See Charlie Run (12 page)

‘Just like home,' said Charlie. ‘Can I see the traffic?'

Cartright went through the ritual of opening a double-security key and combination safe and handed across the manilla folder. Charlie saw it was marked ‘Confidential' and thought at this stage that was an exaggeration, like his colour designation that morning in the code room. Cartright had set out the passport request very simply, not intruding any local objections, and Wilson's response was a one-line message demanding personal contact.

‘Not exactly an outright refusal,' qualified Charlie.

‘Not approval, either,' said the local man.

‘Ever worked out of London?' asked Charlie.

‘No.'

‘Try to avoid it,' advised Charlie. ‘Full of wankers.'

‘Always treated me all right,' said Cartright.

‘Matter of personality, I guess,' said Charlie.

‘How's everything going?' queried Cartright, openly.

Definitely a too direct, entrapping question, gauged Charlie. ‘Who knows?' he said, as awkwardly as possible.

Cartright wondered what irregularities Harkness expected from this man: at the moment he was behaving and operating quite properly.

In the code room, with the door security slide showing red this time, Charlie sent London the notification of his presence with the request that they open up the photo-transmission line while he encoded his material. The response was immediate and Charlie worked concentratedly, breaking away from his hotel room notes only when one picture had been completed and needed replacing with another on the revolving drum. When the picture wiring was finished he opened up the separate transmission line and began sending his impressions of the encounter with Fredericks, checking as the message was relayed against his original reminders. At the end there was the formal acknowledgement from London and at once an instruction to stand by. While he waited, Charlie fed his notes through the shredder and then burned them: just like the hammer and sickle books, he thought again.

The telephone ring jarred, making Charlie jump. He picked up the red receiver, switched on the scrambling device which would distort his voice to anyone except the person at the other end whose telephone had the antidote scrambler, and said: ‘Hello?'

‘You seem to have got quite a bit,' said Wilson. The Director's voice was clear and unaffected by the electronic protection.

‘It will mean a lot of work, for the analysts,' said Charlie.

‘That's what they're employed for,' said the Director. ‘The Americans are being helpful?'

‘No,' corrected Charlie at once. ‘Suspicious and difficult.'

‘So we shouldn't channel any of this checking officially through Langley?' said Wilson, just as quickly.

‘Definitely not,' said Charlie. ‘I don't want them to know what we're doing.'

‘Or the West Germans?'

‘No.'

‘Able to reach any impression?' asked the Director.

‘Not yet,' replied Charlie. ‘As I said in the message, some things fit, others don't. It's still too early.'

‘Do you think you'll get your own meeting?'

‘I warned the Americans I wouldn't continue without one: told them to make that clear to Kozlov, as well …'

‘I would have liked some warning about that,' broke in the Director.

‘Sorry,' said Charlie. There wasn't time.' Thank God Wilson would never know how Fredericks had scooped him up and blown him out in bubbles that first night. He added: ‘Thanks for backing me up.'

‘I wouldn't like it to happen too often: not without some prior contact.'

‘It won't,' promised Charlie.

‘Why a passport?'

‘Giving myself options,' said Charlie.

‘I told you I'd send a squad in,' reminded Wilson. ‘Rather have trained men with our own transport than any civilian aircraft.'

Military preferences emerging, thought Charlie. He said: ‘Just covering eventualities. I don't like getting boxed in, with only one choice.'

‘Makes sense,' conceded the Director. ‘But I want to keep the local embassy at a safe distance, apart from necessities. Passports are numbered: be easily traceable back to Tokyo if there were some sort of problem and it got into the wrong hands.'

‘Any meeting with Kozlov won't be immediate,' pointed out Charlie. ‘There's a contact procedure, which causes delays. You could pouch one out from London.'

‘It would be better,' accepted Wilson. ‘Foreign Office will raise hell, of course.'

‘Tell them I'll be careful.'

‘They wouldn't believe me.'

‘What about Cartright?' asked Charlie, directly.

‘I don't understand the question.'

‘Any change of heart, about his involvement?'

‘We discussed it before you left,' said Wilson.

If Cartright did have a watching brief, it didn't come from the Director! Charlie said: ‘So Cartright is out?'

‘Restricted to the barest minimum,' confirmed the Director.

‘I believe the Americans are heavy on the ground,' said Charlie.

‘If you confirm, you'll get all the help you want,' insisted Wilson. ‘And don't you take any chances yourself.'

‘I never do,' said Charlie, sincerely.

‘Sometimes, Charlie, sometimes,' disputed the Director.

‘Don't forget the passport,' said Charlie, anxious to move what he knew to be a London-recorded conversation beyond the point where the refusal might later prove to be a positive order.

‘I won't,' undertook Wilson, who was as anxious as Charlie to progress, not wanting to restrict the man either. ‘And pouch the original photographs of Kozlov from your end. The quality of those you've wired is good but the originals will be better.'

‘I'd like to get something, before I meet Kozlov,' said Charlie.

‘It's been a good start,' praised Wilson. ‘And there's something else. Herbert Bell was positive. Well done.'

‘Brought him in?'

‘Better as a conduit at the moment,' said Wilson. ‘Do as well on this. But be careful.'

‘It's the same thing as not taking chances.'

After breaking the London connection Charlie packaged and sealed the photographs that Fredericks had supplied and signalled his emergence to the waiting Cartright.

‘London want this in the diplomatic bag,' he said.

‘It'll go tonight,' guaranteed Cartright. Pointedly, the man said: ‘No problems?'

‘I asked London if there had been any change of heart about your involvement. Wilson forbade it,' said Charlie. If the man were playing Sneaky Pete on Harkness's instruction, invoking the Director's authority might reduce his enthusiasm.

‘Why did you do that?' asked Cartright.

‘Thought maybe that things should be re-clarified,' said Charlie. He hoped Cartright got the message. He wondered if the man would attempt to open the sealed envelope of Kozlov's pictures, to see what was inside. That's what he would have done, in Cartright's position. He knew Harry Lu would have opened it, as well.

Kozlov thoroughly swept his car electronically for any listening devices with Irena watching, but she was dissatisfied and insisted upon carrying out a second, independent check. When she was finally sure, they drove aimlessly around the streets of the darkened city, feeling safe to talk about Irena's weekly encounter with Olga Balan.

‘You satisfied her?' demanded Kozlov.

‘I'm positive,' said his wife, at once.

Kozlov glanced briefly across the vehicle at the woman. ‘We shouldn't be too confident,' he warned.

‘What's that supposed to mean!' she said.

‘Just what it said.'

‘That
I
shouldn't be too confident!'

‘Both of us,' said Kozlov, avoiding the dispute.

‘It was Kamakura, like you,' said Irena. ‘She'd checked and it was obvious she didn't like it that the CIA identification had the approval of Moscow.'

‘What about Kamakura?'

‘How we travelled,' remembered the woman. ‘Whether I was aware of what you were doing all the time? And if you were aware of what I was doing.'

‘She believed you?'

‘I told you – she was satisfied,' insisted Irena.

‘I think we should cover ourselves further,' said the man.

‘How?'

‘Moscow knows how successful this apparent surveillance of the Americans has been. We should suggest extending the evaluation to the British.'

‘Why?'

‘The Americans want to meet again,' disclosed Kozlov. ‘I've said the day after tomorrow.'

‘So the British have been brought in!'

‘It has to be that,' agreed Kozlov. i want to take every precaution. Suggesting identifying the British will give us the same explanation that's worked with the Americans.'

‘Nothing from Hayashi at the airport?'

‘Not yet. But I'll tell him again what I want.' Kozlov paused and said: ‘We know they'll try to cheat. So I've guarded against that, too.'

‘How?' she said.

‘I've got our own “safe” house,' he said. Twisting the professional use of the word, Kozlov said: it's going to keep you safe and it's going to keep me safe.'

In the Rezidentura office at the Soviet embassy, Boris Filiatov rose to greet Olga Balan, smiling a greeting and offering vodka, which she refused. He didn't take one either, because he was nervous of her reputation, like everyone else.

‘You consider we have a problem?' he said. He was overly fat and greasy-skinned, the sort of man who perspired under the shower.

‘I do not like this operation that Irena Kozlov has initiated,' announced the woman.

Chapter Seven

Identifying the man called Yuri Kozlov turned out to be remarkably – and in a truly literal sense comparatively – simple. And there was an irony in the fact that it was made so by the American pictures from which Washington appeared to have learned nothing. Britain's counter-espionage service, MI5, has since 1965 maintained current and past photofiles on all known Soviet personnel who have served in any capacity, either diplomatic or trade, in the country. In 1976, for speed analysis, the entire system was computerized under a system in which photographs can be compared not side by side but from physiognomy characteristics, and four years later it was updated with technological improvements which enable a thousand images an hour to be considered. General Sir Alistair Wilson, who in the 1950s Malaysian campaign led his Ghurka troops on horseback and wore a regimental sword, was a committed believer – and user – of technology. While he was still considering the incoming cable from Charlie – before, even, they talked on the secure line – Wilson invoked the internal agency's technical help at Director-to-Director level but guided by Charlie restricted the picture comparison to Russians appointed to trade rather than diplomatic positions.

The computer recognition is not positive; it singles out similar or matching characteristics, requiring final identification to be made by visual examination. By mid-afternoon, London time, thirty possibilities had been electronically pulled from MI5's picture library, and by the time Wilson summoned his deputy to Earl Grey tea and digestive biscuits the photographs which Charlie had wired only hours before lay beside three separate stock prints of a Russian attached to the Highgate Trade Centre from 1976 until 1981.

‘The name then,' disclosed Wilson, consulting the accompanying files, ‘was Gordik: Ivan Gordik.'

Harkness stood at the Director's side, staring down. Two of the London prints illustrated the man they knew to be Kozlov at what appeared to be reception-like functions. The other, obviously snatched by a concealed camera, showed his getting into a car. ‘It's the same man,' Harkness said. ‘There can't be the slightest doubt.'

‘There isn't,' said Wilson. ‘To be absolutely sure I've had our analysts confirm it. Gordik is Kozlov: or Kozlov is Gordik, whichever way you want it.'

‘What's the record say?' asked Harkness, going to his chair.

Wilson looked briefly up from the dossier, shaking his head. ‘Very little, factually: nothing, in fact. But what is there is fascinating, put against what we now have, from Japan.'

‘Proof?' demanded Harkness, coming forward in his chair in unaccustomed eagerness.

‘No,' disappointed Wilson. ‘Just supposition. Kozlov – we'll use that name, to avoid any confusion – was among a party of Russian trade representatives kept under surveillance in March 1980, during a visit to a technology fair at the exhibition centre in Birmingham. The fair ended on March z8. On the night of March 28 a car carrying the Permanent Under Secretary to the Board of Trade, his secretary and the driver went out of control on the MI. The severity of the crash was never explained; a police scientific engineer said he couldn't confirm that the accelerator was jammed, because of the damage, but that was his surmise. The brake drums were smashed, so it wasn't possible to establish if they failed, either …'

‘Were they killed?' asked Harkness.

‘The Permanent Secretary and his secretary,' said the Director. ‘The driver lost a leg. They hit one of the bridge supports: there was another car involved, a family going on holiday. A child died.'

‘Holy Mary!' said Harkness, a Catholic who went to mass twice on Sunday and usually extended the swearing ban to any open blasphemy.

‘There's more,' said Wilson. ‘The Secretary to the Board of Trade should have been in the same car: at the last moment he decided instead to go back early to his constituency, in Wales.'

‘Who was …?'

‘Harold McFairlane. He was opposing both in the House of Commons and in Cabinet a technology exchange programme which would have allowed Russian engineers, as inspectors, access to some of our restricted factories with which the Soviets had placed orders,' completed the Director.