Wilson jerked his hand towards a pink species and said: ‘Displayed at Chelsea this year: got a commended.’
Charlie was unsure what was expected, so he said: ‘Well done.’
‘Do better next year,’ said the Director. ‘Irena’s singing her head off, incidently; can’t stop talking.’
‘Olga won’t,’ said Charlie, positively. ‘There’s still a lot of remorse at the killing – shock, I suppose – but eventually she’s going fully to realize what she’s done by coming across. She’s not a defector, not like they normally are.’
Wilson pulled a branch of something yellow towards him and said: ‘Smell that: isn’t it wonderful? She’s here though, isn’t she? She’ll have to cooperate, finally.’
‘I suppose so,’ said Charlie. He seemed to remember apologizing before but decided a repetition wouldn’t hurt. ‘Sorry for any upsets.’
‘All forgotten,’ said Wilson, breezily. ‘Even got a congratulation at a session of the Intelligence Committee. Our estimation of Soviet technology espionage was about eighty per cent too low: Irena’s giving us names, dates, places … and everything about what her husband did. Names, dates, places, as well. She’s very bitter.’
‘Got a bloody good reason to be.’
‘She’s asked about you, incidently.’
‘Asked what?’
‘Seemed to think you would be her debriefing officer.’
‘What was she told?’
‘Nothing positive: we’ll have to put you in, of course, if we think there’s something she’s holding back, for you.’
‘I don’t think we built up much reliance,’ said Charlie, wanting to avoid the chore.
‘She seems to think you saved her life,’ disclosed the Director.
Reminded of someone’s life which hadn’t been saved, Charlie said: ‘Have Harry Lu’s family arrived?’
‘Yes,’ said Wilson.
‘That’s all going to be OK, isn’t it?’
The Director stopped at the end of a walkway, did a smart about-turn without any apparent difficulty from his stiff leg, and announced: ‘Drinks and lunch.’
Charlie followed, with foreboding, but didn’t press because he knew it had to come as Wilson dictated. The Director poured the Scotch, heavy-handed, and Charlie dutifully expressed admiration at more roses displayed around the room and reminded the ex-soldier that Jun Hayashi was still in place in Haneda. Wilson said the decision had been made to do nothing about the man until Irena’s debriefing had progressed to their uncovering the complete extent of Japan’s witting or unwitting involvement in the hi-tech smuggling chain, when Hayashi might be useful as a bargaining counter with Tokyo.
The meal was beef, thick carved, and there was a bottle of Margaux on the table between them and another opened and breathing on a sideboard, for when the first was drunk.
‘Don’t like the officialdom of government service,’ started out Wilson. ‘Never have done.’
‘I have difficulty with it myself sometimes,’ said Charlie.
‘Bloody forms and columns of figures.’
‘I’m not looking forward to getting back to that,’ said Charlie, anxious to keep an important conversation going.
‘Think you should,’ said the Director. ‘Had a man in the regiment once, first class soldier operationally but a lousy administrator. Got himself involved in some mess account and there was a discrepancy or two. Payments to tradesmen for which there were no receipts, that sort of thing. Forget the figures: £800 comes to mind but I think the final audit was nearer £1800. Hell to pay: couldn’t protect the poor bugger, although I didn’t want to lose him as a soldier. Tragedy: an absolute tragedy.’
‘I can imagine it must have been,’ said Charlie. Christ, what a smashing bloke Wilson was! Charlie said: ‘Strange that we should be talking of accounts. Had a long conversation with Harry Lu, before he was killed. It was all a misunderstanding: just forgot to list those informants.’
Wilson topped up their glasses and said ‘Ah!’ but there was a great deal of satisfaction in the expression. Then he added: ‘Glad you did that.’
‘I do like to keep the records straight, although I don’t enjoy the form filling,’ said Charlie.
‘Nuisance factor of the job.’
‘Nuisance factor of the job,’ agreed Charlie.
‘We haven’t talked about Yuri Kozlov yet,’ said the Director.
Charlie set out the meeting and the ultimatums of the previous day in Tokyo and Wilson sat nodding and adding to their glasses when it was necessary, and when Charlie finished the Director said: ‘I like that. I like that a lot.’
‘I want to make it happen,’ said Charlie, a promise to himself.
‘I don’t think you can go, not the way the Americans feel,’ said the Director.
‘I told him I would be the one.’
‘I suppose you could use a different passport, but we’ve hammered that system a bit lately,’ said Wilson, doubtfully.
‘We’ve got time to think it through,’ said Charlie.
‘You’re right,’ agreed the Director, reaching around for the second bottle. He said: ‘You must be bloody tired, what with the flight and everything.’
Charlie recognized it wasn’t a polite, social enquiry. Accepting the opening, he said: ‘Yes I am. Very tired.’
‘Why not spend a couple of days at home, resting up? No need to come into the department until, let’s say, Wednesday at the earliest.’
‘That’s extremely thoughtful,’ said Charlie.
‘Never have been able to get over the tragedy, losing a first class field soldier over a miserable £1800,’ reflected the Director.
‘Like you said,’ agreed Charlie, ‘a tragedy.’
‘An absolute tragedy.’
When Charlie opened the cocktail cabinet on the return to London he found the whisky decanter half empty: the driver took the lanes back to the motorway with considerable care and Charlie decided that half a bottle for half the speed was a pretty good deal. He said. ‘Sorry I can’t offer you one.’
‘Never drink and drive,’ assured the man. ‘Good meeting?’
‘Couldn’t have been better,’ said Charlie.
The memorandum from Harkness, demanding an immediate meeting, was uppermost in Charlie’s in-tray when he arrived at the office on the Wednesday, so he put it to the bottom and summoned a messenger instead of using the inter-office postal system, entrusting to the man his own expenses with an explanation of the addendums and, in a separate envelope, enclosed a list of informants with a second memorandum that they constituted the omissions from Harry Lu’s accounts. Hubert Witherspoon was a blurred figure through the fluted glass. Charlie flickered his fingers but the man didn’t respond, and Charlie thought fuck you then.
The telephoned summons did not come until after lunch, which was longer than Charlie had expected, and he guessed the deputy had been adding up the figures and he hoped he’d got them near enough right.
‘You wanted to see me?’ he said, ingenuously, as he entered Harkness’s office. It was directly below the Director’s, with a lowered view of the park.
‘Do you believe in coincidence!’ demanded Harkness.
‘I’ve heard it said that life’s full of them,’ replied Charlie.
The pink face became pinker. ‘You seem to have realized your previous expenses had a discrepancy of something like £1802: and although you drew £1000 before you went to Japan, you seem to have spent £500 more than that.’
‘Lucky I had my American Express card,’ said Charlie. ‘I attached those little blue receipt things.’
‘You didn’t use the card and retain the money!’
‘Of course not,’ said Charlie. ‘That wouldn’t be honest, would it?’
‘No,’ said Harkness, sharply. ‘It wouldn’t have been honest.’
‘I don’t find accounts easy,’ said Charlie, apologetically. ‘You may even have thought that yourself. But I do try to keep a rough tally. According to my re
cords, the department owes me £500.’
It seemed difficult for Harkness to talk. He said: ‘To be precise, it’s £502.’
‘See!’ smiled Charlie. ‘I don’t find it easy.’
‘I don’t find some things easy, either,’ said Harkness. ‘Like coincidence, for example. I’ve checked the registers, against the names you list for informants to whom you paid money and against the names that you’ve offered to whom Harry Lu paid money. And do you know what I found?’
‘What!’ said Charlie, his voice apparently excited at the thought of a revelation from Harkness.
‘All the names on your list and all the names on Lu’s list are of diplomats or staff who were serving at an East bloc consulate or installation but have since been withdrawn.’
Charlie regarded the other man innocently. ‘If they were still serving in the West, you could hardly ask them if they were acting as spies for Britain, could you?’
‘Were they!’
‘But of course!’ said Charlie. ‘In my case, I’d swear to it. I can only pass on the names that Harry gave me, naturally. He didn’t feel it was safe, from a security point of view, to put them in those reports that you ordered.’
There was a long silence from the man at the desk opposite. ‘Reports?’
The case histories you asked for: a record, in fact, of what Harry did for us over a lot of years,’ said Charlie. ‘I know I can talk to you in the strictest confidence …’ He sniggered, as if he’d made a joke. ‘What else, considering what we are and what we do? But he told me he was very surprised and I must confess that I was, too, at assembling together in one document something that would cause so much trouble with Peking – sorry, they call it Beijing now, don’t they? – if it ever became public. You know what?’
‘What?’ Harkness’s face was crimson masked, like the make-up of those actors in the traditional Japanese theatre that Charlie hadn’t this time had the opportunity to see.
Charlie extended the moment, enjoying it. He said: ‘Harry was bloody good. Although I understand some people didn’t think so. Harry actually thought there was something odd in the request: maybe that there’d been some Chinese or maybe KGB infiltration into the department here. He took precautions, of course.’
‘Precautions?’ Harkness was actually talking now with the strained, grunted delivery of that Japanese theatre.
‘Well, he didn’t want to let us down, did he?’ invited Charlie. ‘Maintained a copy, along with all the requests from London. From you. Just to be on the safe side.’
‘Does his wife have the copy?’
‘She knows about the document, but Harry was too professional to entrust it to her,’ said Charlie. ‘Said something about it being an insurance for her. A bank maybe …’ Charlie smiled, brightly. ‘Talking of which, no objections to my drawing that £502, are there?’
‘No,’ said Harkness. It was obviously difficult for him. Then, distantly, he said: ‘One day.’
Charlie, who knew what the promise meant, thought one day, asshole: but it would be a long time coming.
Epilogue
There is a narrow sliver of green where M-Street leads into Georgetown, and there are bench seats beneath the few trees. It was upon one of them that Charlie sat, on the sixteenth of the third month, and not in the jungled interior of the Four Seasons lounge. So far, he thought, so good. In the end they had decided against over-using the passport issuing facility but Charlie had been cautious, not attempting to enter America directly but flying first to Canada and then crossing the border from there. The check had been cursory, but Charlie wasn’t relaxing. Everyone else seemed to be. It was difficult to believe, watching the shorted and halter-topped promenade before him, that the tie and suit manufacturers of America could ever make a living: and why didn’t jogging do what it was supposed to? It couldn’t, judging from the wobbly-bodied Sony-Walkmaned runners. Charlie knew he wouldn’t wobble, if he tried it: be more like an uncertain, plunging-everywhere-at-the-same-time landslide. Meat pies in pubs had all sorts of hidden dangers. Not that the size of his stomach was a consideration, anyway. He wondered if any of those funny laced or belted or buckled or even buttoned trainer shoes would be better than Hush Puppies. Maybe he’d try them out, if he had time: if everything resolved today. He still hadn’t checked to see if the Hush Puppies he was wearing could be repaired against the sort of rain he’d suffered in Tokyo: there was always a reluctance against exposing old friends to terminal judgment. A bra-less woman in T-shirt that read ‘Yes But Not With You’ and shorts tight into her bum, and who shouldn’t have risked either, went bounce-bounce by, and Charlie thought automatically of Irena and then, naturally, of Olga. The demands, from both – Olga first, then Irena – had begun at least a month earlier, and the debriefings had ground practically to a standstill. Charlie knew that if he could bottle and market the effect that the inconspicuous little bastard had upon women – one way and another – he could make a fortune.
Even frightened and running again – almost literally – Kozlov was an expert professional. Charlie was late seeing him because the Russian was so good at merging into his surroundings, a weaving little minnow of a man in a sea of bigger fish, coming from the direction of Constitution Avenue and cleverly on the same side of M-Street as the hotel, so he wouldn’t draw attention to himself even crossing the road. Closer, Charlie was conscious of how intent Kozlov was, head swivelling as he moved, alert to everything about him and with everything to be alert about. Charlie, who had chosen the hotel because Kozlov would have to approach this way if the restaurant ploy worked, had tested the same approach twice, the previous day, and was sure that where he sat was concealed by the larger of the trees on the tiny green arrow.
Nearer the hotel, Kozlov slowed further, actually stopping at the bookshop at the very junction and feigning interest in the miniscule window, using its reflection and the opportunity to pause to ensure it was safe.
Although he was still a comparatively long way away, Charlie thought he discerned a shoulder lift of relief at Kozlov’s decision. Certainly the man moved off towards the final two hundred yards to the hotel with more apparent confidence, a head-up stride of an ultimate winner.
The seizure was very good.
There were two cars, a boxed arrangement, one behind the other and stationary, and a third actually moving, able because of the confluence of the streets to go in either direction if Kozlov succeeded in getting away from the first two. He didn’t, because they were stretch wheel-based, black-windowed American limousines that fitted so well outside of the premier hotel and Charlie admired the choice. Kozlov passed the first unaware of its rear doors opening behind him, and when he jerked to a stop, at those of the leading car suddenly blocking his path, it was too late because men behind were already encircling him, thrusting him into the open-mouthed vehicle.
The people in halter-tops and shorts promenaded on and the joggers jogged, no one realizing what had happened virtually in front of their eyes.
Charlie decided he really would try a pair of those training shoes: Reebok seemed a popular make. Maybe black, so with a bit of luck he could get away with wearing them with a suit.
‘All wrapped up,’ praised the Director. ‘Three out of three: we get the goodies and the Americans get the embarrassment.’
Strike while the iron is making sizzling noises, thought Charlie. He said: ‘I’ve been a long time at this grade. Just one up would be another £2000 a year.’ Maybe a bigger carpet, too: could sell that to Witherspoon to impress all the secretaries he was trying to get a leg over.
The Director breathed in, a sucking sound. ‘Permanently desk-bound administration, Charlie. Didn’t think you liked that.’
‘Like it better than exploding aeroplanes,’ tried Charlie. This must be how King Canute felt telling the tide to come back tomorrow.
‘Why don’t I think about it? No rush, after all.’
He’d tried, decided Charlie, resigned. He said: ‘Told either of the women ye
t?’
‘The indications are that the Russians are going to give one of their press conferences: the admissions of a mistaken defector,’ said Wilson. ‘We’ll wait. If it happens, we’ll let them both watch the television coverage.’
‘That should unblock Irena,’ said Charlie.
‘Olga, too, in a different way,’ said Wilson. ‘The realization that she’s lost everything.’
‘What about Herbert Bell?’
‘Too good to arrest, for a long time yet,’ said the Director. ‘Bell’s established his credibility for years, providing the KGB with the time and date of Yuri Kozlov’s double defection, from the Americans to the British. We can use him for all sorts of disinformation now. Of it all, settling things this way was your best idea, Charlie. Inspired!’
‘Think they will put Kozlov in front of a press conference?’
‘It seems to be the formula, at the moment,’ said Wilson.
‘Difficult, despite everything he did, not to feel sorry for the poor bastard, isn’t it?’ said Charlie. ‘Knowing what they’ll do to him, I mean.’
‘An innocent family on a motorway,’ Wilson listed. ‘A Permanent Secretary and his secretary. A crippled driver. Harold McFairlane. A division technician at Fylingdales. Harry Albert. Bill Paul. Valeri Solomatin. A group of British soldiers. And a friend of yours, Harry Lu.’
‘No,’ agreed Charlie, changing his mind. ‘It is difficult. Impossible, in fact.’
‘Those different shoes you’re wearing?’ asked the Director, suddenly.
See Charlie Run Page 30
