The Bear's Tears (74 page)

Babbington. He'd seen the name in the instant that the screen
was
isolated and Moscow Centre cut off his terminal from the main computer.
The telephone continued to ring. Babbington.

He had it. Had Babbington and Wilkes and the others. Had
Babbington —

Then Stepanov moved. The gun had strayed from his side and when
the
pressure of numbness had diminished he had realised the fact - and
grabbed for it, twisting the barrel upwards. For a moment, Hyde was
reduced to utter, feeble panic. Stepanov's breathing was hot on his
face, the man's lips were twisted with effort - Georgi had begun to
move into a crouch from his cross-legged squat and the movement
distracted Hyde further - alarm bells began to sound very distantly, as
if along deserted concrete tunnels and corridors. Hyde's arms were
weak, unable to struggle.

Then he leant towards the Russian officer and butted his head
into
the man's growing-triumphal face. Heard the groan, sensed the
resistance of bone. Then struck with his right hand, at the point where
blood was seeping from Stepanov's nose. The officer slumped from his
seat, knelt as if in prayer for a moment before falling sideways, then
lay curled on the carpet as if sleeping. Georgi's boots had reached him
before he lay still, but the guard halted as he saw the gun reasserting
its freedom of aim. Hyde wiped his nose on his sleeve and grinned
shakily.

"Forget it, Georgi," he muttered. "Just forget it."

He motioned with the gun and Georgi backed away and resumed his
sitting position. Its yoga-like posture was reinforced as he placed
both hands behind his head. Some compressed Buddhist statue or penitent.

Hyde flicked open the streamer's drive door and snatched out the
data cassette. He gripped its clear plastic tightly in his hand like an
award for effort, for winning. He turned, then, and looked down the
long, bright tunnel of the outer room. Two or three individuals in
white lab coats, immobilised and confused by the alarm. No figures in
uniform - not yet. Time…

Time was looping out ahead of him, too thin to become a
lifeline,
but something to cling to - or to follow out of the labyrinth. He stood
up, and his legs did not feel weak, only cramped by tension. He stamped
his feet, as at the beginning of a race.

Then, uniforms. At the far end of the long room.

He thrust the cassette into the pocket of his lab coat. Fished
in
the briefcase and, after unclipping the plastic cover of a narrow
compartment, withdrew what might have been an aluminium rod shaped like
a small, thin truncheon. He jammed the pistol into his belt in the
small of his back, patted the cassette, and walked to the door of the
inner security room. Georgi remained silent and unmoving behind him. He
opened the door, passed through, and the alarms assaulted him as he
closed the door behind him. The noise of the computers in the main room
was louder.

The guards, three of them, had halted. Seeing him in his lab
coat,
they appeared, even at the distance of half the length of the huge
room, disarmed, unconcerned. One of them was already questioning one of
the operators, who was pointing towards Hyde and the highest security
area. Hyde glanced behind him. There was no sign of Georgi. Playing
safe —

Hyde began walking slowly down the room, glancing from side to
side
- not too casually, the alarms
are
ringing, there
is
something
wrong - looking for a wheeled wastebin filled with
print-out that had not yet been sent to the shredder; looking for the
fuse-boxes high on the walls. One of the guards began to hurry towards
him, still uncertain, not yet suspicious. Hyde fingered the aluminium
truncheon in his pocket as if it were a weapon of close-quarter assault.

Bin - yes. Full - almost. Fuse-box - no, no… yes… He gripped the
tube in his pocket more tightly, levering open the small, hinged
handgrip with his fingers. The guard was twenty feet away and already
demanding his ID. Hyde smiled disarmingly and stroked the barrel of
the Flammpatrone, Hand DM 34. Touched the handgrip, touched the
now-freed trigger. Apart from the Czech pistol, it was the only weapon
Godwin had given him, with precise instructions on its use -
in
emergency only, Hyde.

Hyde reached carefully into his pocket and withdrew his papers.
Georgi opened the door and shouted a warning. The two distant guards
turned to him, absorbing the information that he was their target. The
guard in front of him moved the vz.61 Skorpion machine-pistol towards
Hyde's stomach. Hyde drew and fired the flame-cartridge launcher over
the guard's head, towards the fuse- box on the wall.

The guard's surprised expression became a small round hole
through
which his breath was punched as Hyde bulled into him, heaving him aside
and down. Then he ducked behind one of the orange ICL cabinets as the
incendiary charge struck the fuse-box.

Dark - light - light glaring from the walls, the hissing of a
shower
of fragments at 1300 degrees Centigrade, cries of shock and temporary
blindness. Hyde scuttled through the ranks of cabinets towards the
scarred wall where the burning, molten remains of the fuse-box, a
damaged computer cabinet with sparks leaping and crying, and the
burning droplets of cartridge formed an untidy, brilliant bonfire
almost obscured by the smoke generated by the charge.

He crouched, face averted, behind a wheeled waste-bin, then
heaved
it ahead of him. It gathered speed as he ran. Shots flicked off the
wall after murdering his growing-diminishing-leaping shadow, until he
twisted and heaved the bin over. Its contents, great bundles and sheafs
of print-out paper, spilled towards the burning fragments - then
scorched, curled, ignited. Bullets from a Skorpion chipped a ragged
contour across the wall above his head. Plaster dusted his hair. The
print-out sheafs were well alight. Within the smoke, gouts of orange
flame were rearing towards the ceiling, sinuous as snakes. He doubled
back the way he had come, moving in a swift, aching crouch, using his
hands often as if four-legged to speed his progress and keep his
balance. He weaved through the cabinets and the ranks of computer
equipment. A printer chattered as he passed it like some look-out bird
alerting the guards. The whole of the room was full of long, glaring,
melting and reforming shadows. The lights had fused. Sparks protested
from some of the cabinets. The guards shouted.

He glanced across the room and saw the billow of CO
2
from an
extinguisher, the thin spurt of inert foam from another. The whole of
the waste-bin's contents were fully alight. The fuse-box dripped molten
fragments down the charred wall. The smoke was rolling, dense and
clinging. Guards moved near it, through it. He had less than thirty
seconds before the steel shutters locked all of them in the room.
Already, the air-conditioning system would have automatically shut
down. In - nineteen seconds - no, sixteen now, no more… the
room would be pumped full of an inert gas which would stifle the fire.
And kill him and the guards as it forced every particle of oxygen from
the computer room. In seconds, the guards themselves would hurry out…

Hyde regained his bearings and moved swiftly towards the doors
and
the corridor —

And the guards, and reinforcements and fire-fighters and
civilian
staff and security men. Stepanov and Georgi would be running by now,
desperate to get out before the steel shutters slammed down, locking
them in —

He straightened up. The smoke persisted, seemed even thicker. He
felt it in his throat now, unnoticed before. He heard coughing, and an
order to get out, leave the fire - shutters, he heard in a
high voice, a panicky warning. Gas —

Go now —! He had only seconds before they would block his
escape, or
be no more than a pace behind him. Flame spurted and coiled, CO
2
puffed and hissed, smoke rolled thick and heavy.

He brushed at his lab coat - smeared with greasy dirt, scorched
in
one or two places - and touched the cassette in his pocket. Then he
burst through the glass doors, adopting a wild, frightened look, his
arm extended to indicate the chaos behind him.

No one - no one…

In disbelief, he hurried through the reception area.
Incongruously,
a small green watering-can stood beside the pot in which the rubber
plant was growing. He pushed open the outer door. The corridor was
empty —

No. A guard at the corner, at the bottom of the stairs. His
guard. The alarms beat their noise down at his head, shrilled away like
startled, fleeing birds down the corridor. Take the stairs to his left,
downwards —?

No, not deeper —

He hurried towards the guard, already shouting in panic at the
top
of his voice: "For God's sake, man, isn't there any organised response
to a
fire
in this place —?"

The young guard's mouth opened. His rifle was held slackly
across
his chest. The stairs were empty. Hyde hit him in the stomach, then
across the chin, then on the side of the neck as the man fell away from
him. He kicked the guard's legs after him, thrusting them out of sight
from the stairs. The rifle had slid away down the corridor, but he did
not want it anyway. It declared his violence, obviated bluff of any
kind. The adrenalin coursed. He dashed up the stairs, taking them two
at a time —

To be confronted by uniforms, white coats, suits, extinguishers,
rifles, a fireman's helmet. Slow, slow —

"It's chaos in there!" he screamed. "Absolute
chaos!
For
Christ's
sake -
hurry!"

He leaned against the wall to let the group pass. One man
snapped at
him, "What about the security breach? The security alarm sounded first!"

Hyde shrugged. "I don't know - all I know is - the fuse-box blew
-
fire everywhere…" He coughed, for effect, hanging his head in
weariness, his eyes fixed on the man's groin as he awaited the
necessity for violence.

"How many still inside? Quickly, man! How many?"

"God knows - two, three… security personnel, not computer —"

"Warn security control of casualties. I want a manual override
on
the shutters and the gas until everyone's out! Quickly!"

Hyde heard a bellowed reference to a security telephone, and
then
they had passed him on their way towards the computer room.

He turned and ran, before they discovered the unconscious,
obviously
beaten guard at the bottom of the stairs.

Moment of reorientation, a turn, short run, then turn right,
then
more stairs, up, up…

Suk's hand grabbed him and regretted the act as Hyde turned on
him,
fist raised. They were in a wide corridor, just as the memorised
diagram that Suk had supplied had shown. Hyde knew where he was and how
far from the clean air in the Third Courtyard —

"You're in the wrong damn place!" he snarled in a whisper.
People
hurried past them. Now, he could hear the noise of fire-appliances
moving into the courtyard. Through a window, their headlights bounced
and glared. Like hunting searchlights.

"I came - I was worried when the alarms —"

"Where now?"

"Come - this way."

They were on the ground floor of the Chancellery. Already,
people
were being moved out of the building - cleaners, clerks, security
guards, KGB and STB officers. Men in white lab coats similar to the one
he wore. Suk guided him towards a tall narrow door. A guard
perfunctorily inspected their breast-pocket ID cards, and they were out
into a windy night which snatched at Hyde's breath and lowered his
temperature immediately so that his teeth began to chatter and his body
shivered uncontrollably; fevered.

"Are you —?"

"Just bloody cold!" he snapped.

Firemen in yellow waterproof leggings and dark uniform coats
hurried
across the scene in front of them. Men with guns ran, directed by other
men in uniform greatcoats or leather topcoats. Panic. The organism had
been wounded in some vital part. The antibodies were in flight,
hurrying to the scene. Rather, he thought, the wasps' nest, stirred
with a stick. Someone had damaged the secret stuff, the
valuable stuff —

He patted his pocket.

"Here," Suk offered, and handed him his short, dark coat. "Give
me
the white one."

Hyde removed the dustproofing coat and donned his own overcoat,
placing the cassette in his pocket. The gun still nestled in the small
of his back.

"Across this courtyard," Suk began, whispering close to Hyde's
ear,
pausing until the man nodded, "around the east end of the cathedral,
into Vikarska - yes? I showed you on the map." —

"I remember," Hyde snapped impatiently.

"Good," Suk replied, his face pinched by cold and offence. "You
will
find the workmen's ladders where I showed you. With them you can climb
the main wall into the garden there - and the other wall…"

"I know. I can climb that with my hands and feet. I only hope
you're
right, mate."

Hyde looked at the man, looked through the open door into a
scene
which had suddenly become more ordered, drilled, slower moving. More
brown uniforms, many leather and mohair topcoats. A man with black
smears on his face, as if he had been close to a fire…

They were searching now. They knew he had got out of the
cellars.
Time was diminishing, being coiled in by the pursuit. He glanced into
Suk's face.

"Thanks," he murmured, and then turned his back. Suk watched him
until he disappeared into the shadows near the statue of St George,
making for the cathedral. He simply disappeared into the deeper shadow
behind a spilling pool of blue, revolving light from a fire-appliance.
By that time, he was already running.