Charlie M

(13)

A large map table had been brought into Cuthbertson’s office and several two-inch ordnance sheets pinned out in sequence showing the Czech border with Austria, with all the routings into the capital. Beside the maps were boxes of blue and green flags, awaiting insertion.

It was an exercise that Cuthbertson understood and he moved around the table assuredly, aided by Ruttgers, who had returned that morning from Washington and from a meeting with both Keys and the President. The C.I.A. Director was pleased the President was involved; it elevated the operation to exactly the sort of status he considered necessary.

‘By the thirteenth, we’ll have moved over a hundred men into Austria,’ recorded Ruttgers. ‘And we’re airlifting in sufficient electronic equipment to guarantee a complete radio link-up between every operative.’

Cuthbertson nodded. The previous day there had been a full Cabinet meeting which he had attended and he knew that afterwards there had been direct telephone calls be tween the Prime Minister and the American leader.

‘We’re matching that commitment,’ he confirmed. ‘Man for man.’

The resentment at the American involvement still rankled with him: the Cabinet hadn’t shown sufficient outrage, he thought, critically.

Cuthbertson stared fixedly at Ruttgers, then at the map table.

‘Your cigarette is smouldering,’ he complained. ‘Can’t you extinguish it?’

‘Once Kalenin crosses that border,’ said Ruttgers, casually stubbing the offensive butt and looking down at the map, ‘the net will be so tight that a fly couldn’t escape.’

‘I’m still a little concerned about Austria,’ said Wilberforce, ‘we can’t mount an operation of this size without them learning about it.’

‘We can and we will,’ bullied Ruttgers, immediately. ‘By the time they discover anything, it’ll be all over.’

‘It still seems diplomatically discourteous,’ protested the tall man.

‘That’s not the way they’ll see it,’ guaranteed the C.I.A. chief. ‘Austria is the bridge between East and West, don’t forget. They’d be scared gutless knowing in advance someone of Kalenin’s importance was going to move through their territory. Sure they’ll bleat and complain at the United Nations and both our governments will dutifully apologise at the intrusion. But privately Austria will be bloody glad we kept them out so their relations with Moscow don’t suffer.’

Cuthbertson smiled patronisingly at Wilberforce, indicating he shared the American’s assessment.

‘It’ll be difficult to make all our displacements until we know when and how Kalenin intends crossing. But we can bottle up the city.’

He paused, looking at Ruttgers.

‘You sure your house is safe?’

‘For Christ’s sake,’ said Ruttgers, ‘the C.I.A. have owned it for twenty years …’

‘… which means the K.G.B. probably know about it,’ intruded Wilberforce.

‘Not this one,’ promised Ruttgers, who regarded it as vitally important that Kalenin should be lodged instantly at an American-owned property. He was growing increasingly confident he could elbow the British aside once Kalenin had defected.

‘Do you think I’d run the risk if I wasn’t a hundred per cent certain?’ he added.

Cuthbertson nodded, accepting the assurance. He took a gold flag indicating Kalenin from a third box and inserted it into the marked house on Wipplingerstrasse.

‘Anyway,’ pointed out the British Director, ‘he won’t be there longer than an hour. It will just be somewhere to stop, change his clothes and then leave for the airport.’

‘You’ve fixed that?’ queried the American.

Cuthbertson, who had already entered another gold marker in Schwechat, nodded.

‘We’ve officially informed the Austrians we want to shift embassy furniture and equipment over a three-week period. There will be four dummy flights, moving things around for no reason except to get them used to it.’

As he talked, Cuthbertson was flagging the area around the house where Kalenin would be held. He worked on a grid pattern, marking down from the Danube Canal, bordered by the post office and Aspern Square across to the old city hall and Am Hof Square and embracing the Hofburg Palace, the Spanish Riding School and running up to Volksgarten. Blue flags indicated concealed observations; green designated open surveillance, on foot or in cars.

‘That’s a hell of an area,’ remarked Ruttgers, echoing Wilberforce’s thoughts.

‘But necessary,’ insisted Cuthbertson. ‘This outline covers the situation for a concealed, unpursued crossing …’

He opened a drawer and took out some red-headed pins.

‘… I think there should be a contingency situation for an emergency flight, possibly under pursuit …’

He held up the crimson markers.

‘… and we won’t be able to insert these, showing it, until Muffin’s meeting on the thirteenth from which I hope to know the crossing point.’

‘Then what?’ queried Ruttgers.

Cuthbertson sighed.

‘I hope it doesn’t happen,’ he said. ‘But in case it does, we’ll want a back-up team at the crossing spot. If the Russians learn it’s Kalenin, they’ll come across without bothering whose country they’re violating. I’ll have a transfer car waiting, into which we can put Kalenin …’

He hesitated at the American’s frown.

‘I’ll only need three minutes at the outside,’ he said. ‘If the Russians chase, I want them to be able to locate almost immediately the crossing car, which will take off to loop Vienna and apparently make for the Italian border…’

‘While the real car completes the journey to the airport?’ accurately guessed Ruttgers.

‘There’s a lot wrong with that,’ argued Wilberforce. The two Directors stood, waiting.

‘What do you imagine the Austrian authorities are going to do while all this is happening?’ criticised the civil servant.

‘As much as possible,’ said Cuthbertson, confidently. ‘All I want is the transfer. The Austrians will be chasing the car that crossed and which the Russians or Czechs followed. Not one of my operatives — or an American — will be involved, apart from the initial holding operation. From then on, Austrian police pursuit is exactly the sort of diversion I want.’

‘What about the driver of Kalenin’s original car?’ probed Wilberforce, obstinately.

‘He’ll have to be sacrificed,’ said Cuthbertson, easily. ‘I want an explosive device fitted, during the transfer. To detonate within five minutes.’

‘So who will be driving?’ asked Wilberforce.

‘I had thought of Muffin,’ said Cuthbertson.

‘He’s too valuable: he’ll have to travel on with Kalenin,’ protested Ruttgers.

‘You’re right, of course,’ accepted the British Director. ‘It’ll have to be somebody else.’

‘There’s Cox, currently attached to our Moscow embassy,’ offered Ruttgers, remembering his annoyance at the man’s inability to detect Charlie’s entry into Russia. ‘His involvement would be very natural. And he speaks Russian, which gives added validity for his secondment.’

‘A11 right,’ agreed Cuthbertson, carelessly. ‘Let’s use him.’

Wilberforce stood studying both men, wondering if cither was really medically sane. He supposed the sacrifice of one life was justified, but he would have expected some distaste from those making the decisions: Ruttgers and Cuthbertson appeared almost to be enjoying it.

‘Our debriefing team will be arriving in London next week,’ reported Ruttgers, avoiding looking directly at Cuthbertson.

‘Yes,’ said the ex-soldier. He still hoped to persuade the Cabinet to retract permission for the interviews with Kalenin to be Anglo-American.

‘We’ve houses available here?’ asked Ruttgers.

‘Four,’ replied Cuthbertson. ‘Each is as secure as the other. They’re all in the Home Counties.’

‘We’d like to examine them first,’ said Ruttgers.

The clerk-like American had been born out of his time, decided Wilberforce. He would have enjoyed bearbaiting or cock-fighting, watching animals gradually tearing themselves to pieces.

‘A pointless precaution,’ defended Cuthbertson, holding his temper. ‘I will not have that sort of interference.’

Ruttgers smiled. ‘I’d still like to be satisfied,’ he said.

‘I’ll raise it at the Cabinet meeting,’ undertook Cuthbertson, trying to avoid the commitment. ‘They might, object, too.’

‘They won’t,’ predicted Ruttgers. ‘But if you need authority,’ he continued, ‘go ahead.’

Ruttgers was an easy man to dislike, thought Wilberforce.

‘There’s one other thing,’ said the American.

Cuthbertson concentrated upon his map positions, appearing disinterested.

‘I thought one of us should go to Vienna personally to meet him.’

Cuthbertson frowned, off-balanced by the suggestion.

‘We’ll both go,’ insisted the Briton, anticipating what Ruttgers was going to say and determined not to be upstaged by the other man.

‘It’s an American house,’ protested Ruttgers, who had wanted the opportunity to begin his persuasion upon the Russian.

‘But a joint operation,’ reminded the former soldier, definitely.

Ruttgers nodded in curt agreement. He’d blown it, he decided, annoyed at himself.

Charlie Muffin relaxed happily in his former office, with space in which to move and its pleasant view of Whitehall. Like a child who has had its ball returned from a neighbour’s garden, he smiled at Braley. He liked the man, he decided. Braley was a professional, which always gained his esteem: little else did, reflected Charlie.

They had finished the public laundering of the money the previous night, one day before each departed for Prague under embassy cover. The debriefing with Ruttgers and Cuthbertson had been easy and almost perfunctory, both Directors preoccupied with their pinned and flagged series of maps.

There had not, anyway, been any reason for a lengthy meeting, remembered Charlie. The operation had gone perfectly and had been identical in the casinos of Vienna, Monte Carlo, Nice and the Clermont and National Sporting Clubs in London.

Each night for the previous two-and-a-half weeks they had entered the high game rooms and changed fifty thousand dollars into gambling chips. After three hours mingling with the gamblers but never playing, they returned to the caisse, changed the chips back into unmarked currency and left the casino. The mornings of each day had been spent taking sample records, Charlie selecting notes at random and dictating their numbers to Braley, who had operated the pocket recorder.

The American was bent over it now, making the final calculation.

‘According to my figures, we’ve a trace on fifty-five thousand dollars. That’s twenty thousand in sterling, fifteen in French francs and twenty thousand in Austrian Schillings.’

‘Sufficient,’ judged Charlie, dismissively.

‘It was very necessary though, wasn’t it?’ he added.

Braley nodded, positively. In Vienna, Braley had identified two known K.G.B. operatives and Charlie had located a third in Monte Carlo. For that number to have been seen meant the surveillance on Charlie had been absolute, they had decided at their meeting with the Directors.

‘At least Kalenin knows we’re following his stipulations to the letter,’ said Braley.

‘He knows exactly what we’re doing,’ agreed Charlie. ‘What bothers me is that I haven’t a clue about him.’

‘Still apprehensive?’ queried Braley.

Charlie nodded. ‘Very,’ he admitted.

The man’s nervousness was unsettling, thought the American. He wondered how the Englishman would behave if things went wrong in Czechoslovakia.