The Bear's Tears (49 page)

All noises outside himself faded. The path had rounded the
mountain
as he climbed. His hands were deathly white in the first sunlight, the
snow began to glitter, hurting his eyes. He was almost there. The path
had narrowed - by an effort he remembered noting the fact on the way in
- but he could still move freely along it, the wall of the mountain to
his left, touched often by his hand, scraped by his knuckles for
reassurance or gripped by tense, clawlike fingers for support when he
became dizzy or unbalanced.

He passed through the crease, the narrow gate to the valley,
without
realising. He began to descend into shadow again, away from the first
rays of the sun. He paused, then, on his hands and knees, and looked
ahead of him, out of Afghanistan.

And realised that he had no image of rescue in his imagination.
He
had not thought, not considered… He had lost Miandad, his courier, his
secretary. Hyde did not know the arrangements.

The slope of the mountains dropped quickly, like the deep sharp
cut
of a great knife, to the snow-covered floor of the narrow valley
perhaps two hundred feet below him. This ran like a twisting snake
through high mountains for perhaps three or four miles, until the land
lifted again to the pass over which he might reach Parachinar and the
Pathan camp.

He knew he could not return, alone, to that camp - dare not.

Something seemed to give out and slump inside him, something
more
radical and vital than mere physical energy. He shivered with weakness,
on all fours, an exhausted animal. Then he fell against the cliff-face,
hunching into it as if into a parent's skirts, a lover's comfort. His
breathing sounded like sobbing, even to himself…

Until drowned by the noise of helicopter rotors approaching
rapidly
from behind him, clattering against the rock face, making his body
shudder with the downdraught as it lifted into view and hung there, its
tinted glass windscreen like a threatening mask, its gunports like a
grin. It dipped sideways. He could see faces at the side doors, which
were open. He could see a heavy PKMS machine-gun on a swivel mounting
in the doorway, aimed at him. He rose from all fours to his knees,
pressing himself against the rock. The helicopter moved closer, perhaps
thirty feet above him, where the accentuated slope of the mountain peak
allowed the rotors closer access without danger. Spiderlike, huge,
deafening, the MiL gunship hung over him, filling the morning sky, its
racket reverberating like physical blows from the mountain. It sank
very slowly towards him. Hyde could not move.

He became enveloped by the whirling snow dragged up and flung
about
by the downdraught. The helicopter lowered itself into the writhing
cloud of snow it was creating. Hyde pressed his face against the rock,
feeling the pressure of the downdraught in his arms and hands - fingers
slipping all the time, unable to hold their grip, gtow into the rock
enough - then in his body, which juddered with increasing velocity and
violence as he crouched with his back to the rotors, then in his knees
and calves and feet which shuddered, slid, began to move across the
narrow ledge towards the edge and the drop beyond. He was being
agitated into motion, like a compound in a chemist's jar, shaken into
something else - a body falling from a high place.

He held on, trying to hug the rock. He attempted to sit, then to
lie
flat. His legs slid away from him like those of a baby, uncontrolled.
They were dragged towards the edge of the track, towards the drop. He
felt his body slip, too. He turned onto his back and dug in his heels,
but could not prevent himself moving. The ground seemed alive and
sandlike in its distress beneath him, the helicopter a huge black
beetle hovering above him, the cloud of upflung, powdery snow obscuring
everything else.

His legs scrabbled in space, then slumped, knees bent, over the
edge. His buttocks moved towards the edge. He could not turn over
again, his hands could not grip.

The MiL slid to one side. Blue sky where it had been, then a
black
something dropping from it on a rope. A smaller spider, or only the
spider's thread. He lay on his back, legs over the edge, snow boiling
around him, covering him, as the helicopter's winch-man came to collect
him. Twenty feet, fifteen, ten - he seemed to swoop in towards Hyde,
who could only wait for him. He came level, hanging over the drop, then
the MiL began to shunt him sideways towards the ledge.

A hundred yards, two hundred, he told himself. Something, at
least,
told him. No more than that before you reach cover. Then three
miles, something else announced. At least three miles.

Two hundred yards, the other something replied.

Six feet, five, four his eyes registered. The winch-man's boots
scrabbled on the edge, found purchase, his body leaning slightly away,
then straightening. He was on the ledge. Hyde kicked out and the
winch-man danced away as the MiL shifted slightly, a puppet on the wire
that had lowered him. He came swinging slowly back like a pendulum,
feet scrabbling again, then gaining purchase, the rifle already coming
around from its position slung across his back. Hyde rolled towards the
winch-man, and the MiL danced him away again. Hyde scrabbled in the
snow, found frozen dirt, dug his fingernails into it, stopped
the roll of his body towards the edge. He was exhausted and terrified;
incapable of much more. The winch-man danced back, feet touching
lightly on the ledge again. This time, he was grinning, and the gun was
pointing.

Did they want him —?

For a while - two hundred yards - before they kill you…

He made as if to roll again, and the man's feet began to dance
upwards - Christ, the pilot was good and they'd done this trick before
- and then he hovered as if performing a strange, frozen entrechat in
combat boots. The boots remained a foot or so above the path. The
powdery snow settled around the legs of the man as he waited. Hyde
rolled, the legs danced upwards, Hyde drew the Makarov from behind his
back and fired. The winch-man's smile became lopsided, and emitted
blood - like Petrunin, and Hyde didn't look any more. The MiL whipped
away from the ledge, and Hyde turned and was running. The helicopter
buzzed behind him, closing. He heard a terrible, screaming noise, then
the scrape of metal and flesh and bone along the wall of the mountain.
They hadn't even winched the man in, just left him there, just
alive, - banging him along the cliff, trapped - ending the dance.

The PKMS opened up, scattering bullets along the track behind
him,
shattering the outline of a rock that had been close to his head the
previous moment. Hyde dropped into the twisted, jagged, concealing
trench of rocks that led to the valley floor, fear making his body flow
almost as easily and swiftly as the stream that must once have reached
the valley by this sharp-cut course. Hyde, his body jarred and bruised
and shaken, continued swiftly downwards.

He looked behind him, just once. The MiL was a hundred feet up,
and
the dead winch-man was being hauled up. His body hung grotesquely,
brokenly, beneath the gunship. Hyde slithered downwards, desperate to
reach the valley floor before the MiL resumed the game.

"There could be - depositions made available, Frau Schröder. I'm
sure your lawyer understands me… ?" Zimmermann made the statement
lightly turning his- head so he could see
the reactions of the woman's legal counsel. A youngish man, running to
fat, gold-rimmed glasses giving him a learned air that was at odds with
the expensive, modishly-cut suit and the flamboyant shirt. He would
have been little more than a baby when the Schroder woman was
committing the atrocities of which she was accused.

The lawyer nodded for him to continue with the bribery.
Margarethe
Schröder watched Zimmermann from beneath heavy eyelids. Her anger and
outrage were evident, making her face appear too young for its
surmounting thatch of white hair. She shrugged, as if Zimmermann bored
her, but there was a gleam of calculation and alert cunning in her
eyes. She had spent the last two years in prison, in her home city so
that relatives might conveniently visit her, awaiting a trial that
might never come. She had been a guard at Maidanek camp. The
depositions that had been presented against her recited her deeds. She
had killed babies, children, women as a matter of course, of routine
- something more chilling to Zimmermann when he had first read the
depositions than the gratuitous, hideous way her activities had reached
above and beyond the call of duty; the dashing out of brains on
concrete floors or against the wooden walls of huts, the rumours of the
lampshades of skin, the collection of lingering enlargements that
decorated her quarters.

Zimmermann had met them before - the survivors of the SS and the
Gestapo. There was still no other emotion he could feel than sick,
quiet horror, at history and at their nationality.

The woman had been on holiday with a party of similarly retired
women in Florida when a survivor of Maidanek had seen and recognised
her. Margarethe Schröder had never denied the charges; merely dismissed
them as unimportant. She did not acknowledge their criminality.
Zimmermann, however, believed she wished to end her imprisonment. She
resented the sense of blame, of accusation that surrounded her -
resented it deeply and bitterly. He could offer her a speedy and
innocuous trial, even if he hoped he did not mean it, preferred to
think that he would renege on any deal. However, all that was for later.

"I would undertake," he continued, breaking the silence that had
held only the slight noise of the humming striplight, "to ensure that
the trial was brought forward - dealt with this year…" Schröder's eyes
watched him, burning and suspicious and afraid. Zimmermann tried to
smile reassuringly: "We could ensure a very light sentence, thanks to
some new depositions that contradict those held by the Federal
Prosecutor's office - a sentence which, in view of your incarceration
for the past two years, Frau Schroder, would ensure your release before
next Christmas."

He waited then. Schröder looked at her lawyer, who appeared to
carefully consider the offer that had been made. He removed his
spectacles, becoming at once little more than a boy in appearance,
wiped them with a silk handkerchief, then replaced them and his learned
air with a flourish.

"There will be no notes," he observed. "At the moment, this is
not
to be considered a statement of any kind."

"Of course not."

"You will not ask Frau Schröder any questions concerning the
period
1941-45. Do you agree to this?"

"Naturally. That part of Frau Schröder's life does not interest
me -
it is not important to me," he corrected himself, unwilling to
antagonise the woman. Again, he essayed a smile in her direction. She
was looking at her lawyer, who nodded to her. She turned to Zimmermann.
Her voice was deep and hoarse. Her hands, spread on the bare,
formica-covered table, were large, the nails unmanicured. Zimmermann
might almost have called them a man's hands had he not realised the
easy platitude for what it was, and recognised the way in which he was
making her fit a stereotype. In reality, there was nothing with which
to compare Schroder and all the others.

"What do you want to ask me?" she said grudgingly.

"Thank you, Frau Schröder." Zimmermann sat down on the opposite
side
of the table. Schröder lit a cigarette and blew smoke at the humming
striplight. The interview room was warm, drily stale and unused like
the aseptic corridors he had followed to reach it. The prison was
modern, clean and spacious, like a huge office building, suggesting
that crime and criminals were not to be found there. Like most of those
built in Germany since the war, the prison always appeared to
Zimmermann like a grim pastiche of a Costa Brava hotel.

"I wish to take you back to 1974, when you worked…" She nodded
dismissively. She knew why he had come. "… for an officer in British
Intelligence during his residence in Bonn. You were the secretary of a
man named Andrew Babbington?"

"Yes."

"I want to ask you some questions about him."

"I was always a good secretary - very efficient. There were no
accus
—" She coloured slightly, but mostly in anger at herself. "No reports
of inefficiency, I am certain."

"Of course, Frau Schröder. Of course not. I know that Mr
Babbington
was very pleased. It is not you I wish to discuss, but him. You
understand that I cannot tell you why at this moment?"

She weighed his statement while Zimmermann looked at the lawyer,
who
eventually nodded his complicity. There was no need for Zimmermann to
warn either of them of the security aspects of his enquiries. He
returned his attention to Margarethe Schröder. She was grinding out the
first cigarette, lighting a second almost at once. She nodded.
Evidently, she had accepted that it was not some subtle trick, an
indirect and overland route to Maidanek and her crimes, even if she
could not understand the importance attached to an Englishman in 1974.

"I believe that Mr Babbington had an affair - with a married
woman
who has since died of cancer - while he was in Bonn?" He studied
Schröder. "You knew of this affair, of course?" His tone was carefully
calculated. It implied a vague bond between them, a similarity of
attitude to the business of their discussion, but it was clipped and
authoritative, suggesting that Zimmermann was some kind of senior
officer in the same organisation in which Schröder served. She nodded
abruptly in reply. "Good. Now - how
often
did they meet? Where did they meet?" There was guilt, at once, a sense
of complicity that might now endanger her. The cigarette wobbled
between her lips. She coughed. "Come now, Schröder - you have done
nothing wrong. Where did they meet?"