‘Distancing themselves?’ suggested Harkness at once. ‘That’s what we’d do.’
Wilson nodded, but immediately came in with the qualification. ‘At division level,’ he pointed out. ‘The Director himself would not risk later being exposed as a liar in a signed message. I certainly wouldn’t.’
‘What then?’
‘I just don’t know,’ conceded Wilson. ‘Everything about their approach is wrong.’
‘Unless they’re telling the truth,’ suggested Harkness.
‘That’s a novel idea,’ said Wilson, disbelievingly. ‘No contact to Cartright, from Charlie?’
‘Not as of an hour ago,’ said the deputy.
‘I wish to hell I knew whether or not we had the woman,’ said Wilson.
As he spoke, 8000 miles away in Hong Kong, Irena Kozlov opened the door to Charlie Muffin and said: ‘It’s all gone wrong, hasn’t it?’
‘Not yet,’ said Charlie. But almost, he thought.
It would have been ludicrous to regard the approach from Olga Balan as anything like friendship, but Boris Filiatov looked upon it as a gesture of cooperation at least. And certainly, from the material she had made available, there was strong circumstantial evidence that Irena Kozlov had orchestrated the American surveillance for a personal advantage. His immediate — and lasting — reaction was nothing as facile as a concern for any damage to the State: Boris Filiatov’s concern was for Boris Filiatov. And he was well aware that other material was available from which it could be construed that he had supported the operation. Which he had, knowing of Moscow’s approval and always quick to jump on to a safely rolling bandwagon: a bandwagon, he reflected bitterly, showing all the signs of running away down a very rocky road to an appalling disaster. Filiatov recognized at once that he had to disassociate himself: it didn’t matter if the suspicions about the woman were later shown to be unfounded, the only consideration now was to get out before Moscow discovered what was happening, realized its own culpability, and moved to apportion the blame.
Filiatov sighed, replacing the telephone that had remained unanswered in four earlier attempts to contact Olga Balan. He intended his approach to appear reciprocal, a courtesy returned for a courtesy given, but in reality he was desperately anxious to know if the woman had already despatched her reports to Dzerzhinsky Square.
The movements of all Soviet personnel attached to overseas embassies are strictly monitored, travel-logs existing to record every exit from or re-entry to the diplomatic compound, against the reasons for those journeys. Filiatov checked the duty clerk, frowning at there being no listing against the Security Officer’s name to account for her absence. Of all people, Filiatov supposed, Olga Balan could risk scorning regulations, but he hadn’t been aware of her doing so ever before.
Filiatov decided to wait. But not for long: he’d already decided he couldn’t wait long.
Chapter Eighteen
The silence lasted a long time, building into a division between them — a barrier neither had known before — Olga Balan all the while staring fixedly at him, wanting Kozlov to say more. When he didn’t, the woman said: This isn’t how it was planned; how we planned it.’
‘You said then that you’d do anything I wanted,’ reminded Kozlov. He hadn’t expected her to agree at once.
‘Not kill her.’
‘You’ve been trained.’
Olga shook her head, a positive denial. ‘For the State. This is different.’
Kozlov indicated the just-replaced telephone upon which he’d burned with discomfort assuring his wife he loved her with Olga looking at him, stony-faced. ‘I told you what she said: that they’re moving her on, but she doesn’t know where. That telephone is our only link. So it can’t be me, not now. I’ve got to stay here.’
Olga stood abruptly, breaking the tension between them. She looked at her empty glass and the nearby bottle, then appeared to change her mind, going instead to the window. Tokyo was quite outside, so late; a lot of the neon illumination was temporarily resting and the streets briefly empty, until another day. With her back to him, she said: ‘You’d already decided it had to be me, before she called, hadn’t you?’
Kozlov swallowed, glad she wasn’t able to see. He was surprised she’d guessed. He said: ‘Think of another way! Anything!’
Still not looking at him, Olga said hopefully: ‘Maybe Moscow wouldn’t recall you if we just let her go?’
‘You prepared the tapes … conducted the interviews and sent them to Moscow and involved Filiatov …’ reminded Kozlov. ‘Do you really believe that!’
She turned back into the room. There were only sidelights on, so it was difficult to see if she were near tears but he thought she was. She said: ‘We’re trapped, aren’t we?’
‘With a way out!’ he said, urgently.
‘How long!’ she demanded, suddenly angry. ‘How long before Irena becomes suspicious at your still being here in this apartment or Moscow starts demanding answers or Filiatov does something; we’ve prepared him, don’t forget!’
‘You can do it,’ coaxed Kozlov. ‘It could all be over this time tomorrow. So there’s no risk of anything from Moscow or Filiatov. Irena either. You’d even be doing your job, as far as Moscow is concerned.’
‘You never told me about the other time,’ she said, ignoring the assurance with another abrupt change of direction.
‘Other time?’
‘You said in Moscow Irena told you she’d never be a rejected woman. Why did she say that?’
Kozlov poured himself more vodka, not wanting the drink but needing the break from her demanding stare. ‘There was a woman. A choreographer at the Bolshoi. I told Irena I wanted a divorce. That’s when she said it.’
‘So what happened!’ The anger was obvious again.
‘It was just before I came to London: met you. Irena stayed in Moscow, as you know. Used all the power she had in Dzerzhinsky Square — which was a lot — to hurt her. I didn’t know, of course. Didn’t discover it until I went back, between London and Bonn …’
‘You tried to see her again … this other woman …?’
‘Valentina,’ supplied Kozlov.
‘You tried to see Valentina after our affair had already started … when you were telling me that you loved me!’
Kozlov brought his eyes to hers, knowing the suspicion and wanting to convince her. ‘No!’ he said. ‘Not like that. Irena boasted what she’d done: taken care of your whore, she said. She actually arranged criticism of the choreography in Pravda and Tass. Valentina had been dismissed, by the time I got back to Moscow. Unsatisfactory had been registered in her workbook and you know that makes her unemployable.’
‘You met her again?’
Kozlov shook his head. ‘I think she went back to her home, to Kiev. I couldn’t find out, not definitely. I’d have had to enquire through Irena’s directorate and she would have learned about it: made it even more difficult for Valentina.’
‘So you never saw her again?’
‘No,’ said Kozlov.
‘And don’t know what happened to her?’
‘No,’ said the man, once more.
There was a long hesitation and then Olga said: ‘Do you still love her?’
Kozlov shook his head. ‘I feel responsible.’
‘Would it be as easy, to get over me?’
‘I didn’t say it was easy.’
‘It sounds that way.’
‘Darling!’ Kozlov stood, holding out his arms. She refused to come to him and he dropped them, feeling foolish. Instead he went to her, reached out a second time and took her shoulders, bringing her face close to his. ‘I love you,’ he said. ‘No one else. That’s all I can say … no better way — other way — to make you believe me.’
It was several moments before she replied, and when she said ‘I believe you’, there was doubt.
‘Will you do it?’
Another long pause. Then she said: ‘There’s no other resolve, is there?’
‘No,’ he said, positively.
‘I’m not sure I can.’
‘Trapped,’ he said, coaxing some more. ‘Your words.’
Olga started crying, making no sound but with tears moving across her face. ‘I’m so scared,’ she said, broken-voiced. ‘So very scared.’
‘You can do it!’ he encouraged again.
‘I have to, don’t I?’
Kozlov didn’t reply, knowing it would be wrong at that second in time to say anything.
‘Just Irena,’ insisted Olga. ‘Not him.’
‘Just Irena,’ agreed Kozlov.
‘Over by this time tomorrow?’
‘Everything,’ he assured her.
‘You do love me, don’t you?’
‘Don’t doubt me. Ever.’
There was another period when her eyes searched his face and she said: ‘I won’t’, and this time there wasn’t any doubt.
They left Levine at the airport, with two of the crew of the C-130 controlling the surveillance of the military section, and Elliott accompanied the rest of the arriving CIA group to the Peninsula Hotel on the mainland Kowloon side.
Elliott was already established as the contact point for the colony’s CIA informants, and at Fredericks’ urging he went individually through everything that had been assembled.
‘Definite airport arrival?’ pressed the CIA supervisor.
‘Three separate confirmations, from Langley’s stock photographs,’ confirmed the man.
‘Cars?’ seized Fredericks, picking the most important point.
Elliott shook his head, the reluctance obvious. ‘Ground staff and immigration. Nothing outside.’
‘Son of a bitch!’ said Fredericks, vehemently.
‘Just a matter of time,’ said Elliott. ‘We’re running checks on all the taxis and courtesy buses and hire cars.’
‘We haven’t got time!’ said Fredericks, exasperated. ‘This thing is on a very short fuse.’
Elliott looked around the assembled group. ‘Now we’re all here,’ he said, ‘we can start spreading out. There are a lot of hotels, but we’ve got informants in most of them so it isn’t really such a difficult task.’
‘I’d like to believe that!’ said Dale, entering into the conversation to ease the pressure on a colleague.
‘I don’t care how difficult it is!’ reminded Fredericks. ‘I want it done and I want it done completely, and I want it done now!’
Elliott and Dale actually exchanged looks, their faces open but with no need of expression to convey their feeling at the burr-under-the-saddle attitude that was so obvious from the supervisor.
Elliott said: ‘It really is just a matter of time. An itty bitty matter of time.’
Fredericks’ face suddenly opened, more a grimace than a smile. ‘Right!’ he said. ‘The cork’s in the bottle.’
Chapter Nineteen
Irena Kozlov stood in the middle of the room, legs slightly parted, hands on her hips, in a physically intimidating attitude, questions bursting from her in a machine-gun staccato. ‘Why blow up the plane?’ was the most repeated demand, along with others. Like who-and-how caused the explosion, and had they been caught, and what he was going to do now, to get her out? And how?
Charlie Muffin confronted her feeling like a one-armed juggler trying to keep twenty coloured balls in the air at the same time, with his good arm strapped behind his back. And blindfolded as well, just to make it difficult. He attempted to concentrate absolutely upon the strident woman and to relegate the distraction of Harry Lu to the shut-off, solve-it-later part of his mind, but it wasn’t easy because what Harry Lu wanted was so inextricably linked with Irena anyway. As everything was. Charlie lied, repeatedly, insisting that the delay was only temporary and that soon — within hours, which was a further conscious lie — there would be another plane to take her safely to England.
‘How can you say that, after what happened in Tokyo!’ The challenge was immediate, puncturing the attempted assurance.
‘Because this time we’ll be more careful,’ said Charlie.
‘So you were careless!’
Charlie sighed: she was sandpaper abrasive. He said: ‘It was something we didn’t foresee.’ He was determinedly as forceful as she, refusing to be brow-beaten by her hands-on-hips attitude.
‘Yuri expected some trickery, but not this,’ admitted Irena. She hesitated, hands dropping to her sides, lowering herself into a chair. She hesitated and said with sudden and unusual quietness, as if realizing it for the first time: ‘I could have been killed.’
‘They wouldn’t have sabotaged the plane, if you’d been aboard,’ said Charlie. ‘They’d have snatched you.’
‘The man who met me at the airport!’ said the woman, the sudden alarm obvious. ‘He’s safe?’
I wish I knew any more, thought Charlie. He said: ‘Quite safe. A friend.’
‘He said we have to keep moving.’
‘The Americans are chasing,’ announced Charlie. It was a harbour-view room, the black stretch of the waterway lay between them and Kowloon and the New Territories beyond. Charlie looked briefly across at the mainland, wondering how long it would take Fredericks and the other CIA agents to arrive. From the chair upon which she was sitting, Charlie was conscious of Irena moving as if she were going to make a response at once, but abruptly she shook her head. Instead she said: ‘So you don’t know what’s happened to Yuri?’
Charlie hesitated, unsure of the best reply, and decided that there was only one. ‘No,’ he said. ‘There’s no contact between myself and the Americans, not any more.’
‘How are the meetings between Yuri and I going to be arranged!’
‘Through London and Washington,’ avoided Charlie, easily. Wilson was probably already mobilizing the squad to grab Kozlov on that first occasion. It was an operation in which he would like to be involved.
‘You said hours, before we can leave?’ queried Irena.
‘I hope so,’ said Charlie.
She appeared not to notice the qualification. Unexpectedly, she said: ‘I do not feel well: I don’t think I can travel immediately.’
‘What!’ Charlie was off-balanced by the announcement: more coloured balls had been thrown into the juggling act and he had enough already. He looked intently at the woman. Pale, maybe, but that was all. Certainly her attitude since he’d entered the room gave no indication of her being unwell. The opposite, in fact.
‘I need to rest, before moving on,’ Irena said.
She was going to get the opportunity whether she wanted it or not, but the insistence unsettled Charlie. Minutes earlier she’d appeared anxious to get out as soon as possible, which was why he had lied. The strain had to be enormous; maybe she wasn’t as strong as she appeared. He said: ‘There’ll be time enough to rest.’
‘A day at least: I need a day.’
‘A day,’ agreed Charlie, because it suited him.
‘Are you confident we can evade the Americans?’
‘Yes,’ said Charlie, who wasn’t. There was a desperate need to reach Wilson, in London; a desperate need to do so much. Up and down went the coloured balls, a blur of impressions, nothing focussing.
‘Where are we going now?’
Charlie hesitated, looking across at the mainland again. Certainly they had to get off Hong Kong island, so Kowloon was the obvious choice: a lot of small, no-questions-asked places there. ‘The Americans have woken up everybody’ — Harry’s warning, on the way from the airport. So was Kowloon too obvious, like here at the Mandarin? Or safe enough? Before he could reply to the woman’s question, there was a sound at the door. Irena jumped, nervously, and as he opened it to Harry Lu, Charlie decided the man had taken a long time simply to settle a less-than-one-night occupancy bill.
‘All set,’ announced Lu.
For whom and for what, wondered Charlie. Pointedly, he said: ‘Where have you been?’
Lu looked directly at him, recognizing the suspicion. ‘Making calls, Charlie.’
�
��To whom?’
‘Don’t, Charlie. There isn’t any reason,’ urged the other man.
Irena, a professional, detected the atmosphere and said: ‘What’s the problem?’
Both men ignored her. Charlie said: ‘I wouldn’t like there to be, Harry.’
‘I’m trusting you,’ reminded the man. ‘It’s got to go both ways.’
Lu was right, Charlie accepted: and he didn’t have any alternative anyway. Charlie never liked operating without at least one alternative. Preferably more. He repeated: To whom?’
Lu didn’t reply at once, conscious of Charlie’s refusal to meet him on the assurance. Then he said: ‘People: people very anxious to know where you are …’
The man finished speaking by turning to include Irena who said at once: ‘Something else has gone wrong, hasn’t it? Tell me!’
‘Nothing else has gone wrong!’ said Charlie, urgently, trying to quell the woman’s obvious rising anxiety.
‘So what is it between you?’ persisted the woman.
‘A misunderstanding,’ said Charlie. It had been stupid, allowing the exchange in front of her. Trying to rebuild a bridge with Lu, Charlie added: ‘My fault.’
Lu gave no response and Charlie decided the apology had come too late. The annoyance flushed through him, self-anger at his own stupidity: things were bad enough, without his making additional contributions to the fuck-up. ‘My mistake,’ he said again, directly and to the man alone this time.
‘We’ve got a deal?’ asked Lu.
‘Yes,’ agreed Charlie, who still hadn’t considered how to achieve — even if he could achieve — what Lu demanded.
‘Then I’ll keep my side of it,’ undertook the man.
‘Freelance!’ identified Irena, showing further expertise. Accusingly, to Charlie, she said: ‘You involved a freelance!’
‘I involved the best man,’ insisted Charlie. The whole bloody conversation was getting out of hand.
The uncertain doubt was obvious in Irena’s look. She said: ‘Yuri thought you were good,’ in a voice indicating that she didn’t agree with the assessment.
See Charlie Run cm-7 Page 18