The Bear's Tears (61 page)

Voronin shrugged and, almost as if ignoring Babbington, began
walking ahead. Babbington uttered what might have been a growl of
protest, and then hurried to his side. The Russian said at once: "Your
solution does not, at the moment, include the woman. Where is she?"

"I've told you, Voronin, I don't know! She has only one ally in
this
city… she must be with Hyde —"

"If Hyde is here."

"I have no doubt he is. Why else would Shelley be concerned with
Czechoslovakia?"

"Why is Shelley concerned with Czechoslovakia?"

"Heaven alone knows! Perhaps Hyde wants to hide out - where
better,
mm, than under
your
noses?"

"Had you bugged the telephones in the house, you would have
discovered exactly why Shelley was so interested in Czechoslovakia."

It was a patent rebuke. Babbington flushed angrily and snapped,
"Unlike your own dear country, Voronin, security operations require
records, permissions, signatures,
authorisations,
I decided
it was better to keep a low profile. It was extremely unlikely that
Hyde would ring his own flat - the woman upstairs was merely his
landlady, according to our information." He recognised apology in his
tone and said with steely indifference, "Forget it, Voronin. It's
unimportant."

"The Massinger woman —?" Voronin insisted.

"Vienna Station is looking - your people are looking… will you
be
patient and give your attention instead to my proposal?"

"What can I do?"

"Signal Moscow Centre - Kapustin. Tell him what I have told you.
Aubrey is to be taken to Moscow. Massinger is to be disposed of. I
don't care how - the woman, too. Perhaps they should all be taken to
Moscow? It would prevent the slightest possibility of their remains
being discovered…" Babbington broke off for a moment. A vivid image of
Castleford's body being discovered, years after his death, had forced
itself upon his awareness. He thrust it aside. "Yes. That would be
best. Take them to Moscow and dispose of them at once. In any event,
Aubrey must appear in Moscow. It will silence all doubts.
Surely you see that?"

They came to the end of the avenue, and the lawns stretched away
from them, up towards the Belvedere. Babbington saw the windows not as
dull, lightless panes, but as he had seen them on the last occasion he
had walked in the gardens - lit by the last of the sun, glowing deep
orange in colour. He saw Kapustin leaving the gardens, and saw Aubrey's
overcoated figure. He shook his head as if to clear it of alcohol.

"To me it seems a very risky thing to do," Voronin remarked,
gazing
towards the Belvedere.

"Risky?" Babbington snapped. "What risk is there for you?"

"Risky for you, I mean."

"It was risky for me that First Secretary Nikitin and Deputy
Chairman Kapustin let Petrunin live a single day after they initiated
Teardrop
.
Don't you realise that?" Anger, and its undercurrent of fear, gave him
the authority he sought.

Voronin's eyes now displayed uncertainty and loss of confidence.
"Perhaps," the Russian offered in reply.

"It's the only satisfactory solution," Babbington pressed.

Voronin shrugged. "If you had the woman —" he began.

"With or without the woman!" Babbington turned to Voronin, his
face
mobile with rage. "I must be back in London tomorrow, without fail the
following day. I must have, before tomorrow, your agreement to my
proposal. I want Kapustin's agreement. You will organise and
execute a rescue of your agent Aubrey, who will be spirited to Moscow
by Aeroflot and then subsequently appear at some kind of staged
interview with selected members of the Soviet and Western press - my
God, man, you have the drugs to make him do handstands and sing soprano
for the cameras if you care to use them!" One hand had emerged from his
pocket, clenched into a fist. He appeared to threaten Voronin with
physical violence. "Now - will I have Kapustin's agreement? Time is
pressing."

"The raid," Voronin murmured, shaking his head. "I don't know —"

"How else will you explain my
losing
Aubrey?"
Babbington
taunted. He was inwardly satisfied. Voronin was unsettled, out of his
depth. And half-persuaded —

The fear returned, churning at his stomach, tightening his
chest. He
breathed in slowly, exhaled the warmer, smoky air carefully; calming
himself.

"Well?" he prompted.

Voronin hesitated, then nodded reluctantly. He sighed audibly.
"Very
well," he said. "I will signal Comrade Deputy Chairman Kapustin at
once, informing him of your proposal. Perhaps he will agree —"

"He has to agree. There's no other way. I want Aubrey out of
Vienna
and on his way to Moscow within forty-eight hours at the outside. I
want it to be seen and understood as a desperate KGB rescue operation
on behalf of their blown agent."

"For the sake of realism, some of your people will have to suffer?"

Without glancing behind or around him, Babbington nodded.
"Naturally. Some of the Vienna Station personnel who will be guarding
Aubrey must inevitably be killed in action. Very regrettable."

"Very well." Voronin seemed pleased at the display of
ruthlessness.
It was as if Babbington had correctly answered the final question of a
long and searching interview. "Very well. Shall we go, Sir Andrew
Babbington?" For once, Voronin's grasp of English usage was at fault.

Babbington smiled. "Yes, Comrade Voronin - let's go."

Babbington turned, nodded to Wilkes, who seemed relieved, and
began
to stride confidently down the avenue towards the Lower Belvedere, the
gates, and his car. Voronin hurried after him and the screen of
watchers seemed trawled in their wake; a small shoal of overcoats and
trenchcoats being hauled in.

Margaret Massinger watched the leading man, the one closest to
her,
turn as at an invisible signal and move away. She felt immediately
cramped, cold, and weak. She watched the man's retreating trenchcoat,
less white than the snow covering the lawns, as it passed one of the
ornate fountains. When it emerged once more, it was distant and small.
The eyepiece of the camera seemed cloudy, her eyes wet. The telephoto
lens scraped on the stone of the balcony. She looked up, away from the
camera, at the features of Maria Theresa worn by one of the stone
sphinxes. She felt lightheaded. The sphinx threatened to topple on her
as she crouched behind the balcony of the terrace in front of the
palace.

Her imagination was filled with photographic stills, as if she
were
watching some clever, tricky sequence in a film. People moved in her
mind, stopped, were photographed, moved again. Stop, move, stop, snap,
move, stop, snap, move —

She rubbed her frozen cheeks with her woolen-gloved hands. She
was
utterly cold inside her fur jacket. She rubbed her aching, chilled
thighs. Her feet were numb. She felt too weak to stand.

For wildlife photography,
Hyde
had said, and grinned at
her. The smile had been transparent, and she had seen the uncertainty
behind it. The assistant in the camera shop had nodded, displaying a
range of telephoto lenses to accompany the Nikkormat camera. She had
tried to attend. The sleepless night in the anonymous hotel had not
helped. Hyde's presence was that of a stern examiner. Yet she had
eventually understood, simply by reading the literature that
accompanied the camera and the lenses.

Babbington clenching his fist into the unidentified man's face -
the
faces clear in the eyepiece, everything else blurred and unrecognisable
behind them because of the small depth of field of the 1000mm lens. She
had used the largest of the lenses because she was afraid. She wanted
the greatest distance between herself and —

And him. Babbington. Not so much the watchers in the white
trenchcoats and the dark overcoats - the small fish - rather the one
man. She was afraid of him, even in the artificial close-up of the
telephoto lens; as if he might turn in her direction at any moment and
be in reality as close to her as he seemed through the eyepiece. And
recognise and apprehend her. But, she had protected herself behind the
shelter of the balcony.

Slavic cheekbones and lips beneath the trilby hat - picture,
picture, picture, the motor whirring the film forward. Babbington and
the Russian, their nearest bodyguards no more than blurred outlines
beyond them. Adjusting the focus, taking shot after shot, fumbling to
change the film with cold, frightened fingers. More shots, more, more,
more —

Proof, proof, proof, the motor recited as it whirred on. More,
more,
more, proof, proof, proof, more proof, more proof…

When they turned, the second roll of film was finished and she
was
spent. Babbington's heavy, handsome features filled her mind.

She raised her body slightly and looked through the eyepiece of
the
camera. Nothing. Babbington, the Russian, their guards, had all
disappeared from the gardens. The light seemed diminished. She looked
at her watch. Three-ten. Immediately she began to worry about the
aperture setting, the quality of the pictures she had taken —

Out of focus, too dark? Would they be able to identify
Babbington?
The other man, the Russian? Jerkily, she stood up, slapping her body to
warm it. She stared at the camera. There had been too much haste, too
little time to think, to plan. After watching Hyde cross the border she
had returned to observe the house where Paul was kept prisoner. Little
more than twenty minutes later, Babbington had climbed into his car and
had headed for Vienna, unescorted. She had kept well back. The camera
and lenses had lain on the passenger seat like a challenge. She had
waited, daring no more than a sandwich, while Babbington had lunched at
the Hotel Sacher. Finally, he had been driven to the Belvedere, part of
a small convoy of cars. She had parked in the Prinz Eugen strasse,
scrabbled up the camera and lenses, and hurried into the palace gardens.

Exposed, clearly visible —

She had sought the terrace and the balcony in a terror at her
own
fears and her amateurishness. Even now, as she walked up and down and
warmth and feeling returned to her legs and feet, she hardly dared
believe it had worked. Her camera lay like an abandoned weapon on the
balustrade. She had succeeded. Two rolls of film with Babbington's face
in almost every frame. Once his companion was identified, the process
of saving Paul would begin —

She could not believe the ease of it, could not avoid a sense of
triumph. Hyde need not have crossed the border, put himself in danger —

Danger. Paul. The blood in the apartment. Paul.

She ran to the camera and snatched it up. The gardens were
deserted
except for a black, overcoated speck seated on a wooden bench,
surrounded by hungry pigeons. An arm moved periodically in a scattering
gesture. The tiny spots of grey bobbed and moved, as if conducted by
the arm. She ran. She had to talk to her godfather, to Sir William. He
had to listen to her.

Hyde sensed the weight of Godwin's body resting on the two
crutches
the moment he saw him at the surburban bus stop. The man was wearing a
heavy overcoat and a fur hat, and his face was wreathed in a bright
tartan scarf. Otherwise, there was no sense of colour or even life
about him. He expressed endless patience in his stillness and his slump
of weight; a sense of defeat. Hyde steered the car reluctantly towards
the lay-by and its small, glassed-in bus shelter. Godwin had, for some
reason - perhaps only to be seen more easily by Hyde - chosen to stand
in the falling snow. His shoulders in their frozen shrug of acceptance
were thickly white. His fur hat, too, was mottled from its normal black
to a badger's fur. He stared through the passenger window at Hyde, who
tugged on the handbrake and opened the door.

Godwin, seeing him emerge and sensing his purpose, growled: "I
don't
need help. Is this door unlocked?" His hand was on the passenger door
handle. Hyde, already at the bonnet and rounding the Skoda, merely
nodded. Godwin's features scowled with rancour, and a hatred of pity
and of his disability. Hyde retreated to the driver's side, as if from
a wounded animal.

Godwin leaned heavily against the door-frame. He heaved the two
crutches - old and heavy, with metal clasps and stout rubber grips -
into the rear of the car, then almost fell into the passenger seat.
Hyde shuddered, for Godwin and for himself. Godwin lifted his legs into
the car and immediately adopted another frozen posture, staring through
the windscreen, his fur hat on his lap, leaking snow onto the skirts of
his coat and the corduroy trousers that covered his despised legs. On
his shoulders, the snow glistened as it began to melt. Hyde slipped
into the driving seat with unobtrusive and very conscious leg movements.

As a placatory gesture, Hyde said: "Petrunin's dead." It was
crass,
but the silence in the car pressed against his temples.

"Did you kill him?" Godwin replied after a short silence. The
windscreen in front of his face was already misting, as if the man
exuded some violent heat.

"No. His own lot did that for him."

After another and longer silence, Godwin merely said, "My legs
don't
feel any better."

"Look, Godwin —" Hyde began, but Godwin turned to him. His face
was
wan, chilly with rage. It was as if he had been waiting at the bus stop
for days, perhaps ever since he had been shot, just for Hyde's arrival.

"Christ, Hyde - why does it have to be
you
?" he spat
out.
He looked years older. He had lost weight - wasted rather than dieted,
it seemed to Hyde. His eyes were darkly stained beneath the small, hard
pupils. His hair was thinner, and lank. Hyde avoided glancing at the
man's legs. "You and the old man? Why the two of you, of all
people?
"
His lower lip quivered as he finished speaking. Hyde saw the self-pity
and could not despise it. "I was burying myself here, nice and quietly.
I wasn't forgetting, I was quietly and satisfactorily dying. Turning
into a vegetable. Then
you
—!"
His eyes glared at Hyde as he looked up
from the wet fur hat in his lap. It looked like some drowned beloved
pet, the cause of Godwin's rage and grief.