The Bear's Tears

Then he was aware only of the sheen of snow on the gardens, the glint of the frozen pool, the sparkling steps, and his breath beginning to labour as he ran up the long slope towards the darkened, deserted palace.

The air was chilly against his cheeks, his mouth gasped at its coldness, tasting and wetting the wool of his scarf. He heard footsteps behind him. On the end of its lead, the earpiece of the recorder bounced like a fusillade of tiny pebbles against his shoulder.

He saw a form converging, racing across the moonlit white lawn, and he checked then heaved his frame against that of the running man. His breath exploded, and Hyde's shoulder lifted him off his feet, turning him into a face-down dark lump against the snow. Hyde staggered, lurched, felt the recorder drop from his pocket and heard it land on the gravel.

Then he heard a voice, seeming to come from the man on the ground, and for a moment he was unable to move.

'Stop him — kill him if you have to,' in unaccented English. It was no Russian voice, yet it was coming from the pocket transceiver clipped to the lapel of the unconscious man's coat. The words were muffled by the man's body, but they were audible on the chilly air. English, spoken by a native. Collusion, he had time to register. MI5 and the KGB. Collusion.

His eyes cast about on the gravel, but he failed to locate the recorder. Distant figures were running towards him. The recorder—!

No time—!

His body began running again, even as he knew he ought to continue the search. Panic and survival controlled him. He mounted the last steps onto the terrace of the Belvedere. Again, the ghostly features of the sphinx grinned and smirked with superiority. His hand slapped against her stone hair as he regained his balance and looked behind him. Two men below, another two converging.

Kill him if you have to…

He still realised the collusion, but it was the threat that was now predominant. They wanted him dead. He had seen and heard. He must be eliminated. Not simply isolated, left alone, but eliminated. Driven and hounded by his own fear, he ran towards the gates onto the Prinz-Eugen strasse, towards Vienna.

Kill him if you have to…

His shoes pounded on the icy pavement. Lines of lights and parked cars stretched ahead of him down the hill towards the city. He ran on, the idea of collusion fading in his mind like the distanced noises and cries behind him.

PART ONE FALL LIKE LUCIFER'S

'O how fall'n! how chang'd

From him, who in the happy Realms of Light

Cloth'd with transcendent brightness didst outshine

Myriads though bright.'

— Milton: 'Paradise Lost', Bk.1

CHAPTER ONE: After the Fall

PAUL MASSINGER BALANCED his whisky on the small table and then eased himself, left leg extended, into the deep armchair. His face creased into lines of irritated pain for a moment until he settled his arthritic hip to greater comfort. Ridiculous. Within his aging form, he had felt so much younger since his marriage to Margaret. He had belied his fifty-nine years; defeated them. Now his body persisted in its reminders of his physical age; it was pertinent yet false, just as the elegance of the Belgravia flat occasionally reminded him, falsely, how easily he, a mere American, could be charged with having married for money. In many eyes, he knew he had at first been — still was to some people — little better than a colonial buccaneer, a gold-digger. At least, that was what other gold- diggers said. None of it hurt or even affected him. Margaret had entered his long widowerhood firmly and purposefully, and opened a new door to this.

The Standard lay still folded on the arm of the chair. He dismissed the consideration that he must arrange to have an operation on his worsening hip — not yet, not yet — and pressed the button of the remote control handset. The television fluttered and grumbled to life. Margaret was not yet home. A sense of absence filled him to the accompaniment of the signature tune of the early evening news. Alistair Burnet's comfortable features filled the screen. He heard a key in the lock, and surrendered to the small, joyous sensation at her return. He turned in his chair in order to see her the moment she stepped into the drawing-room. There was an excited tightness in his chest. His hip twinged savagely, as if envious of his emotions and the object of his attention. In the same complex moment he was young and old.

The long fox fur coat and the matching fur hat; a high colour from the evening drop in temperature made her younger than her forty-three years. The confident, unselfconscious step… The smile faded from his lips. Alistair Burnet's voice was that of an intruder upon the scene. She had halted abruptly in mid-step, and the colour had blanched from her cheeks. One gloved hand played about her lips. Her eyes looked hurt, bruised. Massinger turned his head towards the television set, and gasped.

A grainy monochrome picture of a man of forty or so, fair hair lifted by a breeze; half-profile, lips parted in a smile, eyes pale and intent. Handsome. Massinger did not hear what Ailstair Burnet said to accompany the photograph. He did not need to hear the appalled, choked word that Margaret uttered:

'Father…!'

He knew it already. Robert Castleford, almost forty years dead.

Margaret dragged the fur hat from her head, dishevelling her fair hair. Her mouth was slightly open, as if there were other things she wished to say; lines she had forgotten.

Massinger said, stupidly, 'Margaret, what's going on…?'

She moved to his chair but did not touch him, except to brush his hand as she snatched the remote control handset from the arm of the chair. Burnet's voice boomed in the drawing-room.

'… the accusations, said to have been made to the CIA by a Russian defector now in America, involve the circumstances surrounding the death in 1946 in Berlin…'

'Why?' was all Massinger could think to say. He looked up at his wife, but she was staring at the screen, her body slightly hunched like that of a child expecting to be struck.

'… the Foreign Office has declined to comment on the matter, and will neither confirm nor deny that any investigation of the head of the intelligence service is under way, as this evening's edition of the Standard newspaper claims…'

Her hand scrabbled near his sleeve like a trapped pet. The crackling of the folded newspaper was followed by a deep gasp that threatened to become a sob. Massinger, suddenly, could not look at her.

D-Notice …? his mind asked irrelevantly, and answered itself almost casually, like a voice issuing from a deep club armchair of worn leather, The British have let it come out. For some reason, they want it known… Aubrey has enemies, then… He loathed his own detachment and wanted to clutch her hand. Alistair Burnet passed to another news story. Bombs in Beirut.

'What — what does it say?' he asked throatily. She did not reply. Aubrey, he thought. Aubrey knew Castleford in Berlin in 1946. But Castleford disappeared in Berlin… His remains were found in — in '5I, beneath the ruins of a house. He'd been murdered, but no one ever thought …

Aubrey?

'Darling,' he said with ponderous, eager gentleness, 'what does it say?'