The Bear's Tears

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.

'Fuck off, Godwin,' Hyde said quietly, forcefully. 'Take your bloody self-pity and stuff it.' Godwin stared at him, his mouth working silently, his eyes angry slits in his white face. 'You're alive. I don't have the time or the range of sympathy to care in what condition… because if you don't help me and I can't do the necessary, neither I nor the old man will be anything but dead. Now, if you'd like to change places, give me your fucking crutches and I'll learn to use them.'

Godwin's jaw dropped. His mouth was a round black hole from which eventually emerged in a shocked, small, defeated voice: 'Oh, you bastard — Christ, you bastard,' Hyde did not reply, and Godwin turned his face away. Slowly, his head subsided onto his chest. Hyde listened to his stertorious breathing, as if the man was labouring up an endless flight of stairs or a steep hill; surmounting his own self-pity, Hyde hoped. Eventually, Godwin sniffed loudly.

It was almost dark in the car. The snow lay thickly on the windscreen and the rear window, and the daylight was fading outside. There was no one at the bus stop. Traffic had begun to pass them, leaving Prague for the suburbs. In the headlights of one oncoming vehicle, Hyde saw bright wetness on Godwin's cheeks.

'OK,' Godwin said heavily, nodding. 'OK. I'm sorry.'

Again, Hyde did not reply. Already, his interest in Godwin's reaction was diminishing. His words had had the desired effect. It was difficult to concern himself with anything larger than Aubrey's survival…

Rare moment of absolute honesty. His own survival. It was that which absorbed his attention. Unless that was the case, Aubrey, Godwin, Massinger and all the others would not survive. The priority of self might just keep others alive — on this occasion.

'It's not you,' Godwin eventually continued. Hyde had to force himself to attend. Godwin was emerging slowly, like a dragonfly, from the chrysalis of his disability.

'Yes?' he demanded, almost impatiently.

Godwin's head twitched, then he said: 'It's not you I blame — God knows, not the old man…'

'No,' Hyde said carefully. Traffic passed, flowing more strongly now.

Godwin looked at Hyde for a moment, as if reminding himself of his companion's identity. Then he said: 'I don't know and I don't care whether you understand this…' Hyde winced, wanting to stem the flow of what he sensed was a confession, but he said nothing. '… but I want to say it.' He swallowed, then Hyde heard a dry, chuckling, ironic noise in Godwin's throat. 'You brought back a world I'd had to leave behind. Fuck you for that.'