‘I am aware,’ he began, speaking very quietly and with control, ‘that I am badly regarded in this department, a reminder of a British intelligence system that made some very bad mistakes … mistakes that meant changes were almost inevitable …’
He hesitated. They were back with him now, he saw.
‘But I have proved myself, if proof were needed, with the Berenkov debriefing,’ he continued. ‘I know espionage intimately … I’m an expert at it. You are a soldier, used to a different environment … a different set of rules …’
‘What is the point you are trying to make,’ broke in Cuthbertson, testily.
‘That we’re being set up,’ said Charlie, urgently. ‘A trap is being created and you are walking blindly into it …’
Again, Cuthbertson shook his head in refusal.
‘… Cut off now, before it’s too late,’ pleaded Charlie. ‘A committed man like Kalenin wouldn’t defect in a million years.’
‘You’re scared,’ accused the Director, suddenly.
‘You’re damned right I’m scared,’ agreed Charlie, open in his irritation. ‘Two agents plucked off within days of encountering Kalenin! We should all be terrified. If he has his way, he’ll wreck the whole bloody department.’
‘I want Kalenin,’ declared Cuthbertson, pedantically.
‘But he isn’t coming,’ insisted Charlie.
‘He is,’ said the Director.
‘Then tell me why Harrison and Snare have been hit,’ demanded Charlie.
‘Because Kalenin is frightened.’
Charlie frowned, genuinely confused. ‘What the hell does that mean?’
Cuthbertson paused at the impertinence, then dismissed it.
‘On each occasion,’ enlarged the Director, ‘sufficient time elapsed for both men to dispatch full reports to London. Kalenin has allowed that, wanting the meetings to be relayed here. Both meetings were in public places … they would have been noted. And Kalenin would have known that. So he protected his back by going for them, once they’d served their purpose …’
He groped among the papers that leafed his desk.
‘… Snare refers several times to Kalenin’s ill-concealed fear …’
‘… bloody right,’ said Charlie. ‘And I might concede your point if Snare had been killed too. But he’s alive. By now, scientifically and without any pain, they will have taken apart the man’s mind, right back to the age of two. Kalenin wouldn’t have risked the inevitable exposure of his defection by letting Snare live, if the defection were genuine.’
‘They’ve promised us consular access in three weeks,’ rejected Cuthbertson, triumphantly. ‘They wouldn’t do that if Snare wasn’t perfectly fit and had been subjected to any torture, physical or mental …’
Charlie sat, waiting, opening and closing his hands.
‘Rubbish,’ he said, at last. ‘They will have stripped him to the bone.’
‘The terms of your employment with the department do not allow you to refuse an assignment,’ reminded the Director.
‘I know,’ said Charlie quietly.
‘And I am ordering you to go.’
Charlie knuckled his eyes, then looked up at the men who despised him. He sighed openly. He’d given them the chance to avoid making fools of themselves, he decided. Now it was entirely their fault.
‘Did American intelligence know how Harrison and Snare were making contact?’
‘Not that we know of,’ said Wilberforce.
Charlie sat, unconvinced. ‘Both meetings were at public functions,’ he said, talking almost to himself. ‘Washington would have known.’
He looked up to Cuthbertson.
‘They want involvement?’ he queried.
‘Desperately,’ agreed the Director.
‘Give it to them,’ advised Charlie. ‘The payment stipulates dollars. Let the money be their entry.’
‘Why?’ demanded Cuthbertson.
‘To give me the opportunity for contact,’ said Charlie. ‘I don’t want the Americans to have any idea that anyone is trying to pick up from Harrison or Snare. String them along by discussing money for a week, to give me time …’
‘That won’t work,’ warned Wilberforce, happy to have found a flaw. ‘Our embassy cover for you to go to Moscow doesn’t come into operation for another three weeks.’
‘I’m not going to Moscow under your cover,’ lectured Charlie. Again he was reminded of Edith’s warning about conceit, but discarded it.
‘… In the last three months you’ve arranged the crossing into Eastern Europe of two men whom you regarded highly,’ he said. ‘One is dead, the other is in Lubyanka. I’ll get to Moscow myself.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous, Charles,’ rebuffed Cuthbertson. ‘No one can enter Russia like that.’
‘Charlie,’ reminded the operative.
‘Charlie,’ accepted the Director, tightly.
Charlie smiled, openly, so both men could see. He would have to be very careful not to go too far, he decided.
‘Do you want the defection … if defection there is … to work?’ asked Charlie.
‘Yes,’ said the other man, instantly.
‘Then I want to operate as I always have done.’
‘If it goes wrong,’ cautioned the Director, ‘then you’ll be the sufferer.’
‘Sir Henry,’ accepted Charlie, smiling. ‘We both know why I’m being brought back into active service. And what will happen if I fail.’
Cuthbertson did not answer the accusation.
‘I’ll need a large petty cash advance,’ stipulated Charlie. He’d take some good wine to Janet’s flat that evening, he decided.
The Director nodded, defeated.
‘I’ll want to know what’s happening all the time,’ said Cuthbertson, hopefully. ‘And I’ll need receipts.’
Charlie nodded.
‘Of course,’ he agreed.
Cuthbertson waited, guessing there was more.
‘… And it would help to have my old office back,’ said Charlie. ‘If we’re going to work on this, we’ll need instant contact with each other …’
Cuthbertson nodded, his normally red face puce with emotion.
‘I’m very worried about this,’ said Wilberforce, after Charlie had left.
‘I’m terrified,’ confessed Cuthbertson. Why couldn’t it have been Charlie Muffin shot in an East German ditch, he thought, regretfully. Even if he succeeded in this operation, decided the Director, he’d still ease him from the department, despite the promises he’d given. The man was quite insufferable.
The orange blossom trees were in full bloom, whitening the shrubbery outside Keys’s office. Far away, people wandered ant-like into the Lincoln memorial, and in the park in front teenagers were clustered around an improvised guitar recital. It was very American and comforting, he thought.
‘So how do you assess it?’ demanded the Secretary of State, turning back into the room.
Ruttgers, who had arrived in Washington just one hour before and knew he would be affected by jet-lag very soon, shrugged, unwilling to commit himself.
‘I don’t honestly know,’ he said. ‘Kalenin has appeared, almost too easily. And from my last meeting with the British Director, it’s obvious the man is discussing asylum.’
‘Do you believe it’s genuine?’
‘I don’t know enough about it to make a judgment,’ avoided Ruttgers, easily.
‘Do the British suspect why their operatives have been hit?’
‘They haven’t a clue,’ assured Ruttgers, confidently. They think it’s just K.G.B. surveillance and Kalenin being over-cautious.’
‘What about the request for money?’
‘A stalling operation,’ guessed the C.I.A. chief. ‘They arc trying to send someone else in.’
‘Will we be able to spot him?’
Ruttgers shifted, uncomfortable at the question. ‘I don’t know,’ he replied, honestly. ‘I’ve got the Moscow embassy on full alert: the man will have to have some of
ficial cover, so we should be able to pick him up.’
Knowing the Secretary of State’s health fetish, Ruttgers never smoked in the man’s presence. The need for a cigarette was growing by the minute.
It was time he came to the point of the meeting, decided the Director.
‘The British are incredibly arrogant,’ he embarked. ‘It’s about time they forgot they were ever a world power and realised how unimportant they’ve become these days.’
‘What do you mean?’ demanded the Secretary of State, aware now that Ruttgers had a proposition.
‘The President is due to tour Europe in November?’
Keys nodded.
‘It would be a terrible snub if he visited every capital except London,’ predicted the C.I.A. chief.
‘You’ve got to be joking,’ rebuked Keys. ‘I could never make a threat like that.’
‘You wouldn’t have to,’ insisted Ruttgers. ‘Just to hint would be enough. Cuthbertson’s a pompous old fool … he’d collapse the moment any ministerial pressure was put upon him. And there would be pressure, without the need for an outright threat.’
Keys shook his head, still doubtful.
‘This could go badly wrong,’ he said.
‘Or be the most overwhelming success,’ balanced Ruttgers.
‘We’ll provide the money?’ guessed Keys.
‘Oh yes,’ agreed Ruttgers. ‘I’m going to make it available. Once we’re financially involved, we’ve got another lever to demand greater access.’
‘Keep a check on the money,’ said Keys. ‘Congress are almost insisting on petty cash vouchers these days.’
Ruttgers looked pained.
‘Of course we will,’ he guaranteed. ‘The numbers arc being fed through the computer now. We’ll have a trace on each note.’
‘I don’t like this,’ repeated Keys, looking out over the gardens again. The police had begun to break up the guitar session, he saw. Why couldn’t the kids have been allowed to continue? he wondered. They hadn’t been causing any harm.
‘It worries me,’ he added.
‘It’ll worry us more if the British get away with Kalenin by themselves,’ insisted Ruttgers.
‘True,’ agreed Keys, sighing.
‘Will you make the threat about cancelling the London visit?’ asked the Director.
‘I suppose so,’ said Keys, reluctantly.
Janet sat easily in the chair before her godfather, quite unembarrassed at his discovery of her affair with Charlie.
‘But why, for God’s sake?’ pleaded the soldier. ‘You can have absolutely nothing in common.’
Janet smiled, enjoying herself.
‘At first,’ she explained, ‘he intrigued me … he was so different from any man I’d encountered before … more masculine, I suppose …’
She paused, preparing her shock.
‘… and actually,’ she went on, alert for the old man’s reactions, ‘he’s really quite remarkable in bed.’
Cuthbertson’s face went redder than normal and he gazed down at his desk to avoid her look.
‘Do you love him?’ he asked, still not looking at her.
‘Of course not,’ said Janet, astonished at the question.
‘Good,’ said the Director, coming back to her.
Janet frowned, waiting.
‘I’ve involved him in the most vital operation in which he’s ever been engaged …’
‘… The Russian thing that killed Harrison?’
Cuthbertson nodded, apprehensively, but his goddaughter showed no feeling.
‘It is imperative that he succeeds,’ he said simply.
‘Why are you telling me this?’ demanded the girl.
‘Because from this moment on I want to know everything that the man does during every minute of his existence. I’ve got him under constant surveillance … and I want to know your pillow talk as well.’
Janet grinned at the expression: he must have got it from a women’s magazine, she supposed, the sort they read in Cheltenham.
‘… ask him the odd question … he’ll need to relax with someone … find out how he feels …’
Imperceptibly, he glanced at his watch. The electronic division would have completely bugged her flat by now, he estimated. Particularly the bedroom; some of what they heard would be unsettling, he thought, looking at the girl. Imagine, he recalled, he’d once held her in his arms in a baby’s shawl!
‘I know how he feels,’ reported Janet. She hesitated, then went on: ‘He resents your appointment … and the people you’ve brought in with you … the department is something to which he is deeply committed. Actually, I think it’s the only thing for which he has any real feeling.’
The Director sat nodding, accepting her assessment.
‘So he’ll do his best?’
‘For the department … not for you.’
Cuthbertson shrugged. ‘I still want to know how he feels about this assignment.’
‘You want me to spy on him?’ asked the girl.
Cuthbertson nodded. ‘Will you do it?’
‘I suppose so,’ she agreed, after a few seconds. ‘It all seems a bit daft, really.’
‘Good girl,’ praised Cuthbertson. ‘Oh,’ he suddenly remembered, ‘two more things.’
The girl sat, waiting.
‘Get those expenses back that I cut,’ he instructed. ‘I’m restoring them. And take a note for the Minister …’ He paused, assembling his words, then dictated the memorandum of praise for Charlie Muffin’s handling of the Berenkov affair. He had the girl read it back, then said: ‘One final paragraph.’
‘In fact,’ he dictated, ‘Charles Muffin was one of my most able and eager workers in the very difficult capture of Alexei Berenkov, which I initiated and headed.’
He smiled across the desk. ‘That’ll do,’ he dismissed, contentedly.
‘What you’re asking me to do is in the nature of an assignment, isn’t it?’ asked Janet, remaining seated.
‘Yes,’ he agreed, curiously.
‘So there’ll be some expenses, won’t there? Good expenses?’
He paused, momentarily.
‘Yes,’ he accepted, sadly. ‘There’ll be liberal expenses.’
Later, after she’d typed the memorandum, Janet sat back in her chair in the outer office and smiled down at her lover’s name.
‘Everyone in the world is trying to screw you, Charlie Muffin,’ she said, softly.
‘Poor Charlie,’ she added.
(11)
In other circumstances, decided Charlie, as the coach left Sheremetyevo airport and picked up the Moscow road, he’d have enjoyed the experience. Perhaps he and Edith would be able to take one of the weekend holidays, some time. Then again, perhaps not.
His method of getting to Moscow had been simple and he was confident that neither Cuthbertson nor the C.I.A., who surrounded their activities with mystique and confusion, would realise how it had been done.
He’d simply gone to the Soviet-authorised travel agency in South London, knowing they issued the Intourist coupons for Russian vacations, and bought himself a £56 weekend package tour to the Russian capital.
The visa had taken a week and he’d had a pleasant flight out with a clerk from Maidenhead on his first trip abroad (‘I read in a travel magazine that you need bath plugs; you can borrow mine if you like’) and fifteen members of a ladies’ luncheon club from Chelmsford fervently anxious to experience romance without actual seduction (‘there’s such excitement about forbidden places, don’t you think?’).
By now Cuthbertson would have discovered he’d left England, decided Charlie, gazing out at the Soviet woodland.
The observation in London had been rather obvious and easy to evade. He glanced at his watch: the men outside the Dulwich house, which he’d left under a clearly visible pile of cleaning in the Porsche driven by Edith, would probably still be assuring Cuthbertson he hadn’t left.
Would Cuthbertson approach Edith directly? he wondered. Unlikely
, decided Charlie. But if the Director did summon his wife, Charlie was confident Edith would have no difficulty convincing the former soldier that when she had left on her cleaning expedition, Charlie had been inside the house. Edith had always found it easy to lie, he thought, reflectively.
Which was different from Janet, he thought. Her sudden interest in the operation (‘I know what happened to Harrison; isn’t it natural I should worry about you?’) had amused him. Poor Janet, he thought. He wondered what incentive Cuthbertson had offered. Money, probably. She was a greedy girl.
The coach crossed the river and then pulled along the Moskva embankment towards the Rossiya hotel. Charlie disembarked as instructed by the officious Intourist guide and stood patiently for thirty-five minutes to be allocated a room, assuring the Maidenhead clerk when he finally collected his key, that he wouldn’t forget the bath-plug offer.
There was still twenty-four hours before Kalenin was supposed to appear in Neskuchny Sad, so Charlie continued to be the tourist, prompt for the regimented mealtimes, always waiting for the coaches taking them in their pre-paid tours, diligent in his purchases of souvenirs. He’d surprise Janet, he decided, by taking her Beluga caviar.
I should feel nervous, he thought, during the interminable wait for dinner on Saturday night. Almost immediately, he corrected the thought. Not yet. So far there was nothing about which to be apprehensive. But there would be, soon, he knew. Then he would need the control of which he had always been so confident.
He was able to avoid the Sunday morning tour with less difficulty than he had expected, placating the Russian woman with the promise that he would be ready for the Basil Church and Lenin’s tomb in the afternoon, then happily watching the Maidenhead clerk depart in close conversation with the secretary of the ladies’ luncheon club who appeared likely to admit access to forbidden places.
‘To work,’ Charlie told himself, stepping out on to the embankment. He touched his jacket, in needless reassurance: the pocket recorder that he had checked and rewound lay snugly against his hip, quite comfortably.
It would be a long walk, he realised, striding out towards the Karmeni Bridge. But it would be safer to travel on foot, he knew. It was a fine, clear morning and he found the exercise stimulating; if it all goes wrong, he thought, wryly, then the only exercise he would know for the rest of his life would be the sort that Berenkov was getting in Wormwood Scrubs.
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