Charlie’s Apprentice

by Brian Freemantle

  Natalia had prepared her opening remarks as carefully as everything else: throughout she was conscious of Tudin’s persistent sighs of condescension, and once she thought she detected a smirk of complicity from a contemporary of Tudin’s, a man named Pavel Khrenin. She outlined the increased demands upon their reformed Directorate and described it as one of the most important arms of the now independent Russian Federation, in which it was practically regarded as a separate, autonomous ministry. She was pleased at the way the reorganization was proceeding and hoped it would soon be complete: that was not just her expectation but that of the government they served. She had called this conference, the first of what she intended to be regular sessions, to receive a full assessment from every division and directorate head and to inform that government of what had been already established, what it was hoped to create and what their ambitions were for the future. Here Natalia paused, indicating the scurrying note-takers at the separate table: a full transcript was to be taken and submitted to the President and the appropriate ministers for their comment, which she undertook to distribute to each of her subordinate departments if and when she received replies.

  Tudin’s final sigh, when it was clear she had finished, was louder and more obvious than those with which he had punctuated her opening address. Determinedly, Natalia refused any reaction. Instead she smiled out into the room, isolating Khrenin to begin the first of the presentations demanded in her convening memorandum. Khrenin was a survivor of the former KGB, although not originally from the First Chief Directorate, and had been appointed to create a new service in Poland. The man appeared startled to be singled out, and started badly: throughout his tone was apologetic for not yet having fully created what was required in the former satellite, constantly stressing the difficulty of establishing a network in a country where anything Russian was derided and anyone identified as having previous connections with the despised KGB faced criminal prosecution.

  Not once, while Khrenin spoke, did Tudin sigh. Several times Natalia glanced sideways at her deputy. On each occasion he was staring fixedly down the room, although not directly at Khrenin, his face blank. She wondered if Tudin’s attitude was consideration for an ally or the beginning of an unsettled awareness of the coup she planned.

  For her own part Natalia decided that Khrenin’s miserable apology for his failure in a country for which she was ultimately responsible was personally acceptable. But only just.

  Natalia urged the reports on through the former satellites of Hungary and Czechoslovakia and tried to maintain the sequence by going on to the chairman of the German division, now a single unit that included East Germany under the reorganization that she had carried out. All, to varying degrees, argued the difficulties of forming new clandestine structures in countries where they were rejected, but again Natalia decided none of the failings were personally damaging.

  As the presentations progressed, Natalia became aware of Tudin shifting uncomfortably beside her, although the admitted failings in the satellite countries reflected upon her as the recognized controller and not at all upon him, as the man answerable for obtaining intelligence from republics within the Commonwealth.

  She hoped her deputy’s increasing agitation meant he’d seen the abyss towards which he was being irrevocably led. Intent upon heightening his discomfort, Natalia turned sideways and smilingly deferred to him to conduct his subordinates through their accounts.

  A considerable effort had clearly been tried to make each report as comprehensibly impressive as possible – which, as one exaggerated recitation followed another, actually focused the awareness of every professional in the room on the fact that in none of the republics was there yet anything approaching even the beginning of an espionage system. Indeed, so obviously embarrassing was it that officers all along the table moved and fidgeted in sympathetic discomfort for those being forced to make the stumbling admissions. A lot stared down at the papers before them, trying to appear occupied in what was written there.

  Natalia was one of the few who didn’t move. Rather, prepared for this as for everything else, she remained absolutely motionless, letting her face set more and more fixedly as the presentations finally, humiliatingly, petered out. Tudin did not attempt a final summation, remaining stonily quiet, which was an advantage she hadn’t anticipated. Seizing it, Natalia stretched the silence: there were audio-recordings being made, as well as verbatim notes, and she knew the echoing stillness would sound far worse than any immediately spoken criticism.

  At last she turned to her deputy. ‘There appear to be problems in this division?’

  ‘As there are in the former satellites,’ said Tudin, predictably.

  ‘Acceptable problems,’ qualified Natalia, seeing her opportunity at once. ‘And ones that can be overcome. Can you guarantee the republic difficulties can be resolved by your division?’ So close and looking directly at him, Natalia could see perspiration bubble out on Tudin’s top lip at his recognition of the trap into which he had so easily fallen: already there was a sheen of nervousness upon his forehead and gradually balding head.

  ‘In time,’ he said, desperately.

  ‘How much time?’ demanded Natalia, relentlessly.

  ‘That is impossible to estimate.’

  Natalia looked away from the man, pleased at the chilled atmosphere that had grown in the room, trying to gauge from their expressions the reaction of the other officers to the unexpectedly open challenge. As much the professional survivors of headquarters in-fighting as professional intelligence officers, every one of them was utterly expressionless. Turning back to Tudin, she said: ‘I think we have to accept the political realities that exist and what we are expected to provide, in those realities. The admitted, and far less serious, delays in setting up operations in the former satellites are acceptable because those former satellites are much easier to anticipate, politically. This is not the case in the countries that once formed the Soviet Union and now comprise the Commonwealth. Not one of them is possible to anticipate. Each is unstable and could collapse or be thrown into turmoil by a coup. Virtually each distrusts every other …’ She paused, anxious not to overplay her hand ‘… If one former republic collapses, the Commonwealth could collapse: certainly it would become more unstable. It is the republics that are the predominant concern of our government and which have therefore to be the predominant concern of this organization. We have to have the facilities and the ability to give the warnings and sound the alarms, in advance, so that the President can be prepared. And at the moment we are not in a position to do that, are we Colonel Tudin …?’ Natalia hesitated again, not for a reply to a question that was rhetorical anyway but momentarily unsure whether to go on. Deciding to, she said: ‘It was because of the importance of getting eyes and ears into these countries that I separated this Directorate as I did: why, believing as I did then in your unquestioned ability, I entrusted you personally to coordinate and create the apparatus essential for our protection.’ Natalia staged the final pause. ‘I very much hope I have not made a mistake in my choice.’

  Tudin was the only man in the chamber whose face was no longer expressionless. The look directed towards Natalia was one of pure and open hatred, and she guessed that behind those hooded, veined eyes he was already planning to initiate whatever scheme he had in mind against her in revenge for such public humiliation.

  ‘I am sure every one of us in this room is grateful for the political insight,’ Tudin said. The words strained out from him, as if he had difficulty in speaking, not from breathlessness but from some restriction in his throat.

  It was pitiful sarcasm and Natalia contemptuously ignored it. ‘I sought an assurance from you, about time.’

  ‘Which I said was impossible to give.’ There was the quickest of glances down into the room, and Natalia guessed at brief eye contact with Khrenin: it had certainly been to Khrenin’s side of the table.

  She didn’t try to follow the look. Instead she allowed another moment of silence.
When she spoke again, Natalia looked out into the room. ‘Then I think I have arbitrarily to impose one. As I said in my opening remarks, these conferences are to be regularly established. I propose they should be at three-monthly intervals …’ She went back to look directly at Tudin. ‘In three months I want to hear from you and your subordinate deputies that networks exist in every former republic which once comprised the Soviet Union.’

  Tudin’s entrapment was complete and he knew it. He wasn’t able to speak, just to nod.

  ‘If, in the interim, you come to believe you cannot fulfil that schedule I expect you to advise me. In any event, I would like weekly progress reports.’ Natalia did not think she had left any avenue for escape or evasion: three months was an impossible time-frame and Tudin was going to be racked twenty-four hours a day even to attempt it, before finally having, in the recordable written form she had stipulated, to admit he had failed. And still she wasn’t finished with the man.

  Once more Natalia turned back to the other men assembled in front of her. While none of them was betraying any readable reaction, Natalia believed she could discern a respectful wariness from some of them: maybe even fear. ‘We have considered the immediate past, and to an extent what we hope to create, to make our reorganization complete. To give all of you an indication of how full I want the exchange of information to be at future conferences like this, I want briefly to talk of an active operation I have already initiated, among certain overseas rezidentura.’

  She watched several of the division chiefs prepare to take notes.

  ‘Some years ago, I was involved in a specific operation to identify a member of the British external service,’ continued the woman. ‘For reasons that do not concern this conference, the operation was not a complete success. But recently I consulted the file to remind myself of it, because of official appointments that have been made in the British SIS, MI5 and the American Central Intelligence Agency. Learning from the mistakes of that earlier failed attempt, I have ordered London and Washington to create the most definitive and exhaustive records in all the past and recent history of this Directorate, not just upon the Director-Generals and Director of the British and American organizations, but upon as many division heads and active serving officers as it is possible to identify …’

  Natalia looked briefly sideways, to Tudin. He was sitting with his mouth slightly open and staring not at the table before him but at some spot on the floor beyond. Natalia’s impression was of someone absolutely stunned. To account for the brief attention upon her deputy, she said: ‘I have initiated the programme in those two countries because of the recently announced appointments to which I have referred and because rezidentura are fully in place and operational in embassies there. When we are properly organized in the former satellites and republics, I want similar tracing programmes conducted there. As I said at the very beginning, this new Directorate is being invested practically with the status of a ministry. I intend it always to qualify as such, if not actually in name.’

  Natalia stared around the room, beginning to feel the strain of her performance. ‘Any questions?’

  No one spoke.

  She’d done it! Natalia decided, exultantly. She’d devastatingly reversed any threat from Fyodor Tudin, virtually making his future in the Directorate impossible. And she had evolved a foolproof way to locate Charlie Muffin by openly using the entire resources of the Russian Federation’s intelligence service. Indulging herself, Natalia decided she had managed the sort of Machiavellian manipulation of which Charlie himself would have been proud. Abruptly, quite unprompted, the sort of recollection she had been seeking for so long came with that idle reflection. It was incomplete and hazy but she was sure it could be important: a long-ago conversation, when he had been here in Moscow. Something about his having a bedridden mother, who at that time would be missing the regular visits he made. He’d talked about the home she was in: described something particular about the part of England where it was situated. But what, she asked herself, desperately: a half-memory wasn’t any good. No good at all.

  Within an hour of returning to her office, the satisfaction at defeating Tudin and the hope that the long-sought recollection was coming at last were washed away by a new and far more immediate crisis.

  Natalia realized that the tempo at which the demand was channelled to her was clearly speeded by the official enquiry she had earlier made at Mytninskaya, coupled obviously with her rank: the delay, from the initial approach, was less than two days, which for Russia was amazingly fast.

  What she expected was to be told by an aide that Eduard had finally tried to find her at the old apartment. She was even beginning to consider how to react to an approach she had already decided she did not want, so that in her distracted surprise she echoed what the secretariat aide had really said. ‘The Militia!’

  ‘From headquarters, at Petrovka,’ confirmed the man. ‘The message says it’s urgent.’

  Because of the monitor he had established, Fyodor Tudin also learned very fast of the Militia enquiry, within an hour of Natalia being told. He’d already decided in the brief but stomach-opening interval since their public confrontation that the only way to save himself was to destroy Natalia Nikandrova Fedova before she succeeded in destroying him, which she had come close to doing that day.

  Actually squeezing his eyes shut, he thought: dear God – or whoever it is who controls people’s destinies – let this be the way to defeat her.

  Twenty-eight

  Gower awoke within thirty minutes of his usual time, pleased at the apparent recovery from jetlag. As he made instant coffee, he planned his day: he’d climb Coal Hill to explore the drops there, revisit the Forbidden City to get the necessary places marked indelibly in his mind, and in the afternoon pick a route to take him past the Taoist temple where the routine to bring Jeremy Snow to the embassy had to begin.

  Begin today? Gower sat with his elbows on the narrow kitchen table, both hands around his cup, considering his own question. It was still too soon. He hadn’t yet visited two of the three places with which he had to familiarize himself. And there was that much-repeated insistence from his last, unnamed teacher always to set up an escape route before ever thinking of beginning anything. At that moment he hadn’t started to consider how he and the priest were going to get out. But what was there to consider? There was only one conceivable way: by air. So there were air guides to be consulted, reservations to be made, routes to be chosen.

  Ridiculous, then, to think of leaving a signal and filling a drop today. It would have to be spread over several days, at least. Certainly a week. Not a delay of nervous reluctance, Gower assured himself: anything but. It was a professionally required period in which to work properly to guarantee the demands imposed from London and from here. He needed that amount of time – might need more – to get an awkward priest to safety and remove any risk of exposure and political embarrassment. And to remove also, of course, the risk of harm to the priest.

  Gower wished the self-doubt was not so readily there, always waiting on the sidelines of his mind, too swift to intrude itself into any uncertain thought.

  He tried mundane activity to slough off the introspection, tidying the kitchen and making his own bed in advance of the room-boy’s attendance. He had just finished setting his snares when there was a peremptory rap on the door, startling him.

  ‘You were away from the embassy all day yesterday, apart from the time you spent with Nicholson,’ declared Samuels, scarcely bothering with any greeting. ‘Have you forgotten what the ambassador said he wanted?’

  Gower had. ‘Sorry?’ he queried, hopefully.

  Samuels sighed, with predictable condescension. ‘You are supposed to be surveying the facilities of the embassy.’

  ‘And also concluding what I’ve been sent here to do as quickly as possible,’ countered Gower, ignoring his earlier reflections.

  ‘We have Chinese staff: gardeners and cleaners. And security officers we know about on the gat
es as well as those we don’t know about, elsewhere,’ said Samuels. ‘It is important you visibly appear to be fulfilling a proper function.’

  After the specific London instructions about protocol and the avoidance of offence, Gower accepted he had to defer to what amounted to an order, although he didn’t enjoy taking orders from a man like Peter Samuels. ‘Nicholson said he expected to spend some time with me.’

  ‘He’s your man,’ agreed the political officer. At once there was the reversal of attitude that had occurred the previous day. Samuels smiled and said: ‘Everything OK?’

  ‘The map was useful: thanks for the suggestion,’ said Gower. ‘I …’ he stopped, realizing what he was going to say, then decided he wasn’t disclosing anything. ‘I had a look around the Forbidden City. Might go again, later.’

  ‘Fascinating,’ agreed Samuels, seeming positively friendly. ‘You could spend a month there and still not see all of it.’

  Taking advantage of an encounter he hadn’t expected, Gower said: ‘I might want to look at what was pouched to me from London.’ Conscious of the wariness that instantly came to the other man, Gower hurried on: ‘Not to keep here, in these quarters. I just want to check it through.’

  Samuels nodded, slowly. ‘I’m going to be in my office all day. Come there when you’re ready. Let’s go and find Nicholson, shall we?’

  The gabbling Scotsman, whose appointed position emerged as the junior lawyer in the embassy’s legal department, was as effusively affable as the previous day. Totally unprepared for what he was being called upon to do, which he acknowledged to be an oversight, Gower asked Nicholson, with the experience of a resident, to decide the inspection by taking him to those facilities in the embassy the man believed most in need of improvement. That brought them back at once to the accommodation wing, for which Gower was grateful, reckoning he could prolong the charade in that one section for enough of that day to comply with Samuels’ insistence, without needing to spend any longer in the embassy itself. He trailed behind Nicholson, genuinely agreeing that the majority of the fittings and furnishings were out of date and inadequate, apologizing to the wives upon whom they intruded in some of the occupied flats. He listened patiently to their more forceful complaints after he was introduced as a Foreign Office inspector: in two flats he dutifully sat and drank the offered coffee, sympathetically nodded and tut-tutting, all the while feeling the fraud that he was.