See Charlie Run

by Brian Freemantle

  Obvious, thought Charlie again. He said: ‘What about Macao?’

  Lu frowned. Surprise? Or annoyance at a change to an already-conceived arrangement? wondered Charlie.

  ‘It’s small,’ argued Lu.

  ‘That’s the problem: everywhere’s small and easily covered,’ said Charlie. ‘But it’s an alternative, isn’t it?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ said Lu, still reluctant.

  ‘We’ll make it Macao,’ decided Charlie. To the woman, he said: ‘Let’s go.’

  At the doorway she stopped, looking directly at him. She said: ‘You lied. Everything has gone wrong. I know it has.’

  Olga Balan used an Australian passport – describing her as a single woman named Hebditch – and landed in Hong Kong on the gritty-eyed dawn arrival flight which was the first available, and which had originated in Hawaii, with a Tokyo stop-over. Not that it would have been possible for her to have slept, had she tried. She knew she was right, in telling Yuri they were trapped. They were trapped and she felt trapped. Unless she killed Irena. Why couldn’t Yuri have understood, when she said she was frightened! But then how could he know? No one knew. Only her.

  Chapter Twenty

  Charlie fought against the light-headedness of fatigue, trying to calculate the last time he’d properly slept and abandoning the exercise because it was an intrusion and there were enough intrusions already. At least Irena Kozlov was safely resting now. He hoped. Like he hoped so much else.

  It was omens time and certainly luck had been following them with the hydrofoil. They’d managed to catch the last one to the Portugese colony, changed the harbour cab for another once they reached the tiny township and used a third to cross the sweeping bridge over the Pearl River to the Hyatt. Where he’d spent exactly five minutes in his own room, after settling Irena, before moving again. Not strictly true. There’d been the further fifteen minutes in the bar with Harry, trying to restore things between them and drinking the Scotch he’d needed at the time but now wished he hadn’t had, because it was contributing to his tiredness. Had he buggered things up with Harry? Certainly with the suspicion in front of Irena, but alone, in the bar, the man had appeared to relax: actually showed photographs of his Chinese wife whose name translated to Dawn Rising and their child, a five-year-old girl called Open Flower. Not just relaxing, Charlie accepted. It had been necessary for the man to introduce his family, so there would be no mistakes about the entry documents required. Wrong to read too much into it then.

  Charlie sighed, staring through the water-flecked windows of the early morning return hydrofoil at the land chips of the outlying islands, haloed in a permanent haze-made rainbow. Wrong, as well, to dwell too long upon it. Harry had made his ultimatum clear enough, so it was ridiculous for either of them to imagine their relationship remaining as it had been, no matter how many different ways Harry said it was nothing personal and Charlie assured him there were no hard feelings. If Harry blew the whistle on him to the Americans, it was going to be very personal indeed and his feelings were going to be hard, fucking hard. And they both knew it.

  There were other far more immediate considerations. Like keeping ahead of a mob-handed CIA squad now backed by some sort of military presence on a colony all too easily sealed. And placating a nervously demanding woman who knew very well things had gone disastrously wrong, despite the lies he tried to make sound convincing. And most important of all, at this moment, conning his way into one of the most secret spy installations maintained by Britain.

  The hydrofoil edged alongside the pier from which he’d left just a few hours earlier, and Charlie slotted himself into the main body of departing passengers, instinctively using them as cover. He ignored the waiting taxis, walking instead towards the clustered-together Connaught Centre and Chartered Bank and the Landmark complex, giant trees that man made. Tiredness carried the usual ache from his feet into his legs and Charlie envied the people around him who’d slept the previous night. Further to clear his trail he detoured off the main highway several times, moving through side alleys where he could be more aware of people around him; outside several shops incense sticks burned from tiny holders to fend off evil spirits, and Charlie hoped the protection extended to passers-by who needed it, like he did.

  He waited until Exchange Square with its fresh skyscrapers before hailing a cab. Once more he was cautious, isolating Repulse Bay for the first leg, settling back against the seat and momentarily closing his eyes against the growing sun glare as the vehicle began its climb over Victoria Peak. Almost at once he felt the sink of sleep and blinked awake, fighting it off, knowing he’d feel worse if he relaxed and had to start functioning again, after only an hour.

  How easy would it be, to get into the Composite Signals Station? Something else he should have fixed with the Director, before severing contact in Tokyo: just like he should have agreed to the despatch of some sort of military aircraft. Charlie shifted, moving against the recurring drowsiness but also in irritation, worried at the things he had overlooked. If you lose your touch, my boy, your balls are going to end up on a hook, he told himself.

  The car started its descent from the high spine of the island, edging down to sea level on the back-upon-itself road, and after one of the curves Charlie caught the first sight of the orange-roofed villas of Repulse Bay and thought it looked like a part of the French Riviera that had been put down for a moment and then forgotten.

  He paid the cab off by the beach and walked slowly further into the tiny settlement while the taxi reversed and then set off for the return trip. It was more difficult than he’d thought it would be to get another car, and when he finally managed it and gave the address at Chung Hom Kok he was aware of the driver’s examination, in the mirror. To be expected, Charlie supposed. The Composite Signals base is an electronic intelligence-gathering installation with equipment sufficiently powerful for Britain to listen to radio and telephone communication as far away as Beijing and to both the Soviet naval headquarters at Vladivostok and the Russian rocket complex on Sakhalin Island. Charlie wondered what would happen to it after 1997: it would certainly be on a spy category list even greater than any upon which Harry Lu’s name appeared. Moscow were probably shitting themselves, aware of how the Chinese could use the ready-made and well functioning station. He hoped to Christ he could use it too.

  He came forward in his seat as the car approached. There were a lot of angled radio dishes and Nissen-hut hedgehogs of bristling radio antennae, but like most secret installations Charlie had ever visited, it still looked like a temporary army barracks, ready for a war. Which perhaps it was. Alert, Charlie saw the camera monitor manoeuvre to their arrival, to record the car – and its number – before he even alighted, and as he walked towards the gate-house Charlie registered the inner protection of wire which he guessed was electrified and the further array of cameras beyond that focussed upon him and guessed the perimeter would be sensor-seeded, to detect any entry which got past either.

  Self-rehearsed, Charlie asked for the guard commandant, and when the man – sparse-haired, sun-worship brown and in a tropical uniform so uncreased Charlie expected the starch to crack with each movement – came curiously across the quadrangle, Charlie asked for the duty officer. For identification he provided his Foreign Office registry number, as well as his name. It was obvious that the registry number meant something to the man, who withdrew without asking any questions: seconds after he disappeared into what appeared to be the main administrative building at the end of the entry road Charlie heard the muffled ring of a telephone in the gatehouse complex, and soon after that three more uniformed gatehouse attendants appeared to support their original colleague and Charlie accepted he was under guard. Which was fine with him and he wished he had more of it. He smiled at them. No one responded, but at least there wasn’t the disdain of the American embassy reception in Tokyo.

  Charlie had hoped to get through the gatehouse area, but the crackling-uniformed officer returned with another man who also w
ore a tropical suit but this one bagged and was actually dirty at the cuffs and lapel edges, the shirt rumpled beneath. Charlie thought he looked the sort of bloke to suffer the morning-after ravages of bad meat pies, but perhaps that was too much to expect.

  The telephone call Charlie detected had gone further than he imagined because at the approach of the two men one of the additional guards opened a side door, gesturing Charlie into what he saw, when he got inside, to be an interview room. With the obvious limit on talking, Charlie passingly thought an interview room was an unnecessary luxury.

  The crumpled man came in alone and did not attempt to identify himself. Instead he gestured with the paper upon which the commandant had recorded the registry number and demanded: ‘Where did you get this?’

  ‘It’s mine,’ insisted Charlie. Before the man could speak, Charlie added his department categorization, its clearance level, the communication code to London, with its standby alternative, and the demand code for the Director. ‘You’ll need to take a note, so I’ll repeat them more slowly,’ he finished. He’d just disclosed enough for a ten-year sentence under the Official Secrets Act, Charlie realized; maybe not as much as ten years. He’d only got fourteen for screwing two intelligence Directors. Certainly five then; and perhaps this time not the way out he’d been offered before.

  There was a barely discernible relaxation in the man’s attitude. He said: ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Communication,’ said Charlie, simply. ‘Believe you’re good at it here.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ rejected the man, at once.

  ‘Ask London,’ said Charlie. When the man remained impassive, Charlie added: ‘Please!’

  The duty officer looked towards the door behind which Charlie knew the four guards would still be waiting. Charlie extended his hands, palm upwards, and said urgently: ‘You have a facsimile machine here: take a full set of fingerprints and check them out with London, in addition to what I’ve already given you.’

  ‘You seem to be in a great hurry,’ said the man, still doubtful.

  ‘A hell of a hurry,’ agreed Charlie. ‘An emergency. Call London …’ He hesitated and added again: ‘Please.’ It had always been a difficult word for him.

  ‘It’s not the purpose or function of this facility,’ said the man, adamantly.

  ‘I said it was an emergency!’

  ‘I heard what you said.’

  Charlie felt the sweat bubble, burst and then find its way down his back. He nodded towards the door. ‘Effectively I’m under arrest, even though I haven’t penetrated any part of this establishment. You can do with me what you like. I’m no danger, to you or anything that you’re doing here. All I want is secure liaison with London …’ The indication this time was to the paper upon which the man had made his notes. ‘You know that’s not bullshit.’

  ‘I know that if it’s genuine you’ve broken a lot of regulations.’

  Dear God spare me from another Witherspoon, thought Charlie. He said: ‘Which I know. Like I said, an emergency …’ The thought came suddenly and Charlie said: ‘You’ll have to make contact with London anyway now, won’t you?’

  ‘I’ll need a passport as well as fingerprints,’ said the man.

  ‘You can have whatever you want,’ said Charlie, relieved.

  There was a delay bringing the inkpad and paper, and when the man finally left the room Charlie experimentally tried the door and found it to be locked. He smiled, appreciatively, not offended. He’d risked – and endangered – everything by coming here like this. He closed his eyes, in brief contemplation rather than prayer: just one wrong word, the smallest misconception, and he’d be down the drain without even touching the sides. He was becoming accustomed to the perpetual apprehension.

  It was a full hour before the man returned, an hour when, despite attempts not to, Charlie kept lapsing into a half-sleep, slumped awkwardly in a stiffly upright chair in an oppressively hot room. He dreamed but consciously, all the time part of him aware of what was happening, confronting a mental mirror of disjointed images: exploding planes and threatening Americans, an emotionless Russian and a big woman whose voice was too loud and who spoke with her hands on her hips, and more threats, from a Chinese who looked like a European this time, and then the voices and the faces and the threats got further confused, coming from the wrong faces with the wrong voices, and that aware part of him, the part that knew it was a dream anyway, tried to get everything back together, in their right compartments, properly to understand what was really happening, and that same, conscious reasoning part of his mind told him he’d come back to the major difficulty and that he still didn’t understand what was really happening, not at all.

  He heard the turn of the key and managed to rouse himself to avoid the duty officer realizing how close he was to exhaustion; fully awake, Charlie realized he’d been right to fight against the collapse in the taxi on the way here. Now he felt bloody awful and some of the images still overlaid each other, more confused than they should have been.

  ‘You’re to come,’ announced the man.

  Not that his knowing mattered, apart from pride, but Charlie managed to conceal the relief from the other man. The guards were outside and formed up into some sort of loose escort, restricting him precisely to where he was to go. It was to the main building and down a central corridor: politely Charlie indicated no interest in things that were not supposed to concern him, but there was an impression of sterility. There were no festooned notice-boards or indications of occupancy and like the CIA Residency at the American embassy none of the doors he passed showed any designation.

  The communications chamber was not suspended, like those to which he was accustomed at embassies throughout the world, and it was far larger than he expected. There were telex and facsimile and photo-transmission and radio and secure telephone equipment Charlie knew how to operate, but there were also two separate banks of what appeared to be radio apparatus that he did not recognize and which he accepted he would be incapable of using. In addition there were six television sets, separated in booths with an individual chair before each. Charlie guessed they were for visual communication but wasn’t sure: the operating controls were on separate panels, linked by curled wire.

  ‘Do you need any assistance?’ asked the unnamed duty officer.

  ‘I think I can manage,’ said Charlie. ‘And thanks.’

  ‘There’s going to be trouble over this,’ predicted the man.

  ‘It seems to happen,’ said Charlie.

  ‘You’re to wait, for London to come through.’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘We’ll be right outside …’ The duty officer paused and then added heavily: ‘All of us.’

  The call came, on a red telephone in the second bank, minutes after the man quit the room. At once Sir Alistair Wilson said critically: ‘The only thing you didn’t provide was the colour of your underwear.’

  ‘After what’s happened, it might have been embarrassing,’ said Charlie.

  ‘Have you got the woman?’

  ‘Yes.’

  There was a discernible sigh of relief, and the Director said: ‘Thank Christ for that.’

  ‘But there are problems,’ deflated Charlie, at once. Again, as in Tokyo, Wilson let him talk uninterrupted, and Charlie was surprised how quickly he was able to set out the overlapping and conflicting difficulties: something so complicated should have taken longer.

  The Director didn’t waste time with comment. The moment Charlie finished, Wilson said: ‘Harry Lu needs resolving first.’

  ‘I don’t really blame him, in the circumstances,’ said Charlie. He owed the man that at least, from their past friendship.

  ‘Him, his wife and his child?’

  ‘English residency,’ confirmed Charlie.

  ‘You really believe he’d do it?’

  ‘To get to America instead of England, as a second choice, sure he would,’ said Charlie. ‘Wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ agr
eed Wilson, at once.

  ‘Is it possible?’ asked Charlie.

  ‘It’ll have to be made possible,’ determined Wilson.

  ‘I can tell him it’s fixed then?’

  There was a hesitation from London and then the Director said: ‘Yes, you can tell him it’s fixed.’

  ‘He’ll want more than a promise.’

  ‘Everything will be available, at the High Commission.’

  ‘Which leaves the Americans,’ said Charlie, moving on.

  ‘Who insist they haven’t got Kozlov,’ said Wilson. Now it was Charlie’s turn to listen without interruption as the other man recounted the exchanges at Director level. Wilson did so in complete detail, even setting out the inconclusive analysis he and Harkness had attempted, afterwards.

  ‘Nothing about this makes any sense at all,’ said Charlie.

  ‘We’ve got the woman,’ reminded the Director. ‘That’s the one positive fact. And we’ve got to keep her.’

  ‘US military, with transport as well as CIA,’ said Charlie.

  ‘We’ll send another military pick-up, right away.’

  ‘The Americans will go for her,’ forecast Charlie. ‘That’s why they’re here!’

  This time the pause was longer than any before. Finally Wilson said: ‘Hong Kong is too diplomatically sensitive, with the Chinese take-over so close, for a major incident.’

  ‘What about a naval boat: get her away at sea and transfer her later on, somewhere where the Americans couldn’t interfere?’ suggested Charlie.

  ‘There soon won’t be a department of the British government you haven’t involved in this!’ said the Director.

  ‘You plan to give her up then?’

  ‘Of course I don’t intend to give her up!’ said Wilson. ‘A ship is a possibility: I’ll check if there are any in the area.’

  ‘Anything more from Tokyo, on the plane explosion?’

  ‘Forensic reports will take days,’ said the Director. ‘So I think Cartright should come down to you: we can monitor the Tokyo investigation through the Air attaché.’