Comrade Charlie cm-9

by Brian Freemantle

  ‘You call the factory?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Everything OK?’

  ‘That’re expecting me at eleven tomorrow.’

  ‘That’s good, Emil. I’m very pleased.’

  Krogh remembered reading that dog owners got better performances from their animals by expressions of encouragement. Trying to sound dismissive, he said: ‘Shall we get on with it?’

  Petrin smiled and defeated him, as he always did. The Russian said: ‘I like your enthusiasm.’

  The Soviet safe house was just off Rutland Gardens, a comparatively small property among the imposing five- and six-storeyed Regency buildings which are no longer individual houses but split-up and divided apartment and sometimes office conversions, each occupied by anonymous and indifferent strangers content to remain anonymous and indifferent, which made the location ideal for the Russians’ unobserved use.

  Virtually an entire room had been set aside for Krogh, although the equipment by no means filled it. Krogh’s impression was that the contents of a commercial or industrial drawing supplier’s showroom had been emptied, which was almost what had happened. There was a large, flat table bisecting the room across its centre and stacked with cartons of original drawing film and trace paper running from size A1 to A4. There were several containers of pencils and drawing pens, in varying colours. The large drawing board was a traditional design, with top and bottom rollers connecting a complete foldaway parallelogram drawing machine which was adjustable, to move either up or down or across a drawing. In front of the assembly was a swivelling drawing chair and there were two large, anglepoise lights and a more elaborate third illumination, with a series of manoeuvrable lamps attached to a bar from which lamps could be set and positioned to direct light in any particular direction or spot.

  ‘Well?’ asked Petrin. For once there was not the automatic confidence with which the man usually spoke.

  ‘It looks all right,’ said Krogh.

  ‘But is it enough!’ demanded Petrin. ‘Is there anything we haven’t got!’

  ‘It looks adequate. But I won’t really know until I see what I’ve got to draw.’

  ‘Was it Springley you talked with?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What’s he expect?’

  ‘We did not discuss anything on the telephone.’

  ‘String it out,’ ordered Petrin, confidently back in a position of command. ‘I’m not minimizing the difficulty of what you’re trying to do: it’s impossible to expect you to retain half, let alone all of it. So prepare him for your coming back.’

  ‘What if he baulks at that?’

  ‘Don’t let him: remember always that you are the major stakeholder in this thing. They’ll defer to you because they’ll think you’re their access to American defence orders worth a lot of money.’

  ‘It’s all thought out, isn’t it?’ said Krogh dully.

  Petrin frowned at the remark. ‘Of course it is,’ he said. ‘Wouldn’t you expect it to be?’

  The question touched a nerve. The problem, reflected Krogh, was that he didn’t know what to expect, about anything. He had the feeling of being lost in a completely alien environment, which he supposed he was. He said: ‘So this is where I have to work. What else?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Petrin simply. ‘You go to the English factory, spend as much time there as you need, and then come back here and make the drawings we want.’

  Krogh shook his head disbelievingly, laughing at the same time. ‘It doesn’t work like that; can’t work like that.’

  Petrin sighed. ‘Then make it work your way!’ he said irritably. ‘That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you: establish whatever work pattern you consider necessary. There is only one consideration: getting it all and getting it right.’

  ‘Will you travel with me?’

  ‘Do you want me to?’

  Yes, thought Krogh at once. He hated and despised and loathed this man. Yet he wanted the reassurance of his presence, the knowledge that Petrin would be somewhere close at hand, ready if the need — whatever the need was — were to arise. He said; ‘I don’t know…I didn’t…’ and trailed away, feeling ridiculous.

  ‘Emil!’ said Petrin with stretched patience. ‘You came in overnight on flight one zero nine. The plane was fifteen minutes late. You occupied a first class seat, four B, on the aisle. The Hackney carriage licence number of the taxi that brought you in from the airport was eight zero eight nine two five…’ The Russian smiled. ‘… And when you go to the Isle of Wight tomorrow you’ll be just as thoroughly protected.’

  ‘But are you coming?’ insisted Krogh.

  There had been long psychological training periods at the spy schools, particularly the academy on the Prospekt Mira, on how a suborned agent could become dependent upon his case officer, and Petrin isolated the indication immediately. Knowing that the reliance had to be made complete in the mind of the agent, Petrin repeated: ‘Do you want me to?’

  ‘Yes,’ conceded Krogh.

  From that same spy school instruction Petrin realized that the man was completely his now, to be moulded and shaped entirely as he wanted, like a piece of modelling clay. He said: ‘Then I will. We won’t actually travel as companions but I’ll be with you all the time, like others will be. You’re not to worry, you understand?’

  Once, recalled Krogh, a remark about not worrying had annoyed him and he’d shouted back and told the man not to be absurd. He didn’t shout back today. Instead he said: ‘All right. I know.’

  ‘Did you get any sleep at the hotel?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It doesn’t look like it,’ said Petrin. He took a phial from his pocket, offering it to the other man. ‘Here!’ he said.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Just sleeping pills,’ said the Russian. ‘They’re quite mild, but from the man we had on board I know you didn’t sleep at all on the flight coming over and I guessed you’d need them.’

  Krogh stared at the phial and thought of an Oakland motel room and visibly shuddered.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘I don’t think I want them,’ said Krogh. He felt his stomach move at the recollection.

  ‘You do, Emil. I want you to take them.’

  Hesitantly the American took the offered bottle, realizing that accepting the pills wasn’t the same as taking them, which he was sure he couldn’t physically manage.

  There was a movement to their left and a man appeared at a door to another room. The man said something in Russian, briefly, and even more briefly Petrin replied in Russian. The man withdrew at once.

  ‘Who was that?’ asked Krogh.

  It had, in fact, been the KGB duty change for the constantly monitored telephone, which was installed in the adjoining room. Petrin said: ‘No one to concern you. There’ll probably be quite a few people around when you start working here.’

  ‘What do I have to do now?’ asked Krogh, showing his increasing reliance.

  ‘Do you want to eat?’

  The belated hunger he’d felt at the hotel had gone now and Krogh said: ‘Not really.’

  ‘Then just rest. You’ve got a lot to accomplish in the coming days.’

  ‘I will,’ undertook Krogh. He wouldn’t sleep, he knew: it would be impossible.

  ‘And I’ll take you back,’ said Petrin.

  Petrin accompanied him to his suite. Inside Krogh looked curiously at the other man and said: ‘What’s happening now?’

  ‘Now you take the sleeping pills I gave you,’ said Petrin. ‘Which you weren’t going to do, were you?’

  ‘No,’ miserably admitted Krogh at once.

  It was Petrin who got water from the bathroom and stood in front of the American while he took the dosage, an adult guaranteeing a child swallowed its medication.

  ‘I know practically everything you’ll do or try not to do,’ said Petrin. Mould the clay into any shape, he thought.

  ‘Yes,’ said Krogh in further dull acceptance.
r />   ‘Remember, Emil. I’m here with you in the same hotel. Looking after you. You’re safe.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Krogh again. He wished he didn’t need the comfort of that assurance.

  The person who was going to be around the American most of all when he worked in Rutland Gardens was Yuri Guzins, and the man was terrified. The suggestion that a scientist go from Baikonur to London to oversee the drawing was met with the sort of frenzied protest that Berenkov and Kalenin had expected. And as they further expected the project chief, Nikolai Noskov, succeeded in arguing himself out of the responsibility, so anxious to avoid it that it was actually he and not Kalenin who put forward Guzins’ name as an alternative candidate.

  Guzins tried to protest just as forcibly but he lacked Noskov’s seniority. More importantly he lacked Kalenin’s seniority and authority and was ordered first from Baikonur and then from Moscow with only forty-eight hours to prepare himself.

  One of the man’s final, weak protests had been that he spoke no language but Russian, so Vitali Losev was sent from London to chaperon the man from the first moment of his arrival into Europe, at Amsterdam’s Schipol airport.

  Losev went with deepening bitterness, viewing it as another secondary role and deciding that it was dangerous, too, when he saw the obvious, attentionattracting apprehension with which Guzins emerged from the arrival hall on to the main concourse. Losev moved at once to minimize it, directly approaching the heavily moustached scientist with the immediate assurance that he was going to be escorted and that there was no need for concern.

  They entered Britain by a roundabout route, driving all the way from Amsterdam to Calais by car and crossing to Dover by sea ferry. Guzins travelled on a Greek passport that had been freighted in the diplomatic bag from Moscow to London and which Losev had carried with him to Holland, for their meeting. It was a completely uneventful trip and they arrived at Rutland Gardens late on a Thursday night.

  ‘What is this place?’ demanded Guzins at once, nervously.

  ‘Your home,’ said Losev. ‘Welcome to England.’

  Chapter 28

  With his customary objectivity — which in matters of personal safety could be brutal — Charlie Muffin admitted to himself that he was taking the biggest risk of a risk-burdened life. Additionally, he accepted that what he was doing was reprehensibly unprofessional. That any unbiased observer would judge it to be bloody daft. And that he thought so too: worse than bloody daft, in fact. Insane was a far better word. He tried to balance the assessment by telling himself he was irrevocably committed, but refused that excuse at once, knowing it not to be the case: that he could still change his mind. And then, in complete honesty, confronted the fact that he didn’t want to operate any differently from the way he was doing right now, so he wouldn’t. Besides, to change his mind at this point would be to admit a mistake and Charlie had an inherent dislike of admitting mistakes and most certainly wouldn’t contemplate such an admission to Harkness. Which, he conceded, made him not just bloody daft but bloody minded, as well. And still left him facing the biggest risk he’d ever knowingly taken. Because if this went wrong by one tiny iota those who ruled his existence — not shithead Harkness but Intelligence Committees and permanent civil servants — might be sufficiently pissed off with him to think a hundred years in a ratinfested jail cell was too good and remove Charles Edward Muffin from circulation altogether. Charlie was convinced such an embarrassment-avoiding course had been taken before, with other insubordinate troublemakers: far less trouble, far less difficulty, all so much neater.

  The problem, which always seemed to be the same problem, was watching his ass at the same time as looking straight in front to see all the approaching dangers. He’d taken all the precautions he could think of taking, which hardly rated as precautions at all, and he couldn’t think of anything else he could do. Which was unsettling because Charlie never liked to be absolutely devoid of ideas like he was this time.

  He completely tidied his apartment and conceived fresh snares, and before he officially took his leave he treated William French to a pub lunch (pie, pickles and beer perfectly kept in wood barrels) to thank the man for what he had already done and to ask if he could keep in touch while he was away from the office.

  ‘I’m not going to regret this, am I, Charlie?’ probed the Technical Division scientist cautiously. ‘A favour’s a favour but this is coming close to needing some proper authority.’

  ‘It’ll be all right,’ assured Charlie. I hope, he thought: he was never comfortable endangering mates, no matter how justified the necessity might be.

  ‘I’ve kept my name off everything,’ warned French. ‘If there is any sort of fuck-up followed by an inquiry I won’t even know what they’re talking about or who Charlie Muffin is.’

  ‘That’s precisely what I’d expect you to do,’ said Charlie honestly. ‘You don’t think I’d point the finger, do you!’

  ‘No,’ agreed the man at once. ‘I don’t think you’d do that under any circumstances.’

  Charlie didn’t imagine he would either: he just wasn’t sure. He said: ‘So I’ll keep in touch, OK?’

  ‘You know how I feel about open telephone lines,’ said the man whose expertise was telephones.

  ‘I’ll be circumspect.’

  ‘That’s not much of a safeguard.’

  ‘It is when we both know what we’re talking about.’

  It was, of course, necessary for Charlie fully to reconnoitre the Soviet delegation hotel and he sketched the surveillance over two days. He explored all the roads immediately adjacent to the Blair hotel, like Gloucester Terrace and Bathrust Street and Westbourne Crescent, giving particular attention to any that had one-way traffic restrictions, and then spread the check as far north as the Paddington Basin and as far south as Hyde Park, although he did not go down as far as the restaurant in which Vitali Losev had made his first hostile meeting with Alexandr Petrin.

  With just days to go before Natalia’s arrival, Charlie had his hair cut and bought two new shirts and a new tie and briefly considered — and rejected — new shoes, and alternated his two suits so that he could have both cleaned and pressed.

  And then, finally, Charlie decided he was ready: there was nothing left to be done that he hadn’t already done. All he could do now was wait. He admitted to himself that he was nervous: more nervous than he could remember being on a lot of past assignments, which was virtually how he was regarding this, an assignment. He had some idea, from the photographs, but he still wondered if Natalia would be the same when he saw her again for the first time.

  Throughout all the preparations, the Soviet observers maintained their twenty-four-hour watch.

  At its most basic a number-for-letter code transliterates directly the letter of an alphabet for its corresponding number, in the case of English the letter A represented by the figure one and running consecutively through to Z, which is twenty-six. There are, however, mathematical variations which can be introduced to make unravelling the cipher difficult — and hopefully impossible — for the codebreakers. If the sender and recipient agree in advance to use a variable of two, for instance, then the transliteration can range over five choices of letter: the intended letter and two either side. It can be further complicated by changing the variable from day to day, from odd to even numbers. And compounded by mixing two languages, English with Russian for example: in Cyrillic Russian there is no easy equivalent for H or J but there are two possible inflections for the letter K.

  Having purposely provided the British with what he wanted them to recognize as a number-for-letter code Berenkov had the KGB Technical Division introduce random variations established in advance by a translation key sent to the London embassy in the diplomatic bag.

  The intention remained always for the interceptors eventually to be able to read the messages, whatever the variation, but for them to believe the more difficult changes indicated an increasing importance of the contents.

  Which was precisely what
happened.

  The transmission from Moscow on the day Krogh arrived in London was a mixture of English and Russian and had a variable range rising from one to four. It was to take the codebreakers a week to comprehend it and when he received it Richard Harkness ranked it as the most important interception and translation so far made.

  It said: REACTIVATE PAYMASTER BY ONE THOUSAND.

  He hurried Hubert Witherspoon to the ninth floor.

  Chapter 29

  Emil Krogh felt better. Not well and certainly not relaxed but there was no longer the impression that the ground was yielding beneath his feet when he walked, and he could think clearly and logically. The sleep had a lot to do with it, he guessed. And he had slept, soundly and dreamlessly — a combination, he supposed, of Petrin’s tranquillizers and utter exhaustion. He’d awoken ravenously hungry and eaten a large breakfast without any aftermath of nausea, and minutes after he settled into his train compartment at Waterloo he was aware of the Russian slowly passing along the platform outside. The man appeared to be by himself, although Krogh knew that not to be the case, and did not look in to where he was sitting. Krogh wished he hadn’t had the relief at knowing of Petrin’s presence, because he recognized it as a reaction of weakness to have about a man who had inveigled him and was treating him as Petrin was. He just couldn’t help it.

  The train was on schedule but Krogh could not see Petrin when he got off at Southampton, not even during the three or four minutes he had to wait in the taxi queue. There was a flicker of alarm, which the American regretted as much as the earlier sensation of relief, but he forced himself on. At the hydrofoil terminal he saw Petrin get from a taxi, still alone, two vehicles behind him. Krogh went to the front on the hydrofoil and Petrin to the rear, so they were separated by the central driving platform and control cockpit, and when they disembarked at Cowes again there was no sign of the Russian.

  There was a chauffeur-driven limousine waiting for him as promised on the taxi-packed jetty and when Krogh’s approach to it became obvious a haphazardly dressed man with fly-away white hair came forward and introduced himself as Robert Springley. They shook hands and parroted how pleased they were to meet each other and on the way to the chain ferry Springley said that with the imposed traffic detour it was as quick to walk but they’d thought a car was more convenient. Throughout the journey to the factory the project chief maintained the conversation, hoping Krogh was not too jetlagged and was this his first time in England and how was he enjoying it. Krogh only had to respond minimally to keep up his side of the exchange.