The Bear's Tears (30 page)

"I'm getting stiff," Hyde announced. "Let's walk."

They left, passing through other rooms that might once have been
offices - a broken chair, sagging wooden shelves - until they stood in
the main courtyard of the fort. The snow-laden pines stretched away up
the mountain slope until they petered out at the treeline. The scene
was almost colourless; hostile and lonely.

They paced the courtyard of hardened earth, ridged by old
cartwheels
or the ancient wheels of gun carriages. Hyde flapped his arms against
his sides for warmth.

"It is a deadly game, my friend," Miandad said after a long
silence
filled only by the wind and their stamping footsteps.

"I know that."

"He will hold you responsible if you do not —"

"I know that!" Hyde snapped. He halted, turning to Miandad. "My
life
isn't worth a spit anywhere in the world unless I get hold of Petrunin
and get the truth from him. In those circumstances, mate, it's easy to
make extravagant promises and put your balls in the scales!"

"Very well. But, how will you prevent Mohammed Jan from putting
your
Russian to death immediately he is captured - always supposing he is
captured alive in the first place."

"Shoot the bugger, if I have to - Christ, I don't know! Just
hope, I
suppose. Or threaten to kill Petrunin myself unless they let me talk to
him."

"And how will you get Petrunin to talk?"

"Christ knows! Offer him a way out? Let's face it, some bugger's
going to be disappointed with the outcome - let's just hope it isn't
us!"

"Very well."

"You'll be safe?"

Miandad nodded. "Oh, yes. Mohammed Jan will not harm me. You
see, I
represent the possibility of guns and ammunition, and shelter."

"God, I wish I knew what the hell to do!"

"Perhaps you should ask Allah for inspiration? Or your own god?"

"Who? Janus of the two faces? Some hope."

"My friend, do not despair. If we find a patrol, and we can
capture
some of the Russian soldiers, they will talk easily enough. They will
know Petrunin - he is a legend among them, one of the few they have.
They will know, perhaps, his movements and his timetable. Then
an idea may come to you."

Hyde looked up at the climbing pines and the white mountains
against
the pale sky. He could not shake off his abiding sense of the alienness
of this country. His mission was doomed to failure. Had he not been
desperate himself, he would never have considered it. He would never
have crossed the border.

A voice called out in Pushtu. They turned swiftly, Hyde bringing
the
Russian Kalashnikov to bear. A turbanned Pathan waved urgently to them
from the main gate.

Miandad said, "They've found a patrol. We are ordered to make
haste." He looked at the sky. "No more than two hours of daylight left.
The patrol ought to be returning to Jalalabad or Kabul very soon. Come,
my friend. Let's hope there are plenty of new guns, even a rocket
launcher. Mohammed Jan will be mollified if the haul is a good one."

"Then there is nothing else you can do - you must get out of
it."
Shelley's face was grim as Massinger looked up. He had been staring at
Hyde's telephone ever since he had replaced the receiver. He could
still hear, more stridently and more affectingly than any of Shelley's
prognostications and fears, Margaret's almost hysterical refusal to see
him, to believe him, to care what happened to him. He was numbed by the
fact that she could abandon him.

"How can I?" he asked bleakly.

"How can you? Drop it - drop the whole thing, man!" It was
evident
that Shelley was pleading with him for their mutual safety. The
tortoiseshell cat roused itself, as if the electricity of their fears
disturbed and shocked its fur. Then it settled back into its hollow in
the sofa next to Massinger. "You'll have to bluff your way out."

"You've already thought this through, haven't you?" Massinger
asked.
He made it sound like an accusation, and Shelley lowered his eyes as he
replied.

"Yes, I have." He looked up again, defiantly. Massinger thought
perhaps his eyes had caught the front page of The Sunday Times
and he had been reminded that he was abandoning Aubrey. His old chiefs
fate seemed settled, inexorable. Perhaps there was nothing that could
be done.

He squashed the thought like an irritating insect, half-afraid
of it
as of some exotic, corrupt sexual temptation. He could not simply
abandon Aubrey. He shook his head. "I can't."

"You have to! Look, I've given this a lot of thought.
Whoever is running this show has closed all the doors against you. Good
God, don't you realise that what happened in Helsinki means that
someone knew what I'd been doing almost before I did it. I made a
couple of telephone calls, I met you in Calais - and it's as if we
carried placards announcing our intentions." Shelley's voice was urgent
and afraid. "It's time to face the truth. There's nothing we can do. We
can't keep anything hidden from them. Sooner or later, they're going to
get tired of us, like buzzing flies, then - splat! You, me - families…"
Shelley's voice tailed off.

Massinger patted the young man's knee roughly, and said in a low
voice: "Even if I did, how could I make them believe me?" He felt
almost as if Aubrey could hear every word he spoke. Yet Margaret
remained the light at the end of the tunnel. She would see him, come
back to him, let him come back.

"It's easy!" Shelley said quickly. Massinger recognised that the
conspiracy was agreed between them. "You have to convince them that
you're interested in the truth of this —" His finger tapped the
newspaper. Aubrey's face stared at them. Shelley's damp fingertip
became smudged with print from the picture and the headline - The
meaning of treason? Shelley rubbed his finger on his denims.
"Don't remain in hiding - don't just skulk here. Go to Babbington,
even, and ask him all about this. Ask to talk to this man living in
Guernsey who's quoted here - what's his name, Murdoch? Convince them
that all you're interested in, all you've ever wanted to
discover, is whether or not Aubrey murdered Castleford. If you can do
that, you can walk away from this
mess."
Shelley's voice ended on a low, seductive note.

Massinger knew it would work. Babbington would accept it, and so
would Margaret. The Sunday Times had opened a route to the
border of the wild country in which he had found himself. He could be
across that border by nightfall; safe.

"And the traitor?" Massinger murmured.

"Forget him."

"But we know he exists!" Massinger began.

"And we can do nothing!" Shelley snapped at him. "We
have
to stay alive. I want to stay alive, anyway. So do you, I suspect."

"But —"

"You don't know where to begin. You have nothing to offer, no
influence, no power, no knowledge, and no leverage. You can't even
protect yourself. Give it up!"

He could be dining with his wife that evening. He could be
holding
her in his arms within a matter of hours.

Safe. The route to the border was open. Safe —

"And you?" he asked.

"I'll ring this man in Guernsey - on your behalf. A halfhearted
final gesture, for form's sake. Then I can go back to the office with
a clean sheet." Two spots of shame had appeared on Shelley's cheeks,
but it was evident that he was determined. He had abandoned Aubrey and
was already learning to live with the amputation of a small part of his
conscience. "As for you," he added, "why not go and see one or two of
these people I've dug up who were in Berlin in '46? It will make for
conviction, mm?" Shelley picked up some sheets of paper from the
coffee-table. "Yes, why not? See one or two of them, and then you call
Babbington. Ask to see him - seem to want to be convinced. Sound as if
you want to believe everything you read in the papers." Shelley's
forced jocularity was evidently acted. He was assuming his new role,
and Massinger desperately wanted to do the same. "When you've spoken to
Babbington, all you have to do is convince him that you're satisfied.
Aubrey killed Castleford. They have to be made to believe that you
beheve it. Who knows -perhaps the old man did, in a fit of passion —?"

"Don't be stupid!"

"Sorry."

There was a very long, strained silence. Massinger suspended all
thought, almost ceased to breathe. Cross the border, he told himself
again and again.

"Very well," he said eventually. "It's the only way. I agree."

As Shelley sighed with relief, Massinger encountered an image of
Aubrey's old and shrunken form in silhouette at the end of a long,
poorly-lit corridor, abandoned and alone. Massinger clenched his fists
and turned his thoughts forcibly to his wife.

It is ludicrous, Aubrey told himself, that I should be providing
my
interrogator, just as he is at his most dangerous, with a roast
pheasant Sunday lunch accompanied by a bottle of good claret. He
watched Eldon squash a portion of peas onto his fork and raise them to
his lips before he refilled the man's glass from the silver-necked
ship's decanter. Aubrey watched his own hand intently as the wine
mounted in Eldon's glass. It was steady. He had absorbed the shock of
the Insight article long before Eldon had telephoned and been
invited to lunch. Mrs Grey considered their dining together an act of
madness or heresy, but had prepared one of her best lunches, with apple
tart to follow. Aubrey had needed the normality of the occasion, false
though it was, to assist the drama of casual indifference and easy
denial that he knew he would have to perform for Eldon.

Within himself, controlled but evident, the turmoil of an
approaching crisis brewed like a tropical storm. The subject of Clara
Elsenreith had arisen, and Aubrey knew they would be looking for her.
He also knew that he had to get to her first, at whatever risk.

"She seems to have quite disappeared," Eldon was saying. "Ah,
thank
you, Sir Kenneth. As I said, an excellent claret."

"I'm sure you regard it as a great pity that I have not
continued
the liaison until the present day," Aubrey remarked. He sliced neatly
at the thigh of the pheasant, placing the meat delicately between his
lips. He was well into the role, and was confident he could play it to
the end of the interview; despite his increasing weariness, his growing
desperation, and the new and sudden fear that he had to make a move.
The journal that Clara had kept for him for thirty-five years must be
destroyed. Now, it could well constitute the last link in the chain
they would use to bind him. They felt they had a motive now menage a
trois, he thought with disgust - and his confession to Castleford's
murder was in the hands of the woman in the case. Find her and they
would find his confession.

Eldon's eyes studied Aubrey. He smiled thinly. "At least, Sir
Kenneth, you admit the liaison itself."

"Of course. Murdoch was not the only one to know of it."

"And this woman was Castleford's mistress, too?"

Aubrey's face narrowed as he pursed his lips. "She was not."

"But —" Eldon's fork indicated the room, which somewhere
contained
the newspaper article and Murdoch's assertions.

"Murdoch assumed the fact."

"As did others?"

"Naturally."

Eldon's brow creased. "I wonder why that should be," he mused.

"Because Castleford's reputation in such matters was well-known.
Because he - actively pursued Clara Elsenreith."

"You had, then, no cause for sexual jealousy? You
were, in
fact, the victor, the possessor of the lady's favours and affection?"
Eldon's tone was light, sarcastic, stinging. The slighting of the
affair, of the woman in the case, was quite deliberate.

"I was," Aubrey replied levelly.

"We shall have to ask the lady for corroboration."

"When you find her," Aubrey remarked incautiously.

"Is there any reason you should hope we do not?" Eldon asked
sharply, laying down his knife and fork.

Aubrey shook his head, sipped his claret. "None whatsoever."

"You have no idea where she can be found?"

"As I indicated - the lady belongs very much to an earlier part
of
my life. An episode I thought long closed," Aubrey added with
unpretended bitterness. "I have no idea where you might find her." An
elegant apartment opposite the Stephansdom, above a smart shoe shop,
his memory confessed, almost as if he had spoken the words aloud. He
sipped at the claret again. He could clearly envisage, without
concentrating, the rooms of the apartment, much of the furniture and
many of the ornaments, the decoration of the drawing-room and the guest
bedroom where he had occasionally slept. Clara owned the lease of the
shop below the apartment. It sold shoes produced by the small companies
in which she had an interest in France and Italy.

Thank God, he told himself, that she never called her fashion
house
by her own name, married or maiden. Thank God for that, at least.

Castleford had pursued her, yes. Castleford had become insanely
jealous when he found her drawn towards another man.

He felt himself cheated by Aubrey, insulted by the poorer
physical
specimen's success, by the junior man's triumph. He had pleaded with
Clara, attempted to coerce and blackmail, to bribe - to possess.
Castleford needed to possess women, to use and enjoy them, then put
them to one side like empty bottles when he had done with them. Clara
had loathed him, though Aubrey was certain that, for her own advantage,
she would have become Castleford's mistress had he not appeared on the
scene. Clara would have had to look after herself. From Castleford she
could have obtained papers, food, money, clothes, protection, safety.
Instead, Aubrey had supplied those things.

Yes, Castleford had been jealous. At first Aubrey had been
jealous
of Castleford, suspecting a success the man had not at that time
enjoyed. But sexuality was not the motive for Castleford's murder.