The Bear's Tears

chair.

When he had ordered coffee, Aubrey said: 'Why was no D-notice issued, Babbington? Why the hue and cry? I can't see how that can be to your advantage…'

'Not us. The Americans, we're pretty sure. They're impatient for answers, for proof.'

'Ah. They'd prefer to see the ascendency of your service completed.' His face folded into bitter creases, and his hand plucked for a moment at the fringing on the armchair. 'As would HMG, now that there is the slightest doubt about myself. No country for old men, mm?' He looked up at Babbington, whose face was as immobile as if he had suffered a stroke. One eyelid flickered for a moment. Then Aubrey laughed, a short, derisive bark. 'My God, Babbington, you really do have a lot to gain from my guilt!'

'And are you guilty, Sir Kenneth?' Eldon interjected.

Aubrey threw down his challenge. 'I was using more sophisticated techniques of interrogation when you were still fagging for your house captain, Eldon.'

'I'm well aware of your reputation, Sir Kenneth.'

'Ah, coffee — excellent. Thank you, Mrs Grey.'

Mrs Grey deposited the silver tray on the sideboard, bestowed glances of proprietorial malice upon Aubrey's visitors, and then left the room. Aubrey poured the coffee, fussing over it in a caricature of aged bachelorhood. He flexed mental muscles as he did so. Then he returned to his seat.

'Well, gentlemen?' he asked brightly. 'I have the last forty-five years to lose, and the emperor's new clothes…' He indicated the large room and its furniture. 'Perhaps you'd better begin.'

Immediately, Eldon said: 'Sir Kenneth, did you know that at your last Helsinki meeting your controller was wired for sound, even though you were not… by his request, if I remember your report correctly.'

Aubrey was silent for some moments. The information had winded him. Suspicions crowded in his mind, just out of the light. 'Wired for sound? Controller!' He squeezed contempt into his voice.

'Your KGB contact, if you prefer,' Eldon corrected himself. 'Yes, wired for sound. We have the tape.'

'Then—'

'It seems very conclusive.'

'Where is it?'

'We'll let you hear it, Kenneth,' Babbington soothed, savouring Aubrey's failure of nerve.

'Conclusive, you say — then why the need for…?'

'Conclusive of treason, perhaps I should have said, Sir Kenneth.'

'Then it's faked! Where did you get it?'

'The Finns. They have people in the Soviet apparat in Helsinki. One of them got it out, the Finns handed it straight on to us — to Sir William and the Cabinet Office…'

'You bloody fools — you dangerous fools!' Aubrey snapped.

'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.