Comrade Charlie

by Brian Freemantle

  Petrin drove straight from McLaren Park to the airport. He was one of those lucky travellers who found it easy to sleep on aircraft and he did so, soundly. It was a polar flight that landed in England by mid-morning and he arrived feeling completely rested. Any visit to the Soviet embassy was precluded by the known permanent, twenty-four-hour watch maintained upon it by British counter-intelligence. Petrin went instead to the hotel where Krogh was booked, remaining only long enough to register in and unpack. Professionally cautious, Petrin rejected the idea of a taxi. Instead he indulged himself by circling the block to go through Grosvenor Square and past the US embassy to reach Hyde Park, walking its full width to the bisecting park road before cutting up towards the restaurant overlooking the Serpentine lake. He made several checks as he did so, ensuring there were no followers.

  In the restaurant he did not take a seat, although confirming there was a table reservation. Instead he stood at the bar until Losev entered, staying expressionless until the man reached him. Petrin thought he detected a reserve in the other man’s greeting, but conceded at once it could have been a misconception.

  ‘The beer’s warm,’ Petrin cautioned.

  ‘It frequently is in England,’ said Losev. ‘You get used to it. There wasn’t any need for the precautions you took getting here: you were protected.’

  Petrin was curious at the other man’s need to boast of the guarding observation: annoyed, too, that he hadn’t detected it, which he should have done. He said: ‘That’s comforting to know.’

  ‘How’s your man?’

  ‘Shaky,’ admitted Petrin. ‘Showing signs of the strain, which is pretty considerable.’

  ‘He’s not going to collapse, is he?’

  ‘I don’t think so: he knows what would happen if he did. There’s a lot to be done before he arrives.’

  A support role, thought Losev at once, bitterly: the other man’s attitude was very much superior to subordinate. He said: ‘Like what?’

  ‘I want the equivalent of a complete drawing office: all conceivable equipment and instruments and a place where he can work without interruption. Can you manage that?’

  I want, isolated Losev. And can you manage that, like it was some junior initiative test. He said, with some exaggeration: ‘Of course. We have a completely secure house unknown to the British authorities quite near here, in Kensington.’

  ‘What about equipping it?’

  ‘Do you know precisely what he’ll need?’

  Instead of replying Petrin handed over the list he had composed at the beginning of the overnight flight, before sleeping.

  Losev glanced at it, hot with irritation. He thought: Run, little messenger boy, run. He said: ‘I’ll organize it today.’

  ‘Any change in the situation of the man you’ve got inside the factory here?’

  It was a gloating question, decided Losev. Exaggerating again, he said: ‘Now he’s been cleared there’s the possibility of a transfer. Moscow consider him important.’

  ‘How soon is the transfer to be?’ punctured Petrin at once.

  ‘There’s no date,’ Losev was forced to admit, discomfited.

  ‘It would be good to have the insurance of a second source,’ said Petrin objectively.

  A waiter advised that their table was ready and both men sat and ordered before picking up the conversation. Petrin asked for the details of travelling to and from the Isle of Wight and what the factory was like, and asked Losev to inform Moscow of his arrival: everything really was politely requested but Losev inferred them as demands and felt further antagonism, giving short, clipped responses. They agreed to communicate daily through the number that Blackstone had, which was to a telephone in the safe house Losev intended setting up as Krogh’s drawing office, and Losev said he would forward any queries from Moscow to Petrin’s hotel using the same route.

  Towards the end of the meal Petrin was sure he had not been mistaken about Losev’s initial reserve or about the later hostility. Finally he said: ‘Is something wrong?’

  ‘Wrong?’

  ‘I have the impression I’ve offended you in some way.’

  ‘No,’ denied Losev. ‘I’m not offended about anything. How could I be?’

  ‘That’s what I couldn’t understand.’

  ‘Maybe you’re tired after the flight.’

  Petrin gazed steadily at the London station chief across the tiny, window-side table. ‘Maybe I am,’ he agreed. Then he said: ‘I don’t think anything should be allowed to endanger what we’ve got to achieve, do you?’

  ‘That remark is incomprehensible to me.’

  ‘It means that we should work together,’ said Petrin.

  ‘I don’t imagine it being any other way,’ said Losev stiffly.

  ‘Good,’ said Petrin. ‘I wouldn’t like it to be any other way.’

  Charlie caught Laura on the pavement outside the office. As soon as she saw him her face opened into a smile but Charlie didn’t smile back. Bluntly he said: ‘I’m going to have to back out of the arrangement we made on Sunday. I’m sorry.’

  Laura’s expression faded. She said: ‘Why don’t we rearrange something for another evening?’

  ‘Maybe not for a little while.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘I see.’

  ‘I think it would be best.’

  ‘I told you a long time ago there wasn’t any danger of it getting out of hand. Not on my part anyway.’

  ‘I remember,’ said Charlie.

  ‘Is it anything I’ve done? Or said?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So why?’

  ‘I just think it’s best, that’s all.’

  ‘I think I deserve an explanation at least.’

  ‘I can’t give you one, not yet. Maybe after I get back from holiday.’

  ‘Or until you want to learn something you can’t get from anyone else!’

  He’d deserved that, Charlie accepted. He still wished she hadn’t said it. ‘I’m sorry,’ he repeated.

  ‘Me, too,’ said Laura, turning abruptly and hurrying into the building.

  Charlie gave her time to get the lift to the floor high above his office and then followed her in. Would he ever be able to give her an explanation, he wondered.

  ‘He gave no reason?’ demanded Harkness, who’d been disappointed for weeks with the titbits of gossip Laura passed on.

  ‘None,’ said the sad-faced girl.

  ‘Maybe after he gets back from holiday,’ repeated Harkness reflectively. ‘What could that mean?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Laura.

  ‘But I’m going to try to find out,’ said Harkness positively.

  26

  Natalia started to prepare herself for England a long time before the scheduled departure date, realizing practically at once the mistake she had made. She should have followed far more closely the lead of the other women on the previous overseas trips and better spent the allowance she received on Western clothes. She could have bought far more than she had that one shopping day in Washington and she hadn’t bothered at all in Australia or Canada. And she was anxious to be chic all the time: chic and cosmopolitan, not insular and dowdy.

  Like a child denying that a hoped-for event could ever occur in the fervent belief that the opposite would happen, Natalia told herself as she had since getting her new appointment that there was no chance of her encountering Charlie. All the old arguments paraded through her mind in the weeks leading up to the trip, the fors and the againsts, her own private search for a conclusion different from any she’d reached before. To start with Charlie was an overseas operative, not internal counter-intelligence, so it wouldn’t be his department who monitored the Russian visit, as all Russian visits were monitored. So there was no way he could know of her presence in the country. Except that she had been an internally functioning officer and was now assigned overseas duties, so maybe he would have access. She told herself it would be too much to expect, if on the off-chance he did learn about her, that it would mean
anything to him anyway. It had all seemed real – so very real – in Moscow but there was always the doubt that for him it had been anything more than an affair of the moment, a temporary refuge from loneliness. He had, after all, gone back, hadn’t he? Gone back to whom? Charlie had talked of Edith and the way she’d died but there could have been another wife, a woman he hadn’t talked about. Except, she balanced hopefully again, he had pleaded with her to run with him. He wouldn’t have done that if there’d been another woman in England, would he? The pendulum swung back in the other direction, to another familiar reflection: there might not have been a woman then but what about now?

  Whatever, Natalia still determined to make herself as attractive as possible, all the time she was there.

  She spent days in the vast market place of the GUM store, picking over and rejecting and picking over once more. She went to the Western concessionary outlets available to her as a KGB officer, on Vernadskovo and Gertsana, and couldn’t make up her mind about anything on the first visits so she went a second time. She finally bought another business suit and two dresses and two pairs of shoes. And when she modelled them for herself back at the Mytninskaya apartment Natalia decided she didn’t really like any of them and wondered if she’d be able to shop in London early in the trip, rather than at the end which seemed to be the custom. She considered changing her hairstyle, taking it even shorter, but decided against it because she’d already shortened it from how it had been when she and Charlie were together and she didn’t want to alter herself too much. She experimented in front of the mirror with different make-up, applying more than she customarily did, but rejected any change here and for the same reason.

  A fortnight before the departure day she received a scrawled note from Eduard, nothing more than a notification of another leave allocated and that she was to expect him home. The dates he gave clashed with those of her being in London and Natalia was relieved and ashamed at herself for the feeling. She wrote back immediately, saying that she was sorry but that she would be away for the entire period and got a response just as quickly from her son. He said it didn’t matter but that he would still use Mytninskaya: if she were going away she wouldn’t be needing the car, would she, so would she leave the keys somewhere prominent for him to pick up when he got there?

  Natalia looked despairingly around her polished, pin-neat home and tried to imagine who Eduard might bring with him to an apartment he knew to be empty and what they would do once they got there. And physically shuddered at the thought. The day after receiving the second letter Natalia sat for an hour trying to compose a note to leave for Eduard, running the gamut from a mother disappointed to a mother pleading through to a mother demanding change. And then threw all the drafts away, guessing at best Eduard would laugh with his friends at her efforts or at worst do something stupid or disgusting or both, just to defy her.

  A conference was called, for the last week, at which the delegation members were introduced to each other and they all had to sit through a lecture now familiar to Natalia on the expected behaviour of Russians engaged on overseas visits. The stress was upon absolute propriety, with no excessive drinking or exuberant, attention gaining embarrassments. At no time were they to forget they were representatives of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

  Natalia didn’t count heads but it was clearly the largest contingent with which she had so far travelled. Idly she tried to isolate the KGB escorts appointed to impose the discipline about which they were being warned, and decided at once upon a fidgeting, hunch-shouldered little man who constantly chewed his fingernails and whose name she remembered to be Gennadi Redin. She guessed there would be two more, at least.

  Although there would have been little reason for it, Natalia wondered throughout the build-up if there would be any summons from Berenkov, like before. But there wasn’t and she felt relieved. There would have been nothing for them properly to discuss and the huge man made her feel uncomfortable.

  Alexei Berenkov did consider a meeting with the woman. And it was because there was no valid reason for it – which would have been obvious to her – that he decided against it. With everything constructed just as he intended, an intricate house of matches with only two or three more tiny sticks to be added, the customarily irrepressible Berenkov was apprehensive now of anything happening to bring it all crashing down. It was absolutely essential that she remain the unknowing, unwitting bait, not someone allowed the slightest suspicion: he didn’t want her protecting Charlie Muffin again, as he was convinced she had protected him once before.

  He set out to create further protection, in fact, actually on the day Natalia attended her delegation meeting, going early into Dzerzhinsky Square to meet with Kalenin. Berenkov did not, however, come at once to the point. Characteristically he allowed himself the boast and announced the London confirmation of Charlie Muffin’s reservation at the delegation hotel, adding at once their positive awareness of the British breaking the communication code. Wanting the concession from his doubting friend, Berenkov said: ‘It is encouraging, don’t you think?’

  ‘Situations often look encouraging at the preliminary planning stage,’ refused Kalenin. ‘I would not say we were anywhere beyond preliminary planning at the moment, would you?’

  ‘Yes!’ came back Berenkov abruptly, his impatience with Kalenin finally spilling over. ‘I consider we are a very long way past that stage.’

  ‘You’ve combined the two operations, brought them too close together,’ insisted the First Deputy. ‘You’ve created a danger where there was no need for one to be created, Alexei. It worries me.’

  ‘And you’ve made that obvious for a considerable time now,’ said Berenkov. He realized that, incredibly, it was their first positive argument.

  The awareness seemed to come to Kalenin at the same time. Sadly he said: ‘This really does seem to be a period of great change, in everything, doesn’t it?’

  ‘I hope not in everything,’ said Berenkov sincerely. He would regret losing the man’s friendship absolutely: it was something to which he was accustomed, so accustomed that he took it for granted. Despite their increasing disagreements over this current assignment it came as a shock to think of any split between them being permanent.

  ‘So do I, old friend,’ said Kalenin, still sadly.

  ‘I’m considering the safety of both of us today,’ offered Berenkov, extending a threadbare olive branch.

  ‘How?’

  ‘Baikonur,’ declared Berenkov simply. ‘I think we should take out insurance against any more sniping from the scientists, like they tried to take out insurance against us by complaining over our heads to the Politburo Secretariat.’

  ‘I’m interested,’ said Kalenin, smiling slightly.

  ‘Why don’t we fully remove the threat of any attack from there?’ suggested Berenkov. ‘The fact they haven’t complained since must mean they’re satisifed with everything we got from America. Which we now know to be complete. And which only leaves what Krogh is due to get from England. Why don’t we move Nikolai Noskov, who led the attack against us, and Guzins, who seemed a pretty enthusiastic and senior supporter, to England?’

  ‘What!’ exclaimed Kalenin, astonished.

  ‘Send them to England,’ repeated Berenkov. ‘I could get them there easily enough, by circuitous routing and on false documentation. They could monitor and approve everything that Krogh produces, on the spot, before it gets here. That way – if anything is missed, if there is a problem we can’t anticipate – the responsibility is theirs, as the experts. Not ours.’

  ‘That’s brilliant,’ admired Kalenin, smiling more broadly and matching the other man’s simplicity now. ‘But Noskov is the Strategic Defence Initiative expert! We couldn’t risk exposing him to Western detection. It would be unthinkable.’

  ‘What’s the greater risk, to ourselves?’ demanded Berenkov, who had thought his argument through. ‘Is it failing to get the Star Wars missile in its entirety? Or the minimal possibility of No
skov being detected?’

  Kalenin shook his head doubtfully. ‘It’s an impossible equation,’ he protested. ‘Of course we can’t risk failing to get everything. But the Politburo would never risk Noskov: minimal or not, the danger is too great.’

  ‘Insurance!’ insisted Berenkov, undeterred. ‘Let the Politburo make the refusal, which affords us some lessening of responsibility. And then, if they do refuse, propose that Guzins, still an expert but of lesser importance, be sent instead. More insurance still.’

  Kalenin shook his head but this time it was a gesture continuing the earlier admiration. ‘You’ve always frightened me with the chances you’re prepared to take but sometimes you think like someone who’s survived here in Dzerzhinsky Square and in Moscow all his life.’

  ‘You’re going to propose it?’

  ‘Exactly as you’ve suggested it.’

  ‘It’s all going to work out fine: everything, I mean,’ said Berenkov, sensing a slight reconciliation between them.

  ‘I hope, Alexei,’ said Kalenin, the doubt coming back up like a briefly lowered shield. ‘I hope.’

  Emil Krogh rationalized it all in his confused mind and it came out fine – well, nearly fine – and he was suffused by an enveloping calm, the first mental peace that he’d known since he couldn’t remember when. Of course it wasn’t perfect. There’d be the stigma of taking his own life when he was mentally disturbed but there’d be a lot of evidence about how hard he’d worked, and people sympathized with dedicated men who drove themselves over the edge like that, so there wasn’t much to sneer about there. He worried for a while about the life insurance for Peggy, because that was negated by suicide. But he calculated that the insurance was really for the corporation anyway – for their loss of a dynamic chairman – rather than anything personal, for Peggy. With the Monterey estate paid for completely and the stock he owned on the open market, she’d be a millionairess twice over. And that before he took into account the stock options in the company itself, which totted up to another million and a half. He’d read carefully through the fine print of the pension agreement and was sure that would be unaffected, so the income would be more than enough for her to live on, without her having to cash in anything. It would leave Cindy with the condo and the car, but he’d already said goodbye to that anyway: he didn’t even think about Cindy or the property any more. Certainly there’d be no chance of what he’d done ever becoming public, because there was no gain in the Russians exposing the empty blackmail. And so he would have defeated them, after all. Finally fucked them like they’d fucked him, because without the British contribution they’d have nothing. And now they weren’t going to get the British contribution.