Comrade Charlie cm-9

by Brian Freemantle

  In the brief period they’d been away the furniture in the conference room had been rearranged. The half-moon table remained, to provide a focus, but there was only one chair behind it now. Some — but Charlie didn’t think all, from his recollection of the bulk — of the folders and binders were stacked at one end of it. The table at which Witherspoon had sat and upon which the evidence had previously rested had gone completely. There were a new stenographer and a new recording technician at the note-taking desk, which had been moved to a further and less obtrusive side of the room. A series of chairs had been set out in the room itself, possibly no more than ten although Charlie didn’t bother to count.

  Wilson was already there, crumpled and unshaven like Charlie. The Director General was in conversation with Springley, who turned and at once introduced Charlie to the third man, John Bishop. The company chairman was putty-faced and clearly disorientated, shaking his head for no particular reason, just in general, all-encompassing horror.

  The man said: ‘I can’t believe it! Won’t believe it. It just couldn’t be. Impossible.’

  ‘It isn’t and it has,’ said Charlie brutally. The basic belief of man, he thought: Misfortune always befalls someone else. This would have been the moment for that remark about life being a bitch. Then again, maybe not. He said: ‘Have you any idea where Krogh stayed, in London?’

  ‘I already asked,’ said Wilson.

  Bishop answered anyway. He gave a helpless shrug and said: ‘My secretary might have kept a number…’ He looked at his watch. ‘She won’t be at the factory yet. I wasn’t told what it was all about until I got here.’

  ‘We’ve got someone going to her home, to get her there early,’ said the Director General. He went on, talking over the two men: ‘I’ve had Blackstone put in a police cell.’

  Charlie nodded. ‘Let him sweat. No conversation with anyone, not even when he’s served food or drink. He folded up last time at the thought of long imprisonment: let him get a taste of what it can really be like inside a cell.’

  There was the sound of further arrivals behind. The two Whitehall men entered first and remained anonymous because Wilson made no attempt to introduce them to the company chairman. He didn’t introduce the following Harkness by name, either, just as his deputy. Charlie stared at Harkness in open surprise. The man had completely changed, into a brown suit with cream accessories, and was fresh and pinkly shaved: around him hung a miasma of cologne, with lemon the predominant aroma.

  ‘Bloody hell!’ Charlie muttered.

  ‘Did you say something?’ demanded Harkness.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Charlie.

  ‘This isn’t over, you know!’ said Harkness. ‘All this. It isn’t over.’

  Charlie gazed at him, innocent-faced. ‘I know it’s not over,’ he said, intentionally misunderstanding. ‘That’s why we’ve all come back here.’

  The Americans’ arrival prevented the exchange continuing. The two men halted uncertainly just inside the door and then the one slightly in front, a plump man with a crewcut and rimless spectacles isolated the Director General and smiled in recognition. He said: ‘Sir Alistair! It’s good to see you!’

  Wilson gestured the men further into the room and named the names. The crewcut man turned out to be the CIA station chief, Hank Bowley. The FBI liaison, a much thinner, unsmiling man but about the same height as the other American, was identified as Philip McDonald.

  Charlie watched them while the handshakes were exchanged, aware of both men looking intently at everyone — particularly their appearance — and thought, hopefully, that they seemed professional. They were certainly crisply fresh. There was a further smell of cologne, too.

  ‘So what’s all this about!’ demanded Bowley. ‘Our duty man said you put a fire-alarm and earthquake priority classification on this!’

  ‘Yes,’ accepted Wilson. ‘I suppose that’s about right. Why don’t we sit down, first?’

  The Director General went to the one chair behind the half-moon table and the rest spread themselves among the waiting chairs. Charlie sat in the front row, at one end of the line. No one tried to join him. At the table Wilson cleared his throat, sighed and said: ‘There’s no pleasant or easy way to put this. We’ve every reason to believe that details of your most recent Strategic Defence Initiative development are compromised.’

  There was one of those complete silences to which Charlie was becoming so accustomed. It was McDonald who broke it. The man said: ‘I’d like you to run that by us again, real slow.’ He had a very broad Southern accent, Texas or perhaps Louisiana.

  Wilson picked up from the table the drawing that had been removed from the King William Street deposit box, starting to offer it and then stopping. Because he was nearest Charlie got up and ferried it to the two American intelligence men.

  ‘What is this?’ asked Bowley at once. There was no longer any affability about the man.

  Wilson indicated the white-haired Springley, separated from the Americans by two rows of seats. Formally the Director General said: ‘It has been positively identified by the project leader involved as a genuine copy-drawing from one forming part of the British participation in a Star Wars defensive missile due to be put into permanent, geo-stationary orbit by American shuttle.’

  The Americans were professionals, both of them. There were no theatrical I-don’t-believe-it or it’s-adisaster or calls upon the Almighty. The questions snapped out, quiet-voiced, calmly: How? Where? Why? When? Wilson tidied the account when he replied, not confusing it in any way by introducing Charlie’s supposed involvement.

  ‘Sure it’s not your guy, Blackstone?’ pressed Bowley anxiously. ‘That it’s not confined just to the British end?’

  ‘Krogh spent practically a week at the factory,’ reminded Wilson. ‘Studying every single drawing. What other reason would he have for doing that? Blackstone was closed off, from everything, after that one instance.’

  ‘Son of a bitch!’ said Bowley, his first expression of anger.

  ‘What have you done, so far?’ asked the steadier McDonald.

  ‘Do you want to take it, Charlie?’ invited the Director General wearily.

  Charlie swivelled in his front seat, the better to see everyone. He considered standing but remembered that despite his bad leg Wilson had remained seated on this occasion, so he decided to do the same. As he spoke Charlie was aware of the expressions of astonishment growing on the Americans’ faces and when he finished Bowley said: ‘That’s the stupidest, most half-assed idea I’ve ever heard of in my entire life.’

  ‘Something like that,’ accepted Charlie, unmoved.

  ‘But what’s the point!’ came in McDonald.

  ‘To see what happens, at the deposit facility. It’ll give us some sort of guide, maybe, how bad things are. And taking a desperate, hopeless chance because of the date on the drawing you’ve got there in your hands. Let’s face the fact: you’ve lost it. We’ve both lost it. Anything, I don’t care how stupid or how half-assed, is worth a try.’

  ‘And this is the best you could come up with: giving the goddamned thing back!’

  ‘What would you like to do!’ came back Charlie, irritated. ‘Call up Dzerzhinsky Square and say they’ve played dirty pool and ask for everything back? Or invade Russia? Krogh’s your traitor, not ours. So you think of something better!’

  ‘There’s nothing to be gained by fighting among ourselves,’ warned Wilson.

  ‘You think Krogh’s still in this country?’ questioned the calmer McDonald.

  ‘Now that it’s daylight and the main computers are open we’re checking all airline bookings over the past week,’ said Charlie. ‘But I think he’s more likely still to be here than back in California. According to the date that drawing is hardly more than twenty-four hours old. And it’s number twenty-one: there should be three more to go.’

  ‘So we check every hotel in London,’ announced Bowley.

  Charlie nodded towards Springley and Bishop. ‘We’re trying to
short-circuit the time it would take to do that by having the factory records checked. But there might be a quicker way. From the telephone check on Blackstone, we’ve located a safe house that’s not on our records: a place just off Rutland Gardens, in Kensington.’

  ‘Then why aren’t we there!’ demanded Bowley in fresh anger.

  ‘We are,’ assured Charlie quietly. ‘It’s sealed: it has been for some hours.’

  ‘OK!’ said Bowley urgently. ‘I know it’s your jurisdiction but he’s our national. We want in. Joint operation.’

  Charlie looked for the decision to the Director General, who nodded. Charlie said: ‘We could do with a wire picture, from your people. There must be one of Krogh from his Pentagon clearance.’

  ‘I’ve got a lot to ask Washington: a lot to tell them, too,’ said Bowley miserably. ‘Is there an office here I could use? I don’t want to waste time going back to the embassy.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Wilson. ‘Advise your people that I’ll make personal contact with your directors, both of them, later today. But tell them I’m sorry.’

  ‘We’re all sorry, Sir Alistair,’ said Bowley. ‘Sorry as hell.’

  ‘Let’s get it over with,’ said McDonald to his CIA counterpart. ‘I want to assign as many people as I can to that safe house. Including myself.’

  Krogh looked at the Russian across the taxi taking them to Kensington and said: ‘I still can’t understand why I’ve got to do this.’ Late the previous night, after everything else had been cleared up, he’d made a token protest when he was finally told he had to make a duplicate drawing but Petrin had told him curtly to shut up, and so he had.

  ‘He wants it so let’s get it done,’ sighed Petrin.

  ‘I’m making a reservation to go home tomorrow,’ said Krogh, straining for a tiny gesture of defiant independence.

  ‘Sure,’ said Petrin, letting the American have it. There’d be no difficulty cancelling it — or even refusing to let the man make it in the first place — if something came up later that morning to make it inconvenient.

  ‘What about you?’

  Petrin had been gazing uninterestedly away from the American, through the taxi window. He answered the man’s look now, seeing the need. If I threw a stick, he thought, this man would run after it and bring it back to me. He said: ‘I’ll be going back, too.’

  ‘Tomorrow?’

  ‘We won’t be flying together, Emil,’ he refused. What about the future? An always leaking source, Petrin remembered. He said: ‘But we’ll keep in touch though, shall we?’

  ‘No!’ said Krogh weakly.

  ‘We’ll see,’ said the Russian, edging forward on his seat as the taxi slowed to stop at the junction of Rutland Gardens with the Knightsbridge Road: it had become the habit, developed from Petrin’s instinctive caution although with that caution dulled now from too much repetition, to walk the rest of the way, never positively identifying the house even to a casual cab driver.

  The seizure went wrong because of a mistaken assumption, which was easy for the later inquiries to criticize and condemn but understandable in the heat and tension of the moment, because Washington’s reaction had been outright panic. There had been President-to-Prime Minister telephone calls and news of more CIA and FBI men arriving on a shared Agency plane and nerves were stretched cheese-wire tight. The belief of the stake-out squads, particularly among the London-based Americans, was that Krogh was already inside the house, living there, and that if he did not emerge after a certain time orders would be given to storm it. Not that he would approach it, virtually from their rear upon which no one was concentrating.

  It was one of the embassy CIA men who first recognized Emil Krogh from the photographs that had been wired from Washington and a copy of which was now in every observing vehicle. The man snatched up the open channel radio in the parked Ford and yelled urgently: ‘Behind! Krogh’s coming from behind, from the main road! Grey suit, blue shirt. Fifty yards from the target house on foot with another male. Caucasian. Brown sport coat. Tan slacks…’

  The mistakes began to compound themselves.

  The observation teams should have allowed Krogh and Petrin to continue on into the house, where they would have been trapped. But two separate groups wrongly interpreted the warning to mean that Krogh was escaping from it, not going towards it. Men burst, far too obviously, from both vehicles.

  Petrin realized what was happening seconds ahead of Krogh. He snatched out, halting the American, automatically beginning to turn before seeing that a third squad had left their vehicle and had closed off any escape back towards the main road. So he stopped, waiting.

  A cry wailed out of Krogh, a whimpering, sobbing sound. And then he tried to run. There was nowhere he could have gone, because there were men blocking the road on either side of them, but he tried to flee anyway. The squads were concentrated upon the pavement, of course, so Krogh dashed blindly into the road from between two parked cars directly into the path of an oncoming Post Office delivery van. The American saw it and the van was not travelling fast and the driver had a few seconds to brake, so the impact was not a severe one: Krogh had his hands outstretched, in a warding-off gesture, and actually appeared to push himself away from the vehicle. There was, however, sufficient force to throw him over. He fell back towards the pavement but short of it and the front and the left side of his head struck precisely against the sharp kerb edge, instantly causing a depressed fracture from the temple practically to the rear of the skull. Apart from that, the American suffered only superficial bruising.

  Other squads did storm the house then, emerging in minutes with the cringing, babbling Yuri Guzins and another Russian, tight-lipped and calm, like Petrin.

  ‘I am innocent! I haven’t done anything! please…!’ gabbled Guzins.

  ‘Shut up!’ barked Petrin, in matching Russian. ‘Say absolutely nothing. You can only suffer if you talk: if you tell them what’s happened.’

  None of the British or American officers surrounding them understood the exchange, because not one of them spoke the language. It was a further error not to have foreseen the need, like not keeping the three Russians apart from each other.

  Upstairs, in the room where Krogh had worked, the two intelligence supervisors surveyed the drawing equipment.

  ‘Holy shit!’ said Bowley.

  Chapter 45

  Charlie finally slept: or rather collapsed through utter exhaustion. He did so at last in the duty officers’ dormitory and showered and shaved in the tiny adjoining bathroom when he got up in the afternoon, grateful afterwards that waiting for him were the fresh clothes that had been brought in, on Wilson’s orders, from the Vauxhall flat. Only when he was dressing did Charlie realize, surprised it had taken him so long, that he was effectively under house arrest. And then he modified the thought: the Russians would have seen the Special Branch seizure and expect him to be in custody. Which made it impossible for him to return to an apartment they might still be watching, as a precaution. It was in between accepted mealtimes in the basement cafeteria. Charlie asked for eggs on toast. The eggs tasted like a sample from a Brazilian rubber tree and the toast was as hard as the bark through which the rubber might have seeped.

  Back in his office Charlie sat and couldn’t decide what to do; what he was expected to do. He wondered about Hubert Witherspoon, who was nowhere around. And then he wondered about Laura Nolan and whether she knew that he was back in the building. And then, avoiding it no longer, he wondered about Natalia and what she was doing and what she was thinking and — again — whether she had any part in the things that were happening all around him.

  The summons from the Director General came in the half light of late afternoon and Charlie was glad because he was fed up wondering about things he couldn’t resolve. Charlie was curious about who else would be in the conference room, and even more curious when he entered and found there was no one apart from Wilson. The Director General was shaved and changed, which was an improvement upon that mor
ning although the old man still looked ill. Charlie doubted Wilson would have returned all the way to his country home, in Hampshire, and then remembered there was a London pied-a-terre, somewhere in Mayfair. South Audley Street, he thought.

  ‘I think we’ve trawled everything in,’ announced Wilson. He was standing, just slightly propped against the table edge.

  ‘Sir?’ queried Charlie.

  ‘We’ve been to your bank. Everything was as you’d said it would be, properly authorized for my receipt. Even the fingerprints of the cashier Sally Dickenson matched those on the banknotes issued against your name. And we recovered the missed micro-dot from your flat, at the same time as collecting your clothes.’

  ‘How about the car numbers?’

  ‘Companies, like you guessed they would be. Two we certainly knew already to be used by the Soviet embassy. One’s new to us. Well done.’

  ‘And Blackstone?’

  ‘It’s coming, in bits and pieces. He identified Vitali Losev from one of the counter-intelligence snatch pictures. Said he knew him by the name Stranger: Mr Stranger. But that he was expecting to be taken over by someone else…’ Wilson smiled. ‘The recognition was to be Visitor. There was some money in the house when he was arrested. There’s some consecutive numbering with what was originally planted at your place.’