The Bear's Tears

microphone. Aubrey's face, as he unwound the lead from his waist and undipped the microphone from his shirt, had been smug with trust. Hyde's blunter sensibilities did not enable him to trust Kapustin, even though these meetings were almost two years old.

Nothing new. A long, unfruitful courtship. Kapustin, by his words but not his actions, wished to defect to the West. A full Deputy Chairman of the KGB, Inspector-General of First Chief Directorate, Operations and Personnel. The glittering prize which dazzled Aubrey.

Ahead of him, fifty yards away against the backcloth of summer shirts and bright dresses, Aubrey and Kapustin strolled towards the turnstiles at the entrance to the zoo. A lion roared in the distance. Children gasped or squeaked with anticipation. Nothing dangerous moved beneath the heavy, aromatic pines, yet Hyde could not relax. There was no danger, nothing more than his persistent, recurring sense of wrongness. Everything was wrong about this — what, perhaps the tenth or even fifteenth meeting between Aubrey and Kapustin? Kapustin the reluctant virgin. Kapustin vacillating, refusing to commit himself, worried about the money, the new identity, the place of residence. Leading Aubrey by the nose.

A red and yellow ball rolled across the path at Hyde's feet. A small boy in shorts, freckled and palely blond, chased it, then trotted away towards his parents, picnicking beneath the trees on wooden benches where sunlight poured down on them. Midges hung in the air like visible motes of their laughter.

He queued behind Kapustin and Aubrey, then kept twenty yards back as they walked the narrow paths between goat pens. A llama watched Hyde with the superior stare of a civil servant and bison grazed against a high mesh fence.

Wrong, he reminded himself. Disgruntled, too. Fed up with acting as Aubrey's bodyguard on this periodic tour of European capitals. The meetings were arranged to coincide with Kapustin's visits of inspection to the Soviet embassies of Western Europe — Berlin, Vienna, Bonn, Stockholm, Madrid, London, Helsinki. Each time, Kapustin supplied high-level gossip, Politburo insights, evidence of shifts of power and opinion — and excuses for not coming over. Demanding twice the money or twice the security, perhaps even twice the flattery.

Kapustin and Aubrey had halted in front of a monkey cage. Small, furry, whiskered faces watched them, small hands clutched towards them through the bars. Harsh voices demanded and insulted. Aubrey appeared earnest; Kapustin, taller and heavier, seemed to lean over him, a schoolmaster over a pupil trying to rush at a solution. Aubrey's expression was a mirror of the cross, pinched face of the Capuchin monkey that watched the two men through the bars. Hyde watched the crowd around them, watched the cameras and the eyes. Nothing.

The exasperation was clear on Aubrey's face beneath the straw trilby. Kapustin gestured broadly, a non- committal shrug. Hyde moved closer to the barrier in front of the cage. A small grey monkey skittered away from him along a branch that led nowhere, as if he represented a palpable threat.

'Double agent? We are not asking you to be that, Dmitri,' Aubrey was saying in a quiet, urgent voice. 'Why do you persist with the idea? It was your request — you contacted me, Dmitri. Directly. Personally.'

'As if I were waking a sleeper?' Kapustin murmured.

'Quite.' Aubrey refused to smile at the remark. 'Ever since then, you have toyed with us, with me.'

'I apologize.' Kapustin watched Hyde for a moment as the Australian drifted closer, his eyes looking away from the monkey cage. In the distance, the lion roared again. Then Kapustin returned his attention to Aubrey. 'You have been very helpful, you have done everything…' he murmured.

'My duty, no more than that,' Aubrey observed stiffly. 'What you offered could not be ignored. But why hesitate now — again and for so long?'

'I cannot decide between you and the Americans.'

'Money? Is that it?'

'Would it be money with you?'

'No. The situation would not arise.'

'Obviously not, now that Cunningham is to retire.'

'You know, of course.'

'You are confidently expected to take his place as the Director-General. You will, of course?'

Aubrey brushed at the air with his hand. 'That's irrelevant.'

'Your real work can begin then.'

'Perhaps. Listen to me, Dmitri. The period of courtship is over. Your decision is awaited. You must decide. You must act.'

Hyde drifted away from the two men. Their voices became lost in the screeching of the monkeys and the noise of children. The same conversation, the endless tape-loop of persuasion and hesitancy. Kapustin playing with Aubrey, wasting everyone's time. Elaborate verbal games, continual amusements…

Hyde let the thought go in the babble of a school party of pigtailed girls and crop-headed boys, bustled past him by an efficient schoolmistress. A blob of vanilla ice-cream appeared on his brown corduroy trousers. He grinned and wiped it away. The idea of ice-cream appealed to him as he vented his irritation on the two old men behind him.

Teardrop. Kapustin's codename, suggested by the Russian himself at that first meeting in Paris. He looked back. The two men were surrounded by the shuffling party of schoolchildren. The strident voice of their teacher lectured them. The image of Aubrey and Kapustin was harmless, even risible. Nothing would come of Teardrop. Hyde did not expect the KGB Deputy Chairman to defect — not this year, not next year nor the year after that. Aubrey was still not even certain of the man's motives for wishing to defect. A vague disillusion seemed insufficient to explain him. Teardrop. It didn't mask some personal tragedy, as far as SIS could establish. It meant nothing, just a codename.

Mechanically, Hyde watched the cameras and the eyes, then the paths and the trees. Nothing. He yawned, felt bored, and wished for action.

Kapustin and Aubrey passed him then, returning to the gates, deep in urgent conversation. Unimportant. Nothing. Teardrop was a waste of everyone's time.

Slowly, unalert, he began to follow the two old men.

* * *

'This is now the actor, from yesterday?' Kapustin asked in the darkness at the back of the room. The film whirred in the projector. Cigarette smoke drifted in the beam of white light that reached towards the wall screen.

'Yes, Comrade Deputy Chairman.'

'The cloud shadows don't look right to me. You've got the time of day OK, and the glare of the sun. But there was more of a breeze today. There aren't enough shadows.'

Kapustin watched his own back moving away from the camera, accompanied by a figure apparently that of Kenneth Aubrey. The actor bore little facial resemblance to the Englishman, but from this viewpoint he was identical. The walk was good, very good, the attitude of the shoulders and the head slightly on one side, like a listening bird. The straw trilby was habitual summer wear with Aubrey, and it was fortunate he had worn it that afternoon.

'We'll make a computer comparison, Comrade Deputy Chairman,' the leader of the technical team offered. 'We can do something about the shadows, I'm certain — even if there aren't any tomorrow when we do the inserts for real.'

'Mm.' Kapustin watched the film for a moment longer, then said: 'Show me the film from this afternoon.'

The projector slowed into silence. A second projector alongside it threw images at the screen, then he and Aubrey were again walking away from the camera, identically with the rehearsal they had staged the previous afternoon. Sunlight, yes. Clothing to be copied, naturally. Manner. The actor would have to be rehearsed. There was an irritation about Aubrey that was infrequently displayed but was here now, on this piece of film, shaping his body, moving his limbs. The Australian drifted along the path behind them, hands in his pockets, apparently bored.

'OK, sir?' the team leader asked at his elbow. Kapustin nodded.

'Not bad.'

'We can solve the problem. The film quality will look identical, once the computer's finished setting up its comparisons.' The man was less ingratiating than proud — of his skills and his equipment and reputation, presumably. 'We'll be able to stitch in anything you want, as long as the actor's right.'

'He will be.'