The Bear's Tears (22 page)

"By no means —"

"Then we'd better keep our hands on him. We might be a little
bit
safer in his company. Help me get him down to the car. We can't
barricade ourselves in here."

"It might be dangerous to move him."

"And fatal if we don't!" He looked up at Massinger. He was
bending
still in front of Bayev like an exhausted runner or an animal tensed to
spring. "You can ask him questions in the car. He's not going to bloody
well know the difference!"

"Very well —"

"Get his coat - it's hanging up in the hall."

Hyde crossed to the window and peered through a crack in the
curtains. Their car appeared unguarded, undetected. Massinger returned
with Bayev's coat.

"You talk to him in Russian," Hyde instructed. "Keep him calm."

Massinger nodded, and then bent to lift Bayev by the arms.

"Come on, Karel, old man - you've had one too many, again!"

Hyde raised his eyebrows in what might have been a compliment as
Massinger laughed and patted Bayev on the shoulder-blades. They
shrugged him into his overcoat.

"Right - weight on you, please," Hyde instructed, loosening the
pistol in its shoulder holster. "Just in case."

"Come on, Karel - you need a breath of fresh air!"

"It's cold!" Bayev exclaimed like a child.

"Where did he get that from?" Hyde murmured as they slipped
sideways
through the door into the apartment's small hallway. "Is he coming
round?"

"I don't know - damn! The benzedrine syringe. I've forgotten it
-
wait here, old man! Haven't paid the bill!" Bayev sagged against Hyde
and did not move, as if once more switched off. Hyde watched the front
door of the flat, hand hovering near the breast of his overcoat.
Massinger reappeared, thrusting a small black case into his pocket.

As soon as Bayev saw the second figure in the hall, he said,
"It's
cold, Pavel - bloody cold out there!"

"You need to wake up, old man. Come on!"

"Keep the bloody noise down when we hit the street. Put your
hand
over his mouth if you have to. Right?"

"Right."

Hyde leaned forward and unlatched the door. He levered it open
with
one foot. The narrow staircase was empty.

"Right, then. Quick as you can, down the little wooden hill."

"Forward march, Karel old man!"

They bundled Bayev down the stairs, Hyde leading, the weight of
the
Russian across his shoulder and back, while Massinger leaned backwards,
taking the strain. He tried to ignore the stabbing pain in his
arthritic hip. Bayev seemed drunk in his inability to negotiate the
individual stairs, stumbling and giggling. He had evidently accepted
the suggestion that he had drunk too much, and Massinger inwardly
cursed this further complication. They leaned heavily against the front
door to the street, breathing hard. Bayev was still giggling.
Massinger's hip was burning with pain.

"Straight across the street to the car. The drunk act might just
fool them, but don't let him start bawling in Russian. Don't stop,
don't even hesitate - they won't shoot if they do recognise
us, not with him between us. Ready?"

"Ready."

Hyde drew the Heckler & Koch. The plastic of the butt was
warm
from his chest and arm. He levered a round into the chamber, and then
nodded.

"OK, here goes…"

He opened the street door slowly then peered round it. The small
area of the Herrengasse he could see showed his car and one of the
Russian vehicles. The driver was still behind the wheel but there were
no passengers. He listened - was startled by a passing car which went
on, past the Hofburg - and heard one set of slow footsteps echoing.
Other side of the street —?

Moving away —?

There was too little sensory information, and the adrenalin was
already dangerously underemployed.

"Come on!" he whispered fiercely, and they dragged Bayev into
the
street, moving across the pavement onto the cobbles as quickly as they
could. Bayev's feet slipped and skidded and stumbled on the icy road.

"It's cold —!" he cried out, and Massinger squashed
his
hand over the man's mouth. His face winced with shock and the pain in
his hip.

"Shit —" Hyde breathed. Bayev slipped heavily, almost bringing
them
down. Hyde felt the cold of the cobblestones through his trousers as he
went down on one knee, Bayev's weight across his back until Massinger
took the strain.

One man, two… three —

All now alerted by the brief Russian exclamation, two of them
already certain of the small stationary group in the middle of the
Herrengasse. The third man focused on them. Movement —

"Don't waste time, they know! Get him to the car as quick…" They
rushed Bayev across the road, his toes dragging swerving lines like
black snailtracks behind them. Hyde thrust the Russian against the boot
of the Mercedes, then heaved open the door. "Get the bugger in!"

Massinger began bundling Bayev into the back of the car, heaving
at
him as the man protested by kicking out, finally throwing himself, with
a stifled groan at his own pain, on top of the Russian and wrestling
him across the rear seat.

Closest man ten yards, running now, mouth open to shout —

Second and third coming fast, fourth even closer, but
approaching
warily, trying to outflank…

Hyde weighed it, then slammed the rear door and jumped into the
driving seat, locking the door behind him.

"Lock the bloody doors or they'll —!" Massinger snapped down the
locks.

Hyde started the engine. A face appeared at his side window,
pressed
flat, smearing the glass with his lips. A gun angled across the window,
held by white knuckles, threatened them. Now they could shoot him, Hyde
realised, without endangering the Rezident. The Russian outside the car
straightened up and stepped back a pace from the window. Rear-view
mirror, the second and third men closing - a bump as one of them
skidded and collided with the boot of the Mercedes - now Massinger,
too, was separable, easier to kill.

Hyde pressed his foot down on the accelerator, and spun the
wheel.
The car slid sideways, lurched, wheels spinning, and then shot away
towards the Michaelerplatz and the Hofburg. The KGB man at Hyde's
window staggered back and was left behind. A fourth man began running
out into the Herrengasse, but Hyde swerved the car around him.

"It's all right, Karel - just some noisy drunks," Massinger was
saying as firmly and soothingly as possible in the back of the car.

"Who are you?" Bayev replied suspiciously. "What are you doing!"

"For God's sake, stop struggling, Karel!" Massinger
snapped. "You must be having the DTs, old man!"

Hyde swung the wheel - two cars already moving in the
Herrengasse,
threatening shapes slipping in and out of the light of successive
street-lamps - and the Mercedes turned ninety degrees and roared into
the narrow, dark archway of the Hofburg's entrance, beneath the cupola.
A pedestrian whisked out of their way, dragging a small dog on a leash
behind him. The noise of the engine was magnified by the bowl of the
cupola's roof, and then they were into the principal square of the
palace leading to the Ring, with traffic lights ahead.

Red.

Mirror - first car turning into the archway already.

"Karel, Karel, wake up, old man! Do you feel better? Come on,
you're
not drunk, just tipsy!" Massinger was shaking Bayev gently, the two men
now propped up on the back seat.

"I can't go back to the hotel," Hyde said, "not until I've
shaken
all three cars."

"This is no good —" Massinger protested. "He's totally
disorientated."

"I'll drive around."

Green. The lights changed as they passed beneath the War
Memorial,
and Hyde turned right onto the Burgring, opposite the huge, dark,
frosty bulks of the arts and natural history museums. Maybe only two
of the cars would catch the light —?

Radio. They'd have radio. They were as vulnerable in the
Mercedes as
they had been in the girl's flat.

Two cars, yes. He accelerated. Karl Renner Ring, Karl Leuger
Ring,
each set of lights thankfully green.

"Where?" he asked.

"Anywhere!" Massinger snapped.

Schottenring. Red lights ahead, strung over the middle of the
wide
thoroughfare. The first car was no more than twenty yards behind them,
in the thin traffic. The road was shining with frost.

Green filter.

Hyde swung the wheel hard to the left, and the Mercedes skidded,
its
back end floating away, then he accelerated and the car bounced heavily
over tramlines and he was into a narrower street. He took the first
right, then right again. The lights of the Schottenring were ahead of
him. He turned into it a block further north from where he had left it,
and accelerated again.

"Aubrey's people," Massinger was saying loudly and firmly.
"Aubrey's
people. He's fighting for his life, Karel. He's desperate. He hasn't
got a chance!"

"No chance," Bayev agreed, but there was something mechanical
and
listless about his voice. Massinger pressed him.

"We can't afford any slip-ups - the pair of us have to stay
safe.
After two years, we can't afford a cock-up now."

Hyde turned the car onto the Franz-Josefs Kai, alongside the
Danube
Canal. The traffic was almost non-existent, the strung-bead lights of a
bridge ten blocks away from them. Cross the canal, something told him.
Into the narrow streets, the darker streets. Two cars still behind him.
The third one would be hanging back, waiting for directions; for some
pattern to be placed on the movements of the Mercedes, some possibility
of a trap.

"Two years? You're a latecomer," Bayev said in the same
mechanical
toy's voice. "Pavel —"

"Thank God," he heard Massinger breathe.

"Pavel, it's been a plan for maybe five years…" Hyde
sensed that Bayev's drugged, confused awareness had slipped back into
his drunk's role. His voice was slightly slurred, his tone confiding,
nose-tapping. Bridge coming up.

Lights red —

He ran through them and a lorry loomed up on the right, the
driver's
face clearly visible as he stared down at the Mercedes rocking on its
springs, leaning drunkenly to one side as Hyde spun the wheel. The car
skidded, turned half-round, then reversed behind the lorry, finally
pulling away from it and running across its path onto the bridge. The
lorry's horn sounded angrily behind them as the car shuddered across
the cobbles of the bridge and jolted along the tramlines.

"Five years - my God!" Massinger exclaimed, his voice still
shaky
from their encounter with the lorry. "Five years. You're obviously a
lot more trusted than I am, Karel."

"Gossip - only gossip," Bayev slurred. Then he yawned.

"Kapustin's always been in charge - yes?" Massinger pressed.

"Is all this on tape?" Hyde asked.

"Yes. It's still running. The recorder's in my hand."

"Thank God." He turned the Mercedes right. The rear-view mirror
was
clear for four seconds before the first of the pursuing cars appeared.
He accelerated again. The kph climbed dramatically on the speedometer.
Seventy miles an hour. "We could be getting somewhere," he murmured.

"Kapustin's always been in command," Bayev repeated like a
lesson he
had learned.

"Brilliant - a brilliant plan. What a mind, what
insight
—!"

"Balls."

"What—?"

"Kapustin - balls, Pavel! Kapustin's just the operator, the
controller. It's not his plan. Just 'cause you're sucking up to him at
the moment, looking to stay in London…" Bayev belched, so convinced was
he of his own drunkenness. He was argumentative now, restless, and he
moved himself into the corner of the Mercedes. His arms waved slowly
once more like windmill sails. "Oh, yes, I know you. You'd kiss
anybody's arse to stay in London."

"Karel, old man —" Massinger protested.

"It's not Kapustin's scheme, you ponced-up fart!" Bayev
screamed, as
if at an enemy. He was now in a violent, enraged, heightened mood, for
no reason other than the effects of the drugs. "Petrunin created it!
Bloody Petrunin - who's a better man than you any day - he
created it!" Bayev was screaming at the top of his voice.

"Who?" Massinger murmured in the ensuing silence.

Two cars in the mirror, slowly closing the gap. The dark, ugly
hump
of the Nordbahnhof rose to their left. Hyde shuddered. Glaring, cold
lights over the massive freight-yards beyond the station.

"Petrunin. Tamas Petrunin," Hyde said, unnerved. "That clever
bastard."

"Shelley?"

"Yes."

Peter Shelley indicated to his wife to turn down the television
set.
Alison Shelley pressed the remote control handset. Laughter at a repeat
of Porridge softened. Ronnie Barker was being berated by the
short, dapper martinet prison officer. Shelley was still smiling at the
last remark he had heard when he realised it was Babbington's voice at
the other end of the line. Immediately, he was intensely aware of the
back of his wife's head as she sat on the sofa, of the television
beyond her, of the bay window still revealing the moonlit, snow-covered
back garden. The images pressed upon him accusingly; claiming their
rights.

"Shelley - I won't beat about the bush, not with one of my
senior
men," Babbington began, and then paused for effect before adding:
"You've been working unofficially, Shelley. You have provided
confidential information for people without security clearance."

Shelley drew in his breath sharply. Alison's shoulders twitched,
as
at the shock of static electricity in the room.

"I'm - sorry, sir… ?"

"Don't play games, Shelley. Massinger asked you for certain
information and you provided it, from Registry."

"Sir —"

Alison looked round at the tone of his voice. Her face was
immediately concerned. He waved a hand to suggest there was no
necessity for concern. But there was —