Charlie M

(10)

It took Sir Henry Cuthbertson an hour to explain the operation upon which they had been engaged for the past four months, culminating in Harrison’s death and Snare’s capture.

Charlie sat relaxed in the enormous office, aware of Wilberforce’s eyes upon him, his face masked against any emotion. Several times the Director stopped during the account, but Charlie’s complete lack of response kept forcing him into further details.

‘That’s it,’ completed Cuthbertson, at last. The whole story.’

Still Charlie said nothing.

‘I was very wrong about you, Muffin,’ offered the Director, finally.

‘Really?’ prompted Charlie. Now I know how Gulliver felt among the little people of Lilliput, he fantasised. Edith’s warning of the previous night presented itself and he subdued the conceit. It would be stupid to get too confident, as she had warned.

‘Your debriefing of Berenkov has been brilliant, absolutely brilliant. I’ve written a special memorandum to the Minister, telling him so.’

He must remember to question Janet about it, he thought. Cuthbertson was a lying sod.

‘Thank you,’ said Charlie.

‘And you were quite right about Berenkov having a contact at the research station at Portland. Naval intelligence got him a week ago.’

‘I’m glad,’ said Charlie. Berenkov would be upset at the cancelled visit, Charlie knew.

Silence descended in the room like a dust sheet in an empty house. Charlie gazed over Cuthbertson’s shoulder, watching the minute hand on Big Ben slowly descend towards the half-hour position. It would be the size of four men, he guessed; maybe even bigger. It would be a noisy job, cleaning it, he decided. How Wilberforce, with his irrational dislike, would be hating this interview, he thought.

Cuthbertson looked at Wilberforce and Wilberforce returned the stare.

‘I would like you to accept my apology,’ capitulated Cuthbertson.

‘I was to be demoted,’ reminded Charlie. He’d let Cuthbertson get away with nothing, he determined.

‘Another mistake,’ admitted the Director. ‘Of course there’s no question of that now.’

Because your balls are on a hook, completed Charlie, mentally.

‘And some expenses …?’ coaxed Charlie.

Cuthbertson stared directly at him. He really hates my guts, thought Charlie.

‘Already reinstated,’ promised Cuthbertson.

Another query to put to Janet, thought Charlie. Wilberforce shifted. Was it embarrassment for his superior or irritation? wondered Charlie.

‘I will accept that although they initially did well, I sent inexperienced men into the field on this latest operation,’ confessed Cuthbertson. He snapped his mouth shut after the sentence, like a man realising he was dribbling.

Never before in his life, Charlie knew, would Cuthbertson have been forced to make so many admissions of error. He would not be a man to forget such humiliation. His head pulled up, so that he was looking directly across his desk.

‘So we need your help, Charles.’

‘Charlie,’ corrected the operative.

‘What?’

‘Charlie,’ he repeated, unrelentingly. ‘My friends call me Charlie’

Cuthbertson swallowed. The man would have enjoyed standing on one of those elevated platforms, watching over the Wall the body of the man he believed to be me burning beside the Volkswagen, Charlie decided. What, he wondered, had happened to the girl called Gretel?

‘We need your help, Charlie,’ recited Cuthbertson, the words strained.

Charlie looked at him, allowing the surprise to show.

‘How?’ he asked.

Cuthbertson covered the exasperation by concentrating on the blank blotter before him. After several moments, he looked up again, under control.

‘I want you to establish the link with Kalenin and bring him across,’ announced the Director.

It was a mocking laugh from Charlie, an amazed refusal to accept the words he was hearing.

‘There is nothing — nothing at all — that is funny about what I’ve said,’ insisted Cuthbertson, taut-lipped.

Impulsively, Charlie stood up, pacing around his chair.

‘No,’ he agreed. ‘Nothing funny whatsoever …’

He stood behind the chair, hands resting on its high back, like a man at a lecture.

‘… It is just madness,’ completed Charlie. ‘Stark, raving madness …’

‘I don’t see …’ tried Wilberforce, but Charlie refused the interruption.

‘Please,’ he said. ‘Please, just listen to me. A year ago we broke a European spy ring, headed in this country by Alexei Berenkov …’

‘For God’s sake, forget the bloody man Berenkov,’ erupted Cuthbertson, releasing his anger. ‘He’s got nothing to do with what we’re discussing …’

‘He’s got everything to do with it,’ rebuked Charlie, emphatically. ‘Can’t you see it, for Christ’s sake?’

Cuthbertson winced, but said nothing; a court martial offence, judged Charlie.

‘What do you mean?’ asked Wilberforce, trying to buffer the feeling between the two men.

Ignoring Edith’s warning of the previous night, Charlie burst on, ‘I’m astonished you can’t see what’s happening …’

The outburst had gained him the attention of both men, he saw. Cuthbertson would be worried he’d made the wrong assessment, like all the others.

‘We destroyed their system … a system that had cost them time and money and which we now know was enormously important to them,’ elaborated Charlie. ‘Suddenly, from the shadows, appears General Kalenin, the genius of the K.G.B., a man no one has seen for two decades, asserting he wants to defect. With the same remarkable timing, there are stories in all the major communist publications that he’s under pressure, giving the defection credence.’

He stopped, looking to both men. Neither spoke.

‘Like a rabbit coming out of a hat, he appears at Leipzig, exactly as he’s indicated to Colonel Wilcox …’

Cuthbertson was doodling flowers on to his blotter and Wilberforce had begun mining his pipe: as a child, the second-in-command would have had a comfort blanket, Charlie decided.

‘… and, like simple innocents, we grab at it,’ took up Charlie. ‘We expose an operative, get fed a load of defection bullshit and then our man, who has identified himself, gets shot. As if this weren’t warning enough, we go through the same procedure a month later in Russia and lose a second man.’

They weren’t accepting his arguments, Charlie realised.

‘It’s the oldest intelligence trick there is,’ Charlie insisted. ‘Make the bait big enough and so many fish will swarm you can catch them by hand.’

Cuthbertson shook his head. ‘I can’t agree … we’ve been unlucky, that’s all. Others agree with me.’

‘Others?’ jumped Charlie, immediately.

‘The analysis section, upon which you place such reliance,’ said Cuthbertson, quickly.

There was more, Charlie knew, remaining silent.

‘The initial approach was made at the American embassy,’ reminded Cuthbertson, reluctantly. ‘The C.I.A. assessed the media attacks on Kalenin and made the same decision as we did.’

Charlie threw back his head, theatrically, braying his laughter.

‘Oh Jesus!’ he said. ‘This is too much. Don’t tell me the Americans are riding shotgun on the whole operation.’

‘They’ve sought involvement,’ conceded the Director. ‘But I’m keeping the whole project British; they can have access to the debriefing in the course of time.’

Charlie made much of walking back around the chair and seating himself. Washington would be furious at being kept out, he knew.

‘I am aware,’ he began, speaking very quietly and with control, ‘that I am badly regarded in this department, a reminder of a British intelligence system that made some very bad mistakes … mistakes that meant changes were almost inevitable …’

He hesitated. They were back with him now, he saw.

‘But I have proved myself, if proof were needed, with the Berenkov debriefing,’ he continued. ‘I know espionage intimately … I’m an expert at it. You are a soldier, used to a different environment … a different set of rules …’

‘What is the point you are trying to make,’ broke in Cuthbertson, testily.

‘That we’re being set up,’ said Charlie, urgently. ‘A trap is being created and you are walking blindly into it …’

Again, Cuthbertson shook his head in refusal.

‘… Cut off now, before it’s too late,’ pleaded Charlie. ‘A committed man like Kalenin wouldn’t defect in a million years.’

‘You’re scared,’ accused the Director, suddenly.

‘You’re damned right I’m scared,’ agreed Charlie, open in his irritation. ‘Two agents plucked off within days of encountering Kalenin! We should all be terrified. If he has his way, he’ll wreck the whole bloody department.’

‘I want Kalenin,’ declared Cuthbertson, pedantically.

‘But he isn’t coming,’ insisted Charlie.

‘He is,’ said the Director.

‘Then tell me why Harrison and Snare have been hit,’ demanded Charlie.

‘Because Kalenin is frightened.’

Charlie frowned, genuinely confused. ‘What the hell does that mean?’

Cuthbertson paused at the impertinence, then dismissed it.

‘On each occasion,’ enlarged the Director, ‘sufficient time elapsed for both men to dispatch full reports to London. Kalenin has allowed that, wanting the meetings to be relayed here. Both meetings were in public places … they would have been noted. And Kalenin would have known that. So he protected his back by going for them, once they’d served their purpose …’

He groped among the papers that leafed his desk.

‘… Snare refers several times to Kalenin’s ill-concealed fear …’

‘… bloody right,’ said Charlie. ‘And I might concede your point if Snare had been killed too. But he’s alive. By now, scientifically and without any pain, they will have taken apart the man’s mind, right back to the age of two. Kalenin wouldn’t have risked the inevitable exposure of his defection by letting Snare live, if the defection were genuine.’

‘They’ve promised us consular access in three weeks,’ rejected Cuthbertson, triumphantly. ‘They wouldn’t do that if Snare wasn’t perfectly fit and had been subjected to any torture, physical or mental …’

Charlie sat, waiting, opening and closing his hands.

‘Rubbish,’ he said, at last. ‘They will have stripped him to the bone.’

‘The terms of your employment with the department do not allow you to refuse an assignment,’ reminded the Director.

‘I know,’ said Charlie quietly.

‘And I am ordering you to go.’

Charlie knuckled his eyes, then looked up at the men who despised him. He sighed openly. He’d given them the chance to avoid making fools of themselves, he decided. Now it was entirely their fault.

‘Did American intelligence know how Harrison and Snare were making contact?’

‘Not that we know of,’ said Wilberforce.

Charlie sat, unconvinced. ‘Both meetings were at public functions,’ he said, talking almost to himself. ‘Washington would have known.’

He looked up to Cuthbertson.

‘They want involvement?’ he queried.

‘Desperately,’ agreed the Director.

‘Give it to them,’ advised Charlie. ‘The payment stipulates dollars. Let the money be their entry.’

‘Why?’ demanded Cuthbertson.

‘To give me the opportunity for contact,’ said Charlie. ‘I don’t want the Americans to have any idea that anyone is trying to pick up from Harrison or Snare. String them along by discussing money for a week, to give me time …’

‘That won’t work,’ warned Wilberforce, happy to have found a flaw. ‘Our embassy cover for you to go to Moscow doesn’t come into operation for another three weeks.’

‘I’m not going to Moscow under your cover,’ lectured Charlie. Again he was reminded of Edith’s warning about conceit, but discarded it.

‘… In the last three months you’ve arranged the crossing into Eastern Europe of two men whom you regarded highly,’ he said. ‘One is dead, the other is in Lubyanka. I’ll get to Moscow myself.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous, Charles,’ rebuffed Cuthbertson. ‘No one can enter Russia like that.’

‘Charlie,’ reminded the operative.

‘Charlie,’ accepted the Director, tightly.

Charlie smiled, openly, so both men could see. He would have to be very careful not to go too far, he decided.

‘Do you want the defection … if defection there is … to work?’ asked Charlie.

‘Yes,’ said the other man, instantly.

‘Then I want to operate as I always have done.’

‘If it goes wrong,’ cautioned the Director, ‘then you’ll be the sufferer.’

‘Sir Henry,’ accepted Charlie, smiling. ‘We both know why I’m being brought back into active service. And what will happen if I fail.’

Cuthbertson did not answer the accusation.

‘I’ll need a large petty cash advance,’ stipulated Charlie. He’d take some good wine to Janet’s flat that evening, he decided.

The Director nodded, defeated.

‘I’ll want to know what’s happening all the time,’ said Cuthbertson, hopefully. ‘And I’ll need receipts.’

Charlie nodded.

‘Of course,’ he agreed.

Cuthbertson waited, guessing there was more.

‘… And it would help to have my old office back,’ said Charlie. ‘If we’re going to work on this, we’ll need instant contact with each other …’

Cuthbertson nodded, his normally red face puce with emotion.

‘I’m very worried about this,’ said Wilberforce, after Charlie had left.

‘I’m terrified,’ confessed Cuthbertson. Why couldn’t it have been Charlie Muffin shot in an East German ditch, he thought, regretfully. Even if he succeeded in this operation, decided the Director, he’d still ease him from the department, despite the promises he’d given. The man was quite insufferable.

The orange blossom trees were in full bloom, whitening the shrubbery outside Keys’s office. Far away, people wandered ant-like into the Lincoln memorial, and in the park in front teenagers were clustered around an improvised guitar recital. It was very American and comforting, he thought.

‘So how do you assess it?’ demanded the Secretary of State, turning back into the room.

Ruttgers, who had arrived in Washington just one hour before and knew he would be affected by jet-lag very soon, shrugged, unwilling to commit himself.

‘I don’t honestly know,’ he said. ‘Kalenin has appeared, almost too easily. And from my last meeting with the British Director, it’s obvious the man is discussing asylum.’

‘Do you believe it’s genuine?’

‘I don’t know enough about it to make a judgment,’ avoided Ruttgers, easily.

‘Do the British suspect why their operatives have been hit?’

‘They haven’t a clue,’ assured Ruttgers, confidently. They think it’s just K.G.B. surveillance and Kalenin being over-cautious.’

‘What about the request for money?’

‘A stalling operation,’ guessed the C.I.A. chief. ‘They arc trying to send someone else in.’

‘Will we be able to spot him?’

Ruttgers shifted, uncomfortable at the question. ‘I don’t know,’ he replied, honestly. ‘I’ve got the Moscow embassy on full alert: the man will have to have some official cover, so we should be able to pick him up.’

Knowing the Secretary of State’s health fetish, Ruttgers never smoked in the man’s presence. The need for a cigarette was growing by the minute.

It was time he came to the point of the meeting, decided the Director.

‘The British are incredibly arrogant,’ he embarked. ‘It’s about time they forgot they were ever a world power and realised how unimportant they’ve become these days.’

‘What do you mean?’ demanded the Secretary of State, aware now that Ruttgers had a proposition.

‘The President is due to tour Europe in November?’

Keys nodded.

‘It would be a terrible snub if he visited every capital except London,’ predicted the C.I.A. chief.

‘You’ve got to be joking,’ rebuked Keys. ‘I could never make a threat like that.’

‘You wouldn’t have to,’ insisted Ruttgers. ‘Just to hint would be enough. Cuthbertson’s a pompous old fool … he’d collapse the moment any ministerial pressure was put upon him. And there would be pressure, without the need for an outright threat.’

Keys shook his head, still doubtful.

‘This could go badly wrong,’ he said.

‘Or be the most overwhelming success,’ balanced Ruttgers.

‘We’ll provide the money?’ guessed Keys.

‘Oh yes,’ agreed Ruttgers. ‘I’m going to make it available. Once we’re financially involved, we’ve got another lever to demand greater access.’

‘Keep a check on the money,’ said Keys. ‘Congress are almost insisting on petty cash vouchers these days.’

Ruttgers looked pained.

‘Of course we will,’ he guaranteed. ‘The numbers arc being fed through the computer now. We’ll have a trace on each note.’

‘I don’t like this,’ repeated Keys, looking out over the gardens again. The police had begun to break up the guitar session, he saw. Why couldn’t the kids have been allowed to continue? he wondered. They hadn’t been causing any harm.

‘It worries me,’ he added.

‘It’ll worry us more if the British get away with Kalenin by themselves,’ insisted Ruttgers.

‘True,’ agreed Keys, sighing.

‘Will you make the threat about cancelling the London visit?’ asked the Director.

‘I suppose so,’ said Keys, reluctantly.

Janet sat easily in the chair before her godfather, quite unembarrassed at his discovery of her affair with Charlie.

‘But why, for God’s sake?’ pleaded the soldier. ‘You can have absolutely nothing in common.’

Janet smiled, enjoying herself.

‘At first,’ she explained, ‘he intrigued me … he was so different from any man I’d encountered before … more masculine, I suppose …’

She paused, preparing her shock.

‘… and actually,’ she went on, alert for the old man’s reactions, ‘he’s really quite remarkable in bed.’

Cuthbertson’s face went redder than normal and he gazed down at his desk to avoid her look.

‘Do you love him?’ he asked, still not looking at her.

‘Of course not,’ said Janet, astonished at the question.

‘Good,’ said the Director, coming back to her.

Janet frowned, waiting.

‘I’ve involved him in the most vital operation in which he’s ever been engaged …’

‘… The Russian thing that killed Harrison?’

Cuthbertson nodded, apprehensively, but his goddaughter showed no feeling.

‘It is imperative that he succeeds,’ he said simply.

‘Why are you telling me this?’ demanded the girl.

‘Because from this moment on I want to know everything that the man does during every minute of his existence. I’ve got him under constant surveillance … and I want to know your pillow talk as well.’

Janet grinned at the expression: he must have got it from a women’s magazine, she supposed, the sort they read in Cheltenham.

‘… ask him the odd question … he’ll need to relax with someone … find out how he feels …’

Imperceptibly, he glanced at his watch. The electronic division would have completely bugged her flat by now, he estimated. Particularly the bedroom; some of what they heard would be unsettling, he thought, looking at the girl. Imagine, he recalled, he’d once held her in his arms in a baby’s shawl!

‘I know how he feels,’ reported Janet. She hesitated, then went on: ‘He resents your appointment … and the people you’ve brought in with you … the department is something to which he is deeply committed. Actually, I think it’s the only thing for which he has any real feeling.’

The Director sat nodding, accepting her assessment.

‘So he’ll do his best?’

‘For the department … not for you.’

Cuthbertson shrugged. ‘I still want to know how he feels about this assignment.’

‘You want me to spy on him?’ asked the girl.

Cuthbertson nodded. ‘Will you do it?’

‘I suppose so,’ she agreed, after a few seconds. ‘It all seems a bit daft, really.’

‘Good girl,’ praised Cuthbertson. ‘Oh,’ he suddenly remembered, ‘two more things.’

The girl sat, waiting.

‘Get those expenses back that I cut,’ he instructed. ‘I’m restoring them. And take a note for the Minister …’ He paused, assembling his words, then dictated the memorandum of praise for Charlie Muffin’s handling of the Berenkov affair. He had the girl read it back, then said: ‘One final paragraph.’

‘In fact,’ he dictated, ‘Charles Muffin was one of my most able and eager workers in the very difficult capture of Alexei Berenkov, which I initiated and headed.’

He smiled across the desk. ‘That’ll do,’ he dismissed, contentedly.

‘What you’re asking me to do is in the nature of an assignment, isn’t it?’ asked Janet, remaining seated.

‘Yes,’ he agreed, curiously.

‘So there’ll be some expenses, won’t there? Good expenses?’

He paused, momentarily.

‘Yes,’ he accepted, sadly. ‘There’ll be liberal expenses.’

Later, after she’d typed the memorandum, Janet sat back in her chair in the outer office and smiled down at her lover’s name.

‘Everyone in the world is trying to screw you, Charlie Muffin,’ she said, softly.

‘Poor Charlie,’ she added.