Comrade Charlie

32

Charlie considered carefully how to stage the recognition with Natalia, knowing how vital the timing and the circumstances were. He knew the scheduled arrival of the Moscow flight, and his initial idea was simply to be in the seating area of frayed brocade when she entered with the rest of the party. And then he decided against it. He had no way of knowing if she wanted to see him as much as he wanted to see her but it was logical she would have thought of the possibility. But for him to be openly in the foyer, practically making it a confrontation, was too abrupt. He had to guard against any startled reaction to his presence because she would be with the rest of the delegation on arrival, and among that delegation would be KGB watchers alert for any unusual response, to anything. It was better that he be nowhere around for whatever registration formalities were to be completed: that she had time to settle in and adjust, however slightly, to her surroundings.

Charlie debated with himself, waiting unobtrusively outside the hotel, just to see her, and actually repeated the reconnoitre of the previous days, seeking out vantage points. There were some – the doorway of a towering Regency house converted into offices and a tiny, centre-of-the-road coppice of trees preserved by a parks department – but Charlie was uncomfortable being outside the hotel after the Russians had entered. One or maybe more of those KGB watchers would inevitably establish a surveillance position in the foyer, noting who followed the party in. And over long years of experience Charlie had found it was human nature – certainly the human nature of supposedly trained intelligence officers, which it shouldn’t have been – to be more interested in people following behind than in people already established ahead. So he abandoned that intention as well.

Instead, for the Russian arrival, Charlie kept completely out of the way. He sat in his room and tried to read newspapers, which didn’t work because his concentration wouldn’t hold, and he tried to become interested in his flickering television, but that didn’t work either although he managed an hour watching horse racing from Goodwood and was glad he wasn’t there in person because every horse upon which he placed a mental bet got lost in the field. He considered dialling one of the in-house movies but abandoned that, too. At last, more than thirty minutes before the delegation should have got to the hotel, Charlie went to his window, which was at the side of the hotel with only the narrowest view of the main Bayswater road along which they would travel. He had to press very closely against it to see anything at all and there was a constant traffic stream of cars and coaches and buses from which it was impossible to distinguish one from another and Charlie quickly gave that up, like everything else.

He was downstairs in the bar within five minutes of its opening for the evening, the first in and able to get the previously chosen seat, the stool at the corner of the bar and the abutting wall. Unasked the barman poured the scotch and said: ‘They’ve arrived.’

‘Did it all go smoothly?’

The man gave a shrug, a gesture which seemed to be close to an affection with him. ‘I gather it was a bit chaotic, but then it normally is when a big party checks in.’

‘How many are there?’ asked Charlie, immediately alert.

‘Twenty-five,’ reported the informative man, just as quickly. ‘Quite a few women as well as men.’

Where, wondered Charlie, was the only one who mattered? He said: ‘They going to be difficult to look after as guests? I mean are there any special requests, that sort of thing?’

The barman replenished Charlie’s glass. ‘Not that I know of. There’s a few policemen about, in case there are any protests. There are sometimes, apparently.’

‘So I’ve heard.’

The barman moved away to serve another arriving customer, a man. From the suit Charlie guessed he wasn’t Russian and got the confirmation when the newcomer ordered in a heavy Scots accent. The first Russians entered soon afterwards, two men and a woman. Charlie was easily able to hear and understand the conversation, although he gave no indication of being able to do so. They were embarrassed at their uncertainty of whether to order at the bar or be seated for the barman to come to them. The difficulty was resolved when the man did go to them. The woman, who had urged that they be seated, said she’d known all along that she was right. The older of the two men stumbled out the order, for beer and scotch. The Soviet conversation ranged over the flight from Russia to how different London was from what the woman had expected – ‘a lot of buildings as big as in Moscow, which I hadn’t thought there would be’ – to where Harrods was and how worthwhile the forthcoming air show was going to be.

Their conversation became increasingly difficult for Charlie clearly to eavesdrop as other Russians came into the bar and either joined the original group or established their own parties and set up a conflicting chatter of cross-talk.

Charlie’s earlier friendliness paid dividends because increasingly busy though he became the barman didn’t forget him. Charlie sat alert to every new customer, each time feeling the bubble of half expectation when it was a woman he couldn’t at first properly see but none was Natalia. He was alert for other things, too. He watched for recognitions from the other already identified members of the delegation or listened for the recognizable language, to assure himself that each newcomer was Russian and not an independent, unassociated guest at the hotel. Having established from the barman the total number in the Soviet party Charlie kept count, so that he was constantly aware of how many were missing. And instinctively self-protective, he set about locating the KGB escorts. After half an hour he was convinced about two, an uncertain, hunchshouldered man who tried to join two separate groups which closed against him and a younger, aloof person with rimless spectacles and fair, almost white hair, who didn’t try to join in at all but who sat studying everyone over an untouched glass of mineral water. There would be more, Charlie knew. He wondered if they were travelling with the party or would be drafted in from the embassy less than a mile away.

Around seven thirty the first arrivals started to move and Charlie overheard several references to food and understood from the conversation that a section of the hotel dining room had been partitioned off for them. At no time had the number in the Soviet party amounted to more than fifteen, Natalia had never been among them and Charlie felt a sink of disappointment. Which he recognized to be unrealistic, because from their time together in Moscow Charlie knew that she scarcely drank at all and that a bar was not an automatic place for her to visit. But it had clearly been the assembly point and Charlie had built up a conviction in his mind that was where he would see her. He grew quickly impatient at his professional lapse. He was behaving like an immature, lovesick teenager instead of an experienced operative who had already risked too much by exposing himself to a great many unknowns where unknowns shouldn’t have been allowed. It was time to stop. To reverse the situation, at least: professionalism first, personal involvement second. Which was how it should be. And always had been, even with Edith. Charlie felt something approaching shock at realizing how his priorities had got out of sequence. Thank Christ he’d become aware of it this soon.

‘Another one?’

Charlie looked up at the barman, shaking his head in his newfound determination to start conducting himself properly. He knew the aloof Russian he’d guessed to be KGB had registered him in the bar and decided it would be careless to remain any longer in a position so openly to monitor the Soviet party. Just as it would be a mistake, desperate though he was to do it, to eat in the hotel dining room in the hope of still catching sight of Natalia. Working as closely as this – much too close to be sensible – he had to ease himself from people’s consciousness, not positively attract their attention by always being around.

He ate a disappointing meal in a Lebanese restaurant in the Edgware Road, remained attentive and therefore satisfied with everything that happened about him, and when he returned to the Bayswater hotel used the pretext of reading theatre bills around the reservation desk to check the bar again. There was quite a lot of noise and audible snatches of Russian but Natalia still wasn’t there so he went directly up to his room.

Lying in the darkness Charlie let the disappointment sweep over him once more but did not get angry at the emotion as he had in the bar, because there was no longer any danger in the indulgence. It hadn’t gone at all how he’d wanted. He’d imagined a recognition being made and of a meeting somehow arranged and of telling her the things he never had in Moscow – that how very often he’d wished he’d stayed instead of running – and of her saying things back that he wanted to hear. Never this; never absolutely nothing, not so much as a snatched glance of anyone who just might have been Natalia.

What if she hadn’t, in the end, been one of the delegates at all! What if for any one of a dozen reasons her participation had been cancelled! Or the announced composition of the Russian party had been wrong! Or changed! The doubts and the questions flooded in on Charlie, so quickly it was difficult for him to evaluate one before another demanded attention. And then he stopped bothering to try to evaluate any of them separately because he recognized each was a distinct possibility. He tried to think beyond, to its significance, and couldn’t because there was still so much by which he was confused and found impossible to work out.

He snapped on the sidelight, near the tea-making things, and booked an early morning call from the hotel operator. Charlie did not sleep properly, despite the assurance of waking up on time. He didn’t dream: Charlie was rarely aware of dreaming. Instead he remained in a half-awake state, always knowing where he was and why he was there and he was already fully awake when the telephone rang. He made himself some tea from a sachet on a string and wished he hadn’t, so he left it, and was shaved and showered by seven. He guessed he was far too early, which he proved to be, but he didn’t think there was another way of doing it. A vaguely detached night porter – not the attentive old man with the ill-fitting teeth – was still on duty when Charlie descended to the foyer, which bustled with a surprising number of maids with vacuum cleaners and floor polishers, maintaining the artificial marble. Charlie saw no one he identified as Russian.

He decided that the house of converted offices was the best spot but that to establish himself there at once would make him too obvious, so he walked fully out into the Bayswater Road. At the junction he considered he was concealed from the hotel. For almost thirty minutes he maintained observation from there and while he was doing so he located the convenient newsagent’s shop. When he felt he could not stay so far away from the hotel any longer Charlie bought two newspapers to hide behind deep in the entrance porchway of the Regency house. It was better concealment than Charlie had believed it would be. There was a half-enclosing, pillared fronting wall and a porticoed roof and inside it was encouragingly dark, too dark, in fact, even to use the newspapers as he intended.

There was one false alarm, when four Russians Charlie recognized from the bar the previous evening emerged from the hotel, but they merely walked down to the main road, towards the park, and then back again. By the time they reached the entrance the nervous KGB escort was on the steps. Charlie first thought the man was checking for the wandering group but he ignored them and then relaxed at the arrival of the expected transport. There were two large limousines and a back-up minibus. The man fussed about the order in which they were parked, after which he took a list from his pocket and hurried back inside the foyer. The first party of Russians straggled from the hotel almost at once.

Natalia was among the second loose grouping.

Charlie felt a jolt deep in his stomach, a physical sensation almost like a kick. She was wearing a highnecked suit, grey he guessed from where he stood, and carried a briefcase. Her hair was definitely shorter than he remembered and he had the impression that she was taller, which was obviously absurd. She seemed quite assured, with none of the shuffling apprehension of some of the others around her. Charlie thought she looked beautiful and decided at that moment that whatever risk – even sacrifice – he’d taken was worth it, just to see her again.

There was the customary confusion that always arises getting a body of people into different vehicles and for a few moments there was a lot of disordered milling around in the forecourt, with none of the Russians going anywhere.

Which was the moment Charlie made his move and when Natalia saw him. Charlie knew at once that she had, although with superb control she gave not the slightest outward reaction apart from the briefest stiffening in the way she stood and Charlie was sure that only he was aware of it because for that fleeting moment he allowed himself to look directly at her. Then he looked away and continued on into the hotel and on up to his room without looking back or paying any attention whatsoever to the later-assembling Russians.

Charlie pressed against the door to close it behind him and remained there for a few moments, realizing that he was shaking very slightly. He wasn’t concerned at the nervousness: a nervous tension was necessary, protective, in a lot of situations. It only became an embarrassment during hostile interrogation. Charlie smiled at the reflection, intrigued at the connection of thoughts: the last time he’s undergone a hostile interrogation was facing Natalia in a Moscow debriefing house after his supposed escape from British imprisonment and defection to Moscow.

The shaking went very quickly. Charlie sat on his still unmade bed and took off the Hush Puppies to free his feet from their minimal incarceration and smiled to himself in satisfaction. She knew he was here: here and waiting for her. And he was sure she’d know where to look for him, that night.

With time to kill now, Charlie had a leisurely breakfast with greatly improved tea and read the previously ignored newspapers before leaving the hotel again to walk unerringly to one of the several public telephone boxes he had marked during his earlier study of the area.

Charlie bypassed the main switchboard at Westminster Bridge Road, dialling the number he knew would connect him directly to William French in the Technical Division.

‘Anything?’ asked Charlie, without any greeting.

‘Yes,’ said French, not needing it.

‘How many?’

‘Two.’

‘Same as before?’

‘Yes.’

‘You made a trace yet?’

There was a long hesitation from the technical expert. Then French said: ‘That’s going further than we agreed.’

‘Not a lot of point in leaving a thing half finished, is it?’ prodded Charlie.

‘You’re a bastard!’

‘Actually,’ said Charlie mildly. ‘My mother says my father’s name was William. But I don’t think she’s too sure.’ He’d have to call the Hampshire nursing home, to find out how she was.

The drawings shipped from London in the overnight diplomatic bag brought the tally of those so far provided by the American up to nine. And there was the advice from the separately received rezidentura cable that there would be a further four in the next shipment. That news alone was sufficient to make Alexei Berenkov a very happy man but there had been other separate cables and what he’d learned from them made Berenkov’s satisfaction complete.

There were a series of reports from the London surveillance teams permanently monitoring Charlie Muffin. There was the record of his arriving at the hotel and of his lingering in the bar in the obvious hope of seeing Natalia – who irritatingly had not appeared until dinner and then been late – but most important of all was the message of a few moments earlier, the report of the passing contact encounter between them that very morning, at the entrance to the hotel.

They were definitely his marionettes, Berenkov determined: his own puppets whose strings he could pull and jerk to make them dance to whatever tune he chose to play. He smiled at his metaphor and then continued it: dance they would be made to do and it was time to turn up the music.

The message was already prepared and waiting for transmission to London on the broken code, because Berenkov had the sequence well established in his mind now. The transmission was in the full and supposedly more difficult combination code, mixing Cyrillic Russian with English with two numbers – three and five – introduced as variables. The message consisted of twenty-six digits.

It was instantly intercepted, which Berenkov was sure it would be, and partially deciphered within two hours by decoders now exclusively assigned to its transcription and therefore familiar with all the permutations that the Russian Technical Division had designed.

Richard Harkness attached enormous personal importance to his service’s ability to read the cipher transmission, believing his proper utilization of it to be the way to his permanent appointment as Director General. He had taken a risk, which was quite out of character, in so early bringing the code-breaking to the attention of the Joint Intelligence Committee – and could still remember their frowned surprise – but it had paid off brilliantly with the two quick successes. Now they no longer frowned, because they were impressed, which they should have been. And Harkness was determined to continue impressing the group upon which his future so closely depended.

Always the man of rules, Harkness had issued a written decree that he should be alerted at the moment of an interception – even before its successful translation – and by the time Hubert Witherspoon responded to the summons to the top floor of Westminster Bridge Road the decode and its original lay side by side on the expansive and meticulously tidy desk.

‘Another one?’ anticipated Witherspoon at once. He was enjoying the increased favouritism since Harkness had got the acting directorship and was convinced it could only get better.

‘But incomplete,’ qualified Harkness, swivelling the message, already in its file binder, so that the other man could read it. The latter part of the transmission was deciphered in full – King William Street – but it was preceded by a group of nine numbers, 759001150.

Witherspoon frowned up. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘No one in the decoding division does, either,’ said Harkness. ‘It won’t decipher. Whichever key the decoders try it still comes out gibberish. They’re reprogramming the computer but they’re not happy.’ Neither was Harkness. So far there had not been any difficulty that hadn’t been quickly overcome, and the hindrance made him uneasy: he wanted uninterrupted success, not setbacks.

Witherspoon had stood to read the message. He sat back now, pulling at his lower lip, which was a mannerism. He immediately saw a possible explanation and was glad he could so quickly prove his cleverness to the other man. ‘So!’ said Witherspoon. ‘We’ve got to assume a connection between this and the other message that is so far meaningless to us: REACTIVATE PAYMENT BY ONE THOUSAND?’

‘Yes,’ said Harkness cautiously.

‘Then it fits, doesn’t it?’ invited Witherspoon.

Harkness wished he wasn’t being asked to give an opinion because at that stage he didn’t have one, but he was unembarrassed in front of the younger man. Harkness decided he’d been wise in making himself Witherspoon’s protector. He said: ‘How do you see it fitting?’

‘The first message is most likely a payment instruction?’

‘Yes?’ agreed Harkness, still doubtful.

Witherspoon was aware of his mentor’s difficulty and decided to make the next question rhetorical to avoid worsening it. ‘And what do we have in King William Street? The Moscow Narodny Bank!’

‘Oh yes!’ agreed Harkness at once. ‘That fits: that fits very well indeed. We’re getting the beginning of an operation.’

‘Maybe not the beginning,’ qualified Witherspoon at once. ‘The first message says reactivate. Something had been ongoing and was suspended. Now it looks as if it’s being resumed.’

This was enough, calculated Harkness: enough to make a preliminary report to the joint planners, which had more than one benefit but all to his advantage. It would continue to prove their – and by ‘their’ the unavoidable inference was his – exceptional access to a vital intelligence source. And at the same time it eased the ultimate responsibility if things went wrong or failed completely to be interpreted because all the other agencies were represented and would be ordered to contribute, so any failure would be a shared one. Overly theatrical Harkness, who was a devotee of American crime series on television, said: ‘All we’ve got to do is find out what it was. And is.’

‘We’ve got no access into the bank?’

Harkness shook his head. ‘None. Nor are we likely to get it.’ The man paused. ‘Could those digits be something as simple as a bank account number?’

‘Possible,’ said Witherspoon. ‘The grouping looks too large, though. And there are too many for it to be a telephone number.’

‘We should impose surveillance at once,’ determined Harkness, pleased with a decisive action that would make his report appear even more complete. ‘It’ll be an enormous job but I want photographs so that we can run a comparison upon all known Soviet bloc people in London.’

‘That will be an enormous undertaking,’ said Witherspoon, coming as near as he felt able to querying the order.

‘I’m not expecting us to get everybody,’ accepted Harkness. ‘Our man might just be among the ones we do get. Once we’ve got a face and an identity we’ll have a lead to follow.’

‘What else can we do?’ asked Witherspoon.

‘Continue to rely upon the code interception,’ said Harkness confidently. ‘That’s our best chance.’