Comrade Charlie (39 page)

‘All very restful,' Losev jeered.

‘Why not?' sighed Petrin. ‘What some of us are doing is more tiring than for others.'

‘Quite so,' said Losev. ‘If it's too much for you I can always draft in some help.'

Petrin looked away, uninterested in the childish exchange. He said: ‘I suppose there
is
some purpose in your coming here?'

‘More than you'll ever know: or be permitted to know,' said Losev, turning away himself. Generally, to the other Russians, he said: ‘I want an original drawing. And not one dated from several days ago because it's got to comply with a schedule of events. Has anything been finished today?'

‘What's going on now!' demanded Guzins, in immediate protest.

‘Something that does not concern you,' rejected Losev arrogantly. ‘Answer the question. Is there a finished drawing from today?'

‘I haven't even been able to consider it yet!' said Guzins.

‘And I haven't photographed it, either,' said Zazulin.

‘Do it now!' ordered Losev. ‘Break off whatever you're doing. Change the film. Take whatever pictures you want of today's work and then let me have the drawing.'

‘But that's going to confuse everything!' argued Zazulin. ‘We're trying to maintain some sort of order about what we're doing.'

‘Do as I say!' insisted Losev, exasperated.

‘This is preposterous! Ludicrous!' said Guzins. ‘When I get back to Moscow I shall complain.'

‘Of course you will,' said Losev. In a pained voice he said: ‘Now let's get on and start doing what I want, shall we?'

To comply Guzins had to abandon what he was doing, sort through the unapproved and therefore unnumbered drawings and then insert the number, so the sequence would correspond, before handing it over to Zazulin. The photographer had to unload and reload his camera and transfer from its restraining frame the half-copied drawing for that upon which he now had to start working. Both men did so truculently, resentful of both the order and Losev's attitude.

As they worked Petrin left his chair and came alongside. He said to Losev, ‘What
is
going on?'

‘Something that you have no right to know,' rejected Losev again, haughtily. He spoiled it by adding carelessly: ‘Nothing that affects what you're doing here.'

‘Don't be ridiculous!' came back Petrin at once. ‘Of course it affects what we're doing here! It involves one of the drawings!'

‘
Separate
from what is being done here,' qualified Losev, regretting the lapse. ‘Therefore none of your business.'

‘I want your assurance of that,' insisted Petrin.

Losev smiled at the other
rezident
patronizingly. ‘Then you have it. Just stay here and go on as you were. Doze, if you wish.'

Fortunately the drawing was of the final moulding process and not as detailed as some of the others had been, and Zazulin completed the copying in two hours. Losev thanked them with elaborate, taunting courtesy and was still out in the street again slightly after midday. Aware of the traffic congestion there would be travelling right across central London to the City by road Losev took the quicker underground, ironically using the line that took him through Knightsbridge station, where Charlie Muffin had arranged to meet Natalia.

Losev was received politely at the safe-custody facility in King William Street and escorted to the vault and to the box listed in Charlie Muffin's name, the second key to which had been left in Charlie's Vauxhall apartment. Losev deposited the drawing in seconds and, convinced of a good job well done, treated himself to an excellent fish lunch at Sweetings. A day or two before, his presence might have been recorded by the observation upon King William Street, although the safe-custody facility was not at the Narodny Bank. But that surveillance had been withdrawn, of course, in Harkness' belief that he and Witherspoon had solved their mystery.

No one ate in the safe house in Kensington, through a combination of anger and the need to restore the work routine as it had been before Losev's interruption.

‘The man is insufferable,' complained Guzins.

‘It's going to take me two hours at least to set up and check where I was, to make sure I don't miss out a frame,' supported Zazulin.

‘It'll cause complete chaos in Baikonur,' said Guzins. ‘They are going to get a set of photographs completely out of sequence and now there isn't a supporting drawing.'

Petrin glanced at Krogh, who was working on unaware of what they were discussing in Russian. ‘That's easily solved,' he said. ‘When Emil has finished everything he can go back and work out a duplicate.'

‘What about the sequence in which the photographs are arriving?' demanded Guzins. ‘That's still going to be confusing.'

Petrin considered the question, thinking back to the facile bickering with Losev. ‘No it's not,' he said. ‘You heard what was said: whatever the drawing was wanted for, it had no relevance to what we're doing here. We'll simply hold the photographs here until the intervening drawings are copied and everything will arrive in Moscow and at Baikonur in their correct order. That way no one get's confused.'

Guzins smiled shyly at the solution. ‘Vasili Palvovich Losev is still insufferable,' he insisted.

Later, when he'd finished drawing for the day, Krogh said: ‘What was all that commotion about?'

‘Nothing,' dismissed Petrin. He decided against telling the American about the duplicate drawing: he'd leave that until the man imagined he'd finished, to avoid unnecessarily upsetting him. It would only require an extra day, anyway.

It was done, thought Berenkov in euphoric triumph: everything in place, and once today's waiting cable was dispatched from London in the code the British could read, it was done. Charlie Muffin would be destroyed far more effectively than by any bullet or bomb. Berenkov knew the man could never withstand any protracted period of imprisonment: Charlie Muffin was too independent, too rebellious. He'd crack. Become a vegetable or go insane. But before he did he'd know who did it to him. Know who'd been the ultimate victor.

There were twenty-three digits in the final message in that final arriving cable. It said: KING WILLIAM STREET FILLED.

42

The car went to Westminster Bridge Road, which was wrong because if the arrest had been proper he should have been taken to a police station with cells, and then Charlie realized how the arrest had been improper from the start. His first – startled – thought was about his theory on how some cases of people disgracing the department had been decisively handled, without recourse to a time-wasting trial. But Harkness wouldn't deny himself whatever official recognition were possible. Which left only one other explanation. He smiled at Smedley in the elevator sweeping up to the ninth floor and said: ‘Nervous?'

Smedley said:'You don't impress me, prick!'

‘You don't impress me, either,' said Charlie. ‘I'd be nervous, if I were you.'

On this occasion there was no delaying security check and the office that Laura Noland normally occupied was empty. They didn't go to the Director General's suite anyway. With Smedley leading they marched towards the minor conference room which Witherspoon had taken over, because it was big enough to accommodate all the waiting people, and all the assembled evidence was there.

Charlie was not immediately interested in all the people there, only one. Sir Alistair Wilson, the Director General, was the only one standing. He did so minimally supported against a chair back: it was the most comfortable way for him because a permanently stiffened leg, badly set after a wartime polo accident, made it difficult for him to sit for any long period. He was whey-faced and much thinner than Charlie remembered, the habitual check suit appearing too large for him.

‘It's good to see you again, sir,' said Charlie.

Wilson stared at him across the half-moon table at which two men whom Charlie didn't know were sitting with Richard Harkness. Wilson did not reply and there was no facial expression whatsoever. Charlie was saddened but realistically accepted he couldn't expect anything else in the circumstances. At right angles to the half-moon table was another at which Hubert Witherspoon sat, behind several folders and binders. Adjoining him but at a separate table again there was a girl at a stenography machine and a male technician at elaborate but surprisingly old-fashioned tape-recording apparatus. Charlie looked at them both and decided that his guess at why he had been brought to Westminster Bridge Road was right. Smedley positioned himself at the door, like a guard, which Charlie supposed was how the man regarded himself. Abbott, the other interrogator of his mother, released Charlie from the handcuff and went to the door to join the other man.

‘Here we all are then!' said Charlie brightly. His wrist hurt where the cuff had chafed it, but he refused the Special Branch men the satisfaction of massaging it.

The two unidentified men looked between each other, and Charlie wondered who they were. The obvious surmise was members of the Joint Intelligence Committee. One looked up at the standing Director General and said: ‘Shall we get on then?'

Wilson sat at last, his left leg rigidly out-thrust beneath the table, and Charlie realized the man had been especially summoned to conduct the meeting. Harkness would have manoeuvred that, Charlie guessed: the deputy would want Wilson to supervise the destruction of someone he'd championed. Wilson looked sideways to Harkness, nodded and said: ‘Yes, let's get on with it.' Wilson's voice was frail, like the man.

Harkness jerked to his feet, moving from the table at which the committee sat towards Witherspoon and the neatly stacked folders. A pink shirt and handkerchief, worn with his school tie again, complemented Harkness' charcoal-grey suit, and the black brogues were brightly polished. Charlie looked at the shoes and was ready to bet they would hurt like a bugger.

‘This department has been penetrated by an agent of the Soviet Union,' announced Harkness, dramatically. ‘It will need further investigation accurately to say for how long that penetration has been but certainly it has existed since Charles Edward Muffin returned to this country from the Soviet Union and was quite wrongly allowed to remain in this organization…'

It wasn't just himself on shotgun trial, thought Charlie, looking at Sir Alistair Wilson. Harkness had to be very confident of himself to make such an open and direct attack on the Director General. Charlie was sure now that the other men at the half-moon table were from the Joint Intelligence Committee.

‘… the damage will have been incalculable. Irreparable,' continued Harkness. ‘The extent of that, too, will require further investigation…'

Charlie reckoned Harkness had waited years for this moment: mouthed the imagined words, maybe practised in front of a mirror.

‘… I have always had the gravest doubts about Muffin's loyalty, as well as his ability,' went on Harkness. ‘So much so that some months ago I authorized an internal investigation upon the man, which at the time proved inconclusive. It was not, however, mistaken…'

As rehearsed as he could be, calculated Charlie: the man was even determined to get the apology over the harassment of his mother expunged from the record. Dig on, thought Charlie; dig a great big grave to bury yourself in, asshole.

‘… some weeks ago this department was successful in breaking a new code with which Moscow was communicating with Russian intelligence officers – the KGB – in this country…' Harkness reached sideways and on cue Witherspoon handed him a piece of paper. ‘The first message gave the location of a dead-letter drop in the Highgate area of London,' resumed the deputy Director General. ‘It was placed under observation and a man who has subsequently admitted being an agent of the Soviet Union was arrested and is shortly to face trial. Another message led us to a terrorist courier, although unfortunately in that instance the opinion of the Attorney General was that no prosecution could successfully be initiated against the man. He has, however, been placed on the prohibited-aliens list at ports and airports of this country and his identity and photograph circulated to Western counterintelligence agencies…' Harkness paused, sipping from a waiting glass of water on Witherspoon's table and Charlie thought: Television courtroom soap opera, circa 1960.

‘… these two episodes are not connected to the matter being inquired into here. I mention them to establish the fact that the communication channel, which the Soviets are unaware of our being able to read, is undoubtedly genuine…'

Harkness continued the theatre by turning to look directly at Charlie at that moment and Charlie smiled and shook his head in a matchingly exaggerated gesture, for no other reason than to off-balance the man, which it did. Harkness blinked and coloured slightly and moved to speak but stopped and then started again. Charlie said: ‘Sorry. Did I put you off?'

There was no flush of anger from Harkness this time. He actually smiled, indicating how assured he was, looking away in contempt. He said: ‘Some weeks ago another message was decoded…' He looked down to the paper that Witherspoon had earlier handed him. ‘“Reactivate payment by one thousand”,' he quoted. ‘Please remember, particularly, the wording of that message. It's important…'

Charlie was inclined intently forward now, no longer complacent or mocking, learning things he didn't know.

‘… that message was the first of several which initially meant nothing to us,' said Harkness. ‘There was a reference to King William Street, in the City…'

‘What!' demanded Charlie loudly.

Harkness was shocked into silence by the outburst. For several moments there was complete silence in the room, and still surprised Harkness repeated: ‘King William Street,' and then clamped his mouth shut, not having intended to respond to the question.