Comrade Charlie

8

It should have been a relaxed, contented occasion, but for Berenkov it wasn’t because abruptly – and unusually – he was troubled by doubts about what he intended doing. Not, actually, in initiating the secondary British operation that hopefully was to involve Charlie Muffin but at keeping it, for the moment, from Kalenin.

Kalenin, who disdained a dacha of his own, had in the past shared a visit to the rambling, bungalowstyle country home of the Berenkovs and this weekend there was a particular reason for his being there because Georgi was home from engineering college. Berenkov was inordinately proud of his stranger son and inclined to over-compensate for the long period they had been apart: the boastfulness – urging him to tell his guardian of examination marks and commendations from his instructors – embarrassed the boy. He was tall and thickly dark-haired, like Berenkov, but avoided this father’s girth: Georgi played centre-field in the college soccer team and had also represented the college in cross-country skiing for two seasons.

They read and walked in the woods and staged their own chess championship, with a ten-ruble prize, which Kalenin – who had played at Master level – let Georgi win.

On the Sunday Berenkov and Kalenin sat in reclining chairs on the wood-strip verandah while Valentina and the boy cleared the midday meal. Kalenin said: ‘These are good times: I enjoy them.’

Berenkov, who used the concessionary facilities to their fullest to maintain the lifestyle he had cultivated in the West, poured French brandy heavily into two goblets and left the bottle uncorked, Russian style, for each to top up as they wished. He said ‘We should make more use of this place.’

‘I’m glad Georgi didn’t try to follow you into the service,’ declared the other man. Kalenin regarded Fidel Castro as unpredictable and Cuba therefore a doubtful satellite but the cigars were an unarguable benefit: he kindled one now and exhaled against the glowing tip, threatening brief fire.

‘It was never considered, by either of us,’ said Berenkov. What he was planning in England amounted to deceiving this man, Berenkov thought uncomfortably.

As he sipped his brandy Kalenin twisted towards the dacha, from which they could discern the sounds of Georgi and Valentina although not what they were saying. Kalenin said: ‘I envy you, Alexei. Having a complete family.’

He was complete, accepted Berenkov: he had everything he could possibly want, would ever want. With the awareness came another sink of unease, at the thought of losing it. So rare was uncertainty to the man that Berenkov became impatient with it, hurrying more brandy into his glass. He said: ‘I know my good fortune.’

‘Guard it carefully,’ cautioned Kalenin.

It was almost as if the man suspected what he was about to do and was warning him against it. Berenkov said: ‘You’re attaching too much importance to the changes.’

‘This is different than before,’ insisted Kalenin. ‘This is a genuine upheaval.’

‘Any Russian leader needs two things,’ Berenkov argued back. ‘The support of the military and the support of the KGB. And they know it.’

‘I hope you’re right,’ said the doubtful Kalenin. ‘For both our sakes.’

There is a period between the season changes in Moscow when in the late afternoon the river valley fills up with mist, cloaking the buildings, and when they drove down from the Lenin Hills it was like going into some milky, untroubled sea where there were never any storms. At Kutuzovsky Prospekt Kalenin and Georgi embraced and Kalenin said he was a fine boy. Back in the apartment, Berenkov and Valentina helped Georgi to pack and both drove him to Kazan station and waited on the platform until the train departed.

In the car on the way back Valentina said: ‘I thought Kalenin was quiet this weekend.’

‘He worries too much,’ dismissed Berenkov.

‘What about?’

‘Everything,’ said Berenkov. He was glad the weekend was over: the doubts weren’t with him any more, out of Kalenin’s company.

‘There’s nothing wrong between you, is there?’ asked the woman curiously.

Berenkov risked frowning across the car at her. ‘Of course not,’ he said. ‘What could there be?’

‘Just an impression,’ said Valentina. ‘I thought you were quiet, too.’

At the apartment they decided they did not want to eat again but Berenkov opened wine, a heavy Georgian red. He drank looking across the room at the wife from whom he had been apart for so much of their married life, thinking back to that afternoon’s conversation about envy and good fortune. Valentina was still beautiful, Berenkov decided: not young-girl beautiful, flush-cheeked and pert breasted, but maturely so, settled. It was an odd word but it fitted because that was how he felt: settled and contented, a very satisfied man. He said: ‘I love you very much.’

Valentina, who had always remained faithful during their parting but sometimes wondered if Berenkov, who was a sexual man, had done the same, said: ‘I love you, too.’

The following day Berenkov sent in the diplomatic bag to London the entire file that had been established and maintained upon Charlie Muffin, from the moment of the Moscow episode, with instructions that the maximum effort be made to locate the man.

Natalia Nikandrova Fedova believed most of the time that she had completely recovered, as a person who has been ill convinces themselves that they are better with the passing of time; but as a convalescent still feels an occasional twist of pain so she had bad moments, like tonight.

Certainly she had escaped any material punishment, which had been her greatest fear. Charlie’s, too. She’d undergone fairly intensive interrogation but she knew the ways of such interviews (if she didn’t, who did?) and they hadn’t caught her out, not even Kalenin himself when he’d led the questioning. And after so long they had to be satisfied. If they hadn’t been satisfied she wouldn’t have been allowed to continue as a KGB debriefer and most definitely not been promoted, as she had been six months earlier, to the rank of full major. Or still be permitted the single occupancy of the two-bedroom apartment, with separate bathroom and kitchen, just off Mytninskaya, particularly now that Eduard was hardly ever home any more. Eduard was another indication of their full trust, Natalia recognized, expertly: if there’d been the slightest doubt about her loyalty Eduard would not have gone unhindered along the privileged, KGB-sponsored route to the officer-grooming military academy.

So her elitist life in Moscow could go on uninterrupted: cosseted, protected, safe. And utterly empty.

Despite her aching unhappiness Natalia knew she had done the right thing in not returning to England with Charlie Muffin. There had been a different regime then. If she’d fled when Charlie had pleaded with her to do so, become a defector, punishment would have been exacted against Eduard. That was the way it had always been; perhaps still was although she suspected it might be different under Gorbachev.

Eduard hadn’t been the only reason for holding back. She’d been frightened, Natalia remembered: desperately frightened and bewildered. There’d been the discovery that Charlie wasn’t the disaffected British traitor he was supposed to be: that he’d beaten her at the debriefings with which she’d been entrusted specifically to find out whether he were genuine or not. Too late, of course, when she had found out. By then they had become lovers, proper lovers not together for the excitement of the sex although that had been good for them both, after such a long time, but in love, content simply to be with each other, each knowing the other was near at hand. Comfortable. She’d seriously thought of running with him. Briefly, momentarily putting aside the effect upon Eduard. That had possibly been the most frightening moment of all, confronting the unknown. Charlie had said he would protect her: guard against any Soviet pursuit or British pressure to defect properly, to go through the debriefing procedure and name names and identify places. But she hadn’t been able to lose the fear. Then it had been equal to the love; no, she decided, in immediate contradiction. Then it had been greater than the love, making the decision to stay easier, irrespective of any consideration about Eduard.

What about now?

Natalia greeted the recurring question like an old friend. She supposed it was easier to imagine herself now making a different decision because she was not, nor would she ever again be, faced by it. If she were to do so she wasn’t sure that fear would overwhelm her other emotions, not this time. The thought had always occupied a part of her mind during the unfilled, echoing months and she’d come to recognize a truth she hadn’t fully accepted before. It had not been until Charlie was gone that Natalia had known, too late, how complete and absolute her love had been.

Natalia gazed around the apartment, relaxing in the warmth of nostalgia but unsettled by it as well. They’d spent more hours here than in his flat. He’d sat in that chair over there and they’d read together, one explaining to the other the nuances of whichever language. He’d perfected his Russian here and she’d learned all the Western swearwords in his irritation at getting the phrasing and the pronunciation wrong. It was here that… Natalia closed the curtain in her mind, refusing to go on. There was no point, no purpose. She’d made her choice – she never thought of it as a sacrifice – and she had survived and Eduard had survived and she guessed she should be grateful. She had a life that accorded her many things, and that had to be sufficient now. There was nothing else; no chance of anything else.

The curtain flicked back, as it usually did during the bad times like tonight, and she allowed herself the final reflection. What, she wondered, would Charlie be doing now? Not professionally: she wasn’t interested in that. Personally. Would there be another woman? It would be understandable, if there were. What had occurred between them had been a long time ago. There’d been no contact since that last day, when they’d parted by the Moskva River, he to flee to the British embassy on its banks, she hurrying to denounce him in the way he’d rehearsed her, to keep her safe. So yes, there would probably be another woman. A wife, even. Children. Would he be happy as, she believed, he had been happy with her? She hoped so, difficult though the generosity was for her. It would be wrong for her not to hope he was happy: go against her love with him, in fact. She’d like to think something else: that occasionally – just very occasionally – Charlie thought of her. Smiled, like she smiled, at some private, secret recollection that would only have meaning for the two of them. She’d like to think that very much indeed.

There was a man thinking of Natalia Nikandrova Fedova, although it was not Charlie Muffin.

Berenkov sat in his darkened office long after all the other senior executives at the First Chief Directorate had left, just burning the lamp directly behind his desk, staring down at a picture of the KGB debriefer which he had extracted from her records file. There was nothing in that file that Berenkov did not know. He had listened, too, to all the recordings of her interrogations with Charlie Muffin. And then located traces of other conversations, which at the moment formed part of no official dossier: conversations too professionally blurred by people who had suspected listening devices in the Mytninskyaya apartment. But unquestionably proof of two people living there, when he knew the boy to have been away at school.

Berenkov pulled back in his chair, out of the concentrated brightness of the light. ‘You’re the way, Natalia Nikandrova,’ he said, unashamedly talking to himself. ‘I know you’re the way.’

Charlie did everything absolutely by the book, complying with every procedural regulation. The risk of a British intelligence officer being identified and targeted by a hostile service is accorded the highest-priority investigation not only by the department’s internal security but by MI5 in its official counter-intelligence role. Charlie ensured the widest circulation to both of his memoranda on his mother’s interrogation. He dispatched a fuller, separate report to Harkness, completely confident there was nothing the acting Director General could do to halt a sweeping, formal inquiry being conducted.

Laura caught him just as he was leaving his cubbyhole office. ‘What the hell’s going on?’ she demanded. ‘It’s chaos up there!’

‘I’m being officially investigated,’ said Charlie simply.

The girl looked at him, obviously at the point of leaving. ‘Where are you going?’

‘Until it’s over I’m officially suspended,’ said Charlie. ‘It’s all in Harkness’ book of rules: paragraph twenty-five, page ten to be precise.’