See Charlie Run

Chapter Twenty-Nine

The rainy season had literally descended on Tokyo when Charlie landed, as if the clouds had split at the seams to spill everything out at the same time. It was thick, impenetrable, at the airport and the car, more like a boat than something on wheels, crested through water-cascading streets into the city, where the pavements were mushroom fields of umbrellas. So much for English weather, thought Charlie; compared to this, London and Manchester in November were positively tropical. He had come up in the military aircraft — enjoying again being called sir by Clarke, whose rank turned out to be a major and whose Christian name was Allan — and from the flight control exchanges he knew that the American C-130 was behind them. And while, as far as he could establish, Fredericks had kept the no-surveillance agreement, Charlie was still careful, knowing the CIA could have put people in ahead of his arrival, to pick him up when he got there. The weather made it easy. He got out at Nijubashimae, ducked off the Toei Shinjuku service after one stop and emerged from the Underground at Kamiyacho, deciding within yards of setting out for Shinbashi that while in theory the tradecraft was good, in practise it was bloody stupid. It was still pissing with rain, and by the time he got to what Yuri Kozlov regarded his safe house Charlie felt anything but safe: the rain had got through his topcoat and jacket and his shoulders were damp, and he knew, from the sticky slip-slip when he moved his toes, that both his shoes were leaking. Maybe, with luck, they could be repaired.

Despite the discomfort, Charlie didn’t enter at once. He went past the building, checking intently, and returned on the opposite side, not so much looking for American observation now but Russian: it still hurt when your balls got caught in the vice, irrespective of who manufactured the pincer machine, and he was not yet sure if Kozlov were sufficiently worried.

Satisfied at last, Charlie squelched into the foyer, shaking himself like a dog to get rid of the surface dampness, aware of the puddle forming around him where he stood. Charlie’s irritation went beyond his physical discomfort: he attached a lot of importance to psychological advantage in the sort of encounter he was about to have and psychologically, arriving like someone emerging from a swamp, he was in the disadvantaged position. He took his coat and jacket off and shook them, and then used his handkerchief to dry his face and hair.

Yuri Kozlov opened the door before Charlie got his hand down from the knock and Charlie decided the swamp-look wasn’t quite the drawback he’d feared; Kozlov would have had to be waiting directly behind the door, to respond that quickly. The man was nervous, then. There was no greeting, from either of them: Kozlov simply stood back and Charlie entered.

Charlie was surprised by the Western-style appearance of the apartment and guessed the view was of the park and the port beyond: the rain was too heavy to see anything now. It was the briefest of inspections — nothing more than to establish the siting of any doors so that he could avoid making himself vulnerable to anyone or anything behind them — and Charlie was back facing Kozlov when the Russian closed the door behind him.

‘Well,’ said Kozlov. ‘I’m here.’

Which tells me a lot, thought Charlie. ‘Quick to get Filiatov, weren’t they?’ he said, confidently. The arrest had already happened for Kozlov to be frightened into keeping the appointment.

‘You know then?’ said Kozlov, in unthinking confirmation.

‘Of course I know,’ said Charlie. ‘I told you how it would be, didn’t I?’ Kozlov had to believe he was practically omnipotent.

‘What will they do to him?’

‘You can guess that better than me. It’s your country; your service.’

‘I meant what have you accused him of?’

‘I didn’t come here to talk about Boris Filiatov,’ dismissed Charlie. He thought the Russian was far smaller than the last time and then remembered he had never seen Kozlov standing, only in a car.

‘You going to tell me now what you want?’

‘It was a hell of a scheme you worked out, wasn’t it?’ said Charlie, avoiding the reply: nothing had to go as Kozlov wanted.

‘Nobody knew, only Olga and I,’ said Kozlov, in sudden urgency. ‘How did you find out?’

This time the man could be answered, because it conveyed the impression of Charlie’s complete control. Charlie said: ‘It’s a big file, Yuri. You and Olga in London, before here. You weren’t very discreet, you know; not very discreet at all.’

‘Nobody knew!’ shouted Kozlov, in desperate defiance.

Charlie didn’t reply. Instead he took from his bag the same photograph that had brought about Irena’s collapse and offered it to the man. For several moments Kozlov made no effort to take it, but at last he reached forward. Attentive, Charlie saw that the man’s hands were shaking. Kozlov held the print for a much longer time and Charlie had the impression of the man becoming visibly smaller, in front of him. Charlie said, with practised carelessness: ‘There’s a lot more.’

Kozlov’s reaction was not what Charlie expected. When the Russian looked up he appeared wet-eyed. He said: ‘I love her, you know. I love Olga.’

‘Like you loved Valentina?’ There was a gain in continuing this conversation.

Kozlov winced, as if he had been struck. ‘Irena told you everything, didn’t she?’

‘A lot,’ said Charlie, wondering what else he could learn.

‘I thought I loved Valentina, at the time. I don’t know, not now. I only know about Olga.’

This was like being a bloody Agony Aunt: Dear Charlie, I am humping three different women but can’t make up my mind which one … Charlie said: ‘What about Irena?’

‘Have you any idea what the woman’s like!’

‘Some.’

‘She’s made me live in hell, for years.’

‘Bad enough to kill for?’

‘I asked her for a divorce.’

‘She told me. For Valentina, not Olga.’

‘I don’t care what you think: what you believe,’ said Kozlov.

Charlie was thinking and believing a lot. He believed that Kozlov did love Olga Balan, and he thought that was going to make everything a lot easier than it might have been. Time to start wrapping it all up into neat little parcels. He said: ‘I made the right assessment, didn’t I?’

Kozlov looked at him, uncomprehending.

‘You are fucked, aren’t you, Yuri? Every way you look. How much longer before Moscow discovers Irena’s not around any more? Filiatov is back there now, talking his head off to stop the pain. And any moment I want I can feed the information through …’

‘All right!’ The yell this time was despair, not defiance.

‘You didn’t let me finish the option, Yuri.’

‘What do you want?’

‘To help you,’ announced Charlie, simply. He stopped, intentionally, wanting the idea to register with the other man.

‘Help me?’

‘Well, you don’t want to go back to an interrogation cell in Butyrki and then on to some gulag for the rest of your life, do you!’

‘Help me how?’

‘Get you safely out, to the West …’ Charlie made another intentional hesitation. ‘And Olga, too,’ he finished.

‘Olga!’

‘You want to be with her, don’t you?’

‘Yes, but …’

‘No buts. Both of you.’

‘Together?’

The training was emerging, through all the confusion, recognized Charlie. He said: ‘Not to begin with. You told me how the Americans wanted you and Irena, when we both thought it was a genuine defection. If I try to take you and Olga out, the same thing would happen: a pitched battle. My way you both get out and then you’re reunited, very soon.’

‘How soon?’ insisted the man.

‘I’d even arrange a date,’ said Charlie. ‘That’s part of the proposal.’

‘I want to hear it all,’ said Kozlov.

‘I’ll tell you and you can check,’ said Charlie. ‘Irena told me about Hayashi, at the airport. He’ll confirm the Americans are there, with a military plane. So are we. I will take Olga, first. You follow, as soon as you know that we’ve cleared air space and can’t be intercepted by the Americans. Fredericks is setting up the same contact procedure for you as before, at the Imperial. He expects to hear from you …’

‘You are working together?’

Charlie wasn’t sure how to answer the question. He said: ‘Not together: we’re keeping to the arrangement that we thought we had, originally.’

‘Are you sure it is necessary to cross separately?’ asked Kozlov, doubtfully.

‘Aren’t you?’ said Charlie.

Kozlov didn’t reply, and Charlie thought I’m ahead of you, you crafty bastard. He said: ‘You’re thinking, of course, why bother letting Olga come with me? Why don’t the both of you go together to the Americans? That’s what I’d be thinking, if I were you now. But you mustn’t ever forget the file, Yuri … the file that’s got more than McFairlane’s name on it. Names like Bill Paul and Valeri Solomatin … and a very special name, a Senator William Bales …’

Kozlov was rigidly still and ashen, lips moving but without any intention of forming words.

‘Fucked, Yuri, unless you do it all my way,’ insisted Charlie. ‘Hayashi will tell you about the military planes, like I said. We’re watching them and they’re watching us, so I’d know before the wheels went up if you ducked me, to take Olga along with you. And then I’d have London tell Washington all the names they don’t know. Can you imagine the reception you’d get? I guess there’d be some debriefing: why waste an opportunity, after all? But then do you know what I think? I think you’d end up in some stockade and you’d be able to close your eyes and believe you were back in a Russian prison, after all. Maybe worse than a Russian prison: can you imagine that!’

The words came at last, a croaking, strained sound: ‘I understand … there’s no need … no more …’

‘Oh yes,’ contradicted Charlie: ‘There’s more. I haven’t told you yet how you’re getting to England.’

Kozlov was looking at him dully, practically glazed-eyed, someone completely defeated, and Charlie said: ‘You hearing what I’m saying?’

‘Yes,’ said Kozlov. ‘I’m hearing it all.’

‘We’re using the Americans to get you out, without the sort of battle that would occur, probably getting everyone seized, including both of you,’ set out Charlie. ‘In Washington, there will be the debriefing. String it out; make them work for everything. And be difficult. Complain about the restrictions of the safe house and say you want to take trips out. They let it happen: they shouldn’t but they do. Today’s the sixteenth. Three months from today, the sixteenth, get taken into Georgetown: all the restaurants are there. And a particular hotel. It’s called the Four Seasons and it’s at the very beginning of the district. There’s a large foyer bar and lounge: lots of plants. Break away from your escort on the sixteenth and come there. I shall be waiting from noon until four …’

‘But …’ Kozlov started to protest.

‘There could be a dozen reasons why you can’t make it,’ anticipated Charlie. ‘I know that. So we’ll run a fall-back precaution. If you can’t make that first time, the sixteenth of every month from then on.’

Kozlov nodded, assimilating the instructions. ‘And then I would be with Olga?’

‘From that moment on,’ promised Charlie.

‘Thank you,’ said Kozlov, in abrupt gratitude.

‘It’s not altruism,’ said Charlie. ‘We want you both.’

‘When?’

‘At once: certainly in the next twenty-four hours.’

‘I’ll have to talk to Olga.’

‘Do you have a way to contact her?’

‘She is calling, to see if you came.’

‘Then tell her to come here.’

‘She’s a good Russian … like I think I am a good Russian.’

‘It’s too late,’ said Charlie, who’d heard it all before.

‘For me, maybe. Not for her. There could be a defence.’

‘We want her, too,’ said Charlie, quietly.

Kozlov made an effort to straighten in front of Charlie and said: ‘I see.’

‘I told you it wasn’t altruism.’

‘You’d really use your Moscow source against her?’

‘Of course we would,’ said Charlie, brutally. ‘Don’t be naive.’

‘She can’t be hurt … mustn’t be hurt …’

‘Don’t let her be.’

‘What’s it feel like, not being able to lose?’ asked Kozlov, in abrupt viciousness.

‘What’s it feel like to have someone in the cross-hairs of a gun sight seconds before you press the trigger and know there’s not a damned thing the poor bastard can do, to avoid being killed!’ came back Charlie, just as viciously. ‘Don’t moralize to me! We’re not in the business of morals.’

‘It must be her choice.’

Charlie didn’t know why the other man was playing games, but he said: ‘Set out all the alternatives and let her make it.’

Which was what Kozlov did.

First — while they were waiting for her to arrive — Kozlov checked with Hayashi at the airport and got the confirmation that the American and British military aircraft were there, officially in transit. And then reluctantly — once actually picking up the receiver and replacing it, before lifting it again — Kozlov called the Imperial Hotel and spoke to the Americans. Liaison was still Jim Dale, but the room this time was 2.02.

The knock was hesitant and Olga Balan’s entry was uncertain, too, looking at Charlie with an expression difficult to define, a mixture of hostility and curiosity and fear. Kozlov said his name and she nodded and then he said her name and Charlie nodded back.

Kozlov said: ‘I think we should talk alone,’ and Charlie said: ‘Don’t be stupid,’ intentionally reducing the man in front of his mistress. He was aware of the feeling registering on Kozlov’s face and thought I bet you’d like to, my son.

‘And in English,’ he said. Would he have remembered the Russian he’d learned so well — and anxiously, in love after so long — from Natalia? Probably, unless there had been some dialect difference: still better self-protection to let them believe he did not have the language. Was there a similarity between this Russian woman and Natalia? Perhaps, but then again perhaps he was trying too hard to find one. The other comparison, now that he could see Olga Balan other than in a photograph, obviously followed and Charlie thought again of Irena with a pimple on her strap-red but naked shoulder and decided, as he had in Hong Kong, that it was no contest. The rain had eased but Olga was still wet and the strain of the previous days was clearly visible; despite all of which she was beautiful. Startling, in fact. She sat oblivious to him, near the window through which the lights of the port were becoming clearer, head forward to hear everything Kozlov said, the femininity — and the sex — radiating from her. How did a pratt like Kozlov pull a bird like that, thought Charlie; life was never fair. The reflections held part of his mind but he listened to the Russian’s exposition as intently as Olga, alert for several things. He wanted to ensure Kozlov set out their earlier conversation but he was intent, too, to catch any small mistake or inflection to indicate that what was happening in front of him was a charade, an act put on to lull him into whatever false impression for them to try something that he hadn’t anticipated. There wasn’t anything.

‘Defect!’ she said, when Kozlov finally proposed it.

‘You got a better idea?’ said Charlie, coming into the conversation.

Olga made a don’t-know shrug. ‘What would I do, in the West?’

‘Cooperate,’ said Charlie, regretting the glibness.

‘Be a traitor, you mean!’ she came back at him.

‘Yes!’ said Charlie. ‘It’s a hell of a lot more fun than being dead or shifting rocks with your bare hands for the rest of your life. Or becoming a gulag gang-bang hooker.’

‘Bastard!’ shouted Kozlov. He used the Russian expression, which conveys greater obscenity, and Charlie came back in Russian, just as fluent and using the word the same way. ‘Try to see what a bastard!’

‘We would be together, in the end?’ said the woman. ‘Yuri and I?’

‘Wasn’t that how Yuri explained it?’

‘Only three months?’ she persisted.

‘Providing Yuri gets away the first time.’

She sat staring at him, not speaking for several moments. Then she said: This is really ridiculous, isn’t it? We haven’t got any choice, have we?’

‘No,’ said Charlie, bluntly.

‘So what’s the point?’

‘You already asked that.’

There was another protracted silence. Some tension seemed to go from her and she said: ‘Did you know him well?’

‘Yes,’ said Charlie. ‘There was a wife and a little girl.’

‘He wasn’t meant …’ She tried, but Charlie came in sharply and said: ‘Does it matter, now?’

‘I suppose not.’

‘Shall we go?’ Charlie said to her.

Olga looked down at herself. ‘I didn’t come … I haven’t got anything …’

Just like Irena, that day on the bus, thought Charlie. He said: ‘What is there?’

There was another don’t-know shrug and this time a didn’t-know outburst. ‘Oh God! Dear God!’

Not here or at the one-walled church in Macao, thought Charlie. He said: ‘Ready?’

Kozlov and Olga both stood, looking at each other, restricted and embarrassed by the presence of Charlie, who remained neither restricted nor embarrassed, looking at them. They kissed, clumsily, as if they were coming together for the first time, and parted the same way.

‘Be careful,’ she said.

‘And you,’ he said, matching the banality.

‘No contact with the Americans until you know we are clear,’ reminded Charlie. He enjoyed the irony of invoking for his own protection the bullshit that Kozlov put forward to Irena, to get her into the firing line.

‘I know what to do.’

‘The sixteenth, three months from now,’ insisted Charlie.

‘I know that best of all.’

‘Just don’t forget,’ said Charlie.

He alerted Clarke from the apartment and when they got out into the street they found the rain had stopped: in the heat that is always there during the season there was a rise of mist — more like a steam — and Charlie thought it really was like a swamp.

‘What about passport?’ she said, in the taxi.

‘It’s an entry, not departure document. And you’re going out under the aegis of the British government.’

‘What’s going to happen to me? To Yuri and me?’

Kozlov certainly had a way of screwing up women, thought Charlie. Maybe it was literally that, but surely it couldn’t be just sex. He said: ‘It’ll be fine, you see.’

There was no difficulty with the diplomatic departure and within thirty minutes of their arrival at Haneda they were airborne: as the plane gained height Charlie had the impression of a great weight being lifted from him, at the release of knowing Fredericks was keeping to the agreement.

They sat separate from the army contingent, further along the body of the plane. Major Clarke was plugged into the pilot communication and after about fifteen minutes he walked up to where they sat in their canvas webbing seats and said: ‘We’ve cleared, sir. We’re on our way to England.’

He seemed to expect some response from the woman, and when it didn’t come the soldier said: ‘Sorry about the seats. Not very comfortable, I’m afraid.’

Charlie guessed it was the first time Clarke had been involved in an operation like this and that the man was enjoying it: material for a dozen dinner-table anecdotes — ‘Have I told you about the time I got a genuine KGB agent out from under the Russians’ noses!’ — but anyone who kept on calling him sir was welcome to whatever anecdote until it became threadbare. Answering for Olga, Charlie said: ‘The seats will be fine.’

Clarke gave up on Olga. To Charlie he said: ‘It was really all remarkably easy, wasn’t it?’

Charlie looked quizzically up at the man, decided it was a genuinely innocent question. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I suppose you could say that. Easy as can be.’

Winslow Elliott was with the Special Forces group who watched the British plane go and Elliott said: ‘She was there! It was all crap! He got her out tonight!’

Jamieson said: ‘So maybe we struck out.’ It had turned out to be a shitty assignment. You win some, you lose some, he thought: just follow the orders and think of the pension and the PX facilities. It was stupid to make it a personal thing.

‘Know what I’m going to do! I’m going to turn in a report showing how Art Fredericks fucked this up, every step of the fucking way. That’s what I’m going to do,’ Elliott promised himself.

The Special Forces colonel, more experienced in the way of buck-passing and report filing than the CIA fieldman, said: ‘Wait a while, buddy. See how the whole thing shakes down before you start throwing garbage into the wind.’

At that moment Yuri Kozlov entered the enormous lobby of the Imperial Hotel, no longer concerned about security — no longer concerned about anything — and walked up to Fredericks, who was waiting for him at the steps leading into the sunken lounge.

‘Thank you for being here,’ said Kozlov.

‘I’m glad you finally made it,’ said Fredericks.

Fredericks didn’t give a shit if the Russkie or any of the CIA guys watching were aware of how relieved he was. He’d just saved his ass.