Comrade Charlie

by Brian Freemantle

  ‘Could we meet here again, say, tomorrow night, for me to give you the specification notes?’

  ‘Sure,’ agreed Blackstone. He had to ask, to get it finalized! He said: ‘What sort of money are we talking about here?’

  ‘This is a rush job, very important to me,’ said Losev. ‘You get a set of drawings back to me by the weekend and I’ve got a good chance of securing a contract that’s going to make me a very happy man. So you do that for me and there’s five hundred pounds in your pocket, no questions asked.’

  Blackstone hid behind his beer glass again. Finally he managed: ‘Here this time tomorrow night then?’

  ‘I can’t believe how lucky we are to have met,’ said Losev.

  ‘Neither can I,’ said Blackstone, deeply sincere. ‘I don’t even know your name.’

  ‘Stranger,’ said Losev, reciting the Moscow-dictated legend name. ‘Mr Stranger.’

  Legend name for Petrin, in San Francisco, was Friend. Both had been selected by Alexei Berenkov with much forethought.

  Berenkov had the summons hand-delivered to Natalia in her office three floors below him in the First Chief Directorate headquarters on the Moscow ring road, knowing she would be there to receive it because he’d made himself responsible for her movements.

  Natalia sat for several moments held by the shock, the words blurring before her, then becoming clear, then bluring again. It had finally come, she decided at once: the demand she’d feared every day since Charlie’s departure.

  Natalia, who’d observed her religion even before the Gorbachev relaxations made church attendance easier, thought: Oh God! Dear God, please help me!

  10

  Berenkov stood politely as the woman entered his office and went halfway across the room to greet her, escorting her to the overly ornate visitors’ chair he’d moved specially, to bring her closer to his desk, not to its front but to one side. That was the extent of the relaxation: there was a less official area of chairs and couches to one side, near the window, but Berenkov decided it would have been going too far.

  ‘Welcome, Natalia Nikandrova,’ said Berenkov. ‘Welcome indeed.’

  ‘Comrade General,’ responded Natalia. Her voice was higher than it should have been but he would expect some apprehension at the personal interview. She put her hand up to the thick-rimmed spectacles before she realized she was doing it and stopped the nervous gesture; it would have seemed like a fatuous wave. Why this clumsy, artificial politeness? Where were the escorting guards and the stenographer, to note the interrogation for later production as evidence at a trial?

  ‘There has not been the opportunity before for me to congratulate you upon your promotion.’

  Nor the need, thought Natalia, further bewildered. Unable to think of anything better, she said: ‘Thank you, Comrade General.’ There was an approach taught like this at the training academy: the soft, beguiling beginning, lulling into a sense of misleading security. Everything was undoubtedly being recorded by hidden microphones so she supposed there was no necessity for official stenographers.

  ‘Well deserved,’ said Berenkov. Truthfully he added: ‘I’ve spent time considering your entire career. It is extremely commendable.’

  She and Charlie had tried to prepare for an encounter like this. It was imperative, Charlie had insisted, that she remain unshakable in her story of never imagining he intended to return to the West until the very day she’d denounced him. She could go as far as admitting their affair – which she had done to Kalenin – but insist it was contrived by her, without any real affection, to trick him into some indiscretion to confirm her growing suspicion of his loyalty to Moscow. Survive, Charlie had repeated again and again: Think of nothing except surviving. Cautiously, stiffly, she said: ‘I am gratified you should think so, Comrade General.’

  ‘And your son is an exemplary student at the military academy,’ said Berenkov.

  The alarm flared through her. The beginning of the pressure, the remainder of what she had to lose? She said: ‘He appears to be doing well.’

  ‘But away for most of the time now? No longer needing his mother’s guidance?’

  Which direction was this? A hint at how vulnerable Eduard was? Or the first move to take the apartment away from her? ‘That is so,’ she conceded. She was terrified of the moment coming but she almost wished, fatalistically, that the bloated man would stop playing with her and come out openly with the accusation.

  ‘So there is no personal reason against your taking another job?’ Definitely nervous, decided Berenkov. But controlling it well. Then again, she had been educated to control her emotions.

  ‘I’m afraid…I don’t quite…another job?’ stumbled Natalia, badly. ‘Forgive me,’ she recovered, more forcefully. ‘What job could I have different from what I already do…for which I have been particularly schooled?’ She was now totally bewildered, too confused to anticipate or guess at anything Berenkov might say.

  ‘Everyone and everything has to adjust to the times through which we are going,’ said Berenkov. ‘Ourselves included. I fully recognize that yours has until now been a specialized subject and that you might not have considered any other field. But there is one; one for which your language expertise fits you very well indeed.’

  What was all this! Certainly not, apparently, what she’d feared. Natalia stopped the relief, before it had time properly to form. Everything was still far too uncertain, too jumbled, for her to feel relief. ‘What else could I do but debrief?’

  There was suspicion, gauged Berenkov. There should have been apprehension, at being called to the Director’s office and there should have been surprise, at what he was nebulously offering. But suspicion didn’t have a place. He wanted very much to produce Charlie Muffin’s name, to observe her reaction. But he couldn’t, he accepted; she always had to remain the unknowing bait, against her warning him if Charlie Muffin did respond. He said: ‘You can listen. Expertly, the way you’ve been taught. Understand the nuances beyond the flat words.’

  ‘Listen to whom?’

  ‘Official ministry delegations, to the West. They are going to increase, in the coming months, under the new order at the Kremlin.’ Berenkov was leaning forward on his desk, intent upon her. Pinpricks of colour came to her face, the way people become flushed when they are excited.

  The West! Somewhere she’d never imagined herself ever being able to reach, somewhere where Charlie…Natalia stopped determinedly. Rigidly professional, she said: ‘There are always interpreters…other people from our organization forming part of the support staff as well. I would have no proper or useful role.’

  An intelligent objection, accepted Berenkov; the woman was fully controlled now, demure hands in the demure lap of her stern black suit, hair tightly in a bun at the back of her head, in a style he found oddly antiquated. She wore no make-up, either. As if she were dressing down or not bothering with her appearance. ‘We think you would: a very useful role. Interpreters have access at all times and at all levels but as I’ve already told you we don’t expect from you the translations of what is said. The others can provide that. From you we want the analyses, independent of the other various ministry opinions.’

  ‘Supplied to whom?’ queried Natalia. ‘The ministries? Or here?’

  ‘Here, of course,’ smiled Berenkov. That had to be the way for any uncertainties in her mind to be satisfactorily allayed.

  ‘I would be a KGB spy upon the delegations, in fact?’ queried Natalia directly.

  Berenkov shook his head. ‘Others form part of every overseas group to ensure proper behaviour: you said so yourself, a few moments ago. All we seek is what I’ve asked for. Independent analysis.’

  Natalia supposed that with so many changes happening in Moscow it made practical, understandable sense for the KGB to know first hand as much as possible of such overseas visits, properly to formulate their own forward policies. She wouldn’t have thought it needed a change of leadership before the necessity was realized, however. She said: �
��So I am being officially transferred?’

  ‘How would you feel about such a move?’ said Berenkov, conveying the impression she had a choice.

  ‘It is too sudden…too unexpected…for me properly to be able to answer that…’

  All the early unease had gone now, assessed Berenkov. She was a woman capable of adapting remarkably quickly. Making it obvious there hadn’t really been a choice at all, Berenkov said: ‘You will begin immediately.’

  Recognizing the dismissal, Natalia stood and said: ‘I hope I will fulfil what’s required of me.’

  ‘I hope that too,’ said Berenkov, in a remark of which she was never to understand the true meaning.

  Natalia had completely recovered from all the doubts by the time she left Berenkov’s suite, able to think and rationalize. That initial reaction, immediately associating Charlie with the West, as if there were a chance of her seeing him again, was perhaps natural but in reality quite foolish. There would never be a chance of a reunion. How could there be?

  Charlie underwent one routine interrogation and, more expert than his questioners, he guessed within minutes that they were merely going through the required motions and that the investigation had already been resolved. And if it had, in a little over a week, he knew, too, that he’d been correct about the episode at the Hampshire nursing home.

  His formal notice to return to Westminster Bridge Road came during the second week but the date for that return was not until the the end of the month, giving the vague semblance of a proper inquiry. Charlie surmised the truth to be that Harkness was trying to delay the inevitable confrontation and considered making contact with Laura to find out what he could. Not fair, he dismissed at once: if he’d succeeded in escalating everything to the level he hoped, he could get Laura fired out of hand for even speaking to him. He could wait, Charlie decided: he had all the time in the world.

  ‘What’s their explanation?’ demanded the outraged Harkness. In his anger his face had gone from its usual pink to bright red.

  ‘It’s most unfortunate,’ said Witherspoon, unhappy at being caught in the middle. ‘I briefed them thoroughly but no one expected the story of their being from the Ministry of Pensions to be checked so thoroughly.’

  ‘The man Muffin is a confounded nuisance; an embarrassment and a nuisance,’ insisted Harkness. ‘Now I’ve got to provide an explanation. Can you imagine that!’

  ‘A great nuisance,’ agreed Witherspoon.

  ‘This department – this service – has got to be rid of him!’

  ‘Yes,’ said Witherspoon in further agreement.

  ‘And I want your help in achieving it.’

  ‘Whatever I can do,’ accepted Witherspoon at once. He knew Charlie Muffin laughed at him: despised him even. There would be a great satisfaction in being the one who laughed, for a change.

  11

  Things happened far more quickly than Natalia Fedova had expected, almost too quickly to allow her properly to think and to encompass all that the change meant to her. Although she could not easily conceive what training or preparation there could be she had still anticipated some period of instruction, but there was none. There was a memorandum from Berenkov officially confirming the decision of their meeting and telling her she would continue to operate from her existing office within the First Chief Directorate. And some Foreign Ministry circular advising her of allowances she could claim, together with a request for accreditation photographs and a personal biography form to complete. Five days after she submitted it, she was assigned her first interpreter-escort role, accompanying a Foreign Ministry delegation to Canberra.

  It was fortunately a brief and comparatively simple trip, an exploratory journey to discuss and assess whether an official visit to Australia at Foreign Minister level would be acceptably worthwhile to both countries. Natalia conducted herself with absolute propriety and decorum, guessing herself to be very much on trial. Technically her rank within the KGB – and the fact that she was KGB – put her above the constraints of other, ordinary Soviet ministry officials towards the delegation leaders, but Natalia never took advantage of it. She was polite and considerate to everyone, even the most junior clerks, and showed the proper deference to those in charge. She identified the monitoring KGB officers before the aircraft landed in the Australian capital, a fat, borish Armenian and a younger, confident Moscow-born man. From them there was an attitude of reserved uncertainty but on the fourth day the younger one made the inevitable approach. Natalia’s tempted reaction was to use her rank. Instead she rejected the man without humiliating or embarrassing him. The official interpreter was a man whom Natalia suspected of having KGB links too, because such advantageously placed officials customarily did. She anticipated resentment but there wasn’t any, which she took as further proof of the man’s Dzerzhinsky Square connections and of his having been told how to behave towards her.

  Natalia found herself enjoying her role. The official meetings were not difficult to interpret, either verbally or by intention, and after shutting herself away in the Mytninskaya apartment for so long the sudden social change was pleasant, as well. She liked the cocktail parties and the receptions and the dinners. There were limited but interesting tourist outings and three press conferences, each with photocalls from which Natalia instinctively and protectively recoiled until pressured into forming part of the groups.

  When she returned to Moscow she was surprised to see the photographs published in Pravda and Izvestia, both with her name printed in full.

  Dutifully fulfilling her imagined function, Natalia wrote a comprehensive and annotated report of the visit, with a single-sheet summary in which she judged that although the Australians had been welcoming and friendly she did not believe an official invitation would be forthcoming so close to a general election within the country. It proved to be an accurate assessment.

  The North American tour was longer and with a different government group, a perennial Trade Ministry quest for grain sales to supplement another failed Russian harvest. This time there was advanced publicity, a group photograph published in Pravda and again with everyone identified by name.

  Natalia conducted herself as carefully as before. This time the sexual advance came from a deputy minister who accepted her refusal philosophically and switched his attention at once to one of the accompanying female stenographers who was equally unoffended but still said no. There were eight days in Ottawa, again concluding with press conferences and photographs, and from Canada they flew south to Washington. The scheduled American visit lasted a week and ended with a joint conference with US agricultural and trade officials who disclosed tentative agreement to supply the full amount needed to make up the Russian shortfalls.

  In her assessment upon her Moscow return Natalia warned against their becoming over-reliant upon American supplies that could be used as a bargaining lever in some quite separate, later negotiation between the two countries.

  Berenkov responded by return, congratulating her upon her analyses – as he had after her correct interpretation in Australia – and assured Natalia her transfer was being regarded even beyond the First Chief Directorate as an unqualified success.

  Blackstone could not remember feeling like this before: couldn’t put into so many words exactly how he did feel. He felt comfortable. And supremely confident, without those worrying dips into depression. But most of all there was relief at not having to worry any more. There’d never seemed to be a time in the past when part of his mind wasn’t occupied with money, making calculations on scraps of paper, often virtually fingering the edges of the coins in his pocket to count how much he had. He didn’t have to do that any longer, not any of it. Christ, it was a good feeling! Not something he wanted to lose, ever. So he was going to make bloody sure he didn’t. The drawings so far had been easy. Not that he’d said so, of course. He hadn’t made them look like a quick or simple job, either. He’d done them properly, top-quality stuff, giving good value for what he got.

  And
he hadn’t flashed the money around, either. Not too much, anyway. The car, a second-hand Ford but a good one, nearly new, had cost more than he’d really planned to spend and he’d had to spread quite a lot on hire purchase, but there’d be no difficulty keeping up the payments, with his extra income guaranteed. And the separate holidays were booked, with Ruth and Ann. And it was good, being able to go into shops with either of them and say things like ‘If you want it, it’s yours’ when they tried on a dress or something.

  Blackstone thought back to another time, a time he was never going to know again, when he’d been worried as usual but cheered himself up, thinking of his luck in having both Ann and Ruth. Now everything was perfect, he decided: absolutely perfect.

  12

  Charlie’s cubicle was on the fifth floor, overlooking an unused courtyard at the back. The corridor and other offices seemed much quieter than usual, with hardly anyone about, as if they’d all heard the airraid siren and rushed off to the shelters before the bombs started to drop. At this door Charlie hesitated, looking through the fluted glass into the facing cubicle. It was nominally the office of Hubert Witherspoon, whom Charlie suspected of being the eager purveyor of his indiscretion to Harkness. It looked, as it always looked, like an entry for the Neat Office of the Year Award, but Witherspoon wasn’t there. If there had been a rush for the airraid shelters Witherspoon would have been way out in front to get the deepest, safest place with his sandwich pack and toilet deodorizer.

  Charlie’s quarters looked like the bomb had already scored a direct hit. The non-classified InTraffic that Charlie was listed automatically to receive had continued uninterrupted while he had been away. It overflowed the provided tray, and messengers had made a pile beside, on the desk, and when that got high enough to topple over they had started stacking them on the floor. There was a second tray for signals advising Charlie in his absence that classified material was awaiting his signature and collection from Dispatch. It was empty, like it had been for months. On top of the two filing cabinets, in an empty milk bottle, drooped the skeleton of an atrophied tulip he’d stolen from St James’ Park coming back from lunch one evening; he couldn’t remember where he’d got the empty milk bottle. The Times still lay on his picked-at, cluedotted blotter, folded as he’d left it at the crossword. Someone had filled in with a contrasting red pen the word that had baffled him – ‘Idiot’ – in response to the clue asking who told Macbeth that life was but a walking shadow. Witherspoon, guessed Charlie: the prick was always going on about Double-whatevers from Oxford and trying to prove how clever he was. Charlie didn’t think the answer was right.