‘It won’t be so bad if you can bring everything off.’
Charlie accepted the further demand, on top of all the others. By the time he succeeded or failed, Harry’s wife and kid could be in England: he’d find a way of arguing from there, if he had to. He said: ‘I’ll bring it off,’ and remembered Harkness and the stupid accounts: he’d have to clear that off Harry’s records to prevent the man doing something bloody awkward.
The Director said: ‘You think Irena will cooperate now?’
‘More than ever now,’ assured Charlie. ‘She believes she’s been abandoned and sees cooperating as some way of getting retribution: all we’ll have to do is keep irritating the nerve.’
‘Kozlov’s quite a bastard, isn’t he?’
It was a crowded honours list, thought Charlie. He said, determinedly: ‘I’d like to get him.’
‘Good luck,’ said the Director.
He was getting it, decided Charlie: not before sodding time. For several moments he sat unmoving in the communications room, conscious of what he had to do and how essential it was to get it all in the right sequence. Which meant the Americans first. Harry Lu’s family after that. Cartright’s idea remained an uncertainty, so Charlie decided he couldn’t fit that into any scheme, not yet. Then Kozlov. Charlie felt a stir of anticipation, in no personal doubt that the Russian had completely sucked him up and blown him out in bubbles. Now it was book balancing time: in a way, thought Charlie, he and Harkness were very much alike. Charlie just sought different results.
The first part was easy. While he was waiting for the British troop commander to be brought to the telephone at the airport, Charlie reflected where he should establish the meeting and decided upon the Mandarin again: he deserved a bit of comfort after the Kowloon hotel and there might still exist the need to draw the Americans off if Cartright hadn’t been successful. Clarke came on the line and called him sir at once, and Charlie remembered Sampson and decided he liked working with special troop units. He stipulated the Mandarin and made the man repeat the message and Clarke said: ‘Would you like me to be there?’
Charlie thought about the offer, wondering about the need for protection. Then he remembered that if Cartright’s route wasn’t possible they would need the military plane and everyone attached to it, and reluctantly said: ‘Better you stay there.’
Clarke queried liaison procedure and with continuing reluctance Charlie decided against giving the soldier the Kowloon address, maintaining the security of one-way contact against any American military interception or surveillance.
The first-day escorts and the unkempt duty clerk were at their posts outside the communications room when Charlie emerged, and Charlie supposed a lot of the now put-aside complaints had emanated from the man. He grinned and said: ‘That’s all for now. But I’ll be back later …’ He allowed the pause and said: ‘You know my name; shouldn’t I know yours?’, setting himself a personal wager on the man’s reaction.
The signals official actually went red with indignation and said: ‘You know perfectly well the answer to that! And I’ll need further authority from London.’
Won a fiver, decided Charlie: he’d pay himself out of Harkness’s expenses advance, which was actually getting pretty low. About time he asked for more. He said cheerfully: ‘You’ve got all day to get it. Shan’t be back until this evening.’
Charlie savoured the trip back over the Peak, enjoying it more than on the first occasion and knowing the reason went far beyond his no longer being exhausted. He wasn’t behind any more, unable to see what was going on because of other people’s dust being kicked up in his face. Now he was in front, throwing up the obscuring dirt: he wondered if he were going to be able to create a sufficient fog to confuse everybody. What he’d told Wilson was true – they couldn’t really lose – but winning completely would be far better. Always was.
Charlie paid the car off at the beginning of Wanchai, wanting to see Harry Lu’s apartment free from any observation. It wasn’t easy to be satisfied: the district was similar to Kowloon, that part of the island where the Chinese lived and worked and ate, a one-on-top-of-the-other jumble of homes and shops and food stalls and restaurants, the lot finished off with the inevitable Christmas cake decoration of coloured neon. For a while Charlie maintained his own observation and then remembered his sequenced time schedule and thrust into the entrance to the second and third-floor apartments, through the door alongside the open-fronted duck stall. The stairs held the smells of the shops below and echoed with the noise, too. On the first landing, Charlie saw that a corridor ran the length of several of the blocks, guessed that each would be served by separate stairways as well as perhaps some elevators and recognized that Harry had chosen a place to live with careful, professional care. It would be difficult to the point of impossibility to get trapped here.
Charlie’s luck held. Lu’s wife responded at once to his knock, regarding him expressionlessly from the doorway. She was very pretty – more attractive than she had appeared in the photographs that Harry had proudly shown him – the black hair shorter than it had been in the picture and her deep black eyes more obvious. She wore a floor-sweeping dress in mourning white, and beyond Charlie could sec incense sticks smoking in front of a small shrine.
‘I am a friend of Harry’s. Charlie Muffin. He may have mentioned me?’
‘No,’ she said at once.
Professional in everything, thought Charlie. He said: ‘I would like to talk with you. There are things to say.’
She waited, appearing to consider whether to let him into the apartment, and then stood aside, almost in resignation. The interior belied the exterior approach. The floors were of some white stone that Charlie thought could have been marble and the furniture was very modern, chrome and black leather. On a low table near the verandah window was a large and clearly powerful radio, not a transmitting device but a receiver upon which Harry could have easily listened to ordinary broadcasts from the Chinese mainland. There was a picture of the child, proud in Western school uniform, alone on a small bordering table, and closer Charlie could see that there was a photograph of Harry on the smouldering shrine.
‘I am very sorry,’ began Charlie.
‘You know what happened!’ she demanded at once.
‘No,’ denied Charlie, just as quickly, feeling no embarrassment at the necessary lie. ‘I heard.’
‘I do not think anybody will ever be punished,’ said the woman. ‘The Portuguese are not concerned about the death of someone the Chinese didn’t like. Neither are the authorities here. Both seem glad he’s dead.’
It was probably true, thought Charlie. Poor Harry, mourned by no one except a beautiful woman whose name meant Dawn Rising and a little girl whose name he couldn’t even remember. Not being able to recall the translation that Harry gave him embarrassed Charlie more than the earlier, direct lie. He said: ‘I expect somebody will be punished,’ which meant something to him but which he realized would sound like an empty platitude to her.
She confirmed his impression by her uninterested shrug. ‘What are they, these things that have to be said?’
‘I spoke to Harry, shortly before he died,’ said Charlie. ‘He told me how much he wanted to go to England … why it was necessary.’
‘They dispensed with him, too. Maybe they’re glad he’s dead.’ Her voice was leaden with bitterness.
‘No,’ said Charlie. ‘That’s not so; neither’s true.’
‘How do you know!’
‘I want you to come with me, now, to the High Commission,’ said Charlie, ignoring the question. ‘There are documents there: the documents to get you and …’ He searched again for the name and failed. ‘And the baby into England.’
For the first time the lassitude went from the woman, some animation reaching her face, but she still had the caution of someone expecting to be betrayed. ‘To live in England!’
‘Yes,’ said Charlie, still not knowing how he could guarantee that. He went on: ‘Britain h
adn’t dispensed with him.’
She became further relaxed. ‘You are from London?’
Charlie hesitated, then said: ‘Yes.’
‘You said you were a friend?’
‘I worked with Harry, in the past.’
‘Why didn’t he mention your name?’
‘It wouldn’t have been right. Did he tell you the names of other people he worked with?’
She nodded her head, in slow agreement to the point he made. ‘Not with,’ she accepted. ‘Sometimes he told me the people he was working against.’
There was the sound of a distant bell in Charlie’s head. He said: ‘Working against here? Or in London?’
‘He was very upset at how he was treated,’ she said, avoiding the straight answer.
‘Who treated him badly?’ persisted Charlie.
‘One particular man, called Harkness.’
‘How?’ asked Charlie.
‘Harry had to review his work: account for what he’d done,’ explained the Chinese woman, unknowingly using the accurate word.
Charlie isolated the accuracy, seeing a bargaining point. He said: ‘Harry had to write reports?’
‘Very many, going back over years.’
‘These reports,’ tempted Charlie. ‘How many were there? Copies, I mean? Just one? Or more than one?’
Indignation settled on her increasingly mobile face. ‘You’ve said what sort of man he was; how properly he operated! Just one, of course!’
Shit! thought Charlie. Was she clever enough to bluff, if she had to? He said: ‘I was not suggesting criticism of Harry. There was a reason for my asking.’
‘What reason?’ she asked.
‘Later,’ avoided Charlie. ‘You can come now?’
‘At once?’
She seemed uncertain, then she nodded. She said: ‘The police, when they came: they said I was to tell them if anyone approached me.’
‘I see,’ said Charlie.
‘Am I to tell them about you?’
Charlie’s impression had been of a mourning woman, erecting barriers behind which to hide her grief, but now he wasn’t so sure. He said: ‘It would not be wise.’
She nodded and said: ‘I understand. But the papers I am to get – they are for permanent residency?’
Now it was Charlie who understood; just as he understood she would not have any difficulty bluffing, if the need arose. He said confidently: ‘Yes. Permanent residency.’
‘Then we should go,’ she said, eager now.
The visa section of the High Commission was crowded, as they always seem to be in embassies and consulates everywhere, so Charlie demanded to see a counsellor, glad he had accompanied her and not left the woman to come alone; there were Chinese sitting around on benches with the attitude of people who had been waiting for a long time. He wondered if all were those being pushed aside with the dismissive description of British Overseas Citizens, effectively making them stateless. It was an opinion easy to reach from the official High Commission attitude, which began as one of impatience and only changed when Charlie demanded, with matching brusquesness, that the unwilling clerk check the degree of authorization from London. And then the change was quite dramatic: what Charlie anticipated would be a protracted formality was completed in under an hour, so quickly that the woman was suspicious.
She looked between the entry stamps in her passport to Charlie and then back again, and said: ‘Permanent?’
‘If anyone officially approaches you from the department, in England, tell them about the report that Harry was asked to prepare,’ said Charlie.
‘That is not clear to me.’
‘It doesn’t have to be,’ said Charlie. ‘Just talk about the report. And insist that a copy was kept.’
‘It is clear,’ said the woman, in immediate correction. ‘Won’t that be dangerous?’
‘You know how Harry contacted the department? The numbers?’
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘Contact me the same way, if it happens.’ Charlie realized he was rapidly getting into some sort of guardianship relationship, but he felt very sorry for her. Angry, too: for his own brief attitude towards the man, but more positively for the way London – but more definitely Harkness – had behaved. Charlie suddenly got the recollection and said: it’s Open Flower, isn’t it; the translation of your daughter’s name?’
She frowned at the abrupt switch in the conversation. Unused to making the translation, she said: ‘Yes, I suppose it is.’
‘Harry told me.’
‘Was it bad?’ she demanded, suddenly.
Charlie hesitated, then decided he couldn’t lie and bugger how he was supposed to reply. ‘No,’ he said.
‘I must know the truth.’
‘That is the truth.’
‘He would never talk about it … the possibility of it happening,’ she remembered. ‘Whenever I tried to discuss it, he always said it couldn’t happen.’
It shouldn’t have done, thought Charlie. He said: ‘It was the truth about being a friend, too.’
‘I thought there weren’t supposed to be any, among you people.’
‘There aren’t,’ admitted Charlie. He was glad he had remained within the building: there was something he’d overlooked.
‘What do I have to do now?’
‘Nothing,’ said Charlie. ‘You can go to England as soon as you like. Providing the police do not object.’
‘I can’t imagine their bothering, from the way they’ve behaved so far,’ she said. ‘And thank you, for being Harry’s friend. My friend, too. I was rude today. I’m sorry.’
‘It’s forgotten,’ promised Charlie.
‘Will we see you in London?’
Why not, thought Charlie. He said: ‘You’ve got the number.’
Charlie stood in the foyer, watching her go out into the skyscraper area, glad there had been no hitch: his luck really was holding. Definitely with the business about Harkness and the report: prissy bugger was going to regret that.
Charlie had to ask directions for the reference library, where the assistance was much more immediately courteous than it had been in the more public section. It only took him fifteen minutes to get the names he wanted from the out-of-date but retained diplomatic registers, including those from an old guide to the official Chinese news agency through which Beijing – when it had been called Peking – had maintained representation before the 1997 agreement with London.
It was still only mid-afternoon when Charlie got back to Kowloon and he was happy that his time schedule was being maintained. It stayed that way when he got back to the hotel to find Cartright and Irena already there, waiting for him.
‘No problem,’ announced Cartright at once, actually producing his passport as if he feared Charlie would not believe him. ‘Entry visas into China. We can train to Canton, fly from there up to the capital and then transfer at Beijing directly on to a London flight. I’ve checked: Pakistan Airways have a service.’
And the intercepting Americans could sit around at Kai Tak airport until Hell froze over, wondering how they’d got away from Hong Kong, thought Charlie. He said: The Director knows it’s your idea.’
‘That was good of you,’ said Cartright.
‘It was a bloody clever idea,’ said Charlie, who wished it had occurred to him. He looked at the subdued Irena and said: ‘You OK?’
‘I’ve heard more sensible questions.’
She’d been right in her self-assessment the previous night, thought Charlie: she couldn’t stop being aggressive if she tried. He said: ‘You really can be in London by this time tomorrow. I think I promised you that: it seems a long time ago.’
‘To what?’ she said.
‘Better than you’d get if you went back to Moscow.’
She looked away at the rebuke, swallowing, and Charlie wished he hadn’t come back at her so hard. She had every right to her self-pity: she’d been dumped into what was going to a pretty shitty existence and to remind her she was alive –
just – wasn’t much compensation, not yet.
‘No point in our hanging around?’ said Cartright.
‘None,’ agreed Charlie. ‘I want you as far away from here as possible before I even get in the same room as Fredericks.’
‘What’s going to happen to Yuri?’
Charlie turned back to the woman’s question. ‘That’s what I’m going to discuss with the Americans.’
‘Can you get him across?’
‘I don’t know: I hope so.’
‘Tell them … tell the Americans … that I’ll make everything available,’ said Irena. ‘All that he’s ever done against their people. He’s done a lot, you know? Killing, I mean.’
‘I think I do know some of it. And I’ll tell them,’ said Charlie, who had no intention of doing so. Hell, fury and woman scorned, he thought. And the play was The Mourning Bride, too.
‘I want him to suffer,’ said the woman, venomously quiet.
‘Seems quite a lot of people do,’ said Charlie. It was almost possible to feel sorry for the poor bugger: almost, but not quite.
‘Run it by me again!’ insisted Art Fredericks.
‘I still don’t believe it either,’ said Jamieson. ‘Their group commander, a guy called Clarke, wanders across the apron, says good morning like some jerk out of a B-movie and then asks me to set up a meeting between you and Charlie Muffin. The Mandarin, he says. If you don’t show up, he’ll take it you’re not interested.’
‘Son of a bitch!’ exploded the permanently uptight Elliott.
‘It’s another crappy decoy,’ suggested Levine. ‘Drawing us all across to the island while they sneak her out through the airport.’
‘That’s the most obvious,’ agreed Fredericks. To the army colonel he said: ‘I want everybody ready and waiting.’
‘We’ve been ready and waiting for days,’ said Jamieson, always annoyed at how the CIA imagined command.
‘What about the rest of us?’ asked Fish.
‘We’ll all go,’ decided Fredericks, at once. He looked at Fish and Dale and said: ‘I think he’s got a make on everyone except you two. So you stay in the foyer, for any pursuit. This time we’re not going to lose the bastard.’
See Charlie Run Page 26
