Comrade Charlie

by Brian Freemantle

  ‘Oh yes. Yes, I’m sorry,’ agreed Witherspoon at once. ‘I didn’t think you meant that…I didn’t…’

  ‘No,’ seized Charlie. ‘You didn’t think, did you! No one’s thought, from the very beginning.’

  ‘What’s this proving, except your undeniable guilt?’ intruded Harkness in a weak attempt to help his protégé.

  Charlie chose to ignore the question, openly showing his contempt. ‘So!’ he pressed on. ‘The numbers of the notes are listed, aren’t they? And they’re consecutive, aren’t they?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Witherspoon. ‘Yes, they are.’

  ‘Are we soon getting to the point of this?’ sighed Wilson.

  ‘Please, sir!’ pleaded Charlie. ‘Not long now. Just let me have a few more minutes.’

  ‘A very few more minutes,’ cautioned Wilson.

  Charlie turned back to Harkness. ‘Some time ago – months ago, in fact – you made me the subject of an official internal inquiry?’

  ‘I have already referred to that. And given my reasons for initiating it.’

  ‘There was a period of surveillance?’

  ‘Naturally.’

  Charlie had to turn, to encompass Smedley and Abbott, before coming back to the deputy director. ‘My mother, who is senile and confined to a nursing home, was even subjected to interrogation?’

  Harkness couldn’t withstand Charlie’s unblinking stare. The deputy director looked away and said: ‘There was considered proper reason.’

  ‘Considered by whom?’

  ‘Do I really have to undergo this sort of questioning!’ protested Harkness.

  ‘I’d appreciate your cooperation,’ said Wilson. ‘There appears to be a great deal here that needs explanation.’

  ‘Considered by me,’ admitted Harkness.

  ‘Why?’ persisted Charlie.

  ‘I have always been suspicious of your time in Moscow, although you were supposed to be on assignment on behalf of this department, and you were subsequently allowed to return to it. To which I have already made reference. It was conceivable you might have discussed something of that visit – something incriminating – with your mother.’

  ‘What!’ exclaimed Charlie, genuinely astonished. ‘The possibility of my discussing anything – incriminating or otherwise – with a mentally confused person is utterly inconceivable!’

  ‘I subsequently acknowledged that it was perhaps excessive,’ reminded Harkness. ‘Very little else has proved to be.’

  Charlie was conscious of Wilson’s shift of impatience. Quickly he said to Witherspoon, ‘You have among those folders the results of my most recent assessment examinations?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Pull out just one marking for me,’ asked Charlie. ‘What was the adjudication for surveillance and observation, both detected and performed?’

  ‘Really!’ Wilson protested.

  ‘In a very few moments I will be talking about a Soviet agent who does exist,’ stopped Charlie.

  ‘Reply to the question,’ the Director General ordered Witherspoon urgently.

  ‘Your rating for both is graded as excellent. Ninety-five per cent for detected surveillance, ninety-four for that which you conducted.’

  Had he missed anything? wondered Charlie. He didn’t think so, not at this stage. There would always be time to pick up and elaborate later. He faced the committee and the frowning Director General and said: ‘When I finished the assessment course I was almost at once assigned to an inquiry upon the Isle of Wight, at a factory engaged on a joint development project with a Californian firm. The work is connected with the American Strategic Defence Initiative, Star Wars. A man named Blackstone, who is officially employed as a tracer although not on the secret project, had been found in suspicious circumstances. A company inquiry had already dismissed the matter as having no security risk. I was not satisfied, for reasons I shall make clear at the eventual prosecution…’

  ‘… Prosecution!’ broke in Harkness. ‘You told me – your report says – that the man was beyond suspicion.’

  ‘No I did not,’ corrected Charlie. ‘Read the file. I said that during the time I observed him he did not behave in a suspicious manner. There were things that made me curious, however. His attitude swung between extremes. He confessed to being a bigamist – which I admit did initially throw me in the wrong direction – but then, when I’d apparently accepted it as an explanation for his nervousness, never mentioned it again. He should have kept on about my reporting him to the police, for the crime. But he didn’t. I even protracted the interview on the last day, to give him the opportunity. He didn’t take it. And that second day he was much more confident. There were small discrepancies, too. He said he didn’t know the sort of work going on, for instance, when it had been generally reported…’ Charlie paused, smiling but in mockery towards Harkness. ‘That’s why I decided to stay on. I got to thinking: What is the most important thing a bigamist needs? And decided it was money. Which would make him an ideal target in a situation where there were secrets that the Russians might be interested in. So I watched. Like I said, there was nothing positively suspicious. But there was an episode with a telephone. It was a public kiosk, quite close to his home, yet he used it and not his own, so very close. I could not get near enough to identify the number he called but I could certainly see that he started from the bottom and the very top of the dial, so it had to be a London number prefixed by zero one. He followed by seven more digits, which further indicates it was a London connection…’

  ‘… There is no log, no file note of this whatsoever. That is directly contrary to procedure,’ cut in Harkness. ‘How much more self-admission are we going to need from this man!’

  ‘I agree with you,’ said Charlie, before Wilson could speak. ‘I contravened regulations, which I concede was wrong. But by this time other strange things were happening and I considered the course I took justified. As I said, Blackstone clearly called a London number. He spoke briefly, because I saw him. And then hung around the kiosk for about fifteen minutes – when his own house and his own telephone were less than five minutes away – to call again. That was all. I kept him under the closest surveillance for the remainder of a week and at no time did he do anything to arouse the slightest suspicion…’

  It was Harkness who broke in again. Intent across the table, believing he was improving his accusations, the deputy Director said: ‘Are you telling us that you’ve let a man you believe to be an agent continue working at an installation where the highest classified work is being carried out? And done nothing about it!’

  ‘No,’ said Charlie. ‘I emphatically impressed upon the English project leader that Blackstone under no circumstances should be considered for employment, nor allowed within the restricted area at any time or under any circumstances whatsoever. But never to let him know that he was under any ban: rather that he might be seconded in response to an application he’d made. I also had our Technical Division impose a trace upon the Isle of Wight public kiosk to isolate all London calls made from it…’ He looked across at Witherspoon: ‘If you searched my office you should have come across the report.’

  Witherspoon shook his head but to Harkness, who was staring at him furiously. ‘There was just a number. It didn’t mean anything.’

  ‘Strange things,’ prompted the Director General. ‘You said there were other strange things happening.’

  ‘I found myself under surveillance,’ announced Charlie. ‘It was very expert – more expert than it had been before – and it was unquestionably professional observation…’ Charlie paused and said: ‘And here I made a serious mistake, the only one I consider a I have made. And from which I hope to recover…’ He looked, pointedly, from Harkness to Witherspoon and then to the Special Branch men. ‘I had been, as you have heard, under constant internal harassment from this department…harassment I had identified and which had been openly acknowledged – an acknowledgement which is on file – to me by the deputy Director General prior to
anything he has said here today. I inferred, quite wrongly, that what I had detected was a continuation of that harassment. I decided to run hare to the hounds, to see what more stupidity there was going to be. It was some time before I discovered it wasn’t internal at all. That it was Soviet…’

  ‘… You didn’t report being targeted by a hostile foreign agency …!’ broke in Harkness.

  Charlie virtually ignored the question again, continuing to talk directly to Wilson. ‘I didn’t make the discovery immediately. It was some days after I returned from the Isle of Wight inquiry. I am extremely careful how I leave my flat: setting things that will alert me to an entry. I knew there was an entry – again I thought it was part of the internal investigation – because my door has several locks, one a Yale. But I never set it, because the others compensate: it’s always latched. When I tried to enter my flat one evening the Yale lock had been dropped. There were other things – cabinet and room doors closed which I had left ajar or in positions from which I could recognize if they had been touched, the slight disarrangement of magazines that had been left in a particular order. But I couldn’t, at first, discover why. It was a Sunday when I made a determined search…’ Charlie paused, going to Witherspoon. ‘You might like to take a note of the date, although of course it will be recorded by the official stenographers here. It was August 6…’

  Witherspoon hesitated, frowning, and briefly made a notation on a pad in front of him.

  ‘… I found the cipher pad first,’ resumed Charlie. ‘The door of the cupboard housing the electricity meter was one I had left slightly open and it had been closed when I first discovered the entry. It was much more difficult finding the money: I thought I’d covered the bedroom until I noticed the slight variation between the indentations in the carpet that the leg castors had made. The bed had been put back just a fraction out of alignment to where it had been before…’

  Charlie paused, wishing he had water, like Harkness earlier. He said: ‘That’s when I realized who had really established the surveillance which had by now been in place for a considerable amount of time. And realized, too, that it was being directed very personally against me and was not some wider operation. So I decided to go on running hare …’

  ‘… that would have been entirely wrong: against every regulation,’ interjected the determined Harkness. ‘If it were true – and I do not believe this absurdly concocted story for a minute – it should have been immediately reported to me!’

  He’d already concluded that if he handled this confrontation wrongly he was lost, Charlie remembered: that it was all or nothing. Staring straight at Harkness, Charlie said: ‘I did not have then – nor do I have now – any confidence whatsoever in this department properly to investigate what was or is happening. I was the obvious target: I decided to let it continue to run, to try to see at least if a direction or a purpose emerged, before reporting it officially.’

  ‘That action, like that remark, was quite wrong,’ said Wilson, and Harkness snatched a sideways look of gratitude to the Director General he had earlier criticized.

  Shit, thought Charlie. And then another reflection: All or nothing. He said: ‘It would not have been one I would have taken had different circumstances prevailed in this department.’

  ‘The innuendo in that remark is even more improper,’ said Wilson angrily, turning perceptibly towards a blazing-faced Harkness. ‘I think it calls for an apology to certain people in this room.’

  There were several moments of absolute silence, with everyone’s concentration entirely upon Charlie. He swallowed and shuffled slightly on aching feet. Then he said: ‘With respect to yourself, sir, I decline to make any apology to anyone in this room for anything I have so far said or implied.’ There! he thought. Not just irrevocably committed: he’d put the noose around his own neck and had the do-it-yourself trapdoor lever in his hand.

  ‘We have been very patient…’ began Wilson, but for the first time ever Charlie risked talking over the man: ‘Please!’ he said, knowing he had only the briefest chance to hold them. ‘Just another few minutes…!’ and when Wilson stopped talking, more in further anger than permission, Charlie hurried on: ‘That money over there, the thousand pounds by which such great store is being set as being a Soviet payment to me, is my money.’

  ‘What!’ demanded Wilson, no longer angry.

  He’d saved himself but he was still hanging on by his fingertips, Charlie calculated. ‘There was a thousand pounds in that cavity, when I discovered it,’ explained Charlie. ‘A plant, like everything else has been planted. Not knowing – still not knowing even now – why it was being done, it was blatantly obvious I had to take what precautions I could to avoid any further mistakes. I made the discovery, as I have said, on August 6th, a Sunday. On the morning of Monday, August 7th, I took the thousand pounds and three of the top sheets off the cipher pad to my bank. It’s the Barclays branch just across Vauxhall Bridge, on Millbank. I deposited it with an assistant manager, named Frederick Snelgrove, with written authority that it should be released upon demand to Sir Alistair Wilson. I then withdrew, in consecutively numbered notes from the cashier Sally Dickenson, whose fingerprints are on those notes, one thousand pounds from my own account. I had those numbers recorded and that record is also part of the provably dated deposit.’

  Charlie stopped, hopefully, Nobody spoke. He said: ‘No one seems to have realized the significance! All this was done on August 7th. The message – “Reactivate payment by one thousand” – was not sent from Moscow until August 26th, according to your evidence: nineteen days after, I had already found the thousand pounds, switched it and made arrangements that any investigation – any after, proper investigation – would lead to its being eventually released to the Director General of this department.’

  The reactions were mixed, throughout the room. The two unidentified men – who looked like clones of all the Whitehall mandarins Charlie had ever encountered – were bent sideways towards each other in whispered conversation. Sir Alistair Wilson was staring at him with obvious curiosity but with no other indication of what he was thinking. Harkness had a finger sideways to his mouth, gnawing at it in concentration, trying to absorb what Charlie had said. Witherspoon was scurrying through his documentation, seeking something. It was time to finish, while he was marginally ahead, decided Charlie. He said: ‘There have been other things added to the bank deposit since that initial date. There is a long list of vehicle registration numbers, which I believe to have been used by various Soviet observation teams, particularly since I moved into the delegation hotel in Bayswater. I have not had the facility, away from this department, to check out the ownership for those registrations. I would suspect they are hired. Tracing the hiring back will, I hope, give us the names of some Soviet front companies which we might not at the moment be aware are being used by the KGB…’

  He smiled back towards the rigid-faced Smedley. ‘… And there are also the numbers of our own people who have been in such painfully obvious position over the past three or four days. Three Fords, a Vauxhall and a Fiat…As I have already suggested, the investigation has been appallingly amateurish…’

  ‘Anything else?’ cut off Wilson. There was no longer any anger in the frail voice.

  ‘I hope there will be when I know what was in the King William Street drop,’ said Charlie. He turned to Harkness. ‘So what was it?’

  Harkness’ hand came only partially away from his mouth. ‘There still needs to be further investigation to discover its whereabouts,’ the man conceded.

  ‘What!’ said Charlie. Confident now, he slightly overstressed the incredulity. ‘You mean you don’t even know where it is yet!’

  ‘It will be found,’ insisted Harkness.

  ‘And I thought it was something else you’d just omitted to say,’ said Charlie in disbelief. He turned to Witherspoon but with a positive body movement to include Smedley and Abbott. ‘Who tossed my flat?’

  There was no immediate response. Then
Witherspoon breathed in heavily and squared his shoulders and said: ‘It was done under my supervision.’

  Charlie gestured to the other two men. ‘By those two.’

  Witherspoon nodded.

  ‘And what did you find?’

  ‘You have already heard what we found.’

  ‘Jesus!’ exclaimed Charlie. He hadn’t imagined it was going to be this easy to exact the retribution for the harm he believed Smedley and Abott had caused his mother. He said: ‘So you missed the micro-dot!’

  There was a throat movement from Witherspoon, and Smedley’s colour heightened. There was what might have been a groan from Wilson, but the sound was hardly audible and Charlie might have been mistaken.

  Charlie began to look back to the assembled inquiry team but then hesitated. He said: ‘No one has yet said here, in this room, what sort of code it is. it’s a variable number-for-letter system: that’s what the micro-dot says. That’s right, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes,’ mumbled Witherspoon.

  ‘And that message, the one that identifies King William Street. Was that all it said?’

  From the look that passed between Harkness and Witherspoon Charlie didn’t need the answer, but it came anyway. ‘No,’ said the man.

  ‘What’s missing?’

  It was Harkness who spoke, once more trying to take the pressure off his protégé. ‘Some numbers which, at the moment, the cryptologists cannot decipher.’

  ‘They didn’t need to,’ sighed Charlie. He wouldn’t allow them any respite, any let-up on their exposure: they’d sought utterly to destroy him, were still intent upon destroying him. He said: ‘The key was already there if you’d correctly looked for it. Somewhere in the grouping the figures one and five and zero feature, don’t they?’

  Witherspoon hurried back to his message folder. ‘At the end.’

  ‘Three digits, out of a grouping of nine?’ demanded Charlie. To Wilson he said: ‘The grouping of nine was on the micro-dot: it’s listed in the bank package for you. Could I ask you to cast your mind back to King William Street, sir?’