  We investigate the problems of consistency and causality for the equations of
motion describing massive spin two field in external gravitational and massless
scalar dilaton fields in arbitrary spacetime dimension. From the field
theoretical point of view we consider a general classical action with
non-minimal couplings and find gravitational and dilaton background on which
this action describes a theory consistent with the flat space limit. In the
case of pure gravitational background all field components propagate causally.
We show also that the massive spin two field can be consistently described in
arbitrary background by means of the lagrangian representing an infinite series
in the inverse mass. Within string theory we obtain equations of motion for the
massive spin two field coupled to gravity from the requirement of quantum Weyl
invariance of the corresponding two dimensional sigma-model. In the lowest
order in $\alpha'$ we demonstrate that these effective equations of motion
coincide with consistent equations derived in field theory.
