Comrade Charlie

by Brian Freemantle

  ‘And Krogh.’

  Wilson glanced at his watch. ‘By now he should already have undergone one operation, in an attempt to lift the bone depression away from the brain. The prognosis, before the operation, was that it’s caused quite a lot of damage. He’ll be in intensive care for quite a while. So we still don’t know whether the Russians got the lot.’

  ‘If they had everything there wouldn’t have been any purpose in going to the house this morning, would there?’ pointed out Charlie.

  The Director General shrugged. ‘There’s been too much guessing already: I don’t want to add any more.’

  ‘What are you going to do with the Russians?’

  Wilson gave a wintry smile. ‘I haven’t decided yet,’ he said. ‘If the fat one who’s falling apart tells all then we could make a case against them: bring in Losev, too, on the basis of Blackstone’s confession. At the moment we can hold those we’ve got on suspicion of espionage: two of them for entry into Britain on false passports…’ The smile broadened, becoming warmer. ‘Or they could have a better, practical use, if we wanted some misleading information conveyed back to Moscow.’

  ‘Yes they could, couldn’t they?’ said Charlie, smiling back.

  ‘I’ve been doing most of the talking, Charlie.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’ queried Charlie.

  ‘I want to know about the hotel. And Natalia Nikandrova Fedova.’

  Charlie told him. He held nothing back and was completely honest, from the affair in Moscow up to their last conversation, two nights before.

  The Director General listened blank-faced and without any interruption until Charlie had obviously finished. Then he said at once: ‘You did not make an identification file, when you returned from Moscow?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You should have done.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Neither did you when you recognized the media reports?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Which means you knowingly allowed a KGB officer to enter this country as a Soviet delegation member without any notification or alert to counter-espionage?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And then went and set yourself down right in the middle?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’re a bloody fool!’ declared the older man.

  ‘I’ve explained my reasons,’ said Charlie.

  ‘Which don’t change the fact that you’re a bloody fool.’

  Charlie said nothing because the assessment was the right one.

  Wilson sighed. ‘I’ve tolerated a lot from you, for all the reasons we both know,’ he said. ‘There’s a limit.’

  ‘I did not behave – did not intend – to cause any embarrassment or to compromise this department.’

  ‘Bullshit!’ exploded the Director General. ‘You were there: have been photographed and are now known to counter-espionage to have been there! That embarrasses and compromises this department!’

  ‘I’ve honestly explained my personal reasons for doing what I did,’ tried Charlie. ‘But I also knew, by the time I went to the hotel, that some trap was being set. I wanted to spring it.’

  ‘Weak, Muffin, weak,’ dismissed the Director General.

  He was no longer being called by his first name, acknowledged Charlie. ‘The truth,’ he insisted.

  Wilson came slightly away from the table, bending forward for emphasis. ‘All right!’ he said. ‘So tell me this. If there had not been any of the other business – no hostile surveillance, no phoney evidence planted at your flat – and you’d learned as you did learn that Natalia Nikandrova Fedova was coming under some guise into this country? Would you have still made contact with her?’

  Charlie hesitated. ‘Yes,’ he admitted finally.

  Wilson shook his head in dismay. ‘And you believe it’s innocent!’

  ‘I still don’t know.’

  ‘Or want to decide?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Think, man! Think!’

  ‘I’ve done little else, for weeks.’

  ‘Then think some more!’ urged the Director General. ‘Naivety doesn’t become you: it’s got to be wrong!’

  ‘I’ll concede some. Not all.’

  ‘You really believe she’ll come over?’

  ‘I don’t know but I think so.’

  ‘She’d have to go through the system.’

  ‘I told you what she said about that.’

  ‘Rubbish! She doesn’t have a choice. You know that. She should know that. It would be a condition of her acceptance.’

  ‘I decided to deal with it once she’d crossed.’

  ‘And there’d be another condition, of course.’

  Charlie hesitated again. Then he said: ‘Yes, I know.’

  ‘You prepared for that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I can’t accept that!’ disputed Wilson. ‘I don’t think you’ve properly considered it.’

  ‘I believe I have.’

  ‘What would you do?’

  Charlie humped his shoulders. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Then you haven’t thought it through!’ insisted the Director General, slapping his thigh in finality. ‘Not to the extent that you should have done.’

  ‘Nothing about this episode has been easy to think through to it’s proper, logical conclusion,’ said Charlie.

  Berenkov was concerned but not panicked. Not yet. The moment he received the alert from Losev he began the damage limitation, calculating step by step and with ice-cold expertise how bad the situation was. Bad, he judged: bad but not catastrophic. Petrin and Obyedkov were professionals and professionals daily faced the risk of seizure. They were trained for it: knew that if they were ever tried and imprisoned in the West an exchange would be arranged – as an exchange was every time arranged if a Russian intelligence officer were incarcerated – even if it meant jailing in Russia a visiting or diplomatic national from the arresting country on a trumped-up charge. Yuri Guzins was the weakness, the one who could make it a catastrophe. The man wasn’t trained: would have no confident expectation of release, in the event of being sent to prison. He’d be sitting in some cell now, unable to speak a word of the language, horrors crowding in upon horrors all around him. If he broke, confessed everything, Britain would have what they needed for a trial, and working in collusion with America – and the two countries would be working in collusion – there’d be enough for an enormous propaganda accusation throughout the West. And it didn’t end there: scarcely began, in fact. Guzins was a top Soviet space scientist. Under skilful interrogation – promises of leniency if he cooperated – the man could be tricked into disclosing hugely damaging secrets of genuine Soviet research at Baikonur. The burly Directorate chief shook his head, tempted to revise his judgement. Maybe it did go beyond being bad: come close to being catastrophic. Certainly the potential existed.

  Emil Krogh was another dangerous uncertainty. Berenkov didn’t know what had happened to the American. Before he’d been seized Obyedkov had managed to babble on the emergency line to the embassy that there’d been an ambush in the street and that he and Guzins were about to be taken and then the instrument had been snatched from him and Losev had protectively disconnected from the English voice demanding from the other end who was there. Krogh was as weak a link as Guzins, Berenkov calculated. The American would actually be able to identify Guzins’ speciality to the interrogators and guide them on how to pressure the Russian scientist.

  It did go beyond being simply bad, thought Berenkov, revising his opinion at last. So it was time for another damage assessment: a personal one now. Disastrous though it might be, no criticism – no accusation of himself having made a mistake – could be levelled at him for the British discovering the Kensington house. That, always, had had to be an accepted, recognized risk. What then? The remaining drawing, he isolated at once: the one remaining drawing which the idiot Guzins had insisted upon being duplicated, and before the receipt of which he had refused to release the photographic copies
that already existed. No problem, balanced Berenkov at once, relieved. The photographic copies did exist. Safe and secure and awaiting shipment, upon Guzins’ authority. Which he could no longer exercise. When they arrived he would have satisfactorily fulfilled his brief, Berenkov told himself. There’d been a cost – possibly a very high cost – but nothing for which he could be blamed.

  And there had, in addition, been the other, private success. From the messages from London the previous day Berenkov knew Charlie Muffin was now behind bars somewhere, facing the inevitability of many more years in precisely that situation. The Russian wondered if the British had started the questioning yet, giving the man the clue to how it had all been manipulated.

  Berenkov stirred at last, satisfied that he had worked everything out to its proper conclusion and in its proper order of importance. There only remained one thing to complete, to make himself absolutely secure. It only took him minutes to compose the cable, ordering that the retained cassette be included in that night’s diplomatic shipment from London.

  Which it was.

  Losev, who was still working out his reaction to the Kensington arrests, had anticipated it anyway and had the spool ready. The diplomatic bag reached London airport with two hours to spare before the Moscow-bound flight and was receipted and guaranteed its protection under the Vienna convention by the senior Customs controller on duty.

  It was placed in the Customs safe to await final loading and removed from it – without Customs awareness – within fifteen minutes by Special Branch technicians who peeled off the diplomatic seal in such a way that it could be undetectably relocked. When they opened the bag itself they used magnets to hold back the device they detected by X-ray, which was intended to destruct upon unauthorized entry. They took the film cassette they found inside to the Special Branch photographic facility permanently maintained at the airport. There – in protective darkroom conditions – it was viewed in negative, which showed the sort of drawing for which they were looking, although not at that stage precisely which drawing. Following the detailed instruction from the Director General, prints were made from every frame. The negative roll was then fogged sufficiently badly to prevent any further prints being made from that part necessarily developed – and to prevent that development being detected by the Russians – and then rewound into its original casing which was pressured to distort slightly. Finally it was replaced in the diplomatic bag, and the bag resealed.

  Two hours later, at Westminster Bridge Road, Wilson looked up from the prints at Charlie and said: ‘You incredibly lucky bugger!’

  ‘About time,’ said Charlie.

  46

  Natalia was there.

  And conducting herself well, properly, not standing on the pavement edge, looking around hopefully in a way that might have attracted attention but back against the entry to a shop and gazing in as if she were window shopping, someone with plenty of time to spare. Charlie was actually inside the opposite store, on the first floor from the overlooking window of which he could gaze down and see everything, as he needed to see everything. He thought she was alone: certainly there was no one in close proximity, a watcher or a guard. The emotion, his feeling for her, lumped inside him, a positive physical sensation. So she’d done it. She’d come. Was waiting. Waiting for him. I’ll be ready. His promise to her, Charlie remembered, the night they’d made their final plans. These plans. So was he? Was he going to keep the promise and go and get her and run with her? Charlie swayed – the start of a movement – but then didn’t move, remaining where he was, watching. Why had she had to turn up at all! Why hadn’t she just stayed away, so that he would have known at once that she’d been part of it, instead of this: being there so that he stayed confused. Didn’t know.

  Maybe she should be waiting around the corner, in the main road and not in the side street directly opposite the store, Natalia thought abruptly. She’d expected Charlie to be there, prepared, so that there wouldn’t be any delay like this. That had to be it! Around the corner in the main road. She moved, casually, which was very difficult for her because she was so frightened she felt lightheaded, nerves so taut her skin itched. What she really wanted to do was run the few yards to the junction and yell for him, shout out his name to make him come to her and get her away. Natalia reached the main road and started down it, pretending to study the windows again but desperately seeking him, aching for him to emerge from some doorway, some car. Where was he! Dear God, where was he?

  Was her moving a signal to someone, someone he hadn’t spotted? Still using her cover well, judged Charlie: surprisingly expert. I wasn’t trained as a field agent, like you. That’s what she’d told him, that last night. All right, her movements weren’t perfect – weren’t how he or a professional with years of experience knew how virtually to disappear on a crowded street – but she was still very good. So had she been trained? Brought up to a minimum standard at least, for this operation? And it had to be an operation. Something. What else could it be? Professional, Charlie decided: he had to be brutally, clinically professional, subjugate every feeling for her and examine everything that had happened, from the very beginning. And the very beginning had been her transfer, from a specific, highly skilled position to a nebulous, untitled role that exposed her to the West. Not just exposed her, Charlie reasoned on. Publicly exposed her because every trip she’d made out of Russia had been reported, with photographs. Wrong, determined Charlie, forcing that brutal, clinical judgement. Wrong like Sir Alistair Wilson had again insisted it was before giving him permission at last to leave Westminster Bridge Road and done it sadly and said goodbye, an unspoken reminder that if she were there and she did cross then the department would be closed to him, for ever. Not just wrong, by their assessment, either. Surely Natalia – Natalia who had been vague and casual when he’d tried to talk about it with her – knew that no service switched people around like she’d been switched around. She hadn’t been assigned to one particular ministry, even: the only essential appeared to have been a delegation, any delegation, crossing to the West. Another incongruity: like so many others.

  Where was he! thought Natalia again, desperation worsening. She turned, walking back towards the store, jostled and pushed by oncoming people but hardly aware of them. Charlie wasn’t like this: couldn’t be like this. He’d know what it would be like, how dangerous it was. In the end there had only been eight of them who’d wanted to come and Bondarev had appointed himself the escort as well as an embassy official, and she’d been away from the shopping party for five minutes at least. There’d be the search for her soon, curious at first but then the panic, the alarm. Charlie had said he would look after her always. So why wasn’t he looking after her now! She thought: Please Charlie! Please Charlie, where are you?

  The hotel had been the most incongruous of all, Charlie reasoned. How could Natalia have moved around so easily and so freely, unless she’d been permitted to do so? He knew from the barman how the KGB watchers had monitored and herded up the late-night drinkers not in their rooms. Natalia had told him herself of Bondarev’s diligence. And her supposed explanation for being discovered coming to him didn’t withstand examination. Those same KGB escorts would have known she scarcely drank because it would have been in her personal records, so it would have been something at once to arouse their suspicion. I’ve been lucky. Charlie found it easy to remember that remark: the tone of voice in which Natalia had made it. Luck hadn’t come into it, he knew sadly. He could remember everything about that last night. He recalled her hesitation when he’d announced he was booking out. I’ll learn, she said. Learn what? Was there a pointer in another, earlier conversation, the discussion about his being in Moscow? Had she come across to get to him and discover what he’d really been doing there? It was a possibility. No service liked an unclosed file. And according to Natalia’s own admission, Berenkov was still head of the First Chief Directorate, with the power to have orchestrated everything just to find out.

  Natalia reached
the corner again and turned into the side street to the shop windows she’d first pretended to study. Her stomach was in turmoil and briefly she folded her arms across herself, so that she could scratch the irritation on her arms. He loved her! She knew he loved her, like she loved him! It had been unreal – like some absurd dream – at the hotel but it had been wonderful and she was sure it could have been even more wonderful when they were together somewhere safe, just by themselves. So why hadn’t he come! He wasn’t cruel: not a bastard. He wouldn’t have tricked her – deceived her – like this. It was inconceivable. What would have been the point? There wasn’t one. So it had to be inconceivable. Then where was he? Something had to have happened to him! He was lying hurt, injured somewhere! The guess brought a surge of anxiety, then conflicting emotions. Her eyes filmed at the idea of his being hurt and then she realized that if he were physically prevented from getting to her none of it was going to work because there was no one else who could come for her. Natalia had to keep her lips tight, biting them closed with her teeth, to prevent the whimper of despair. Don’t let it happen like this, she thought; don’t let everything collapse and fail like this! It couldn’t! It wasn’t fair. Everything was going to be so good, so perfect. She was going to be happy and it seemed such a long time since she’d been happy. Minutes, she calculated: she couldn’t stay any longer than minutes. Why hadn’t he come? Why! Why! Why!

  The Director General had been right, accepted Charlie. Natalia would have known she’d have to go through a debriefing procedure: that her acceptance would have been impossible without it. So what reason had there been for her announcing that she wouldn’t cooperate? It didn’t make sense. I’ll learn, he remembered again. And then he thought further, to other things she’d said that night: to her insistence – near shouted insistence – that he remain in the service. You’ve got to find a way, she’d said. And more, when he’d argued against her. I won’t cross. Was that the true meaning of her saying that she’d learn? That she wanted him to stay on in the hope of picking up, over the weeks and months, as much as she could about the department and its ongoing operations? Possible, Charlie decided: extremely possible. Certainly, for Soviet intelligence and the grand-gestured Berenkov, worth the attempt to link him with Natalia again.