The Bear's Tears (7 page)

"We're in the process of submitting it to the most stringent
technological tests, Sir Kenneth," Eldon continued, unperturbed. "I may
say that, thus far, it holds up. It would appear to be genuine. The
meeting took place at the zoo. Near the monkey house, from the
background noises."

"Kenneth," Babbington interrupted with what might have been genuine
concern, "it's not good. This tape holds up just like the file that
fell into the hands of the CIA. They're convinced that file is genuine
- and so are we." His voice hardened on the last words, as if he were
pressing them in a vice.

"My God…" Aubrey whispered. He saw the way ahead very clearly; a
dark path between close, high trees in failing light. It was the only
path, and his feet were already upon it.

"The file indicates quite clearly that you were the instrument of
Robert Castleford's betrayal," Babbington insinuated. The use of his
name brought the man himself back vividly to Aubrey; not the photograph
in the newspapers nor on the television, but a haggard, defeated,
cunning face - the last occasion they had met. The last time he had
seen Castleford alive. An older, surprised, appalled, finally dangerous
Castleford. Careful of your face, your eyes, Aubrey reminded himself,
as if afraid that the memories would become visible like stigmata.

"I'm afraid that is precisely what the
Teardrop
file
indicates, Sir Kenneth," Eldon agreed.

"What did you call it?" Aubrey demanded, stunned.

"
Teardrop
." Eldon appeared to permit himself a smile, and a
catlike smoothing of his moustache. His eyes glinted with
concentration. "Your codename, apparently."

"
My
codename? My
God
—!" Aubrey half raised
himself from his chair. "You know it was
his
codename,
dammit!"

"Do we? The file now in Washington has
Teardrop
upon its
cover. It was opened in 1946, Sir Kenneth."

"But you've checked the records - dammit, you know that Kapustin was
Teardrop
…" His jaw dropped. "The records are ambiguous," he
admitted in a hoarse whisper. "I could just as easily have been meeting
- my controller from Moscow…"

"Precisely, Sir Kenneth."

"And you - have drawn that conclusion."

"Let's say we're proceeding on that assumption, Kenneth," Babbington
supplied. "It will be up to you to disprove it, if you can."

"I might add, Sir Kenneth, that we have some film with the Helsinki
tape. We're examining that, too, for signs that it might be a forgery.
We don't think it is."

Aubrey shook his head weakly, and then looked at them, his eyes
moving from face to face. He felt as close to pleading with them to be
believed as he felt distant from their sympathy and understanding.

"Where's Hyde?" he asked unexpectedly. "Why did he flee the scene?"

Babbington appeared taken aback.

"We - we're looking for him now."

"He hasn't called in?"

"No."

"Why not? What smell's in his nose, Babbington?"

"Hyde could be on a binge for all we know, Sir Kenneth," Eldon said
dismissively.

"Good God, man - you're not even interested!" His outburst was
directed at Babbington. "I have been cleverly - very cleverly - framed,
and you are going along with it out of personal ambition!"

Babbington stood up quickly. His eyes glared at Aubrey.

"If you want a
personal
motive, Kenneth," he said, "then I
should try revenge rather than ambition. You betrayed Robert Castleford
- you've betrayed everybody and everything for the last thirty-five
years and more!" Babbington's mouth clamped into a thin line, then he
added in a quieter voice: "We'll leave you for a few hours now,
Kenneth. Shall we say two-thirty this afternoon? We'll be taping,
naturally."

Babbington strode to the door. Eldon followed him with an easy,
relaxed step. At the door, however, the colonel turned to Aubrey and
said: "You will recall, Sir Kenneth, that the emperor had no new
clothes." Then he shut the door behind him.

Aubrey heard Mrs Grey usher the two men coldly from the flat, and
consciously suppressed his sudden desire for alcohol. A large cognac
would be craven, not medicinal. The wall lights in the drawing-room,
switched on because of the lowering grey sky outside, glinted on the
crystal decanters next to the silver coffee pot.

For two days they had left him alone and unvisited. And uninformed.
Alone with his growing suspicions and his imaginings. Now, a series of
detonations had damaged, perhaps destroyed, his foundations. He was
like an old building that tottered from the concussions. Tapes, films,
files -
Teardrop
. Above all, that clever, clever,
clever
codename -
calm down
…

All he had known before that morning had been gathered from the
newspapers, and the television the previous evening - early news, Nine
o'Clock News, News at Ten, Newsnight, the endless repetition of a
growing nightmare.

Two species of treachery, separate yet interwoven. In December 1946,
he had betrayed Robert Castleford, a distinguished civil servant
working for the Allied Control Commission in post-war Berlin, and ever
since then he had been a double agent, at first for the NKVD, then
later the MVD, finally the KGB. For more than thirty-five years he had
led a secret life. He was Philby, he was Blunt, he was Burgess - he was
worse than any of them.

Mrs Grey's head appeared at the door, and hastily withdrew as he
turned a baleful glance upon her.

And he had done none of it.

And he could never prove his innocence.

He could never tell the truth, not about December 1946, not about
Castleford.

Impatiently, leadenly, he paced the room.
The emperor had no
new clothes
. Silver, white napery, jade, velvet, wool, crystal,
china, porcelain, oak, walnut.
The emperor had no new clothes
.
KCVO. Sir Kenneth. Director-General.
The emperor had no new clothes
.

He could never tell the truth. There was a crime, but he could never
reveal it. He would not be believed. He would never be believed
innocent. He would only compound his guilt if he told the truth,
because he
had
killed Robert Castleford.

In a grey tin box, in the safe keeping of one of the few people who
had never lost his trust, his motives lay bound in leather, inside a
buff envelope. He had written the account immediately in the wake of
Castleford's murder. After the war, it had lain in a deposit box in his
bank. His secret, his bane. His leather-bound guilt and conscience.
Then, in 1949, when he had met Clara Elsenreith once again, in Vienna
during his service there with the Allied Control Commission, he had
surrendered the journal - confession? - into her safekeeping. She still
possessed it. All the reasons were there, he had fully explained them;
but now those reasons would never excuse the crime. The truth would
finish him as effectively as the KGB's lies. He had killed Robert
Castleford.

The emperor had no new clothes
, he thought bitterly, anger
vying in his chest and stomach with growing fear, so that he felt
inflated; asphyxiated. His head had begun to pound with a sudden
headache, and the chill grey light from the tall windows pained his
eyes. The trap was perfect.
Teardrop -
Deputy Chairman
Kapustin - had set him up to perfection, had led him by the nose for
two unsuspecting years while his damnation was arranged. His heart
pumped, his head beat with his impotent rage and accusations of failure
and gullibility. He had been tricked -
he
had been tricked…

He banged his fists against his thighs as he paced back and forth
across the length of the lounge. The icing on the cake was to make him
appear to have been activated as a Soviet agent; it clinched the guilt
they had suggested for him in 1946.
The emperor had no new clothes
.

The KGB had him.
Teardrop
was now
his
codename,
the codename of a traitor, a traitor who was Director-General of SIS.
The trap had closed. In his mind, he could distinctly hear the slamming
of steel doors.

Crystal, jade, silver; presents for the nativity of his promotion.
The emperor's clothes. Unreal, like the new flat overlooking Regent's
Park, like the new housekeeper, like the new office at Century House,
overlooking the river; like his knighthood, which he
had been so long in taking. He had been moated with fulfilled
ambitions, but now they had him, inescapably, finally. For he had
killed Castleford, and they evidently knew that, and upon their
knowledge the whole strategy turned. He had killed him and had hidden
the crime for thirty-five… for so
many
years…

His heart pumped and his head throbbed. His body felt too frail to
support his emotions and their physical manifestations. The doorbell
rang, startling him. He heard his old, weary breathing in the silence
that followed, and surrendered to hopelessness. Mrs Grey answered the
door as he experienced dread at the possible return of Babbingtpn and
Eldon with all the virulence of an aging woman unprepared by make-up
and rest for the arrival of visitors.

Into Aubrey's mind a clear, high, pure treble voice floated, an
almost unearthly sound; a boy's voice. The words of the hymn or anthem,
whichever it was, were indistinguishable in the echoing innocence of
the voice. Perhaps
Abide with me
, perhaps the
Nunc
Dimittis
. He did not know which words he was singing in his
vividly remembered childhood. A cathedral nave, but other churches and
chapels crowded their architecture upon him, too. White surplices were
no more than ghostly in an incensed gloom. His father, the disgruntled,
vicious, bigoted cathedral verger, was there, smiling; his lips drawn
back over his teeth in the demonstration of a snarl.

Aubrey was frightened of the memory; not because of its potency, but
because it seemed to herald an incontinence of mind that endangered
him. It was an involuntary retreat from the present when he needed all
his energies, all his concentration, simply to survive.

He looked up, visibly shaken, as Paul Massinger appeared at the
door, unannounced. Aubrey's eyes narrowed in calculation and surprise -
Castleford's face as they struggled was vivid and unnerving in his
mind. He saw Massinger's handsome face register shock and he recalled
Massinger's wife; Castleford's daughter. Then Aubrey pushed himself
firmly to his feet.

"Paul, my dear fellow! How good of you to come…"

"Kenneth - you're all right? You look —"

"Yes, yes," Aubrey replied testily. "A little tired. Sit down, sit
down."

Massinger chose Eldon's place on the sofa, opposite Aubrey.

Aubrey noticed the walking stick and the moment of discomfort as
Massinger lowered himself into the cushions. The man's breath escaped
in a sigh.

"I —" Massinger began.

"A drink?" Aubrey suggested, almost involuntarily beginning to
control the situation.

"Thank you. Scotch and soda." When Aubrey had poured the drinks and
reseated himself, Massinger blurted: "I - came to offer my help. I
don't know how - it seems almost crazy now -but I wanted you to know —"

Aubrey leaned forward and patted Massinger's knee. "I know, my dear
fellow. And - thank you." Then the past two days welled up in him
uncontrollably, and he said: "They've abandoned me, Paul. The Cabinet
Office, JIC - abandoned me."

"The ingratitude of princes?" Massinger's Bostonian accent had
almost been eroded by his twenty years' domicile in London.

"Perhaps. They want to get rid of me, of course - they'd like to see
the reins in Babbington's hands."

"I - see…" Aubrey saw in Massinger's face a keen hunger. His
expression wore a sheen of excitement. Good. Massinger, despite having
resigned from the CIA more than twenty years ago, was being drawn back
into the secret world. The alcoholic who, years after his cure, takes
the first drink. Massinger was eager once more for the gossip of the
secret world, its machinations, perhaps even for its power. He saw
help, too, of course. Massinger intended to help him if he could. There
was in him an erect and certain loyalty to friends, and an almost
priggish sense of right and wrong. In his desperation, Aubrey would
take and use Massinger's help if he could. He prepared himself for
another interrogation. Massinger said, his face gloomy, wrought-up:
"There's nothing to all this nonsense, I suppose?" As Aubrey began
emphatically shaking his head, he added: "You know why I'm asking, of
course?"

"Yes. I give you my word on it. I did not betray Robert Castleford
to the NKVD. That is a complete fabrication." Aubrey moulded his
features to an expression of honesty, to an intimate gravity suiting
his words and the friendship between himself and the American scholar.
Massinger studied his face, and then nodded.

"Thank God," he whispered. "But what about the rest of it?"

In Massinger's face, he saw a reflection of the past; signals of
debt. Massinger was perfectly well aware that Aubrey had once saved his
career after an operation had gone seriously wrong. Massinger had been
blamed for the exposure and arrest of a whole network he had run.
Aubrey had proven treachery by another rather than Massinger's
incompetence, and the debt had never been repaid. Now, perhaps, it
would be. Aubrey suppressed the eagerness he felt, rose and crossed to
the sideboard, bringing the whisky decanter when he returned. He began
speaking urgently even as he poured. Also, the man's wife would not
wish him here; Massinger had come despite her disapprobation, even
hatred if she believed the media. Therefore, he might prove a staunch
ally.

"… and the original
Teardrop
was the Deputy Chairman
himself.
He -
set me up for this - all of it," Aubrey
concluded a few minutes later. Massinger had remained silent throughout
the narrative. "And the Joint Intelligence Committee and the Cabinet
Office have decided that they believe this cock-and-bull story, down to
the last fabricated detail. Even to the extent of not muzzling the
press. They do not intend I should wriggle out of this, Paul - they do
not!"