The Bear's Tears

the magazine to ensure immobilising any enemy. The gun did not provide a great deal of comfort. It was marginally better than nothing. He settled down behind the wheel in silence. The gun might be next to useless, but he had unwrapped some of the bandaging from his right hand so that he could hold it more easily. It had been painful, closing his hand experimentally around the butt. Driving the car, too, hurt his hands, but the pain was now retreating.

When the first escorting car passed them, followed by the limousine which must contain Babbington behind its tinted windows, the sight startled Margaret Massinger. She sat bolt upright in her seat, turning to Hyde, who at that moment switched on the Ford's engine.

'What will he do to them?'

'Who? Your old family friend and escort to the opera?' Hyde sneered. A third car was bunched up behind the limousine. It looked like a KGB procession. It was, he reminded himself.

Margaret's face was pinched with anger. 'Yes. Him.'

'I hear the KGB Rezident in London got pissed at your place a few times, too. That right, is it?' His hands touched the wheel gingerly, then gripped. A stabbing pain, then almost at once a steady ache he could ignore. He rolled the car gently down the sliproad, accelerating once he reached the autobahn. The traffic was already heavier with the first of the rush-hour. A caterpillar of lights rushed towards them. They were invisible in the thinner stream of traffic heading into the city. Away to their left, the landing lights of an aircraft flickered and winked.

'Yes,' Margaret admitted miserably. Hyde desisted from further comment. Accusations, reminders only fed her guilt. Guilty, she was useless, even dangerous. 'What will he do to them?' she repeated after a mile or more of silence.

'If it hasn't occurred to him yet, then it soon will.'

'What?'

'The old man on display in Russia.'

'How could he—?'

'Easy. Drug the poor old sod up to the eyeballs, take a few snaps, then get rid of him. Babbington would be safe then, because the old man's treachery would have been confirmed.'

'And Paul?'

'An accident.'

'No…' Margaret's voice shuddered, and she covered her face with her hands.

The three cars ahead had left the autobahn into Vienna and were climbing and twisting through the maze of a major junction. Hyde closed the gap between them, aware of the plethora of signs and distances and directions. The cars braked, turned and Hyde followed them onto Autobahn 23, heading south-west. He wondered for a moment whether he had been spotted, since the three cars appeared to be retracing their journey, and then decided it was merely a precautionary move. He let the Ford drop back into the stream, half-a-dozen cars behind the trailing.

He was alert at every sliproad and junction. They passed through Favoriten and Liesing before the autobahn turned south and became the E.7. The three cars left the autobahn at Vosendorf, turning west onto Autobahn 21. By this time, Margaret had a road map on her knees, and periodically switched on the courtesy light.

'It looks like the Vienna Woods,' she said, switching off the light immediately.

'He's not likely to go further afield. I wonder who owns the property — us or the Red Terrors?'

The cars left the autobahn outside the village of Perchtoldsdorf and Hyde slowed, widening the gap between them and himself before he, too, took the winding minor road. Now that they had left the tunnel of lights, they could see the low hills rising against still-blue gaps in the clouds. Vineyard lines and trellises flanked the road. The village was quiet, glowing, tiny. Hyde saw the doors of an inn swing open, could almost imagine he heard accordion music and singing. Yet there were modern houses, too. New wealth moving to picturesque suburbs, enlarging villages. He saw a Porsche parked outside a converted barn, a BMW outside a modernised mill, a Ferrari standing next to it. They crossed a tiny stone bridge and, as they did, the three cars ahead turned off the narrow road into trees. He saw their lights dancing ahead of them on a rutted track. He drove beyond their turning point, noticing the narrow drive and the lights of a large, low house perhaps a hundred yards beyond. They were just outside the village. Hyde stopped the car.

'Welcome to King Babbington's regal hunting lodge,' he remarked. 'Who says crime doesn't pay. It must belong to the opposition. We couldn't afford it.' He gently touched his hands together. Just aching… not too bad.

'Are they inside?' Margaret asked, the first tiny note of hysteria in her voice. It disturbed Hyde.

'Oh, yes — they're inside.'

'What are you going to do?'

'I don't know. I really don't know.'

* * *

A log fire blazed in the huge fireplace. The lighting was subdued, warm. The shadows of the men who got quickly to their feet as he entered loomed and swayed on the walls and ceiling. Deep old chairs, a sofa, gleaming block flooring covered by thick, bright rugs. Babbington realised the appearance and furnishings probably corresponded to someone's image of a senior Party official's dacha in the woods outside Moscow. However, he liked the house; always had done. It was a safe house in more senses than intelligence jargon implied. He nodded to the three men in the room. More shadows loomed as his escort trooped in behind him. One of them took his dark overcoat. He shook hands warmly with Wilkes who had crossed the room to greet him. Wilkes was Vienna Station; Wilkes was entirely necessary, even irreplaceable. The others were locals, one of them even an emigre Bulgarian, one of the mercenaries of the secret world. The dog-soldiers.

'You've kept them apart?' Babbington asked, letting go of Wilkes's hand.

Wilkes nodded. 'All the time.'

'Good.'

Babbington crossed to the fireplace. The heat from the logs leapt to his cold face. He rubbed his hands together then offered his palms to the fire, bending slightly forward. He appeared intent upon pictures in the flames, but for Babbington there were none. He had his objective clearly in mind and there was no margin for error or imagination.

When his hands were warm again, he turned his back to the fire and studied the men in the room with him. They appeared, amusingly, like stark-shadowed passport or prison pictures of themselves against the white-painted stone walls of the room. His people — Vienna Station. Wilkes, of course, had been the beginning of it, approaching the KGB when he was first posted to the city. A greedy man, a man who sought money and also loved the challenge of betrayal. Eventually, Babbington was made known to him, and Babbington began using him. By that time, Wilkes had enlisted most of the people in the room. He was running Vienna Station by then, even though the Head of Station, Parrish, was nominally his superior. Parrish allowed Wilkes, as senior field officer based outside the embassy, to control the operation of the Station; to pay, to contact, to mount operations, and to recruit — most importantly, to recruit. Wilkes had recruited the locals and the emigres, even two of the men posted to Vienna from London. He'd done a very good job during the past three or four years. He had provided Babbington's communications base, and his eventual means of trapping Aubrey.

Briefly, and with an inward smile, Babbington recollected approaching the small, self-important figure of Aubrey in the Belvedere gardens. Only two weeks ago. Another forty-eight hours would see it finished with.

Them finished with, he corrected himself.

'How badly is Massinger hurt?' he snapped at Wilkes. 'I couldn't obtain a clear picture from — your colleagues.' There was evident irony. Wilkes's expression did not change.

'Not bad. He's been patched up. A doc the — our friends use from time to time. Silly bugger wanted to be a hero. He'll live. Just lost a lot of blood, that's all.' Wilkes affected boredom.

'And Aubrey?' Babbington could hardly mask the gleam of satisfaction in his voice.

'Grumbling — threatening — full of bull, about covers it.'

Babbington's face registered disappointment. Evidently, Aubrey was not yet a broken man. He wondered whether he should see him, or let him stew a little longer.

'No news of the woman?'

'Which one?'

'Massinger's wife — oh, dismiss your colleagues, Wilkes…'