The Bear's Tears

'Hello, Patrick,' Wilkes said again. Then the door moved on its hinges. Heat stung the back of his neck as he tried to overcome tight, frozen muscles to turn his head. The door slammed shut behind him. He imagined, almost immediately, that he could hear breathing in the darkness around him. Two, three, four pairs of lungs, his imagination counted. Trap. He knew they were there. He did not know how many, but they were plural; collective. They were a trap, and they had snapped shut on him. 'OK, Patrick,' Wilkes added confidently, almost amused, 'put down the gun. There's a good chap.'

Now—!

There was the single, elongated fraction of a moment in which his body would not come unfrozen, would not move — then the torch was out, and he leapt and rolled, and crashed into something which gave and then toppled upon him, winding him. Torch beams flashed and played about him, and someone cursed.

Not Wilkes's voice. He clung to something tapering and moulded or carved. A torch beam struck as he pushed it away. A model of one of the towers of the Kremlin.

Kremlin—?

He rolled away. No gunfire, only the searchlight beams of the torches and lamps licking across the dusty floor of the warehouse, seeking him. The embrace with the model had threatened the return of his paralysis, but since he could not explain it, he rejected it. He scrabbled. Others moved now, converging on the point where his light had been, where his collision with the model had taken place. He rolled under a bench, into a corner, hunching against the wall and trying to control his breathing.

Footsteps, like the slither and rush of rats. Flickering torchlight, orders—

Silence, filling the bowl of the warehouse. Some children's game, but played in the dark. Statues, was it? When Hyde looks, all stand still. Make a statue.

Lenin, model—?

'Patrick?' Wilkes said clearly, his voice whispering in the hollow acoustic. 'Patrick. I think you ought to give it up as a bad job.' Silence, then: 'Oh, for your information, Clint Eastwood made a film here. You saw some of the set dressing, the props. A spy film. Very exciting, I believe.'

'Where's the bloody main switch?' someone called out.

'In the office!' Wilkes snapped.

Someone collided with some cans or buckets, setting them rolling on the cobbled floor. As he moved under cover of the noise, Hyde heard the man cursing.

Then Wilkes was speaking again. His voice betrayed the subtle, arcane pleasure of having known it was Hyde tailing him in the Volkswagen, of having known his every move. Wilkes had trailed him behind his Audi like a kite.

'Come on, Patrick — there's nowhere to go. We'll have all the lights on in a minute. We shall all know and be known. Just don't be silly about it.'

Rage enveloped Hyde.

'What the hell do you want with me, Wilkes?' he yelled, at the same time scurrying along the wall, deeper into the warehouse, almost on all fours. Weak moonlight seemed to drip with the rain from broken skylights in the roof above him. Something—?

Nothing.

Wilkes's voice pursued him, and there was movement from ahead of him. He crouched silently against the wall.

'We have our orders, Patrick. We have to render you harmless,' Wilkes announced dispassionately.

Hyde was shuddering with exertion, damp, cold and terror.

'Why?' he yelled out in anguish. 'Why?'

His body had given up, collapsing into spasm and chill numbness.

'You know why, Patrick. London says you're under suspicion.' Wilkes's voice oozed insincerity. 'Sorry. You've been a naughty boy.' Then, as if slightly unsure of the endgame, Wilkes shouted: 'Where are those bloody lights?'

Hyde's hand gripped the steel of a girder. Unwillingly, his eyes traced it aloft. It grew up the whitewashed wall like a tree. Part of the framework supporting the roof, some reinforcement of the original wooden structure.

'I've got them,' he heard someone call distantly. 'Ready when you are.'

Hyde's other hand — stuffing the pistol into its holster — climbed up the girder, involuntarily. Then his left hand climbed, then right, so that he was standing upright, pressed against the wall. Right hand encountering a handhold, left foot a foothold, left hand, right foot, right hand…

He was climbing, past the lower crossbeam, up towards the roof. The noises he was making were like the scrabbling of rats, perhaps discountable by the men below him. The lower crossbeam was below him now, and the weak moonlight cast the faintest sheen. The black bar of the upper steel girder was still above him. If it was more than six feet below the broken skylight, he could never get out that way -

'Everyone under cover?' he heard Wilkes ask, interrupting his doubts. It had to be no more than six—

The others replied; his hearing, choked with his heartbeat and breathing, could not distinguish direction. They seemed all around him.

Lights—

A glare of whitish light. He scrambled across the girder, lying flat for a moment, then rising onto his haunches, hands white as they gripped the cold, wet steel. He was sitting like a waiting animal, yet the posture suggested resignation, immobility at the same moment. A pool of shadow lay below him, cast from his body by the…

No, not his body, Wilkes's body as the man moved out into the open. They couldn't see him, a gauze of light between him and the ground, thrown by the lamps suspended on long wires. He was above the light—

Rain seeped through the skylight onto his neck. His forearms and shoulders already ached with the pressure he was exerting through them simply to remain still and balanced on the narrow girder. Wilkes was almost directly below him. An animal would have dropped at that point, that moment — an animal would have ignored the odds of four or five to one.

'Patrick? Come on, Patrick…' Wilkes was regretting his bravado, regretting the open and the hard, dusty light.

Hyde looked up. Five, six, six and a half? Jagged glass, but bare wood in places — rotten wood? One jump, one stretch only. Or wait—?

Perhaps for no more than a minute they would be surprised, confused, puzzled, inactive. Then the ratlike noises would take shape and purpose and identity, and when they had scoured the floor area and the ground-level hiding places, they would look up.

Look up—

Six and a half; wet, dark, paint-peeled window frame; jagged glass, no footholds — he could imagine his shoulders heaving up and through, legs kicking, noise of effort, of cracking wood and glass, then the surprised, upturned faces and the guns aimed at the struggling, kicking legs…

A shudder ran through his aching arms and shoulders. He steadied himself, then looked down. Four of them, emerging from the shadows against the walls, collecting beneath him — Wilkes waving his gun, miming instructions now… one moving towards a stack of wet cardboard boxes, another back into the recesses of the warehouse, a third moving away towards an open door to some disused office.

Apart for a moment, then they'd be drawn back together again—

Now—

No movement—

Stand up.

Hands letting go, reluctantly. Thighs and calves feeling weak, rejecting the effort. Hands free, fingers numb, slow to flex. Arms aching. Legs quivering as they straighten, window not coming close enough. Arms protesting as they stretch above the head, fingers clenched to grasp. Touch — not enough. Touch; grip.

Yes, close enough. Girder wet, foot slipping a fraction. Wood — wood sound enough. Grip.

Now.