The Bear's Tears (75 page)

Voronin watched each of them, arranged like exhibits on the
three
upright chairs on the other side of the Rezident's desk. He had
requisitioned Bayev's office at the Soviet embassy with a casual
authority, confident of his own role at the hub of the drama. He was
alone with his three prisoners; alone, except for the frowning Party
portraits that stared down from the walls, unchanging, rather
forbidding. He noticed them, perhaps for the first time in a number of
years - since they were no more than the normal furniture of a KGB
Rezident's office - with the eye of the three foreigners in the room.
Lenin, Brezhnev, Nikitin and the others - a small number for the years
since 1917, he observed to himself - sternly indicated to Aubrey and
the Massingers that they were already seated in the ante-room of an
alien way of life. Voronin watched them, eager for signs of stress, of
defeat, and confident that they would appear as tangibly as the spots
associated with chicken-pox or measles.

Aubrey had tidied his remaining hair and buttoned his shirt. He
had
tightened his narrow, striped tie. His jacket had been flung at him by
one of Voronin's men as he was forced into the limousine outside the
safe house. Voronin remembered it with satisfaction as a dismissive,
final gesture. Aubrey wasn't wearing it now.

Massinger sat stiffly upright, his injured leg thrust out in
front
of him - the too-small trousers they had supplied at the lodge before
he was transferred were strained over the bandage; stained on the thigh
with drying blood. His wife looked dowdy and middle-aged with her hair
dishevelled and make-up smudged. Defeated by her bruises and swollen,
split lips. She seemed little more than a mirror of her husband's
dejected and weakened condition, and it was difficult for Voronin to
reconcile the woman he saw with the well-connected, troublesome image
that Babbington and Kapustin had feared.

Voronin was satisfied that the Massingers were disorientated,
frightened, clearly aware of the brevity of the future. They knew they
would die quite soon. Aubrey; however, the third member of the
consignment for Moscow, disappointed him.

He was tired, unshaven, old. But he had the appearance of a
pensioner suddenly roused from sleep rather than that of a captured
intelligence officer. Voronin felt cheated. Aubrey's appearance should
have mirrored that captivity. On the contrary, it belied what he must
surely be feeling. It was an unreasonably lame conclusion to the days,
weeks, months, years of effort of which Voronin had been an important
part. Hidden cameras, microphones, doctored film and tape, lighting,
scripts, actors. A complete, elaborate, marvellous forgery, all to
entrap Aubrey. Entrap this one old man who seemed incapable of
understanding what was happening to him. Voronin remembered the smoky
rooms, the endless whirring tapes, the hiss of film sliding through
projectors. He remembered Aubrey in front -
in front of the monkey
cages at Helsinki Zoo —

That day, perhaps of all days, they knew - the whole team had
sensed
it - they had Aubrey. That was the film they'd released to the French,
that had been shown all over the world. They'd all known they had him
then, that he couldn't escape them…

And yet now he seemed to have done so. He looked drugged, weary,
indifferent.

Voronin dismissed his disappointment and picked up the
telephone. It
was the reason he had had them brought to this room, rather than spend
the intervening hours before their transfer to Schwechat airport in
tiny, separate cells below ground. As he waited after dialling
Kapustin's number at Moscow Centre, he checked the dials and lights on
the encryption unit's face. Was Aubrey glancing slyly at him? Perhaps
not. It was a superfluous call, merely confirming their success. But,
he wanted these people to hear it. It was a call for the benefit of his
prisoners.

He glanced at his watch. Twelve-five. They'd be transferred at
four
to the airport. Aubrey with false diplomatic papers - he must be seen
by witnesses who would later recall that he went willingly, not under
arrest - and the other two as diplomatic passengers. Their departure
would remain secret — forever. Like their later executions in Moscow.

He heard the connection being made and leaned forward to switch
on
the desk speaker, clamping the receiver to it. Aubrey's eyes wandered
vaguely, hardly aware. The Massingers were distracted by his movements
from their intent perusal of the monochrome faces looking down at them
from the white office walls.

Aubrey and his companions would disappear. SIS in Vienna was in
total disarray, and controlled by Babbington. There would be no
effective search, no possibility of counter-measures. The Austrians
would want nothing to do with it except, at a safe distance in time, to
make the appropriate empty diplomatic noises. There was this room, then
a limousine to Schwechat, then the cabin of the Tupolev, then another
car, then another room. That was all that lay in front of the
Massingers: Aubrey had little more to look forward to.

"Comrade Deputy Chairman —!" Voronin announced, to attract
Aubrey's
attention. Their eyes seemed to focus. The Massingers appeared unmoved,
their attention having wandered as easily as that of children. Aubrey
twitched once like a small animal receiving a shock from a buried
electrode. Then his attention, too, seemed to cloud.

"Is it done?" Kapustin asked.

"Of course, Comrade —"

"Casualties?"

"One on our side…"

"Only one? Good."

"What are your orders, Comrade Deputy Chairman?" Was Aubrey even
paying attention —? Damn the old man… damn him. He could not rid
himself of the sense that Aubrey had somehow reversed their positions,
become the superior by his inattentive silence.

When Kapustin replied, Voronin realised that the Deputy Chairman
sensed Aubrey could hear the exchange. There was a silky pleasure
unusual in the Deputy Chairman's gruff voice as he said, "Do I need to
repeat them, Voronin?" Momentarily, Aubrey's face narrowed to an
expression of hatred. "Very well. I shall repeat your instructions. The
aircraft will depart at four-thirty. Before dawn, your guests will be
in Moscow. Tell them the weather promises to be fine. Arrangements here
are in order. All matters will be dealt with speedily. Please assure
them - but perhaps they can hear my voice, Voronin?" The young man did
not reply, merely smiled into the room. Aubrey refused to attend—! "In
which case," Kapustin's voice continued, "I can assure
them
personally that no time will be lost in dealing with their - problem.
No
time will be lost." The repeated words were purred out. "Is there
anything else, Voronin?"

"No, Comrade Deputy Chairman - there is nothing else."

"Then goodbye…" And then, because Kapustin could not resist the
temptation, he added: "Goodbye, Sir Kenneth," in a mocking, triumphant
tone. Aubrey's eyes were hooded, but bright with attention. Good, good
- at last!

Voronin switched off the speaker and replaced the receiver. Then
he
sat back in his chair, studying the faces arranged before him once
more. Looked down on by those other faces towards which the Massingers'
attention had returned. He adopted a relaxed and confident air. They'd
got to Aubrey. He knew, he understood. His inattention was no more than
an act, a pretence. He was suffering - oh, yes, he was suffering.
Knowing that, Voronin cared little or nothing for the others. They had
retreated further from him, but that did not matter. Their hands were
linked on the woman's lap, but clearly not for the purpose of mutual
comfort. Rather, in a union that suggested that the present moment
satisfied them.

Satisfy —?

Did Aubrey's suffering satisfy him, Voronin? Did he possess all
the
feelings, the strength of feeling, appropriate to this moment?

He could not say that he did.

Why not?

He knew why not. Babbington. He disliked the man intensely -
always
had done, the past two days more than ever. Arrogant - feudally
arrogant, the sort you wanted to frighten with a gun or a club, shake
out of his complacent arrogance…

Babbington was the hero of the hour. Hero of the Soviet Union.
They'd keep the medals for the day he finally came home. Sickening.
Voronin felt himself to be a child, excluded from some adult
celebration party. It was Babbington's moment; all the satisfaction,
the sense of success, belonged to Babbington. He and all the others had
been no more than servants, scurrying to do what Babbington ordered.
Saving Babbington's precious skin.

Aubrey watched Voronin. He saw the man's pleasure pall and
understood the reason. He was no more than a cog, a part of
Babbington's machine. Aubrey saw a discontented young man of pale
complexion and sharp bright eyes. Not fashionably dressed but dowdy and
clerk-like, his suit old-fashioned, a piece with the overcoat and
trilby hat he had now discarded. The shirt and tie were drab. Voronin's
hair was limp and straight; a dirty blond in colour.

A catalogue of mediocrity. Yet — and Aubrey could not avoid or
escape the impression - this mediocrity held their lives in his hands.
And would dispose of them all when the time came for him to do so.

This dangerous drab young man represented a lank-haired Nemesis
in a
clerk's grey suit.

Aubrey's attention retreated. What use were the pretences, the
masks? He was beaten and knew it. The Massingers were as good as dead.
He, too, after a short, shameful interval, would cease to exist —

Fear came then. He knew why he had hidden his attentiveness from
Voronin. The effort had occupied him sufficiently to keep the fear at
bay. But now, the fear clutched at his stomach and heart and lungs,
almost stopping his breath.

Voronin smiled greedily. He saw. He knew, and appeared satisfied.

The empty street, cobbled and steep, sloped away from him,
pooled by
shadows which filled the spaces between the lamplight. The
sgraffito-work facade of the Schwarzenberg Palace seemed ghostly,
luminescent. The other buildings massed silently and lightless in the
square; the palaces and the town hall and the Swiss embassy. The carved
saints leaned over their madonna directly ahead of him. He felt as
jolted as if he had collided with the statuary or with the wall of a
building; winded and disorientated. Godwin wasn't there.

A cripple, unable to run, but he wasn't there, wasn't there…

His lungs and heart pumped out the refrain. Godwin wasn't there…

He listened for the sounds of pursuit, watching the square's
pools
and bays of shadow for the movement of waiting men. As the strain of
his efforts faded, another stronger chorus emerged. Stop it stop it,
stop
it —

Routine questioning, slipped on an icy pavement and lying in
hospital, too cold for him to come out at all… Hyde hadn't wanted him
there, and perhaps Godwin had done no more than change his mind.

The alarms were ringing, distantly and continuously, in the
castle.
The guards at the closed gates of the First Courtyard were almost
invisible to his left, but he sensed their increased alertness like a
scent on the cold air. He pressed back against the wall, feeling chilly
carved stone against his cheek. He tried to control the little puffed
signals his breath made in the icy night. He began to feel cold as the
sweat dried. Lights sprang on in the castle's nearest building; neon
lighting, flickering on like burning torches hurried from room to room
by the men searching for him. The group of stone giants in combat above
the gates loomed over the square, black backs and arms muscled and
dangerous in the light thrown down from the windows.

The guards had turned their backs to him as they looked back
through
the gates; already puzzled, becoming dangerous. Headlights flickered
across the walls surrounding the Second Courtyard, illuminating the
frozen beard of the fountain.

Now —

Lights above him in the government offices of the old
Archbishop's
Palace. More alarms, louder as if someone had opened a window to let
the sound escape. Lights coming on in the Swiss Embassy, reducing the
shadows in which he hid. A car starting further up the cobbled hill.
More headlights in the inner courtyards, more lights in the room
surrounding the square. By now, the fire in the computer room would
have been extinguished, and be understood as no more than a diversion.
They would be single-minded now, their attention entirely focused on
himself. They did not know what he had - but, if they had him, Godwin
would tell them, and soon —

Running feet, heavy and booted —

Now
—!

He touched the chilly stone with both hands, as if about to hurl
himself away from it, studied the pavement and the cobbles - and ran.

The gates were swinging open, the guards were moving towards the
leading car. He saw this as he knelt by one of the parked black
limousines in front of the Archbishop's Palace, his heavy breathing
clouding the car's polished flank. Booted feet, voices, the alarm
shrill, joined by others as if nesting birds had been roused. He got
off his haunches and ran, crouching and wary, across the cobbles to the
group of figures carved around the madonna. He pressed against the base
of the statue and watched the leading car roar out of the gates into
the square - wheels spinning, rear of the car sliding sideways, then
the
drift
corrected - and away up the hill towards the Strahov. Only seconds left
now. An officer was instructing the guards at the gates; someone yelled
down from a high window. A mechanical voice through a public address
system began to rouse the whole castle. Only seconds —

He scuttled across the last pool of light, last bay of shadow. A
truck with a searchlight mounted on the back trundled into the square,
its brakes protesting as it stopped. Immediately, the beam began
bouncing and sliding in the square like a great golden ball striking
the walls of the buildings.