Charlie M

(8)

General Valery Kalenin entered the Leipzig Convention Hall at precisely 11.15 a.m. on March 11. Harrison noted the exact time, determined to prepare an impeccable report to Cuthbertson on his first absolutely solo operation. A bubble of excitement formed in his stomach and he bunched his hands in his pockets, trying to curtail the shaking.

The Russian was in plain clothes, a neat, fussy little figure who appeared to listen constantly, but say hardly anything. The deference towards him was very obvious, Harrison saw.

The General moved in the middle of a body of men, three of whom Harrison had seen during the previous two days at the Fair. The recognition annoyed him: he hadn’t isolated them as secret policemen. One had got quite drunk at the opening ceremony and Harrison had marked the three as relaxing communist businessmen. The episode would have been a ploy, he realised now, a clever attempt to tempt people into unconsidered words or action. The mistake worried him. Charles Muffin would have probably recognised them.

Kalenin appeared in no hurry, hesitating at exhibition stands and closely examining products. Any questions, Harrison noted, were usually addressed through one of the other people in the party, so avoiding direct contact.

Harrison’s entry documents described him as an export specialist in the Department of Trade and Industry, enabling him free movement to any British exhibition. Impatiently, he shifted between the stalls and platforms, accepting the nods and smiles of recognition; with the obedience instilled by his army training, he had dutifully followed instructions and befriended those businessmen providing his cover.

‘Let Kalenin take the lead’ — He recalled Cuthbertson’s orders, watching the agonisingly slow progress of the Russian party, but holding back from direct approach. It would have been impossible to achieve anyway, he thought: there needed to be an excuse for the meeting to prevent surprise in the rest of the party.

At noon, by Harrison’s close time-keeping, Kalenin was only two stalls away, lingering with the Australian exhibitors. The Briton imagined he detected growing attention from the diminutive, squat man at the approach to the British section. Harrison positioned himself away from the first display, an office equipment stand, remaining near an exhibit of farm machinery. It comprised tractors and harvesters, among which it was possible for a man to remain inconspicuous, Harrison reasoned.

At the office equipment stall, Kalenin abandoned for the first time the practice of talking through the men with him, instead posing direct questions to the stallholders.

‘Wants to show off his English,’ commented the salesman by Harrison’s side. The operative turned sideways, smiling. The man’s name was Dalton or Walton, he thought. Prided himself as a wit and had spent the previous evening telling blue jokes at the convention hotel.

‘Any idea who he is?’ floated Harrison.

‘Looks important from the entourage,’ guessed the salesman.

Harrison went back to the Russian party, detecting movement, but the farm machinery salesman was ahead of him, beaming.

‘Reminds me of a T-54,’ Kalenin said hopefully, pointing to a combine harvester and looking to his companions in anticipation. There was a scattering of smiles and Kalenin appeared disappointed at the response.

‘But more useful than a tank, surely, sir,’ intruded Harrison, seeing the blank look on the stallholder’s face.

Kalenin stared directly at him, gratefully.

‘Do you know tanks?’ asked the General. ‘They’re a hobby of mine.’

‘Only of them,’ said Harrison.

‘A man of peace, not war,’ judged the Russian, smiling.

‘A man whom my country much admires, once remarked that through trade there will be peace, not war …’ tried Harrison, quickly, wondering if the man would remember quoted verbatim what he had said at the American embassy reception. If Kalenin missed the significance, he would have to be more direct and that would be dangerous in such an open situation.

Harrison was conscious of a very intense examination. Please God, don’t let him misconstrue it, thought the Englishman.

‘A wise comment,’ accepted Kalenin.

He had remembered, decided Harrison. He felt very nervous, aware that the attention of the entire party was upon them and that the tractor salesman was desperately attempting to edge back into the conversation, believing Kalenin to be a trade official. The man thrust forward a square of pasteboard, eagerly.

‘Bolton, sir,’ he introduced. ‘Joseph Bolton.’

‘And a remark my country remembered,’ over-rode Harrison, desperate not to lose the opportunity. He was attempting to reduce the sound of his voice, so it would not be heard by the others.

‘Perhaps there should be a wider exchange of views between the two?’ suggested Kalenin.

‘They’re looking forward very eagerly to such a possibility,’ responded Harrison. Elation swept through him. The last time he had experienced such a sensation, he remembered, was when he had collected his Double First at university and seen his parents, who had been separated for ten years, holding hands and crying.

He’d done it, he knew. In four minutes of apparently innocuous banter, he had brilliantly achieved what he had been sent to do.

Kalenin turned to the salesman, accepting the card at last. None of the others would have suspected anything, decided Harrison. It was perfect.

‘Show me the engine,’ said Kalenin, then immediately proceeded to ask three technical questions showing his knowledge of machinery. The visit was consummately timed, assessed Harrison, admiringly. The Russian allowed exactly the proper amount of attention before disengaging himself to move back into the group.

‘It was a pleasant meeting, sir,’ said Harrison, walking with him towards the edge of the stand. ‘Perhaps on another occasion?’

‘I don’t know,’ countered Kalenin. ‘I’m leaving Leipzig tonight.’

The Russian spoke in the short, precise sentences of a dedicated man who had learned English in a language laboratory.

‘It would be nice, possibly, to extend the conversation,’ said Harrison, dangerously.

‘Yes. I’d like that,’ replied Kalenin, already moving on.

Harrison stood, savouring the knowledge of success, watching the party involve themselves in other displays. From no one came a backward glance that would have hinted suspicion.

‘If you’d spend less time getting in the bloody way, I might have made some progress there.’

Harrison turned to the annoyed salesman: Bolton, he remembered.

‘He took your card, Mr Bolton,’ pointed out Harrison.

‘You damned D.T.I. men are all the same,’ went on Bolton, unmollified. ‘Out for a bloody social occasion. Some of us live by selling, not as parasites off the taxpayer.’

Harrison was conscious of the amused attention of the adjacent stalls and smiled. Nothing could upset him after the preceding fifteen minutes.

‘He devoted more time to you than any other English exhibit,’ offered Harrison, moving away.

‘For sod all,’ echoed behind him.

Harrison spent the afternoon preparing a verbatim transcript of the encounter, sipping frequently from the duty-free whisky he’d bought on the outward journey and which he felt he deserved, in celebration. Charlie Muffin, whom everybody had considered so damned good, couldn’t have done as well, he convinced himself, belching and grimacing at the fumes that rose in his throat. The whole meeting had been magnificent; it didn’t matter if the others with Kalenin had heard every word. To anyone but the two of them, it was just a meaningless exchange of pleasantries.

He felt quite light-headed when he located the rest of the government party and entrusted the security-sealed envelope to the courier for transmission to the East Berlin embassy and then the diplomatic bag to London next day.

He had a five-day holiday, he realised, suddenly, sitting in the hotel bar that evening. He looked around the drab room. Hardly the place he would have chosen to spend it.

In the far corner, Bolton was in his accustomed role, the centre of a raucous group and involved in a story which needed much hand-waving.

Harrison smiled and nodded, but the tractor-salesman pointedly ignored him.

The C.I.A. cover for the Fair was through a legitimate firm of timber exporters based in Vancouver, British Columbia. From their observer, five stools further down the bar, had already gone the report of the unexpected presence that day of General Kalenin, following Ruttgers’s alert to all Warsaw Pact stations to react immediately to the appearance of the man whose face they knew after twenty-five years’ anonymity.

‘Bolton’s bloody angry,’ reported the Australian with the stall adjoining the British office equipment exhibit, nodding along the bar.

‘Why?’ asked the C.I.A. man, politely. The Australian’s tendency to drink beer until he was sick offended the American.

‘Reckons the bloody man screwed up an order from that important-looking Russian delegation that came through this morning.’

The C.I.A. man looked towards Harrison with growing interest.

‘Who is he?’ asked the American.

The Australian, who had served in Vietnam and retained the vernacular like a medal, wanting people to recognise it, moved closer and affirmed, ‘I reckon a spook … a bleedin’ pommie spook. From the questions he’s been asking the exhibitors, he knows fuck all about trade.’

‘Excuse me,’ said the C.I.A. man. ‘Reports to write for head office.’

Four days later, Harrison set off alone in a hired Skoda, driving slowly, unsure of the way, wishing within an hour of departure he had curbed his boredom and returned in convoy with the main British contingent.

He was moving along the wide, tree-lined highway about twenty miles outside of East Berlin when he first became conscious of the following car in his rear-view mirror. It was too far away to determine the number of occupants and Harrison kept glancing at the reflection, expecting it to overtake. It appeared to be keeping a regular distance and Harrison experienced the first jerk of fear. Immediately he subdued it; his trade cover was perfect and he carried no incriminating material whatsoever. There couldn’t be the slightest danger.

So occupied was he with what was following that for those first few seconds Harrison thought the traffic ahead had slowed because of an accident. Then he realised it was a road block. He recognised soldiers as well as People’s Police and saw that in addition to the vans that completely closed the highway, strips of spiked metal had been laid zigzag in front of them, to rip out the tyres of any vehicle that didn’t slow to less than walking pace to negotiate the barrier.

Then he realised the following car had closed behind him. There were only five yards between them now and he could see five men jammed uncomfortably in the other vehicle.

‘Oh my God,’ said Harrison, aloud.

In the first few seconds of unthinking confusion, he braked, accelerated, then braked again, so that the car leapfrogged towards the obstruction. Two soldiers in front of the spikes motioned him to stop and men began fanning out along either side of the road. The recollection of the burning Volkswagen and the dull, thudding sound that the bullets had made, hitting the body, forced itself into his mind and again he braked, sharply and with design this time, trying to spin the car in its own length so that he could be facing back up the road. The vehicle stuck, halfway around, the bonnet pointing uselessly towards the bordering field. To his right, Harrison saw the following car had anticipated the man?uvre and turned across the road, blocking any retreat.

Harrison was sobbing now, the breath shuddering from him. There was no reason why he should be detained, he assured himself, his lips moving. No reason. Or excuse. Don’t panic. Act in the outraged manner of any important government official irritated by being stopped. The car episode was easily explained; just dismiss it as lack of control in an emergency situation in a hired car.

He thrust out of the vehicle and began walking purposefully towards the road block, protest disordered in his mind. But then he saw the uniforms and fear got control of him and he stopped. His mouth opened, but no sound emerged. And then he ran, stupidly, first towards the waiting soldiers, then sideways, trying to leap the ditch.

There was no sound of warning before the firing, which came almost casually from a machine gun mounted on a pivot near the driving position of the leading armoured car. Harrison was hit in mid-air and dropped, quite silently, into the ditch he was trying to leap.

The driver and one of the men from the following car walked slowly up the road, hands buried into the pockets of their leather topcoats, breath forming tiny clouds in front of them as they walked. For several minutes they stood staring down into the ditch, alert for any movement that would indicate he was still alive. Only Harrison’s legs were visible, the rest of him submerged in the black, leaf-covered water. His foot jerked spasmodically, furrowing a tiny groove in the opposite bank. It only lasted a few seconds and then it was quite still.

‘It’s not possible to spin a Skoda like that,’ said the driver, as they turned to go back to their own vehicle.

‘No?’

‘No. Something to do with the suspension and the angle that the wheels are splayed.’

‘Must be safe on ice, then?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘We won’t tell Snare,’ decreed Cuthbertson. He stood at the window, watching a snake of tourists slowly enter the Houses of Parliament. They were Japanese, he saw, armoured in camera equipment and wearing coloured lapel pins identifying them with their guides, who carried corresponding standards in greens and reds and yellows.

‘All right,’ agreed Wilberforce.

‘It would be quite wrong,’ justified Cuthbertson, turning back into the room. ‘He’d go to Moscow frightened. A frightened man can’t be expected to operate properly. It’s basic training.’

‘Need he go at all?’ asked Wilberforce. ‘Surely Harrison’s report is pretty conclusive.’

‘Oh yes,’ insisted Cuthbertson. ‘He’s got to go. I’m convinced now, but we need to know the conditions that Kalenin will impose. And if he’s made his own escape plans. A man like Kalenin won’t just walk into an embassy and give himself up.’

‘Yes,’ concurred Wilberforce. ‘I suppose you’re right.’

They remained silent while Janet served the tea. It was several minutes after she had left the office before the conversation was resumed.

‘Was it a surprise?’ asked Wilberforce, nodding to the door through which the girl had left the room.

‘What?’ demanded Cuthbertson, pretending not to know what the other man was talking about.

‘To discover from the security reports that Janet was having an affair with that man Muffin.’

‘Not really,’ lied the Director. ‘I gather he has a reputation for that sort of thing. Rutting always has been the pastime of the working class.’

He shook his head, like a man confronted with a distasteful sight.

‘Imagine!’ he invited. ‘With someone like that!’

‘What are you going to do?’ asked the second-in-command. ‘He’s married and she’s the daughter of a fellow officer, for God’s sake.’

Cuthbertson opened the other file on his desk, containing the report of Harrison’s death.

‘Let’s see how Snare gets on,’ he said, guardedly.

‘Over six months have passed since Comrade General Berenkov was sentenced,’ recorded Kastanazy, gazing over his desk at Kalenin.

‘Yes,’ said the K.G.B. officer.

‘Most of yesterday’s Praesidium meeting was devoted to discussing the affair.’

‘Yes,’ said the General.

‘Please understand, Comrade Kalenin, that the patience of everyone is growing increasingly shorter.’

‘Yes,’ agreed the General.

Had Kastanazy purposely dropped his rank? he wondered.