The Bear's Tears kaaph-4

by Craig Thomas

  … implemented when conditions favourable to place him in unassailable position within hierarchy…

  The name, Christ the name—!

  … operational order given. Proposed merger of two services, security and intelligence, suggests optimum chance of success for operation within ensuing twelve months…

  The name—!

  … Cabinet opinion favours new combined service…Chairman of JIC will provide favourable conditions for promotion of our agent… Deputy Chairman Kapustin to begin overtures… documents in preparation for eventual defection of agent Smokescreen…

  Stepanov, Georgi, the telephone. Noise, urgency, fear. He felt himself out of control, weak and trapped.

  Babbington.

  Blank screen.

  Illusion? He touched the grey surface of the screen, smoothing out its charge of static. Illusion?

  Babbington. He'd seen the name in the instant that the screen was isolated and Moscow Centre cut off his terminal from the main computer. The telephone continued to ring. Babbington.

  He had it. Had Babbington and Wilkes and the others. Had Babbington—

  Then Stepanov moved. The gun had strayed from his side and when the pressure of numbness had diminished he had realised the fact — and grabbed for it, twisting the barrel upwards. For a moment, Hyde was reduced to utter, feeble panic. Stepanov's breathing was hot on his face, the man's lips were twisted with effort — Georgi had begun to move into a crouch from his cross-legged squat and the movement distracted Hyde further — alarm bells began to sound very distantly, as if along deserted concrete tunnels and corridors. Hyde's arms were weak, unable to struggle.

  Then he leant towards the Russian officer and butted his head into the man's growing-triumphal face. Heard the groan, sensed the resistance of bone. Then struck with his right hand, at the point where blood was seeping from Stepanov's nose. The officer slumped from his seat, knelt as if in prayer for a moment before falling sideways, then lay curled on the carpet as if sleeping. Georgi's boots had reached him before he lay still, but the guard halted as he saw the gun reasserting its freedom of aim. Hyde wiped his nose on his sleeve and grinned shakily.

  "Forget it, Georgi," he muttered. "Just forget it."

  He motioned with the gun and Georgi backed away and resumed his sitting position. Its yoga-like posture was reinforced as he placed both hands behind his head. Some compressed Buddhist statue or penitent.

  Hyde flicked open the streamer's drive door and snatched out the data cassette. He gripped its clear plastic tightly in his hand like an award for effort, for winning. He turned, then, and looked down the long, bright tunnel of the outer room. Two or three individuals in white lab coats, immobilised and confused by the alarm. No figures in uniform — not yet. Time…

  Time was looping out ahead of him, too thin to become a lifeline, but something to cling to — or to follow out of the labyrinth. He stood up, and his legs did not feel weak, only cramped by tension. He stamped his feet, as at the beginning of a race.

  Then, uniforms. At the far end of the long room.

  He thrust the cassette into the pocket of his lab coat. Fished in the briefcase and, after unclipping the plastic cover of a narrow compartment, withdrew what might have been an aluminium rod shaped like a small, thin truncheon. He jammed the pistol into his belt in the small of his back, patted the cassette, and walked to the door of the inner security room. Georgi remained silent and unmoving behind him. He opened the door, passed through, and the alarms assaulted him as he closed the door behind him. The noise of the computers in the main room was louder.

  The guards, three of them, had halted. Seeing him in his lab coat, they appeared, even at the distance of half the length of the huge room, disarmed, unconcerned. One of them was already questioning one of the operators, who was pointing towards Hyde and the highest security area. Hyde glanced behind him. There was no sign of Georgi. Playing safe—

  Hyde began walking slowly down the room, glancing from side to side — not too casually, the alarms are ringing, there is something wrong — looking for a wheeled wastebin filled with print-out that had not yet been sent to the shredder; looking for the fuse-boxes high on the walls. One of the guards began to hurry towards him, still uncertain, not yet suspicious. Hyde fingered the aluminium truncheon in his pocket as if it were a weapon of close-quarter assault.

  Bin — yes. Full — almost. Fuse-box — no, no… yes… He gripped the tube in his pocket more tightly, levering open the small, hinged handgrip with his fingers. The guard was twenty feet away and already demanding his ID. Hyde smiled disarmingly and stroked the barrel of the Flammpatrone, Hand DM 34. Touched the handgrip, touched the now-freed trigger. Apart from the Czech pistol, it was the only weapon Godwin had given him, with precise instructions on its use — in emergency only, Hyde.

  Hyde reached carefully into his pocket and withdrew his papers. Georgi opened the door and shouted a warning. The two distant guards turned to him, absorbing the information that he was their target. The guard in front of him moved the vz.61 Skorpion machine-pistol towards Hyde's stomach. Hyde drew and fired the flame-cartridge launcher over the guard's head, towards the fuse- box on the wall.

  The guard's surprised expression became a small round hole through which his breath was punched as Hyde bulled into him, heaving him aside and down. Then he ducked behind one of the orange ICL cabinets as the incendiary charge struck the fuse-box.

  Dark — light — light glaring from the walls, the hissing of a shower of fragments at 1300 degrees Centigrade, cries of shock and temporary blindness. Hyde scuttled through the ranks of cabinets towards the scarred wall where the burning, molten remains of the fuse-box, a damaged computer cabinet with sparks leaping and crying, and the burning droplets of cartridge formed an untidy, brilliant bonfire almost obscured by the smoke generated by the charge.

  He crouched, face averted, behind a wheeled waste-bin, then heaved it ahead of him. It gathered speed as he ran. Shots flicked off the wall after murdering his growing-diminishing-leaping shadow, until he twisted and heaved the bin over. Its contents, great bundles and sheafs of print-out paper, spilled towards the burning fragments — then scorched, curled, ignited. Bullets from a Skorpion chipped a ragged contour across the wall above his head. Plaster dusted his hair. The print-out sheafs were well alight. Within the smoke, gouts of orange flame were rearing towards the ceiling, sinuous as snakes. He doubled back the way he had come, moving in a swift, aching crouch, using his hands often as if four-legged to speed his progress and keep his balance. He weaved through the cabinets and the ranks of computer equipment. A printer chattered as he passed it like some look-out bird alerting the guards. The whole of the room was full of long, glaring, melting and reforming shadows. The lights had fused. Sparks protested from some of the cabinets. The guards shouted.

  He glanced across the room and saw the billow of CO2 from an extinguisher, the thin spurt of inert foam from another. The whole of the waste-bin's contents were fully alight. The fuse-box dripped molten fragments down the charred wall. The smoke was rolling, dense and clinging. Guards moved near it, through it. He had less than thirty seconds before the steel shutters locked all of them in the room. Already, the air-conditioning system would have automatically shut down. In — nineteen seconds — no, sixteen now, no more… the room would be pumped full of an inert gas which would stifle the fire. And kill him and the guards as it forced every particle of oxygen from the computer room. In seconds, the guards themselves would hurry out…

  Hyde regained his bearings and moved swiftly towards the doors and the corridor—

  And the guards, and reinforcements and fire-fighters and civilian staff and security men. Stepanov and Georgi would be running by now, desperate to get out before the steel shutters slammed down, locking them in—

  He straightened up. The smoke persisted, seemed even thicker. He felt it in his throat now, unnoticed before. He heard coughing, and an order to get out, leave the fire — shutters, he heard in
a high voice, a panicky warning. Gas—

  Go now—! He had only seconds before they would block his escape, or be no more than a pace behind him. Flame spurted and coiled, CO2 puffed and hissed, smoke rolled thick and heavy.

  He brushed at his lab coat — smeared with greasy dirt, scorched in one or two places — and touched the cassette in his pocket. Then he burst through the glass doors, adopting a wild, frightened look, his arm extended to indicate the chaos behind him.

  No one — no one…

  In disbelief, he hurried through the reception area. Incongruously, a small green watering-can stood beside the pot in which the rubber plant was growing. He pushed open the outer door. The corridor was empty—

  No. A guard at the corner, at the bottom of the stairs. His guard. The alarms beat their noise down at his head, shrilled away like startled, fleeing birds down the corridor. Take the stairs to his left, downwards—?

  No, not deeper—

  He hurried towards the guard, already shouting in panic at the top of his voice: "For God's sake, man, isn't there any organised response to a fire in this place—?"

  The young guard's mouth opened. His rifle was held slackly across his chest. The stairs were empty. Hyde hit him in the stomach, then across the chin, then on the side of the neck as the man fell away from him. He kicked the guard's legs after him, thrusting them out of sight from the stairs. The rifle had slid away down the corridor, but he did not want it anyway. It declared his violence, obviated bluff of any kind. The adrenalin coursed. He dashed up the stairs, taking them two at a time—

  To be confronted by uniforms, white coats, suits, extinguishers, rifles, a fireman's helmet. Slow, slow—

  "It's chaos in there!" he screamed. "Absolute chaos! For Christ's sake — hurry!"

  He leaned against the wall to let the group pass. One man snapped at him, "What about the security breach? The security alarm sounded first!"

  Hyde shrugged. "I don't know — all I know is — the fuse-box blew — fire everywhere…" He coughed, for effect, hanging his head in weariness, his eyes fixed on the man's groin as he awaited the necessity for violence.

  "How many still inside? Quickly, man! How many?"

  "God knows — two, three… security personnel, not computer—"

  "Warn security control of casualties. I want a manual override on the shutters and the gas until everyone's out! Quickly!"

  Hyde heard a bellowed reference to a security telephone, and then they had passed him on their way towards the computer room.

  He turned and ran, before they discovered the unconscious, obviously beaten guard at the bottom of the stairs.

  Moment of reorientation, a turn, short run, then turn right, then more stairs, up, up…

  Suk's hand grabbed him and regretted the act as Hyde turned on him, fist raised. They were in a wide corridor, just as the memorised diagram that Suk had supplied had shown. Hyde knew where he was and how far from the clean air in the Third Courtyard—

  "You're in the wrong damn place!" he snarled in a whisper. People hurried past them. Now, he could hear the noise of fire-appliances moving into the courtyard. Through a window, their headlights bounced and glared. Like hunting searchlights.

  "I came — I was worried when the alarms—"

  "Where now?"

  "Come — this way."

  They were on the ground floor of the Chancellery. Already, people were being moved out of the building — cleaners, clerks, security guards, KGB and STB officers. Men in white lab coats similar to the one he wore. Suk guided him towards a tall narrow door. A guard perfunctorily inspected their breast-pocket ID cards, and they were out into a windy night which snatched at Hyde's breath and lowered his temperature immediately so that his teeth began to chatter and his body shivered uncontrollably; fevered.

  "Are you—?"

  "Just bloody cold!" he snapped.

  Firemen in yellow waterproof leggings and dark uniform coats hurried across the scene in front of them. Men with guns ran, directed by other men in uniform greatcoats or leather topcoats. Panic. The organism had been wounded in some vital part. The antibodies were in flight, hurrying to the scene. Rather, he thought, the wasps' nest, stirred with a stick. Someone had damaged the secret stuff, the valuable stuff—

  He patted his pocket.

  "Here," Suk offered, and handed him his short, dark coat. "Give me the white one."

  Hyde removed the dustproofing coat and donned his own overcoat, placing the cassette in his pocket. The gun still nestled in the small of his back.

  "Across this courtyard," Suk began, whispering close to Hyde's ear, pausing until the man nodded, "around the east end of the cathedral, into Vikarska — yes? I showed you on the map."—

  "I remember," Hyde snapped impatiently.

  "Good," Suk replied, his face pinched by cold and offence. "You will find the workmen's ladders where I showed you. With them you can climb the main wall into the garden there — and the other wall…"

  "I know. I can climb that with my hands and feet. I only hope you're right, mate."

  Hyde looked at the man, looked through the open door into a scene which had suddenly become more ordered, drilled, slower moving. More brown uniforms, many leather and mohair topcoats. A man with black smears on his face, as if he had been close to a fire…

  They were searching now. They knew he had got out of the cellars. Time was diminishing, being coiled in by the pursuit. He glanced into Suk's face.

  "Thanks," he murmured, and then turned his back. Suk watched him until he disappeared into the shadows near the statue of St George, making for the cathedral. He simply disappeared into the deeper shadow behind a spilling pool of blue, revolving light from a fire-appliance. By that time, he was already running.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN:

  A Consignment for Moscow

  Voronin watched each of them, arranged like exhibits on the three upright chairs on the other side of the Rezident's desk. He had requisitioned Bayev's office at the Soviet embassy with a casual authority, confident of his own role at the hub of the drama. He was alone with his three prisoners; alone, except for the frowning Party portraits that stared down from the walls, unchanging, rather forbidding. He noticed them, perhaps for the first time in a number of years — since they were no more than the normal furniture of a KGB Rezident's office — with the eye of the three foreigners in the room. Lenin, Brezhnev, Nikitin and the others — a small number for the years since 1917, he observed to himself — sternly indicated to Aubrey and the Massingers that they were already seated in the ante-room of an alien way of life. Voronin watched them, eager for signs of stress, of defeat, and confident that they would appear as tangibly as the spots associated with chicken-pox or measles.

  Aubrey had tidied his remaining hair and buttoned his shirt. He had tightened his narrow, striped tie. His jacket had been flung at him by one of Voronin's men as he was forced into the limousine outside the safe house. Voronin remembered it with satisfaction as a dismissive, final gesture. Aubrey wasn't wearing it now.

  Massinger sat stiffly upright, his injured leg thrust out in front of him — the too-small trousers they had supplied at the lodge before he was transferred were strained over the bandage; stained on the thigh with drying blood. His wife looked dowdy and middle-aged with her hair dishevelled and make-up smudged. Defeated by her bruises and swollen, split lips. She seemed little more than a mirror of her husband's dejected and weakened condition, and it was difficult for Voronin to reconcile the woman he saw with the well-connected, troublesome image that Babbington and Kapustin had feared.

  Voronin was satisfied that the Massingers were disorientated, frightened, clearly aware of the brevity of the future. They knew they would die quite soon. Aubrey; however, the third member of the consignment for Moscow, disappointed him.

  He was tired, unshaven, old. But he had the appearance of a pensioner suddenly roused from sleep rather than that of a captured intelligence officer. Voronin felt cheated. Aubrey's appearan
ce should have mirrored that captivity. On the contrary, it belied what he must surely be feeling. It was an unreasonably lame conclusion to the days, weeks, months, years of effort of which Voronin had been an important part. Hidden cameras, microphones, doctored film and tape, lighting, scripts, actors. A complete, elaborate, marvellous forgery, all to entrap Aubrey. Entrap this one old man who seemed incapable of understanding what was happening to him. Voronin remembered the smoky rooms, the endless whirring tapes, the hiss of film sliding through projectors. He remembered Aubrey in front — in front of the monkey cages at Helsinki Zoo—

  That day, perhaps of all days, they knew — the whole team had sensed it — they had Aubrey. That was the film they'd released to the French, that had been shown all over the world. They'd all known they had him then, that he couldn't escape them…

  And yet now he seemed to have done so. He looked drugged, weary, indifferent.

  Voronin dismissed his disappointment and picked up the telephone. It was the reason he had had them brought to this room, rather than spend the intervening hours before their transfer to Schwechat airport in tiny, separate cells below ground. As he waited after dialling Kapustin's number at Moscow Centre, he checked the dials and lights on the encryption unit's face. Was Aubrey glancing slyly at him? Perhaps not. It was a superfluous call, merely confirming their success. But, he wanted these people to hear it. It was a call for the benefit of his prisoners.

  He glanced at his watch. Twelve-five. They'd be transferred at four to the airport. Aubrey with false diplomatic papers — he must be seen by witnesses who would later recall that he went willingly, not under arrest — and the other two as diplomatic passengers. Their departure would remain secret— forever. Like their later executions in Moscow.

  He heard the connection being made and leaned forward to switch on the desk speaker, clamping the receiver to it. Aubrey's eyes wandered vaguely, hardly aware. The Massingers were distracted by his movements from their intent perusal of the monochrome faces looking down at them from the white office walls.