Run Around (26 page)

‘I want to make absolutely sure, from the service people first.'

‘You're wasting your time.'

‘It's still got to be done,' insisted Charlie. ‘Has there been any independent contact from the others?'

‘Giles called. Said he thinks it's ridiculous to exclude you: he's told Blom, apparently.'

Loved at last, thought Charlie. He said: ‘Did Giles see anything in the logs?'

‘If he did he hasn't told me.'

‘Do you think they'll accept this as positive evidence that the bastard is here somewhere?'

‘No,' said Levy, at once. ‘And neither do I. It's proof of something, perhaps. But not that he's our man.'

‘You know what you're all going to do!' demanded Charlie, exasperated. ‘You're all going to be pissing about trying to convince yourselves nothing's wrong when the shooting starts!'

‘I do think we should meet tonight, instead of waiting until tomorrow, though,' conceded the Israeli.

Charlie had been marked by two squads of the specially drafted Soviet Watchers when he walked past the embassy on Brunnadernain the second time and positively targeted on the third occasion by both. Between them the two groups managed five exposures and the photographs were included in that night's diplomatic despatch from Bern to Moscow, under a priority designation so that instead of remaining overnight in Dzerzhinsky Square they were taken at once by special courier to Berenkov's apartment in Kutuzovsky Prospekt.

The courier meant it was official and normally Valentina would have said nothing but she was abruptly conscious of her husband's startled reaction.

‘Alexei Aleksandrovich!' she exclaimed, alarmed. ‘What is it!'

‘Someone from the past,' said Berenkov. He remembered his wife had met Charlie Muffin, during the Moscow episode, but decided against mentioning the name.

The special meeting in Geneva was already under way when Berenkov summoned his emergency session in Moscow.

Chapter Twenty-two

‘So your people didn't need any specific instruction!' accused Charlie. The rudeness was intentional: he wanted to stir one of them – or more hopefully all of them – into some sort of reaction.

‘I don't think it is as indicative as Charlie does,' said Levy, ‘but it's certainly curious.'

‘I think so too,' endorsed Giles, pleased he had isolated the inconsistency like the other two.

‘There might be an explanation different from that you are reaching,' tried Blom. He was burning with impotent anger.

Charlie tossed the log records on to the desk of the Swiss counter-intelligence chief and said: ‘Look at it! The entry of a workman carrying a toolbag is recorded at ten-thirty in the morning: they actually wrote it down for Christ's sake!'

‘I know what they wrote down,' said Blom.

‘So where's the matching entry of his leaving!' demanded Charlie. ‘You trying to suggest that the Soviets have kidnapped a Swiss workman and have still got him in the embassy!'

‘They could have missed the departure,' suggested the American. ‘A workman is a pretty normal sort of arrival and departure, after all.'

‘That's exactly what it is
not
!' insisted Charlie. ‘It just seemed so to these Watchers and it shouldn't have done; they need their arses kicked. The Russians
never
employ local labour for any work inside their embassies. It's their standard trade-craft to have everything done by Russians: to fly people in from Moscow, if necessary.' He hesitated, for effect, then he said: ‘And just in case they changed the habit of a lifetime I checked, with every service agency I could think of: telephone, electricity, gas, everyone. There is no record of any call to the Soviet embassy at Brunnadernain: I asked about the past, too. They never get called.'

‘You think he came out with that mass exit, recorded at lunchtime?' asked Levy, referring to his own copy of the Watchers' log.

‘It's the most obvious answer,' said Charlie. He looked at the Swiss intelligence chief. ‘And your Watchers did not think that was significant enough to report specially either, did they?'

‘There appears to have been some slackness,' conceded Blom, with no choice. ‘I still think it would be wrong to twist it to fit the circumstances.'

‘I'm not twisting it to fit any circumstance,' argued Charlie. ‘It's actually got a pattern. He almost beat us by merging into the background in England and he beat us here by merging into the background again. It was actually a mistake on his part.'

‘What about a different exit?' said Giles.

‘I went to Bern and looked at the embassy for myself,' said Charlie, unaware of his own mistake. ‘They're all covered.'

‘I think the squad on duty when the workman went in should be interrogated to see if we can get a description that matches the one we've already got,' said Levy.

‘It was the pick-up,' said Charlie, in adamant frustration. ‘This was when he collected the weapon. Or weapons.'

‘There's no record on the log of anyone in that lunch-time crowd carrying anything out,' said Giles.

‘The squads should be interrogated on that, too,' said Charlie.

‘They will be,' promised Blom.

‘You've got five days before the Middle East conference begins,' reminded Charlie. ‘The delegation leaders start arriving in the next forty-eight hours.'

‘So?' said Blom.

‘So publish the damned photograph!' said Charlie. ‘Frighten the bastard off!'

‘I don't think anything has happened to change the attitude on that,' said the Swiss.

‘Suggest it again,' urged Charlie, looking to each of the other three men. ‘And warn the other delegations.'

‘I won't start a panic,' said Blom.

‘It's the way to avert one,' said Charlie.

‘Give me some positive proof,' demanded Blom. ‘Better proof than this.'

‘By the time you accept it, it'll be too late,' warned Charlie.

‘I'll raise it again with Jerusalem,' undertook Levy.

‘I'll play it back, too,' said Giles.

‘I'm sure the answer will be the same as before,' said Blom, confident his security committee would not change their minds.

‘If it is it'll be a mistake,' said Charlie. Christ how he hated working with a committee!

Sulafeh stirred and Zenin shook her gently, fully awakening her.

‘We should go,' he said.

‘I don't want to.'

‘It's late.'

‘Can we come here again tomorrow?'

‘Yes.'

‘Every day?'

‘We'll see,' avoided the Russian. ‘I think we should leave separately. You first.'

‘Shall we meet at the same place tomorrow?'

‘No.'

‘Where?'

Zenin hesitated and then said: ‘The Cornavin terminal: the main concourse.'

‘What time?'

‘Three.'

‘Make love to me again.'

Chapter Twenty-three

Alexei Aleksandrovich Berenkov regarded Charlie Muffin as his equal, which was an accolade. The Russian had frequently concluded during those long, sleepless and gradually despairing nights in London's Wormwood Scrubs that no one but Charlie Muffin would have persisted, sifting and checking and cross-checking and then pursuing with the relentlessness of a starving Siberian wolf the labyrinthine maze Berenkov had created for his own protection and which eventually ensnared him. Or behaved, either, as Charlie had after the arrest. Not treating him as a hydra-headed monster, to be looked at like some fairground curiosity through the prison-door peephole, but treated as an equal, professional to professional. It had been a challenge, being debriefed by Charlie. Berenkov still sometimes wondered what the score had finally been, before his release. He'd meant to ask, when they'd met later in Moscow, but the occasion had not presented itself. They'd been fools, the British, to imagine such a man as expendable. But to his benefit, Berenkov recognized. If the British had not decided to use Charlie Muffin as the disposable bait in the crossing of the Berlin Wall – and been caught out by the man doing so – Berenkov guessed he could still now be decaying in that damp-walled cell with the stinking pisspot in the nighttime corner and the eight boring hours in the prison library and the one boring hour in the exercise yard and the rest of the time alone with the smell of damp and piss. Charlie Muffin had hardly been his capturer then. Saviour in fact. No, that was not correct, either. There might have been professional admiration between them, but that was where the feeling ended: where it had to end, as professionals. His repatriation to the Soviet Union in exchange for the British and American intelligence directors whom Charlie lured into Soviet entrapment in Vienna had been convenient, that's all. He'd been an advantage and Charlie had used him, like he used all advantages. Which was why the man was so dangerous. And why he had to be destroyed. Berenkov reached the conclusion quite dispassionately: again it was professional, not personal. He knew Charlie Muffin would understand that. Were the situation reversed, it was the sort of decision Charlie would have reached. It was regrettable but necessary: that was why he had not mentioned the man's name to Valentina. She'd liked Charlie: perhaps rightfully considered him to be the man who had restored a husband to her, after so many – too many – years as an espionage agent in the West. Women thought like that; with their hearts rather than with their heads. Men had to think differently.

Berenkov arrived first at Dzerzhinsky Square, of course, but Valery Kalenin was close behind, with such a short distance to travel from Kutuzovsky Prospekt: Berenkov had considered their coming together in the same car but decided upon some time to himself, fully to consider the implications of the Swiss sighting.

‘A problem?' demanded Kalenin at once.

Instead of replying, Berenkov handed the other man the set of photographs.

The KGB chief gazed down at them, slowly shaking his head. Then he looked up and said: ‘Charlie Muffin!'

‘They were taken today outside the embassy in Bern,' announced Berenkov.

‘How many were there!' demanded the KGB chief, at once.

‘That's the confusing part,' admitted Berenkov. ‘I checked, obviously. But it was not a concentrated sweep. Just Charlie Muffin. And he was too late. Zenin had already made the pick-up.'

‘I don't understand a fishing expedition,' complained Kalenin.

‘If the British knew more there would have been a build-up,' insisted Berenkov. ‘The Swiss would be swamping the embassy. And they're not.'

‘Still worth letting it run, then?'

‘We've still got the embassy covered,' reminded Berenkov. ‘If there's any sort of change in the surveillance we can still turn Zenin off at the apartment. I know it's not in the planning and there's a risk of panicking him but it's always an option for us.'

‘Charlie Muffin, of all people!' said Kalenin, reflectively. Kalenin had posed as the defector bait to lure the English and American directors to Vienna and there had necessarily been supposed planning meetings between himself and Charlie.

Berenkov knew the KGB chairman had about the man a professional regard similar to his own. He said: ‘I know Charlie Muffin. So do you. His being there worries me.'

‘But you said he was alone.'

‘How professional were the cells I ran in England and Europe regarded?' asked Berenkov, confusingly.

Kalenin frowned across the Dzerzhinsky Square office at his friend, whom he regarded as one of the least conceited people he had ever known. He said: ‘Magnificent. You know that.'

‘Charlie Muffin worked virtually alone when he closed me down,' said Berenkov. ‘And what about his coming here after the escape from a British jail?'

‘A plant: we know that.'

Berenkov shook his head. ‘The Englishman who was with him and whom we captured admitted everything,' he said. ‘Everything except that. He always insisted Charlie Muffin knew nothing about it.'

‘But that's how Natalia Fedova discovered there was an attempt of infiltration in the first place!' refuted Kalenin, who had again personally interrogated the woman.

Berenkov, who knew of his friend's involvement, said: ‘That's what Comrade Fedova insists.'

‘Are you suggesting Charlie Muffin was working quite separately: on something we haven't realized!'

‘I'm suggesting we re-open the file on the whole episode of his being here,' said Berenkov.

‘It would mean Comrade Fedova was mistaken,' said Kalenin, in further reflection.

‘Or something worse,' said Berenkov.

‘Oh no!' said Kalenin, understanding. ‘That can't be. She was the one who alerted me!'

‘Isn't the classic way to avoid suspicion to shift it entirely upon someone else: particularly if that someone else is guilty?'

Kalenin was silent for several moments, then he said: ‘I agree the file should be re-opened. But personally, by you. I don't want any suggestion of a mistake having been made.'

Berenkov nodded, accepting the order and said: ‘I think we should go beyond a re-examination. I think Charlie Muffin is too dangerous. I think he should be taken out.'

Kalenin sat regarding the other man for several moments, considering the suggestion. He said: ‘You're surely not suggesting he should be killed in Switzerland?'

‘Of course not,' said Berenkov. ‘It would attract far too much attention: actually confirm everything. But I think an operation should be devised for something very quickly afterwards.'

Once more Kalenin did not respond immediately. Then he said: ‘I admired him. Liked him, too.'

‘So did I,' said Berenkov. ‘I don't think that should affect our getting rid of him.'

‘Not at all,' nodded Kalenin, in agreement. ‘But I want to know what he was doing here first. Discover that if you can, before you order it.'