Comrade Charlie

19

The head of security at the aerospace factory was named Harry Slade. He had served in the British Army for twenty-five years, honourably retiring with the rank of sergeant major and a regimental photograph signed by all the officers. He wore two lines of campaign ribbons on an immaculate, rigidly pressed black uniform with a profusion of brightly shined buttons, and regarded Charlie Muffin with the distasteful regret of a missed parade-ground challenge. It was an effort, but he managed to avoid automatically calling Charlie ‘sir’. The effort, like the attitude, was obvious but Charlie decided not to confront it: he was working away from Westminster Bridge Road for the first time in months, there would be expenses, the sun was shining and he was feeling generous. Slade confirmed that afternoon’s appointment with Blackstone and showed Charlie the office that had been made available for him, the waiting room to a conference chamber. There were easy chairs as well as a more formal arrangement at a desk and there were fresh flowers in a proper vase and a view of the Medina river from the window. Charlie guessed the place to be three times the size of where he was accustomed to working at Westminster Bridge Road. At Charlie’s insistence the security chief reviewed everything discussed at the inquiry and produced Blackstone’s personnel record and then took Charlie on a tour of the fenced-off, secure section. There Charlie met the project manager, and Springley said he was sure it was all a fuss about nothing and Charlie truthfully said he didn’t mind at all coming down from London to check it out. Under Springley’s guidance he was shown around the workrooms and the communal drawing area and saw how all the blueprints and drawing material were secured at the end of each evening.

‘Personally checked every night by myself,’ chipped in the escorting Slade. ‘There’s no danger of any classified information getting into the wrong hands from this building.’

‘Glad to hear it,’ said Charlie.

‘I think the whole episode comes down to Blackstone’s dedication to the job,’ said the project manager. ‘He’s applied twice to join the team.’

‘Are you taking him on?’

Springley shrugged. ‘I might, if a vacancy occurs. There’s no room at the moment, but I think there might be in a few weeks.’

Slade appeared surprised when Charlie asked to see where Blackstone normally worked, in the main building, but showed him anyway. Slade seemed affronted when Charlie said he didn’t want the man to sit in on the afternoon’s interview.

‘I expected that you would,’ said the security chief.

Charlie guessed the man would have kept Blackstone standing to attention throughout. He said: ‘I prefer to be on my own.’

‘I need to make a proper report to the company,’ protested Slade. ‘It’s my job.’

‘I’ll tell you what happens,’ promised Charlie. He’d never got on with sergeant majors and certainly didn’t want the intrusion of this one with his judgement already made.

Blackstone was early. The tracer came inquiringly into the room after politely knocking, stopping in the doorway when he saw only Charlie there. He said: ‘I was told to come here?’

‘That’s right,’ said Charlie.

‘Just you?’

‘What did you expect?’

‘I didn’t…I don’t know.’ Which was true and the reason for Blackstone’s vague confusion. He’d prepared himself to be confronted by a group of officials from London, maybe even some sort of panel but not just one person. And most certainly not by this tramp of a man who didn’t look like an official of anything. Blackstone did not now have the confidence of the night he was caught – his feelings were actually on a downturn – but he was sure he didn’t have anything to fear here.

Blackstone was a plump, quick-blinking man. He wore a well-pressed blue suit that Charlie guessed to be his Sunday best, with a crisp white shirt and with his hair combed carefully to cover the place where it was thinning, near his forehead. Charlie nodded across the desk at which he was already sitting and said: ‘Why not take that chair there?’

Blackstone sat as he was told, his hands crossed in front of him in his lap. He said: ‘This is all a silly misunderstanding.’

‘Is it?’ said Charlie mildly. ‘Tell me about it.’

‘I was just trying to be helpful.’

‘Why don’t you tell me about it?’ invited Charlie.

‘From when?’ queried Blackstone.

‘From whenever you like,’ said Charlie.

Charlie listened, not looking fully at the other man but with his chair slightly turned, at times even gazing as if something had caught his attention on the river or further out, on the sea. Blackstone initially found the attitude unsettling. Then he decided there was nothing to be unsettled about: the man just wasn’t very good, that was all. His self-assurance began its ascent.

‘Drawing tubes?’ stopped Charlie abruptly, swinging back from the window.

‘What?’ said Blackstone, off-balanced.

‘When you went into the secure section on the second occasion you carried drawing tubes?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why?’

‘It’s the way blueprints are sometimes handled. Makes them easy to carry.’

‘Surely the blueprints you’d delivered earlier were already in their own containers?’

Blackstone swallowed. ‘I wasn’t sure whether they still would be. Sometimes they get mislaid: I just decided to be sure.’

‘So those you carried when you were challenged were empty?’

He wasn’t going to be caught that easily, thought Blackstone. He said: ‘No. They held drawings but there would have been room for more.’

‘How far would you say it was, from where you work to the secure area?’ asked Charlie, who’d carefully paced it out.

Blackstone shrugged. ‘About a hundred yards; maybe more.’

‘A little more, I’d say,’ corrected Charlie. ‘Nearer two hundred, in fact. Why walk two hundred yards from one building to another on the off-chance that the Ariane drawings would be ready for return? Why didn’t you telephone to ask?’

Blackstone felt himself becoming hot. He gave another uncertain movement and said: ‘I just didn’t think of it. I knew the drawings were there and on the spur of the moment decided to call by.’

‘Practically an hour after you should have gone home?’

Perspiration began on Blackstone’s upper lip, making it itch and he wanted to wipe it off but it would have made him look nervous. He said: ‘We can work flexi-hours here if we choose. Anyway, I didn’t really know what the time was. I was trying to see Mr Springley. I’ve applied for a transfer to the project.’

The reasonable explanation that had been produced before, remembered Charlie. He said: ‘So it wasn’t such a spur-of-the-moment decision after all?’

Unable to stand the itching any longer Blackstone moved his hand quickly across his face. He said: ‘It began that way: it was only when I was at the section that the idea of trying to see Mr Springley occurred to me.’

‘Spur of the moment yet you gave it sufficient thought to take along some spare drawing tubes in case the others had been mislaid?’

‘I’d kept the unwanted ones by my desk. It was automatic to pick them up. I didn’t positively think of it.’

Charlie was finding Blackstone a difficult person to assess. The man’s demeanour had changed from the almost aggressive reassurance with which the interview had started to this sweated discomfort, but it would be wrong to read too much into that. He said: ‘If you wanted to see the project head, why didn’t you go to his office? Why were you in the main communal drawing area?’

‘I wasn’t sure where his office was.’

‘You’d been in the section before, to deliver the Ariane blueprints.’

‘But not to Mr Springley’s office. It wasn’t he who’d asked for them.’ He’d been very wrong to imagine this was going to be an easy meeting, decided Blackstone. And more mistaken still to think that this unkempt man needn’t be taken seriously.

‘So what were you doing?’

‘Looking for someone to direct me.’

‘You must have known everyone would have gone home?’

‘I told you, there’s a flexi-hour system. Only no one was working that evening.’

‘Crossing from one building to another, as you did, you must have seen a lot of people leaving?’

Blackstone tried to make a careless gesture. ‘A few.’

Neither convincing nor unconvincing, thought Charlie. But then people more often than not did things without a completely logical explanation that could be examined later. Deciding to change the direction of the questioning to see if he could further disconcert the man, Charlie said: ‘You’ve gone through security clearance?’

‘Yes.’

‘And signed the Official Secrets Act?’

‘Yes,’ agreed Blackstone again. What the hell was the man getting at now!

‘I know of cases of people being jailed for twenty, even thirty years for contravening the Act.’

‘What are you talking about!’ Blackstone felt loose-stomached now, plunging into panicked depression and uncaring how he appeared to the other man.

‘Penalties, for contravening the Official Secrets Act,’ said Charlie quietly. Was Blackstone nervous enough to make a slip?

‘I haven’t contravened anything!’ protested Blackstone. ‘I told you how it happened! I didn’t mean any harm!’ Incredibly, for the first time, Blackstone’s mind went properly beyond the money he’d been getting, fully to consider what could happen to him if he were found out. He remembered the inquiry the night he’d been caught not as an inquiry at all. Ridiculous though it now was to contemplate, it had all seemed like some sort of game, a contest between himself and men he knew and had worked with. But that’s all. Not once had he considered there being a penalty, at the end of it. But now he did. He thought about thirty years and didn’t regard what was going on here as anything like a game. This was deadly serious: deadly, horrifyingly serious. Thirty years, he thought again.

Charlie’s feet began to hurt, which he’d known they would when he’d walked from the ferry terminal to save the three-pound taxi fare. He crossed one leg over the other and slid his fingers inside his sagging shoe, massaging the ache. He said: ‘What time did you enter the secure section?’

The bastard was going to pick on and on, wearing him down, until he made a mistake! Stick to what happened, Blackstone told himself: don’t try to invent lies he might forget, under pressure. He said: ‘I wasn’t paying any particular attention to the time. Maybe five thirty. Maybe later.’

‘That’s funny,’ said Charlie.

‘What is?’

‘According to the security report, you were challenged in the main drawing office at six thirty-five. You’d been there for a whole hour!’

Dear God, what was he going to do! The man obviously didn’t believe him. He’d say so, soon: make some open accusation. Thirty years! Desperately Blackstone said: ‘It could have been later than five thirty.’

‘Let’s give you the benefit of a lot of doubt,’ said Charlie. ‘Let’s say you didn’t go in until six. That’s still half an hour. What were you doing alone in the building for half an hour?’

‘I went to the lavatory.’

‘The lavatory!’

‘I had the need to go when I got to the building.’

‘So you hid in the lavatory for thirty minutes?’

‘I didn’t hide!’ denied Blackstone. ‘I went to the lavatory.’ Deflect him, thought Blackstone: he had to do something, say something, anything, to deflect the man to get the pressure off!

Blackstone was weakening, Charlie decided: on the ropes and weakening. But there still wasn’t anything positively incriminating. Charlie said: ‘Are you keen to get on the secret project?’

Blackstone groped for a handkerchief and made as if to blow his nose, using the pretext to wipe away the build-up of sweat and to delay his answer as long as possible. Stick to the truth as much as possible, he told himself. He said: ‘I want very much to be part of it.’

‘Why?’ demanded Charlie.

‘Secret work is always different: exciting. I like working on challenging projects.’

‘What about the extra money?’

Careful! thought Blackstone. He said: ‘It does carry a higher salary scale. And it’s always nice to earn extra money.’

Charlie lowered his foot back to the floor, moving his toes inside the capacious Hush Puppies. His foot still ached. ‘So!’ he said briskly. ‘You decide to show how conscientious you are. Around the time most other people were going home you enter a classified, secure working area hoping to see the project manager to talk about a transfer. But then you go into a toilet and stay there all the time, so that when you come out Springley has gone home, like everyone else. Making everything completely pointless.’

‘I didn’t have any alternative,’ said Blackstone stubbornly. ‘I was ill.’

‘You didn’t say that before.’

Blackstone’s shirt was glued to his back by sweat and he had consciously to press one hand against the other in his lap to prevent the shake being noticeable. He was gripped by despair, finding it difficult to hold in his mind which answers he’d given to which questions: difficult to get his mind to function at all. He said: ‘It’s not something you talk about, is it?’

‘If you’re asked to explain being on premises where you’ve no right to be I would think it’s something you talk about,’ insisted Charlie.

Blackstone shrugged, not knowing an answer. ‘I didn’t.’ He knew he couldn’t go on much longer. Soon he was going to say something, admit something, and it was all going to be over. Everything. Thirty years: he was going to go to prison for thirty years.

Time for a sharp confrontation, gauged Charlie. He said: ‘You’re very nervous, Henry. If this is all the innocent misunderstanding you say it is, why are you so nervous?’

Blackstone frantically thought he saw an escape. He was engulfed by fear and recognized it as desperate but it was a matter of the lesser against the greater and his mind was blocked by the thought of a lifetime sentence if he admitted what he’d done. He said: ‘You’re a policeman, aren’t you?’

‘Not really,’ said Charlie. ‘Why should that be important?’

‘It’s not, I don’t suppose,’ said Blackstone. ‘But you don’t believe me, do you? So you’re going to go on digging and if you go on digging long enough you’re going to find out, aren’t you?’ He was committed now. There was no going back: lesser against the greater, he tried to convince himself. Nothing could be greater than thirty years.

Here it comes! thought Charlie. He’d have to get Slade in to witness whatever the confession was when it came to be written down. Not time yet, though: the hurdle of the first admission was always the most difficult. Once they started talking they usually found it impossible to stop. He said: ‘What is it I’m going to find out, Henry?’

‘Two wives,’ mumbled Blackstone. ‘I’ve got two wives. Not legally allowed to do that, am I?’

Charlie held back from laughing out loud but it wasn’t easy. ‘Not my line of business,’ he said. A reasonable enough explanation for the nervousness, he acknowledged.

‘You’re not interested in that!’ An uncertain hope came through all the other switchbacking emotions. Surely he wasn’t going to get away with it completely!

Charlie shook his head. ‘Like I said, I’m not a policeman. That’s nothing to do with me.’

‘I thought it would be.’ The man had accepted it! Blackstone decided hopefully.

A time to press hard and a time to behave softly, thought Charlie. Abruptly he announced: ‘I think that’s enough for today.’

‘For today?’

‘There are a few other things I’d like to cover but not today,’ said Charlie. ‘Why don’t we break now? See each other again tomorrow morning.’

He had escaped, accepted Blackstone. Temporarily perhaps, but it was enough, just to get away from the back-and-forth questioning that had his head in a whirl, confusing him, so he couldn’t think. He said: ‘Of course. Whatever you say.’

‘How about ten o’clock?’

Blackstone nodded agreement to the time and said: ‘So you’re not a policeman?’

‘Nope.’

‘Will you tell the police about me?’

‘I told you, I’m not interested,’ repeated Charlie.

For the first time there was a twitch of a smile, like a light clicking on and off. He’d well and truly deflected the other man, like he’d set out to do, determined Blackstone triumphantly. ‘Appreciate it,’ he said. ‘Not as if I’m hurting anyone, is it? I treat them both the same. They’re both happy.’

‘That’s not why I’m here,’ assured Charlie.

He’d won but only just, Blackstone realized objectively as he left the factory. And there was no telling for how long. He needed to talk to someone and there was only one person to whom he could talk. The urge was overwhelming to go to the first public kiosk he could find but Blackstone forced himself to stay calm, waiting until he’d crossed the river and was going inland before stopping at the telephone box he normally used, three miles outside of Newport. It wasn’t Losev who took the call, of course, but Blackstone said at once there was an emergency and that he had to speak to the man with whom he personally dealt, refusing any explanation. It was arranged he should call back in fifteen minutes and when he did the Russian was there, waiting. The dam broke the moment Blackstone was connected. He babbled disjointedly and Losev stopped him and told him to relax, then demanded the account in a controlled, consecutive way. Blackstone managed it but not easily, pumping coins into the pay phone as one time period expired to run into another.

When Blackstone finished the Russian said: ‘Why didn’t you warn me when you were first caught?’

‘I knew I’d got away with it that time.’

‘And now you’ve admitted your bigamy?’

‘I couldn’t think of any other way to get him off my back: I couldn’t think straight.’

‘He’s not going to do anything about it?’

‘He said he wasn’t.’

Losev was furious once more at the renewed difficulties Blackstone’s detection posed for him personally, his mind far ahead of the immediate problems. It meant he couldn’t recover with Moscow as he’d hoped over the incomplete drawing with which the bastard had already tricked him. And that even if Blackstone got through the postponed interrogation he couldn’t risk using the man for a long time. He said: ‘You really think the project manager is looking favourably upon your re-application?’

‘That’s the impression I got. He was very friendly. I don’t know what could happen now.’

So the man still had potential, acknowledged Losev, despite his anger. Too much for him to be disregarded or cast off, which was what Losev would have liked to do. As emphatically as possible he assured Blackstone there was nothing for him to worry about: that the only risk was in the man confessing. All Blackstone had to do was keep his head and he would be safe. ‘Do you think you can do that?’

‘I’ll try,’ said Blackstone, subdued.

‘You’ve got to do it,’ insisted Losev, as forcefully as possible. ‘The only person who can put you in jail is yourself.’

‘Should I keep in touch?’

‘Not for a week or two. Don’t do anything that might attract suspicion or attention,’ ordered Losev.

‘It frightens me to be questioned by someone I know to be an intelligence official, although he looks like a tramp.’

It worried Losev, too. Which was why the Soviet station chief rushed a surveillance squad to the Isle of Wight overnight, to be in position when Charlie went into the interrogation room that Blackstone had identified during his terrified call. They succeeded in getting a total of five photographs of Charlie. Losev was a very diligent as well as a very ambitious intelligence officer. He made the routine comparison at once with the dossier that Berenkov had sent from Moscow weeks before. And realized that while he might have encountered a setback with one assignment he had succeeded in another. He’d identified the whereabouts of someone called Charlie Muffin.

Which an hour later, in Moscow, Berenkov regarded as very important indeed.

‘This isn’t like it used to be, is it?’ asked Barbara. ‘Not like it’s supposed to be?’

‘No,’ agreed Krogh, glad she had initiated the conversation.

‘I’m sorry.’ She’d tried hard to make it work for him that night, but it hadn’t. She sat at the side of the bed now, voluptuous and full breasted, wearing a diaphanous cover that secured at the neck with a tie and ended just short of her crotch. Her hair was unsecured, falling to her shoulders.

‘One of those things, I guess,’ said Krogh.

‘I never think these sort of situations should end badly: people saying things that hurt.’

‘I don’t think that either,’ agreed Krogh. It was all happening remarkably easily. Thank Christ something was, at last.

Barbara gestured around the San Francisco apartment. ‘This is your place: I know that.’

‘Take as long as you want. No hurry.’

‘Thanks.’

‘You need any money?’

‘I guess the apartment agents will want a deposit. They often do.’

‘Five thousand OK?’

‘Thanks again.’

‘I should be going.’

‘Sure.’

‘Take care.’

‘You, too.’

‘I will,’ assured Krogh. ‘I really will.’