The Bear's Tears

West-bahnhof and light and crowds.

He ran. The noise of the tram faded behind him. There was no noise yet of a car engine firing or of pursuing footbeats. It was enough of a gap.

He ran.

* * *

Peter Shelley remembered looking out across dark, light-pricked London on numerous earlier occasions from the broad windows of his office in Century House. The river wound like a black snake between two borders of light, its back striped by the lamps of bridges. Increasingly, his last, reluctant, half-ashamed cogitations of the day had come to concern Kenneth Aubrey. He could not help but consider himself as some kind of betrayer. Aubrey and the old order — he owed them everything, including his latest and most gratifying promotion to the directorship of East Europe Desk. That office was a recognised stage on the road that led to the very top: part of the Jacob's Ladder of SIS mythology. He should repay, honour his debts to Aubrey. Yet whenever he decided that, an image came to him of a sunlit garden in Surrey, and his wife pushing the swing which held and delighted his small daughter. He was always the observer of the scene, and he seemed to himself to lurk beneath the apple trees like an intruder, someone who intended harm to that secure and loved couple. The feeling of danger posed to them was so intense it was as if he held a weapon in his hands, or the two people were naked and vulnerable and he, a stranger, obscenely desired sexual violence.

Paul Massinger had hinted darkly at SIS collusion with the KGB, on Hyde's word. Shelley trusted both men, and could not ignore them. But Babbington, with Sir William's blessing, now controlled SIS along with MI5, and Shelley was in danger — his family was in peril along with his mortgage and his promotion and his career and his ambitions — if he did more than nothing. He must do nothing, nothing at all.

He turned from the nighttime view of the city, and the telephone seemed immediately at the focus of his vision. He all but removed his right hand from his pocket to reach for it, then relented. His breathing was audible, almost a gasp. There was one more moment of reluctance, and then he picked up the receiver and dialled an outside line. The telephone purred. He watched the door, as if afraid of being surprised in some guilty act. He had to, no matter what the cost. The calculation, the selfishness he had hoped would come to him, had not materialised. He was helpless before his obligations to Aubrey. He had to help -

He dialled his home, and waited. His wife's voice gave their number.

'Darling…' he began.

'Peter — where are you?' Then testiness creeping in, tones of a dinner postponed or spoiled. 'You're not still at the office, are you?'

'Yes — sorry. Something's come up. Can dinner be kept?' he added hopefully.

'No!' she snapped, then: 'Oh, I suppose so. Honestly, Peter, you said you'd be early this evening.'

'I know,' Shelley soothed. A hard lump of guilt appeared in his throat. 'I'm sorry. Look, it won't take me very long. I'll be with you by—' He studied his watch, a birthday present from his wife. ' — oh, eight at the latest. OK?'

She sighed. 'OK. Don't be any later.' Her voice had hardened again, as if being mollified had left her feeling cheated. 'Please don't be any later,' she repeated with heavy irony.

'I promise—'

The receiver clicked and she was gone. Reluctantly, he put down the instrument. Her testiness, he felt, was entirely justified; he felt more bereft at it than he might have done had they been more affectionate. He was betraying her, all the more so because she was not an ambitious wife, not pushing. She might even have supported his decision to assist Aubrey, to repay his debts. That knowledge was almost insupportable.

Swiftly, he left and locked his office, and made for the lifts. The corridor was empty except for a cleaner with a noisy vacuum. She did not look up as he passed, as if to mirror his shifty guilt. The lift arrived almost immediately, surprising him, and it did not stop until he had reached the basement level which housed Central Registry.

He stepped out into an echoing concrete corridor. He waved his ID quickly at the duty security officer opposite the doors of the lift. The man nodded, even smiled briefly. Shelley was known, Shelley was senior…

The refrain ran in his head like a mocking jingle. Shelley was recognisable to everyone at Century House, Shelley was a coming man, Shelley was known, Shelley was senior, senior, senior…

Known came back at him out of the darkness in his head. It was easy to get into Registry, easy to fulfil Massinger's request. And easy for others to remember he was there, what he wanted.

A second duty officer, then the doors opened automatically to admit him.

The cavern of Registry retreated before him, the strip-lighting in the ceiling shedding a dusty light. There was a musty, underground chill to the place, too, despite the efficient heating. Registry was a sterile, low-ceilinged library, even a cathedral nave. The confessionals of partitioned booths lay to his left, each of them containing a microfiche viewer and a VDU terminal with access to the main computer files. It was a place to which Aubrey very rarely came; he dispatched emissaries if he required files, digests, or information. Shelley shivered with his own nervousness. The place repelled him, too, at that moment.

Registry retreated into shadows where rows of ceiling-high metal shelves held the hundreds of thousands of low-grade files that had not yet been sifted for transfer to computer tape or for shredding. The place was almost deserted. He showed his identification at the desk, and the clerk gestured towards an empty booth. Shelley hurried to it like a man on whom it had suddenly begun to rain.

The VDU screen was blank and coated with a film of dust. Shelley's fingers touched it reluctantly. He sat down in front of it, and switched on. Immediately, a request for his security classification and identity code appeared on the screen. His hands poised over the keyboard. Once he tapped out his code and identity, he was logged into the computer. On record, for anyone who looked to see, would be his name, the date, the files he had asked for. He had thought of disguising his request, approaching the information regarding the Vienna Rezident obliquely. Hurriedly, he identified himself, and a few moments later the screen accepted him with its permission to proceed.

He could still postpone, or avoid, identifying himself with any particular file, any area of information. He cleared his throat; a weak, dry little noise.

Garden swing, daughter passing through a white beam of sunlight, haloed… Aubrey on the rack… Hyde at risk… collusion—

He looked at the ways of escape — Reset key, Control key, Escape key; the ways out.

The screen cleared, and then the request for his orders tiptoed across the screen again.

Why do it? Why even be here? The commuter train is waiting — get on it, retreat to Surrey. Did Massinger have the nerve to go through with this? Wouldn't he be left, Joe Muggins, holding the baby or caught with his trousers down when the lights went on? Why be there at all?

Massinger, he understood, had been drawn back to the secret life. There was something beyond friendship towards Aubrey or a concern with truth. Another junkie of the secret life, as Hyde had once described it to Aubrey, who had pursed his lips in disownment of the colloquial epithet. Massinger, Hyde, Aubrey, most of all… and himself. Junkies. Secrets direct into the vein; pure, uncut, as Hyde had said. Yes…

It was simple to explain his being there. The smell and taste and touch of a secret. The passion that swept away reason, caution, nerves, sometimes even self.

Shelley typed in his request with eager fingers. First, the general code. Visitors. Then the more precise identification, KGB. Then, London. Then Home Base to identify the Soviet Embassy. Finally, Team Manager to identify the Rezident, Pavel Koslov. Then he typed in the request for All Information — Digest.

The screen went blank for a moment, then began spilling its information in a green water fall. Age, place of birth, education, training — Shelley watched the past unroll with indifference. The VDU screen filled and emptied, filled and emptied again and again like a glass bowl, with green, luminous water.

The years fled — early postings, successes, contacts — Paris, Cairo, Baghdad, Washington. Each place had its appropriate reference number for extracting the full files on each period of operational residence.

Vienna—

Shelley looked at his watch after he had stopped the progress of the information. Then he entered the request for the full Vienna file. It was a childish precaution; someone enquiring into Shelley's logged use of the computer, however, might just be put off by the London Rezident's idem and look no further. Now, he had jumped sideways, into Vienna Station's records.