The Bear's Tears

'Babbington's chums. I'm near the top of the list of potential help the old man might try to employ. I couldn't fart without them knowing about it.'

Massinger stared into his coffee, then absently swilled the pale armagnac in his glass. From the moment the lobster had been served, he had known this would be the outcome. Aubrey's fall had left Shelley still in the directorship of East Europe Desk, but his hold upon his new office was precarious. He was an Aubrey man. He might yet go. Shelley was keeping his head down until the gunfire stopped.

'Babbington intends to control both services, finally?'

Shelley nodded. 'Oh, yes. He's ambitious, and he's favoured. It's happened before, in the sixties, and since then. One man doing both jobs. Babbington's the man, apparently.'

'You must owe Aubrey a great deal,' Massinger suggested.

'I do,' Shelley replied frostily, his face twisted into an ugly grimace as he drained his glass. He evidently disliked being reminded of his debts, especially by someone outside his service, and an American, at that. Massinger controlled his anger. 'And I'm aware of it, and I'm grateful. But, I can do nothing.' He leaned confidentially towards Massinger. 'To begin with, JIC has impounded all the papers, the tapes, everything. Sir William sent in some people and they took stuff away by the lorryload. And I just can't get you a transcript of the Teardrop file. It's much too hot and much too jealously guarded. I haven't even seen a copy. Any one of the few copies in existence would be missed immediately. I can't do it. The old man's being sent to the wall, Professor. There's nothing to be done about it.'

Massinger sighed impatiently, admitting inwardly that Shelley was right. He was not even craven, simply right. 'What about Hyde?'

'Mm. Vienna Station say he's disappeared. They've heard nothing from him.'

'You don't believe that, do you?'

'Patrick Hyde's a funny bloke — but he wouldn't leave the old man up to his eyeballs in the shit without a very good reason.'

'Then what does he know, or suspect? What did he see or hear that night?'

'I've no idea.'

'And you're not curious?'

'I can't get hold of him without going through Vienna Station. And I can't do that with any hope of secrecy. Hyde's cut off. He might even be dead.'

'Why should he be dead?'

'I don't know,' Shelley whispered fiercely with growing exasperation. 'But unless he calls in, no one is ever going to find out what spooked him.'

'What's his home address?'

'I—' Shelley paused, then added: 'I'll write it down for you.' He scribbled on the back of an envelope. Massinger pocketed it without reading the address. 'He won't be there.'

'Would there be anyone else at home?'

Shelley looked thoughtful. 'There's a woman upstairs — she actually owns the place. His landlady. I've no idea what their real relationship is. Most odd…' He shrugged.

'Would he trust her? In trouble, would he try to contact her?'

'I don't know. Perhaps…'

Massinger leaned forward. 'Look,' he said, 'you don't believe any of this nonsense against Aubrey, do you?'

Shelley shook his head. He looked young and cunning and ambitious and embarrassed. 'No, of course not —'

'Then—?'

'I can't—!' he protested. His long index finger tapped the tablecloth, then stirred the crumbs from his bread roll as he continued. 'There's nothing that can be done to help him, Professor. I know that. I'm there every day. No one is going to help him buck JIC, the Cabinet Office, and HMG. No one wants it to happen, but they can't fight it.' He looked up from the curling comet's tail of crumbs on the white cloth. He shook his head emphatically. 'Nothing can be done. The old man's beyond saving.'

* * *

In the foyer of the Inter-Continental Hotel, Hyde passed a row of long mirrors which reflected a man he might not have recognised had he not created him. The glass windows of the souvenir shop mirrored him more palely than wide-skirted dolls and curved wooden pipes. Then the window of the newspaper shop caught and held him again. But the face that stared back at him from the front page of the evening newspaper suddenly exposed the truth, masked only by the moustache, the clear spectacles and the three-piece business suit. His own face — the familiar one that confronted him in his shaving mirror and the face of the man who had slept rough for two nights in Vienna, by the river and then in an alley behind a restaurant — stared at him from the rack. His disguise was at once useless and foolish. Gingerly, he took one of the newspapers, flinching as a large, middle-aged Austrian did the same before passing into the shop to pay for it. Hyde opened the paper. The small headline and the story lay below the photograph. The snapshot was official. It matched his passport photograph. It was his passport photograph. SIS must have supplied it.

Drugs. Wanted for suspected drug offences.

KGB — SIS — Viennese police.

He felt the weight of the falling net upon his shoulders.

Upstairs, in the suite he had booked with the passport he had stolen on the metro, the rest of his new clothes, the too-large suitcase that was part of his cover, the new toothbrush and comb and after-shave all waited like props he could no longer use because the play had closed. He had booked into one of Vienna's most expensive hotels because it would be among the small hotels and pensions that they would look for him first.

Now, drugs. He was a police matter. He shuffled the clear-glass spectacles on the bridge of his nose, fingered the pads in his cheeks; his disguise seemed pitiful, amateurish. He thrust the newspaper back into the rack, and walked away from the shop. Arabs lingered over coffee in the foyer, a group of Americans queued at Reception, there was laughter from the bar. He reached the lifts, then paused.

What—? Who—?

He had not dared attempt to hire a car, or try the airport or the railway stations. Now, he might have to. Now he had to get out of Vienna before his face began to stare nightmarishly at him from lamp-posts and newspaper and metro station walls and trolley-bus windows. This was only the opening bombardment. The pressure would increase, the crimes grow in enormity, his capture become more essential.

Savagely, he stabbed his finger on the button to summon the lift. He needed to retreat to the hideously expensive suite on the tenth floor which he could not use any of his own credit cards to pay for. The doors sighed open and he stepped in. The lift ascended, smooth and swift, as if rushing him away from possible identification and arrest. He felt fear; pure, undiluted and inescapable. He knew he was beaten.

Train, car, bus, boat…

The lift doors sighed open. He hurried along the corridor, passing an open suite door. Two Arab women and two children sat there, a tray of fruit and biscuits outside the door. They were prisoners of the hotel, like himself. He fumbled his key into the lock, opened the door, and closed and locked it behind him.

His breathing was loud and ragged. His body was heavy, wanting only to sink into the cushions of the sofa or lie upon the bed in the next room. His hands were shaking. There was no way out, his body urged. Give it up…

Train, car, bus, aircraft…

All watched. All watched.

The telephone lay on the writing desk. He could ring, call Parrish or Wilkes at the embassy, play along, ask them what they wanted—

Or just walk in. They couldn't execute him in cold blood. Whatever they wanted or didn't want from him, he could listen to them, agree to do it, forget what had happened…

That would be as easy as telling them about the tape he had dropped, the tape they undoubtedly had by now. He damned his stupidity, his gullibility, once more. Easy -