‘How …?’ she stumbled.
Kozlov indicated the telephone. ‘She kept to the arrangement …’ In his frustration, Kozlov punched one fist into the palm of the other. ‘It was the Englishman,’ he said. ‘It was all planned so perfectly and Charlie Muffin did something I hadn’t expected …’
‘What are we going to do!’
‘Find them,’ said Kozlov, simply. ‘And this time make sure she dies.’ He paused and said: The Englishman, too: he’s definitely got to be killed.’
Chapter Sixteen
The vodka had been for a celebration of their freedom, but they drank it now for a different reason, needing its support. Kozlov walked aimlessly about the apartment, glass in hand, movement necessary to ease his frustration.
‘Everything was perfect!’ he said again. ‘Everything!’
‘Tell me from the beginning,’ said Olga, confused and trying to understand.
Kozlov halted by the window, gazing out over the gardens, still gripped by anger. Instead of replying directly, he said: ‘I should have known! I thought the photograph was to identify her: I should have guessed a passport!’
‘From the beginning,’ prompted Olga again.
‘Hayashi alerted me as soon as the military planes arrived,’ began Kozlov. ‘It was easy, that late at night, to get on to the apron: he knows the airport very well. The British aircraft was locked, of course, so I put the explosive into two different engine cowlings. Pressure activated …’ He stopped, drinking deeply from his glass. ‘For the meeting I went through the usual routine: ran the Americans all over town, choosing the place. Then insisted that I be left alone, with the Englishman …’ Kozlov paused again, halted by a thought. ‘He was clever: knew things about the KGB that surprised me: somehow he had linked me with McFairlane …’ He shook his head. ‘I wasn’t careful enough. I’d confused the Americans and I thought I’d confused him: didn’t imagine anything could go wrong.’
‘He didn’t query the separate crossings?’ asked the woman.
‘Of course he queried them,’ said Kozlov. ‘He seemed satisfied, by what I said. We arranged how he was to contact Irena and afterwards I took her through it … everything was going just as I’d planned …!’
‘How did you learn it had gone wrong?’
‘After she left this morning I came here. Heard the news reports of the explosion and thought it had all worked …’ He drank heavily again. ‘You know the precautions … this place and this telephone …’
‘This was supposed to be our place,’ she interrupted.
Kozlov was suddenly aware of her need. He crossed to her, cupping her face into his hands, and kissed her, gently. ‘It is,’ he said. ‘And it’s going to be.’
‘Why did she have to know?’
Kozlov frowned at the question. ‘You know why! There had to be a telephone point between us, away from the embassy which would have made her suspicious. Don’t forget the British and the Americans intended trying to get us both; the Englishman openly admitted it to me! This was the failsafe, to stop the Americans interfering. I told her I would not cross to Fredericks until I had heard positively from her. She was to tell the Americans, if they intercepted, that I wouldn’t cross at all until they’d released her and let the arrangements remain as they were supposed to be. That way I could guarantee her being on the British aircraft. This place was the last part of the perfect murder.’
‘And she called?’
Kozlov nodded, adding more vodka to both their glasses. ‘I thought it was you! She actually guessed something, from my voice; asked me what was wrong!’
‘What did you say?’
‘Difficult to say anything, at first. Told her she was imagining it and that maybe I was nervous.’
‘Where was she?’
‘Osaka airport. About to take off for Hong Kong.’
‘So why did you let her leave!’ demanded Olga.
‘There has to be proveable contact with a foreign intelligence organization,’ insisted Kozlov. ‘All your interrogations were geared to show that, on the tapes and films and the involvement of Filiatov … bringing her back to Tokyo would have ruined it all.’
‘But what’s to prevent her getting on the next flight to London, from Hong Kong!’
‘Me,’ said Kozlov. For the first time he smiled. ‘She’ll realize at once that something has gone wrong, because the plane isn’t going to be there. She’ll imagine some disaster here …’ He indicated the telephone. ‘She’ll call,’ he said.
The woman shook her head, doubtfully. ‘I think you’ve taken a terrible risk.’
‘I didn’t have any alternative,’ said Kozlov.
‘Darling,’ said Olga, slowly, ‘why not just let her go: you tricked her into defecting. Isn’t that enough?’
Kozlov wondered if Olga would agree to what he wanted, to make things right. ‘You know it isn’t enough,’ he said. ‘It’s all part of the explanation, to satisfy Moscow. That we realized at the last moment what she was doing, establishing the contact: and that I proved my loyalty by stopping her, as she tried to defect. It can’t work, any other way. The families of Russian defectors are always interrogated and always remain on the suspect list. In my case, it would be a hundred times worse. I’d be taken back to Moscow under arrest …’ Kozlov paused, for the most important fact to register. ‘It would mean the end of it, all that we’ve planned, so carefully and for so long … the end of us, darling.’
Olga bit her lip, making a performance of sipping her drink to cover the closeness of tears. ‘Damn her!’ she said. ‘Why couldn’t the bloody woman have agreed to a divorce!’
‘I told you what happened before,’ reminded Kozlov. ‘Before I came to England and we met. She said she’d never be a rejected woman … never be abandoned.’
‘I would have accepted things going on as they were,’ said Olga.
‘I wouldn’t,’ said Kozlov, positively. ‘I want to get rid of her completely. I want you as my wife, not a mistress from whom I can be parted by a whim of some posting, from Moscow, for either of us. Look how long it took us to get together again, here …!’ Kozlov put his drink aside, sat next to her and said: ‘I love you, my darling. Completely and absolutely. So no more half-measures. No more hiding from everyone in the embassy, frightened of a chance look or gesture being seen and interpreted.’
‘I’m frightened,’ conceded the woman. ‘I thought it was a brilliant idea and I know I went along with it, but now it’s …’ She moved her hands in front of her, searching for the words. ‘Now I think it’s impossible: that it can’t succeed,’ she said.
‘It can,’ said Kozlov, coaxingly. Was now the time to tell her what she had to do?
Before he could speak, she said: ‘Did she ever come here?’
Kozlov hesitated. Then he said: ‘She had to; she had to think it was for her protection. I told you that.’
‘Did you make love to her here?’
Kozlov’s hesitation this time was longer. At last he said: ‘It was meaningless … nothing …’
‘Just something else that had to be done!’
‘Olga!’ he said, consciously trying to avoid a different irritation. ‘For fifteen years I lived with a woman able to find fault with everything, hidden reason in everything and question in everything. If I said it was day, she said it was night. Black was white and white was black. I could have lied just now. I could have said Irena never came here, only knew the telephone number, and that I didn’t go to bed with her here. I didn’t because I love you and don’t intend ever lying to you. I brought her here and made love to her here because I thought it was necessary: because she had to believe and not, for once in her life, question.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said the woman. ‘I’m really sorry …’ She smiled and said: ‘This has got to be our place, from now on. Somewhere secret, which nobody else knows. Make love to me now …’
Kozlov felt out for her and she was coming to him when the telephone sounded stridently into th
e room. Each jerked away from the other, startled. Kozlov said: ‘I told you it would be all right.’
He nodded, in unnecessary confirmation, when he heard Irena’s voice and said: ‘Darling!’
Olga, softly, said: ‘Bitch.’
The aircraft made its lower-than-the-hilltops approach to Hong Kong and then the sharp starboard turn as if it was going to land among the skyscrapers, instead settling on the water’s-edge postage stamp that is Kai Tak airport. With only a travel bag, Charlie had no luggage collection delay, hurrying through the terminal and out into the melee of the taxi and hire car area. It was markedly warmer than Tokyo, a heat blanket wrapping around him, and Charlie felt the perspiration form at once.
He pushed his way through the touts, passing the taxis and then the hire car reservations, going to the very end of the line. It was a yellow Mercedes, the For Hire flag on the passenger side. The driver was uniformed, a black or maybe dark blue outfit, and wore a peaked cap. Charlie got into the rear, settling back as the driver manoeuvred himself through the traffic crush and then out of the airport complex.
‘Any company?’ said Charlie.
‘Not yet. But there’s going to be.’
‘Good to see you again, Harry.’
‘Like I said,’ replied Lu. ‘It’s been a long time.’
Chapter Seventeen
Harry Lu lit an inevitable cigarette as the car dipped into the tunnel to Hong Kong island and said: ‘It’s put a strain on my loyalty, Charlie. If it hadn’t been you, I’d have sold out, after the way London’s cut me off.’
‘Tell me about it,’ said Charlie. Fuck Harkness and his columns of figures. He hoped Lu was telling the complete truth, not just covering his back.
‘The Americans have woken up everybody they’ve ever used. I’ve had three separate calls from people, asking if I know anything. Money no object.’
Let Harkness argue that away, thought Charlie. He said: ‘I expected it.’
‘People are coming in, apparently.’
‘That too,’ said Charlie. He smiled at Lu’s reflection in the mirror and said: ‘See you’ve still got Hong Kong buttoned up.’
‘Like to know what’s going on; feel safe that way,’ said the other man.
‘How is she?’ asked Charlie.
‘Edgy,’ said Lu. ‘Very edgy.’
‘What have you told her?’
‘That there had to be a change of plan and that you’re coming.’
‘Where is she?’
‘Mandarin,’ said Lu. ‘That was before I heard what the Americans were doing. Warned her we’ll be moving on; it’s too high profile and obvious now.’
‘She knows there’s a pursuit?’
‘Of course not!’
Charlie registered the frown of the man in front of him and said: ‘Sorry. Silly question.’ The American reaction meant any civilian aircraft was impossible. Charlie wished he’d agreed to a military plane being despatched; now there would be at least a day’s delay in getting Irena Kozlov away.
Lu said: ‘Russian?’
‘Yes,’ said Charlie.
‘Any link with the plane explosion in Tokyo?’
‘They all died,’ said Charlie.
‘Who did it?’
‘CIA,’ said Charlie.
‘They must want her very badly?’
‘They’re going for the double,’ said Charlie. ‘They’ve already got the husband.’
The Mercedes emerged on to Hong Kong island into an immediate traffic clog. Charlie looked up at the jumbled skyline of uneven skyscrapers and thought Lu was right about moving from the Mandarin Hotel: the island was too easy to block off.
‘London know I’m in?’ asked Lu, from the front of the vehicle.
‘The Director himself,’ assured Charlie.
‘No objection?’
Charlie hesitated. ‘They had no choice, did they?’ he said. Lu was too experienced to be bullshitted; would be offended, in fact.
‘What’s my problem there?’
Charlie told him, feeling embarrassed, and Lu said: ‘I was building up my get-out fund. My name is going to be on the list after 1997.’
‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ admitted Charlie. Harry Lu had been literally born into espionage. His father was a colonel in the communist Chinese army whose spying for Britain was discovered in the last year of the Korean war. Ironically it was a British not a pursuing Chinese bullet that shattered his arm as he fled across the dividing line, and it was in the Seoul hospital that he met the British nurse he later married. In Hong Kong, Harry’s father established himself as London’s foremost China watcher and inculcated the craft into his son when he was still in his teens, to take over the operation when he died. Charlie said: ‘You really think Beijing will still have the file open, after all these years?’
‘Don’t forget the Asian mentality: a thousand years is a speck in time,’ said Lu. Apart from his surname and an olive complexion, there was no indication of his parentage. He was actually fair-haired and European-featured. He said: ‘Beijing have had their cells operating here for years. They know all about me.’
As the traffic jam cleared and they began moving again, Charlie said: ‘I would have thought your father was the target.’
‘Sins of the father,’ quoted Lu, glibly. ‘Over the years I provided as much — maybe more — on China as he did: he began during a war, that’s all.’
‘Convinced it’s going to be that bad, when China takes over?’
‘People like me don’t even have a proper passport: not officially anyway,’ said Lu. ‘We’re second-class citizens, just promised consular protection.’
‘What are you going to do?’
There was a gap before Lu responded. Then he said: ‘Canada is taking people.’
‘Without proper passports?’
‘Something’s always available, at a price. Like everything else in Hong Kong,’ said the man.
‘So why didn’t you, Harry?’
‘Sell you out?’
‘You don’t owe any loyalty in London,’ accepted Charlie. ‘And this goes beyond whatever there is between us.’
Lu smiled, rekindling another cigarette. ‘Never the fool, Charlie.’
‘It costs too much.’
‘I’m displaying a Chinese characteristic,’ admitted Lu. ‘I’m gambling.’
Ahead, to the right, Charlie saw the Star ferry terminal and automatically registered another escape point from the island. Remembering the London remark of Sir Alistair Wilson, Charlie said: ‘What’s the game?’
‘Getting a proper passport and all the entry permits to settle in England,’ announced Lu. He risked a brief, backwards smiling glance. ‘Would you believe I’ve got relatives in a part of London called Cockfosters! What sort of place gets a name like Cockfosters!’
Charlie spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness, knowing of the other man’s absolute attention from the front of the vehicle. ‘I can’t guarantee anything: you know that!’
‘Wilson could,’ said Lu confidently and at once. ‘And after tonight I’m owed, Charlie. I’m owed a lot.’
‘I’m not sure he could, either,’ said Charlie, doubtfully.
‘You going to try to fix it for me, Charlie?’
Charlie sighed, momentarily closing his eyes. Hubert Witherspoon was probably at this moment in his safe and centrally heated 6? by 6? office, with its synthetic carpeting, completing his up-to-date expenses in triplicate and concerned with nothing more than memorizing the latest amendments to regulations. He said: ‘Of course I’ll try.’
The Mandarin was very close now, and although the traffic was not particularly congested, Lu slowed the car. ‘I’d like something positive,’ he said.
‘Or?’ said Charlie, who realized the other man meant want, not like.
‘It’s nothing personal. You must understand that.’
‘I do understand it,’ assured Charlie. And he did. Harry Lu was talking about survival, and in Harry’s place he
would have done the same.
‘It’s an opportunity I can’t let go.’
‘You don’t have to explain.’
‘I’m sorry, Charlie.’
‘You don’t need to be.’
‘It’s just that I’d much rather live in Cockfosters than Poughkeepsie or Peoria.’
‘I think I would, too,’ said Charlie. ‘You want an answer before I leave?’ He intentionally did not say can leave, but there was no misunderstanding between them.
‘That’s what I’d like,’ said Lu, still avoiding the absolute insistence. Heightening the awareness between them, he said: ‘That’s what I’d like best of all.’
At the current state of the game, although game was the last way in which he regarded it, Charlie knew the CIA would offer Harry Lu a passport, guaranteed residency and promise to change the US constitution so he could take a shot at the Presidency, in exchange for what he knew.
‘Let’s get the woman somewhere secure first,’ said Charlie. Lu’s strength was knowing where she was anyway, so he wouldn’t balk at that.
‘Sure,’ agreed Lu, easily. He took the car into the narrow runway to the Mandarin Hotel, nodded familiarly to the doorman, and parked in front of a prohibited sign. The doorman didn’t protest.
When they got out, it was the first time they had faced each other. Lu gave another of his hesitant smiles and said: ‘No hard feelings?’
‘No hard feelings,’ assured Charlie. He remembered the last time he’d agreed that had been to Fredericks, and a few hours later a plane had blown up. He said: ‘Let’s keep everything clean: you settle the bill and I’ll get the woman.’
‘Why is it called Cockfosters?’ asked Lu.
‘Maybe a lot of cock-ups happened there sometime, too,’ said Charlie, leading the way into the hotel.
General Sir Alistair Wilson held the message towards his deputy, shaking his head in uncertainty. He said: ‘Why should the American Director — the Director himself, don’t forget — initiate a cable to me to say there appears to be a delay with Kozlov’s crossing and making it clear, in a roundabout way admittedly, that they had nothing to do with the explosion!’
See Charlie Run cm-7 Page 17