Comrade Charlie

Chapter 24

William French, the electronics expert in the Technical Division, returned the favour sooner than Charlie had expected and Charlie knew he should have felt satisfied and vindicated but he didn’t because things weren’t sitting neatly in his mind, like he wanted them to sit. And there was a further uncomfortable dichotomy, an intrusion into his professional life by what he wanted privately to achieve by a reunion with Natalia. Which he quickly accepted was hardly a dichotomy at all because in these circumstances it was virtually impossible to differentiate between professional and private considerations.

He still tried.

Harkness was suddenly and unexpectedly leaving him alone, but realistically Charlie knew he couldn’t rely on that continuing throughout the time Natalia was scheduled to be in London. And that he had therefore to remove absolutely the possibility of Harkness imposing another meaningless chore which risked keeping him apart from her.

The answer appeared easy and Charlie wished everything else was. From the information already released from Moscow he knew that Natalia was part of the delegation attending the Farnborough Air Show. And the Farnborough Air Show ran for a prescribed week in September. Still with three weeks’ official leave due to him, Charlie filed the memorandum to Personnel and to Harkness requesting the entire period, to run before and after the show, to provide him with contingency time at either end and keep the period she would be in England sacrosanct from any interruption.

It was not difficult, either, to discover the hotel at which the Russian support staff were staying. A Permanent Secretary at the Foreign Office had earlier in his career been a cultural attache at the British embassy in Budapest, where Charlie had prevented the embarrassment of an injudicious involvement with an Hungarian secretary. The grateful diplomat returned Charlie’s call within twenty-four hours and said why didn’t he try the Blair, slightly off the Bays water Road. Just to be sure Charlie checked with an Inspector in the Special Branch Protection Unit, who confirmed the hotel while Charlie was still on the telephone.

Again Charlie allowed himself time at either end of the air-show week, reserving a day ahead and two days after the planned duration of the Russian visit. He followed up the telephone booking with a letter of confirmation and asked for confirmation in return, determined against anything going wrong.

And with conscious cynicism he continued to date Laura. He chose the weekend and rented a car and initially considered driving with her down to the Hampshire nursing home. But then changed his mind because when he telephoned ahead the matron said his mother hadn’t come out of the relapse and wouldn’t know he was there anyway. Instead they drove into Sussex and found a pub with oak beams and no slot machines or piped music in the bar.

On the way down Laura said Harkness appeared excited by the first major coup since his appointment as acting Director General but admitted she didn’t know what it was because at the moment it was restricted to verbal reports to the Joint Intelligence Committee with the Cabinet Secretary taking the formal, four-copy-only notation.

‘It’s got to be important then?’ queried Charlie curiously.

‘Harkness seems to think so. Oh, I forgot! Witherspoon is involved somehow.’

Charlie waited until they got to the pub before trying to resolve an uncertainty that had grown worryingly in his mind since the investigation on the Isle of Wight, directly asking Laura if she thought Harkness was still targeting him.

Laura frowned and said: ‘Not at this actual moment: he’s too caught up in this other thing, whatever it is. Why?’

‘I just wondered,’ said Charlie uncomfortably. He didn’t like making mistakes, ever.

‘Why so serious all of a sudden? You don’t normally let it depress you.’

‘No reason,’ lied Charlie. Shit, he thought: he wasn’t getting the sort of feedback he wanted.

‘This is all pretty solemn for a dirty weekend in the country!’ Laura complained brightly. ‘Can’t we forget the department, just for a little while?’

Charlie made the effort, which wasn’t easy, but Laura seemed content enough. They ate pheasant for dinner and drank their coffee in the chimney inglenook and the bed had an old-fashioned feather mattress into which they sank, like snow. There were fresh eggs for breakfast, which was a reminder of the Isle of Wight which Charlie didn’t need.

Laura gave a mew of disappointment when Charlie suggested returning to London in the morning, so he compromised and stopped for lunch on the way. They still reached Chelsea by mid-afternoon and Laura said why didn’t they lounge about for the rest of the day reading the Sunday papers and why didn’t he stay the night. Charlie said that would have been fine but there were things he had to do, and they made arrangements to get together some time during the week.

Back at the Vauxhall flat Charlie sat thinking for a long time, until it became night and grew completely dark inside the living room. He finally put on the light and said to himself: ‘You’re slipping, my son! And when you slip you end up flat on your ass.’

It was very late before Charlie went to bed because when he finished doing the things he had to do he spent a long time thinking again. In the morning he was late for work, because he stopped for an hour on the way, but Harkness wasn’t looking for him so he was not called upon to explain.

The Soviet observation of Charlie was established as a twenty-four hour rotating duty, nominally under the supervision of a KGB officer named Viktor Nikov. The man was on duty that Sunday night outside Charlie’s flat. He said to his companion: ‘Jobs like this really piss me off.’ He suspected Losev had appointed him because of some personal animosity, although he couldn’t decide the reason.

‘How much longer?’ asked the other man.

‘I wish I knew,’ said Nikov, with feeling.

Because the Blair was the designated hotel for the Russian party there was official justification for Losev’s request to the management for a list of other registrations for the same period.

And Alexei Berenkov felt another flush of euphoria at the news of Charlie’s reservation. Everything was unfolding as he intended it should: absolutely everything!