The Run Around cm-8

by Brian Freemantle

  ‘He doesn’t know.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘He doesn’t know.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘He doesn’t know.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘He doesn’t know.’

  ‘Who’s the assassin?’

  ‘He doesn’t know.’

  ‘What do you expect me to do?’

  Wilson looked at Charlie curiously, as if he were surprised by the reaction. ‘Find out who is to be killed and stop it happening, of course.’

  Fuck me, thought Charlie. But then people usually did. Or tried to, at least.

  Characteristically, Alexei Berenkov was an ebullient, flamboyant man but he was subdued now because the defector had ultimately been his responsibility, as head of the KGB’s First Chief Directorate. The demeanour of Mikhail Lvov was equally controlled but then the commander of Department 8 of Directorate S which plans and carries out ordered assassinations was by nature a reserved and controlled man, in addition to which the meeting was being held in the office of the KGB chairman himself, which had an intimidating effect.

  It was the chairman, General Valery Kalenin, who opened the discussion.

  ‘The decision is a simple one,’ he said. ‘Do we abort the assassination? Or do we let it proceed?’

  Chapter Two

  General Valery Kalenin was a small, saturnine man whose life had been devoted to Soviet intelligence. He had controlled it through two major leadership upheavals in the Politburo, which now regarded him with the respect of people well aware — because he’d made sure they were aware — that he had embarrassing files upon all of them, like America’s Edgar Hoover had retained unchallenged his control of the FBI with his tittle-tale dossiers upon US Congressmen and presidents. Kalenin had been a young and never-suspected overseas agent in Washington during the last year of Hoover’s reign and had been unimpressed by the ability of the country’s counter-intelligence service. He’d applauded the advantage of incriminating information, though, and followed Hoover’s example when he had gained the ultimate promotion to Dzerzhinsky Square. Although he had taken the precaution Kalenin was unsure if he would ever use it as a defence, because he found the idea of blackmail distasteful, like he found assassination distasteful. The defection was a good enough excuse to abandon the idea but Kalenin, a forever cautious man, thought there might also be a good and protective reason to let it run.

  Although the question had been put more to Berenkov than to the head of the assassination division, it was Lvov who responded. ‘A great deal of planning and effort has gone into the operation,’ he said, an ambitious man defending something personally his.

  ‘To how much did Novikov have access?’ demanded Kalenin.

  ‘Certainly sufficient to know that an assassination was being planned,’ said Berenkov. In contrast to Kalenin, the head of the First Chief Directorate was a bulge-stomached, florid-faced man.

  ‘But little more than that,’ argued Lvov, who was aware of the importance the Kremlin attached to the assassination and even more aware of the benefit of being recognized its creator.

  ‘We’ve traced three cables Novikov enciphered,’ said Berenkov. ‘One specifically talked of the value to be gained from a political killing.’

  ‘There was no identification of the target,’ insisted Lvov.

  ‘There is in the Politburo Minute,’ said Berenkov. ‘And Novikov was security-cleared for Politburo traffic.’

  Kalenin, who was conscious of the differing attitudes between the two men confronting him, said: ‘Is there any proof of Novikov having seen the Politburo document?’

  Berenkov shook his head, almost angrily. ‘Security in the Kremlin is a joke,’ he said. ‘There is no system, like we have here, of signature acknowledgement of handling. Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t. The only way we’ll ever know is to go ahead and find they’re waiting for us. And then it will be too late.’

  ‘You think we should abort then?’ demanded Kalenin. There was no other officer in the KGB whom Kalenin respected more than Alexei Berenkov. Like Kalenin, Berenkov had been a brilliant overseas operative — controlling five European cells under his cover as a London wine merchant — and endured English imprisonment until an exchange had been arranged, back to Moscow, where he had proven himself to be an even more brilliant headquarters official and planner.

  ‘I know how important the mission is regarded,’ said Berenkov. ‘I know, too, how much organization and time has gone into setting it up. But I think the risk of it being compromised outweighs every consideration.’

  Lvov, who had anticipated Berenkov’s caution, said: ‘Vladimir Novikov was not the man who handled the identifying Politburo communication …’ He paused, offering a sheet of paper across the table to the KGB chairman. ‘This is an affidavit from a man named Nikolai Perebillo,’ Lvov resumed, triumphantly. ‘He controls the entire cipher section, with absolute clearance. And he attests that only he transmitted Politburo communications naming the target.’

  Kalenin looked enquiringly at Berenkov.

  Unimpressed, the huge man said: ‘Does it also attest that he’s positive that Novikov, alerted from messages to which he’d already had access, didn’t use his matching clearance to go through Politburo files to get more information?’

  ‘He could have been shot for that!’ tried Lvov.

  ‘He was a traitor, leaking information to the British!’ Berenkov came back. ‘He already risked being shot. And would have been, if he hadn’t realized how close the investigation was!’

  ‘I still consider it unthinkable that he would have tried such a thing,’ said Lvov. He was a small, narrow-faced man.

  ‘It’s what I would have done if I’d been about to defect and wanted to impress the people to whom I was going,’ admitted Berenkov.

  ‘So it comes back to being a gamble,’ said Kalenin.

  ‘Isn’t it a governing principle in intelligence that gambles should be reduced to a minimum?’ reminded Berenkov.

  ‘Doesn’t that depend on the stakes?’ said Lvov, balancing question for question.

  ‘And they’re high,’ agreed Kalenin.

  ‘They would be higher if it ended in a disaster we didn’t intend,’ warned Berenkov.

  ‘How long would it take to prepare for another opportunity?’ Kalenin asked the head of the assassination department.

  ‘There’s no way of knowing when another such public opportunity will arise,’ pointed out Lvov. ‘Months, certainly. And there would be no guarantee that the woman would be involved again, if we aborted this time. Without her — or someone like her — it would be impossible.’

  ‘They’re ready?’

  ‘Both of them,’ assured Lvov. ‘He’s an outstanding operative.’

  Kalenin shook his head at Berenkov and said: ‘I don’t see we have any real alternative.’

  ‘There is,’ disputed Berenkov, stubbornly. ‘The very real alternative is to cancel and wait for another occasion, irrespective of how long it takes or how difficult it might be to manipulate.’

  ‘It’s not a choice I think I have,’ said Kalenin.

  ‘I don’t believe Novikov saw any more than the three messages we’ve positively traced to him,’ said Lvov, recognizing the argument was tilting in his favour. ‘And by themselves they’re meaningless: no one would be able to make any sense from them.’

  ‘I know of some who might,’ said Berenkov, whose British capture had been supervised by Charlie Muffin.

  ‘We go,’ decided Kalenin. ‘I acknowledge the dangers and I don’t like them and I’d personally enjoy interrogating the runaway bastard in Lubyanka until he screamed for the mercy I wouldn’t give him, to learn exactly how much he’s taken with him. But I think on this occasion we’ve got to take the gamble.’

  Lvov allowed himself a smile of victory in the direction of Berenkov, who remained expressionless. Berenkov said: ‘Let’s hope, then, that it’s a gamble that pays off.’

  The instruction centre for KGB assas
sins is known as Balashikha. It is located fifteen miles east of Moscow’s peripheral motorway, just off Gofkovskoye Shosse, and it was here in his isolated but luxury dacha that the waiting Vasili Nikolaevich Zenin received the telephone call from the head of the department, within minutes of Lvov leaving the meeting in Dzerzhinsky Square.

  ‘Approval has been given,’ announced Lvov.

  ‘When do I start?’

  ‘At once.’

  Five thousand miles away, in the Libyan capital of Tripoli, Sulafeh Nabulsi left the headquarters offices of the Palestinian Liberation Organization precisely at noon, which she did every day and headed directly towards the port area, which she also did every day, her regulated actions governed by an obedience to orders found only in absolute fanatics. At the post office close to the corner of Revolution Avenue she made her daily check at the poste restante counter, feeling a jump of excitement when the letter for which she had been waiting so anxiously for so long was handed to her. It was postmarked London and consisted only of three lines, on paper headed with the name and address of a genuine English mail order company. The catalogue about which she had enquired was being despatched immediately, it promised. Sulafeh smiled, feeling her excitement grow. She’d known and lived among soldiers all her life but had never encountered anyone like this, someone trained so specifically to kill. What did an assassin look like? she wondered.

  ‘Names!’ demanded Harkness.

  ‘The Red Parrot, the Spinning Wheel and the Eat Hearty,’ said Charlie, uncomfortably. He was taking a chance, hoping they’d support the lie even though he ate at all three quite a lot and they knew him.

  ‘Why don’t they print their names on their receipts!’

  ‘I’ve no idea,’ said Charlie. ‘That’s what they gave me when I asked for a copy.’

  ‘You know what I think these expenses are?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Fraud. Criminal fraud.’

  ‘I genuinely spent the money,’ insisted Charlie. He supposed he should have guessed that Harkness wouldn’t let the matter drop, despite the Director lifting his suspension. Vindictive bugger. What would Harkness do when the bank manager’s letter arrived?

  ‘You think you’ve got away with it again, don’t you?’

  ‘I don’t understand what you mean.’

  ‘You understand it well enough,’ insisted the Deputy Director. ‘You haven’t got away with anything: you’ve been assigned because the Director thinks you have some special ability for a case like this. Which I, incidentally, do not. But I am going to continue the enquiry into these expenses.’

  ‘But while I’m on assignment I will be able to draw money, won’t I?’

  Harkness’s face flared, in his anger. He said: ‘I want every penny properly accounted for, with receipts and bills that are verifiable.’

  ‘I always try,’ said Charlie. He’d have to warn the restaurants that the sneaky little sod was likely to come sniffing around.

  Chapter Three

  Charlie Muffin had A5 security clearance, which is the highest, and the Director’s memorandum to all relevant departments within an hour of their meeting accorded the same classification to the Novikov investigation, designating it an operation of absolute priority. It also named Charlie as the agent in charge of that investigation, which allowed Charlie a moment of satisfaction as well as complete control. Hope to Christ there are a lot more such moments, he thought: and quick. He didn’t mind looking for needles in haystacks but he liked at least to know where the bloody haystack was.

  The debriefing so far conducted with the Russian comprised a verbatim transcript of the automatic recordings, presented question and answer. But only Novikov was identified in the file, security precluding the naming of the interrogator even on a document with such restricted circulation. Charlie wondered in passing who the poor sod was: debriefings could take months — were required to take months, to drain the maximum possible from a defector — so there wasn’t a chance in hell of making any money on expenses because Harkness and his abacus squad knew where you were and what you were doing every minute of the day and night.

  From the raw debriefing material Charlie compiled his own notes, concentrating only on his specific line of enquiry, aware that others would dissect every additional scrap of information the Russian disclosed. Vladimir Andreevich Novikov claimed to have been born in Riga, to a father killed in the siege of Stalingrad during the Patriotic War and a mother who fell victim to the influenza epidemic that swept Latvia in 1964. He had graduated in 1970 from Riga University with a combined first-class honours degree in electronics and mathematics, which Charlie accepted made almost automatic the approach from the KGB, for the position he was later to occupy. According to Novikov the invitation actually came before the end of his course, his ability already identified by the KGB spotters installed within the university to isolate potential recruits. He had worked for three years in the cipher department at the provincial KGB headquarters, apparently improving upon two internal communication codes and because of such ability was appointed deputy head over five people who were his superiors. His transfer to KGB headquarters in Moscow came in 1980. By which time, according to the question-and-answer sheets, Novikov was already coming to accept that Latvia was not the autonomous republic of the USSR it was always proclaimed — and supposed — to be but a despised Russian colony, although he was sure he always successfully concealed any hint of resentment during the frequent security interviews. In Moscow he married a Latvian girl, from Klaipeda, who was more forcefully nationalistic than he was. She had contact with dissident Latvian groups both in Riga and Moscow and he had become frightened any investigation by the KGB’s Second Chief Directorate — responsible for the country’s internal control — would inevitably discover her links, which would have meant his automatic dismissal and possibly her imprisonment. She had been killed before either could happen. It was a hit and run accident, near the Moskva Bridge, and although he had been a member of the KGB, with supposed influence, the driver had never been arrested and Novikov was convinced the civilian militia hadn’t bothered with a proper investigation because she had been a Latvian, someone who didn’t matter.

  ‘Latvians are second-class citizens, dispensable,’ was Novikov’s way of expressing it, which struck a cord with Charlie who never forgot how he’d once been considered dispensable. Or forgot, either, the fall-out that had contaminated so much and so many by his fighting back, creating his own personal Hiroshima.

  According to the transcript the woman’s death marked the moment of Novikov’s turning traitor to Russia, doing his utmost to cause as much damage as possible to a society he finally regarded as a colonial oppressor, worse than any of the Western colonial oppressors daily criticized within the Soviet Union.

  ‘The mind of Albert Einstein coupled with the social conscience of Mother Theresa, judged Charlie, aloud, in the emptiness of his refuse-viewed office. Often — and unashamedly — Charlie talked to himself. Sometimes he gave himself the right answers: the right answers were always the most difficult.

  Charlie was disappointed in that part of the transcript devoted to the supposed assassination, although he supposed he should not have been, forewarned by the meeting with Sir Alistair Wilson just how little was available. Worse than just little, qualified Charlie: what he had here was positively infinitesimal, the two cables to the Russian embassy in London’s Kensington the only positive, workable facts. Still, something, at least, upon which it was possible to work. Charlie continued on through the paperwork, looking expectantly for the recommendation and then, with equal expectation, for the confirming order, frowning in surprise when he didn’t find it.

  ‘Cunts!’ he erupted angrily, speaking aloud again. Being personally named as the investigatory chief and having the priority designation so clearly set out was going earlier to prove an advantage than he’d imagined. There were going to be more ruffled feathers than in a hen coop at mating time but fuck it: it was fucking that ru
ffled feathers at mating time anyway.

  In addition to the operation’s priority coding, Charlie used the authority of Sir Alistair Wilson’s name in his insistent messages to MI5, Britain’s counter-intelligence service. In further addition he stipulated that the absolute, 24-hour checks extend beyond the Kensington Palace Gardens embassy and the known diplomatic addresses in Edith Road and Kensington’s Earl’s Terrace to include the offices of every accredited Russian journalist and television commentator in London, the Soviet Trade Mission at West Hill, in the Highgate suburb, the Intourist and Aeroflot offices in Regent Street and Piccadilly, the Wheat Council in Charing Cross, into which the KGB had in the past infiltrated agents, and the Russian Narodny Bank, whose premises were in the City’s King William Street. And still remained dissatisfied. According to the Director, Novikov had been across for two months. And the assassination would have undergone planning months prior to that. So why the hell hadn’t the debriefer or those analysing what was being produced taken the most obvious and most elementary precautions!

  ‘Cunts!’ said Charlie again, more angrily than before.

  With his carte blanche authorization, Charlie drew the best car available from the motor pool, a small-bodied Mercedes with a specially adapted turbo-charged engine and absolutely secured radio patch communication, waiting until he cleared the London suburbs and was actually on the motorway before using it to call ahead and confirm his visit to the safe house already warned from Westminster Bridge Road of his impending visit. He took the car effortlessly up to 100 m.p.h., knowing from the special engine it was capable of at least another 50 m.p.h. Would he be able to get a nice second-hand little runner for the sort of overdraft he’d asked for, Charlie wondered, in rare naivety. He’d never actually bought a vehicle of his own. Edith had always purchased the cars because she had the money. After he’d screwed British and American intelligence and she’d been killed in the vengeance hunt Charlie had refused to touch his wife’s inherited estate, placing it instead in an unbreakable trust for the benefit of a children’s charity that had been one of Edith’s favourites. Be nice to have a little car like this: run out to a country pub on Saturday lunch-times and polish it like everyone else did in England on a Sunday morning. Might be a bit dodgy those nights when all the street lights seemed to join together, though. Or parking it in the roads around his flat, where even the police cars got their radios nicked and offered back for sale. Enjoy it while you can then, he told himself. Charlie fully opened the sun roof, reclined the seat back a further notch, and stared through the tinted glass to enjoy the Sussex countryside. Sir Archibald Willoughby, his first Director, had lived in Sussex. Not here though: on the coast, near Rye. They’d been the great days, under Willoughby. Allowed to roam, under Sir Archibald: make up his own rules. No pissing about over expenses with demands for certifiable receipts. Not that that was the fault of the present Director. Wilson was a good bloke, like Willoughby had been. Just surrounded by pricks, that’s all. Which had been the problem with Willoughby, as well. Odd that there were so many comparisons: even fanatical about rose growing. Harkness’s hobby was probably reciting tables, one twelve is twelve, two twelves are twenty four…. Charlie didn’t have the slightest doubt that the penny-pinching fart wouldn’t let him off the hook without a convincing explanation about those damned receipts: if he couldn’t think of one he supposed he’d have to accept the amounts being cut off, which would be losing out. Charlie didn’t like losing, certainly not fiddled expenses money. Not the biggest problem at the moment. The biggest problem at the moment was trying to find answers when he didn’t even know what the questions were. Or have a clue where to find them.