See Charlie Run

Chapter Twelve

Charlie was up early, with a lot to do before noon. ‘Smooth as silk,’ he told himself, in the bathroom mirror. So why was he still unable to lose the feeling that any minute that steel-shod boot was going to catch him where it hurt the most. Kozlov was unquestionably genuine: no doubt about that, like he’d told Fredericks. Reason for the split defection made sense, too, because defectors were despised and frequently dumped, when their usefulness was exhausted. All the negotiations had been convoluted, but that made professional sense, also, because at any minute Kozlov could have pulled back. OK, so he hadn’t withdrawn when Fredericks maintained his warned-against surveillance, but that wasn’t an important inconsistency. Neither was the fact that Irene had been kept out of it; professionalism again, because it minimized the danger. Nothing wrong then. So maybe it was a hundred and one per cent genuine; maybe he was a suspicious old sod with thinning hair and painful feet and bloodshot eyes, who’d spent so much time making two plus two equal five that he couldn’t properly add up anything any more. And yet he could still feel that incoming boot.

Mind held by his self-description, Charlie leaned forward in the mirror. Eyes weren’t bloodshot — well, not much anyway — and the hair wasn’t thinning; just looked that way because he’d slept awkwardly. Not in bad shape at all, really, providing he remembered to breathe in all the time and walk with his chin up, to lessen the jowl droop. He managed to shave without cutting himself and chose the freshly pressed suit and the tie that no longer showed the pie stain, smiling at his unusual reflection in the larger mirror. Posh enough for a wedding, he decided. The reflection ran on, soberingly; people dressed up for funerals, as well.

He picked up the passport, checking his entries of the previous night, pausing at the photograph of Irena Kozlov. Certainly no rose, he thought again. He searched for the descriptive word and came up with formidable. Irena Kozlov certainly looked a formidable woman. He guessed it would take a long time fully to debrief her, everything having to be done at her speed and pace. Charlie hoped he didn’t get lumbered with the task; he disliked being boxed up for weeks in guarded country houses, painstakingly stripping the facts from the invariable self-important fiction with which defectors always attempted to make themselves appear better catches than they were. Bad as damage assessments, when one of their own people went walkabout. The thought led naturally to Herbert Bell; better as a conduit, the Director had said. Charlie wondered what disinformation they were feeding the Russians through the Foreign Office traitor. Sir Alistair Wilson was a cunning old bugger: whatever it was, Charlie knew it would be confusingly good.

Charlie did not hurry through the long walkway to the main foyer and stood back for a couple at the taxi rank, wanting at this stage to make it as easy as possible. He didn’t check until the vehicle was down the ramp and into the immediately clogged streets, looking idly through the rear window. Difficult in conditions like this, with so many cars, but he put?5 on the black Nissan with the central roof aerial: two men, neither Japanese. There’d be plenty of opportunity to make sure; Haneda was a bloody long way from the city. Of which he had not seen enough, Charlie decided. When Irena was safely away he’d definitely do the rounds in Niban-cho: he liked the look-at-me neon with bars the size of cupboards and bills the size of wardrobes, especially when it was Harkness’s money. Invite Cartright, maybe; give him indigestion, if he were Harkness’s man.

Charlie guessed correctly about the Nissan. Levine, who was driving, said: ‘I guess the airport.’

‘Where the hell is the pick-up?’ said Elliott.

‘Could be a dozen places.’ His partner’s constant anger worried Levine.

‘Noon, he told Fredericks,’ reminded Elliott. ‘He’s given himself a lot of time.’

‘Suppose it would make sense to meet her at the airport?’ said Levine.

‘Not good for a snatch,’ said Elliott. ‘Too open.’

‘I wouldn’t like it either,’ agreed the other American. ‘Damn all we can do about it.’

‘Shouldn’t we close up a little?’

‘Don’t want to spook him,’ said the more controlled Levine. ‘It’s got to be the surprise of his life.’

‘What there is left of it,’ said Elliott.

‘The woman first,’ cautioned Levine. He wished Fredericks had linked him with someone else.

They joined the airport highway and Charlie made another check and decided he was right about the Nissan. He wondered what Washington’s plans were, to get Kozlov out. It had to be an aircraft of some sort: and military, too. With their bases on Guam and in the Philippines, the Americans were better placed than London had been. Alas, thought Charlie, for the passing of the British Empire, gunships and natives everywhere who knew the words to ‘Rule Britannia’.

The routing signs began to indicate the airport and Levine said, ‘No doubt about it.’

‘Going to be a bastard if the meeting is there,’ said Elliott, echoing the earlier concern.

‘The woman first, then him,’ insisted Levine. ‘Let’s not fuck up by getting the priorities wrong.’

‘Hate to miss the opportunity, after what he did,’ said Elliott.

‘His losing her will be enough,’ said Levine.

‘No it won’t,’ said Elliott. ‘Not half enough.’

In the car in front Charlie leaned forward, indicating to the driver he wanted the military transportation area in the cargo section and not any of the main civilian passenger terminals.

Levine saw the car’s change of direction and said: ‘Shit! We’ll be obvious, if we stay this near!’

Elliott tensed against the windscreen and Levine saw him reach down to unclip the restraining strap on the ankle holster. Levine eased the car back, edging himself behind the hopeful concealment of a food delivery lorry. As he did so he saw the camouflaged markings on some of the parked aircraft they were approaching and said: ‘It checks out, with what he told Fredericks: a military plane.’

‘Where’s the goddamned woman!’ demanded the other American.

Levine saw the taxi stop against the military terminal building and managed to get his car into a filter road and behind a cluster of single-storey sheds.

‘What now!’ said Elliott.

‘We watch and we wait,’ said Levine.

Charlie Muffin entered the control area for transitting foreign military personnel, gazing through a window on to the apron, trying to identify the British aircraft. He saw an Air Force rondel about five aircraft away from the main building.

Sampson responded within minutes to the Tannoy paging, a stiffly upright, closely barbered, open-faced man, obviously military despite the civilian clothing.

‘I was expecting to come to see you, sir,’ said Sampson. There was an eagerness to please about the man.

Charlie tried to remember the last time even a restaurant waiter had called him sir. He said: ‘There was a particular reason.’

‘A lot was explained to me in London,’ said Sampson. ‘When’s it to be?’

‘Today,’ said Charlie. ‘But not from here.’

‘I thought …’

‘Too many interested observers,’ said Charlie. ‘I’m running hare to the hounds.’ It took him fifteen minutes to explain how Irena Kozlov was going to leave Japan, and when he finished Sampson said: ‘Providing she can go through with it, everything sounds remarkably simple. Very little for me to do, in fact.’

‘The best ways are always the simple ones,’ said Charlie. ‘And there’ll be enough to do, from Hong Kong.’

‘How will I recognize her?’

Charlie produced the passport and the photograph from his travel bag and said: ‘Rose Adams.’

Sampson studied the picture, without comment, and then said: ‘She will expect me to be waiting?’

‘At the arrival barrier,’ said Charlie. ‘She’ll have your name.’ Just pick her up, transfer immediately to your own aircraft and head for London. No stop-over. Just go.’

‘What time does her plane get in?’

‘Nine tonight,’ said Charlie. ‘Six o’clock departure from Osaka.’

‘I’ll have a flight plan filed from here for two,’ said Sampson.

‘That should be more than enough time,’ agreed Charlie.

‘Sorry not to have been able to help more,’ said the man.

‘You’re doing everything that’s necessary,’ said Charlie.

Charlie had held the taxi and as it left the airport complex and rejoined the multi-laned highway back into the city, Levine said from the watching car: ‘Checking the escape route. Very professional.’

‘So we know it is going to be from here,’ said Elliott. ‘And how to stop it. We’ve got him, Hank: really got him! The woman, too.’

‘It’s looking good,’ agreed Levine. ‘Very good indeed.’

Charlie turned back into his seat, in the car in front. This had been the easy part: he hoped the dutifully following CIA men had been lulled into believing it was going to continue just as easily.

They had. On the outskirts of Tokyo, Levine — the more cautious of the two — argued they should pass on to the others the departure arrangements they had confirmed for Irena Kozlov. And when Charlie’s taxi pulled into the shopping arcade entrance leading directly into the tower block in which they knew his room to be, Elliott agreed they had time.

Which they didn’t. Charlie went to the elevator, stayed in it until the first-floor stop and then left, going quickly back down the fire-escape stairs. It could have still gone wrong for him, but for Levine’s second mistake. The American was actually on the lobby telephone to Yamada, the liaison man, when he saw Charlie hurry across the short space from the emergency exit into the corridor to the main exit. Levine slammed the receiver down and instead of following alone decided instead to go back to Elliott in the waiting car. The lapse allowed Charlie to get to the exit, feign a movement towards the waiting taxis to check there was no dark-coloured Nissan carrying two non-Japanese, and then double around behind the loading tourist bus to lose himself among the boarding crowd. Done it! he congratulated himself: left them foundering.

The euphoria was very brief. He looked expectantly around the bus and then, abruptly, checked a second time. Irena Kozlov, whose picture he carried in the waiting passport, wasn’t there.

Fredericks and Harry Fish were still at the American embassy, waiting for the meeting instructions with Kozlov, when the liaison message came through and Fredericks said, triumphantly: ‘We can’t lose!’

‘Doesn’t look like it,’ agreed Fish.

The supervisor shook his head at the other man’s caution. ‘We’ve got the bastard! There’s no way he can get the woman out.’

‘Still can’t make up my mind whether we shouldn’t wait: it’s going to be proof to Kozlov from the word go that we are cheating them,’ said Fish.

‘So what the hell can they do about it!’ demanded Fredericks. ‘Say no, they’ve changed their minds and want to go back! We’ve played footsie long enough with a guy who’s killed one Agency man at least. Once he’s aboard the plane, there’s fuck all protest he or the woman can make. And they know it. From then on, we dictate the game plan.’

‘You know Elliott intends to kill Charlie Muffin, don’t you?’ demanded Fish. ‘How do you think the British are going to react to that, losing an agent as well as a defector?’

‘I don’t give a fuck about how they feel,’ said Fredericks. ‘It was an intentional insult, for London to assign the man in the first place. So everyone gets taught a lesson; so what!’

Fredericks saw personal promotion in this, realized the other American. He said: ‘So let’s hope nothing fouls-up.’

‘You worry too much,’ said Fredericks, confidently. He looked at his watch. ‘Kozlov should be making contact any time now.’

Kozlov let himself into the Shinbashi apartment and sighed, a release of tension. Seized by an abrupt thought he lifted the receiver, to hear that the dialling tone was there and that the instrument was functioning; the best conceived plans could be wrecked by the most inconsequential of things, like suddenly out-of-order telephones. It purred reassuringly in his ear. He sighed again. Now that everything was so close, he was held by an overwhelming feeling of anticlimax. Ridiculous, he thought: far too soon to imagine that nothing could go wrong. He checked the time. The Americans would be expecting him to call soon now.