The Bear's Tears

embassy…' Hyde groaned. He wanted to push Petrunin's body away from him in protest, but some instinct made him hold on. Or perhaps it was merely sympathy. Petrunin, unnoticing and undeterred, continued to murmur against Hyde's ear. His lips were frothily wet. Hyde shuddered. His stomach felt hollow with loathing and disappointment.

Babbington was unassailable — he was British Intelligence, just as Aubrey had been. Hyde had nothing. In itself, without proof, the knowledge was worthless, futile. Babbington was the man in the high castle; impenetrable. Petrunin continued, as if with some litany of confession. It was evident, in his remote and inhuman whisper, that he was mocking Hyde even as he wished him to know and to be able to do something. Revenge and amusement.

'Access is strictly limited,' he said. 'You would have to be me to get it. Understand — understand? Only I can get hold of it — you would have to be me! Understand?'

'Yes.' Hyde did not understand.

'I–I have it on file, hidden in the computer… I saw the advantage of having an, an, an insurance policy… I suborned a programmer to create a secret file, stored under their very noses… everything's in it — dirt, operations, even your precious Teardrop — my precious Teardrop … do you understand me?'

'Yes.' Hyde still did not understand. He simply accepted that he must listen to Petrunin until he could speak no more. Hold the man until he felt the final slump of his body into bonelessness.

'Access is from any remote terminal linked to Moscow Centre… in any embassy abroad or in the Eastern bloc… if you knew each of the passwords, you could find it. Only I know them — only me…' He paused, his body shifted violently, as if some last part of his human cargo had shifted in a storm. He sat more upright, and his face appeared haunted. He could see the end now, and must race his own collapsing body. 'I killed the programmer, of course, for security — before they sent me here … it was to be my insurance, even my ticket to the West… I would have been the most valuable defector on earth, with just a computer cassette…'

His voice was lower now, but quicker, urgent. 'Listen to me, listen… you must access Assignment Histories in the Personnel Files of the computer… access my file…' He paused, his eyes flickered open and closed against Hyde's cheek, as if he were trying to focus his gaze. Or remember. Then he said: 'There are passwords to remember before that — listen. Listen… access to the Main Menu is by the password — K-2-U-7 — stroke — R-S-4 -K… repeat it to me!' Hyde did so, then to himself once more. Yes… 'To Personnel, access is by another password, letters and numbers again… C-7-3-5 — stroke — D-W — stroke — P-R-X… repeat that…' Petrunin sighed with what might have been exhaustion, or satisfaction, as Hyde repeated the password. 'Good, good…' Petrunin's hand patted against Hyde's shoulder with the force of falling snow. 'Assignment Histories has the password White Nights — White… Russian, White Bear, without a break… after that, you request my assignment history. Then — then use my last three postings, in reverse order — reverse order, without a break, to access the secret file. You, you — a poem appears next — it looks like a corrupted data file, it's meant to put people off… don't cancel it! — let it run, all fourteen lines… to a girl I once knew… then, out comes everything — everything…'

He paused, expecting Hyde to reply. Hyde did not understand anything beyond the urgency of the communication. Yet he memorised it. Like a recorder, he would be able to reproduce the information, if requested. If he ever talked to someone who understood.

'There is — is a short-cut to Teardrop… short-cuts to everything… wouldn't have much time, perhaps, to cut and run… had to be sure I could get at the juiciest… Teardrop espec — ially… short-cut—!' He cried out, as if he saw an enemy approaching. Hyde flinched, almost turning to check his back. Petrunin began coughing. Hyde's neck and cheek were wet, slimy. 'No, no—!'

'Short-cut—' Hyde prompted, shaking Petrunin's arms lightly.

Petrunin's right hand was tapping at Hyde's shoulderblade furiously, emphasising words that the Australian could not hear.

Then his hands scrabbled for a finger-hold on Hyde's sheepskin jacket as if clinging at the edge of an abyss. His voice bubbled.

'Short-cut… short… cut… shor… cu — 't…'

'Yes, yes!'

Petrunin's body slumped against Hyde, boneless and then rigid almost at once. As if he had been dead for hours, frozen stiff. Hyde pressed him back against the rock. His mouth was still daubed with blood, his chin darkly- painted. Smears on his cheeks and neck. His forehead was white and dead. His hands were still shaped into claws.

Powerless. His information was as dead as Petrunin. Every Soviet embassy, anywhere in the world. The only places to have access to the main computer system in Moscow Centre. It was hopeless. Pointless and hopeless. He was almost pleased that Petrunin was dead, that the effort had shortened his life, even if only by minutes.

Yet he felt a curious reluctance to release the body, as if his chilled hands had somehow become frozen to the material of Petrunin's greatcoat. The Russian stared lifelessly at him, and past him at the still falling snow and the stunted trees. Then Hyde removed his hands and the body slid a little sideways, to loll untidily like a forgotten toy against the rock. Hyde breathed deeply a number of times, then crawled out from beneath the overhang. The wind and snow against his face were fresh rather than icy. He felt himself waking from a light trance, disorientated and suddenly fearful of this strange place. He remained on his hands and knees, like a dog sniffing the air. He could not hear the soldiers, but there was a distant noise of helicopter rotors, an indistinct buzzing like that of a television left on after the last programme had finished.

Instinct rescued him before noises alerted him. Instinct, or memory. He remembered what had been called out by the last of the three soldiers who had passed their hiding place. Something about distance, about the limit of their patrol, about the time and about reporting in…

He shook his head but could not recall the words. His subconscious mind, however, had remarked a sense of limit, or return …

They would be returning—

Hyde scrambled to his feet. Dying images of sympathy for Petrunin faded in his mind. The man who wanted to bomb and burn his way back to favour in Moscow, the man who had had to face the wild animal in himself, the shadow of the urbane, intelligent, over-proud man. He began to move on sluggish, almost-giving-way, cramped limbs. He blundered like a drunk, staggered, then began to achieve locomotion. The details of Petrunin's description of Teardrop became unimportant the moment he heard the first voice — a backward glance and call for someone to hurry which almost at once became a yell of surprise and command and delight. He heard the scratch of a transmitter being switched on, then a gabble of Russian as his position was relayed. He ran through the deep snow at the edge of the clearing, labouring almost at once as the slope steepened above the overhang. Sounds came to him, the cry of discovery, the yell of orders to pursue, the more distant and inhuman noise of a reply from the R/T the first soldier was using. He was bent almost double, knees coming up beneath his chin, hands jabbing down into the soft snow at every step to stabilise his leaden charge up the slope. Dwarf trees crowded around him, as if he were scuttling through a toy forest. Snow flew as he brushed whippy branches; his face stung from their recoil. He was aware of the gun in his belt. More noises from behind, the half-shouts, the straining of voices struggling with bodily effort. They were climbing after him.

He was perhaps four or five miles from the border. He paused, his breath smoking around him, mouth open like that of an exhausted dog, and looked up. The mountain seemed to go on forever, white with the grey creases of bare ledges and steep cliff-faces. He could not make out the peak or the fold near the peak where they had crossed from the valley to come down to the fort. The snow seemed invested with something of the approaching dawn's greyness. The noise of rotors seemed louder.

The first bullet ripped through close-packed, low branches near his head. He scrabbled away on all fours, then leaned again into his blundering run. The snow was deep and loose and he floundered on, his feet and legs numb, his chest heaving, pressed by a tightening steel band. Two more shots, both wide. Fear made him aware of every inch of flesh on his back and buttocks, even though he did not know whether they wanted him alive.

He turned to his right, running like a fairground target along a humped ridge which climbed towards a shoulder of the mountain. Underneath the snow, Mohammed Jan had assured him, were tracks, Pathan routes. Hyde knew he was following the route they had taken when they had crossed into Afghanistan, but there was no track. He could not believe in a track, did not consciously choose his path. Some detailed, trained memory guided him, prompted his changes of course, his upward movement. More shots, again wide. He heard the bullets whine in the air, skip off the bare cliff-face twenty yards from him. He raised his body slightly, arms akimbo for balance. It