The Bear's Tears

'I was in Bonn at the request of both the END and the BfV — you know the circumstances. German security and intelligence required — oh, information, instruction, coaching, call it what you will. They were afraid that the World Cup in Munich that year might end up entertaining the same kind of tragedy that attended the Olympic Games in 1972. They did not want more dead on their hands. Representatives of almost every Western intelligence agency were in and out of Bonn that year in advisory capacities.'

'And that's all there was to it?' Eldon enquired with heavy irony.

Aubrey nodded tiredly. 'It was all you could yourself claim at the time.' He waved a hand in dismissal. 'Guillaume is back in the East now — all the matter seems to be good for is more mudslinging. Put it aside, Eldon. There was no double-agent in my service helping Guillaume to avoid arrest.'

'It's a matter we shall go into again — very thoroughly,' Eldon warned.

'Really?' Aubrey remarked contemptuously. 'However, for today, perhaps we should return to the events of 1946?'

Aubrey realised that the subject of 1974 had been broached to soften him, to expend yet more of his dwindling resistance and energy. This was to be the meat of the repast — Berlin, 1946.

'Very well, Eldon,' he replied at last. Sunlight was reaching across the room, catching motes of dust and turning them to gold. 'Very well. Proceed.'

Eldon inclined his head in a mocking gesture of thanks. 'You arrived in Berlin, attached to the Allied Control Commission, as an SIS officer — in April '46, yes?' Eldon made a business of consulting his notes. His briefcase lay, open-mouthed like Aubrey's Pandora box, next to him on the sofa.

'That is correct.'

'Robert Castleford was, at that time, a senior civil servant transferred from Whitehall to the Commission, and had no links whatsoever with SIS?'

'Again, correct. He did not. He was not a member, nor an associate member, of the intelligence service.' Aubrey's lips pursed as he finished speaking, and Eldon's eyes gleamed.

'It seems to me that even now you speak with some disparagement, Sir Kenneth? But, of course, there was friction between yourself and Robert Castleford from the very beginning, was there not?' Without waiting for a reply, he continued: 'You resented the authority of any — civilian? You resented any interference with your work. With your rather high-handed methods, you crossed swords with Castleford more than once. Your various encounters are a matter of record.'

'I did object on occasion, yes… it would seem I possessed remarkable foresight in being wary of him, considering my present situation.'

Eldon did not smile. Aubrey's attempt at nonchalance irritated him.

'You immediately disliked, and resented, Robert Castleford?'

'No—'

'Sir Kenneth,' Eldon breathed with evident, malicious irony. 'That, too, is a matter of record. There were other complications later, but your antipathy towards Castleford was evident to colleagues from the very first. You complained, time after time, of the manner in which the civilian authorities presumed to override what you considered to be important intelligence work. You seemed to consider your work of more significance than the huge task of getting Germany back on its feet once more. Catching ex-Nazis and spiking the Russians' guns seemed of more importance to you than the rebuilding of Germany?'

'If you say so…'

Aubrey gripped his hands more tightly together in his lap, and averted his gaze. Castleford's dead face had presented itself to his imagination in hideous close-up, the blue eyes going blank and glazed, the head beginning to tilt backwards. The noise of the revolver was in Aubrey's ears. As his eyes found the carpet near his feet, Castleford's face, too, fell sideways and the man's body was vividly before him, stretched on his carpet — so vividly that he was afraid that Eldon, too, would see it; see the flow of blood from his temple staining the white shirt-front. He shook his head and the image retreated.

'Something wrong, Sir Kenneth?' Eldon asked.

'Tiredness,' Aubrey managed to say.

'You wanted, from the very beginning, to fulfil your own ambitions in Berlin,' Eldon pursued. 'You were building your own career, and you would brook no interference from outside your service. Your ambitions dictated that even a very senior member of the Commission such as Castleford was not to be tolerated if he interfered with your work.' None of the observations were interrogative. For Eldon, they were merely statements of fact.

'If you say so…' Aubrey replied wearily.

'You went about establishing your own network, did you not, within weeks of arriving in Berlin?'

'Yes.'

'Setting out thereby to prove your superiority to brother officers in SIS? You were not the senior officer there, I take it?'

'Of course not!' Aubrey snapped.

'Then why did you begin to behave in this — cavalier fashion?' Eldon's hands moved apart in a shrug. 'Towards officers more senior and experienced than yourself,' he added darkly.

'Because their networks were suffering from rigor mortis. Most of them were established during the early days of the occupation of Berlin. We were finding out less and less, we were catching fewer and fewer Nazis — we had no real access in the Russian sector…'

'You're suggesting that you had all the right answers — only you, no one else?'

'Not that — simply a fresh mind, fresh links.' Aubrey looked up at Eldon. There was only sunlight on the carpet now. 'Surely you can understand how networks become moribund?'

'Perhaps. But you spared no one's feelings, no one's pride, as you went about this fresh approach of yours. You made yourself deeply unpopular in intelligence circles at the time.'

Aubrey shrugged. 'All that summer we were afraid that the Russians would try something like a blockade of Berlin — we had to pull out all the stops to try to discover what they meant to do. In fact, they postponed their intention for two years, until '48.'

'And your new networks began to produce results?'

'Not at once. But, slowly — yes, they did.'

'Castleford objected, on many occasions, to your high-handed, even illegal treatment of German nationals, did he not?'

'Yes, he did,' Aubrey sighed. 'There were a number of cases—'

'Where he reprimanded you for over-zealous behaviour? Such as detaining German nationals without charge — or blackmailing German nationals into assisting you? Bribery, black-market goods supplied for favours and information. Castleford objected most strenuously to most of the methods you used, did he not?'

'He did.'

'Increasing the antipathy between you?'

'Naturally. He — got in my way on every possible occasion. I was looking for Nazis and for Russian agents being funnelled into the other sectors of the city, then to the West, under the guise of displaced persons and even German soldiers. There was — little time for niceties.'

Eldon's lips pursed in contempt. 'Perhaps Castleford thought that the war was over by the summer of 1946?' he said with heavy irony.

'Perhaps. We simply did not agree as to priorities.'

'You were caught by the NKVD in the Russian sector of Berlin in December of '46?'

'Yes.'

'Why were you there?'

Aubrey hesitated for an instant. Stick to your original debriefing, he instructed himself. Eldon will have seen the reports. Give him what he expects. He said: 'Following a lead — a suspected double in one of the new networks. Not a very spectacular operation. The double knew I was coming, apparently, and proved his real loyalties by turning me over to the NKVD.'

Aubrey sat back in his chair. The sunlight on the carpet had reached the round toes of his black, old- fashioned shoes, lapping at them like water. A hateful vision of himself as an old man at the seashore who has slept