Comrade Charlie

by Brian Freemantle

  The ability to drink more than anyone else, and never suffer a hangover, had been one of Igor’s boasts, thought Natalia, isolating other similarity. She said: ‘You’re not in an officers’ mess now.’

  Eduard grimaced, not appearing to regard it as the rebuke she intended. ‘Good life, the military,’ he said. ‘I’m enjoying it.’

  Another thing Igor had often said. It had taken her a long time to realize it was because of the freedom it gave him, to whore and impress women at air shows and exhibitions by flying faster or lower than anyone else. She guessed her ex-husband would have by now gained a substantive promotion in the Air Force. Igor would like that, insignias of rank on a fine uniform, medals and ribbons arrayed in lines. She wished it were not proving so easy to think of the man today. She reckoned the last time she had consistently done so was when she’d been with Charlie, here in Moscow, the reflections then those of persistent comparison, good against bad. Which, she supposed, was what they were again. She still wished it weren’t so. She said: ‘I’ve managed to get tickets for Saturday for the State Circus! It’s a new season: quite a lot of fresh acts.’

  Eduard stared at her with that frowning, about-tolaugh expression again. ‘The circus!’

  ‘It’s hardly children’s entertainment!’

  Belatedly he realized her disappointment. ‘It’s just…well, I wish you’d mentioned it before.’

  ‘I didn’t think of it until about a week ago, when it was too late to write. And I wasn’t sure I could get tickets anyway. They’re not easy to come by, you know!’

  ‘I made plans, that’s all.’

  ‘Plans!’ exclaimed Natalia, genuinely upset at the flippancy with which he was discarding her proposed treat.

  ‘With some of the other cadet-officers I came up from Baku with.’

  ‘For Saturday night?’

  ‘You don’t mind, do you?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘It’s our first time off base for months.’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘One of them says he knows some good places here where we can enjoy ourselves. Have a few drinks…a few laughs.’

  And more, thought Natalia. The unchanged pattern: drink, whore, boast, exaggerate. ‘I said I understood.’

  ‘I knew you would.’

  Eduard slept late, snoring loudly. His bedroom was redolent of him when Natalia crept in to collect up the laundry and she wondered how long the windows would have to be left open to air the place after he’d gone. The washing was filthy, a lot personally stained, and she doubted her son always emerged the victor in the drinking contests, as he claimed. If Eduard could handle his drink intake one way he did not appear to be able to do so in another. She pressed him to bathe when he finally arose and he said he supposed he should, though there was little enthusiasm. He had his first drink before noon, although only a beer. Eduard kept prowling around the apartment and Natalia guessed he was bored or felt restricted or both. She suggested an ice-hockey game that afternoon and he said OK without much interest although when they got to the stadium his demeanour changed. He yelled and shouted and swore uncaringly, although not obscenely, and when it ended said he’d enjoyed himself.

  Afterwards Eduard said there didn’t seem any point in his returning to Mytninskaya and then having to come out again so soon, so why didn’t they have a drink to fill in the time before he had to meet friends. Because it was convenient they used the bar in the Berlin Hotel, on Zhdanova. Eduard ordered vodka with a beer chaser again, telling his mother to get more than one purchase ticket to save time when they wanted refills.

  ‘There’s no real reason for me to go back to the apartment, either,’ said Natalia when they were seated. ‘I might as well go on to the show straight from here.’

  ‘Show?’ queried Eduard blankly.

  ‘The circus,’ reminded Natalia sadly. ‘It would be silly to waste both tickets.’

  ‘Right!’ agreed Eduard, with surprising eagerness. ‘You’ll have fun.’

  Natalia moved to make the obvious reply but then stopped, saying nothing. Eduard took the tickets which lay between them and returned with more vodka and beer. ‘You didn’t want another juice, did you?’

  ‘No,’ said Natalia.

  ‘I didn’t think you would. That’s why I got the beer, instead.’

  ‘That’s fine.’ Natalia had no real interest in going to the circus on Vernadskovo by herself, but the alternative was to go home by herself which wasn’t really an alternative at all. She realized that quite apart from wanting to see Eduard again she had been looking forward to some brief hours of simple companionship.

  ‘So you won’t need the car?’ demanded Eduard, smiling.

  ‘What?’ she said, confused by the question.

  ‘The car. You won’t really need it if you’re going to the circus, will you?’

  ‘I’ve got to get home, afterwards.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Eduard, waiting expectantly.

  ‘Why?’ she asked in weary resignation.

  ‘I just thought…well…’ shrugged Eduard. ‘I mean it might have been useful if I could have borrowed it…’ He smiled, a little-boy-misunderstood expression. ‘Silly idea.’

  ‘I suppose I could always get a taxi.’

  ‘Sure you wouldn’t mind?’ said Eduard, eager again and too impatient to bother with the charade of protesting that it would cause his mother too much inconvenience.

  ‘I’d be upset if it were damaged.’

  ‘You can trust me.’

  It had never before occurred to Natalia to doubt that she could but she did now and was disturbed by the ease with which the uncertainty came to her. She recalled her reflection in the concessionary store: Eduard was a man living in a rough, even brutal, all-male environment of an army camp. She should be more understanding of how difficult it must be for him to make in minutes, at the snap of his fingers, the transition from one existence to another. She was letting her emotions become jumbled and convoluted, fashioning images where none existed. Natalia handed over the car keys and then, reminded, said: ‘What about a key to get back into the flat?’

  ‘You haven’t a spare?’

  ‘Not with me. I’ll wait up.’

  ‘I might be late,’ said Eduard in quick warning.

  ‘If it gets too late I’ll go to bed and you can wake me up with the bell when you get home.’

  ‘Sure you don’t mind?’

  There was a lot she was being asked not to mind tonight, thought Natalia. ‘No,’ she said.

  The State Circus was spectacular, some of the acts so good that Natalia genuinely forgot the disappointment of not having Eduard with her. During an interval a woman on the far side of the empty place said how could people be so selfish as not to bother to use a seat that was so difficult to get, and Natalia said she couldn’t imagine.

  She stayed up at Mytninskaya until almost one o’clock in the morning and guessed she managed to remain awake for nearly an hour after she got into bed. She jerked awake in the morning, aware at once of not having let Eduard in. His bed had not been slept in although it was possible to detect a trace of his having occupied it the previous day: unthinkingly Natalia opened a window.

  She sat tensed at the kitchen table, hands held tightly before her, unsure what immediately to do. The emergency services, she supposed. But in what order? She’d use her KGB rank and position to get the proper response: she’d never experienced it herself but the civilian militia were legendary for uncaring disregard. So who first, police or hospital services? Hospital services, she decided. There were other things that could have happened to him, beyond a traffic accident. He could have become involved in a fight or got so drunk he’d fallen down and hurt himself. Be in a sobering-up station, in fact. She wasn’t sure but she didn’t think such places, necessary to get fall-down drunks off the Moscow streets to prevent their freezing to death in the winter, were administered by either the police or medical authorities. Definitely try hospitals first.r />
  Because of being in the KGB Natalia possessed that rarest of Moscow commodities, a telephone directory, and was actually looking up the numbers when the doorbell shrilled.

  She ran to the door, hesitating for the briefest second to compose herself before opening it, expecting some official conveyor of bad news. Eduard stood with one hand outstretched against the frame, as if he needed its support. His uniform and shirt collar were undone again, sagging, and his face was red and bloated and his eyes red-veined.

  ‘Didn’t wake you up after all,’ he avoided.

  Eduard was still drunk Natalia decided: if not drunk then very close to it. ‘Where have you been?’

  ‘Decided not to disturb you. Slept in the car,’ he said, grinning, making the lie obvious.

  Were mothers supposed to hope quite so quickly that their sons didn’t become infected by the whores they slept with? She said: ‘You look dreadful. Come in and clean yourself up.’

  ‘Little sleep first,’ insisted Eduard, giving the lopsided smile of his father. He stayed grinning. ‘Not very comfortable, sleeping in a car.’

  It was past noon when he emerged from his bedroom, and once more Natalia had to insist upon his bathing. She tried to keep any distaste from showing in her voice when she asked if he’d enjoyed himself the previous night and pretended to believe the haphazard account of what he’d done. Throughout the rest of the day there were long silences between them, neither with anything left to say, and on the Monday, their last day together, Natalia took him out into Moscow again, trying to use up the time with constant activity in restaurants and bars and among the stalls in the GUM store.

  Eduard had to leave very early on the Tuesday morning and Natalia got up to see him off. He said he had had a wonderful leave and Natalia said she had enjoyed it too. He wasn’t sure when he would get his next furlough but he would let her know and Natalia said that would be fine and that she hoped the new job wouldn’t clash with it, taking her out of the country. Eduard said he hoped that too. The farewell kiss was as clumsy and embarrassed as the greeting gesture had been. Each was relieved at the parting.

  Natalia stripped the bed and washed the blankets as well as the sheets and opened all the bedroom windows to their fullest extent. As an afterthought she put both sets of flowers in the room, although they did not seem particularly scented. Afterwards, still with time to spare before having to get to the First Chief Directorate building, she sat at the same kitchen table and with the same tenseness in which she’d been held imagining Eduard lying injured or dead somewhere on the Sunday morning. It had been an appalling weekend: ugly and disgusting and awful. She didn’t believe Eduard’s behaviour had been the difficulty of adjusting from one environment to another. She believed he found it easy – easier than to conform any other way – to be brutal and coarse, like his father had been brutal and coarse. And in the end she’d come to hate his father.

  Blackstone had been waiting when Losev arrived, getting quickly into the car but saying nothing as they drove to the seafront where Losev stopped intentionally in a car park from which it was possible to see the island, a distant grey outline beyond the dull sea.

  ‘Well!’ said Losev. ‘You’ve had time to think.’

  ‘It won’t work,’ insisted Blackstone. ‘I told you, I’ve been refused on the project.’

  The ambitious Losev hadn’t told Moscow of the problem. ‘Re-apply,’ he insisted. He was determined to get Blackstone operational.

  ‘There’s no point,’ shrugged Blackstone. ‘They’ve got all they want.’

  ‘It’s worth a try,’ persisted Losev.

  Blackstone shrugged again, without replying. He was trapped whichever way he looked: and he considered he’d looked at every possible escape. He desperately wanted to continue receiving the money and felt no reluctance in getting it this way, although he knew precisely who this man calling himself Mr Stranger really was. What right did the company have to expect any loyalty, after the way they’d treated him! Served them right!

  Losev said: ‘I think you’re being too easily beaten. You’re an employee there, even if you’re not part of the project. You can move around, can’t you?’

  ‘Not easily, in the restricted areas.’

  ‘Have you tried?’

  ‘I don’t need to. I know.’

  ‘Five hundred, every time you get me something,’ bargained the balding KGB man. ‘A bonus, for anything particularly good. Doesn’t that appeal to you, five hundred pounds a week at least?’

  ‘You know it does.’

  ‘So do as I say.’

  ‘How will I contact you?’ capitulated Blackstone.

  ‘I’ll give you a phone number,’ said Losev. ‘It will always be manned.’ He smiled across the car, offering an envelope. ‘And didn’t I tell you I was a friend?’

  Blackstone looked at the envelope without taking it. ‘What is it?’

  ‘I don’t want you to worry, about anything,’ said the Russian. ‘It’s your first bonus, a sign of my good faith. Five hundred pounds for doing nothing.’

  Blackstone took it eagerly. ‘I’ll do what I can,’ he said.

  ‘I knew you would,’ said Losev.

  14

  There seemed to be a lull in the war. Charlie guessed that generals and brigadiers who fought real wars would have a technical phrase for it, like regrouping or retrenchment or reallocation of forces. Harkness was probably doing all of those things and working to invent more. But in the immediate days following the confrontation there was a respite, although Charlie was careful not to provide the acting chief with any excuse, no matter how inconsequential. He arrived at Westminster Bridge Road promptly on time and only took a measured hour for lunch and never left early. He was polite to Witherspoon, who returned soft-footed to his office the afternoon of Charlie’s encounter with Harkness, and Witherspoon was polite back although Charlie got the impression of the man distancing himself, which was fine with Charlie who was fed up with the prick breathing constantly down his neck anyway. He made plans with Laura.

  Charlie disposed of the atrophied flower and its milk bottle and paced himself to get through the huge backlog of official documentation and official publications and official and unofficial papers. He dealt first with the direct communications, putting his initials on forms and instructions that needed signed proof of his having read them. He responded with his own memoranda when required, reckoning the Brazilian rain forests were being destroyed sokly to provide the paper necessary for Harkness’ bureaucracy.

  Charlie left the publications until last, although the daily inflow of newsprint meant the pile was constantly increasing, threatening to keep ahead of his physical ability to read them before a fresh batch arrived. He tried to devise a system to clear it and win. He read initially everything printed in English and then, because it made the job easier, studied the analysts’ translations and interpretations of the foreign material that was his responsibility before moving to the originals themselves.

  So it was a long time after that first and those subsequently planted references in the Soviet media to Natalia Nikandrova Fedova before Charlie finally came upon them.

  His recognition was instant although disbelieving and because the first reaction was disbelief he wanted to make sure and that only took seconds anyway, because that first reference, in a weeks-old edition of Pravda, clearly identified Natalia by name, as a delegate member on a visit to Australia. Charlie sat gazing at the photograph, wishing it were better. Natalia did not appear to have changed much: hardly at all, in fact. The picture showed her in civilian clothes, a businesslike, high-buttoned suit, and she was unsmiling in the official surroundings, hedged in by other stern-faced Russians. Her hair seemed shorter, though: when they had been together in Moscow Natalia had mostly worn it long, strained back and in a bun when she was working, loose and lustrously black when they were alone, more at her apartment in Mytninskaya than at his.

  Charlie waited for a feeling, the sort of emotion he sup
posed he should experience, but there was nothing very much, not yet. Maybe there would be some reaction later. At the moment there was too much in the way, too many questions.

  Charlie sectioned the newspaper and used its dating to scour every other Russian-language publication, a week either side. That produced a large photograph in Izvestia with a longer caption, identifying Natalia for the first time as a translator. There was a subsequent story, again with a photograph, upon the delegation’s return and although there were cross-checks he wanted to make at once, Charlie forced himself first to work to a pattern/and go completely through the backlog, unaware and uncaring of time. Which was how he located three more photographs and five further written accounts of Natalia’s movements, through Canada and Washington. Satisfied at last that he had located every report in the publications for which he was responsible for monitoring, Charlie extended the search. Records maintained a Back Reference service of printed material. From it Charlie withdrew everything put out by Tass, the Soviet news agency, together with their entire picture issue, around the dates that corresponded with Natalia’s overseas visits. He extended the inquiry, to include Australian, Canadian and American publications for the same period and found additional coverage and two more photographs for the dossier he began to collate.

  By the time Charlie finally cleared his desk that dossier, which was personal, without any official classification or restriction and which therefore he carried back and forth from the Vauxhall apartment, was quite bulky although there was considerable repetition, which he weeded out.

  So what, in total, did he have? Personal impressions first. Three of the Tass photographs were originals, not blurred newsprint reproductions. So he was able to be very sure that Natalia had not changed at all apart from wearing her hair much shorter, which he liked. He didn’t recognize anything she wore but then it had been a long time since they’d been together, nearly two years, so it was natural she would have bought new clothes. And there would be an expectation – and a financial would be an expectation – and a financial allowance to fulfil it – that she dress well as a representative of her government on overseas missions.