Here Comes Charlie M

TWO

Alexei Berenkov preferred the dacha in the autumn evenings, about an hour before it got truly dark. Then he could look down from the Moscow hills and see the Soviet capital swaddled in its smoky, protective mist, like a Matisse painting. He wondered what had happened to the one he had had in the lounge of the Belgravia house. Sold, probably. The British government would have made money, he knew. It had been a bargain when he bought it. The furniture would have gone up in value, too. Certainly the French Empire.

He heard movement and turned expectantly, smiling at Valentina. His wife was a plump, comfortable woman, warm to be next to on a winter’s night. Wouldn’t have been quite the same near the Mediterranean. Or in Africa, perhaps. But then, he thought, he wasn’t near the Mediterranean. Or Africa. Nor would he be, ever again.

‘Happy?’ she asked.

‘Completely.’

‘I never thought it would end like this. So perfectly, I mean.’

Berenkov didn’t reply immediately.

‘Were you very frightened?’ he asked.

‘Always,’ she replied. ‘I expected it to get better, when you’d established yourself with a good cover. But it didn’t. It got worse. When I heard you’d been arrested, it was almost a relief … the news I’d expected for so long.’

He nodded.

‘I was getting very nervous, too, towards the end,’ he admitted.

‘Was prison very bad?’

He nodded again.

‘I knew I’d never serve the full sentence, of course,’ he said. ‘I thought, in the beginning, that I would be able to withstand it easily enough, waiting for the exchange that we always arrange … but it had a strange, destructive effect …’

Valentina looked at the man she had seen so rarely in the past twenty years. The furtive, cowed look had gone at last, she realised. Now the only legacy was the hair, completely white. Once it had been so black, she remembered nostalgically. My Georgian bear, she had called him. She reached out, feeling for his arm, looking down with him over the faraway city.

‘What was Charlie Muffin like?’ she asked unexpectedly.

He considered her question.

‘A very unusual man,’ he said firmly. ‘Very unusual indeed.’

‘I owe him so much,’ said the woman. ‘And I’ll never be able to thank him.’

‘Neither will I,’ said Berenkov.

‘It would be nice to show my gratitude.’

‘Yes,’ agreed the man.

‘Did you like him?’

‘Very much,’ he said, distantly. Then he added: ‘And now I feel sorry for him.’

‘Sorry?’

‘He was very clever, doing what he did. But I’m sure he never completely realised what it would be like afterwards.’

He shivered, a man suddenly exposed to the cold.

‘… more terrible than prison,’ he said. ‘Far more terrible.’

It had been stupid to begin the conversation, she decided, irritated with herself. It had led to needless reminiscence and they had been getting away from that in the last few months.

‘It’s all over now,’ she said briskly. ‘And we can forget about it.’

‘I’ll never be able to do that,’ he said. ‘Nor want to.’

‘Just prison, then,’ she accepted. ‘The worst part.’

He looked down at the woman, smiling at her misunderstanding.

‘Prison wasn’t the worst part,’ he said.

She frowned up into his face.

‘Not knowing was the worst part,’ he tried to explain, with difficulty. ‘Being aware, as I was, for almost a year that I was being hunted yet not knowing what they were doing or how to fight back …’

He paused, back among the memories.

‘Not knowing is like being aware that you’re dying and unable to do anything about it,’ he said.

For several moments, neither spoke. Then Berenkov said: ‘And Charlie’s got to live like that forever.’

‘Unless he’s caught,’ she reminded him.

‘Unless he becomes careless and is caught,’ he agreed.