The Bear's Tears (4 page)

What —?

Where the hell had Kapustin gone? Hyde hadn't even watched him leave
the gardens of the Belvedere. Damn —

Hyde's hand reached into his coat.

"Sir Kenneth? It's Andrew Babbington —" one of the approaching knot
of men - four, no, five of them - called out.

"Babbington?" Aubrey replied confusedly, moving towards the group.
"Babbington - Andrew, what are you doing here?"

Hyde remained on one knee, his hand gripping the butt of the Heckler
& Koch the embassy had issued him that afternoon. Its shaped
plastic was warm from his body. He could not ignore the crackle of
static.

Then Aubrey said: "It is you - what is it?"

Crackle - legs, there, beneath the trees. He saw them through a
diseased, thinned part of the hedge. Wilkes and the others had closed
up now, forming a group of men in dark overcoats and light trench
coats, surrounding Aubrey. Must be an emergency —? The legs he could
see through the hedge rose to a dark, bulky coat. He could not see the
man's face. Aubrey had been joined by the Director-General of MI5 and
the Vienna Head of Station. It had to be an emergency - highest
priority.

The legs remained still. Did the body have a familiar shape —?

Another pair of legs arrived silently.
Two
watchers. Hyde
got to his feet and moved slowly and quietly off the gravel path. His
hand held the recorder and its lead and the earpiece. He thrust the
recorder into his pocket and the plug back into his ear.

"… it's extremely embarrassing, Sir Kenneth," someone was murmuring
deferentially. Parrish, Head of Station in Vienna.

"I simply do not understand why you are here, Andrew," Aubrey
snapped as Hyde again bent low by the hedge. The two watchers had not
moved. Their stance betrayed their interest in the group on the path.
They were unaware of him.

"Mr Babbington - I'm sorry, Sir Andrew has given me very precise
instructions, Sir Kenneth. I'm very sorry…" Why wasn't Babbington
speaking for himself? Why the hell was Babbington in Vienna anyway? MI5
was internal security, not intelligence. He was on Aubrey's patch. "I
must ask you to accompany us, Sir Kenneth."

"Why, may I ask?" Aubrey asked waspishly. "And why won't you speak
for yourself, Andrew? What is it? What is the matter?"

Hyde slipped along the grass verge, his back brushing the tall
hedge. A statue loomed, and the hedge opened in decay behind it. He
slipped through into the deeper darkness beneath the trees.

"… this is very awkward for me, Sir Kenneth," Parrish was
protesting. "Very awkward for all of us…"

"Where is your man Hyde?" Babbington suddenly asked. Hyde was
chilled by the tone of command, the sense of urgency. It was a palpable
threat. He
knew
it as such and was unnerved by disbelief.
Ahead of him, he could see the two watchers beneath the trees. They
were perhaps thirty yards from the group on the path. Who were they —?

"I - have no idea where Hyde is," Aubrey said cunningly. "He was
here a moment ago… What do you want of me, Andrew?"

"You'll return to London in our company, Kenneth - and there you
will remain incommunicado at your flat until such time…"

"What?"

Hyde was rigid with shock, almost unaware of the watchers even
though they were now moving in his general direction.

"Kenneth —" Babbington warned.

"What is it, man? What in the devil's name are you talking about?"
Aubrey stormed.

"Treason, Sir Kenneth," Babbington replied coldly. Hyde gasped with
incredulity.
Aubrey
—?

"What did you say?"

"Sir Kenneth, I must warn you that there are grounds for the
strongest suspicion - there are matters which
must
be
investigated…"

Footsteps to Hyde's left, coming through the trees. Noises on
gravel, farther off.

Kapustin… Kapustin…

He recognised the man. He had been the first watcher he had spotted
beneath the trees. He hadn't left the gardens - he had
known
…

Known it would happen.

Hyde's breath escaped in a cloud. Kapustin saw him then. Almost
immediately, he bent his head to one side and whispered furiously into
a small transceiver. Kapustin had known it would happen, that Aubrey
would be…

Arrested.

Running footsteps, and the noises of Aubrey's group moving off, as
if abandoning him.

"This is blatantly ridiculous," Aubrey was saying, his voice seeming
to grow fainter. "You know why I'm here, what this is about."

Hyde was alone. Running footsteps on gravel, closing in. Kapustin
watched him, expectant and confident. A body brushed through low fir
branches, a slithering sound. Kapustin's transceiver suddenly crackled
with voices. In his ear, Aubrey continued to protest, his voice and
circumstances now irrelevant. Kapustin was about to speak. Hyde felt
his legs become heavy. The adrenalin coursed in his veins, but he
seemed powerless to employ it.

A body blundered against him, slipping on a patch of ice in a hollow
in the leaf-mould and hard earth. The collision freed him. He tugged
the pistol from his overcoat and struck out, catching the man across
the temple. The KGB man staggered back, clutching at the sudden rush of
blood. It seeped between his fingers, ran into his eyes. Hyde heaved
him out of his path and ran.

He burst from beneath the trees, skidded on the frosty, sparkling
gravel then recovered his balance and fled towards the Upper Belvedere,
aware that he was moving away from Aubrey and the men who had arrested
him. Then he was aware only of the sheen of snow on the gardens, the
glint of the frozen pool, the sparkling steps, and his breath beginning
to labour as he ran up the long slope towards the darkened, deserted
palace.

The air was chilly against his cheeks, his mouth gasped at its
coldness, tasting and wetting the wool of his scarf. He heard footsteps
behind him. On the end of its lead, the earpiece of the recorder
bounced like a fusillade of tiny pebbles against his shoulder.

He saw a form converging, racing across the moonlit white lawn, and
he checked then heaved his frame against that of the running man. His
breath exploded, and Hyde's shoulder lifted him off his feet, turning
him into a face-down dark lump against the snow. Hyde staggered,
lurched, felt the recorder drop from his pocket and heard it land on
the gravel.

Then he heard a voice, seeming to come from the man on the ground,
and for a moment he was unable to move.

"Stop him - kill him if you have to," in unaccented English. It was
no Russian voice, yet it was coming from the pocket transceiver clipped
to the lapel of the unconscious man's coat. The words were muffled by
the man's body, but they were audible on the chilly air. English,
spoken by a native.
Collusion
, he had time to register. MI5
and the KGB. Collusion.

His eyes cast about on the gravel, but he failed to locate the
recorder. Distant figures were running towards him.
The recorder
—!

No
time
—!

His body began running again, even as he knew he ought to continue
the search. Panic and survival controlled him. He mounted the last
steps onto the terrace of the Belvedere. Again, the ghostly features of
the sphinx grinned and smirked with superiority. His hand slapped
against her stone hair as he regained his balance and looked behind
him. Two men below, another two converging.

Kill him if you have
to…

He still realised the collusion, but it was the threat that was now
predominant. They wanted him dead. He had seen and heard. He must be
eliminated. Not simply isolated, left alone, but eliminated. Driven and
hounded by his own fear, he ran towards the gates onto the Prinz-Eugen
strasse, towards Vienna.

Kill him if you have to…

His shoes pounded on the icy pavement. Lines of lights and parked
cars stretched ahead of him down the hill towards the city. He ran on,
the idea of collusion fading in his mind like the distanced noises and
cries behind him.

'O how fall'n! how chang'd

From him, who in the happy Realms of
Light

Cloth'd with transcendent brightness
didst outshine

Myriads though bright.'

Paul Massinger balanced his whisky on the small table and then eased
himself, left leg extended, into the deep armchair. His face creased
into lines of irritated pain for a moment until he settled his
arthritic hip to greater comfort. Ridiculous. Within his aging form, he
had felt so much younger since his marriage to Margaret. He had belied
his fifty-nine years; defeated them. Now his body persisted in its
reminders of his physical age; it was pertinent yet false, just as the
elegance of the Belgravia flat occasionally reminded him, falsely, how
easily he, a mere American, could be charged with having married for
money. In many eyes, he knew he had at first been - still was to some
people - little better than a colonial buccaneer, a gold-digger. At
least, that was what other gold-diggers said. None of it hurt or even
affected him. Margaret had entered his long widowerhood firmly and
purposefully, and opened a new door to this.

The
Standard
lay still folded on the arm of the chair. He
dismissed the consideration that he must arrange to have an operation
on his worsening hip - not yet, not yet - and pressed the button of the
remote control handset. The television fluttered and grumbled to life.
Margaret was not yet home. A sense of absence filled him to the
accompaniment of the signature tune of the early evening news. Alistair
Burnet's comfortable features filled the screen. He heard a key in the
lock, and surrendered to the small, joyous sensation at her return. He
turned in his chair in order to see her the moment she stepped into the
drawing-room. There was an excited tightness in his chest. His hip
twinged savagely, as if envious of his emotions and the object of his
attention. In the same complex moment he was young and old.

The long fox fur coat and the matching fur hat; a high colour from
the evening drop in temperature made her younger than her forty-three
years. The confident, unselfconscious step… The smile faded from his
lips. Alistair Burnet's voice was that of an intruder upon the scene.
She had halted abruptly in mid-step, and the colour had blanched from
her cheeks. One gloved hand played about her lips. Her eyes looked
hurt, bruised. Massinger turned his head towards the television set,
and gasped.

A grainy monochrome picture of a man of forty or so, fair hair
lifted by a breeze; half-profile, lips parted in a smile, eyes pale and
intent. Handsome. Massinger did not hear what Ailstair Burnet said to
accompany the photograph. He did not need to hear the appalled, choked
word that Margaret uttered:

"Father…!"

He knew it already. Robert Castleford, almost forty years dead.

Margaret dragged the fur hat from her head, dishevelling her fair
hair. Her mouth was slightly open, as if there were other things she
wished to say; lines she had forgotten.

Massinger said, stupidly, "Margaret, what's going on… ?"

She moved to his chair but did not touch him, except to brush his
hand as she snatched the remote control handset from the arm of the
chair. Burnet's voice boomed in the drawing-room.

"… the accusations, said to have been made to the CIA by a Russian
defector now in America, involve the circumstances surrounding the
death in 1946 in Berlin…"

"Why?" was all Massinger could think to say. He looked up at his
wife, but she was staring at the screen, her body slightly hunched like
that of a child expecting to be struck.

"… the Foreign Office has declined to comment on the matter, and
will neither confirm nor deny that any investigation of the head of the
intelligence service is under way, as this evening's edition of the
Standard
newspaper claims…"

Her hand scrabbled near his sleeve like a trapped pet. The crackling
of the folded newspaper was followed by a deep gasp that threatened to
become a sob. Massinger, suddenly, could not look at her.

D-Notice
… ? his mind asked irrelevantly, and answered
itself almost casually, like a voice issuing from a deep club armchair
of worn leather,
The British have let it come out. For some
reason, they want it known… Aubrey has enemies, then
… He loathed
his own detachment and wanted to clutch her hand. Alistair Burnet
passed to another news story. Bombs in Beirut.

"What - what does it say?" he asked throatily. She did not reply.
Aubrey
,
he thought.
Aubrey knew Castleford in
Berlin in 1946. But Castleford disappeared in Berlin… His remains were
found in - in '5I, beneath the ruins of a house. He'd been murdered,
but no one ever thought
…

Aubrey?

"Darling," he said with ponderous, eager gentleness, "what does it
say?"

She let the paper fall into his lap, and crossed the room to the
sideboard. He heard a drink being poured, and breathing like that of
someone close to death. Castleford's picture was alongside the headline
WHERE is 'C'? Beneath that, a sub-heading, Intelligence Furore - Who
Killed Who? He could feel the pain each word must have inflicted upon
her, but he could not turn his attention from the article.

Exclusive
. Arrest of the Head of Intelligence, 'C',
expected at any moment… CIA sources in London… Whitehall refuses to…
Soviet embassy sources angered by the accusations of complicity in
Castleford's death… Castleford's background, senior and distinguished
civil servant, brilliant university scholar, veteran of the Spanish
Civil War, until now believed murdered for some undiscovered personal
reason - or motivelessly done to death… information in our possession,
fourth man, fifth man… Blunt and Long and the others all small fry…