The Bear's Tears kaaph-4

by Craig Thomas

  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.

  He was aware of the clatter of another keyboard in a neighbouring booth, and could not shrug off the sense that he was being checked upon by whoever was operating that second terminal. He shivered. In the distance, the central heating clunked.

  Vienna, during Pavel Koslov's period as deputy Rezident. Shelley knew that the current Vienna Rezident, Karel Bayev, had been Koslov's superior during that time, and his friend. He tapped the keys, demanding access to Koslov's biography and record in Vienna. Then, he summoned information on Koslov's relations with his superior, then information on that superior.

  Finally, he called for an update on the Vienna Rezident, under contacts with Koslov in recent years. Trips by one to Vienna, the other to London, holidays, meetings throughout eastern Europe…

  The information unrolled, cancelled, sprang up again; none of it betrayed what Shelley had hoped for. He summoned surveillance reports by SIS on Koslov and the Rezident in Vienna — as recently as the previous year, a long weekend visit by Koslov.

  Women — professional? Reference earlier reports, same woman — ? Yes. Regular visits by the Vienna Rezident, a long-term strictly professional arrangement. A file number was supplied.

  Shelley exhaled, inhaled deeply. If someone followed him this far, they would guess. If they took the next step with him, they would know—

  And he might kill Hyde and Massinger, because he had found what he wanted, and he knew what they would put into effect on the basis of this information; Massinger's crackpot plan.

  He demanded that section of the Vienna Rezident's file dealing with Social/Sexual Contacts, looking once more at his watch. His tension flickered in his mind, short-circuiting him to an image of his wife waiting to serve dinner, and the clock at eight-thirty; it wasn't important, but expressed his desire to leave Registry, get out of the place, finish this.

  There it was. The girl's name, address, security check, together with the decision that she could not be used. The Vienna Rezident visited her once a week; a prostitute. No other involvement, no leverage. Payment in US dollars, equivalent to a hundred and fifty pounds sterling. The girl supplied him with nothing but her body and her ersatz passion. Even the sex was uncomplicated. No deviations; no kinks. Sex without strings, sex without danger of compromise.

  Shelley memorised the address and the other details, and then pressed the Escape key. He had to force himself to return the screen's interest to Pavel Koslov. His fingers trembled. It was a futile bluff, but it might just confuse a bored officer assigned to keep surveillance on Shelley. The screen supplied information concerning Koslov's relationship with the Vienna Rezident until the section of file was completed.

  Shelley logged off and shut down the terminal. He had read none of it, simply sat there until the programme had ended; a man waiting for the end of a previously-seen and not-much-liked film.

  He stood up, feeling cramped and chilled. He had to force himself to walk at a leisurely pace past the desk, to nod a goodnight to the clerk, to pass the two duty men in the corridor with a neutral expression on his face, hands thrust casually into his pockets. He felt cold, suppressing an almost feverish shiver until the doors of the lift had closed behind him.

  Thursday. The day after tomorrow. The Vienna Rezident visited his whore on Thursdays, without a security escort.

  Thursday.

  Shelley realised he would have to hurry to catch his train.

  * * *

  Eldon had lost patience with him, but Aubrey could not begin to exercise any control over the situation. He had, instead, to hold his hands together in his lap to still their tremor. He was desperately tired, lost in a maze of protestations and evasions and denials. He was increasingly edgy and uncertain. It was the third day of his interrogation by Eldon — his 'debriefing' as they persisted in labelling it, with manifest irony — and they had no intention of lessening the pace or increasing the time-span. He was to be worn down as quickly as possible, made to admit, agree…

  To confess and confirm, Aubrey reminded himself as he watched Eldon's darkened, handsome features. Yes, the man had lost patience; but his anger was groomed and fresh-looking, not shirtsleeved and weary. It might be no more than pretence, but Aubrey did not think so. Eldon believed in his guilt, and he was now angry that the old man opposite him wriggled and lied and evaded evident truths — the facts of the case. During the past few days, Aubrey had seen the glow of Eldon's righteous indignation. He was passionate in his loyalty and honesty. He despised traitors, and he was convinced that Aubrey belonged to that detestable species. His passion made him the most dangerous adversary Aubrey could have encountered, and revealed how well he had been chosen by Babbington. Eldon was Aubrey himself, but younger and stronger.

  "Sir Kenneth," he observed in a clipped, even tone which yet managed to sound repressed, held back, "you have lied and prevaricated for two days. You ignore evidence that points to your complicity — you deny everything, you answer o
nly the questions you choose." Aubrey summoned an ironic bow of the head. Eldon's eyes glittered. "You have, in fact," he continued, "no friends or allies — anywhere…" Aubrey realised that the anger had at first flared up like a spot-fire but was now under control and being used by Eldon. "Of course, we monitored all your calls yesterday." Eldon employed a smile.

  The information did not surprise Aubrey, but to be reminded of it weighed on his weariness like an immovable stone on his chest. Increasingly desperate telephone calls, all the previous afternoon. Grasping at straws, or lifelines. The Foreign Office, the Cabinet Office, the PM's office. All had fended him off or turned him aside. Each individual, each department; not at home. Only Sir William Guest had received his call in person. That in itself had alerted Aubrey. Contempt, rejection, dislike had come down the telephone line to Aubrey; seepages from his life-support system, fatal damage to it. Sir William had abandoned him as all the rest had done.

  And this man knew it, this dangerous, clever man opposite him. Eldon knew and approved, and felt his own obligation to produce the admissions and agreements which would confirm the evidence against him.

  He could not hold Eldon's gaze, and dropped his eyes. His feet shuffled irresolutely on the carpet, a signal which Eldon did not fail to notice. Aubrey was daunted — frightened, yes, he could even admit to that — by his sense of isolation. He was unnerved by the subtlety and cleverness and completeness of the trap into which the KGB — Kapustin! — had led him.

  "It isn't quite like 1974, is it, Sir Kenneth?" Eldon enquired silkily.

  "I don't understand—" Aubrey blurted, startled.

  "We should have had you in 1974," Eldon said, his hand closing slowly into a fist on his knee. "We must have been within a hair's breadth of exposing you then."

  "What—?"

  "Bonn, dammit!" Eldon snapped, his impatient contempt revealing itself again. "In April — after they arrested Gunther Guillaume. You recall the fuss?"

  "That was a ridiculous rumour," Aubrey protested.

  "It lacked proof, but not credence. Someone in your service tried to tip off Guillaume just before the Germans got him. I became convinced of that during my enquiries."

  "You were forced to clear every member of the SIS staff at the Bonn embassy," Aubrey retorted, feeling a landslip of confidence within himself. Another old bogey now to be laid at his door. It was true, there had been rumours that an officer in British Intelligence had tried to help the Russian double, Guillaume, to escape the net closing around him. Gunther Guillaume had been Willy Brandt's closest adviser during his period as Chancellor of West Germany — and Guillaume had been a Russian spy. His arrest had caused Brandt's downfall. Eldon had been part of the

  MI5 team of investigators who had been drafted to Bonn at the end of April to enquire into the truth of rumours that there was a British double-agent in league with Guillaume. Nothing except the innocence of Aubrey's officers in Bonn had been proven.

  "We were evidently looking in the wrong place, Sir Kenneth. You were not, yourself, subject to investigation."

  "No, I was not."

  "Evidently a crucial omission."

  "It was never more than a foolish rumour."

  "I wonder."

  "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?"