The Bear's Tears by Craig Thomas Read Free Book Online Page B

Mercedes roared past, startling him, making his hand reach
instinctively into the breast of his overcoat where the butt of the gun
felt damp with his exertions. Then he relaxed, and looked again at his
slight, hunched figure and the sallow reflection of his face. He began
walking slowly on, with no purpose other than to conceal himself.

    "Is this to be the beginning or the end of this -
lunacy
?"
    Sir Andrew Babbington, Director-General of MI5, lowered himself with
studied casualness into the armchair opposite Aubrey, and then looked
up into the older man's face as if assessing the visible symptoms of a
disease. Aubrey waved his glance aside with an angry gesture that
underlined his enraged question.
    "Kenneth —"
    "Babbington, I asked you a question. Pray do me the courtesy of
replying."
    "This is Colonel Eldon," Babbington said, indicating his companion,
"of our Counter-espionage Branch." His smile indicated that he
considered he had answered Aubrey's enquiry. Eldon nodded.
    "Sir Kenneth," he murmured. Eldon, behind his military moustache,
was sleek, handsome, clear-eyed; he was also tall. And Aubrey sensed a
tough doggedness just beneath the surface of this senior interrogator.
For a moment, Aubrey's heart beat with
a ragged swiftness. He gripped the arms of his chair to suppress the
quiver of his hands. The game had begun in earnest. There was no room
for mistakes, no margin for error.
    "I have been held under what I can only consider to be house arrest
for two days. My telephone has been tapped, there have been guards at
my door. My housekeeper has only been allowed to go shopping after a
humiliating search. She is searched again when she returns. Oh, sit
down, Eldon —!" He waved his hand towards the unoccupied sofa. Eldon
sank into its deep cushions. The interruption had defused Aubrey's
angry protest.
    Babbington said: "You wish the charges against you to be clarified?"
There was something sharp gleaming through the man's urbanity, and it
worried Aubrey.
    "What charges?"
    "Charges of treason," Babbington snapped.
    "So you said at the Belvedere, and again at the embassy - and again
on the aircraft and in the car from Heathrow. You must be more
explicit," Aubrey added with a calm acidity he did not feel.
    Babbington grinned. Apparently, a moment for which he had been
waiting had arrived. Eldon, too, seemed pleased that a point of crisis
had been reached. He was stroking his moustache in a parody of the
military man he had once been. His eyes appeared blank and unfocused,
and Aubrey realised that the man was dangerously intelligent,
dangerously good at his job.
    "Very well, Kenneth," Babbington replied.
    "You'll have to try very hard, Babbington - even were I guilty!"
Aubrey snapped, surprised at his own rage.
    "Oh, we realise it will be a very long job, Sir Kenneth," Eldon
murmured.
    "Why have I been denied all access to the Minister, to the Chairman
of the JIC - whom I might expect to be here in your stead, incidentally
- and even to the Cabinet Office?"
    "Because for the present, and until this matter is resolved - the
power of all three lies in me."
    "I see," Aubrey replied. He controlled the muscles of his face,
which wished to express apprehension, even shock. "Yet another
rearrangement of our peculiar hierarchy, I gather," he murmured
contemptuously.
    Babbington merely smiled. Aubrey had been appointed as 'C' after the
retirement of Sir Richard Cunningham. The appointment had coincided
with the changes in the Joint Intelligence
Committee that the Franks Report on the Falklands campaign had
urged. The Chairmanship of the JIC had been lost by the Foreign Office,
and MI5, under Babbington, had seized its chance to bask in the sun.
MI5 had survived the Blunt, Hollis, Long scandals and emerged in the
ascendent under a younger, more virile leadership. SIS was regarded as
a country for old men, Aubrey being the oldest among them. Everyone was
waiting for his retirement. Sir William Guest, as Chairman of the JIC
and