The Bear's Tears (45 page)

"Jesus wept," Hyde breathed, but it might have been no more than
impatience which prompted him. Snow flurried in a quicker wind and
dusted them. Hyde tasted it, then smeared it across his face as if to
wash, to freshen himself. His beard rasped. Its growth seemed more than
a mere stubble; a change of identity. Petrunin, too, had suffered
change. Yes, they had known what they were doing when they sent him
into exile, to Kabul.

"You could burn them all if you could find them, if you had
enough
napalm," Petrunin repeated. "Kapustin - I can see his cunning peasant's
face now - sitting on Nikitin's left, telling me I had overreached
myself…" His English was more regular now; its tone more clipped,
educated, as if the man were reverting to some former, more urbane self
as he died.

"Come on," Hyde whispered. The snow-curtain swayed, flickered,
swayed, fell.

Overreached… even then, he must have been patting
Teardrop
on the head like a newly-adopted son… even then - peasant. His hissing
voice was interrupted by
coughing.
Hyde almost covered his mouth with the bloodstained piece of shirt,
suppressing the spillage. Hyde's lips moved silently, as if he were
praying. Eventually, Petrunin's heaving chest subsided. When Hyde
removed the cloth, the Russian's cheeks and chin were smeared with
darker patches and stripes; an animal mask resembling the symbols that
had decorated his blood-red helicopter as it hovered over the burning
tribesmen. Hyde sat back, and almost at once his weariness made him
close his eyes. He jolted back to wakefulness, his eyes staring at the
falling snow. His boots and trousers were covered by a thin white
blanket. He heard Petrunin's teeth chattering, and knew he could not
let the man wander in the landscape of his self-pity any longer.

In Russian, he said with studied deference: "They did badly by
you,
Comrade General - those Party hacks." The words were out almost before
he could consider and weigh them; yet he knew they were right. He
remembered Massinger's voice from the rear of the Mercedes,
interrogating the Vienna Rezident. Something like that - a last
delusion for the dying man, drugged by his wound. "You're right, sir -
peasants,
all of them."

There was a long silence, then he heard Petrunin's remote, quiet
voice. "You want to know, don't you?" he said. "Hyde? You're here to
find out - aren't you?"

"Yes," Hyde could not help admitting. Somehow, the proximity of
Petrunin's death disarmed him.

Petrunin laughed; coughed, so that Hyde plucked up the piece of
cloth at once; continued to laugh. His amusement seemed as deep as his
bitterness, as deep as his inhumanity.

"Why not?" he said finally. "Why not?" Then, after a long pause:
"Why not indeed?"

Hyde glanced up at the overhang of the rock as if at the sky.
His
hands clenched at his sides with the relief of tension.

"It had to be your idea," he said. "So bloody devious."

"You didn't know - you found out, but you didn't guess?"

"No."

"Good. But yes, it was my idea. I created
Teardrop.
Kapustin merely stole it. After he failed to rescue me - let me drown
in front of Nikitin in the juice of my failure - he simply came along
and picked the whole thing up."

"Why?"

"Why? Because the time was right, that's why. Aubrey was head of
the
service - the time was right. For everyone in Moscow Centre, the time
was right. And sweet…" The tone of Petrunin's voice was thin and faint,
like the distant sounds of a boy treble rising from a hidden choir.
Unearthly. Yet there was a satisfaction that even his closeness to
death could not diminish. His scheme had ended Aubrey's career in
disgrace. Petrunin's revenge was complete. The high faint tone of the
voice was like a long amen. Petrunin seemed at peace.

"But - just for revenge? You created it just for Aubrey's
disgrace?"
Hyde's words resonated with disappointment.

"Not Aubrey - sweet, though. Anyone. The Director-General of the
time… there were other scenarios… but the best, the best belonged to
Aubrey. Everything fitted… and 1946 was a bonus. Oh, I was an avid
reader of Aubrey's biography. I know more about him than anyone on
earth - even himself, perhaps. Sweet…"

"Why? What was the real reason?" Hyde persisted. The
curtain of snow seemed lighter now, almost transparent. Petrunin was
silent for a long time. Hyde felt very cold, especially numbed in his
left arm and shoulder. Then he realised that it was Petrunin's weight
leaning against his side. The man's eyes were closed, his jaw was
slack, and his lips hung open amid the stripes and stains of the
smeared, dried blood. Hyde groaned aloud; almost a wail. He shook the
body by the shoulders, but Petrunin's eyelids did not flicker.

Then Hyde heard the distant noise of a helicopter.

Wolfgang Zimmermann felt a curious gratitude that Margaret
Massinger
seemed so willing to immerse herself in the sheafs of reports and
surveillance digests he had given her. He was aware that the woman was
somehow keeping herself in check, as if turning her past lightly page
by page, an album of old photographs to which she gave hardly any of
her attention; someone else's snapshots, another person's history. She
seemed determined that the work should occupy her.

Zimmermann felt that Margaret understood he did not believe
Aubrey
to be innocent of the death of her father. He had struggled to conceal
the truth of his guesses and suspicions when she questioned him about
Disch, but the woman was perceptive, keen-eyed for proof of Aubrey's
guilt. He did not think he had masked his intuitions sufficiently to
deceive her. He did not wish to believe Aubrey guilty, but Castleford's
execution as a closet Nazi helping war criminals to escape did not
contradict his
knowledge of Aubrey's character. He surreptitiously glanced at his
watch. They had been working for almost two hours since lunch, and
Massinger still had not returned. Zimmermann almost dreaded his arrival.

Margaret saw, from the corner of her eye, Zimmermann's tiny
movements as he turned his wrist to check his watch. She did not look
up. Paul - what had Paul learned? Was he afraid to come back? Did he
know
—? She ground her teeth, certain that the noise was audible, and
pressed all thought of her father into the back of her mind. Most of
the time - especially whenever she reminded herself of the danger that
threatened Paul - she was able to believe that concern over the truth
of her father's death had become less important to her. But, at moments
when she was off-guard, as when Zimmermann consulted his watch, it
leapt at her with unabated strength. Yet she had to suppress
it, had to —

"I - excuse me, Wolf…" Zimmermann looked up and smiled. Her
German
was grammatical, stiff, well-learned, and recently unused. "I - I've
made a list of what you could call - absences without leave during the
period from February to April '74. There are a lot of them."

She stretched forward, arm extended. Zimmermann, too, leaned
towards
the coffee-table, and took the sheet of notepaper. He inspected it,
nodding and shaking his head in turn. Then he looked up.

"I agree. It is a poor comment on the protection we offered our
guests. Yes, I'm afraid there was a great deal of time unaccounted for
by SIS personnel during those weeks." He sighed. "A pity - whether we
can check very much of it after so much time, I'm not sure." He
pondered, then asked: "Do you detect a pattern here?"

Margaret shook her head. "Some were greater offenders than
others -
I've starred their names. Mostly night-times are unaccounted for." She
smiled. "Might it mean anything?"

"Possibly. We must try."

"And you? Have you found anything?" Her gaze was direct, almost
fierce. Guiltily, he glanced down at the heap of files balanced on his
lap. He had kept Aubrey's material for his own examination - his
movements, contacts, debriefing, subsequent debriefmgs of those
assigned to his protection from the BfV. In it, as he had expected, he
had found nothing. He shook his head gently, wisely. Margaret's
features pursed at the patronising mannerism.

"No, I have not. I did not expect to," Zimmermann said coldly in
response to her expression. The woman's suspicions were suddenly
irritating, stupid. "What may or may not have happened in 1946 has
nothing to do with 1974, or with now," he said pedantically. "I am
certain of that. There is nothing here to link Aubrey with Guillaume or
anyone else."

"Do you say that only because you are in his debt, Herr
Zimmermann?"

"I do not," he replied angrily. "I am in his debt, greatly so.
That
is true. But it is not true to make it an accusation. Do you forget
that you and your husband are perhaps both in danger? He
certainly is. The man is here somewhere, in this maze, in all this old
paper. Your father is dead - he had been dead for almost forty years…
your husband is alive."

Margaret's face had reddened. She clenched her hands in her lap.
"You don't have to lecture me, Herr Zimmermann."

"My apologies."

"I - I'm sorry…it - it's just that it's so hard to
help
the man who might have killed my father —!"

"Then help your husband!"

"Very well! What do you want me to do?"

Zimmermann stood up, clutching the sheaf of files in both hands.
He
threw them onto the sofa beside her. "Here! You think that man killed
your father - you find something against him. I can't! The
reason I can't is that there is nothing to find." Zimmermann was
visibly trembling as he stood in front of her. She confronted a passion
for truth as fierce as her own.

She disregarded the files on Aubrey. "I'm sorry - I'll carry on
with
- with my own work, here…"

"As you wish," Zimmermann observed coldly, turning away from her
and
walking to the window. The snow had stopped, but more threatened from
the heavy sky. Zimmermann was angry with himself for losing his temper.
Margaret Massinger was under a great strain.

He almost turned to apologise, but could not. Better to leave
her,
for the moment, to recover herself. He heard her shuffling through
papers, and knew that she would not now look, even glance, at the
Aubrey material. In a moment, he should get back to it —

Where was Massinger?

He prevented himself from looking once more at his watch. It was
already beginning to get dark outside. The barges were like long black
slugs on the grey path of the Rhine. No, there was one with washing
hung out even in this dreary, freezing weather - a line of it like
naval signals of greeting or distress.

Where was Massinger?

Nerves took hold of Zimmermann, unformed but gathering fears. He
should have provided the man with an escort, with protection.

Margaret Massinger was speaking.

"What —?" he asked abruptly.

"I didn't realise that Andrew Babbington was in Bonn during that
period," she repeated, undisturbed by his tone.

"Oh - yes, he headed the team of interrogating officers that MI5
sent over, a few days after Guillaume was arrested," Zimmermann replied
absently, watching the barge, flying its signals of colourful washing,
move upriver towards the Kennedybrücke.

"No, he was here before that," Margaret continued. "Some
internal
investigation in the Chancery section of the British embassy -
misappropriation of funds, it says here."

Zimmermann turned from the window. "That is not unusual…" he
began
with heavy humour.

The door opened, and Paul appeared.

"Well?" Margaret asked breathlessly, almost at once. Zimmermann
saw
the certainty on Massinger's face, and quailed inwardly. He doubted he
could help save Aubrey by helping them. Massinger believed in Aubrey's
guilt, that much was evident; just as it was evident he wished to
conceal that conviction from his wife. "What did you find out?" she
asked ominously.

Massinger laid his raincoat across the back of a chair and sat
beside her. The man seemed to have no masks left; Zimmermann could see
that any effort at deception would fail miserably.

"It's no more than speculation," he began.

"What is?" Margaret snapped.

"Your father - it's a crazy, wild guess - Aubrey was wrong, I'm
certain of it…"

"What?" Her tone was icy.

Zimmermann turned once more to the window. The barge with its
hoisted washing was slipping beneath the Kennedybrücke now, bereft of
colour. No more than another black slug on grey.

It had begun to snow once more. He remembered that Massinger's
grey
hair had sparkled with wetness when he came through the door.
Zimmermann wished to excuse himself, he was inwardly hunched against
Massinger's reply. He refused to listen to it, nonsense that it was… a
fate deserved. If true, Aubrey had known, would have been sure.

"No —!" Margaret almost screamed. "No, no, no, no!" The stain
was
too great, the smear. What Zimmermann had divined from his own
conversation with Disch had become clear to Massinger, too. Perhaps
Disch himself, on reflection, had also come to believe it. Now,
Margaret Massinger was trying to reject the suspicion they all shared.
Not that - above all, not that… Her father could not be at
one with the mass-murderers of the six million, the maniacs, the
slaughterers, the deformed, the misfits, the thugs and torturers - not
them!
Zimmermann, as a German, could not but resent the horror in her voice,
even as he sympathised with her.

She was sobbing now, he was murmuring useless comforts, having
caused her distress. Zimmermann had hoped Disch might have concealed
what he suspected, but had not believed he would.

"No, no, no, no…" she was murmuring.

Stop, he thought. Stop it. It was useless to suspect, more
pointless
to believe, most futile to know. It was almost forty years ago. She had
to shake it off - both of them had to exorcise her father's ghost. It
might be a matter of life and death - theirs…