See Charlie Run

Chapter Nineteen

Irena Kozlov stood in the middle of the room, legs slightly parted, hands on her hips, in a physically intimidating attitude, questions bursting from her in a machine-gun staccato. ‘Why blow up the plane?’ was the most repeated demand, along with others. Like who-and-how caused the explosion, and had they been caught, and what he was going to do now, to get her out? And how?

Charlie Muffin confronted her feeling like a one-armed juggler trying to keep twenty coloured balls in the air at the same time, with his good arm strapped behind his back. And blindfolded as well, just to make it difficult. He attempted to concentrate absolutely upon the strident woman and to relegate the distraction of Harry Lu to the shut-off, solve-it-later part of his mind, but it wasn’t easy because what Harry Lu wanted was so inextricably linked with Irena anyway. As everything was. Charlie lied, repeatedly, insisting that the delay was only temporary and that soon — within hours, which was a further conscious lie — there would be another plane to take her safely to England.

‘How can you say that, after what happened in Tokyo!’ The challenge was immediate, puncturing the attempted assurance.

‘Because this time we’ll be more careful,’ said Charlie.

‘So you were careless!’

Charlie sighed: she was sandpaper abrasive. He said: ‘It was something we didn’t foresee.’ He was determinedly as forceful as she, refusing to be brow-beaten by her hands-on-hips attitude.

‘Yuri expected some trickery, but not this,’ admitted Irena. She hesitated, hands dropping to her sides, lowering herself into a chair. She hesitated and said with sudden and unusual quietness, as if realizing it for the first time: ‘I could have been killed.’

‘They wouldn’t have sabotaged the plane, if you’d been aboard,’ said Charlie. ‘They’d have snatched you.’

‘The man who met me at the airport!’ said the woman, the sudden alarm obvious. ‘He’s safe?’

I wish I knew any more, thought Charlie. He said: ‘Quite safe. A friend.’

‘He said we have to keep moving.’

‘The Americans are chasing,’ announced Charlie. It was a harbour-view room, the black stretch of the waterway lay between them and Kowloon and the New Territories beyond. Charlie looked briefly across at the mainland, wondering how long it would take Fredericks and the other CIA agents to arrive. From the chair upon which she was sitting, Charlie was conscious of Irena moving as if she were going to make a response at once, but abruptly she shook her head. Instead she said: ‘So you don’t know what’s happened to Yuri?’

Charlie hesitated, unsure of the best reply, and decided that there was only one. ‘No,’ he said. ‘There’s no contact between myself and the Americans, not any more.’

‘How are the meetings between Yuri and I going to be arranged!’

‘Through London and Washington,’ avoided Charlie, easily. Wilson was probably already mobilizing the squad to grab Kozlov on that first occasion. It was an operation in which he would like to be involved.

‘You said hours, before we can leave?’ queried Irena.

‘I hope so,’ said Charlie.

She appeared not to notice the qualification. Unexpectedly, she said: ‘I do not feel well: I don’t think I can travel immediately.’

‘What!’ Charlie was off-balanced by the announcement: more coloured balls had been thrown into the juggling act and he had enough already. He looked intently at the woman. Pale, maybe, but that was all. Certainly her attitude since he’d entered the room gave no indication of her being unwell. The opposite, in fact.

‘I need to rest, before moving on,’ Irena said.

She was going to get the opportunity whether she wanted it or not, but the insistence unsettled Charlie. Minutes earlier she’d appeared anxious to get out as soon as possible, which was why he had lied. The strain had to be enormous; maybe she wasn’t as strong as she appeared. He said: ‘There’ll be time enough to rest.’

‘A day at least: I need a day.’

‘A day,’ agreed Charlie, because it suited him.

‘Are you confident we can evade the Americans?’

‘Yes,’ said Charlie, who wasn’t. There was a desperate need to reach Wilson, in London; a desperate need to do so much. Up and down went the coloured balls, a blur of impressions, nothing focussing.

‘Where are we going now?’

Charlie hesitated, looking across at the mainland again. Certainly they had to get off Hong Kong island, so Kowloon was the obvious choice: a lot of small, no-questions-asked places there. ‘The Americans have woken up everybody’ — Harry’s warning, on the way from the airport. So was Kowloon too obvious, like here at the Mandarin? Or safe enough? Before he could reply to the woman’s question, there was a sound at the door. Irena jumped, nervously, and as he opened it to Harry Lu, Charlie decided the man had taken a long time simply to settle a less-than-one-night occupancy bill.

‘All set,’ announced Lu.

For whom and for what, wondered Charlie. Pointedly, he said: ‘Where have you been?’

Lu looked directly at him, recognizing the suspicion. ‘Making calls, Charlie.’

‘To whom?’

‘Don’t, Charlie. There isn’t any reason,’ urged the other man.

Irena, a professional, detected the atmosphere and said: ‘What’s the problem?’

Both men ignored her. Charlie said: ‘I wouldn’t like there to be, Harry.’

‘I’m trusting you,’ reminded the man. ‘It’s got to go both ways.’

Lu was right, Charlie accepted: and he didn’t have any alternative anyway. Charlie never liked operating without at least one alternative. Preferably more. He repeated: To whom?’

Lu didn’t reply at once, conscious of Charlie’s refusal to meet him on the assurance. Then he said: ‘People: people very anxious to know where you are …’

The man finished speaking by turning to include Irena who said at once: ‘Something else has gone wrong, hasn’t it? Tell me!’

‘Nothing else has gone wrong!’ said Charlie, urgently, trying to quell the woman’s obvious rising anxiety.

‘So what is it between you?’ persisted the woman.

‘A misunderstanding,’ said Charlie. It had been stupid, allowing the exchange in front of her. Trying to rebuild a bridge with Lu, Charlie added: ‘My fault.’

Lu gave no response and Charlie decided the apology had come too late. The annoyance flushed through him, self-anger at his own stupidity: things were bad enough, without his making additional contributions to the fuck-up. ‘My mistake,’ he said again, directly and to the man alone this time.

‘We’ve got a deal?’ asked Lu.

‘Yes,’ agreed Charlie, who still hadn’t considered how to achieve — even if he could achieve — what Lu demanded.

‘Then I’ll keep my side of it,’ undertook the man.

‘Freelance!’ identified Irena, showing further expertise. Accusingly, to Charlie, she said: ‘You involved a freelance!’

‘I involved the best man,’ insisted Charlie. The whole bloody conversation was getting out of hand.

The uncertain doubt was obvious in Irena’s look. She said: ‘Yuri thought you were good,’ in a voice indicating that she didn’t agree with the assessment.

Irritated with the dispute — and not knowing how to continue it without further unsettling the woman — Charlie turned back to Lu and said: ‘So what do these people say?’

‘The Americans have arrived. In force. Military, too.’

Charlie recalled his reflection on the journey from the airport: it looked as if a military as well as a civilian aircraft departure was going to be difficult, without some sort of pitched battle. He said: ‘Where are they?’

‘I don’t know: not yet.’ Lu smiled, fleetingly, and said: ‘I will, of course.’

‘Hope you find them before they find us,’ said Charlie, sincerely. He gestured around the hotel room and said: ‘Where, after this?’

Lu nodded across the waterway, towards the mainland. ‘It’s got to be Kowloon, hasn’t it?’

Obvious, thought Charlie again. He said: ‘What about Macao?’

Lu frowned. Surprise? Or annoyance at a change to an already-conceived arrangement? wondered Charlie.

‘It’s small,’ argued Lu.

‘That’s the problem: everywhere’s small and easily covered,’ said Charlie. ‘But it’s an alternative, isn’t it?’

‘I suppose so,’ said Lu, still reluctant.

‘We’ll make it Macao,’ decided Charlie. To the woman, he said: ‘Let’s go.’

At the doorway she stopped, looking directly at him. She said: ‘You lied. Everything has gone wrong. I know it has.’

Olga Balan used an Australian passport — describing her as a single woman named Hebditch — and landed in Hong Kong on the gritty-eyed dawn arrival flight which was the first available, and which had originated in Hawaii, with a Tokyo stop-over. Not that it would have been possible for her to have slept, had she tried. She knew she was right, in telling Yuri they were trapped. They were trapped and she felt trapped. Unless she killed Irena. Why couldn’t Yuri have understood, when she said she was frightened! But then how could he know? No one knew. Only her.