Run Around (7 page)

Sir Alistair Wilson was sitting formally behind his desk, which he rarely did and there was none of the personal affability of which Charlie was usually conscious. Harkness was in his customary chair, prim hands on prim knees, making no attempt to hide the expression of satisfaction: Charlie thought he looked like a spectator at a Roman arena waiting for the thumbs down. Attacking at once, the deputy said: ‘You were specifically told ten o'clock.'

‘One or two things came up,' said Charlie. ‘Sorry.'

‘Just what the hell do you think you're doing!' erupted Wilson. The complete whiteness of his hair was heightened by his red-faced anger.

‘About what, precisely?' Charlie hadn't intended the question to sound insolent but it did and he was aware of Harkness's sharp intake of breath.

‘You have caused absolute bloody chaos,' accused the Director, hands clasped for control in front of him on the desk. ‘In my name – but without any reference or authority from me – you've demanded – not politely asked but
demanded
– MI5 mount a massive surveillance operation on every Soviet installation in London.'

‘Yes,' agreed Charlie. ‘I have.'

‘Have you any idea of the manpower involved?' said Wilson.

‘Or the overtime payments?' came in Harkness, predictably.

‘Quite a lot,' said Charlie, answering both questions.

‘MI5 is not our service,' lectured Wilson. ‘When we want co-operation we ask, politely. We don't insist. And we don't make requests which will tie up every Watcher they've got and require extra men being seconded. Do you know what their Director said, when he complained! That Britain's entire counter-intelligence service was at the moment working for
us
.'

‘I hope they are,' said Charlie.

‘What are you talking about?' said Harkness.

Instead of answering the man Charlie said to the Director: ‘But
are
they doing it?'

Wilson frowned, momentarily not replying. Then he said: ‘Yes. I wasn't going to cancel without knowing what was happening, but by God you'd better have a good explanation – a bloody good explanation.'

Charlie sighed, relieved. ‘I'm glad,' he said.

‘And not just an explanation for that,' said Harkness. ‘We've studied the full transcript of your interview with Novikov.'

‘And?' lured Charlie. Come on, you penny-pinching arsehole, he thought.

‘Appalling,' judged Harkness. ‘Unnecessarily antagonistic, putting at risk any relationship that might have been built up between the man and other debriefers. And absolutely unproductive.'

‘Absolutely unproductive?' coaxed Charlie. He didn't just want Harkness to dig a hole for himself; he wanted a damned great pit, preferably with sharpened spikes at the bottom.

‘Not one worthwhile thing emerged from the entire meeting,' insisted Harkness. Confident enough to try sarcasm, he said: ‘And for whose benefit was the whisky episode!'

‘Mine,' said Charlie at once. ‘I wanted to break his concentration. It was going so well that I didn't want to lose anything: it can sometimes happen if a defector becomes too tense.' He smiled and said: ‘Islay malt is a favourite of mine. His, too, it seems.'

There were several moments of complete silence in the room. Charlie waited, comfortably relaxed. The roses today were predominantly yellow and heavily scented: Charlie wondered if the block of buildings beyond were Waterloo Station or the County Hall, uncertain whether it were either.

‘Going so well?' It was Harkness who spoke, his voice edged with uncertainty.

‘And about time,' said Charlie. ‘I think too many mistakes have already been made. I hope we're not too late …' He smiled again, directly at Wilson this time. ‘That's why I'm glad the Soviet surveillance is being maintained: it is something that should have been in place weeks ago. The biggest mistake of all, in fact.'

‘I said I wanted an explanation,' complained Wilson. ‘I'm not getting it in a way I can understand.'

Charlie recognized there was no longer any anger in the man's voice. He said: ‘There were a number of reasons for my being what you regarded as antagonistic. It is always necessary, in the first place, to regard any defector as a hostile plant—'

‘You'd already been told that in the opinion of other debriefers Novikov was genuine,' broke in Harkness.

‘I'm not interested in the opinion of other debriefers,' said Charlie. ‘Only my own. And having read the transcripts of their sessions and seen the oversights and the errors I didn't think their opinions were worth a damn anyway.'

‘So what is your opinion?' said Wilson.

‘I've asked this morning for some corroboration, from Moscow,' said Charlie. ‘But provisionally I think he's OK.'

‘What other reasons were there for your approach?' demanded Harkness, fully aware of the unspoken criticism of Witherspoon, who was his protégé.

‘Novikov is arrogant,' said Charlie. ‘Isn't that obvious from the transcript?'

‘Yes,' conceded Harkness reluctantly.

‘He's been handled wrongly, from the start,' said Charlie. ‘Allowed to dominate the sessions, instead of being dominated himself. I wanted him to know I didn't trust him: that he had to prove himself. Which he did.'

‘You said mistakes had been made,' queried Wilson.

‘A lot,' said Charlie. ‘One of the most serious is the lack of response to the word “catalogue”. It's not in any of the debriefing guide books, but it is most frequently used by the KGB to cover an agent from their assassination department. Who will be sent in specially. That's why I mounted the surveillance: I want a comparison between their known operatives and someone we don't know. If it's not too late, that is.'

Wilson nodded and said: ‘If you're right, I agree. But why couldn't catalogue refer to the victim?'

Charlie shook his head against the qualification. ‘Novikov had encountered the description before,' he reminded. ‘Both times in connection with an assassination. He refused to be absolutely positive, but his belief was that it's the code for the operative. And I think the debriefing proved that the operation does not just involve England.'

‘Prove?' demanded Harkness.

‘Novikov agreed that the cipher division of the KGB is not a general department, that it's compartmented like everything else,' said Charlie.

Harkness nodded, in recollection.

‘The assumption by all the previous debriefers had been that Novikov was part of some centralized system,' insisted Charlie.

‘Yes,' said Wilson, looking directly at Harkness. ‘And it was a mistake.'

‘I wanted particularly to establish the limitations of what Novikov handled, despite the Politburo clearance,' disclosed Charlie. ‘The numbering told me.'

‘Number four was his first involvement,' remembered Wilson.

‘I think I know what happened to the previous three,' announced Charlie.

‘What?' asked the Director.

‘Novikov agreed with me that he worked for the Directorate's Third Department, which we know from previous defectors covers England. The logical conclusion is that the previous messages, perhaps identifying the target, went through other departments,' said Charlie.

‘Which means the killing could be anywhere in the world!' exclaimed Wilson.

Charlie shook his head, in another refusal. He said: ‘I think we can narrow it down.'

‘How?'

‘Although separate in department control, England is considered part of Europe,' said Charlie. ‘My guess is that England is the staging post for a killing that is to be carried out somewhere in Europe.'

‘A guess,' pounced Harkness.

‘Which might have been easier to confirm if surveillance had been imposed earlier,' came back Charlie.

‘Why England at all, if the assassination isn't to be here?' asked Wilson.

Charlie shrugged, unable positively to answer. ‘It's trade-craft always to conceal the point of entry,' he suggested.

‘Everything is still too vague,' said Harkness.

‘No,' disputed Charlie again. ‘The debriefing told us how to look. And where.'

‘What!' shouted Wilson.

‘The dates,' said Charlie. ‘I'm sure it's in the dates.'

‘Tell me how?' insisted the Director.

‘The pattern fits,' argued Charlie. ‘Novikov was cut off on 19 August?'

‘Yes,' agreed the Director. He was leaning intently across the desk.

‘The last message he encoded was 12 August?'

‘Yes.'

‘Before that, 5 August?'

‘And you anticipated the first, 29 July,' remembered Harkness.

‘All Fridays,' said Charlie.

There was another brief silence, then Harkness said: ‘So?'

‘The Politburo of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics always convenes on a Thursday,' said Charlie. ‘Novikov's first message, to the Politburo, was an acknowledgement of an instruction for a public and political assassination. The other two were outwardly transmitted messages, establishing London as a link in that planning.'

Harkness shook his head in rejection. ‘I don't agree that assumption,' he said. ‘Or still understand the guide it gives us, even if I could accept it.'

‘Allow me the assumption,' urged Charlie. ‘We've got three unknown messages, before Novikov was given his, numbered four in the sequence. So let's work backwards, from those dates. If I am right, then the assassination was discussed at three previous Politburo sessions, 22 July, 15 July and 8 July, with 8 July being the date of the initial concept.'

‘I am finding this as difficult to follow as Harkness,' protested the Director. ‘But if I do allow you the assumption, I still don't see what we have got.'

‘“The need is understood that a political, public example has to be set, for the maximum impact,”' quoted Charlie.

‘I don't need reminding of the first cable,' said Wilson.

‘How about the last?' asked Charlie. ‘“You will wrap the November catalogue.”'

‘What's the connection?'

‘What political, public event, where something of maximum impact could possibly be achieved, was announced just prior to but certainly not after 8 July?' suggested Charlie. ‘A political, public event scheduled to take place in November?'

‘Oh yes,' accepted the Director, finally. ‘Oh yes, I could go for that.'

‘It's a theory,' allowed Harkness, grudgingly.

‘The best we've got, after the mistakes so far,' said Charlie.

‘I think so, too,' agreed the Director, at once.

‘I'm glad,' said Charlie. ‘I was late for this morning's meeting because I've ordered from every British embassy in every European capital a complete list and breakdown of major political happenings in their countries throughout December as well as November just to be sure. I designated it maximum priority, with a copy in each case to the ambassador.'

‘In whose name?' asked Wilson, expectantly.

‘Yours,' said Charlie.

Harry Johnson was pissed off, right up to the back teeth: five weeks to go before retirement, the lump sum he'd decided to take from his pension already deposited on the holiday bungalow in Broadstairs, the extra plot negotiated to his allotment and this had to happen, a hands-over-your-bum, watch-everything-that-moves red alert. It wasn't fair: certainly the assignment wasn't fair because the buggers had manoeuvred it so he got the worst surveillance of the lot, the one most likely to go wrong. And the last thing he could afford was anything going wrong: until the gold watch that had already been selected and the insincere speeches and the booze-up in the Brace of Pheasants. All he'd wanted – could surely have expected! – was a quiet, easy life, so that he could quit the service with a reasonably good record. Not this, something that was so obviously important and even more obviously dangerous.

Johnson, a plump man who wore braces as well as a belt and who puffed a lot when he breathed, because of a tendency to bronchitis, saw the departure of Yuri Koretsky first, because Johnson was one of the most senior Watchers on the squad and only ever needed the sight of a quarry once. And Koretsky, who was the KGB
rezident
in London, had to be one of the most marked quarries of the whole stupid alert: Johnson was disappointed that the younger two, Burn, who was the driver, and Kemp, who was the back-up, hadn't been quicker. According to regulations, as the senior man he should have reported them but he knew he wouldn't. What was the point of being shitty, with only five weeks to go before retirement?

‘There's our man,' he said, alerting them for the first time.

Koretsky was in a car with a driver, which Johnson recognized at once to be significant. He said, in a further warning: ‘This could be it.'

‘Why?' asked Kemp.

‘Watch and learn,' said Johnson. He wondered what ‘it' was? Throughout the majority of his MI5 career as a professional surveillance merchant he had followed and bugged and burgled and pried, rarely knowing the complete reason of any assignment, like he didn't know the full purpose of this one. He frequently wondered whether any of it mattered.

The Soviet car went up the Bayswater Road – ironically within a mile of the hotel Vasili Zenin was preparing to leave within the hour, to make the collection – and went to the right at Marble Arch, clogging at once in the Park Lane traffic. Their vehicle was two cars behind and Johnson said: ‘Don't lose him! Close up.'

The Soviet vehicle turned into Upper Brook Street to go past the American embassy but stayed to the left of Grosvenor Square, going in front of the Dorchester and then crossing Bond Street to the next square. There the car went immediately left, to cross Oxford Street and Johnson said: ‘Wrong! It would have been quicker to have gone north up the Edgware Road.'