The Blind Run

Chapter Twenty

It was a long month for Charlie. Frustrating, too. Increasingly so. There was no formal announcement from Natalia Fedova that the debriefing was ending. They had become repetitive, certainly, but that was not infrequent with such interviews and Charlie had become to rely upon them, his only source of outside, daily contact. He left the by now familiar building by the peripheral one evening expecting another summons – getting up at the regularly established time and bathing and waiting for the telephone to ring on several subsequent days – but nothing happened. Charlie was disorientated by the abrupt halt, recognising that his reliance upon the encounters extended beyond the simple fact of meeting another human being. He recognised, too, his was a predictable response: there’d even been lectures about it, during the instructional sessions, the attachment that a subservient interviewee psychologically develops towards his debriefer in situations of stress, cut off and far from home. Knowing the attitude, Charlie was surprised it had happened to him; the instructional sessions were, after all, warnings to prevent it. Had it been what the psychologists had warned about? OK, so he was cut off and far from home but he knew the way back. And the stress of the unstarted mission wasn’t anything he didn’t think he could handle. Charlie didn’t like falling into categories evolved by mind doctors, most of whom he thought were a bloody sight dafter than the people they were supposed to treat anyway. So what was it then? Had he fancied her? She was the first woman he’d seen – been near at all – for a long time because of the circumstances. And he had, on several occasions, got the impression that she was responding to the flirta tion: wasn’t offended by it at least. Yes, he answered himself finally: he had fancied her. Which was dafter than he’d just considered all psychologists to be. The debriefed didn’t pull their debriefers; Charlie smiled, realising another definition for the word. Debriefers kept their briefs on, he thought. He supposed there was nothing wrong in fantasising as long as he didn’t lose sight of the fact that that was exactly what it was, a fantasy. Still a bloody attractive woman: big tits, too. And the termination meant he was imprisoned again, stuck inside the smelly flat.

He was disappointed, too – on a professional as well as a social level – that there was no further contact with Berenkov. He’d expected it – they’d arranged it that night, after all – but no calls came. After the first four empty, echoing days, Charlie decided upon another rebellion and found things different there, as well. No one tried to stop him.

Charlie had an excellent, inherent sense of direction and he had the advantage of the drive – even though it had been at night – on his way to Berenkov’s apartment so he set off confidently towards the centre of the city. The excursion began as the test to see if he were still under restriction but as he walked he realised what he’d find in the centre of the city and thought why not? It was the only contact point he had. And it was the reason for his being in Moscow at all. Having decided actually to go to the GUM complex, Charlie wondered about clearing his trail, smiling as he had earlier in the apartment as the tradecraft expression came automatically to mind. No, he determined. Not on this, the first outing. He didn’t have any doubt that there was surveillance but if he evaded it they’d become suspicious and that was the last thing he wanted. It was better to make the journey just that, an apparently aimless outing of someone trying to relieve his boredom – and he genuinely felt that, after all – by visiting the most obvious tourist spots in the city. Which naturally – unsuspiciously – included the largest department store in the Soviet Union. For those who watched unseen – and he didn’t intend even trying to see them – it would be nothing. For Charlie, it would be a useful reconnoitre for the real thing. If the real thing ever happened.

The streets were drab and uniform and depressing and Charlie thought how crushing it would be to imagine having to spend the rest of his life here. Which was what Sampson would do. Enthusiastically. For how long? Charlie wondered. The stupid bugger was eager enough now, full of cliche and cant but Charlie couldn’t believe that later – a year, maybe two, maybe five but some time later – he wouldn’t realise he’d just changed prisons. Serve the bastard right. Charlie hoped the realisation came sooner, rather than later. Christ, how Charlie wished there were some way he could really find out if Sampson were involved in trying to trace the Russian traitor. He thought – he bloody well knew – that he’d rather confront and defeat Sampson in a competition of professional ability than he would compete in the best of three falls in Natalia Fedova. It would be a hell of an experience, falling on to Natalia Fedova. Silly, fantasising sod, he thought.

The massive expanse of Red Square opened up before him and Charlie experienced a spurt of satisfaction at having found his way unfailingly there. He hoped – after the absence – that all the other abilities were still as good. For the benefit of those dutifully observing, Charlie meandered without any apparent direction through Kitav-Gorod, the oldest part of the Soviet capital. Charlie remembered the Russian for what was now the dominating area, pleased once more that things were coming back so well. It was, he was sure, Krasnaya Ploshchad. And it meant Beautiful Square. And it was beautiful, compared to the drab boxes upon boxes arranged around the regimented rectangles through which he’d walked on his way there. The very centre of Soviet history, for four hundred years, reflected Charlie. Here had been enacted slaughters and executions and triumphs and failures. And only a few hundred yards away – maybe not even that – was the meeting place with an unknown stranger through whom, if he were very clever and very devious and very lucky, he was going to be able to rehabilitate himself completely and go back to a life he should never – in a moment of conceited vindictiveness – have considered abandoning. Another ‘if, held like an admonishing finger. Would Red Square – Beautiful Square – be for him a triumph or a failure? Charlie wondered. And was the Russian really unknown? If it were Berenkov – and circumstantially there were enough pointers – then the man would have been astonished to find Charlie in Moscow. And until his actual appearance at GUM wouldn’t anyway know he was the deputed route-master. Charlie hoped very much it was Berenkov.

Charlie had forgotten, from his previous, long-ago visit, how vast the architecture was. Gulliver’s houses in the land of Lilliput. No, he thought, unhappy with the impression. All around were the despised edifices of the Tsars and Tsarinas and the oppressive, heel-crushing rich which the new tsars and tsarinas and oppressors chose not to hate but to occupy, like grateful hermit crabs warm and safe inside the shells that had once been the homes of bigger, better crabs. Charlie grimaced, to himself. He wasn’t sure the succeeding impression was any better than the first. Maybe he should stop trying; trying so hard at least.

Lenin’s mausoleum didn’t accord with the surroundings. The memorial to the goatee-bearded opportunist who chased away the bigger crabs was an ill-fitting apology of a place. If they were going to bother, they should have got it right, thought Charlie. Whether Lenin had been an opportunist or a dedicated revolutionary against an unjust regime – and Charlie thought he was more of an opportunist than dedicated revolutionary – he had caused a pretty dramatic body swerve in world history. So he deserved more than something that looked like a 1940s bomb shelter against a chance air raid. Charlie wondered if the always-present, dutifully waiting queue – were they really genuine visiting Soviet territory tourists or permanently employed actors, on a job for life? – were as disappointed as he was.

Deciding that he had appeared aimless for long enough, Charlie turned away from the unimpressive resting place for the father of the revolution and went at last towards what had now become the object of his visit. Outside of the store, in towering identity, was the full name from the initials of which the acronym is created, Gosudarstvennyy Universal’nyy Magazin. Once, thought Charlie, as he approached, the concentration of more than 1,000 different stores, each competing, each surviving. Now, like everything else – almost everything – a collective. But positioned where it was and with the captive market it had, perhaps a more successful collective than most within the system.

The west door, on the third Thursday of any month: those were the instructions. So where the hell was the west door: there appeared to be dozens of doors, all around the place. Utilising the sense of direction again Charlie used St Basil’s Cathedral, to the south of Red Square, as a marker. Charlie worked out the geography easily enough but still wasn’t sure that it would help. He actually entered the huge store from one of the doors to the west, immediately conscious of the activity inside, a huge, human beehive. And inside this beehive on the third Thursday of succeeding months there was going to be a queen bee who was going to pick him out as a very special worker bee. He hoped. A guide book wrapped around a rolled up copy of Pravda, Charlie recalled, continuing the instructions. Professionally he decided that the choice of meeting place was good and the book and the newspaper innocuous enough and the final part of the process – ‘If I lived in Moscow, I don’t think I’d care what the weather was like’ – the sort of simple exchange not likely to arouse suspicion. So what would? Charlie had survived for so long – been good for so long – because before embarking upon any operation – any problem – he always approached it from every possible direction because the danger always was that the bad guys would know a route he hadn’t thought of and use it to come charging down and scoop him up. Charlie eased his way through the crowded store, letting the movement of the crowd carry him, taking only seconds to isolate the flaw. Today’s visit was OK and maybe a subsequent one – on the third Thursday of any month, between eleven and noon that time – but anything beyond that would be dangerous. And the guidebook and the newspaper weren’t as good as he’d first thought: there would unquestionably have been watchers, today. Who would have seen him find his way without maps or directions. So the guidebook would look out of place, if his observers were as good as they should be. Just as it would look out of place if, on succeeding third Thursdays of succeeding months, he kept returning to a regular spot at regular times. Shit, thought Charlie. There was no despair; Charlie was too experienced for that. Having identified the flaws, Charlie immediately began seeking a way around them. It was simply – he hoped to Christ it was simple – a matter of clearing his trail. But doing it better than those watching had ever known before, so that the evasion of pursuit wouldn’t be a conscious attempt upon his part but an irritating mistake upon theirs: and be shown to be, at any subsequent enquiry. Having found the resolve, Charlie improved upon it. He wouldn’t try to dodge on the first identification visit: nothing was going to happen then – apart, he hoped, from his being identified by whoever it was who would later make contact – so better to let that trip be seen. Better still, he’d make lots of other apparently pointless visits, carrying the guidebook and the newspaper, to lots of other apparently innocent tourist spots. That way there’d be a logical reason for the book – which, the longer and more obviously he carried it, would cease to occupy the attention of those watching, because they would become accustomed to his always having it – and GUM would not register with any more significance than anywhere else he went.

It was going to involve a hell of a lot of walking, thought Charlie, remembering his recurrent personal problem. He actually stopped, looking down at his already throbbing feet too tightly enclosed in the shoes that had been provided for him on the night of the escape. And then he realised he was in the country’s biggest store and started to look around with greater attention, seeking the shoe department. There were, in fact, more than one and Charlie went to them all, looking for anything resembling the familiar Hush Puppies and becoming increasingly disappointed. Bloody amazing, he thought. Maybe it was something to do with all the snow they had in the winter but Charlie decided in boots like these, snowshoes wouldn’t have been necessary to cross the drifts. Some looked big enough actually to walk on water! It was going to be an uncomfortable time.

Charlie made an unhurried exit from the store but didn’t immediately leave the area, which again might have marked GUM out as the significant destination. He visited St Basil’s Cathedral and stopped and pretended to admire the monument to Minin and Pozharsky beside it and then went on, ambling down the Razina highway and decided, when he saw it there, to go into the Rossiya Hotel. Charlie’s unthinking intention was to have a drink but then he realised he didn’t have any money and recognised again just how much of a prisoner he remained. He sat instead in the downstairs foyer, preparing his feet for the return walk, getting up after half an hour with the awareness that his feet would never be prepared for any sort of walking.

It took him an increasingly uncomfortable hour to get back to the apartment. He boiled some water, diluted it to the right temperature and gratefully soaked the ache from his feet, savouring the relief and not wanting it to end, so it was almost an hour from his actual return when he went properly into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator and saw that in his absence the flat had been entered and restocked. So the surveillance was as active as it had ever been! He supposed the listening devices would have been replaced, too. He grinned and said, loudly ‘Thanks.’ In a cupboard in the main room he found a bottle of vodka, which was an addition to the previous supplies, which Charlie supposed to be an indication of acceptance. ‘Thanks again,’ he said, to the unseen and unknown listeners.

Charlie crossed and traversed again practically every tourist location in the Russian capital. He read the Pravda denunciation of Wainwright and wondered if it were all over anyway but he still kept the appointment at the GUM department store on the appointed Thursday, hoping that he wasn’t presenting himself for arrest and that Berenkov would emerge from the crowd.

He didn’t but he telephoned, actually on the evening that Charlie returned from the store.

‘Wondered if you might like to work?’ said Berenkov.

Charlie felt the jump of excitement. ‘You’re joking!’ he said. ‘I’m practically going out of my mind with boredom.’

‘How would you feel about instructing at a spy school?’

Charlie hesitated, although not from the reservation that Berenkov imagined. Bloody marvellous, thought Charlie, realising the advantages at once. To the Russian he said, ‘That sounds very interesting.’

‘You’ll do it?’

‘Yes,’ accepted Charlie. ‘I’ll do it.’

‘It was a great shame, about Wainwright,’ said Wilson.

‘More mentally affected than we suspected,’ agreed Harkness.

‘We’ve made all the arrangements?’

His deputy nodded. ‘He intended to retire to Bognor, apparently. That’s where the funeral has been arranged. The wife died, two years ago. But there’s a mother, in an old people’s home in Brighton: suppose that’s one of the reasons he chose to live nearby. I’ve arranged for his pension to be carried on, so that the fees for the home are paid. Pension people aren’t happy about it: they say it’s establishing a precedent.’

‘Damn the pension people,’ said Wilson. ‘Let me know if there’s a difficulty.’

Harkness nodded and said, ‘I don’t think there will be. What about the funeral?’

The director considered the question. ‘The Soviets will swamp it, of course,’ he predicted.

‘Inevitably, I would think,’ said Harkness.

‘Better for no one important to go then…’ Wilson hesitated. ‘Richardson!’ he suddenly decided. They’ll know about Richardson now.’

‘Might even make them think there was something that Wainwright didn’t tell them, after all,’ said Harkness.

‘Good point,’ nodded Wilson. He paused for several moments and said, ‘Don’t suppose there’s any doubt that he didn’t tell them everything?’

‘None at all, I wouldn’t imagine,’ said Harkness. ‘They’ll expect us to change the code now. Not only because of Wainwright but because they’ll know we’ve detected their alterations, from our listening facilities.’

‘Let’s not designate a sender any more,’ ruled Wilson. ‘I don’t want to lose anyone else, in the Russian panic to find out what’s happening.’