The Run Around cm-8

by Brian Freemantle

  ‘There was no need.’

  ‘Maybe that was an oversight.’

  ‘Are you inferring some sort of collusion between the woman and Charlie Muffin!’ said Kalenin. ‘Suggesting in fact she’s a spy, in place?’

  ‘There was an affair, wasn’t there?’

  ‘Which she intentionally cultivated, according to her testimony: she was suspicious of him, despite his successfully passing the debrief. It enabled her to maintain a constant watch on the man.’

  ‘Very praiseworthy!’ said Berenkov.

  Kalenin frowned at the obvious doubt. He said: ‘There has never been any reason to doubt that Natalia Nikandrova is not a loyal member of the debriefing section of the KGB.’

  ‘Until now,’ said Berenkov.

  As he spoke, his wife came into the room, carrying the coffee and brandy. Valentina said: ‘You look as if you’re plotting!’

  ‘I think Alexei is,’ said Kalenin.

  ‘Maybe others have in the past,’ suggested Berenkov.

  Chapter Thirty

  Charlie reckoned he’d done bloody well, complying to the letter with the Director’s instructions. He’d gone near no one, upset no one and talked to no one, except to the room service supervisor for a meal and a bottle of wine when he got back from Bern. The only thing he had not done was to sit and do nothing because that was clearly daft. Instead he worked steadily and without interruption — apart from the brief meal and even then he read on — through the Israeli dossiers, determined to absorb as much as possible despite the size of the task. By nine he had gone through the Palestinian and Jordanian backgrounds and stopped because the words were blurring before his eyes, exhausted concentration aching through him. Deciding that it was a deserved reward for effort, Charlie went back to room service and ordered brandy, two large ones because it seemed a waste to bring the waiter all the way with just one.

  The more detailed examination completely confirmed his initial impression, Charlie decided, feeling the brandy warm through him: the Israeli files could not be faulted. Every Arab investigation was painstakingly detailed, in the case of the Palestinian and Jordanian records with what Israel considered terrorist links individually itemized along with the incidents and events supporting those allegations, all of which were set out in a chronological arrangement. When such people were picked out there was a red marker on the cover of the folder and top-sheet assessment of that person: in every instance the judgement was that none of them any longer represented risk or danger.

  Charlie found no difficulty accepting this view, despite the scepticism of a man who never completely admitted the vice-versa logic of night following day. After all, the majority of Commonwealth leaders jostling to get as close as possible to the Queen during those London conference photo-calls had Foreign Office records identifying them as independence-fighting villains who in their time had danced around demanding the demise of the British monarchy.

  He was wasting his time, Charlie reluctantly decided, creating work to convince himself he was working. Whatever or wherever the lead, it was not going to come from this filing clerk’s nightmare. Of which, objectively, he’d already been aware, from the comparable pictures. Where then? He didn’t know. And he didn’t like not knowing and he didn’t like the impotent frustration he’d felt, ever since this sodding job began. In fact he liked bugger all about any of it. If he were honest — which he always was with himself if sometimes not with other people — Charlie accepted it was easy to understand the doubt everyone else was showing. Because he had nothing. His own doubt wormed its way into his mind, disconcertingly. Had he got it wrong: clutched too eagerly at a mistaken identification and really wasted his time, spending days running around like a blue-arsed fly in quite the wrong place? He liked the prospect of that least of all.

  Although he would have been surprised if they had managed it so quickly, Charlie lifted the telephone when it rang expecting it to be Cummings with a come-and-get-your-wrist slapped order from London for conning them with the photographs. But it was the barrel-toned Levy, the man’s voice echoing into the room.

  ‘How’s it going?’ demanded the Israeli intelligence chief.

  ‘Slowly,’ conceded Charlie. He was not talking to anyone else, he thought, in self-defence: Levy was talking to him.

  ‘Thought I might have heard from you.’

  ‘Why?’ demanded Charlie, immediately hopeful there might have been a development of which the other man wrongly imagined him to be aware.

  ‘Believed we were going to keep in touch,’ said Levy.

  ‘I’ve come up with nothing,’ admitted Charlie. The persistent problem, he thought.

  ‘This is the house phone,’ disclosed Levy. ‘I’m downstairs. How about a drink?’

  Charlie looked at the file copies and remembered his impression about work for work’s sake and said: ‘Why not?’ What Sir Alistair Wilson didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him.

  Levy was already at the bar, bulged over a stool, shirt open beneath his jacket, the tangle of hair visible at the neck and along the thick wrists extending beyond his sleeves. He shifted slightly, for Charlie to join him, indicating the brandy snifter. Charlie nodded, in acceptance.

  ‘Well,’ said Levy, ‘everybody’s here.’

  ‘I’m not interested in everybody. Just one person.’

  ‘He’s a ghost, Charlie.’

  ‘We’ll see.’ Charlie wished there had been more conviction in his voice.

  ‘You looked at the dossiers?’

  ‘Not all,’ admitted Charlie. ‘A lot.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Impressive,’ praised Charlie.

  ‘But leading us nowhere?’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Charlie. ‘Leading us nowhere.’

  ‘I warned you.’

  ‘It was something I wanted to do myself.’

  ‘No real purpose in your staying any longer, is there?’

  ‘That’s what London thinks,’ revealed Charlie. ‘There have been complaints from the Swiss. And the Americans.’

  ‘You’ve been pretty outspoken,’ said the Israeli.

  ‘I’ve been honest,’ insisted Charlie. About the important things at least, he thought.

  ‘They’ve got tender feelings, Charlie, tender feelings.’

  ‘A bullet in the head leaves it pretty tender, too.’

  ‘So are you going back?’

  ‘They’ve agreed my staying on for a while,’ said Charlie, non-committally. ‘No idea for how long.’ He gestured to the barman for more drinks and the man approached the unkempt couple with ill-concealed disdain. Fuck you, thought Charlie, it’s your tip you’re gambling with, sunshine.

  ‘It’s a bastard when a seemingly good start comes to nothing, isn’t it?’ said Levy, professionally sympathetic.

  ‘Happened to you much?’

  ‘From time to time,’ said Levy.

  Charlie was unsure whether the man was being honest or carrying on with the sympathy. He said: ‘Any more separate meetings with Blom?’

  Levy smiled and said: ‘How did you guess?’

  ‘Psychic,’ said Charlie. ‘What was it about?’

  ‘It was private, just Blom and myself and some Foreign Minister people who came in with our leaders this afternoon,’ said the Mossad chief. ‘Blom gave the assurance on behalf of his government that they’d done everything they could.’

  ‘And you didn’t call him a liar!’

  ‘He’d done his best.’

  ‘Bollocks!’ rejected Charlie.

  ‘His best, I said,’ reminded Levy.

  ‘So aren’t you worried?’

  ‘We’ve got a pretty good security record, Charlie.’

  ‘Usually on your own ground: this is an away match.’

  ‘So was Entebbe.’ The Israeli beckoned the reluctant barman and said: ‘Two more.’ He paused and then added: ‘And a smile.’

  The barman managed one, just.

  There wasn’t any functional purpose in his staying on, Cha
rlie conceded; even in the embassy communication room he’d been unsure why he’d bothered with the photograph bullshit, apart from that hope of some later I-told-you-so satisfaction. And after the afternoon and evening in his hotel room and the self-honesty that he had been foolishly avoiding he was increasingly doubtful about that. So he’d been a damned fool, putting himself into a position from which he couldn’t manoeuvre without Sir Alistair Wilson realizing he’d been conned. It was a mistake and it angered Charlie when he made mistakes, like it angered him to lose face when others had the I-told-you-so satisfaction. He said: ‘Blom say anything about a meeting tomorrow?’

  Levy nodded at the persistence. He said: ‘He’s offered Giles and me a full tour of the entire conference area. So we can satisfy ourselves about the on-the-ground security arrangements.’

  ‘What about me!’

  ‘You weren’t mentioned: Britain isn’t a participant, remember?’

  ‘Would you support me, if I asked to tag along?’

  ‘I wouldn’t have any objection.’

  ‘What do you think Giles would say?’

  ‘No idea,’ said Levy. ‘Why not ask him?’

  ‘I will,’ said Charlie, determinedly.

  ‘You’ll have to wait until the morning,’ advised Levy. ‘The Americans have got a reception tonight: everyone’s there.’

  ‘Why aren’t you?’

  Levy grinned sideways. ‘Somehow I never learned how to drink champagne with my finger stuck out. And I always drop those little biscuit things covered with congealed mayonnaise and last week’s shrimp.’

  They lay side by side, damp with each other’s perspiration and totally exhausted by sex, unable to love any more. It was Sulafeh who moved first, reaching sideways for his hand, linking their fingers.

  Cautiously, she said: ‘You haven’t told me about afterwards?’

  It had been an oversight not to have gone through the charade, Zenin acknowledged. He said: ‘I was leaving it until tomorrow. What time do you think you can get away from the Palais des Nations?’

  ‘Noon,’ she said at once.

  ‘We’ll do it then,’ he promised. He’d already decided to return to Bern after she left that evening and stay overnight in the retained room at the Marthahaus, to enable his collection from the garage to be early the following morning. Zenin was confident he would be able to complete most of the setting up before he had to meet her. Anything that remained could be finished off in the late afternoon or evening.

  ‘And then we’ll come back here?’ she asked eagerly.

  ‘No.’

  She shifted slightly, looking more directly at him. ‘Why not?’

  There was no real reason, Zenin accepted: he’d just felt it better that she did not see the assembled rifle. He said: ‘There are things I have to do here. Arrangements to make.’

  ‘How would I interfere?’

  ‘It’s the way I want it,’ he said. He’d never spoken to her harshly and was conscious of her flinching.

  ‘Of course,’ Sulafeh said, retreating at once.

  ‘There’ll be time, afterwards,’ he said, carelessly, not wanting to alienate her.

  The happiness flooded through her, washing away the immediate hurt at the way he had spoken: it was only natural that he would start becoming tense, as the time got close. Sulafeh said: ‘I’ve so much wanted to hear you say that. So very much.’

  For a brief moment the Russian could not understand what she was talking about and then he realized. Improvising awkwardly, he said: ‘It will be wonderful. I promise.’

  ‘Where will we go?’

  ‘I haven’t decided yet,’ he avoided. ‘Let’s get the mission over first.’

  ‘Of course,’ she agreed again. Emboldened, she said: ‘But you do mean it, don’t you? About our staying together?’

  ‘You know I do,’ said Zenin.

  ‘I want to say it,’ she blurted, with the shyness of a young girl. ‘I love you.’

  She looked at him expectantly, so Zenin said: ‘I love you, too.’

  Chapter Thirty-one

  As the senior intelligence controller guarding the American delegation Roger Giles spent almost the entire day in and around the banqueting rooms at the President Hotel in which the reception was to be held, formulating and supervising all the security arrangements and coordinating with Brigadier Blom, who personally supervised the Swiss input.

  For the first time it gave Giles the excuse to dictate rather than defer to the Swiss intelligence chief and he utilized it fully, ordering that all the hotel staff involved in the catering and employed on the floor occupied by his delegation should be vetted by his own officers. He insisted on some of them being stationed in the kitchen, as apparent workers, and on more being dressed as waiters and hotel employees, to mingle among the guests during the actual event. Further, disguised again as hotel staff, he deployed more of his own people throughout their permanent floor: if the Secretary of State or any of the senior officials were a target Giles considered a professional more likely to attempt to penetrate their official but temporarily deserted quarters and lay in wait than make any sort of frontal assault at the crowded reception.

  In the diplomatic pouch from Washington he’d had flown in electronic equipment adapted by the CIA’s technical division from the hand-held metal detectors used at airports. The devices were smaller but more sensitive than those in commercial use, capable of being carried in a man’s pocket and of triggering an alarm within a ten-metre radius of any metal object the size of a knife and certainly of a pistol or grenade dimensions. Giles issued these to ordinarily dressed officers who were to circulate among the guests, as well as to those disguised as waiters. Also from the technical division came X-ray machines once more adapted from airport equipment. With the agreement of the hotel management and of the brigadier he installed these unseen in the closets to be used as cloakrooms, with instructions to the operators that all deposited baggage should be surveyed against a bomb being left to explode when the reception was at its height.

  Giles was also specific in the orders he issued to every officer, particularly in the use of specialized weaponry he handed out to some whom he individually selected for a specified function. The normal operating procedure on such foreign operations was initially a Halt and Explain demand to any suspicious person, with the drawing and firing of a handgun understood to be a last resort. Giles decreed there should be no delay. If any of them — and especially those stationed at all times within a five-metre radius of the most senior officials — detected the approach of anyone by whom they were alarmed they were to shoot immediately, with no preliminary challenges.

  His final briefing were to those agents individually selected. To each were issued a further consignment from the CIA’s technical division, the adaptation this time of the sort of stun grenades developed by the Israelis against aircraft hijacking. Each man was given two of the grenades, together with earplugs to defeat their function and enable him to remain conscious afterwards. If there were any sort of concerted attack by a terrorist group, Giles ordered that the grenades should be exploded irrespective of the temporary unconsciousness they would cause to everyone, the essential requirement only the immobilizing of the attackers before they could commit any outrage. Giles’s final instruction was that those protected by the earplugs should ensure that every attacker was completely neutralized before bothering to summon any medical assistance for the unconscious guests.

  The senior and supervising agents all had their linked communication earpieces and throat microphones, connected not just to each other in the reception area but above, on their accommodation floor, as well.

  As a matter of courtesy, Giles involved the Swiss intelligence chief throughout the security preparations and just before the reception began Blom said: ‘So you are still taking the British warning seriously?’

  ‘I take my job seriously,’ said the American, diplomatically.

  ‘I thought to work effectively stun grenades ne
eded a confined space like an aircraft fuselage?’ queried Blom.

  ‘They do,’ agreed Giles. ‘Our training is that the best way to defeat an assassination is to deflect it. If anything happens I’m gambling on the grenades being sufficient to disorientate, to give our people time to block off the attack and get some shots in themselves.’

  ‘I’m sure it will all be unnecessary,’ said Blom, confidently.

  ‘I hope it is,’ said Giles, sincerely.

  Giles had chosen to put himself at all times close to the Secretary of State, the assistant Secretary of State and the American ambassador to Switzerland. It placed him initially near the receiving line, so he saw Barbara the moment she entered. She moved swiftly along the line, seeing him when she was halfway along and smiling. She approached him hesitantly and said: ‘Is it all right if I stand with you?’

  ‘Talk to any other guy and I’ll break his legs,’ said Giles. It had seemed natural that she should come — he’d wanted her to be with him — but Giles thought suddenly of what would happen if there were an attack.

  He got her a glass of champagne from a genuine passing waiter and she said: ‘So this is what you call work!’

  ‘There’s a lot of mental strain!’ he said, trying to match her mood, pleased at her lightness.

  ‘Isn’t that thing in your ear uncomfortable?’

  ‘You get used to it.’

  ‘Martha Bell is more attractive in person than in all the newspaper pictures.’

  ‘She works hard at it.’

  ‘That sounds as if you don’t like her.’

  ‘I don’t know her.’ Giles spoke never looking at her but all around, not at his agents but carrying out his own surveillance. He said: ‘Don’t think I’m ignoring you.’

  ‘I know you’re not.’

  ‘I’m afraid this is how it’s going to be for the next few days.’

  ‘I expected it,’ she said. ‘I thought I might take a trip on the lake tomorrow: there’s an afternoon cruise.’

  ‘Sounds good,’ said Giles. ‘I’m going to be tied up longer tomorrow than I have been today.’