The Bear's Tears (13 page)

There was weakness in Massinger, weakness in himself, too, for that
matter. Weakness of the same kind, like cracks hidden behind heavy
wallpaper, cracks that went down to the foundations and boded trouble.

Blue Cortina -

Massinger's blue Cortina,
his
tail —?

The blue Cortina stopped outside the BMW, then pulled forward and
away. Shelley shivered violently and stood up, rubbing his arms and the
backs of his thighs. He gazed towards the fasade of the War Museum
almost with longing. There was no one on the steps. He crunched along
the gravel, hands thrust into his pockets. They had him now. Perhaps
they did not know why he had met Massinger - perhaps they had not
followed the American… But they had him. He was under suspicion, under
surveillance. His breath smoked around his head like a gauzy hood. He
was breathing harshly, as if afraid or spent. He hadn't recognised any
of the faces in the two cars, which meant they were more likely to be
MI5 than KGB - Babbington's troops. They had him, then.

Massinger emerged from the doors as he reached the top of the steps.
Massinger turned to look back over the railings. He could distinguish
the red Vauxhall, but there was no sign of the blue Cortina.

"Finished?" he asked eagerly.

"My God - yes, I've finished." Shelley snatched the buff envelope
which contained the
Teardrop
transcript, its pages protected
by stiff polythene. "I was careful, Peter. No one will realise it's
been copied." He smiled, but some other emotion removed the expression
from his lips almost at once. "I - just glances, you know. It's
incredible. Even talking to Aubrey didn't prepare me for it. Nearly
forty years of treachery documented there. Aubrey's being turned in
1946, being woken from his long sleep two years ago, the information
he's passed, his promotion and the prospects and plans - dismantling
SIS, turning it into… my God, it's so - so convincing!"

"Especially the last two years."

"But Hyde was there - most of the time he was there."

"And Aubrey often went off by myself - unlogged. Or he wasn't wired
for sound, or he didn't make full reports of his contacts. Who could
defend him adequately against this?" Shelley's face was set in a stony,
lifeless expression. To Massinger, he looked young, afraid, vulnerable
- unreliable.

"Any activity?" he asked, gesturing towards Brook Drive with the
gloves he held in one hand.

"The Vauxhall's back with me," Shelley muttered, then he burst out:
"Christ, I'm shit-scared at having anything to do with this!"

"What do we do?"

"Walk. I - can collect the car later. Lambeth's the nearest tube
station in the other direction. OK?"

"OK. Who are they?"

"I - don't know."

"You suspect —?"

"Babbington's people."

"Damn - you're sure they're not KGB?"

"Not sure - not sure they are, either. Veering towards MI5."
Shelley's voice was almost inaudible above the crunching of their
footsteps on the gravel.

"I thought a great deal about this last night," Massinger murmured
as they passed out of the gates, heading towards the Kennington Road.
Massinger recollected Margaret's quietly-breathing form next to him
throughout the night. The awareness of it was vivid, almost a physical
sensation against his arm and side. The memory pained him deeply. He
turned his head, but no red car appeared to be moving.

"And —?" Shelley replied reluctantly, listening to the older man's
hard breathing and the tap of his stick on the pavement. Both noises
were dispiriting.

"I spoke to Pavel Koslov, the KGB Rezident, last evening."

"Where?"

"He was at the flat. A social occasion."

"And?"

They passed an eighteenth-century house with a grand door and an
iron balcony to the first and second floors. It appeared aloofly
unaware of the neighbouring launderette and Indian restaurant. Shelley
seemed distracted by the odours of Tandoori cooking.

"He let something slip - drunk, of course. He knew exactly what was
going on. That it was a frame. He even knew what had happened in
Vienna. It amused him. His opposite number there had told him the whole
story of Aubrey's arrest."

"What can we do about it?" The question surprised Shelley himself.

Massinger halted, and the two men faced one another. Shelley knew he
was being weighed and was affronted and sick with uncertainty. Why had
he said that? Why hadn't he been able to walk away? He had to get the
file back,
that
was what really mattered.

"Do you mean that?" Massinger asked finally. A turbaned Sikh brushed
lightly and apologetically against them. A shopping trolley dragged
behind a large woman banged painfully against Shelley's ankle. Behind
Massinger, a car showroom burst from the ground floor of a once-elegant
house like a mutant, leaving the upper storeys stranded in the past. A
Labour Party poster glared from one window, as if to proclaim the
entirety of change throughout the house.

"Yes," Shelley replied reluctantly, unable to prevent the answer he
gave, shrinking from it even as he did so.

"Good man."

"But what can we
do
—?" Shelley protested as they walked
on.

Massinger slipped on a patch of ice and Shelley steadied him.
Foreboding overwhelmed him.

"Do you realise we have no time left?" Massinger asked. "Already,
we're both under surveillance - if it is MI5, then we have no time at
all, and if it's Pavel who's set the dogs on us, then we may have even
less time. Pavel wouldn't hesitate…"

"I know!" Shelley snapped. "There is no need to scrawl the message
on the wall. So? What hope is there?"

They had reached the entrance to the tube station. Massinger paused,
facing Westminster Bridge Road. On the other side of the thoroughfare,
whitewashed racist slogans had been daubed on a wall beside the poster
of a cowboy smoking his favourite brand of cigarette, a packet of which
obscured the grandeur of Monument Valley. Massinger received a fleeting
image of John Wayne lying prostrate on the roof of a racing
stage-coach, of a crowded, child-noisy movie theatre. His youth.

"I realise Pavel's too well protected - and on guard," he murmured.
Shelley had to bend his head to hear distinctly. "There'd be a
God-awful stink if anything happened to him. But we have no
time!
.
There are the three of us, and one of us is trapped in Vienna with no
hope of getting out. The agent -
our
field agent - cannot
come to us. I have to go to him."

"What then?"

"Someone may be planning to stop us because of what we've already
done. If we can do something quickly, something
decisive -
then maybe we can win. Slowly means we lose - altogether."

"I realise that. But what —?"

"Bear with me, Peter. We need Hyde, and that means going to him.
Which means Vienna. I want everything Registry has on the KGB Rezident
in Vienna - the Rezident and his senior staffers."

"Why?"

"Will you get it for me?" Massinger's eyes gleamed with daring
rather than reason.

"Why?" Shelley repeated.

"If we could make him talk - if we had
proof!"

"The - Rezident, in Vienna… madness." Shelley's anger was fuelled by
fear. "It's absolutely
insane!"

"It's quick. Speed is our only hope."

"That's not hope, it's lunacy."

"And the entirely unexpected. Get me everything on the current
Rezident. There must be something, some time when he's virtually alone,
unattended, off his guard… a moment in which we can - talk to him?"
Massinger's smile matched his eyes. Shelley quailed. It was the most
desperate, monstrous lunacy, a four-in-the-morning solution to the
problem. It should have dispersed in the light of day.

"You can't!" he felt obliged to say.

"At least we can try, man!"

"And this KGB senior staffer - he'll just answer your questions
politely?"

"No. Which is why we will need pentathol and a man with a needle."

"
What
—?"

"You control East Europe Desk, Peter. You must have someone,
somewhere in Europe, someone you can still trust, who can inject the
necessary drugs? There must be someone… ?"

Shelley felt himself mocked. More, he felt himself endangered. Too
close to the bone, to vital organs. Massinger was in the process of
flinging him over a precipice.

"I - can't do what you ask," he murmured. "It's too risky, leaks
like a sieve…"

"My God, man - don't you realise that your precious job may not
exist if this goes on much longer!" Massinger stormed through clenched
teeth. It was a superior, cold anger. "There is collusion between
elements in your service and the KGB. Everything we know and everything
that has happened to Hyde tells us that much. You
must
want
to know who, and why - you have to try and stop it. We
must
establish the truth, Peter. We must discover what this awful
co-operation means, how far it extends - what and who is behind it.
It's your
job
, for God's sake!"

Shelley half turned away, his hands flapping feebly at his sides. "I
don't want to realise that," he muttered.

"But it's necessary - crucial. It's the reality of this business."

"I know. It's standing beside you like a bloody shadow. Duty. God,
Queen and Country. I know I have to. I know it." Shelley's lips twisted
in a sneer.

Massinger looked at his watch. "You'd better get that file back,
Peter," he instructed gently. "And the other material - can you get it
for me today?"

"Today?"

"Hyde is in constant danger.
Your
people in Vienna Station
threw him to the wolves. He's running and he's afraid. He may have even
less time available than we do."

Shelley nodded in accompaniment to Massinger's grave words. Then he
looked up from the pavement and his shuffling feet, and said: "I'll
try. I'll try, and call you tonight?" He left the statement as a
question and studied Massinger's face. The American glanced at the buff
envelope under Shelley's arm, then nodded.

"Yes. Do that. I - we have to go on with it - whatever."

"Yes. Now, I have to go."

Shelley turned away abruptly, and entered the tube station, leaving
Massinger staring at the cigarette hoarding across the street.

"You're certain it was Massinger?"

"No, sir - not certain."

"But Shelley - yes?"

"Yes, sir."

"And you lost them?"

"They shook us off, sir. Didn't use the car."

"Where are they now?"

"Massinger's at home. Shelley's at Century House. He's been there
since a little after one."

"Why did they meet? I don't see the significance of the War Museum."

"Sorry, sir - can't tell you."

"Why did they meet?"

"Sorry, sir - didn't quite catch —"

"It doesn't matter. It can't add up to anything much. Old loyalties
having a day trip, chickens scratching around in the dust. Mm. Shelley
will have to be watched more closely. I'm certain Massinger doesn't
have the stomach for this - he'll run out of steam fairly soon."

"I see, sir."

"Maintain surveillance on both of them, until we can be certain what
they're up to - if anything."

"Sir."

Hyde recognised that he had passed through both fear and the
oppressive sense of isolation. They had worn themselves away, like an
over-familiar lust. Finally, he was left with no more than a desire for
action. It was his simplest emotion; whenever he encountered it, he
felt he had arrived at a destination or a new beginning.

The rain slanted in the gusts of wind across the street. Car
headlights glared onto the windscreen of the Volkswagen van, and brake
lights splashed on the road like ruby paint. He had hired the van from
a small backstreet garage and had borrowed the stained grey overalls he
now wore. Almost six in the evening. He was waiting for Wilkes to leave
the SIS offices on the Opernring. The van was parked beneath the trees,
alongside the tramlines, thirty yards from the door of the office
building. Wilkes had not yet left. Impatience filled Hyde,
gratifyingly, in itself a signal of purposeful activity. His fingers
drummed against the greasy touch of the steering wheel.

Wilkes would tell him the truth. Wilkes, the man who had sent the
KGB for him in the cafe, in the cathedral square. The purposeful men in
the heavy overcoats. Wilkes —

Wilkes stepped from the door, turning up his collar, glancing to
left and right, crossing the pavement to his parked car. Hyde started
the engine of the Volkswagen with a fierce tightness in his chest and
throat. Now, now it begins, he could not avoid thinking.

Wilkes's Audi pulled out into the traffic flow, and Hyde slid into
the line three vehicles behind it. Was he going home, back to his
apartment? Going for a drink, meeting someone? To Hyde, it did not
matter. Eventually, Wilkes would be alone, and then…

Hyde damped down the suddenly rising anger. He had not realised,
until that first moment of secret surveillance as he pulled out into
the traffic behind the unsuspecting Wilkes, how much he wanted to hurt
him, make him talk. He had been too isolated, too endangered and for
too long. Wilkes was going to repay him for that frightened, hunted,
wasted time.

Wilkes's car turned off the Opernring, into Mariahilferstrasse,
following a tram that flashed blue sparks from the wire above it. The
Hofburg Palace loomed to Hyde's right for a moment, then they were
passing the massive elegance of the Kunsthistoriscbes-museum. Audi,
Mercedes, small Citroen, then the Volkswagen. Hyde considered moving
up, anticipating being caught by one of the sets of traffic lights. He
decided against it, however. There were sufficient sets of lights to
keep Wilkes in sight, even if he missed one of them. Action itself
assured him. He would not lose Wilkes. He was there, three cars away
beyond the wipers and the slanting rain.