See Charlie Run

Chapter Two

Art Fredericks disembarked from the train on to the miniscule platform, momentarily drawing back from the crush of people filing obediently in the direction of the first of the shrines at Kamakura, admiring Kozlov’s choice and recognizing, reluctantly, that the Russian was a clever bastard. And recognizing, pleased, that he’d been cleverer.

Kozlov had chosen the location, which he had always done since establishing contact, and Kamakura was perfect. Wherever the Russian was – and Fredericks knew he would be watching from somewhere – the tiny station and the single exit from it allowed the man complete surveillance, to determine if Fredericks were alone or accompanied by minders: or worse, snatch squads. Fredericks joined the crush, thinking as he had a dozen times since coming to Japan that everything would have been a goddamned sight easier if he weren’t a round-eye, so easily distinguishable from all the other tourists. By the same token, he accepted realistically, it should make Kozlov easier to identify. Fredericks didn’t bother to search, knowing by now of Kozlov’s expertise and that to try to locate him, wherever he was, would be pointless: another of Kozlov’s insistences was that as well as selecting the meeting places he should always initiate the contact, never giving any indication where or how it might be. Clever bastard, thought Fredericks again, conscious of attention from the Japanese immediately around him. Fredericks was a tall, heavy man, fighting a losing battle to prevent the muscle of his college heavyweight boxing days turning to fat, but he knew, unoffended, that it was not his size which intrigued them. It was the hair. Not only was it tightly curled and thick on his head but thatched on his chest and obvious today because he wore an open sports shirt, and matted, too, down from his arms, to cover the backs of his hands. His Japanese wasn’t good enough to overhear if they were calling him monkey: he knew it was a frequently used word. One day, he thought, he would have to ask somebody why the Japanese never had any body hair.

The American went, according to the Russian’s instructions, towards the Meigetsu-In temple. An expert himself, the CIA agent carried a camera and went into his tourist cover, stopping several times to photograph the foam of hydrangeas through which he had to climb to reach the building. He lingered at the main building and then stopped to photograph the smouldering fire upon which the students burned their wood-inscribed prayers for examination success, all the time alert for the approach. Which never came. Ten minutes had been the time limit.

As Fredericks turned and started to descend the long walkway, he saw Harry Fish, at one of the side shrines. The other CIA man whom Fredericks had sent in advance, with the rest of the team, showed no recognition and neither, of course, did Fredericks.

The next designated spot was very close. Fredericks walked easily back towards the railway tracks, wondering if the whole business were going to be a waste of time. Langley were insisting he try and so he would, but Fredericks thought he’d reached a pretty sound judgment about the Russian on their three previous encounters and guessed Kozlov would tell him to go to hell. The American hoped that was the man’s only reaction; Fredericks’ feeling was that Kozlov was too valuable a catch to risk challenging the arrangements at this stage. The time to change everything was when they got the man across, when it would be too late for him to do anything about it. At this stage it was still possible for Kozlov to back away from the whole thing.

Fredericks entered the Enno-Ji temple, privately amused at his thoughts of Kozlov telling them to go to hell when he saw the ten kings of Hades grimacing down from their places. He hoped it wasn’t an omen. He took more photographs, isolating Hank Levine near a side door, apparently engrossed in an English-language guidebook about the temple. Fredericks bought a book of his own, to fill in the stipulated time limit, wondering if Kozlov would make him complete the entire route. It was possible. For the first time this was a meeting requested by the Americans, not by the man himself. So Kozlov would be nervous, unsure of the reason and taking every precaution.

The American paused outside the second temple, looking at the guidebook he’d just bought. There was a map of the tourist spots just inside the cover and Fredericks decided that Daibutsu was too far away to walk. He had to return almost to the railway station to get a cab and as he settled into the back he hoped he didn’t have to make every point Kozlov had listed. At the entrance to the third spot the cab driver said: ‘I wait?’ and the American hesitated, momentarily, attracted by the thought of permanent transport. Reluctantly he shook his head.

Beyond the narrow entrance the Kotoku-In temple ballooned out, dominated by the enormous figure of the open-air Buddha, with its curious head-down stare. At least, reflected Fredericks, going into his routine, his parents in Little Rock were due quite a range of holiday pictures. In the tourist shop to the right Jimmy Dale, who hadn’t bothered with a camera of his own, was sifting through the professionally taken selection. Fredericks hoped that Kozlov’s caution wouldn’t prevent his making any sort of meeting at all. The guys were pretty pissed off losing an entire Saturday as it was.

‘Interesting, isn’t it?’

Fredericks managed – just – to prevent the jump of surprise. He’d been tensed, waiting, and he’d still missed the goddamned man until he was right alongside. The irritation, at the thought of Kozlov’s expertise being better than his own, dampened the satisfaction at the man having kept the meeting. Falling into the role dictated by Kozlov, that of Western tourists getting into casual conversation over a point of interest, Fredericks: ‘Yes. The position seems unusual.’

This was the testing period, the time when both engaged in seemingly meaningless conversation while each checked that the other had kept to the understanding and come alone. Which was why Fredericks had moved the other guys in overnight, so they could get to the spots early and be in place when he arrived, not obviously follow him in. Although he appeared to be looking at the statue, Kozlov’s attention was upon the narrow entrance. It was the only one there was, and Fredericks realized why Kozlov had chosen this place, in preference to all the others. Clever bastard, he thought, once more.

Kozlov appeared to consult a reference book and said: ‘It wasn’t originally created like that. There was a tidal wave, about a hundred years ago. It washed away the temple in which the figure was housed and forced its head forward, in that strange position. The people who worship him decided that he didn’t want to live in an enclosed house; that’s why he’s permanently in the open. Why have you asked to meet?’

The circumstances meant that Kozlov had to be by himself, if the defection request were genuine. Which still had to be proved. Until which time he had to watch his own back. Dale had realized the contact and positioned himself perfectly, a roof support protectively behind him and the open square dominated by the buddha set out in front. Covered then, thought Fredericks; there was a group of obvious Western tourists – fellow Americans, he guessed, from their dress – filing in through the rear door to examine the hollow interior of the statue, but apart from that there were no Caucasians at all in the area. Maybe, decided Fredericks, there were certain advantages after all in being a round-eye in Asia. Kozlov was alone: it was an important point to make, when Washington made yet another of its demands for indicators whether or not Kozlov was for real. He said: ‘That’s a cute story. There’s something important for us to talk through.’

‘I don’t know how they’re going to interpret the next tidal wave or typhoon: this place seems to be right in the path of natural disasters,’ said the Russian. ‘You’ve got all the details of the British involvement?’

‘No,’ said Fredericks, directly. There was no purpose in continuing the avoidance and the split-against-eavesdropping double talk, now that they were both sure. He was conscious of the Russian’s abrupt head turn, towards him.

‘Why no!’ demanded the man. ‘That was all that remained to be fixed, after our meetings. Why I agreed to come today, when I got the signal. Everything else had been discussed.’

Kozlov’s rising anger was as Fredericks had feared and warned it might be. After Kozlov’s first approach their encounters had always been his decision, confirmed in the most simple – and therefore the safest – way. The Agency permanently maintained a room –323 –in the Imperial Hotel, with its view of the palace: by some irony, Jimmy Dale, who was now guarding him against any unexpected eventuality, was the man who occupied it, to cover against any hotel staff curiosity. If Kozlov wanted contact, he telephoned a supposed enquiry against the room number, giving the place. Every three days – purporting to be Dale – he called the hotel, checking messages. The American response, if they wanted a meeting, was for the message to be that a conference was necessary, as always leaving Kozlov to be the decider of where the meeting should be. Fredericks had invoked the system on the American part four days earlier, for the first time. The American said: ‘My people aren’t happy, about the British. You’ve no cause to distrust us. We’ll keep every promise that we’ve made: on my life!’

Kozlov began to move, apparently wanting to view the buddha from a different angle. Fredericks had to go as well, to keep up with him. Kozlov said viciously: ‘You’re trying to trick me, like I always knew you would!’

‘No!’ said Fredericks, worried. ‘We’re doing everything you asked. Hear me out.’

The other man stopped, using the camera that he carried, ‘What is it?’ he asked.

Inviting the other man’s understanding, Fredericks said: ‘It’s not me. It’s headquarters. You know what headquarters are like.’

‘What do they want?’

‘It’s unnecessary – they feel it’s unnecessary – to bring the British in …’ Fredericks saw the other man start to speak and said urgently: ‘Wait! Let me finish! You said you wanted $500,000, for yourself. We’ll double it, to $1,000,000, which will give you what you’d get from the British, for Irena. We’ll get you both out: new identities, protection, everything. You can choose whatever house you want, anywhere in America …’

‘We’ve talked through all this,’ dismissed Kozlov. ‘This is a ridiculous conversation.’

‘You’ve no reason to think we won’t keep our undertaking,’ insisted Fredericks, desperately. ‘I’ve been told to offer you whatever guarantee you need.’

Kozlov, who was a small, unobtrusive man of seemingly apparent calmness, said: ‘I’ve already set out the guarantees I need.’ He closed his camera, a positive movement. ‘It’s over,’ he declared. ‘Finished.’

‘No!’ protested Fredericks, yet again. He was hot with fear, knowing what would happen if he lost the other man. They were a bunch of stupid bastards, back there at Langley: trying to impress each other with a lot of bullshit talk in comfortable conference rooms, we want this and we want that and we want this, ignoring the warnings he’d sent. And if it fucked up, because of how they wanted it done, it would be his fault and his butt, with a lot more bullshit talk about his incompetence and his inexperience and how they should have sent someone else, who could have done it their way. Fredericks said: ‘It was a sincere offer; is a sincere offer. But if you want it to stay the way it was, then fine.’

‘If it was fine my way, you wouldn’t have tried to change,’ said Kozlov, unmollified.

Fredericks tried to subdue his apprehension, calling upon the other man’s experience. ‘You know the way it is,’ he urged. ‘Wouldn’t your people try to do the same, if someone from the CIA tried to split a crossing, say between Russia and Poland?’

‘We control the Polish service,’ refused Kozlov, pedantically. ‘They’d do as they were told.’

‘You’re aware of what I mean,’ persisted Fredericks. ‘We want you, Yuri. But we want the whole package, complete. Not divided, like this.’

Kozlov smiled, a rare expression, and Fredericks felt a surge of relief. The Russian said: ‘I’ve made your headquarters nervous?’

Fredericks hesitated, unsure of the response the other man wanted. Then he said: ‘Yes. It’s an unusual demand.’

‘It was meant to be,’ said the Russian. ‘I won’t be cheated. Or tricked.’

‘Like I’ve said …’ tried the American, but Kozlov talked across him.

‘So don’t bother saying it again,’ interrupted the Russian. ‘I accept that you were only doing what you were told to do, by Washington. But that means you hadn’t properly explained the situation, for them to understand how pointless it would be. It’s my way or it’s no way at all. You’ve known that from the beginning.’

Kozlov was arrogant as well as clever, decided Fredericks. He said: ‘All right. Your way, entirely.’

‘What about the British?’ demanded Kozlov.

‘There’s been some communication,’ qualified Fredericks. ‘No one has actually arrived yet.’

‘You delayed, to see what would happen today?’ anticipated Kozlov.

Now Fredericks smiled. ‘Yes,’ he admitted. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘I believe it wasn’t your fault,’ said Kozlov. ‘We suffer fools at Dzerzhinsky Square, too. It won’t happen again?’

‘No,’ promised Fredericks, hopefully. Damn Langley and empire builders, he thought.

‘How much longer?’ pressed Kozlov.

‘I’ll tell Langley today. Say it must be soon.’

‘Very soon,’ insisted the Russian. ‘It’s easy for suspicion to arise in a Soviet embassy.’

‘You think something is wrong?’ asked Fredericks, feeling new concern.

‘Not yet: I’m sure of that. Irena is as alert as I am, so I’m confident we would have detected something, between us …’ He smiled again. ‘I’m just a very cautious person; I was trained that way.’

‘I understand,’ assured Fredericks. ‘I’ll make everything very clear.’

‘I want you to leave here first,’ said Kozlov.

‘Of course.’

‘We’ll maintain the same method of contact?’ said the Russian.

‘Yes.’

‘Your people at Langley are stupid.’

‘Yes,’ agreed Fredericks, sincerely. ‘They’re very stupid.’

The American felt strangely self-conscious, going out of the temple with the Russian watching him. The feeling was soon overtaken by another, better sensation. Kozlov thought he controlled everything and that they jumped when he said jump, but Jim Dale was back there, watching everything the guy did. Which made him the cleverer of the two, decided Fredericks, satisfied.

The arrangement had been that each of the people guarding him returned to the US embassy at Akasaka Toranomon directly after the failed meetings, to avoid any danger of identification from the possibly watching Kozlov, so Fish and Levine were back in Tokyo ahead of Fredericks. While they awaited the arrival of Dale – together with Winslow Elliott and Takeo Yamada, the two other CIA men whose wait at the other places set out but not used by the Russian had been pointless – Fredericks encoded Kozlov’s reaction and transmitted it to Washington. He took a lot of trouble, wanting, without making the criticism obvious, CIA headquarters fully to understand how near they had come to fouling up the whole thing by imagining remote control was possible. Fredericks waited in the code room for half an hour, for their response. When it finally came, it was limited to the briefly formal acknowledgement of receipt, and Fredericks knew he’d got the message home. Now they’d be scurrying around, each trying to dump on the other and avoid the responsibility for coming so close to disaster.

By the time he got back to the CIA section within the embassy, the other three men had returned and were waiting for him, and Fredericks made no attempt to sanitize the account, as he had to Langley.

‘Kozlov’s right,’ said Levine, when the CIA supervisor finished the explanation. ‘Langley are stupid. Kozlov might appear calm, to you. But inwardly he’ll be screwed up tighter than a spring; he can’t be any other way. It’ll only take the slightest thing to spook him.’

‘I’ve told them that,’ reminded Fredericks.

‘What did they say?’ asked Fish.

‘Nothing.’

They all knew, like Fredericks, what the silence meant, and there were various smiles around the room.

‘You know what I think,’ said Elliott, who was irritated at what he considered a wasted day. ‘I think we should snatch him. Arrange another meeting, like today, put extra men in everywhere and then jump him. Get some sort of knock-out stuff from Technical Division, sedate him until we get him on to a military plane and stop all this screwing about.’

‘What sort of dumb-assed idea is that!’ erupted Fredericks, genuinely irritated but also venting some of his earlier anger upon the man. ‘That’s kidnapping, for Christ’s sake! We’d have Moscow going ape, Japan screaming and Kozlov hostile without the wife he eventually wants with him. Why stop at Kozlov, if that’s the way we’re going to operate! Why not snatch Gorbachev and the entire fucking Politburo and run the Soviet Union from some cosy little safe house in Virginia!’

Elliott shifted under the ferocity of the attack, looking embarrassed. ‘It was an idea,’ he said, awkwardly.

‘Dumb-assed,’ repeated Fredericks, dismissively. ‘Let’s start behaving professionally.’ He looked to the men who had waited fruitlessly at the first two shrines. ‘Well?’

‘No one was monitoring you,’ said Fish. ‘I’m sure of it.’

‘You were clean at the Enno-Ji temple, too,’ said Levine.

‘Jim?’ asked Fredericks.

The CIA agent who had monitored the actual encounter was a sandy-haired man newly posted from Washington. He nervously took off his glasses and said: ‘Squeaky clean. There was only one other group of Caucasians around the buddha …’

‘American …?’ interrupted Fredericks.

Dale nodded: ‘Made a point of checking, after you left. A Lions club, from Milwaukee. Throughout the entire time you were with Kozlov, no one showed the slightest interest.’

Fredericks was silent for several moments, remembering his assessment in the buddha temple. ‘If he’s by himself, it indicates he’s genuine,’ he said, trying the opinion out on the others. ‘If it were some sort of trick, some entrapment embarrassment for instance, he’d be mob-handed: people identifying me, stuff like that.’

‘I’d say so,’ agreed Yamada, an American-born Japanese.

‘Me too,’ said Fish.

‘Still seems a lot of screwing around,’ said Elliott truculently.

Fredericks ignored the man, returning to Dale. ‘What happened after I left.’

‘He checked, for surveillance,’ said the American, wanting to boast his recognition and avoidance. ‘Went right by me into the souvenir shop: actually bought a key-ring. Then he went inside the buddha. It’s hollow, you know.’

‘Spare me the tourist crap,’ said Fredericks. ‘I heard it all from Kozlov when he was clearing his path. Sure he didn’t spot you?’

‘Positive,’ said Dale. ‘I told you, I checked the Milwaukee group. Got into the conversation with a couple of old guys and left the temple with them, like I was one of the party.’

‘Good deal,’ praised Fredericks.

‘So we’ve got to work with the British?’ said Yamada, introducing into the conversation what everyone had been avoiding.

‘We’ve still to get the word from Langley,’ said Fredericks, cautiously. ‘But that’s how it looks.’

‘But him!’ protested Elliott, gesturing to the file that had been airfreighted overnight from Washington and lay on Fredericks’ desk, a picture of Charlie Muffin uppermost.

‘Him,’ confirmed Fredericks. ‘He’s the person London nominated.’

‘Do you know what the son of a bitch did!’ demanded Elliott.

‘I know the stories, like everyone else,’ said Fredericks.

‘He’s a fucking Commie traitor!’

‘There’s an argument against that, sufficient for the British.’

‘I don’t give a damn about what’s sufficient for the British,’ argued Elliott, feeling on safe ground now and trying to recover from the previous mistake. This thing is uncertain enough as it is, without his involvement.’

‘Could be useful, precisely because of that uncertainty,’ said Fredericks, evenly.

The tone of the supervisor’s voice halted Elliott’s outburst. He hesitated and then said, smiling: ‘We’re going to use him?’

‘We’re still feeling out in the dark about Kozlov,’ reminded Fredericks. ‘More things can still go wrong than we can even guess at. The participation of someone like Charlie Muffin – a man who proveably screwed the British and American services and got both directors arrested by the Soviets in doing it –gives us a hell of an insurance policy, don’t you think?’

Smiles from the other men in the room matched that of Elliott, but it was the disgruntled man who spoke. ‘I like that,’ said Elliott. ‘I like that very much indeed.’

‘Only if something goes wrong with Kozlov?’ pressed Levine, who knew as well the American side of the history.

‘Let’s get Kozlov in the bag,’ said Fredericks. ‘Once we’ve achieved that and got the woman as well, we can think of settling things with Charlie Muffin.’

‘The British aren’t going to keep the woman? queried Dale, embarrassed the moment he spoke at showing his inexperience.

Elliott actually laughed, glad that finally the ridicule had shifted from him.

More kindly, Fredericks said: ‘Come on, Jim, what do you think! Do you really imagine we’re going to let the Limeys – and more particularly a Limey who made one of our directors prick of the month – get their hands in the cookie jar? Kozlov wants his particular cross-over deal, and after this morning he’ll get it. He’ll get the British baby-sitting his wife and he’ll get us, promising the keys to Fort Knox. And when we hit them the British – but more importantly Charlie Muffin – will think World War III has started in their own backyard.’

‘Which will serve the bastards right,’ said Yamada. ‘Can you believe the incredible arrogance, putting the man forward at all!’

‘We’d have screwed them whoever their man was,’ reminded Fredericks. ‘Charlie Muffin just makes it that much sweeter.’

‘Me!’ demanded Elliott, with sudden urgency. ‘When it happens, I want to be the one who fixes the son of a bitch: who teaches him a lesson!’

Fredericks recognized that Elliott was a worrying weakness, someone whose objective balance could not be trusted in a moment of absolute crisis. ‘We’ll see,’ he said, avoiding any sort of commitment. ‘There’s so much that’s more important, initially, before we start concerning ourselves with side issues.’

‘I don’t regard settling things with Charlie Muffin as a side issue,’ disputed Elliott, who saw retribution as the surest way to impress those grey-suited, anonymous men at Langley upon whom promotion always depended. ‘We lost a lot of face and a lot of people over that man. He can’t be allowed to escape, not a second time.’

‘We’ll see,’ reiterated Fredericks. He would have to take care that this man did not become a difficulty. There were already too many uncertainties as it was.

The Shiba Park is conveniently close to the Soviet embassy so the contact was arranged there. Although the meeting was flexible, for Irena’s benefit, she was still later than the time they had estimated. Kozlov showed no impatience, either while he waited near the Tokyo Tower, with its added radio mast to make it taller (and therefore marginally better) than the Paris Eiffel Towel of which it is an exact copy, or when she actually entered the recreation area. He did not approach her even then, and she made no attempt to make directly for him, either. Instead she walked with apparent casualness along a perimeter pathway intentionally chosen to take her a long time to reach him, enabling Kozlov to seek any pursuit for which he knew she would have already checked, at least six times since leaving the Soviet enclave. Kozlov was actually against one of the struts of the tower, confident he was completely concealed, because they had rehearsed and ensured that, too. It was a hot evening and the park was crowded – another advantage – but Kozlov was sure no one who came in after his wife was following her. Still he waited, not breaking the arranged pattern, remaining intent upon those behind her in case the followers – either American or fellow Russian – were as professional as he considered himself to be. It was unlikely but still possible. Still nothing. Waiting for Irena to complete the prepared route, Kozlov allowed himself a brief, satisfied smile. Today had been unsettling, a minor hiccup, but he was still absolutely in charge and in control of everything. It was a comforting feeling. It was going to work brilliantly, as he’d always planned that it should.

Irena showed no recognition when she reached the base of the tower, waiting for Kozlov’s approach to signal they weren’t under any observation, and positioning herself against a concealing strut as an added precaution. When he eventually approached she said, unsmiling: ‘Well?’

‘You’re clear,’ he said.

‘I already knew that,’ she said, the confidence obvious. Irena Kozlov was altogether a big woman, prominent nosed, large featured, big busted, wide hipped and much taller than her husband. She wore her hair strained back in a severe bun, and because of her size it was difficult for her to buy clothes in small-statured Japan. Those she had on today had been bought during their first posting together, in Bonn, and were worn in preference to anything Russian against the unlikely but still remote possibility of their being identified as coming from the Soviet Union.

‘Was I monitored?’ he said.

‘Every time,’ confirmed Irena, who had been her husband’s protector in the three meeting places at Kamakura that Art Fredericks visited that day. ‘They weren’t very impressive, any of them. I took photographs of all three and compared them for confirmation back at the embassy, against the picture files we have of American diplomatic personnel. The man at Meigetsu-In is named Harry Fish, at Enno-Ji it was someone called Levine and during the meeting it was Samuel Dale …’ The woman paused. ‘We didn’t have Dale positively identified as CIA, incidently. So everything can be justified to Moscow quite properly. Is everything arranged?’

Kozlov shook his head, abbreviating the purpose of Fredericks’ summons, looking not at his wife but beyond her, still checking the park.

‘Today it was to be settled!’ complained Irena, at once.

‘I threatened to call everything off, to withdraw.’ Kozlov looked toward her. ‘Frightened the silly man to death.’

‘They are trying to trick us!’ she insisted.

Kozlov shook his head again. ‘I was expecting it,’ he said. ‘It was something they had to attempt.’

‘Why didn’t they take you seriously, from the beginning!’

‘They do now,’ insisted Kozlov. ‘It’s good they only put one man in each place, to protect Fredericks. I was nervous of a commando squad.’

‘There’s been no warning, from Hayashi at the airport.’

‘They could have arrived by commercial airline, not necessarily military.’

‘You’ve briefed Hayashi?’

‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Anything military, British or American.’

‘We always chose public places, to avoid a snatch,’ she reminded him.

‘Did the man Dale take any photographs?’

‘No,’ said Irena. ‘Pure surveillance. Not particularly good, either.’

‘He couldn’t have identified you?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ she said, annoyed at the suggestion. ‘I tagged on to a party of Americans, as if I needed the translation. Dale actually spoke to two men, within a few feet of me.’

‘No one followed me out,’ said Kozlov. The statement was faintly questioning, because he had been alert.

‘He left with me, while you were in the souvenir shop!’

Kozlov shook his head in disbelief and then, reminded, said: ‘I bought you a present. There’ll be something better, later.’

Irena took the key-ring, smiling down at her husband for the first time. ‘There’s a lot I want, when we get to the West.’

‘There won’t be any more stupidity, like today,’ promised Kozlov. ‘Fredericks was really frightened.’

‘I wonder if the British will be more professional?’ said the woman.

At that moment Charlie Muffin approached the bar in the departure lounge of London airport, £800 of travellers’ cheques comfortably fat in his wallet and £200 in cash even more comfortably bulging his trouser pocket. There wasn’t any Islay Malt so he chose Glenlivet, peeling off the first of the notes that Harkness had failed to stop him getting and knowing the drink would taste all the better because of it. And not just because of the £1000. Aware of how the clerks gossiped—despite the supposed restriction of the Official Secrets Act – Charlie had allowed exactly twelve hours for the word to circulate before demanding a First Class ticket. And got it because the permanent mandarins had been too shit-scared to query the authority.

‘Going far, sir?’ asked the barman, the perpetually polite question.

‘As far as I can go,’ said Charlie.