‘Good God!’ said Wilson, in recollection at last.
‘Yes,’ said Charlie. ‘Berenkov wanted me to know he’d planned whatever it is that’s going on. Which is arrogant, but then he always was an arrogant man. It was probably his only failing.’
‘I can’t follow this,’ protested one of the unidentified men. He had a pronounced Welsh accent.
‘A number of years ago,’ said Charlie. ‘I was responsible for the arrest and jailing of an extremely successful Soviet illegal, a trained KGB officer who was infiltrated into this country and who for several years ran a series of spy cells throughout Europe. At 150 King William Street, in the City of London, there is a privately owned safe-custody facility: clearing banks used to offer the service as a safe deposit box but very few do now. A number of private firms have filled the gap. Quite unknown by the company who own it, he used King William Street as a safe cut-out, a dead letter box to pass material between himself and KGB officers attached to the embassy here in London, without there ever being a requirement for them openly – or incriminatingly – to meet…’ He glanced at Witherspoon. ‘This investigation of me that you masterminded? Didn’t you check my operational file: everything I’d ever done?’
There was a despairing head movement of confirmation and Charlie felt not a jot of pity for the man. Charlie said: ‘It’s all there, in the Berenkov case file. And if you’d worked out that 150 King William Street was the address then I would have hoped that even you could have guessed at the other numbers not being part of the code at all. But the number of the facility itself.’
There was a new briskness to Wilson’s voice when he said: ‘It’s just past six o’clock: it’ll be closed.’
‘Which just might be to our benefit,’ suggested Charlie. ‘They’ll have monitored the drop, after filling it. Because they’ll want to know we’ve understood what they want us to. At the moment they’ll think we haven’t understood…’ Charlie allowed the glance towards Harkness. ‘Which until now we haven’t, have we?’
‘You think the company will cooperate?’ asked Wilson.
‘They did with Berenkov: they allowed us afterhours access then.’
It had suddenly become a planning discussion between two men, Charlie and the Director General, and Harkness flustered to intervene.
‘There are other considerations!’ he insisted. ‘What about this man form the Isle of Wight factory? Blackstone? He should be arrested immediately.’
‘No!’ said Charlie, practically shouting. ‘I was picked up on the Isle of Wight: and Blackstone has an access telephone contact. For all we know there’s a timed system: an automatic alert if he does not call. Blackstone is neutralized: leave him.’
‘I don’t think you’re in any position to say what will or will not be done!’ rejected Harkness.
‘He’ll be left,’ decided Wilson curtly.
Harkness actually flinched at being so obviously overruled. Trying to recover, he said: ‘There’s more I want explaining. What has Muffin been doing for almost a week at a hotel housing a Soviet delegation? And what is the connection between him and Natalia Nikandrova Fedova?’
It was Charlie’s turn to create the awkward silence: although he should have been prepared, he wasn’t, because he hadn’t been able to think of any way to prepare himself. With absolute honesty he said: ‘I went to the hotel for personal reasons, to make contact with the woman.’
‘What’s she got to do with all this other business?’ demanded Harkness, not properly thinking out his question.
‘At the moment I don’t know,’ admitted Charlie, in further honesty.
‘That isn’t a proper answer!’ protested Harkness.
‘I think the proper answers have got to come in the proper sequence,’ intruded Wilson, urgent again. ‘Which for far too long they haven’t been doing. I want to find out – and find out quickly – what’s in King William Street. Everything else can wait. We’re going to recess but nobody goes anywhere. We’re staying here, all of us, until this is completely resolved.’
No one actually did attempt to move anywhere in those first few moments. Witherspoon was the first to stir, getting uncertainly to his feet and bringing his binders together in some sort of clearing up tidiness.
‘Hubert!’ said Charlie.
Witherspoon looked up, apprehensively questioning.
‘The correct answer was “fools”,’ said Charlie.
‘What?’ gaped the man, in utter bewilderment.
‘That crossword clue you filled in when you came poking around my office a long time ago: the one about life being a walking shadow, from Macbeth. You wrote “idiot” but the correct answer was “fools”…either would have fitted perfectly here, though, don’t you think?’
The atmosphere became much better inside the Kensington house and for obvious reason. It was Petrin who brought it about, his bored impatience finally coming to a head. He set out quietly, genuinely not wishing to foment a fresh dispute between himself and Losev, not because he was frightened of the man but because the perpetual arguments were very much part of his boredom. From apparently casual conversation with the photographer he learned there were only three outstanding drawings remaining to be copied in the absolute detail with which Zazulin was working. Continuing the query further, he discovered that Yuri Guzins had six drawings he still needed to go through with Krogh. And the American finally conceded that he was working on the last reproduction.
‘So!’ seized Petrin at once. ‘We can finish!’
‘What!’ It was Zazulin who spoke, expressing the surprise of everyone.
‘Finish,’ repeated Petrin. ‘If we work on now – don’t stop – we could get everything done. End it.’
‘I’ve got a lot…’ started Guzins, but Petrin refused him. ‘Nothing that you couldn’t get through with Emil if you stayed at it. He’s practically completed the last of the original drawings: there’s nothing to interrupt or distract the two of you now.’
‘Maybe I could do it,’ conceded Guzins reluctantly.
‘What about you, Emil? You prepared to carry on, to clear everything up?’
‘Really finish!’
Petrin paused. Still not the time to mention the one replacement drawing that was still needed. ‘Really finish,’ he said.
‘I’ll work for as long as is necessary,’ guaranteed Krogh sincerely.
‘I could certainly get all the photographs finished,’ guaranteed Zazulin. ‘I didn’t know we were coming so near to the end of the original drawings.’
Predictably Losev felt cheated by being beaten to the suggestion by Petrin but even the London rezident was anxious for it to end now. To Zazulin he said: ‘Could you finish in time to get a shipment to Moscow?’
‘I think so.’
‘Not the held-back cassette!’ insisted Guzins at once. ‘I must see an original: have an opportunity of discussing it with Krogh. The references on the photographs must accord to the drawings.’
‘All right!’ said Petrin. ‘Don’t worry! That’s how it will be done.’
‘Have you told Krogh yet there’s a duplicate for him to complete?’ asked Guzins. As always – as it always had to be for the monolingual Guzins – the conversation was in Russian.
‘Not yet,’ admitted Petrin. ‘Let’s wrap everything else up first.’
Which was what they did. There was a lot to occur elsewhere in an intervening period but in Kensington they worked on until everything was completed. And Zazulin did meet his commitment: he finished in time for all his photographic rolls to be included in that night’s diplomatic pouch to Moscow. Only one cassette was held back in London, that of the drawing that the unknowing Krogh had still to make again.
43
There were varying degrees of shock from almost everyone in the room, the two unnamed men showing it most. Charlie, who’d caused it, wasn’t shocked: he’d half expected something like this and thought he was a long way towards comprehending what had happened or was happening. Mos
t of it anyway.
‘Sure?’ demanded Wilson, still gazing down at the drawing around which they were all grouped, on Witherspoon’s evidence table.
‘No,’ admitted Charlie, although for accuracy, not to reassure them. ‘All I can say is that it resembles drawings I was shown by the project leader when I made the Isle of Wight investigation.’
It had taken four hours to get the official search warrant authorized by a magistrate, locate the afterhours address of the managing director of the safe deposit company, persuade the man of the urgency of cooperating at once and finally to retrieve the blueprint from King William Street. While they waited – Charlie finally being allowed to sit – there had been sandwiches and coffee but little conversation. No one had spoken at all to Charlie until the drawing was unrolled and Charlie had announced its possible source. A disjointed, competing babble erupted the moment Charlie responded to the Director General’s question, with the Whitehall official with the Welsh accent fractionally in the lead. ‘Good God!’ said the man, aghast. ‘Have you any idea of the implications of this! The Foreign Office must be told: the Foreign Secretary himself …!’
The persistent, determined Harkness was already trying to make his point before the first man finished. ‘… The key!’ he tried, in fresh triumph. ‘The key found in Muffin’s flat fitted the safe deposit facility. And Muffin investigated on the Isle of Wight!’
‘… This is a disaster!’ endorsed the second official. ‘This will end any technological cooperation between us and the United States for years…a disaster…!’
‘…I think…’ began his colleague but Wilson cut him off, trying to restore some order. ‘Please be quiet!’ he said. He didn’t shout but despite the frailty there was authority in his voice and everyone stopped talking at once. The Director General looked around the room and said, more forcefully: ‘Let’s stop behaving like a lot of frightened chickens with a fox in the henhouse! I want to understand what we’ve got here, not listen to a bunch of hysterics!’
There was some embarrassment in the silence that settled. Harkness said: ‘I do not think the observation I made should be ignored.’
‘Nothing is being ignored,’ said Wilson, and on this occasion Charlie was convinced there was a note of weariness in the Director General’s tone towards the other man. He was aware of Wilson looking at him ‘Charlie?’ he invited.
‘Like you said,’ supported Charlie. ‘Don’t panic. The first thing to do is confirm that it is something from the space project.’
‘It means delay…’ the Welshman began to protest.
‘…no it doesn’t,’ corrected Charlie. ‘The Isle of Wight is less than an hour away, by helicopter. The factory even has its own landing pad. We already know Springley’s address: the local police can have him there waiting for us before the machine arrives…’
‘Yes,’ accepted Wilson at once, nodding towards Witherspoon. ‘Organize that now.’
‘Blackstone,’ insisted Harkness. ‘The man has to be arrested!’
‘No, he doesn’t!’ said Charlie, as Witherspoon left the room accompanied by Abbott, the second Special Branch officer. ‘And for the same reason as before: we don’t know yet if there’s a cut-off warning system in operation. We’ve got to take things in their proper order.’
‘Your accomplice…’ started Harkness, and Charlie exploded.
‘For Christ’s sake!’ he shouted, so loudly that Harkness actually stepped back and Smedley started forward from his guard position at the door before stopping again.
‘Listen!’ implored Charlie, more controlled. ‘Just listen and think. You want to argue that I received that drawing from Blackstone, put it in the safe deposit facility and then told Moscow, correct…?’
Harkness blinked back at him, saying nothing.
‘How?’ demanded Charlie. ‘Tell me – tell us all – how! And why! The bloody drawing is dated, isn’t it! With what is almost yesterday’s date. You know to the second where I’ve been for the past three, almost four days: that I haven’t been anywhere near the Isle of Wight to make any pick-up. You now who I’ve met, so you’re equally well aware that Blackstone hasn’t come to London, to give me anything. According to what you’ve said in this very room, I was actually under arrest when the message was intercepted to Moscow saying King William Street had been filled. So it couldn’t have been me who filled it, could it! Or sent the message, because you’ve also told us the transmission and receiving point is inside the Soviet embassy in Kensington Palace Gardens. And why was that message sent at all? Just to go on fooling you, like it’s fooled you all along. Why should the Soviet embassy receiving material from a dead letter box in King William Street alert Moscow before they pick it up! Surely even you can see the nonsense in that. Standard procedure – the only procedure – is to empty a box and then advise what you’ve got, if you want to, although that doesn’t make a lot of sense either…’ Charlie had to stop, breathless. He said: ‘You were fed the numbers-for-letter code, like you were fed everything else…the dead letter drop that got you an arrest…the courier against whom you couldn’t move. What did they amount to, either of them? Think about it! They didn’t matter a damn. It was just the bait, for you to swallow. Which you did. Moscow has sucked you up and blown you out in bubbles. That code is Boy Scouts’ stuff: senior Boy Scouts, maybe, but little more. It should never have been relied upon…had importance attached to it.’
‘I think that’s enough,’ halted the Director General. ‘I will say, however, that at this stage I agree with what has been said. It would seem to me that we are dealing with two separate things here. And for the moment the overwhelmingly important one is the discovery of a British document carrying the highest security classification being where it has no right to be. I want that run to ground first: everything else can wait.’
Harkness discernibly sagged. His immediate, concerned concentration focused upon the Whitehall officials and Charlie became even surer that they were in some way connected to the all-important Joint Intelligence Committee.
Everyone settled down to another period of waiting, for the arrival of Robert Springley. Harkness returned to the evidence table – although to the folders, not the drawing. The two Whitehall men withdrew pointedly to a part of the room where they could not be overheard and at once started an intense, head-bent conversation. The stenographer and the recording operator sat back, stretching, grateful for the temporary rest. The stiff-legged Wilson was the first to stand. The Director General caught Charlie’s eye, jerking his head, and Charlie crossed to where the man was, beyond the half-moon table.
Wilson said: ‘I think you’ve publicly made your point with sufficient forcefulncss for the moment. No more.’
‘Yes, sir,’ accepted Charlie.
‘I still want a further explanation.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘For Christ’s sake stop parroting “yes, sir” at me!’
‘I’m pretty sure the drawing is from the Isle of Wight.’
‘You’re in deep trouble if it came from a man you let run.’
‘I accept that.’
‘Why the hell did you let it go on!’
‘I thought I’d closed him off: that the risk was justified.’
Wilson snorted, in impatient anger, nodding in the direction of the intensely talking government officials. ‘They’re right, you know. If something involving America’s Strategic Defence Initiative has reached the Russians from one of our places the shutters are going to come down with a sound we’ll hear all the way from Washington. The Americans would actually have to consider abandoning it: starting all over again.’
‘I realize that, too.’
‘Christ!’ said Wilson again but more to himself than to Charlie. ‘I can’t think of a comparable disaster! Nothing!’
They both turned, at movement from the door. Witherspoon entered first, followed by Springley. The white-haired project chief had had time during the flight to recover from being roused from his bed b
ut he was still blinking in bewilderment. He was wearing a carelessly put on tweed jacket over a roll-neck sweater. The man frowned around the room in continuing confusion, his face breaking slightly at recognition of Charlie Muffin.
When he spoke it was to Charlie. He said, complaining: ‘No one will tell me anything, except that there’s some sort of crisis: that this is a security committee. What is it? What’s happened?’
Wilson said to Charlie: ‘You might as well take him through it. He knows you.’
Harkness didn’t hear the exchange but his look was one of undisguised hatred – and without caring that it was undisguised – as Charlie went to the project chief, to lead him back to the table where Harkness still stood. Charlie ignored the deputy Director. He picked up the flimsy drawing, offered it to Springley and said: ‘Can you identify that?’
Springley only looked at it briefly, for no more than seconds. After which his gaze came up, first to Charlie and then more widely, out into the room. He was smiling slightly, the smile of someone completely baffled but who imagines they are having some incomprehensible trick played upon them. He said: ‘What is this?’
‘That’s what I am asking you, Mr Springley,’ said Charlie, cautious against giving the man any lead or guidance.
‘One of the drawings,’ said the project chief, spacing the words in growing disbelief. ‘The final drawing of the planned sidescreen moulding, with the process description. Where did it come from?’
There were several sounds of audible reaction throughout the room but Charlie didn’t see who made them. He said: ‘That’s what we want you to tell us.’
‘Blackstone!’ interrupted Harkness foolishly. ‘It was stolen by Blackstone, wasn’t it!’
There was another audible sound, one of annoyance, and Charlie knew this time it was from the Director General.
‘No,’ said Springley, shaking his head. ‘It’s one of the drawings from the project but not the drawing. It’s a completely accurate copy…’
Comrade Charlie Page 33