Comrade Charlie

21

Alexei Berenkov had no false illusions about what he was trying to do in moving against Charlie Muffin. Objectively he recognized that one miscalculation could bring about his own destruction rather than that of the man he sought to destroy. But with his typical self-assurance he was not frightened by that awareness. If there were a feeling it was one of anticipation at finally manoeuvring just such a situation. Berenkov wanted to confront Charlie Muffin, like combatants in some medieval contest, which was perhaps a rather grandiose imagery but nevertheless how Berenkov thought of it and had for so long planned it. Which, objective again, Berenkov acknowledged to be pride, although he would not have gone so far as to admit to conceit, as well. Just pride. Dangerous – even reckless – pride in the shifting uncertainty of Moscow. But still a contest he was determined to have. He’d knowingly misled Kalenin by denying any personal importance in removing Charlie Muffin. Everything about the operation was personal: a personal, private matter that had finally to be resolved between them. Charlie Muffin. Or himself. One to end the ultimate victor, the other the permanently vanquished. It was not, however, that the Russian hated or despised Charlie. Far from it. Berenkov admired the man: respected him as a superb espionage professional. It was precisely because of that admiration and respect that Berenkov had set out to manipulate the encounter-by-proxy, as he had.

There’d already been two contests between them.

The first had been Charlie’s pursuit in England and throughout Europe, doggedly unrelenting, stubbornly refusing the false trails and deceptions that Berenkov had laid and which succeeded in fooling everyone else. No doubt that time who had emerged the victor: the sentence at London’s Old Bailey for running the Soviet spy ring had been forty years. And Berenkov would still have had twenty-eight to go if he hadn’t been exchanged for the British and American intelligence directors whom Charlie led into Soviet captivity in retribution for their willingness to sacrifice him, despite all that he had done.

And then there was the Moscow episode during which Charlie had met Natalia Nikandrova Fedova. Not such a clear victory there but dangerously close. Certainly under intensive, necessarily brutal interrogation the Englishman Edwin Sampson, with whom Charlie had supposedly escaped from English imprisonment, after their staged treason conviction, had confessed that his function after Soviet acceptance had been to infiltrate the KGB. But despite the chemical and then bone-crushing questioning Sampson had maintained he didn’t know Charlie Muffin’s purpose in coming to Russia: that they had not been working together. The incident had come near to bringing him down, Berenkov remembered. He’d believed Charlie Muffin’s defection to be genuine and accepted the man into his home and sponsored his appointment as instructor at the Soviet spy school, and but for Kalenin’s defence and protection after the man had fled back to England would probably have been replaced as a security threat.

So this, an ultimate confrontation, was justified. Justified personally and justified professionally. And it was the one that Berenkov was sure, without any eroding doubt, he was going to win.

Berenkov realized that the sequence with which he made his moves was of vital importance. And the most vitally important action of all remained obtaining the complete specifications for the American satellite. So at first, frustrating though it was to do so, he ignored England completely. Instead, using the secure diplomatic bag as his route for communication, Berenkov issued a series of instructions to Alexandr Petrin at the San Francisco consulate.

Only when he was completely satisfied that the American was to be activated in the way he wished did Berenkov revert to England. Here again he issued a series of acknowledge-as-comprehended orders, some of which were bewildering to the receiving Losev because following established intelligence procedure they were compartmented, without explanation of apparent relevance. There was no elaboration, for instance, for Blackstone having to be humoured with the promise of a retainer. Or, not in those first messages, how alternative arrangements were being made to obtain the English information.

The first practical step was to have the increasingly resentful Losev open a safe-custody facility, operated by a two-key, photographic recognition access, at a particular private bank in London’s King William Street. Berenkov was an expert in tradecraft material and their uses from his period as a European field supervisor. He travelled personally to the KGB’s Technical Directorate installation beyond the ring road, at Lyudertsy, to ensure he got exactly what he required, even though each of those requirements was a very normal tool of the espionage profession.

It was essential that Charlie ultimately realize there had been a confrontation between them and that he’d been utterly defeated. So Berenkov had the King William Street facility identified by name and access number in the micro-dot created for him by the Technical Directorate scientists as the site of the ‘dead letter’ drop, sure its significance would register with Charlie: it was the location and the method Berenkov himself had used all those years ago in London to exchange information with the Soviet embassy there. And which Charlie had been the officer to isolate and then to penetrate. In addition to the micro-dot Berenkov obtained a one-time-message cipher pad and had the experts further evolve for him a comparatively basic transposed letter-for-number communication code, which by being comparatively simple would make it matchingly easy for British cryptologists to break.

Berenkov shipped everything to London, again in the secure diplomatic bag. Once more there were detailed instructions to each of which the London station chief had to respond individually, guaranteeing complete understanding.

There were blueprints still outstanding from Emil Krogh’s factory in California, which meant a delay to everything being set into motion (but the hindrance had its benefits.) The order needed authority greater than his, which meant discussing the majority of the intended operation with Kalenin. Berenkov accepted when he did so the perceptible reservation of the other man, wondering if, when it became the spectacular coup he knew it was undoubtedly going to be, Kalenin would move to rebuild the bridges between them.

‘As a complete espionage proposal it’s very fragile, Alexei,’ cautioned Kalenin.

‘I’ve built in many safeguards,’ insisted Berenkov.

‘It’s what can’t be foreseen that concerns me,’ said Kalenin, unimpressed.

‘The two can be separated,’ argued Berenkov. ‘The entrapment of Charlie Muffin won’t conflict with our getting the space technology we want.’

‘I don’t see how we can ensure one doesn’t impinge upon the other,’ rebuked Kalenin. ‘At some stage they have to become inextricably linked, according to your proposals.’

‘Only when I know the space material is safe,’ insisted Berenkov with his customary enthusiasm.

‘When you were imprisoned in England I personally involved myself in the operation to get you freed,’ reminded Kalenin. ‘There was a faction within the government of the time that criticized your being arrested in the first place: described it as culpable carelessness. I defended you, against accusations like that. And became the bait to entice the British and American directors to Vienna where we seized them. Which, if it had gone wrong, could have exposed me to the same accusation.’

‘I know all this,’ said Berenkov, guessing the path the conversation was taking. He supposed it was inevitable, sooner or later.

‘I would not welcome being called upon again to defend you against culpable carelessness,’ announced Kalenin flatly. ‘We none of us can afford to become involved in debates where charges like that can be levelled.’

Berenkov sighed, saddened but not surprised. It was, he supposed, a mark of the friendship still between them that Kalenin was warning him in advance how he would react if mistakes were made. He said: ‘I would not like to put you into such a position.’

‘May your saint be at your shoulder, Alexei.’

Berenkov swallowed, at the traditional Georgian invocation for good luck. ‘I wish I knew how to reply,’ he apologized. ‘I don’t know your folklore sufficiently well.’

Kalenin shook his head. ‘There isn’t a reply,’ he said. ‘After that there’s usually nothing left to say.’

Berenkov refused to be depressed by the encounter with Kalenin. The other man had always been a headquarters planner immersed in headquarters politics, never an active overseas operative having to decide on the ground whether to take great risks to achieve even greater success. He might not know Georgian folklore but there was an axiom from his once adoptive Britain which appealed to him and by which he had ruled most of his operational life: Chance governs all. Berenkov saw no significance in it being from Milton’s Paradise Lost.

Berenkov had one last piece to fit into his intricate jigsaw, a piece so important that without it there would be no final picture at all. Natalia entered Berenkov’s office with her customary polite reserve, not sitting until she was invited and deferring always to her controller’s authority.

‘Another overseas assignment, Comrade Major,’ announced Berenkov. This time we want you to go to England.’

Natalia was glad she was sitting because for the briefest moment there was a sweep of dizziness and she was unsure whether it would have showed if she had been standing. Without sufficient thought she said: ‘I will look forward to that, Comrade General.’

‘Will you!’ seized Berenkov.

‘I look forward to every assignment involving my new function,’ said Natalia, recovering. Dear God, could it ever be possible!

The convenient event chosen by Berenkov to get Natalia to England was the country’s premier aeronautical display, the Farnborough Air Show, which in itself was something of a coincidence considering the parallel operation to obtain space technology. There was a further coincidence in that Berenkov made his arrangements to publish the names and a communal photograph of the attending delegation of which Natalia was to form part on the day that Charlie Muffin returned from his investigation at the Isle of Wight aerospace factory.

Charlie Muffin was still uneasy.

‘I find it difficult to accept there was sufficient reason to stay as long as you did,’ declared Harkness.

As always there was nowhere for Charlie to sit, but Charlie had gone beyond being annoyed by the man’s petty childishness. Far away, over Harkness’ shoulder, Charlie saw an advertising air balloon making its stately progress above the wavering line of the Thames: the distance was too great to make out the name of the product being promoted. He said: ‘In my judgement there was.’

‘What?’ demanded the acting Director General.

No, thought Charlie, positively. He was taking a risk but that was nothing new and at the moment he didn’t quite know the new game Harkness was playing. With stiff formality he said: ‘I considered there was reasonable enough suspicion to maintain a period of surveillance upon someone who had contravened security procedure.’

‘And what did you find?’

‘During the time I observed him he did not behave in a suspicious manner,’ said Charlie.

‘So you had a holiday!’

Maybe he should have taken off his shoes and socks and paddled, thought Charlie: wasn’t seawater supposed to be good for painful feet? He said: ‘It was not a holiday.’

‘I shall require a full, written report.’

‘I know the regulation.’

‘And the fullest receipted support for all expenses.’

‘Actually I was surprised how expensive everything was,’ said Charlie, just to antagonize the other man. The air balloon was closer now and Charlie saw it was advertising what was described as a revolutionary new chocolate bar. He wondered if the centre would be hard, like his mother always demanded.

‘Everything is to be receipted,’ repeated Harkness.

‘What’s the latest medical report on Sir Alistair Wilson?’ asked Charlie, with open disrespect.

‘I don’t consider it proper to engage in that sort of conversation with you,’ refused Harkness.

Asshole, thought Charlie.

‘He was openly insolent! Challenging me!’ complained the acting Director General.

‘He’s arrogant,’ concurred Witherspoon. ‘And it’s going to be his arrogance that will be his undoing.’

‘One slip,’ Harkness promised himself vehemently. ‘That’s all he needs to make. Just one slip.’