Comrade Charlie cm-9

by Brian Freemantle

  Blackstone found the lavatory he was seeking halfway down the corridor and hurried in, tensed against there already being people inside. There weren’t. He concealed himself in the furthest cubicle but did not turn the lock, to prevent the Engaged sign registering. Instead he sat on the pedestal with his legs stretched out in front of himself, keeping the door closed with his feet. The position also kept his feet and lower legs from being visible from outside. He reckoned at least four people came in and out: a far-away cubicle was used once. The conversations at the urinals covered the improbability of a previous night’s soap opera on television, Italian food being better than French, and house prices going up on the island as fast as those on the mainland. Blackstone thought he recognized the voice of one of the men to be someone called Morton who’d joined the firm after him and without half as much experience, which just went to show how bloody unfair the whole selection for the secret project had been. His legs began to ache at the back, just behind his knees.

  He let half an hour elapse before cautiously emerging. The building seemed quiet around him, some of the corridor and office lights already extinguished by their timeswitch. Blackstone remained stationary in the corridor, alert for movement or noise of people but hearing nothing. I want a lot, he thought again. There were a number of doors into the communal room. Blackstone chose one of the smaller, near a darkened corner. And was approaching a double drawing board when the voice said: ‘What are you doing here!’ Blackstone was so surprised he gave a muted cry of fright and dropped the drawing tube in which he’d hoped to sneak out whatever he could find.

  The security drill was strictly adhered to, which meant the preliminary inquiry was immediate but it actually gave Blackstone an opportunity to compose himself and arrange his story because Springley had to be recalled, fortunately only from his usual early evening visit to the nearby sports and social club. Blackstone’s own section chief was summoned back as well, along with the most senior director still on the premises and the head of security.

  By the time the questioning began Blackstone was, incredibly, in one of his upswing moods, relaxed and relatively unworried. As he spoke he thought it was just like telling the truth. He produced his temporary security access authorization, which was agreed by them all to be valid. Blackstone’s instruction to deliver the Ariane fin design was confirmed by his superior and Blackstone insisted his return that evening had been the action of a conscientious employee attempting to retrieve documents non-classified and therefore insufficiently important to require a positive collection directive: if he were wrong about that then he was sorry. He’d only been trying to do his job. And here Blackstone introduced a further explanation he had mentally rehearsed while he waited for the examination to begin. He’d also hoped, he conceded in apparent admission, that he might personally encounter Robert Springley, from whom he still awaited a reply to his renewed application to be part of the project team. Again, Blackstone asserted, the action of a perhaps overly keen, conscientious worker. The absentminded, white-haired project leader at once confirmed such a reply was outstanding.

  The drawings tubes he had been carrying were examined and found only to contain additional Ariane material, and a thorough check of the room in which he had been detained showed nothing interfered with and nothing missing.

  Throughout Blackstone became increasingly aware that the examination was being conducted internally, without any outside police involvement, which had to be a good sign. And he didn’t regard as ominous being told to hold himself in readiness for a fuller inquiry, pending which he would be formally upon suspension, because if they’d really believed him to be doing something wrong they wouldn’t have allowed him off the premises in the first place. The most encouraging thing of all was the smiling farewell from Springley himself, who said when the inquiry had disbanded and they were getting ready to leave that he was sorry for the delay but that he hadn’t made up his mind about the application yet.

  He’d got away with it! decided Blackstone exultantly. And Springley was considering him. There certainly wasn’t any cause to ring the emergency number in London and alert the man he knew as Mr Stranger, which he further knew wasn’t the man’s real name at all.

  There were other prescribed routines which automatically followed such a preliminary inquiry. One was that a report be sent to London, and because it involved the security of such a highly classified overseas project it was channelled to Westminster Bridge Road. The level of classification also required it to be personally studied by the acting Director General.

  Richard Harkness decided at once it was an innocent, completely explained event of no importance whatsoever, which was already the conclusion of the inquiry group that had convened the night of the occurrence. But procedure dictated their own investigation be conducted, pointless though it would be in this case.

  Harkness knew just the officer for pointless investigations.

  The meeting that day was in Berkeley, near the university campus, the sort of crowded and jostled place that Petrin seemed to favour. Emil Krogh arrived on schedule and waited impatiently, moving from foot to foot and gazing up and down the pavement near the designated drug store, wishing the rendezvous were more secluded. The openness worried him and he said so when Petrin finally arrived.

  ‘I like it this way,’ said the Russian dismissively. He did not, of course, add that such locations made their every meeting and every handover that much easier for the positioned KGB officers to photograph.

  Chapter 19

  The head of security at the aerospace factory was named Harry Slade. He had served in the British Army for twenty-five years, honourably retiring with the rank of sergeant major and a regimental photograph signed by all the officers. He wore two lines of campaign ribbons on an immaculate, rigidly pressed black uniform with a profusion of brightly shined buttons, and regarded Charlie Muffin with the distasteful regret of a missed parade-ground challenge. It was an effort, but he managed to avoid automatically calling Charlie ‘sir’. The effort, like the attitude, was obvious but Charlie decided not to confront it: he was working away from Westminster Bridge Road for the first time in months, there would be expenses, the sun was shining and he was feeling generous. Slade confirmed that afternoon’s appointment with Blackstone and showed Charlie the office that had been made available for him, the waiting room to a conference chamber. There were easy chairs as well as a more formal arrangement at a desk and there were fresh flowers in a proper vase and a view of the Medina river from the window. Charlie guessed the place to be three times the size of where he was accustomed to working at Westminster Bridge Road. At Charlie’s insistence the security chief reviewed everything discussed at the inquiry and produced Blackstone’s personnel record and then took Charlie on a tour of the fenced-off, secure section. There Charlie met the project manager, and Springley said he was sure it was all a fuss about nothing and Charlie truthfully said he didn’t mind at all coming down from London to check it out. Under Springley’s guidance he was shown around the workrooms and the communal drawing area and saw how all the blueprints and drawing material were secured at the end of each evening.

  ‘Personally checked every night by myself,’ chipped in the escorting Slade. ‘There’s no danger of any classified information getting into the wrong hands from this building.’

  ‘Glad to hear it,’ said Charlie.

  ‘I think the whole episode comes down to Blackstone’s dedication to the job,’ said the project manager. ‘He’s applied twice to join the team.’

  ‘Are you taking him on?’

  Springley shrugged. ‘I might, if a vacancy occurs. There’s no room at the moment, but I think there might be in a few weeks.’

  Slade appeared surprised when Charlie asked to see where Blackstone normally worked, in the main building, but showed him anyway. Slade seemed affronted when Charlie said he didn’t want the man to sit in on the afternoon’s interview.

  ‘I expected that you would,’ said the secu
rity chief.

  Charlie guessed the man would have kept Blackstone standing to attention throughout. He said: ‘I prefer to be on my own.’

  ‘I need to make a proper report to the company,’ protested Slade. ‘It’s my job.’

  ‘I’ll tell you what happens,’ promised Charlie. He’d never got on with sergeant majors and certainly didn’t want the intrusion of this one with his judgement already made.

  Blackstone was early. The tracer came inquiringly into the room after politely knocking, stopping in the doorway when he saw only Charlie there. He said: ‘I was told to come here?’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Charlie.

  ‘Just you?’

  ‘What did you expect?’

  ‘I didn’t…I don’t know.’ Which was true and the reason for Blackstone’s vague confusion. He’d prepared himself to be confronted by a group of officials from London, maybe even some sort of panel but not just one person. And most certainly not by this tramp of a man who didn’t look like an official of anything. Blackstone did not now have the confidence of the night he was caught — his feelings were actually on a downturn — but he was sure he didn’t have anything to fear here.

  Blackstone was a plump, quick-blinking man. He wore a well-pressed blue suit that Charlie guessed to be his Sunday best, with a crisp white shirt and with his hair combed carefully to cover the place where it was thinning, near his forehead. Charlie nodded across the desk at which he was already sitting and said: ‘Why not take that chair there?’

  Blackstone sat as he was told, his hands crossed in front of him in his lap. He said: ‘This is all a silly misunderstanding.’

  ‘Is it?’ said Charlie mildly. ‘Tell me about it.’

  ‘I was just trying to be helpful.’

  ‘Why don’t you tell me about it?’ invited Charlie.

  ‘From when?’ queried Blackstone.

  ‘From whenever you like,’ said Charlie.

  Charlie listened, not looking fully at the other man but with his chair slightly turned, at times even gazing as if something had caught his attention on the river or further out, on the sea. Blackstone initially found the attitude unsettling. Then he decided there was nothing to be unsettled about: the man just wasn’t very good, that was all. His self-assurance began its ascent.

  ‘Drawing tubes?’ stopped Charlie abruptly, swinging back from the window.

  ‘What?’ said Blackstone, off-balanced.

  ‘When you went into the secure section on the second occasion you carried drawing tubes?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s the way blueprints are sometimes handled. Makes them easy to carry.’

  ‘Surely the blueprints you’d delivered earlier were already in their own containers?’

  Blackstone swallowed. ‘I wasn’t sure whether they still would be. Sometimes they get mislaid: I just decided to be sure.’

  ‘So those you carried when you were challenged were empty?’

  He wasn’t going to be caught that easily, thought Blackstone. He said: ‘No. They held drawings but there would have been room for more.’

  ‘How far would you say it was, from where you work to the secure area?’ asked Charlie, who’d carefully paced it out.

  Blackstone shrugged. ‘About a hundred yards; maybe more.’

  ‘A little more, I’d say,’ corrected Charlie. ‘Nearer two hundred, in fact. Why walk two hundred yards from one building to another on the off-chance that the Ariane drawings would be ready for return? Why didn’t you telephone to ask?’

  Blackstone felt himself becoming hot. He gave another uncertain movement and said: ‘I just didn’t think of it. I knew the drawings were there and on the spur of the moment decided to call by.’

  ‘Practically an hour after you should have gone home?’

  Perspiration began on Blackstone’s upper lip, making it itch and he wanted to wipe it off but it would have made him look nervous. He said: ‘We can work flexi-hours here if we choose. Anyway, I didn’t really know what the time was. I was trying to see Mr Springley. I’ve applied for a transfer to the project.’

  The reasonable explanation that had been produced before, remembered Charlie. He said: ‘So it wasn’t such a spur-of-the-moment decision after all?’

  Unable to stand the itching any longer Blackstone moved his hand quickly across his face. He said: ‘It began that way: it was only when I was at the section that the idea of trying to see Mr Springley occurred to me.’

  ‘Spur of the moment yet you gave it sufficient thought to take along some spare drawing tubes in case the others had been mislaid?’

  ‘I’d kept the unwanted ones by my desk. It was automatic to pick them up. I didn’t positively think of it.’

  Charlie was finding Blackstone a difficult person to assess. The man’s demeanour had changed from the almost aggressive reassurance with which the interview had started to this sweated discomfort, but it would be wrong to read too much into that. He said: ‘If you wanted to see the project head, why didn’t you go to his office? Why were you in the main communal drawing area?’

  ‘I wasn’t sure where his office was.’

  ‘You’d been in the section before, to deliver the Ariane blueprints.’

  ‘But not to Mr Springley’s office. It wasn’t he who’d asked for them.’ He’d been very wrong to imagine this was going to be an easy meeting, decided Blackstone. And more mistaken still to think that this unkempt man needn’t be taken seriously.

  ‘So what were you doing?’

  ‘Looking for someone to direct me.’

  ‘You must have known everyone would have gone home?’

  ‘I told you, there’s a flexi-hour system. Only no one was working that evening.’

  ‘Crossing from one building to another, as you did, you must have seen a lot of people leaving?’

  Blackstone tried to make a careless gesture. ‘A few.’

  Neither convincing nor unconvincing, thought Charlie. But then people more often than not did things without a completely logical explanation that could be examined later. Deciding to change the direction of the questioning to see if he could further disconcert the man, Charlie said: ‘You’ve gone through security clearance?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And signed the Official Secrets Act?’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Blackstone again. What the hell was the man getting at now!

  ‘I know of cases of people being jailed for twenty, even thirty years for contravening the Act.’

  ‘What are you talking about!’ Blackstone felt loose-stomached now, plunging into panicked depression and uncaring how he appeared to the other man.

  ‘Penalties, for contravening the Official Secrets Act,’ said Charlie quietly. Was Blackstone nervous enough to make a slip?

  ‘I haven’t contravened anything!’ protested Blackstone. ‘I told you how it happened! I didn’t mean any harm!’ Incredibly, for the first time, Blackstone’s mind went properly beyond the money he’d been getting, fully to consider what could happen to him if he were found out. He remembered the inquiry the night he’d been caught not as an inquiry at all. Ridiculous though it now was to contemplate, it had all seemed like some sort of game, a contest between himself and men he knew and had worked with. But that’s all. Not once had he considered there being a penalty, at the end of it. But now he did. He thought about thirty years and didn’t regard what was going on here as anything like a game. This was deadly serious: deadly, horrifyingly serious. Thirty years, he thought again.

  Charlie’s feet began to hurt, which he’d known they would when he’d walked from the ferry terminal to save the three-pound taxi fare. He crossed one leg over the other and slid his fingers inside his sagging shoe, massaging the ache. He said: ‘What time did you enter the secure section?’

  The bastard was going to pick on and on, wearing him down, until he made a mistake! Stick to what happened, Blackstone told himself: don’t try to invent lies he might forget, unde
r pressure. He said: ‘I wasn’t paying any particular attention to the time. Maybe five thirty. Maybe later.’

  ‘That’s funny,’ said Charlie.

  ‘What is?’

  ‘According to the security report, you were challenged in the main drawing office at six thirty-five. You’d been there for a whole hour!’

  Dear God, what was he going to do! The man obviously didn’t believe him. He’d say so, soon: make some open accusation. Thirty years! Desperately Blackstone said: ‘It could have been later than five thirty.’

  ‘Let’s give you the benefit of a lot of doubt,’ said Charlie. ‘Let’s say you didn’t go in until six. That’s still half an hour. What were you doing alone in the building for half an hour?’

  ‘I went to the lavatory.’

  ‘The lavatory!’

  ‘I had the need to go when I got to the building.’

  ‘So you hid in the lavatory for thirty minutes?’

  ‘I didn’t hide!’ denied Blackstone. ‘I went to the lavatory.’ Deflect him, thought Blackstone: he had to do something, say something, anything, to deflect the man to get the pressure off!

  Blackstone was weakening, Charlie decided: on the ropes and weakening. But there still wasn’t anything positively incriminating. Charlie said: ‘Are you keen to get on the secret project?’

  Blackstone groped for a handkerchief and made as if to blow his nose, using the pretext to wipe away the build-up of sweat and to delay his answer as long as possible. Stick to the truth as much as possible, he told himself. He said: ‘I want very much to be part of it.’

  ‘Why?’ demanded Charlie.