See Charlie Run

Chapter Twenty-Four

Charlie’s first thought was to go for one of the book-by-the-hour short-time whorehouse hotels in central Kowloon, among the clothes-festooned tenements, but then he realized how easily two round-eyes could be located in such complete Chinese surroundings and so he came closer – but not too close – to the waterfront and took a room in the Asia, which dollar-a-day vacationing students shared with working girls. There were still clothes-festooned tenements and cooking smells from outside streets zig-zagged with neon and inside rooms where some people really were on a dollar a day. There was a perpetual rustle and stir of noise, too, from outside again, but competing against quick-breathed bed sounds from rooms around them and a further away competition, from transistor radios. Their room was at the back of the hotel, kept in a permanent half-light from the overshadowing buildings. The netted curtains against the window were grey with dirt and the bed covering was grey, as well, and probably from the same cause, although it was difficult to be sure even from the additional illumination of the single bedside lamp with its lopsided shade. The lamp was on a table containing the only drawers, and when Charlie opened the plywood wardrobe a solitary bent metal hanger clattered at him. Light in the adjoining bathroom was better. There was a tide-mark of blackness at the water level of the lavatory and several more, at varying heights, around the bath, the bottom of which had completely lost its enamel and was uniformly black. When Charlie put the light on, three fatly contented cockroaches made for the safety of the skirting board but unhurriedly, more confident of their permanence of occupation than he was. Just the sort of place where Harkness would expect him to stay, thought Charlie.

‘We are occupying the same room?’

Charlie turned hack from the bathroom at Irena’s question, and said: ‘Do you want to be alone then, after today!’

She seemed to have difficulty in replying, the demanding confidence still not recovered. Instead she said: ‘Who tried to kill me?’

‘I told you before I didn’t know,’ reminded Charlie. ‘I’m still unsure.’ There was so much to think about, maybe reconsider. He could find – just, and then certainly not justify – a rationale in the Americans blocking an escape route by destroying the plane, but today didn’t have any logic. Irena Kozlov wasn’t any advantage to them dead, and if he and Harry had been the targets of a professional CIA kill-and-snatch operation – and the weapon had most definitely been professional – why was he still alive and why hadn’t Irena Kozlov been taken? He had been a sitting duck, incapable of any effective resistance. And it would have been obvious to anyone after their first week of basic intelligence training. So if not the Americans, then who? There was only one obvious answer – an answer supported by the use of the special assassins’ gun that fired without noise – but against that were the same arguments as before. If the Russians had somehow found them there would have been a squad, and a squad of trained experts would not have let them get three feet from today’s ambush. Why the hell was the world full of questions without answers?

‘That man, the one who was killed; you said he was a friend of yours?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ said Charlie, reminded. ‘He was.’ Poor Harry, he thought: he wouldn’t after all be taking a family with tinkling names to settle in Cockfosters, the next stop after Oakwood.

‘I am sorry someone has died, because of me.’

Charlie looked intently at the woman, surprised by the expression of regret and the continued humility, neither of which seemed in character. ‘So am I,’ he said. Wilson didn’t like soldiers getting killed and Charlie didn’t like his mates – even mates who’d made him temporarily suspicious – getting killed.

‘What are we going to do?’ It was a little-girl question from someone who wasn’t a little girl.

Charlie moved closer to her but then didn’t know what to do because Irena Kozlov wasn’t the sort of woman to feel out to and offer some reassurance through physical contact. He did anyway and she further surprised him by responding, reaching out to take his hand. ‘We’re going to get out,’ he said, wishing he believed it himself and hoping she did. Already rehearsed from his earlier reflections, Charlie went on: ‘They tried to kill us but we got away, so we must have lost them. Otherwise they would have tried again. So we’re safe.’

She looked back at him uncertainly, but didn’t openly challenge him. She said: ‘It’s got to be the Americans, hasn’t it?’

Charlie caught the doubt in her mind, wondering if the fear of her own people in pursuit had brought about the changed attitude. While he preferred it to her earlier demeanour, Charlie decided it would be better if she only had the fear from one source. He said: ‘Yes, it’s the Americans.’

‘They’ll lose,’ she announced.

‘Lose?’ queried Charlie. Her hands were very soft.

‘When I tell Yuri. He explained how you tried to persuade him to have both of us come to you, like the Americans. When I tell him what’s happened, he’ll abandon them and come to you. We both will.’

‘That will be good,’ said Charlie. Something to pass on to Wilson. In fact, there was a lot to discuss with the Director and he had to stop Cartright – initially anyway – mistakenly crossing to Macao.

‘Thank you, for looking after me like you have,’ said Irena.

What would a dark-haired woman whose name meant Dawn Rising feel about the way he’d looked after her husband, thought Charlie, suddenly. The entry documents were waiting at the High Commission; something else he shouldn’t forget. He squeezed her hands in attempted reassurance and said: ‘It’s going to work out just fine.’

‘I hope Yuri is all right, now.’

‘Don’t worry,’ urged Charlie. How was he going to manage all that had to be done? It would take at least three hours, there and back, getting first to Hong Kong island and then across to the signals station, and he couldn’t leave Irena Kozlov alone, not now. And he couldn’t take her with him, either: apart from the risk of their being re-identified during the journey, it was inconceivable to take a KGB agent – albeit a defecting one – anywhere near an installation with the security classification that existed at Chung Hom Kok. It looked like rule-breaking time again.

It took a long time for him to be connected with the duty officer: Charlie sat perched on the bed-edge, aware how hard it was, wondering if the bathroom cockroaches had any friends between the covers. When the man came on to the line, Charlie dictated his Foreign Office number, conscious of the intake of breath from the other end at the breach of security, and hurried on, stopping any protest or reaction, giving the hotel and the room and insisting Cartright be directed there the moment he made contact.

Able finally to speak, the man began: ‘London will …’ but Charlie put the receiver down before he could continue: he bet London – Harkness – would complete the threat, whatever it was.

Irena was at the window, staring out at the dark, inner courtyard, properly standing to one side so that she would not be openly visible. There seemed more than a difference in the way she was behaving; she appeared physically smaller, weighed down by what had – and was – happening. She was probably wishing she’d never defected and if she was, she would be thinking there was no going back.

‘Are you hungry?’

Irena turned, without coming away from the window. ‘Would it mean going out?’

‘Only immediately outside; I saw some places, in the same road as we are.’

‘No.’

‘Tell me, if you change your mind.’

‘We just left him, sitting there!’ she burst out.

‘He was dead: we couldn’t do anything.’

‘Was he married?’

‘Yes.’

‘Children?’

‘A girl.’

She shuddered. ‘What will happen to them?’

‘I’ll see to it.’

Some sort of emotion moved through her again and Irena said: ‘It’s awful, this business, isn’t it?’

The disillusionment that brought about the defection? wondered Charlie; it seemed a strange reaction from someone knowingly married to a killer. Coaxing, he said: ‘Is that what Yuri thinks?’

‘He says not – that it’s imprisonment he’s frightened of – but I know it is.’

Charlie didn’t want to lose the momentum, but he had to make the briefest of pauses, correctly to phrase the question. He said: ‘He’s worked a lot, then?’

Now Irena hesitated, not lost in any reverie but very aware of what she was being asked. ‘A lot,’ she said, not offering any more.

A mistake to push in that direction, decided Charlie. He said: ‘Did you find it difficult?’

Irena considered the question and said positively: ‘No, not at all.’

‘Where were you, before Tokyo?’

She moved finally, coming further into the room. ‘Is this the start, the debriefing?’

‘No,’ said Charlie.

‘Acceptance interview?’

‘It’s a little late for that, isn’t it?’

Irena smiled, big-toothed. ‘Far too late. What then?’

‘Obvious, professional interest.’

The woman examined him curiously, as if she didn’t fully believe him, and said: ‘Bonn. It was the first posting Yuri and I had together; he was in London by himself.’

An attempted deflection, gauged Charlie. ‘And you stayed behind in Moscow, throughout the time he was in England?’

The smile came again. ‘No,’ she said. ‘For part of the time, but then I worked supposedly as a secretary at the Soviet consulate in San Francisco.’

Which monitors the American hi-tech industry to the south, in Silicon Valley, thought Charlie. There was a determined and recognizable pattern from the places where Irena Kozlov had worked: Silicon Valley, the technology crucible of the West, from there to West Germany, the major European smuggling conduit, and then on to Japan, the major Asian route to the Soviet Union. The complete cell-building, spy-suborning tour, in fact: Moscow would unquestionably and immediately order her killed, to prevent what she knew being passed on. At once came the stumbling block question: so why hadn’t it been done? Knowing that all defectors try to elevate their importance – and wanting to prod Irena’s previous boastfulness – Charlie said: ‘You must be highly regarded.’

She sat on the bed, the only place available at the bottom, away from him, and said: ‘Yes, I am.’ The boastfulness he’d expected wasn’t there.

Remembering the fears that prompted their split defection, Charlie said: ‘You will be well treated, in England. I can promise you that.’

‘I’m afraid it might be a problem,’ she said.

‘There’s bound to be uncertainty, a period of adjustment …’ began Charlie, but she talked across him.

‘Not that,’ she said. ‘I know what will be expected of me … the cooperation. I think that’s what I will find difficult …’ The smile came once more, a sad expression this time. ‘I’m well aware of what I’ve done but I still regard myself as a loyal Russian. Does that surprise you?’

‘Utterly,’ admitted Charlie. Weren’t there enough ambiguities, without this!

‘I did it because of Yuri,’ disclosed Irena. ‘It was he who wanted to come over, not me.’

More guidance for Wilson; or rather for the debriefer who would eventually handle Irena, if he managed to get her out. It meant the woman would have to be treated quite differently from how they might have envisioned: not as someone hostile but certainly as someone who would be reluctant to impart what she knew. Charlie thought back to his earlier reflection about how defectors usually embroidered, to enhance their value; Irena Kozlov was going to be the reverse. One reflection prompted another: now he definitely hoped he wasn’t going to be the unlucky sod appointed her case officer. Get her out first, Charlie reminded himself, soberly. Unable to think of anything better, he said again: ‘Believe me, things will be fine.’

‘I’d like to think so,’ she said. ‘So much has happened, so quickly, that I’m not finding it easy.’

Neither am I, love; neither am I, thought Charlie. He was spared the search for further echoing assurances by Cartright’s knock, a hard sound, just once. Irena started up from the bed and went to the wall by the window again, the furthest point from the door. She remained there after the Tokyo Resident identified himself and was admitted by Charlie who said to her: ‘It’s OK.’

Cartright offered his hand, which she took hesitantly, and then the man looked doubtfully around the room.

‘It’s what the brochures call unchanged,’ said Charlie.

‘What’s happened?’

Charlie gave an edited account in front of the woman, avoiding any reference to Chung Hom Kok or the pressure Harry Lu had imposed, for the cooperation that cost the man his life. Throughout Cartright stood nodding, and when Charlie finished he said: ‘I never knew Harry Lu.’

‘He was all right,’ said Charlie. It didn’t seem much of an epitaph for someone who’d worked his balls off for the service since he’d literally been a kid. Charlie was glad Cartright didn’t waste time asking questions to which he didn’t have answers.

Cartright looked at the woman, recognizing the difficulty of full conversation in front of her. ‘London want to talk. Urgently,’ was all he allowed himself.

Charlie wanted to talk to them, but not yet: postponing confrontations seemed to be a growing habit, he thought, remembering his initial reluctance in Tokyo. He said: ‘More important things to do first. We’ve got to stay clean, as far as local law is concerned. We ran out on the Hyatt, in Macao, and that’s going to show up when the investigation starts and puts Harry there, as well. I want you to go back and settle the account: just ours, of course. There was no obvious contact between Harry and us – only in our rooms – and I don’t want any connection established. Cash, no traceable credit cards.’

‘They’ll still have names, from registration records.’

‘Along with a hundred others,’ said Charlie. ‘They won’t mean a thing as long as there’s nothing suspicious like skipping out on a bill.’

Cartright nodded and said: ‘London was very insistent.’

‘I’ll let them know you passed the message on,’ promised Charlie.

Cartright looked uncertain, but didn’t press the argument. ‘What after Macao?’ he said.

Christ knows, thought Charlie. He said: ‘Back here. And be careful. There’ve been enough casualties.’

After Cartright left, Irena said: ‘He seems very young.’

‘I always think that about policemen in the street. Must be age,’ said Charlie. He’d meant it as a remark against himself but it didn’t come out as he intended. She didn’t seem offended. He wondered how old she was: late thirties perhaps, forty top whack.

‘Thank you, for what you’ve done.’

‘You already thanked me,’ reminded Charlie.

‘I mean you don’t have to go on looking after me so closely. I’m feeling much better now. I’ll be all right.’

Was she worried about both of them sharing the same room? She hadn’t seemed to mind the reference to age and Charlie wondered if she’d be upset by the assurance that the last thing he had in mind was making any sort of sexual approach: the handholding had been part of the job, nothing else. He said: ‘I wasn’t strictly honest with you, that first night at the Mandarin, when you asked me if everything had gone wrong and I said no. Everything hadn’t gone wrong: but too much had. It still is going wrong. And like I say, I don’t know why. I’ve got to get you safely to England and I am going to do it. And after what happened today I’ve decided that means not leaving you alone, for a moment.’

‘He said London wanted you, urgently.’

‘They want you more urgently,’ said Charlie. ‘Cartright won’t be long. When it’s not me, it’ll be him.’

In fact he took longer than Charlie expected, so that it was already genuinely dark by the time the man got back to the Kowloon hotel: the single lamp was like a match in a coalmine.

‘Any problems?’ asked Charlie. There were enough, surely.

‘None at all,’ said Cartright. He handed Charlie the hotel receipt and said: ‘London will want this.’

Harkness really had the poor bugger trained, thought Charlie. He said: ‘Too late to speak to them now.’

‘The time difference is in our favour,’ disputed Cartright.

‘I meant too late from this end,’ said Charlie, still avoiding any mention of Chung Hom Kok: avoiding London, too. To Irena he said: ‘Sure you’re feeling better?’

‘Positive,’ she said at once, brightly.

‘Good,’ said Charlie. ‘Then we can go out to eat.’

They went to the restaurant Charlie had already identified, just across the road from the hotel. It was bare-floored and the tables were formica-topped, and Charlie recognized a Chinese restaurant that Chinese used and decided they’d scored, which they had. It was Sichuan: Charlie had Governor’s Chicken and Cartright chose Ma-Pa Do Fu. Irena only picked at her fish, the brightness no longer there. Any normal conversation was practically impossible, although Cartright tried and Charlie did his best, and there were still long periods of echoing silence between them. But then, reflected Charlie, it was hardly a social event. They went directly back to the hotel, where Cartright had a room on the floor above theirs. At the door to their room, Irena stopped and said: ‘I really don’t think this is necessary.’

‘I do,’ insisted Charlie. He opened the door and went in, refusing a corridor argument.

Irena followed and said: ‘Richard’s room is just one floor up.’

Cartright stood uncertainly at the door, looking between the two of them, unsure what – if any – contribution to make.

‘Irena,’ said Charlie, with forced patience, ‘I’m sharing your room, not your bed. An aeroplane you should have been on was blown out of the sky and this morning someone I liked a lot was killed, not more than a foot from where you stood …’ If it made her frightened, so what: frightened she was more malleable. He picked up: ‘I told you this afternoon I was going to keep you safe; and that means my staying in your room so let’s cut the shit. In shit, I’m an expert.’

She looked down at herself, smoothing her hands over her pink-patterned suit. ‘I don’t have anything to change into.’

Charlie sighed: on top of everything else, he had to get the KGB’s original Vestal Virgin. He’d been sure there weren’t any. He said: ‘I’ll stay outside, while you get into bed.’

In the corridor it was the first time Charlie and Cartright had been alone. Cartright said at once: The Americans insist they haven’t got her husband. A navy ship isn’t possible: there isn’t one for a thousand miles. So it’s got to be a plane again; the troop leader’s name is Clarke. Due early tomorrow morning: there wasn’t a definite time when I spoke to the signals station. And London are as mad as hell about that, incidentally: about a lot of things.’

‘You know the American expression SNAFU?’ asked Charlie, wearily.

‘No,’ said Cartright.

‘Situation normal: all fucked up.’

‘This is serious, Charlie.’

‘It was serious when Harry Lu got a bullet in his eye.’

‘Sorry,’ said Cartright. He looked at the closed door and said: ‘She’s not easy, is she?’

‘Easier than she was,’ assured Charlie.

‘Why don’t I spell you, during the night?’

There wasn’t any point in going absolutely without sleep, Charlie thought: he’d done enough of that. ‘Thanks,’ he accepted. He knocked on the door and said: ‘You ready?’

Irena was lying with the grey covers up to her chin and Charlie wondered again about companions for the bathroom cockroaches. He put his hand against his ribs and said: ‘You really shouldn’t worry. Rape always gives me a stitch in my side. Just here.’

‘Where are you going to be?’

It was a good question, in a shitty room like this. Charlie perched at the bottom on the bed, on the side opposite to her and with his back uncomfortably against the metal bed-edge. ‘This far away.’

Irena smiled, an expression difficult to define, and said: i suppose I could spare a pillow.’

Charlie wasn’t at all sure he wanted one, from a bed like that, but he said ‘Thanks’ and she manoeuvred one from beneath the sheets, still managing to keep herself covered. He made a support for his back and tried to get comfortable.

‘I want the light left on,’ she said.

Usually the request was made in different circumstances, thought Charlie. He said: ‘Richard is relieving me, incidentally. Don’t panic at someone else coming into the room.’

She turned heavily on to her side, away from the light, bringing the covers further up so that he could not see her face. Charlie gazed around the decayed room and then at his watch: Christ, it hadn’t even gone ten! Should have brought a bottle back from the restaurant: the rice wine had been good, like the food. Pity Irena hadn’t enjoyed it. Her breathing seemed heavier, but Charlie didn’t think she was really asleep. Maybe a good idea he hadn’t brought any wine back. Better that he sat there, boringly sober, and started all over again, from that moment in Wilson’s office if necessary, and ran everything over just one more time, trying to find the key that would unlock all the doors so far remaining steadfastly shut in his face. Irena shifted, a settling movement, and Charlie eased slightly away, giving her room. It ruckled his jacket, awkwardly. He went away further, actually from the bed, taking the jacket off and hoping she didn’t look over her tented barrier and start yelling rape: in a place like this, there wouldn’t be a translation for the word, in any known language. As he did so Charlie detected in an inside pocket the Hyatt bill that Cartright had given him earlier: like Cartright had said, Harkness would want it, to make his tidy sums add up in their tidy columns. He took it out, glancing without interest at the total and then stopped, looking closer, at first unsure in the dull light. Charlie stayed unmoving for a long time, although bringing his eyes up quite quickly from the no longer necessary bill. Then, quietly now, not wanting to disturb her yet, he went to the always-carried shoulder bag containing the material the Director had freighted from London, looking not for that but for the other bill he’d sent Harry Lu to pay that first night in Hong Kong: he remembered using the same phrase then – about keeping things clean – that he had today to Cartright. It was in the side-pocket, still in the special departure envelope that the Mandarin always gave. The initial check only took Charlie seconds, but after so many mistakes and wrong turns – and with at last something which might at least lead him part way out of the maze – he determined to be sure, so he went right up to the bedside, directly beneath the light.

Fuck me, he thought. And then, that they had. He went back to the base with its supportive pillow and said: ‘Irena!’

She didn’t respond at once and so Charlie said again: ‘Irena! You’re not asleep: I know you’re not asleep.’

She came over the bedclothes, looking at him. ‘What?’

‘I think we’ve got things to talk about.’

Irena pushed the coverings down still further, although remaining completely concealed. ‘What?’ she asked again.

‘Everything,’ said Charlie. ‘Everything you’ve got to tell me.’

Olga didn’t know – couldn’t remember – how long the aimless wandering had gone on through the alleys and then the wider streets of Macao. The floating casino was a positive recollection, the beginning of the gradual recovery, because she’d dropped the gun into the water there, tensed against the splash between the boat and the jetty that had sounded to her like the explosion that guns usually made when they were fired but appeared to be heard by nobody else. And where the second fear had immediately come, that it wouldn’t sink, because it was plastic and light and floated initially on the surface while people jostled past behind her, eyes only for the fan-tan tables: and then the barrel seeped and filled with water and it gurgled down and still no one had seen. She supposed she must have taken a taxi to the ferry, but she couldn’t remember: her concentration had been upon the terminal itself, apprehensive of thronged police and person-by-person checks which never occurred because when she arrived the departures proceeded quite normally, without any interruption. The crossing to Kowloon was gone, too – not completely, but almost – and it was not until she finally regained the mainland that any positive recollection and cohesion started to formulate in her mind. She knew she had to get off the streets and she took a hotel which smelled and where babies cried, comparatively close to the Kowloon arrival jetty. And then she knew she had to speak to Yuri in Tokyo, at the Shinbashi apartment where he would be waiting according to their strictly time-tabled schedule to hear that everything had gone as they’d hurriedly planned, and that Irena was dead and they were secure, forever. Which they weren’t: couldn’t be, not now. Because she’d failed. Olga actually felt out towards the telephone several times, never once able to lift the receiver. Finally – instead – she let herself go sideways, against a counterpane that smelled like everything else.

‘Oh God,’ she said, uttering the forbidden word for the first time. ‘Oh, dear God, what am I going to do?’

There was a bizarre irony in that Olga Balan and the CIA group led by Art Fredericks – each of whom were pursuing Irena Kozlov for different reasons – were both at that moment just over a mile from the Asia, where the woman sat upright against the bedhead, still covered but confronting Charlie Muffin.

‘I’m waiting,’ said Charlie.