Comrade Charlie

23

Vitali Losev was a greatly disappointed man. From being at the very centre of a major assignment, with all the personal benefits emanating from it, he now believed himself shunted aside on to its periphery, relegated to the role of a messenger boy. Certainly there’d been the congratulatory cable from Berenkov in Moscow, praising him for locating someone called Charlie Muffin. And there seemed to be some importance attached to the identification, from the activity that had followed. But Losev knew that obtaining the space information had been what really mattered: that would have been the prize to earn the recorded commendations. The prize and commendations denied him because of the idiotic Blackstone, an idiot he still had to humour and befriend, according to the inexplicable instructions from Moscow.

Losev bitterly accepted he had lost out completely to Alexandr Petrin, who was flying in triumphantly from the United States to remain the case officer on everything: case officer on the American and case officer responsible for the missing material. Leaving him on the sidelines. A support function. Those were the precise words in the instructions from Dzerzhinsky Square. What did a support function and all the other chores accompanying it mean other than he was a messenger boy!

Losev felt a burn of frustration. A messenger boy, and there was nothing he could do to reverse or change the position. Worse, he guessed he could be relieved even of that menial role – although he was head of the London rezidentura – if he made the slightest mistake, because Moscow had made it frighteningly clear that no error or oversight would be permitted. So he had to continue obediently in his subsidiary support position, a bystander to others gaining the glory he’d once seen to be his. Deserved to be his.

Dismayed though he was by the twist of events, Losev remained too professional to allow his despair to affect what he had to do, peripheral or lowly though he considered it to be. He personally supervised the imposed surveillance upon Charlie Muffin, monitoring the Vauxhall apartment and the journeys to and from Westminster Bridge Road and to a pub on the Thames embankment called The Pheasant and to a mews house in Chelsea which the convenient Voters’ Register showed to be owned by a Mr and Mrs Paul Nolan.

And when Berenkov’s specific instructions arrived, Losev again took personal charge, rehearsing everything that had to be accomplished before moving.

The entry into the Vauxhall flat and what had to be deposited there was obviously the essential part of the operation so Losev decided that was where his presence had to be. He divided the operatives into two groups, himself with the KGB break-in team in one, six field officers in the other. They stayed together on the Thursday morning outside the Vauxhall block until Charlie left, to be picked up at once by the field officers. They, in turn, divided again. Three rotated foot surveillance on Charlie while the others followed to Westminster Bridge Road in a radio-transmitter-equipped car from which they could warn Losev, wearing an ear-piece receiver, if Charlie left the headquarters building with the possibility of returning to Vauxhall before the break-in squad completed what they had to do.

Such was the degree of caution Losev observed, although what had to be accomplished inside Charlie’s flat was not going to take a great deal of time, because like everything else Losev had planned ahead.

Losev insisted his team remain in their cars until he got the message that Charlie had entered the office building. And then initially he dispatched only one lock-picking expert into the apartment block, unwilling to risk arousing the suspicion of another resident or a caretaker with the entry of any larger group. The rest entered at staged, five-minute intervals: Losev was the first, so he could supervise everything when they arrived inside the flat to ensure their entry and departure remained completely undetected.

Individual responsibilities had been assigned before they’d left the embassy. The locksmith’s function finished with the actual entry, although the man remained just inside the door and alert for any outside activity, like an attempted entry by a cleaner or a services inspector, such as a meter reader. Against any such surprise the man began fitting rubber wedges beneath the door and rubber-cushioned clamps at the two top corners. Another positioned himself at once at the window overlooking the street, a guard against the unexpected return of Charlie Muffin if the man succeeded in leaving Westminster Bridge Road unseen by the observers in the radio car. The third man, Andrei Aistov, was to work with Losev. Before they began Losev warned the inside group not to touch or disturb anything that didn’t need to be touched.

‘Although it would hardly matter,’ he said, gazing around the disordered room. ‘This place is more like some sort of nest than a home.’

‘What’s so important about this man?’ queried Aistov.

Losev shrugged. ‘Something we haven’t been told.’ Messenger boy, he thought again bitterly. ‘Let’s get started.’

‘Where?’ asked Aistev.

‘The bedroom,’ said Losev at once. ‘That’s where people hide money they shouldn’t have.’

The station chief followed Aistov from the living room. It was Aistov who found the place in the skirting board, a break in the panelling where an additional piece of wood had been inserted to complete the length running along the wall against which the bed and a small dressing table abutted.

‘I don’t want the slightest mark.’

Aistov looked up sourly. ‘There aren’t going to be any.’

The man lay full length on the floor, the bed eased carefully away to allow him room to work. The fill-in boarding was held in place by four screws. Aistov worked patiently but surely, testing the resistance of each fastening before unscrewing it, not wanting the screwdriver to slip and noticeably score the screwhead. He had trouble with only one screw but he was able to release it by gently tapping the screwdriver handle, jarring it loose. Behind, when the panel came free, there was a hollowed gap about six inches deep.

‘Perfect,’ assessed Aistov. From his pocket he took £1,000, all in £50 notes and all contained in a Russian-manufactured envelope, together with one of the keys to the safe-custody facility in King William Street. After feeling around, to guarantee there were no unseen holes or spaces down which the cache could drop and be lost, he placed everything carefully inside. He said: ‘It could be a terrible waste of money.’

‘Moscow’s loss,’ reminded Losev.

Aistov replaced the panelling with the care with which he’d taken it out and stood back for Losev’s examination. The man lay as close as Aistov had, gazing intently not just at the metal screws but at the disturbed wood, finally straightening up and nodding. ‘A good job,’ he praised.

From the bedroom Losev and Aistov went directly into Charlie’s cluttered kitchen. They found the electric meter in a cupboard alongside an overcrowded sink and Losev stood back while the other man squeezed in to dismantle a casing panel as gently as he’d worked earlier in the bedroom.

‘Is there sufficient room?’ asked Losev, unable from where he stood to see past the other KGB man.

‘Just,’ guessed Aistov. From his pocket the man took the one-time cipher pad and taped it tightly against the inside of the casing section, hefting it in his hand to gauge the additional thickness he had created. Satisfied, he inched it back into its housing, cautious to avoid the obstruction interfering with the working mechanism. It went home without any halting blockage and as he tightened the butterfly screws to secure it into position Aistov said to his supervisor: ‘This will bring it even further from any moving parts.’

‘Let’s be sure,’ insisted Losev. Still unable to squeeze into the meter cupboard himself, the rezident gazed around the kitchen, seeking a site for the third item to be left in Charlie’s flat, smiling as the ideal spot presented itself.

‘It’s fine,’ came a muffled voice. ‘The dial arms are revolving exactly as they should.’

‘Let me see,’ insisted Losev.

The technician stood back to give Losev room. The rezident squinted at the unmarked meter, wrinkling his nose at the damp, undersink smells of the space into which he was jammed, offended by them. The arms spun around the faces of the dials, as the technician had assured him they did. Losev backed out and said: ‘It’s all going remarkably easily.’

‘Why shouldn’t it?’ asked Aistov. ‘What about the micro-dot?’

Losev pointed to the calendar on the inside of the kitchen door: the illustration for this month was a nakedly splayed, hugely busted woman with a wisp of chiffon draped to conceal her sex.

Aistov said: ‘I’ve never known a woman with a body like that.’

‘Not many men have,’ agreed Losev. ‘You choose: what month?’

‘August,’ decided Aistov. He hesitated. Then he said: ‘The second Friday: it’s my mother’s birthday.’

This time Losev did the work. He carried everything in a box that fitted easily into his jacket pocket. He extracted it and settled at the kitchen table for the initial preparation. He took the dot from its protective plastic container with the special pointed-arm tweezers which he held in his left hand to apply the adhesive with the single-fibre brush in his right. When he nodded that he was ready Aistov took down the calendar and turned to the month of August. His hand trembling slightly from the concentrated strain, Losev lowered the dot to fit in the spot designated by his companion: it did so perfectly. Losev tamped it firmly into position and Aistov hung it back on the door. Losev stood back about two yards and said: ‘It’s absolutely undetectable.’

The breasts of the August pin-up were less pendulous but her sex was quite visible. Aistov said: ‘I prefer this one.’

‘Could be mother and daughter,’ said Losev. ‘Let’s put it back like it was.’

Aistov returned the calendar to its original reading and followed the rezident back into the main room. The locksmith was at his post near the door and the other man was at the window, as they had left him. To the locksmith Losev said: ‘Free the door; it’s time to go.’

They left as they’d arrived, one by one, Losev being the last to be sure everything was secured and left exactly as it has been when they entered.

The message and the time of the promised callback were waiting for Losev when he reached the embassy. He responded at once, forcing the unavoidable anger back as he drove through Kensington to the ‘safe’ house and its telephone which Blackstone had as his contact point.

‘Did he give any indication of what he wanted?’ Losev demanded at once from the duty telephone clerk.

The man shook his head. ‘Just that it had to be you. And that it was important.’

‘I’ll believe it when I hear it,’ said Losev.

Blackstone came on to the line precisely on time. He insisted he had been completely re-accepted as a loyal employee. When Losev pressed, the man said he hadn’t heard but that he was still confident of being taken on to the secret project: if he didn’t hear in a week he was going directly to ask for a reply.

‘So it’s looking hopeful?’ said Losev. The friendliness was difficult. There was nothing new or important in anything the man had said.

‘I think so. Certainly,’ said the eager Blackstone.

‘I’m very pleased. So will other people be,’ said Losev.

‘I was wondering…’ started Blackstone and then stopped. He was doubling his horse-racing bets now and hadn’t won for weeks.

‘Wondering what?’

‘This is just a setback, right? We’re still going to go on together?’

‘Of course we are,’ assured Losev. ‘I’ve got some news for you. There’s consideration being given to some sort of basic retainer, on the weeks when there isn’t anything positive.’

‘You really mean that!’ snatched Blackstone.

‘I’m still awaiting the final approval.’

‘I’d be so grateful! You can’t imagine how grateful!’

‘Just keep in touch,’ ordered Losev, reciting the instructions he’d been ordered by Berenkov to relay. ‘At the moment nothing is guaranteed but it looks promising.’

‘I’ll do my best for you,’ said Blackstone anxiously. ‘I promise I will.’

Whether or not the British had broken the entrapping Soviet code had to be conveniently monitored and witnessed, so Berenkov set both up for London.

The first genuine Soviet espionage emplacement to be sacrificed was a dead-letter drop in the no longer used part of Highgate cemetery. It was a split-apart and sagging vault less than two hundred yards from Karl Marx’s tomb. For a year it had been the undiscovered depository for minimally useful ship movement memoranda leaked by an Admiralty clerk, whom Berenkov also judged to be dispensable. Berenkov identified Highgate by acknowledging in code to the Russian embassy in London the importance of what they were receiving through it. Within twenty-four hours, fully observed by an undetected Soviet squad, the British set up their surveillance and twenty-four hours after that arrested the unwitting Admiralty clerk who was much later to be sentenced to eight years’ imprisonment.

The second test involved a supposed Cuban businessman who was, in fact, a courier for the Dirección General de Inteligencia. Berenkov knew the man would be carrying a terrorist-customer list for Czech arms on a flight from London’s Heathrow airport to Havana because Berenkov had ensured the delivery of the list, which was out of date anyway, to the Cuban embassy in London. On this occasion, in the same code, Berenkov cabled London on the value of the information being carried and supposedly ordered that any assistance sought should be given. Once more the airport seizure was witnessed by the watching Russians. The courier was not technically carrying anything illegal, for which he could have been arrested, but the terrorist list was seized on the grounds that it constituted information potentially useful to an enemy.

The code used by Berenkov for the two exchanges was the simple letter-transposed-for-figure cipher that the KGB’s Technical Division had devised specifically for Berenkov. And which had been faithfully recorded on the micro-dot now attached to the girlie calendar in Charlie’s apartment.

In Moscow Berenkov, satisfied that his code had been intercepted and broken, insisted on celebratory champagne and when Valentina asked what they were celebrating he said the very successful progress of an operation that was going to prove the advantage of sometimes acting audaciously.

In London Richard Harkness was equally ecstatic at their having penetrated a new Russian communication system although he didn’t consider champagne because he never touched alcohol of any sort.

Both of what Harkness believed to, be intelligence successes had been commanded by Hubert Witherspoon. He didn’t drink, either, so his celebration went unmarked as well.