Comrade Charlie

26

Natalia started to prepare herself for England a long time before the scheduled departure date, realizing practically at once the mistake she had made. She should have followed far more closely the lead of the other women on the previous overseas trips and better spent the allowance she received on Western clothes. She could have bought far more than she had that one shopping day in Washington and she hadn’t bothered at all in Australia or Canada. And she was anxious to be chic all the time: chic and cosmopolitan, not insular and dowdy.

Like a child denying that a hoped-for event could ever occur in the fervent belief that the opposite would happen, Natalia told herself as she had since getting her new appointment that there was no chance of her encountering Charlie. All the old arguments paraded through her mind in the weeks leading up to the trip, the fors and the againsts, her own private search for a conclusion different from any she’d reached before. To start with Charlie was an overseas operative, not internal counter-intelligence, so it wouldn’t be his department who monitored the Russian visit, as all Russian visits were monitored. So there was no way he could know of her presence in the country. Except that she had been an internally functioning officer and was now assigned overseas duties, so maybe he would have access. She told herself it would be too much to expect, if on the off-chance he did learn about her, that it would mean anything to him anyway. It had all seemed real – so very real – in Moscow but there was always the doubt that for him it had been anything more than an affair of the moment, a temporary refuge from loneliness. He had, after all, gone back, hadn’t he? Gone back to whom? Charlie had talked of Edith and the way she’d died but there could have been another wife, a woman he hadn’t talked about. Except, she balanced hopefully again, he had pleaded with her to run with him. He wouldn’t have done that if there’d been another woman in England, would he? The pendulum swung back in the other direction, to another familiar reflection: there might not have been a woman then but what about now?

Whatever, Natalia still determined to make herself as attractive as possible, all the time she was there.

She spent days in the vast market place of the GUM store, picking over and rejecting and picking over once more. She went to the Western concessionary outlets available to her as a KGB officer, on Vernadskovo and Gertsana, and couldn’t make up her mind about anything on the first visits so she went a second time. She finally bought another business suit and two dresses and two pairs of shoes. And when she modelled them for herself back at the Mytninskaya apartment Natalia decided she didn’t really like any of them and wondered if she’d be able to shop in London early in the trip, rather than at the end which seemed to be the custom. She considered changing her hairstyle, taking it even shorter, but decided against it because she’d already shortened it from how it had been when she and Charlie were together and she didn’t want to alter herself too much. She experimented in front of the mirror with different make-up, applying more than she customarily did, but rejected any change here and for the same reason.

A fortnight before the departure day she received a scrawled note from Eduard, nothing more than a notification of another leave allocated and that she was to expect him home. The dates he gave clashed with those of her being in London and Natalia was relieved and ashamed at herself for the feeling. She wrote back immediately, saying that she was sorry but that she would be away for the entire period and got a response just as quickly from her son. He said it didn’t matter but that he would still use Mytninskaya: if she were going away she wouldn’t be needing the car, would she, so would she leave the keys somewhere prominent for him to pick up when he got there?

Natalia looked despairingly around her polished, pin-neat home and tried to imagine who Eduard might bring with him to an apartment he knew to be empty and what they would do once they got there. And physically shuddered at the thought. The day after receiving the second letter Natalia sat for an hour trying to compose a note to leave for Eduard, running the gamut from a mother disappointed to a mother pleading through to a mother demanding change. And then threw all the drafts away, guessing at best Eduard would laugh with his friends at her efforts or at worst do something stupid or disgusting or both, just to defy her.

A conference was called, for the last week, at which the delegation members were introduced to each other and they all had to sit through a lecture now familiar to Natalia on the expected behaviour of Russians engaged on overseas visits. The stress was upon absolute propriety, with no excessive drinking or exuberant, attention gaining embarrassments. At no time were they to forget they were representatives of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

Natalia didn’t count heads but it was clearly the largest contingent with which she had so far travelled. Idly she tried to isolate the KGB escorts appointed to impose the discipline about which they were being warned, and decided at once upon a fidgeting, hunch-shouldered little man who constantly chewed his fingernails and whose name she remembered to be Gennadi Redin. She guessed there would be two more, at least.

Although there would have been little reason for it, Natalia wondered throughout the build-up if there would be any summons from Berenkov, like before. But there wasn’t and she felt relieved. There would have been nothing for them properly to discuss and the huge man made her feel uncomfortable.

Alexei Berenkov did consider a meeting with the woman. And it was because there was no valid reason for it – which would have been obvious to her – that he decided against it. With everything constructed just as he intended, an intricate house of matches with only two or three more tiny sticks to be added, the customarily irrepressible Berenkov was apprehensive now of anything happening to bring it all crashing down. It was absolutely essential that she remain the unknowing, unwitting bait, not someone allowed the slightest suspicion: he didn’t want her protecting Charlie Muffin again, as he was convinced she had protected him once before.

He set out to create further protection, in fact, actually on the day Natalia attended her delegation meeting, going early into Dzerzhinsky Square to meet with Kalenin. Berenkov did not, however, come at once to the point. Characteristically he allowed himself the boast and announced the London confirmation of Charlie Muffin’s reservation at the delegation hotel, adding at once their positive awareness of the British breaking the communication code. Wanting the concession from his doubting friend, Berenkov said: ‘It is encouraging, don’t you think?’

‘Situations often look encouraging at the preliminary planning stage,’ refused Kalenin. ‘I would not say we were anywhere beyond preliminary planning at the moment, would you?’

‘Yes!’ came back Berenkov abruptly, his impatience with Kalenin finally spilling over. ‘I consider we are a very long way past that stage.’

‘You’ve combined the two operations, brought them too close together,’ insisted the First Deputy. ‘You’ve created a danger where there was no need for one to be created, Alexei. It worries me.’

‘And you’ve made that obvious for a considerable time now,’ said Berenkov. He realized that, incredibly, it was their first positive argument.

The awareness seemed to come to Kalenin at the same time. Sadly he said: ‘This really does seem to be a period of great change, in everything, doesn’t it?’

‘I hope not in everything,’ said Berenkov sincerely. He would regret losing the man’s friendship absolutely: it was something to which he was accustomed, so accustomed that he took it for granted. Despite their increasing disagreements over this current assignment it came as a shock to think of any split between them being permanent.

‘So do I, old friend,’ said Kalenin, still sadly.

‘I’m considering the safety of both of us today,’ offered Berenkov, extending a threadbare olive branch.

‘How?’

‘Baikonur,’ declared Berenkov simply. ‘I think we should take out insurance against any more sniping from the scientists, like they tried to take out insurance against us by complaining over our heads to the Politburo Secretariat.’

‘I’m interested,’ said Kalenin, smiling slightly.

‘Why don’t we fully remove the threat of any attack from there?’ suggested Berenkov. ‘The fact they haven’t complained since must mean they’re satisifed with everything we got from America. Which we now know to be complete. And which only leaves what Krogh is due to get from England. Why don’t we move Nikolai Noskov, who led the attack against us, and Guzins, who seemed a pretty enthusiastic and senior supporter, to England?’

‘What!’ exclaimed Kalenin, astonished.

‘Send them to England,’ repeated Berenkov. ‘I could get them there easily enough, by circuitous routing and on false documentation. They could monitor and approve everything that Krogh produces, on the spot, before it gets here. That way – if anything is missed, if there is a problem we can’t anticipate – the responsibility is theirs, as the experts. Not ours.’

‘That’s brilliant,’ admired Kalenin, smiling more broadly and matching the other man’s simplicity now. ‘But Noskov is the Strategic Defence Initiative expert! We couldn’t risk exposing him to Western detection. It would be unthinkable.’

‘What’s the greater risk, to ourselves?’ demanded Berenkov, who had thought his argument through. ‘Is it failing to get the Star Wars missile in its entirety? Or the minimal possibility of Noskov being detected?’

Kalenin shook his head doubtfully. ‘It’s an impossible equation,’ he protested. ‘Of course we can’t risk failing to get everything. But the Politburo would never risk Noskov: minimal or not, the danger is too great.’

‘Insurance!’ insisted Berenkov, undeterred. ‘Let the Politburo make the refusal, which affords us some lessening of responsibility. And then, if they do refuse, propose that Guzins, still an expert but of lesser importance, be sent instead. More insurance still.’

Kalenin shook his head but this time it was a gesture continuing the earlier admiration. ‘You’ve always frightened me with the chances you’re prepared to take but sometimes you think like someone who’s survived here in Dzerzhinsky Square and in Moscow all his life.’

‘You’re going to propose it?’

‘Exactly as you’ve suggested it.’

‘It’s all going to work out fine: everything, I mean,’ said Berenkov, sensing a slight reconciliation between them.

‘I hope, Alexei,’ said Kalenin, the doubt coming back up like a briefly lowered shield. ‘I hope.’

Emil Krogh rationalized it all in his confused mind and it came out fine – well, nearly fine – and he was suffused by an enveloping calm, the first mental peace that he’d known since he couldn’t remember when. Of course it wasn’t perfect. There’d be the stigma of taking his own life when he was mentally disturbed but there’d be a lot of evidence about how hard he’d worked, and people sympathized with dedicated men who drove themselves over the edge like that, so there wasn’t much to sneer about there. He worried for a while about the life insurance for Peggy, because that was negated by suicide. But he calculated that the insurance was really for the corporation anyway – for their loss of a dynamic chairman – rather than anything personal, for Peggy. With the Monterey estate paid for completely and the stock he owned on the open market, she’d be a millionairess twice over. And that before he took into account the stock options in the company itself, which totted up to another million and a half. He’d read carefully through the fine print of the pension agreement and was sure that would be unaffected, so the income would be more than enough for her to live on, without her having to cash in anything. It would leave Cindy with the condo and the car, but he’d already said goodbye to that anyway: he didn’t even think about Cindy or the property any more. Certainly there’d be no chance of what he’d done ever becoming public, because there was no gain in the Russians exposing the empty blackmail. And so he would have defeated them, after all. Finally fucked them like they’d fucked him, because without the British contribution they’d have nothing. And now they weren’t going to get the British contribution.

Krogh considered for some time leaving a note, actually working out the rambling phrases in his mind, stuff about pressure of work and how he found it increasingly difficult to cope. But then he reckoned that made him appear weak and he didn’t want any weakness being publicly discussed so he decided not to leave any message.

He took a lot of trouble, building up the stockpile of pills, driving for miles to different pharmacies to spread the purchases and avoid any challenge from a curious dispenser. And despite their separate sleeping arrangements he didn’t set out to do it at home, where Peggy might have interrupted and screwed it all up by discovering him too quickly and getting medical help.

Instead he made the sort of overnight business trip excuse he’d used a hundred times before and Peggy accepted it without question, like she’d accepted it those hundred times before. Krogh set out without any positive direction, driving up from Monterey towards San Francisco. He found himself on the Bay View side so he crossed over the Oakland Bridge and recognized the surroundings because one of the meetings with Petrin had been this way, at a motel that really had had Hell’s Angels motorcycles in the car park. And then Krogh thought: Why not? It would be his way of shoving up the middle finger to the Russians when they learned what had happened. He started to concentrate and found the motel again. This time there were no Hell’s Angels bikes.

Krogh paid in full and in cash and the clerk asked with smiling expectancy if there were going to be anyone else joining him, and was clearly surprised when Krogh said there wasn’t. From the earlier motorcycles and the question about company Krogh expected the cabins to be whorehouse dirty but they weren’t. Everything was pressed-cardboard cheap but it was clean, the bedding fresh and with even an unbroken wrapper band over the toilet seat to prove it had been sanitized after the last occupant.

Krogh toured it all and looked at himself in the bathroom mirror, seeking something different in the image gazing back at him but finding nothing. Except that he did look like hell, as Petrin kept complaining: the carefully tucked skin seemed sagged, especially around his neck, and his eyes were watery and veined. Krogh wondered what sort of photograph the newspapers would use: he hoped it was one of the early ones from his publicity portfolio. They’d been a good set and he’d liked them.

Back in the bedroom Krogh looked about him uncertainly, not sure what to do next. How did you kill yourself? Just did it, he supposed. He unzipped the overnight bag and took out the pill bottles and stacked them neatly on the table beside the bed, like he’d stood his soldiers up as a kid. At the bottom of the bag there was the quart of Jack Daniels he’d brought as well, because he thought he remembered it was a more effective way to kill yourself, mixing pills and booze, and he figured he might need a little Dutch courage anyway. In fact he’d do just that: just a little nip by itself first, to relax him. Krogh poured a stiff one in a wrapper-sealed bathroom glass, grimacing slightly as the liquor burned its way down, and thought he’d take a second by itself, because why not? He decided to undress, for no particular reason, neatly hanging his suit in the closet, and sitting on the edge of the crisp bed in his shorts, feeling quite calm about what he was going to do. Halfway through the second drink he began emptying the pills out on the side table, so that he wouldn’t have to fumble with childproof stoppers when he got fuzzy-headed, and then thought what the hell was he waiting for? So he started taking them. He did it patiently, not shovelling handfuls into his mouth or anything silly like that; a pill, a sip of whisky, a positive swallow, then waiting a few seconds before taking another.

Soon after he started Krogh began to belch, as if he had indigestion. He stopped for a while, mouth clamped shut. He had expected to be feeling some effect by now, a drowsiness, but there was nothing. There appeared to be an enormous number of pills in front of him, a mountain range. He started again, slowly like before, but after two the whisky caught in his throat and he coughed and a lot came up, sour and bitter tasting. Krogh swallowed and got them down and waited longer this time. When he resumed again he was feeling something, nothing like positive sleep but a tingling numbness to the back of his hands and his cheeks.

He threw up just after that. Krogh tried desperately not to, biting his lips closed and cupping his hands in front of his face but he realized he couldn’t hold it down and so he rushed to the bathroom. The damned wrapper-band got in the way and he didn’t quite make it but didn’t cause too much of a mess.

He didn’t think he’d lost everything so there would still be some effect from the pills, and certainly the numbness hadn’t gone. He’d clung to the toilet bowl in the end so he stayed on the floor, crawling back into the bedroom and propping himself against the bed edge. Had to start again; get it right on this attempt. He developed the same pattern as before, a pill, a sip, a pause, but there was no indigestion and he didn’t feel nauseous and the heaviness came, his eyelids too full to keep open. Krogh fought against it, wanting to be sure, trying to maintain the routine, vaguely conscious of spilling the drink over himself and several times dropping a pill he couldn’t find because it rolled away so that he had to fumble for another.

He wasn’t aware of losing consciousness. His realization was rather of waking up, his head feeling as if it were stuffed with cotton wool, but knowing at once where he was and that he hadn’t taken enough and had to do more. The whisky now was foul to taste and he gagged and it ran down his chin. On rubber legs he staggered into the bathroom to get water in a second glass and started swallowing the pills with that, which was better and although he was beyond counting he knew he’d taken a lot and then there was blackness again.

The retching brought him out of his unconsciousness once more, although that wasn’t his immediate impression because there was a dream that he was ill, dying, and everyone was gathered around and people were saying what a wonderful man he had been and what a great loss it would be. He tried not to vomit in front of all the sympathetic visitors because it was disgusting but he couldn’t stop himself and then he was somehow back in the bathroom, sprawled by the toilet which he hadn’t reached soon enough. Krogh rolled over in his own filth, unable to move any more, unable to make his body do anything, drifting in and out of consciousness.

It was absolutely quiet when he finally awoke, nothing moving in the early morning stillness. Krogh was bitterly cold, shivering violently, and he felt like the death that he’d tried to achieve but knew he couldn’t. He stayed lying where he was, tears sobbing from him at his complete, aching helplessness.

The men were clearly frightened to be called before him which was what Berenkov wanted because fear was a great guarantor of orders being strictly obeyed.

‘Is it quite clear what you are to do?’ he demanded.

The nervous Gennadi Redin, whose major’s rank put him in charge of the KGB escorts accompanying the delegation to Britain, said: ‘Whatever happens we are to do nothing whatsoever to interfere with Comrade Natalia Nikandrova? She is to be allowed to do whatever she chooses, without question or challenge.’

‘Absolutely,’ confirmed Berenkov. ‘Whatever she chooses.’