Comrade Charlie

by Brian Freemantle

  ‘By Blackstone!’ said Harkness again, but it was not the deputy’s interjection that caused the project manager to stop in mid-sentence. Springley went back to the drawing, looked up and said: ‘Dear God! Oh dear God what’s happened?’

  Charlie thought that if God responded on each occasion he’d been called upon already it was going to be a busy night for all concerned. Encouragingly he said: ‘What?’

  ‘Krogh!’ said Springley weakly. He shook his head once more. ‘It has to be. I even thought…it actually crossed my mind…not very strongly, you understand…but I did…I thought it was strange…’

  ‘I’m not following you,’ said Charlie. ‘Who’s Krogh?’

  ‘The chairman of the main American manufacturing company,’ said Springley. ‘He approached us weeks ago: said he wanted to visit to ensure that what we were making and what his plant were constructing were compatible…’ The man trailed off, lost.

  ‘The American manufacturer came to you!’ prompted Charlie.

  ‘Over a fortnight ago now,’ confirmed Springley. ‘The company checked his bona fides, of course. He had the topmost clearance. He said he wanted to study our drawings and he did, for days. Told me once that he was glad he did, because he’d thought for a while that there had been an incompatibility. There wasn’t, it turned out. That’s what he said, anyway… Oh God, what a mess!’

  ‘He saw everything?’ pressed Charlie.

  ‘Everything there was. All of it.’

  ‘How many drawings?’

  ‘Twenty-four.’

  ‘Shit!’ said Charlie, not talking to anyone but looking at what the project chief still held in his hands, which were shaking now. Charlie said: ‘When did he leave…the last day he was with you?’

  Springley shrugged uncertainly. ‘Over a week ago. Maybe nine or ten days.’

  ‘It’s important!’ said Charlie. ‘Be precise.’

  ‘I can’t be, not exactly,’ apologized Springley. ‘Eight days, I think: yes, eight days.’

  ‘Where is this American firm based?’ It was the Welshman, from behind.

  ‘California,’ said Springley at once.

  ‘We’ve got to tell America now! At once!’ said the Whitehall official. ‘It’s still only afternoon there. They can pick him up at once.’

  ‘He’s not there, is he!’ said Charlie, not bothering to turn. ‘We’ve already seen that the drawing’s dated, with what is now yesterday’s date. And it was found here, in England. So that’s where he’s working, somewhere here in England.’ And I bet I know where, Charlie thought.

  ‘This gets worse…appalling…’ said the Welshman. ‘We must alert the embassy here, then. They’ve got security secondment in Grosvenor Square. FBI as well as CIA.’

  Charlie moved slightly away from the project chief, gazing down contemplatively. When he looked up it was to Wilson. ‘It is a disaster,’ he said. ‘An unmitigated one. If this man Krogh has been here, copied all twenty-four drawings, then it can only mean he’s already passed over, long ago, everything there was to have from his plant in California.’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed the Director General at once. ‘And it doesn’t matter a damn, in the end, that strictly speaking it’s not our leak, either.’

  ‘But that drawing is our responsibility, isn’t it!’ demanded Charlie suddenly. ‘I mean we could argue that we’ve got the right of decision over it?’

  Wilson frowned, head to one side, then looked for guidance to the other two men: Harkness was not included. First the Welshman, then the other official shrugged. Wilson said: ‘What’s the question about, Charlie?’

  ‘Desperation,’ admitted Charlie. ‘Absolute, utter desperation.’ He went back to Springley, gesturing to the drawing. ‘Explain that to me. Completely. Every detail.’

  ‘Like I said, it’s a drawing of the sidescreen moulding,’ began Springley hesitantly. ‘More to explain the process, really. We got the contract for our reinforced resin system because it’s more resilient than monoset carbon fibre. It performs better in the atmospheric vacuum of space, too.’

  ‘Performs better how?’ queried Charlie, needing everything.

  ‘It doesn’t give off vapour, like monoset: lenses, mirrored reflective detection devices, surfaces like that won’t get fogged.’

  ‘What’s resilience got to do with it?’

  ‘If monoset carbon fibre is struck, by space debris for instance, it shatters. Thermoset – our system – might be penetrated but the overall structure remains intact.’

  ‘You called it reinforced resin?’

  ‘The resin is made from polyetheretherketone: it’s an oil by-product of petrol distillation. We construct a laminated matrix of resin and carbon fibre: in this case the complete lamination is twelve sheets in thickness.’

  It wasn’t coming, realized Charlie. Maybe it had been naive – really desperate – to imagine that it would. He said: ‘So you lay sheets of carbon fibre, interspersed with the oil-based resin, one on top of each other?’

  Despite the seriousness of the situation Springley smiled at the simplicity of the question. ‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s got to be created quasi-isotropic: meaning that it can carry loads in all directions. So as each layer is added it is laid at a different angle to that of the sheet beneath it…’ The man hesitated. ‘We call it a weave and it’s very much like that. A sheet of carbon fibre is composed of many fine threads, all running in the same direction: as each sheet is laid one on top of the other those threads criss and cross to provide the strength of the final, composite sheet, very similar to weaving cloth. Only hundreds of times stronger.’

  ‘We need to follow this, Charlie,’ cautioned Wilson.

  ‘I haven’t got it yet,’ freely admitted Charlie. To Springley he said: ‘What about how it’s made?’

  Springley shrugged once more. ‘In a moulding bay…’ He indicated the process specifications, alongside the drawing. ‘There are temperature and cleanliness requirements, of course…’

  ‘What!’ seized Charlie abruptly.

  Springley continued to take Charlie through the drawing itemizing the points as he got to them. ‘Constantly maintained temperature, at twenty degrees centigrade. Fifty per cent humidity…’

  ‘…what are all these?’ demanded Charlie, going ahead of the man. ‘Dimethicones…magnesium sulphate…lanolin…camphor…salicylic acid… phenol…what’s the importance of these things…?’

  ‘I don’t really see the point of singling out those particular ingredients,’ conceded Springley. ‘There are many more, after all. We might just as well say any cream.’

  ‘For what?’ said Charlie, beginning to feel a tingle of hope.

  ‘Every two or three laminations have to be pressed down to consolidate the vacuum,’ said Springley. ‘We’ve obviously got to be careful of voids.’

  Charlie smiled. It wasn’t perfect by any means – desperate, in fact – but it was an effort, at least. And still all might be a waste of time and effort. ‘Especially in an expanding vacuum,’ he agreed. ‘How long would it take you to redraw that drawing? Exactly as it is, with just two lines omitted? And one inserted in their place?’

  Springley turned down the corners of his mouth. ‘No time at all,’ he said. ‘It’s already there, complete. All I’d need to do is a simple copying job.’

  ‘And you could match the lettering, by tracing that already there?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘When are we going to get this, Charlie?’ asked the patient Director General.

  ‘Now,’ said Charlie. And told them.

  ‘Ridiculous!’ rejected the Welsh official at once. ‘Preposterous and ridiculous.’

  ‘And do I need to remind you that a diplomatic bag is sacrosanct?’ asked his companion.

  ‘No,’ said Charlie, unperturbed. ‘Or that it could very well be preposterous and ridiculous and achieve nothing. But we’ve been sitting around here for hours, using words like disaster and catastrophe and bemoaning the demise of any future technologi
cal exchange with the United States of America. We’ve agreed the Russians must have everything from California and certainly twenty of the British plans…’ He waved the blueprint they had, for emphasis. ‘…because Krogh appears to have been numbering them and this is twenty-one. So what have we got to lose, apart from our time tonight and Mr Springley’s time tonight, and one simple, diplomatically illegal act…?’ He swivelled to the project chief. ‘You prepared to give us that time, Mr Springley?’

  ‘Of course I am,’ said the man.

  To the others in the room Charlie said: ‘OK, let’s have another idea better than the desperate, preposterous, ridiculous one that I’ve put forward?’

  No one volunteered immediately. Then the Director General said: ‘We’re grateful for your cooperation, Mr Springley. Tell us what materials you want and we’ll get them for you immediately.’

  Determined not to misunderstand, Springley said to Charlie: ‘Dermatitis?’

  Charlie nodded in agreement: ‘Severe dermatitis.’

  ‘Mr Springley,’ stopped the Director General. ‘Where did this man Krogh stay in London? There must have been a hotel? A telephone number at least.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said the project chief. ‘I don’t remember his giving me one.’

  It was approaching dawn, fingers of light already feeling through the darkness, before everything was completed, although the revised drawing of the moulding and the carbon-fibre preparation process was back in the safe deposit facility long before that because Springley worked remarkably quickly. When the project chief did finish there was a tired repeated objection from one of the Whitehall officials, which Harkness tried to support, but Wilson brusquely overrode both. Abruptly Charlie dropped his earlier objection to Blackstone’s arrest, because there was a purpose now, and orders were given for the man’s detention, initially by the local police to await the arrival, by helicopter again, of a Special Branch escort back to London: pointedly Wilson avoided giving the job to either Smedley or Abbott. Springley was still in the room, so he overheard the planning and asked that the company chairman be awakened and brought to London as well to be told what had happened, and Wilson agreed at once. The duty officer at the American embassy was contacted and arrangements made for a seven o’clock breakfast meeting with the local station chiefs of America’s Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Central Intelligence Agency. While all the calls were being made Charlie wandered across to where the files lay, sorted through, and located the telephone number and address of the Kensington house that William French, from the Technical Division, had identified from it. No one tried to stop him: Witherspoon was flustering in and out of the room obeying the instructions of the Director General and Harkness remained dully at the half-moon table, staring down sightlessly and seemingly unaware of all the activity. Towards the end Wilson stumped over to Charlie and said: ‘Well?’

  ‘We’ve forgotten the Kensington house,’ said Charlie.

  ‘Fix it,’ agreed Wilson at once. Suddenly, depressed, he said: ‘I’m going along with everything but I don’t think it’ll achieve anything.’

  ‘It’s an attempt, at something,’ offered Charlie.

  ‘I’d like you to take the meeting with the Americans.’

  He’d been yelled at and vilified by everyone else so why not them as well, thought Charlie. ‘All right,’ he said.

  ‘Let’s try to get some rest and put our thoughts in order,’ suggested Wilson. ‘It’s almost five in the morning.’

  By then there had been some changes at the Kensington safe house. When they’d finished that night, much earlier than the English group, Losev had agreed to the dismantling of the photographic gear, because there only remained the last, duplicate drawing to be redone, and they already had the photograph of that. So only the drawing materials remained. And Yuri Guzins, on his makeshift cot in a small side room. He was awake that morning, at five, knowing that he was finally going home. Emil Krogh was also awake, with the same thought. And so was Natalia Fedova, thinking not of going home but of leaving it, for ever.

  Outside the Kensington house the arrest squads began to assemble, with orders to await instructions.

  44

  Charlie didn’t sleep. There was a small dormitory at Westminster Bridge Road, for the overnight duty officers, but Charlie didn’t bother to use it because there was hardly time to justify it. He slumped instead in his own office chair, feet up on the desk, and imagined at first it would be quite comfortable but quickly realized that it wasn’t, not at all. He doubted that he would have slept, anyway. His mind was too full: overcrowded, in fact. And not just with what they’d done throughout the night and were going to have to go on doing, during the day.

  There was still Natalia. Was she part of it? Was she a knowing cog in some entrapment machinery he still didn’t fully comprehend? Charlie shook his head in the half light of the office. She couldn’t have been! He knew her: had loved her and lived with her in Moscow. Really knew her. She couldn’t have maintained the artifice during the time they’d been together now, in the hotel. He was sure she couldn’t. There would have been a slip, some mistake. And yet…?

  Charlie straightened more fully in the chair, abandoning the idea of trying to get comfortable. How about approaching it from another way, from what he could think through? Berenkov had set out, knowingly and intentionally, to inveigle him: bury him under a welter of phoney facts and evidence which could so easily have destroyed him. Actually got him jailed. Could still harm him: I still want a fuller explanation, the Director General had said. But why! thought Charlie, mentally echoing his earlier outburst when Harkness had presented his inept case. Why had Berenkov tried to bring him down? The only conclusion was revenge for what had happened in the past, and Charlie rejected that as ridiculous. The breaking of Berenkov’s cells and his arrest and imprisonment hadn’t been personal. It was business: professional, accepted, understood business. Maybe the Moscow episode had been slightly different: then Berenkov had been positively pursued, with himself as the unknowing pursuer, but from what Natalia had told him the whole thing had failed, so that hardly counted.

  Could Berenkov regard what he’d attempted to do as business, as well? Thought of it with the professional detachment with which Charlie regarded their previous confrontations? It was a possibility: perhaps the only conclusion. But why connect it so closely with another operation, the stealing of the Strategic Defence Initiative drawings? That wasn’t professional: not properly – even literally – detached. It was a cardinal rule, for every intelligence service, that an operation should never overlap another sufficiently to put one at risk and by so doing endanger both. Which led on to another logical conclusion: that one – obtaining the drawings – was so far advanced and already successful that it could not be endangered. In which case they had been wasting their time, staying up all night.

  A full circle, without finding an answer, recognized Charlie: an answer to anything. One step at a time, he decided: he’d argued throughout the night for them to proceed in the proper order, so that’s what he had to do. Keep the sequence right. And there was a lot he had to do before deciding about Natalia. The self-honesty refused him. He was dodging the issue, he knew. Wanting it to go away – be resolved for him – so that the decision wouldn’t be his. He was only sure about one thing. That he loved her. Wanted her. That none of this – whatever this was – had changed or affected his feelings for Natalia at all. What then? Muddied the waters, he supposed, unhappy at the cliché. Made it difficult, certainly, for him to see – to think – clearly.

  Charlie left his office long before the appointment time, descending to the basement cafeteria where the just-finished security-cleared cleaners were bunched at tables and who looked accusingly at his intrusion into their early morning domain, some – because of his unshaven and more than usually dishevelled appearance – even with suspicion. Charlie smiled a general good morning. No one said anything back. He bought grey-coloured coffee and a glazed bun w
ith currants on top, which was stale and filled up his throat before finally going down in an uncomfortable lump. When he blinked it was like closing his eyes against sandpaper and he kept wanting to yawn. Charlie decided he felt like shit. It would be better soon, when he was calling up the adrenaline to work things out. At least he hoped it would be. He abandoned the bun and the coffee, guessing that for the refreshments the previous night – or was it strictly speaking the same night? – they must have sent out because everything had been a bloody sight better than this. It was no wonder ail those blokes like Burgess and Maclean and Philby and Blunt had gone over to the other side: they were probably just trying to get away from the canteen food.

  In the brief period they’d been away the furniture in the conference room had been rearranged. The half-moon table remained, to provide a focus, but there was only one chair behind it now. Some – but Charlie didn’t think all, from his recollection of the bulk – of the folders and binders were stacked at one end of it. The table at which Witherspoon had sat and upon which the evidence had previously rested had gone completely. There were a new stenographer and a new recording technician at the note-taking desk, which had been moved to a further and less obtrusive side of the room. A series of chairs had been set out in the room itself, possibly no more than ten although Charlie didn’t bother to count.

  Wilson was already there, crumpled and unshaven like Charlie. The Director General was in conversation with Springley, who turned and at once introduced Charlie to the third man, John Bishop. The company chairman was putty-faced and clearly disorientated, shaking his head for no particular reason, just in general, all-encompassing horror.

  The man said: ‘I can’t believe it! Won’t believe it. It just couldn’t be. Impossible.’

  ‘It isn’t and it has,’ said Charlie brutally. The basic belief of man, he thought: Misfortune always befalls someone else. This would have been the moment for that remark about life being a bitch. Then again, maybe not. He said: ‘Have you any idea where Krogh stayed, in London?’