The Bear's Tears

broader, striding more quickly — they were fifteen yards, fourteen, twelve…

He ran.

Hyde's boots skidded on the little accumulation of sleety snow on the bottom step, then he turned to his left, thrust away from the sooty, crumbling stonework, head down. A shout, other shouts like answering hunting horns. The south-side man hurrying almost at once, without noticeable shock-delay. Hyde rounded the west facade into deeper shadow, hearing the footsteps behind him over the pounding of his heart; over the drumming realisation that he was running into a narrowing canyon behind the cathedral where the pedestrianised streets on the north and south sides converged. At that instant, men were running along the north side, beneath the unfinished, capped tower of the Stephansdom, to head him off. It was a race. There would be no doubling back, no luck of deception. Point of convergence — himself. He would have to outrun them.

Lights from fashionable, expensive apartments above fashionable, expensive shops. Shoes gleamed and primped in a soft-lit window. A couple huddled in a chilly passion in the shop's doorway. The shadows along the cathedral wall were deep, almost alive. Hyde skidded again, and his hand rubbed against cold stone as he righted himself. He could hear the beat of footsteps ahead and behind him.

Shop window, doorway, couple, dark side street…

He turned, saw the three men bearing down on him, and then fled down the narrow street, away from the cathedral. Their pursuit resounded from the blank, grey walls of the tall houses. Left into a narrow alley with light at the other end, then right and across the street, hearing a car moving away from him and the sudden, chilling screech of a cat, then another alley, then a lightless street after the loom of a church.

He paused and listened. The car's noise had faded. There was the noise of someone blundering into a dustbin, music from an upstairs window, and the beat of footsteps — splitting up, the noises moving away. He crossed the street and walked swiftly, hands in his pockets. A man emerged from the alley into the dark street. He was alone, and no more than a shadowy lump. Then he moved off in the opposite direction.

Sausages hung in the unlit window of a delicatessen; fat, ripe, Daliesque. His dark, narrow features stared out at him in reflection. He looked abandoned, inadequate. He had no cover, no luggage, no hotel, no back-up. Wilkes had set the KGB on him.

A Mercedes roared past, startling him, making his hand reach instinctively into the breast of his overcoat where the butt of the gun felt damp with his exertions. Then he relaxed, and looked again at his slight, hunched figure and the sallow reflection of his face. He began walking slowly on, with no purpose other than to conceal himself.

* * *

'Is this to be the beginning or the end of this — lunacy?'

Sir Andrew Babbington, Director-General of MI5, lowered himself with studied casualness into the armchair opposite Aubrey, and then looked up into the older man's face as if assessing the visible symptoms of a disease. Aubrey waved his glance aside with an angry gesture that underlined his enraged question.

'Kenneth—'

'Babbington, I asked you a question. Pray do me the courtesy of replying.'

'This is Colonel Eldon,' Babbington said, indicating his companion, 'of our Counter-espionage Branch.' His smile indicated that he considered he had answered Aubrey's enquiry. Eldon nodded.

'Sir Kenneth,' he murmured. Eldon, behind his military moustache, was sleek, handsome, clear-eyed; he was also tall. And Aubrey sensed a tough doggedness just beneath the surface of this senior interrogator. For a moment, Aubrey's heart beat with a ragged swiftness. He gripped the arms of his chair to suppress the quiver of his hands. The game had begun in earnest. There was no room for mistakes, no margin for error.

'I have been held under what I can only consider to be house arrest for two days. My telephone has been tapped, there have been guards at my door. My housekeeper has only been allowed to go shopping after a humiliating search. She is searched again when she returns. Oh, sit down, Eldon—!' He waved his hand towards the unoccupied sofa. Eldon sank into its deep cushions. The interruption had defused Aubrey's angry protest.

Babbington said: 'You wish the charges against you to be clarified?' There was something sharp gleaming through the man's urbanity, and it worried Aubrey.

'What charges?'

'Charges of treason,' Babbington snapped.

'So you said at the Belvedere, and again at the embassy — and again on the aircraft and in the car from Heathrow. You must be more explicit,' Aubrey added with a calm acidity he did not feel.

Babbington grinned. Apparently, a moment for which he had been waiting had arrived. Eldon, too, seemed pleased that a point of crisis had been reached. He was stroking his moustache in a parody of the military man he had once been. His eyes appeared blank and unfocused, and Aubrey realised that the man was dangerously intelligent, dangerously good at his job.

'Very well, Kenneth,' Babbington replied.

'You'll have to try very hard, Babbington — even were I guilty!' Aubrey snapped, surprised at his own rage.

'Oh, we realise it will be a very long job, Sir Kenneth,' Eldon murmured.

'Why have I been denied all access to the Minister, to the Chairman of the JIC — whom I might expect to be here in your stead, incidentally — and even to the Cabinet Office?'

'Because for the present, and until this matter is resolved — the power of all three lies in me.'

'I see,' Aubrey replied. He controlled the muscles of his face, which wished to express apprehension, even shock. 'Yet another rearrangement of our peculiar hierarchy, I gather,' he murmured contemptuously.

Babbington merely smiled. Aubrey had been appointed as 'C' after the retirement of Sir Richard Cunningham. The appointment had coincided with the changes in the Joint Intelligence Committee that the Franks Report on the Falklands campaign had urged. The Chairmanship of the JIC had been lost by the Foreign Office, and MI5, under Babbington, had seized its chance to bask in the sun. MI5 had survived the Blunt, Hollis, Long scandals and emerged in the ascendent under a younger, more virile leadership. SIS was regarded as a country for old men, Aubrey being the oldest among them. Everyone was waiting for his retirement. Sir William Guest, as Chairman of the JIC and with the ear of the PM, had his own plans for a combined security and intelligence service. And Aubrey knew that he intended Babbington to head the new service, SAID. Everyone -

simply everyone — was waiting for his retirement. He could almost see the impatience in Babbington's eyes, sense it in the room. And now, this — this thing that had lumbered out of one of his nightmares had fallen into their hands, and they were all prepared to use it to get rid of him. It almost did not matter to them whether he were guilty or innocent. He would be removed and the new service would be inaugurated, and Babbington would have his place in the sun.

Aubrey controlled his features once more. Babbington was enjoying whatever expression of anger or bitterness played about his lips.

They had him now. Another Russian agent. Babbington was outraged, even vengeful. That latter would be because he was an old family friend of the Castlefords.

Evidently his face had again betrayed his thoughts, because Babbington smiled and said with silky threat: 'Whatever else may or may not be true, Kenneth — if you betrayed Robert Castleford to the NKVD in 1946, I will have your head. I promise you that.' The anger was cold, well-savoured, decided upon. It was an emotion that had become a motive, a mainspring of action. Aubrey avoided glancing towards Eldon's glittering eyes.

Then Eldon said: 'Sir Kenneth…' Aubrey looked venomously in his direction. 'Perhaps you would prefer that these conversations…' His hands moved apart, suggesting the passage of a great deal of time; a time without specified term. '… take place at one of our — residences out of town?'

Aubrey shook his head. 'I'm sure you realise that I would prefer to cling to the familiar?' he replied with an acid smile. 'In this case, however, I would be using my surroundings as a constant reminder of what is at stake for me — what I might lose.'

'You would prefer to remain here, too, I suspect — comfort and familiarity can be great betrayers.' Eldon nodded his head in acknowledgement. 'No, we'll stay here, I think. Coffee?' he added brightly.

'Please.'

Aubrey lifted the small silver bell which Mrs Grey had instructed him to buy and use as a proper means of summoning her, and it tinkled softly in the comfortable room whose windows looked north over Regent's Park. The central heating clunked dully. The morning's headlines lay exposed and sharp on the table beside Aubrey's