See Charlie Run

by Brian Freemantle

  ‘That the lot?’ asked Charlie.

  ‘Everything,’ promised Cartright. ‘Were you expecting more?’

  ‘Nothing separate, to you?’ pressed Charlie. It would be wrong to let the other man think he was a prick, even if he’d been a bit of one last night. He’d also expected something about the empty boast to Fredericks that he had power to abort. Charlie accepted that if the American had checked and London reacted wrongly he’d be in the shit, right up to his neck. Fredericks’ cleverness had gone beyond putting him under immediate surveillance; making the direct approach at the hotel had wrong-footed him into having to improvise.

  ‘That’s all there is,’ lied Cartright. Hurrying on in his discomfort, he said: ‘Do you want the code room?’

  ‘Not yet,’ said Charlie. ‘You can tell them I’ve arrived, OK?’

  Cartright looked doubtful. ‘I rather think they are expecting to hear from you,’ he said.

  I bet they are, thought Charlie: Harkness first in line, bleating about authority. He needed something to fight back with, before there was any contact. He was pretty sure Cartright had been appointed watchdog and regretted it: the man seemed nice enough and Charlie wanted friends, not enemies. He said: ‘Things to do first. It’s only a formality, after all. And you will check about the passport, won’t you?’

  ‘Certainly? Sure that’s all?’

  ‘There are telephones, in the code room?’ Let him work that out.

  ‘Of course.’

  Charlie recognized the standard design, trying to remember the first time he’d ever enclosed himself inside a secure capsule like this: certainly he’d been younger than Cartright. An inner, sealed chamber was supported by four metal struts he knew were tested weekly against electronic interception. The chamber was reached across a small walkway which lifted, separating it from the outer shell and isolating the occupant completely. The door had a system operated from the inside which displayed on the outer part a colour code designation, indicating the degree of sensitivity of the material being transmitted or received inside the sanctum, pink for the lowest through a varied rainbow to purple, the highest. Charlie itemised red, which was an exaggeration, and direct-dialled Hong Kong: Harry Lu’s telephone would not be secure, of course, but the electronic gadgetry in the code room prevented any trace of source if the conversation were intercepted.

  Harry Lu answered on the third ring, gruff-voiced from the sixty cigarettes a day. Charlie identified himself at once and then without pausing said: ‘You clear your end?’

  ‘No,’ confirmed Lu, aware at once from the query that it was an official call. ‘You?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Charlie, telling the other man he was in an embassy somewhere.

  It was still difficult for Lu to contain himself. ‘Charlie! For Christ’s sake, Charlie! I thought you were dead!’

  ‘Almost was,’ said Charlie. ‘Very much like it at least.’

  ‘Somewhere local, Charlie?’ asked Lu, guardedly.

  ‘Nearby,’ said Charlie, with equal caution.

  ‘Near enough for a meeting?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Pity, I’d have liked that. Talk over old times.’

  Charlie smiled at the cue: the man was bloody good. ‘Maybe new times as well,’ he said.

  ‘Not a lot of contact with head office,’ warned Lu.

  ‘Accountants are out to rule the world,’ guided Charlie.

  ‘Always a problem,’ said Lu, understanding.

  ‘Doing anything else?’ probed Charlie.

  ‘Things are very quiet,’ said Lu.

  ‘Maybe possible to put something your way.’

  ‘I’d like that,’ said Lu. ‘Be good to meet, too.’

  ‘Not going anywhere?’ asked Charlie, an important question. He wanted Lu instantly available if the need arose, as it might if he decided Kozlov’s defection were genuine: certainly now he wasn’t sure that he and Cartright held tickets for the same performance.

  ‘Best time of the year in Hong Kong,’ said Lu. Still searching, the man said: ‘What’s the weather like where you are?’

  Charlie grinned at the most frequently asked question during any long distance call, admiring again Lu’s expertise. He said: ‘About the same as yours, I would think.’

  ‘We’ll keep in touch then?’

  ‘Definitely,’ said Charlie.

  ‘Soon?’

  ‘Difficult to say, at the moment,’ cautioned Charlie. ‘Lot of clients to meet.’

  ‘Hope it goes well,’ said Lu, played the part.

  ‘Me too,’ said Charlie. ‘Might be some sticking points over the contract.’

  ‘Contracts can sometimes be difficult.’

  ‘This one might be particularly so.’

  ‘Good luck then, Charlie.’

  Hong Kong didn’t become part of China until 1997, and as a British possession it was certainly the best transit point in the area through which to smuggle something (or someone) Britain didn’t want the world to know (or see) was happening. Alerting Harry Lu was wise insurance, then: and it would be bloody good to see and work with the man again. Maybe even sort out the nonsense of making a few quid on his expenses. He said: ‘We’ll be in touch.’

  ‘I hope so, Charlie,’ said the other man. ‘I really hope so.’

  Charlie replaced the telephone, warmed by the contact. It was a comforting thought to have a consummate professional just down the road: well, practically, anyway. Other things were still uncertain. He had definitely expected some indication from London whether or not the Americans had called his bluff. And hadn’t got it. So there was no alternative but to continue bluffing. If the Americans had caught him out, he’d discover it soon enough.

  Fredericks answered at once and said: ‘I know this is a secure call.’

  Too anxious to recover, judged Charlie. He said: ‘You can train monkeys to watch embassies. What happened to your guy on the train this morning?’

  ‘Aren’t you the smart-ass!’ said Fredericks.

  ‘Thought it was proving time,’ said Charlie. If the chain were to be pulled, flushing him down the toilet, the hand had to be reaching up by now. So there was no further point in blowing bubbles at each other. He said: ‘So OK. Are we going to meet?’

  The silence lasted for several moments and then Fredericks said: ‘Of course we have a meeting. I thought we decided that last night.’

  Charlie grinned at the blank wall in front of him. He’d demanded a review as well as an encounter with Kozlov, and if Fredericks were agreeing to that then he was also agreeing to his seeing Kozlov. Things were on an upswing. Charlie said: ‘I’m glad things are working out,’ letting the sentence trail, so that ‘my way’ was clearly inferred.

  ‘This afternoon?’ suggested Fredericks, who got the point.

  The response showed yet more anxiety, like coming to the hotel the previous night. Recognizing that it was bridge-building time, Charlie said: ‘Why don’t I come down to see you at the embassy?’

  ‘That’ll be fine,’ said Fredericks, tightly.

  Charlie signalled his emergence from the code room and Cartright was waiting when he lowered the walkway and went back into the main body of the embassy. ‘Always feel uncomfortable in these things: like I’m in one of those funny spy films where people have code names and kill each other,’ said Charlie.

  ‘Sometimes it happens, and it isn’t in films,’ said Cartright.

  ‘You know something?’ said Charlie. ‘Until now it’s been a great day. You just pissed all over it.’

  ‘Well?’ demanded Wilson.

  ‘It could have been luck,’ said Harkness, with insufficient thought.

  ‘Luck had nothing to do with it,’ insisted the Director. ‘It was intelligent assessment from a damned good operator …’ He paused and said: ‘Disappointing that Witherspoon didn’t establish any possible connection.’

  Witherspoon was a protegé of the deputy director, who ignored the remark. Instead he said: ‘How did we get such a
n immediate confession out of Knott?’

  Wilson smiled and said: ‘Promise of an early parole review and a five-year reduction of the sentence.’

  ‘We’re going to do that!’ exclaimed Harkness, surprised at the concessions.

  ‘Of course not,’ said Wilson, surprised in his own turn. ‘I wanted a confession in a hurry and that was the way to get it. The bastard will serve his full time, with no remission or parole consideration.’

  ‘What about Herbert Bell: he’s dangerously in place.’

  ‘Don’t want another espionage trial, so soon upon the other one,’ said Wilson. ‘It would unsettle NATO more than they are at present: particularly the Americans. And I definitely don’t want any uncertainty between us and Washington, no matter how peripheral, until this business in Japan is settled.’

  ‘We can’t just leave him,’ protested Harkness. ‘He’s been positively identified as a Soviet spy.’

  ‘I’m not going to leave him,’ said Wilson. ‘I’m going to use him. I’m going to make Herbert Bell a conduit for as much confusing disinformation to Moscow as I can possibly manage. And then, when we do arrest him, the Russians won’t know what they can and what they can’t trust, out of everything he’s sent, for years.’

  ‘Let’s hope Charlie Muffin is as lucky in Japan as he was on this thing,’ said the deputy.

  ‘I keep telling you, it wasn’t luck,’ insisted Wilson. ‘Charlie’s better than most, for all his faults.’

  One day Charlie Muffin would make a mistake impossible to cover up or lie about, thought Harkness: a mistake he was determined to uncover and expose. Hopefully Cartright would provide it. Harkness wondered how long the Director’s strange loyalty would last, after Charlie Muffin made the inevitable slip.

  Kozlov concluded the arrangements with the letting agency and then went by himself to the apartment in Shinbashi, overlooking the Hamarikyu Garden and the sea beyond. Aware of the accommodation problems of Tokyo, Kozlov decided it was extremely good: a bedroom separate from a living area, a small kitchen and – most important – an existing telephone. The Russian would have enjoyed staying longer but he was late and Hayashi was important.

  Hayashi was waiting at the appointed railway-arch yakatori stall where it was a habit for homegoing commuters to stop, for chicken and sake. He smiled anxiously when he saw the Russian and said: ‘The message said it was important.’

  ‘You do control the military section of the airport?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Hayashi, at once. He’d ordered but wasn’t eating.

  ‘I must know of any US or British arrivals,’ said Kozlov.

  ‘I can guarantee it,’ promised Hayashi.

  Beneath the table Kozlov handed the man his retainer: a bourgeois revolutionary, thought the Russian, contemptuously.

  Chapter Five

  Charlie set himself the test as he left the embassy, guessing at the black Mazda, and got the confirmation that it was the CIA surveillance car when it pulled out at once and began following his taxi. Charlie turned back inside his vehicle, shaking his head. It was something he’d have to sort out with the American: things were going to be difficult enough as it was, without constant game playing between them. Not this sort of elementary game playing, anyway. He still needed positively to know whether Fredericks had checked his abort authorization. The man should have done, if he were the professional that Cartright suggested. And if the American believed he had the power, then Charlie knew he possessed the lever which put him slightly ahead, in the forthcoming bargaining. About bloody time. He tried to shrug off, literally, the irritation of the previous night. He’d been caught with his pants down and his pride had been hurt, but it was stupid – and worse, a distraction – to go on thinking about it. Keep it in mind, for when the opportunity came. But in its rightful, second place, where the need to even the score didn’t intrude.

  At the entrance to the compound he identified himself to the Marine guard and then again to the receptionist in the main vestibule. While the receptionist made a muffled telephone confirmation a second Marine checked his identification, closely comparing Charlie’s photograph against the man in front of him, obviously reluctant to allow him any further into the embassy.

  He’d worn a fresh shirt, too, thought Charlie. Indicating the photograph, he said: ‘I could have been in pictures. A star.’

  The soldier looked back, face unmoving. ‘You got any ID other than this?’

  Miserable bugger, thought Charlie. ‘Afraid not,’ he said.

  From behind the guard, the receptionist said: ‘Someone’s coming. Will you wait?’

  ‘There,’ said the unhappy Marine, pointing to a seating area near the door, where Charlie would have been directly in sight.

  Charlie ignored it, going instead to the American Tourist Office information rack and leafing through the brochures. It had been a long time since he’d been to America: during the time he’d been on the run from his own people, after setting the Directors up. Which had been a silly thing to do, he thought, in rare self-recrimination. They had been prepared to sacrifice him at a Berlin border crossing and so they deserved the embarrassment of Soviet arrest and humilating exchange. But he hadn’t properly calculated the personal cost. And not just the running and the hiding; he could have managed that, because so much of his professional life had involved running and hiding. It was the other things. If he hadn’t determined his own personal vengeance, Edith wouldn’t have been killed, in their retaliation hunt for him. So lonely, for so long. And then Natalia … Charlie snapped the unfocussed brochure shut, closing out with it the reflections and the unaccustomed self-pity. His wife was dead and Natalia beyond reach, and to think about either was another distraction he couldn’t afford: he’d made his mistakes and they couldn’t be undone and he had to live with them.

  ‘You’d never get a visa.’

  Charlie turned, to the huge figure of Art Fredericks, putting the booklet back into the rack. ‘Got some good references.’

  ‘Soviet or British?’

  Fuck you, thought Charlie. Take your pick,’ he said.

  Charlie walked deeper into the embassy alongside the CIA Resident, grinning at the Marine as he passed and thinking what an incongruous couple they must look; Charlie realized he scarcely reached the other man’s shoulders. There was a further identity check from more Marines at the actual entrance to the intelligence section of the embassy, and Fredericks signed his personal authority for Charlie’s admission. Beyond the desk, the corridors were blank walled and the doorways contained no glass, so that the offices beyond were completely concealed. Charlie looked up expectantly, found the camera monitor and winked.

  Fredericks’ office was large, because he was the CIA officer in charge, but it still didn’t seem big enough for the man. Charlie guessed the enormous enveloping chair had been specially imported. There was the obligatory US flag in the corner and the nameplate on the front of the desk, and behind, on a low cabinet, an array of sports pictures and pennants. Charlie identified the boxing prints and thought there was also a photograph of Fredericks in American football kit. It would, thought Charlie, have been a sight to see. On the desk itself was a family photograph of a pretty blonde-haired woman and two blonde-haired girls, faces of both dominated by freckles and a foundry’s supply of steel that always seemed to go into American teeth braces.

  ‘So we’re going to work together?’ said Charlie.

  ‘That was always the plan.’

  ‘You’re setting up the meeting for me, with Kozlov?’

  Fredericks hesitated, glad he’d given the undertaking the previous night and was not being forced into an open capitulation or admission of how he’d tried to screw the scruffy son-of-a-bitch. Harry Fish was right; the bag women on 42nd Street were in better shape. He said: ‘I’ve started things off. Like I said, it’ll take a while.’

  ‘You also said you thought Kozlov was genuine. Why?’

  There was another pause from the American. He’d worked his bu
tt off, regarding this as probably the most important case he was likely to encounter in a dozen years, and now this guy was coming in and expecting to be fed it all on a plate. ‘Everything he’s said checks out.’

  Charlie sighed, conscious of the attitude. Openly to challenge would make things worse. He said: ‘OK, let’s start at the beginning. Anything known, in your records?’

  Fredericks shook his head. ‘We’ve run the name – and his wife’s – through every computer there is: ours, FBI, NSA and military and navy. FBI have two Kozlovs, both who served in Washington at one time or another. One is now in the Soviet embassy in Ankara, the other in Paris …’

  ‘Photo-comparisons, to make sure they’re the same people?’ interrupted Charlie.

  ‘Of course we made photo checks!’ said Fredericks, irritably. ‘The Kozlovs who are in Ankara and Paris are the guys who were in Washington. Neither of the wives’ names were Irena, either. Kozlov’s clean.’

  ‘Sure that’s his real name?’

  ‘We’ve no way of telling.’

  Charlie frowned openly at the evasion. ‘You want me to believe you haven’t taken a photograph, during one of your four meetings!’

  Fredericks smiled, in reluctant admission. He said: ‘Twice. We freighted the pictures back to Washington. He’s not on any mug file we or any other agency have.’

  ‘Born?’

  ‘Leningrad, 1940.’

  ‘Age seem right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Anything unusual?’

  ‘Unusual?’ queried Fredericks.

  The man knew what he meant, for Christ’s sake! Charlie said: ‘Facial hair. Or lack of hair. Scars. A limp. Missing fingers. Jewellery. Odd-shaped rings. That kind of unusual.’