Comrade Charlie

Chapter 14

There seemed to be a lull in the war. Charlie guessed that generals and brigadiers who fought real wars would have a technical phrase for it, like regrouping or retrenchment or reallocation of forces. Harkness was probably doing all of those things and working to invent more. But in the immediate days following the confrontation there was a respite, although Charlie was careful not to provide the acting chief with any excuse, no matter how inconsequential. He arrived at Westminster Bridge Road promptly on time and only took a measured hour for lunch and never left early. He was polite to Witherspoon, who returned soft-footed to his office the afternoon of Charlie’s encounter with Harkness, and Witherspoon was polite back although Charlie got the impression of the man distancing himself, which was fine with Charlie who was fed up with the prick breathing constantly down his neck anyway. He made plans with Laura.

Charlie disposed of the atrophied flower and its milk bottle and paced himself to get through the huge backlog of official documentation and official publications and official and unofficial papers. He dealt first with the direct communications, putting his initials on forms and instructions that needed signed proof of his having read them. He responded with his own memoranda when required, reckoning the Brazilian rain forests were being destroyed sokly to provide the paper necessary for Harkness’ bureaucracy.

Charlie left the publications until last, although the daily inflow of newsprint meant the pile was constantly increasing, threatening to keep ahead of his physical ability to read them before a fresh batch arrived. He tried to devise a system to clear it and win. He read initially everything printed in English and then, because it made the job easier, studied the analysts’ translations and interpretations of the foreign material that was his responsibility before moving to the originals themselves.

So it was a long time after that first and those subsequently planted references in the Soviet media to Natalia Nikandrova Fedova before Charlie finally came upon them.

His recognition was instant although disbelieving and because the first reaction was disbelief he wanted to make sure and that only took seconds anyway, because that first reference, in a weeks-old edition of Pravda, clearly identified Natalia by name, as a delegate member on a visit to Australia. Charlie sat gazing at the photograph, wishing it were better. Natalia did not appear to have changed much: hardly at all, in fact. The picture showed her in civilian clothes, a businesslike, high-buttoned suit, and she was unsmiling in the official surroundings, hedged in by other stern-faced Russians. Her hair seemed shorter, though: when they had been together in Moscow Natalia had mostly worn it long, strained back and in a bun when she was working, loose and lustrously black when they were alone, more at her apartment in Mytninskaya than at his.

Charlie waited for a feeling, the sort of emotion he supposed he should experience, but there was nothing very much, not yet. Maybe there would be some reaction later. At the moment there was too much in the way, too many questions.

Charlie sectioned the newspaper and used its dating to scour every other Russian-language publication, a week either side. That produced a large photograph in Izvestia with a longer caption, identifying Natalia for the first time as a translator. There was a subsequent story, again with a photograph, upon the delegation’s return and although there were cross-checks he wanted to make at once, Charlie forced himself first to work to a pattern/and go completely through the backlog, unaware and uncaring of time. Which was how he located three more photographs and five further written accounts of Natalia’s movements, through Canada and Washington. Satisfied at last that he had located every report in the publications for which he was responsible for monitoring, Charlie extended the search. Records maintained a Back Reference service of printed material. From it Charlie withdrew everything put out by Tass, the Soviet news agency, together with their entire picture issue, around the dates that corresponded with Natalia’s overseas visits. He extended the inquiry, to include Australian, Canadian and American publications for the same period and found additional coverage and two more photographs for the dossier he began to collate.

By the time Charlie finally cleared his desk that dossier, which was personal, without any official classification or restriction and which therefore he carried back and forth from the Vauxhall apartment, was quite bulky although there was considerable repetition, which he weeded out.

So what, in total, did he have? Personal impressions first. Three of the Tass photographs were originals, not blurred newsprint reproductions. So he was able to be very sure that Natalia had not changed at all apart from wearing her hair much shorter, which he liked. He didn’t recognize anything she wore but then it had been a long time since they’d been together, nearly two years, so it was natural she would have bought new clothes. And there would be an expectation — and a financial would be an expectation — and a financial allowance to fulfil it — that she dress well as a representative of her government on overseas missions.

Which took him beyond personal reflections. What the hell was Natalia doing, flying around the world described as a translator? She was an exhaustively trained, highly qualified, very expert KGB debriefer: so highly trained and expert that in the end it had been Natalia who realized his flight from British imprisonment to the Soviet Union wasn’t genuine but a complicated London espionage operation. But by which time, thank God, she’d felt more for him than about whatever it was he was doing. Dzerzhinsky Square didn’t shift specialized people like Natalia around: no intelligence service did. So why? And not just reassigned to one department: Foreign Ministry in Australia, Trade Ministry in Canada and the United States. Something else that didn’t make sense. Unanswerable, insoluble question after unanswerable, insoluble question. Which prompted another: Would he ever be able to find the answers?

A feeling came at last, an excitement of anticipation, but Charlie curbed it, refusing to fantasize, aware of an oversight and annoyed by it because keeping her safe was important and he didn’t know if she still were. Charlie hadn’t identified Natalia during his debriefing after the Moscow episode. If he had done, her name would have gone on to the general register and been shared with the CIA and maybe other Western intelligence agencies and exposed her to Christ knows how many hostile operations. She’d covered for him, in Russia. So he’d covered for her, back in the West. And for the same reason. And for that same reason he had to continue to make sure Natalia was still clean.

Charlie returned to the analysts’ reports that had accompanied what he had already studied, smiling that no ‘KGB Known’ tab had been set against Natalia’s name; there was a comment upon the trade visit confirming continuing Soviet grain shortages, but that was all. It wasn’t, however, absolute proof that Natalia had escaped positive identification because there were always other, separate analyses. Charlie had accessed computer records shortly after his repatriation, determined to protect her, so he only had to go back over the two immediate preceding years to discover if her name had been added to the register. Which he did. It hadn’t.

Still safe, thought Charlie, back in his chickencoop office. And how she’d stay. The publicationmonitoring was designed precisely to achieve the sort of identification that Charlie had made: to add names to lists, Harkness’ idea of intelligencegathering. Fuck Harkness, Charlie decided, that most frequent of conclusions. He had not identified Natalia before and he was buggered if he would now.

Was that it then, an exercise in cleverness for his own personal satisfaction, like The Times crossword? For the moment, Charlie supposed. But only very much for the moment. He’d known the determination from that first sighting of her photograph and then her name, but hadn’t bothered to confront it. But now he did, because it was time. The private, untidy file carefully locked in the bottom drawer of his tin desk contained three announcements of her intended trips in advance of Natalia making them. So what would he do if he came across another such announcement, alerting him to a forthcoming overseas visit? Charlie welcomed a question he could answer at last. And easily. Wherever, however, whatever, Charlie knew he’d try to get to her. Get to her. See her. Speak to her. Try to…Charlie stopped, braking the sudden rush of decisions. Too much, too quickly.

Were there to be the miracle — were they to meet again — how different was it likely to be from before, in Moscow? Another impossible question, with too many subsidiary queries and doubts and considerations. What about the consideration: the only thing that mattered. Whether this time she would stay with him.

Eduard had been the barrier before. How old would the boy be now? Eighteen: maybe nineteen, he wasn’t sure because he couldn’t remember the actual birthday. Whatever, no longer a boy: no longer the dependent barrier behind which she’d once hidden, frightened like it was understandable she should have been frightened.

Something else he would attempt, if there were ever a second chance. Beg her, plead with her, try to explain better and more convincingly than he had in Moscow. Anything, just to get her to stay.

Charlie finally let the fantasies, like the nostalgia, flow unchecked. They could be happy together, he knew. Not immediately, because that wasn’t sensible to expect, but the difficulty wouldn’t exactly be unhappiness. It would be uncertainty, while she adjusted and came to trust a new life: became accustomed to all the changes because it was Natalia who would be called upon to make more sacrifices than he would.

There was, though, one sacrifice that would be the same: maybe, even, greater in his case. He’d have to give up the service, the beloved existence in which he’d immersed himself and never imagined himself ever leaving, despite peripheral irritations like Harkness. He would have to give it up. It was unthinkable — quite inconceivable — for him to delude himself into thinking that if he and Natalia ever came together again he could somehow continue as he was.

Was he prepared to do that for her, like he would be asking her do, for him: like he’d already, once, asked her to do for him? Yes, Charlie decided at once, without any lingering doubt or caveat. To have Natalia permanently with him, to marry her and live with her as naturally as they would ever be able to do anything naturally in their particular circumstances, Charlie knew he was prepared to give it all up. Everything. Without a moment’s hesitation.

It was the weekend before the reflective Charlie completed his search for references to Natalia, the weekend he’d arranged the long-delayed date with Laura, after going down to Hampshire. Now he wished he hadn’t. It was a reluctance he was quickly to put aside.

Charlie sat for almost half an hour holding the paper-skinned, unmoving hand and talking of whatever came into his head, trying for some shared reminiscence to lure her out from the private world into which she had retreated again, but his mother sat propped up in bed staring into emptiness, unaware he was there. He gave up, finally, leaving the chocolates with hard centres near where her hand lay on the bed, and made his way to the matron’s office.

Ms Hewlett looked up as he entered and said at once: ‘I’m sorry. It looked so promising, too.’

‘When did it happen?’

‘Quite soon after your last visit. She kept on about the pension inspectors but it became confused, of course. Twisted in her mind. She came to think she’d done something wrong and that they were going to punish her: that she was going to have to leave here. Kept saying she didn’t want to go. I tried to explain it wasn’t so, that they didn’t mean any harm, but I don’t think I really got through to her…’ The woman paused, shaking her head. ‘I was so hopeful.’

‘I want to know something,’ said Charlie, very slowly. ‘Those inspectors. In your opinion was their visit responsible for my mother regressing, as she has?’

The matron adopted a doubtful expression, turning down the corners of her mouth. ‘Impossible to say,’ she said. ‘Maybe. Then again, maybe not. People your mother’s age, senile like she is, their minds fasten on the strangest things.’

‘But if they hadn’t come, there wouldn’t have been the incident to fasten on to in the first place, would there?’

The matron frowned. ‘You can go through life saying “if only…” but it doesn’t get you very far,’ she said philosophically.

‘What are the chances of her coming out of it, like she did before?’

‘There’s always the possibility.’

‘You don’t sound as if you expect it to happen?’

‘I never lose hope.’

‘I left the chocolates on her bed.’

‘I’ll keep them safe here in the office, just in case.’

Charlie returned determinedly to London, glad after all he’d made the date for that evening. He got to the bar sufficiently ahead of Laura to have two drinks before she arrived. She offered herself to be kissed, so he did, and this time they went to a restaurant that had not been recommended in any food guide, and the meal was fine. He let Laura lead the conversation because he did not want to appear to do so in anything, agreeing it was fortunate the hospital had discovered Paul’s infection to be caused by a virus and not by the heat, particularly as Paul had to spend a month in Brazil.

‘Harkness is wary of you now,’ she suddenly disclosed. ‘There really was the most awful row, you know?’

‘It did get to the Joint Intelligence Committee, didn’t it?’

She nodded. ‘He didn’t even have me type up the memorandum of explanation. He insisted on doing it himself.’

Charlie smiled contentedly. ‘Serves the bastard right.’

‘I don’t think he’ll stop picking on you,’ judged the girl. ‘I think he’s just waiting…catching his breath.’

‘So am I,’ said Charlie. ‘And I’ve had more practice than he has.’

‘I feel that I’ve been waiting for ever,’ said Laura provocatively.

There were no messages this time on the answering machine at the Chelsea house. She poured brandy and wormed her way very close to him on the small couch and kept insisting that he kiss her, which Charlie did, wishing Paul didn’t appear to be watching from the studio photograph.

‘I’m so glad we’re here like this at last,’ she said.

‘Would you do something for me?’ asked Charlie, choosing his moment.

‘I’ll do whatever you want,’ she said, misunderstanding.

‘The two who went down to the nursing home to question my mother,’ said Charlie. ‘Do you think you could get their names, off the file? They would have submitted reports, wouldn’t they?’

‘What do you want to know that for?’

‘Just curious,’ said Charlie.

‘Catching his breath?’ queried Harkness.

‘That’s what he said,’ confirmed Laura.

‘Without any indication of what that meant?’

‘None,’ said the girl.

The acting Director General came around from behind his desk, so that he was closer to her. ‘You really are doing remarkably well,’ he said. ‘I’m most grateful.’