The Run Around cm-8

by Brian Freemantle

  Once more Blom looked to his assistant, who responded with a shoulder-shrugging gesture of uncertainty.

  Charlie said: ‘The sewers must extend out beyond the boundary into the city. It would be the obvious and perhaps the easiest way for anyone to get in undetected.’

  ‘Why bother to get in?’ asked Levy.

  Charlie looked to the screen again and nodded in agreement. ‘You’re right,’ he said to the Israeli. ‘With the area swept and declared clean all that’s necessary is to clamp explosive devices beneath those manhole covers and set them to detonate when the cars of the delegation leaders pull up for the official arrival. No one would survive.’

  Blom swallowed and said: ‘All the manholes will be checked and then sealed. And the sewer lanes secured against any human entry at the complex boundary, until the conference concludes.’

  It had not been a waste of time, decided Charlie. In fact it had been very worthwhile. He said: ‘Can we look outside?’

  It was a more subdued Swiss intelligence chief who led the group into the gardens, deferring to the assistant unnecessarily to point out the cameras feeding the control room they had just left. Giles made a point of identifying manholes as they made their way through the side courts and surrounding gardens, picking up two in the gardens where the photograph was to be taken, and at Blom’s urging the aide made notes on a small pocket pad for them to be sealed.

  At the gardens Charlie stared around, starting to isolate the overlooking buildings, when Levy announced: ‘I wasn’t happy with our entry this morning.’

  Charlie turned back on to the group as Giles said, in agreement: ‘We weren’t checked.’

  ‘The car was recognized to be official!’ insisted Blom.

  ‘The cars carrying all the delegation leaders will be official,’ pointed out Levy. ‘My people are going to sweep our vehicles before we set out each day and I know the Americans will do the same. But what if someone were to attach a bomb to one of the other delegation cars, in some hotel park overnight? And again time the explosion?’

  Charlie was glad Levy had brought it up, sparing him the need.

  ‘It could cause a bottleneck,’ protested Blom.

  ‘I think it would be justified,’ said Giles. ‘And the congestion could be eased by opening up more than one entry point and covering it with more men.’

  ‘Possibly with sniffer dogs,’ encouraged the Israeli.

  ‘Yes,’ admitted Blom. ‘It would possibly be a good idea.’ He started back towards the conference block, anxious physically to get away from the concerted pressure: they were playing games, all of them, each trying to prove who was the best counter-insurgency expert. Damn the scruffy, ridiculous, posturing Englishman who’d started it all! Blom was glad the Swiss protest had been made to London. He could not understand why the man had not been withdrawn: certainly it had been a mistake letting the other two persuade him into letting the man accompany them on the security tour. The final satisfaction was going to be his, of course, when the conference ended and all these fantasy precautions were going to be shown to have been quite unnecessary.

  There was a moment of uncertainty among them back at the entrance, where Blom’s car was waiting, and Giles said: ‘My people picked up something about an attack on a member of the Palestinian secretariat?’

  Blom’s face tightened, perceptibly. ‘It is not a matter for us,’ he said. ‘It is a police investigation.’

  ‘What happened?’ asked Charlie, curiously.

  ‘Street crime: a mugging,’ said Blom. ‘A member of the Palestinian translator staff. Mohammed Dajani.’

  Long-time Arafat supporter, Charlie remembered, from the Israeli files. Identified as a moderate and advocate of negotiation, certainly with no marked involvement in what Jerusalem regarded as terrorism. Charlie said: ‘Have your people talked to him?’

  Blom sighed. He said: ‘This is not something into which to start reading significance. I have personally seen the full police report. He was attacked last night near the university. Unfortunately quite badly injured: a broken pelvis. But it was a robbery, pure and simple. He lost a watch and a quantity of money.’

  ‘What about any sort of documentation to have gained access here?’ demanded Levy.

  Blom smiled, happy for the first time with a question. ‘Precisely why the evidence was submitted to me,’ he said. ‘There were some accreditation documents found near him. There’s been the most detailed check with what was found and what remained in his hotel room. Nothing whatsoever is missing.’ Blom saw the disappointment on the faces assembled around him. ‘As I already told you,’ Blom said, continuing to enjoy himself, ‘it is a regrettable street crime, nothing more.’

  ‘How many people involved in the attack?’ asked Charlie.

  ‘He thinks only one, but he’s not sure.’

  ‘Description?’ pressed Giles.

  ‘There was absolutely no street lighting: he saw nothing.’

  ‘It wouldn’t seem to have any significance,’ agreed Levy. ‘Not with all the documentation remaining intact.’

  ‘I am glad you agree with me,’ said Blom.

  It was Giles who resolved the impasse about what to do next, inviting everyone into the American secretariat section where American security had established their headquarters. Blom declined, remarking heavily that there were further arrangements he had to make, but Charlie and Levy accepted.

  Giles had a separate but necessarily cramped office very close to where the conference was to take place. Everything appeared temporary, a snake’s nest of telephone, teleprinter and television cables across the floor of the outside rooms and a lot of people looking lost, trying to remember where their assigned places were. From a desk drawer Giles produced a bottle of Jack Daniels and apologized for only having two glasses. Charlie said he was happy with the cup.

  ‘Well?’ said Charlie. It was nice to be admitted at last but he was unsure how genuine was their acceptance.

  ‘I think we closed a few doors that were too wide open,’ said Giles.

  ‘I don’t have any authority to interview Dajani,’ said Charlie. He looked at Levy. ‘And I guess it would be difficult for you, as well …’ He turned to Giles. ‘Don’t you think it might be an idea to investigate the attack yourselves?’

  ‘For what?’ said Levy. ‘According to Blom, the man didn’t see anything.’

  ‘According to Blom, there’s no danger!’ said Charlie, conscious as he spoke of the look which passed between the two other men. In full awareness, he said: ‘So you would have suggested all the tightening up today even if there hadn’t been any warning!’

  ‘That’s our job, Charlie,’ said the Israeli.

  Being patronized was something that pissed Charlie off the most and he thought it was close to happening here. So much for acceptance. He said: ‘You don’t think it’s worth looking at independently: you’re the people talking about doors that have been left too wide open.’

  ‘I think it’s been checked out,’ said Levy.

  ‘I don’t believe it’s anything to get spooked about,’ agreed the American.

  ‘Believers in coincidence!’

  ‘Don’t make a monster out of every shadow, Charlie!’ pleaded Levy. ‘The poor bastard was mugged: the one thing that would have made it suspicious — the loss of any conference documents — didn’t happen!’

  ‘Like nothing else is going to happen,’ accused Charlie. Cunts, he thought. He was still thinking it three hours later when Alexander Cummings reached him at the Beau-Rivage from the Bern embassy.

  ‘You’re to come right away,’ ordered the British intelligence rezident. ‘London says it’s important.’

  Back and forth like a fiddler’s elbow, thought Charlie.

  Alexei Berenkov had studied all the interrogation transcripts and the records of the trial evidence and reviewed yet again his own interview with Edwin Sampson. And acknowledged that the only conclusion possible was that which Kalenin had reached, that Natalia Nika
ndrova Fedova was a loyal and dedicated KGB intelligence officer whose brilliant intervention had prevented Sampson infiltrating the Soviet service.

  And he refused to accept it.

  Berenkov had survived in the West for so long by refusing ever to believe the obvious — intrigued during the debriefing after his capture to realize it was also a precept of Charlie Muffin’s — even when it was supported by incontestable fact.

  The need was to uncover something which did contest the facts. Because Natalia was attached to the First Chief Directorate and subject to his authority it was easy for Berenkov to know at all times where she was, enabling his squads to enter her apartment without any fear of discovery. The searchers went in first, under Berenkov’s strict instructions that nothing should be disturbed for her to realize her apartment had been burgled, and after them the technical experts went to work. There were two video cameras installed, both with fish-eye lenses capable of recording the activities throughout the entire room, one in the main bedroom and another in the living room. The encompassing lenses were the size of pinheads and fitted high in the ceiling cornice in both rooms. The audio equipment was not put actually into the telephone, where Natalia might have discovered it, but installed as an additional wire alongside the regular lead-in line. An extra microphone was fixed as a transistor to a small portable radio which usually appeared to be kept in the kitchen but which she sometimes carried from room to room, particularly to the bathroom in the mornings.

  Berenkov hoped the break would not take long: Charlie Muffin was a problem that should be eradicated as quickly as possible.

  Chapter Thirty-four

  ‘It could be nothing,’ cautioned Sir Alistair Wilson, over the echoing, scrambled line, ‘but I think it’s sufficient for a warning.’

  ‘What?’ demanded Charlie.

  ‘The two men didn’t match,’ said the British Director. ‘But another picture did.’

  ‘With the man in Primrose Hill?’

  ‘No,’ declared the Director, ‘with a picture you sent of a woman described as Sulafeh Nabulsi.’

  Charlie frowned in the secure communications room of the Bern embassy, striving for recall. ‘The translator,’ he said, remembering.

  ‘We didn’t have a name, until your picture. All there was on our terrorist files were two other photographs, both blurred and indistinct. With the assessment that she was a fanatic,’ said Wilson.

  ‘A positive match!’

  ‘The technical physiognomy comparison suggests it’s the same person and two of our expert visual examiners here agree.’

  Charlie’s mind was far ahead of the conversation. Levy and Giles might believe in coincidence — his word, Charlie recalled — but he didn’t. So what connection was there between an apparent street attack on one translator with the Palestinian party and this sudden discrepancy with another? Charlie was sure the Israeli dossier upon the woman had not recorded any terrorist connections at all, like it had with some of the others. Aged thirty-four, he remembered further. Single and a language graduate from the University of Jerusalem. Her father had been listed as a doctor, practising in Ramallah, her mother dead. There had even been a number of teaching appointments he could not recall, apart from their having been in the Lebanon and Egypt. And from the University of Cairo there had been a further language degree. As the memories returned, Charlie had the most important recollection. The Israeli material had been indexed, with function descriptions of everyone. Now that Dajani had been incapacitated Sulafeh Nabulsi was not just another translator, she was the only translator. Charlie, a man of hunches, felt a familiar tingle: he had not known it for far too long. He said: ‘What have we got on her?’

  ‘Practically nothing, like I said,’ reminded Wilson. ‘The name even came from you. One of our photographs was supplied from Eygpt: she’s very much in the background of the Sadat attack. The other is from the Lebanon: it was taken at a mass funeral of guerillas who died in an Israeli air attack on Marjayoun, in the south.’

  ‘Why the insistence that she’s a fanatic?’

  ‘What information there is with both pictures describe her as belonging to the Fatah Revolutionary Command,’ said Wilson. ‘That’s the most extreme of the Palestinian factions. It’s led by Abu Nidal, who according to the Foreign Office has pledged his followers utterly against the accord being worked out in Geneva.’

  ‘None of this is in the Israeli dossier,’ disclosed Charlie.

  ‘I’m not prepared to be definite about it,’ said the Director, cautioning again. ‘I’m sending some stuff first thing tomorrow morning and I want you to warn Blom that it’s coming. Nothing has changed about our role. Which means your role. We’re advising. Nothing more.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I mean it, Charlie.’

  ‘I understand,’ assured Charlie, easily. He’d gone through the routine of fuzzy pictures with Blom and been patronizingly tolerated by Giles and Levy, just in case he came up with something they’d missed — which they had with this — and now it was time to return to normal, Charlie Muffin’s normal. Working by himself.

  ‘Anything new from your end?’ enquired the Director.

  The attack upon Dajani lifted the London information from the curious to the suspicious. Yet Sir Alistair himself acknowledged that the Nabulsi photographs could mean nothing. No purpose just yet then in crying wolf, Charlie thought, in self-justification. Easily again he said: ‘Not a thing.’

  ‘What’s the security like?’

  ‘Better than it was.’

  ‘Seems like it might have been a good idea for you to stay on, after all,’ said Wilson.

  ‘Could easily be.’

  ‘I said advisory, Charlie!’

  ‘I heard.’ To cover his arse he would eventually need to advise as ordered: and the problem with trying to be a one-man band was playing the trumpet and the trombone at the same time as banging the drum. Charlie said: ‘Any objection to Cummings coming back to Geneva with me?’

  ‘Why?’ demanded Wilson, the surprise obvious.

  Every cloud turns out to have a silver lining in the end, thought Charlie. He said: ‘The Swiss complained, don’t forget. It might be better if he were involved, as the local man whom they know and have worked with before.’

  There was a long silence from London. Wilson said: ‘Involved with what?’

  ‘Liaison,’ said Charlie. He hoped this part of the conversation didn’t continue much longer because there weren’t many words left before he fell over the edge.

  Wilson spoke slowly, spacing the delivery, wanting Charlie to understand every nuance. He said: ‘Strictly speaking, I disobeyed higher authority by not bringing you home.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Charlie, shortly.

  ‘Now there seems to be an excuse. Just.’

  ‘Yes,’ repeated Charlie.

  ‘This conversation — everything I’ve said — is being recorded at this end.’

  ‘I know,’ said Charlie. ‘It’s automatic.’

  ‘It’s a protection device, to ensure accuracy,’ said the Director. ‘Don’t forget it, will you?’

  ‘No,’ promised Charlie. ‘I won’t forget.’

  There was another discernible pause. ‘Have Cummings, if you think it’s necessary,’ conceded the Director.

  The Bern rezident suggested driving back to Geneva in his own car and Charlie readily agreed, wanting to be cocooned with his thoughts. There was a need to be careful, he accepted; despite the experts’ assessment the identification could still be mistaken. And the Dajani assault really could be concidence, although he didn’t personally believe coincidence, space ships, ghosts or that the world was round. That long-absent sensation wouldn’t go away, though: that tingle of anticipation, the gut feeling that at last something was going right after so much going wrong. Inside looking out, he’d told the Israeli. There would obviously have been the need for someone on the inside. Christ he’d been slow, not thinking of it before! Still not too late: almost, but not
quite.

  ‘I still don’t know what I am supposed to be doing,’ protested Cummings beside him. ‘What this is all about?’

  Charlie told the other man as much as he felt necessary, editing completely the restrictions imposed upon him by their Director in London, realizing as he talked that it would be an advantage to have a car. Beside him Cummings listened in increasing discomfort, physically shifting in his seat. Cummings had felt safe in Switzerland. It was one of the easiest postings in the service, a place where nothing ever happened and where his role had previously been to transmit between Bern and London low level intelligence judged so unimportant by both that neither side minded the other knowing. Which was how he wanted to continue, acting out the role of a special postman, enjoying the overseas allowances and the embassy cocktail parties and avoiding anything and everything which might upset the status quo. Like this, he recognized, worriedly.

  ‘I don’t believe it!’ he said.

  ‘Millions don’t.’

  ‘What do you want me to do?’

  ‘Sit in my hotel room and drink Harkness’s whisky until it comes out of your ears,’ said Charlie. He felt cheerful — ebullient — at finally having a pathway to follow.

  ‘What!’

  ‘I need a contact point: a number and a person I know will be there, when I call. Just leave the bathroom door open when you pee, so that you’ll hear the phone.’

  ‘Why!’

  ‘There’ll be a need to tell the Swiss.’ And I hope the time, Charlie thought, remembering Wilson’s injunction.

  ‘Why not tell them now?’

  ‘Because we don’t know enough to tell them anything, yet.’ Which was a lie and could get him hanging by his balls from the ceiling hook if it all went wrong and Wilson launched an enquiry.

  ‘What are you going to do?’ asked the man.

  ‘See what the second-class hotels of Switzerland are like,’ replied Charlie, nebulously. ‘And I’ll need this car, incidentally.’

  ‘I’m not sure about that,’ protested Cummings.