Comrade Charlie

41

Charlie failed: despite all Natalia’s patience and coaxing tonight nothing happened, would happen, not like it finally had when the problem occurred before. Charlie said Oh Christ and he was sorry and Natalia kissed him and told him not to be silly, that it didn’t matter and who said it had to work every time.

‘I did,’ insisted Charlie, making a weak effort to ease his embarrassment.

‘Chauvinist pig!’ she accused, trying to help him here, too.

‘It won’t be like this again.’

‘It will and it won’t matter then, either.’

Charlie gestured around the bedroom and said: ‘I’m not making excuses but this has all been a bit unreal, hasn’t it?’

‘Completely,’ Natalia agreed at once. ‘Unreal and wonderful.’

‘I’ve worried, at the risks you’ve had to take.’

Natalia kissed him again, on the cheek, and said: ‘I’ve been lucky. And careful. And prepared.’

‘How prepared?’

‘Like you told me, the simpler the better. If there’d ever been a challenge I’d have said I’d changed my mind and decided to go to the bar for a final drink. But I haven’t had to.’

He had to tell her tonight, remembered Charlie. He said: ‘And now you won’t.’

‘What?’ she frowned at him.

‘I’m checking out tomorrow.’

‘But I…oh…’

‘I’ve got to, haven’t I?’ urged Charlie. ‘You just can’t run, without some planning in advance.’

‘Of course,’ accepted Natalia at once. ‘I just hadn’t thought.’ Or wanted to, she acknowledged, to herself. She felt safe, cocooned, in this bedroom: locked away where no one could get to them, hurt them. And more. His moving out, to make positive arrangements, finally committed her. And while she wanted to cross and was determined to cross she was still frightened. Frightened of being intercepted at the last minute and frightened of the unknowns of trying to live a new life in an environment and a country where she was a stranger and frightened of things she couldn’t even conceive but feared would be ahead of her, lurking in dark corners.

‘You don’t sound sure?’

‘Of course I’m sure: you know that…’ Natalia trailed off. Then she said, hopefully. ‘Can’t you imagine how I feel?’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Charlie.

‘What must I do?’ she asked quietly.

‘Do you know the rest of your itinerary?’

‘Farnborough, for the remainder of the trade days. The afternoon of the last but one day here in London, for official receptions. The last day is packing up – the shopping I told you about – and then the plane back to Moscow in the late afternoon.’

Charlie sat nodding, not looking at her. ‘The shopping expedition,’ he decided. ‘That creates the best opportunity: the safest…’ he turned to her. ‘Has there been any talk of groups being organized? Any arrangements made?’

‘Loosely,’ said Natalia. ‘Everyone’s talking about Harrods.’

‘Make yourself part of it,’ insisted Charlie. ‘If your plane is going in the afternoon the outing will have to be in the morning. Just go with the group. It’s a big store, usually crowded. Which is ideal. Let yourself become separated: it’s got to appear completely accidental, to avoid any suspicion. There are a lot of exits and entrances. Make for the one directly opposite the underground – what you call metro – station. It’s named Knightsbridge, after the district. Because it is a station it’s busy, so there’ll be a lot of cover from people using it.’

‘What do I do then?’

‘Just wait,’ instructed Charlie. ‘I’ll be ready, whatever the time.’

‘It all seems too…’

‘…simple,’ finished Charlie. ‘It’ll work.’

She smiled at the reminder. ‘I’ll learn,’ she promised.

‘Do you want me to go through it again?’

Natalia shook her head, serious-faced. ‘No.’

‘This is always the worst part, just before everything starts,’ warned Charlie.

‘I’ve never known it,’ said Natalia. ‘I wasn’t trained as a field agent, like you. It’s different for me: more difficult.’

‘Just a few more days,’ said Charlie. ‘After that it’ll all be over. We’ll be settled.’

‘Where?’

‘I don’t know, not yet.’

‘I wish…’ started Natalia, and stopped. Enough! she told herself, irritated. There was no other way – no safer way – and it was ridiculous to start saying she wished that there were. He was a professional who knew what he was doing. She had to trust him. There was surely no one else in whom she could better put that trust.

‘What?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Let’s not leave any uncertainty about anything,’ pressed Charlie. ‘We won’t get second chances: neither of us expected this one.’

‘No, really.’ She didn’t want to – she wouldn’t – show any weakness, let him know how really frightened she was. She was behaving like a child.

‘You sure?’ said Charlie, still pressing.

‘Quite sure.’

Charlie looked at her, waiting, but Natalia didn’t continue. He said: ‘I’ll be waiting.’

‘I’ll be there.’

The following morning Charlie telephoned reception from his room, apologizing for ending his booking early, but didn’t go down into the foyer to settle his account until he was sure the Russian delegation would have left for Farnborough. When he got there the porter who’d greeted him the first day was behind his cubbyhole desk and Charlie smiled and said he was leaving and the porter said he was sorry he hadn’t been able to be of more assistance.

‘Not that it would have been easy,’ said the man, his ill-fitting teeth moving as if they had a life of their own. ‘Been a right work-up with all these Russians.’

‘Other people have told me,’ commiserated Charlie.

‘Had to send out for more bar-stock two days ago,’ disclosed the man. ‘Some of them really did need minders!’

Charlie paid his bill and assured the reception clerk and the cashier that he’d enjoyed his stay and walked out into the forecourt towards the road and its taxi stand.

They got him just at its edge. There were three men, one very large, who emerged from a blue Ford. The large one waved a piece of paper towards Charlie but too quickly for him to read it. The man said: ‘Charles Edward Muffin. This is a warrant for your arrest, issued under the necessary section of the Official Secrets Act.’

‘Hands against the car roof, sunshine,’ ordered his immediate companion. ‘It’s always wise to give bastards like you a pat-down.’

Charlie did as he was told, unprotesting. The man ran his hands expertly over Charlie’s body, seeking a weapon, finishing with further expertise by running the search finally down Charlie’s right arm and snapping a handcuff around his wrist before Charlie guessed it was going to be done.

‘Hey! What’s going on!’

They all turned at the shout. The friendly, goldloving barman named John was hurrying along the pavement, on his way to open up for the day.

The big arresting officer sighed and took a small folding wallet from his jacket pocket, holding it in front of the man to halt the approach. ‘Smedley, Special Branch,’ he said to the barman. ‘Piss off!’

Charlie said apologetically to the barman: ‘They’ve got to speak like that all the time otherwise they don’t get the job.’

The man who had attached himself to the other end of the handcuff twisted in, thrusting Charlie into the rear of the car, and the big man got in on the other side, so that Charlie was crushed between them. The third man got in behind the driver’s seat.

‘You’re nicked, you are!’ insisted the large man. ‘You’re in the shit right up to your scruffy bloody neck.’

‘I often am,’ confided Charlie mildly. He looked at the man and said: ‘So if you’re Smedley…’ He paused, turning to the man to whom he was tethered. ‘…then I suppose your name will be Abbott? You people normally stay together as partners, don’t you?’

‘What the fuck are you talking about!’ demanded Smedley.

‘Bullied any senile old ladies lately?’ asked Charlie, in a very personal question of his own.

From that first alert, which came from the Soviet observers still in the hotel before Charlie was properly in the Special Branch car to be driven away, Vitali Losev had to do everything personally, specifically refused authority to delegate anything to any other Soviet intelligence officer and by so doing diminish or spread his own responsibility. Which was, he accepted, an open, threatening warning against his making the slightest error. He was not, however, unduly worried: identifiable responsibility against mistakes carried corresponding credit for success. And he did not consider what he had to do as particularly difficult. His predominant consideration, in fact, was that it put him very much in a position of superiority over everyone in the Kensington safe house but most importantly over Alexandr Petrin.

Losev approached the Kensington house by a circuitous, carefully checked route and did not hurry his final entry until he was completely sure that he was alone.

It was oddly quiet inside the large room where the drawing and the photographing were continuing, the atmosphere practically somnolent: Petrin was actually slumped in a chair, a discarded newspaper over his knees, heavy-eyed with boredom. There was a perceptible change when Losev entered the room, something like a stiffening going through the people in it, and Losev felt a flicker of satisfaction that the most discernible change came from Petrin.

‘All very restful,’ Losev jeered.

‘Why not?’ sighed Petrin. ‘What some of us are doing is more tiring than for others.’

‘Quite so,’ said Losev. ‘If it’s too much for you I can always draft in some help.’

Petrin looked away, uninterested in the childish exchange. He said: ‘I suppose there is some purpose in your coming here?’

‘More than you’ll ever know: or be permitted to know,’ said Losev, turning away himself. Generally, to the other Russians, he said: ‘I want an original drawing. And not one dated from several days ago because it’s got to comply with a schedule of events. Has anything been finished today?’

‘What’s going on now!’ demanded Guzins, in immediate protest.

‘Something that does not concern you,’ rejected Losev arrogantly. ‘Answer the question. Is there a finished drawing from today?’

‘I haven’t even been able to consider it yet!’ said Guzins.

‘And I haven’t photographed it, either,’ said Zazulin.

‘Do it now!’ ordered Losev. ‘Break off whatever you’re doing. Change the film. Take whatever pictures you want of today’s work and then let me have the drawing.’

‘But that’s going to confuse everything!’ argued Zazulin. ‘We’re trying to maintain some sort of order about what we’re doing.’

‘Do as I say!’ insisted Losev, exasperated.

‘This is preposterous! Ludicrous!’ said Guzins. ‘When I get back to Moscow I shall complain.’

‘Of course you will,’ said Losev. In a pained voice he said: ‘Now let’s get on and start doing what I want, shall we?’

To comply Guzins had to abandon what he was doing, sort through the unapproved and therefore unnumbered drawings and then insert the number, so the sequence would correspond, before handing it over to Zazulin. The photographer had to unload and reload his camera and transfer from its restraining frame the half-copied drawing for that upon which he now had to start working. Both men did so truculently, resentful of both the order and Losev’s attitude.

As they worked Petrin left his chair and came alongside. He said to Losev, ‘What is going on?’

‘Something that you have no right to know,’ rejected Losev again, haughtily. He spoiled it by adding carelessly: ‘Nothing that affects what you’re doing here.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ came back Petrin at once. ‘Of course it affects what we’re doing here! It involves one of the drawings!’

‘Separate from what is being done here,’ qualified Losev, regretting the lapse. ‘Therefore none of your business.’

‘I want your assurance of that,’ insisted Petrin.

Losev smiled at the other rezident patronizingly. ‘Then you have it. Just stay here and go on as you were. Doze, if you wish.’

Fortunately the drawing was of the final moulding process and not as detailed as some of the others had been, and Zazulin completed the copying in two hours. Losev thanked them with elaborate, taunting courtesy and was still out in the street again slightly after midday. Aware of the traffic congestion there would be travelling right across central London to the City by road Losev took the quicker underground, ironically using the line that took him through Knightsbridge station, where Charlie Muffin had arranged to meet Natalia.

Losev was received politely at the safe-custody facility in King William Street and escorted to the vault and to the box listed in Charlie Muffin’s name, the second key to which had been left in Charlie’s Vauxhall apartment. Losev deposited the drawing in seconds and, convinced of a good job well done, treated himself to an excellent fish lunch at Sweetings. A day or two before, his presence might have been recorded by the observation upon King William Street, although the safe-custody facility was not at the Narodny Bank. But that surveillance had been withdrawn, of course, in Harkness’ belief that he and Witherspoon had solved their mystery.

No one ate in the safe house in Kensington, through a combination of anger and the need to restore the work routine as it had been before Losev’s interruption.

‘The man is insufferable,’ complained Guzins.

‘It’s going to take me two hours at least to set up and check where I was, to make sure I don’t miss out a frame,’ supported Zazulin.

‘It’ll cause complete chaos in Baikonur,’ said Guzins. ‘They are going to get a set of photographs completely out of sequence and now there isn’t a supporting drawing.’

Petrin glanced at Krogh, who was working on unaware of what they were discussing in Russian. ‘That’s easily solved,’ he said. ‘When Emil has finished everything he can go back and work out a duplicate.’

‘What about the sequence in which the photographs are arriving?’ demanded Guzins. ‘That’s still going to be confusing.’

Petrin considered the question, thinking back to the facile bickering with Losev. ‘No it’s not,’ he said. ‘You heard what was said: whatever the drawing was wanted for, it had no relevance to what we’re doing here. We’ll simply hold the photographs here until the intervening drawings are copied and everything will arrive in Moscow and at Baikonur in their correct order. That way no one get’s confused.’

Guzins smiled shyly at the solution. ‘Vasili Palvovich Losev is still insufferable,’ he insisted.

Later, when he’d finished drawing for the day, Krogh said: ‘What was all that commotion about?’

‘Nothing,’ dismissed Petrin. He decided against telling the American about the duplicate drawing: he’d leave that until the man imagined he’d finished, to avoid unnecessarily upsetting him. It would only require an extra day, anyway.

It was done, thought Berenkov in euphoric triumph: everything in place, and once today’s waiting cable was dispatched from London in the code the British could read, it was done. Charlie Muffin would be destroyed far more effectively than by any bullet or bomb. Berenkov knew the man could never withstand any protracted period of imprisonment: Charlie Muffin was too independent, too rebellious. He’d crack. Become a vegetable or go insane. But before he did he’d know who did it to him. Know who’d been the ultimate victor.

There were twenty-three digits in the final message in that final arriving cable. It said: KING WILLIAM STREET FILLED.