See Charlie Run

by Brian Freemantle

  ‘Irena,’ said Charlie, with forced patience, ‘I’m sharing your room, not your bed. An aeroplane you should have been on was blown out of the sky and this morning someone I liked a lot was killed, not more than a foot from where you stood …’ If it made her frightened, so what: frightened she was more malleable. He picked up: ‘I told you this afternoon I was going to keep you safe; and that means my staying in your room so let’s cut the shit. In shit, I’m an expert.’

  She looked down at herself, smoothing her hands over her pink-patterned suit. ‘I don’t have anything to change into.’

  Charlie sighed: on top of everything else, he had to get the KGB’s original Vestal Virgin. He’d been sure there weren’t any. He said: ‘I’ll stay outside, while you get into bed.’

  In the corridor it was the first time Charlie and Cartright had been alone. Cartright said at once: The Americans insist they haven’t got her husband. A navy ship isn’t possible: there isn’t one for a thousand miles. So it’s got to be a plane again; the troop leader’s name is Clarke. Due early tomorrow morning: there wasn’t a definite time when I spoke to the signals station. And London are as mad as hell about that, incidentally: about a lot of things.’

  ‘You know the American expression SNAFU?’ asked Charlie, wearily.

  ‘No,’ said Cartright.

  ‘Situation normal: all fucked up.’

  ‘This is serious, Charlie.’

  ‘It was serious when Harry Lu got a bullet in his eye.’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Cartright. He looked at the closed door and said: ‘She’s not easy, is she?’

  ‘Easier than she was,’ assured Charlie.

  ‘Why don’t I spell you, during the night?’

  There wasn’t any point in going absolutely without sleep, Charlie thought: he’d done enough of that. ‘Thanks,’ he accepted. He knocked on the door and said: ‘You ready?’

  Irena was lying with the grey covers up to her chin and Charlie wondered again about companions for the bathroom cockroaches. He put his hand against his ribs and said: ‘You really shouldn’t worry. Rape always gives me a stitch in my side. Just here.’

  ‘Where are you going to be?’

  It was a good question, in a shitty room like this. Charlie perched at the bottom on the bed, on the side opposite to her and with his back uncomfortably against the metal bed-edge. ‘This far away.’

  Irena smiled, an expression difficult to define, and said: i suppose I could spare a pillow.’

  Charlie wasn’t at all sure he wanted one, from a bed like that, but he said ‘Thanks’ and she manoeuvred one from beneath the sheets, still managing to keep herself covered. He made a support for his back and tried to get comfortable.

  ‘I want the light left on,’ she said.

  Usually the request was made in different circumstances, thought Charlie. He said: ‘Richard is relieving me, incidentally. Don’t panic at someone else coming into the room.’

  She turned heavily on to her side, away from the light, bringing the covers further up so that he could not see her face. Charlie gazed around the decayed room and then at his watch: Christ, it hadn’t even gone ten! Should have brought a bottle back from the restaurant: the rice wine had been good, like the food. Pity Irena hadn’t enjoyed it. Her breathing seemed heavier, but Charlie didn’t think she was really asleep. Maybe a good idea he hadn’t brought any wine back. Better that he sat there, boringly sober, and started all over again, from that moment in Wilson’s office if necessary, and ran everything over just one more time, trying to find the key that would unlock all the doors so far remaining steadfastly shut in his face. Irena shifted, a settling movement, and Charlie eased slightly away, giving her room. It ruckled his jacket, awkwardly. He went away further, actually from the bed, taking the jacket off and hoping she didn’t look over her tented barrier and start yelling rape: in a place like this, there wouldn’t be a translation for the word, in any known language. As he did so Charlie detected in an inside pocket the Hyatt bill that Cartright had given him earlier: like Cartright had said, Harkness would want it, to make his tidy sums add up in their tidy columns. He took it out, glancing without interest at the total and then stopped, looking closer, at first unsure in the dull light. Charlie stayed unmoving for a long time, although bringing his eyes up quite quickly from the no longer necessary bill. Then, quietly now, not wanting to disturb her yet, he went to the always-carried shoulder bag containing the material the Director had freighted from London, looking not for that but for the other bill he’d sent Harry Lu to pay that first night in Hong Kong: he remembered using the same phrase then – about keeping things clean – that he had today to Cartright. It was in the side-pocket, still in the special departure envelope that the Mandarin always gave. The initial check only took Charlie seconds, but after so many mistakes and wrong turns – and with at last something which might at least lead him part way out of the maze – he determined to be sure, so he went right up to the bedside, directly beneath the light.

  Fuck me, he thought. And then, that they had. He went back to the base with its supportive pillow and said: ‘Irena!’

  She didn’t respond at once and so Charlie said again: ‘Irena! You’re not asleep: I know you’re not asleep.’

  She came over the bedclothes, looking at him. ‘What?’

  ‘I think we’ve got things to talk about.’

  Irena pushed the coverings down still further, although remaining completely concealed. ‘What?’ she asked again.

  ‘Everything,’ said Charlie. ‘Everything you’ve got to tell me.’

  Olga didn’t know – couldn’t remember – how long the aimless wandering had gone on through the alleys and then the wider streets of Macao. The floating casino was a positive recollection, the beginning of the gradual recovery, because she’d dropped the gun into the water there, tensed against the splash between the boat and the jetty that had sounded to her like the explosion that guns usually made when they were fired but appeared to be heard by nobody else. And where the second fear had immediately come, that it wouldn’t sink, because it was plastic and light and floated initially on the surface while people jostled past behind her, eyes only for the fan-tan tables: and then the barrel seeped and filled with water and it gurgled down and still no one had seen. She supposed she must have taken a taxi to the ferry, but she couldn’t remember: her concentration had been upon the terminal itself, apprehensive of thronged police and person-by-person checks which never occurred because when she arrived the departures proceeded quite normally, without any interruption. The crossing to Kowloon was gone, too – not completely, but almost – and it was not until she finally regained the mainland that any positive recollection and cohesion started to formulate in her mind. She knew she had to get off the streets and she took a hotel which smelled and where babies cried, comparatively close to the Kowloon arrival jetty. And then she knew she had to speak to Yuri in Tokyo, at the Shinbashi apartment where he would be waiting according to their strictly time-tabled schedule to hear that everything had gone as they’d hurriedly planned, and that Irena was dead and they were secure, forever. Which they weren’t: couldn’t be, not now. Because she’d failed. Olga actually felt out towards the telephone several times, never once able to lift the receiver. Finally – instead – she let herself go sideways, against a counterpane that smelled like everything else.

  ‘Oh God,’ she said, uttering the forbidden word for the first time. ‘Oh, dear God, what am I going to do?’

  There was a bizarre irony in that Olga Balan and the CIA group led by Art Fredericks – each of whom were pursuing Irena Kozlov for different reasons – were both at that moment just over a mile from the Asia, where the woman sat upright against the bedhead, still covered but confronting Charlie Muffin.

  ‘I’m waiting,’ said Charlie.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Irena drew her feet up, creating a more positive barrier, the bedclothes still protective, staring at him but not saying anything, and Ch
arlie refused to prompt with a positive question, just staring back. The hotel sighed and breathed around them, but in the room there was a silence noisy between them.

  After a long time, Charlie said: ‘Well?’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean … what you want.’

  ‘Look at the hotel bills,’ said Charlie, pointing to where they lay, between them.

  To pick them up Irena had to reach over the clothing and from the straps Charlie saw she still wore her bra. The woman made as if to study them but Charlie knew it wasn’t necessary for her. He didn’t know enough to ask probing questions, although he was giving the impression he did; the leads had to come from her. He said: ‘That really wasn’t very clever, was it? Careless, in fact.’

  ‘I still don’t know what you mean … what I’m supposed to have done wrong.’

  ‘Look again,’ urged Charlie, trying sarcasm. ‘It’s marked with a T, on both accounts. Stands for telephone. The second symbol – still on both accounts – indicates long distance. You’re supposed to be running, Irena: hiding were no one can find you. And all the time you’re making long-distance telephone calls …’ Charlie stopped, intentionally. He – or perhaps the British service – was being set up but he couldn’t work out how, so she had to provide the way to let him understand.

  She smiled, an obviously open expression, and it surprised him although Charlie didn’t think it showed. She said: ‘Is that all?’

  ‘You tell me,’ persisted Charlie. Come on, come on!

  ‘It was all part of the caution,’ she said. ‘The way Yuri devised to stop anyone tricking us. You. Or the Americans.’

  ‘Yuri!’ exclaimed Charlie. He had the impression of a very small corner of a very dark curtain being lifted. But not enough.

  ‘You know how careful Yuri was: how he always knew the Americans would try to cheat; you, too, if you could.’ The woman sat now with her arms comfortably wrapped around her knees, relaxed. ‘He never planned to go across, not at the same time as me. Always he was going to wait, until he knew I was safe … that way he could have forced the Americans to release me: keep to the bargain …’ The smile came again, rehearsed, like the words sounded. ‘He loves me, you see …’

  Charlie sat absolutely unmoving, needing to consider it all, analyse it properly: he would have liked hours – days – but he knew he didn’t have either, just a few minutes to think it through and get it right, after so long. And he had been right, that first day in the Director’s office, when he’d said it didn’t make sense: right, too, in the continuous feeling of uncertainty. Which was still there. Bits of the puzzle were beginning to fit together but there were still some pieces missing. The biggest piece was why? Charlie remembered a man named Sampson who called him sir and Harry Lu without an eye and wanted to shout and make demands from the woman but instead, rigidly controlled, he actually managed to smile back at her, encouraging, and said: ‘Tell me about it, Irena. Tell me how it worked.’

  ‘Very simply,’ she said. ‘We couldn’t liaise through the embassy, of course. Too dangerous. So he took an apartment, a safe house. The telephone there …’ She stopped, nodding towards the hotel accounts with the long-distance calls. ‘That was the contact point …’

  Charlie didn’t want to interrupt the flow, but he needed to get the sequence right so he risked it. He said: ‘The day we first met, on the bus: when the Americans were following? You spoke to Yuri then?’

  She nodded: ‘That was the arrangement: I’ve just told you.’

  ‘Where from, that day?’

  ‘The airport. Osaka.’

  Charlie remembered something else from the tourist bus ride. He said: ‘A military plane!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That same day on the bus: when I told you about Osaka you said you thought we’d go out from Tokyo and then you said “A military plane”. Why? Why specifically a military and not a commercial plane?’

  For a moment Irena looked uncertain and then she shrugged and said: ‘We had a source, at the airport. We knew about your people coming in. The Americans, too.’

  ‘When?’ demanded Charlie. ‘When did you know?’

  ‘The night before.’

  The idea came to Charlie and it irritated him because it was stupid and so he dismissed it. Trying to make the question seem as casual as it could be, in the circumstances, Charlie said: ‘How was Yuri, when you spoke to him that time? From Osaka?’

  Irena shrugged and said: ‘He was …’ And then she stopped, both the gesture and the sentence.

  ‘Was what?’ pressed Charlie.

  ‘Nothing,’ she said.

  ‘Was what?’ repeated Charlie.

  ‘I thought he sounded strange; asked him about it. He said there was nothing wrong but perhaps he was nervous,’ remembered the woman.

  ‘He didn’t say anything about the plane blowing up?’

  ‘Not then?’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Hong Kong,’ said Irena. ‘Harry took me to the Mandarin when the plane wasn’t there and I called …’ She felt out, touching the hotel bill. ‘And Yuri told me what had happened …’ She paused and said: ‘I’ve told you about the bills now. Is this really necessary?’

  Instead of answering, Charlie said, angrily: ‘And I missed it!’

  ‘Missed what?’

  ‘When I got to the Mandarin you asked a lot of questions, but you kept on about blowing the plane up,’ reminded Charlie. ‘And I already knew Harry hadn’t told you, because I asked him. And I hadn’t, either. Shit!’ Would Harry still be alive, if he’d been more alert? Maybe, like his wife would still be alive if he’d been more alert, all those years ago.

  ‘Does it matter?’

  Charlie opened his mouth to reply but managed to halt the anger once more. Instead he said: ‘Go on. Tell me what Yuri said, when you spoke to him from Hong Kong?’

  ‘That the destruction of the plane showed how necessary it was, to maintain the arrangement … that it showed what the Americans were prepared to do …’

  ‘Moving!’ interrupted Charlie again. ‘You knew we were moving on because Harry had already told you. Did you tell Yuri?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Irena, grimacing as if it were another unnecessary question.

  ‘What did he say to that?’

  ‘That we had to go on being careful … that he would go on refusing to make any contact with the Americans until he knew I was safe …’ Irena stopped again and said, in head-lowered recollection: ‘And he called me darling.’

  Was the earlier idea so stupid, wondered Charlie. Maybe, but then maybe not. It was still something difficult to believe. He said: ‘How was he going to know that: that you were safe?’

  ‘The same way.’

  ‘You were to keep telling him where you were?’

  She nodded and then said: ‘The last time from the airport.’

  ‘So you called from the Hyatt?’

  She gave another smile and said: ‘There it is, on the bill.’

  Poor birch, thought Charlie: poor, stupid bitch, hearing what she wanted to hear, believing what she wanted to believe. He suddenly remembered the momentary brightness, just before they went out to eat, when she might have imagined she was to be left alone; and then the absurd modesty of getting into bed that night, which he didn’t think now had been modesty at all. He said: ‘What about from here! Have you called to tell him you’re here!’

  ‘I haven’t been able to, have I?’

  Charlie covered the sigh of relief, convinced he was right but recognizing at the same time it was all surmise. Unless there were something more she still hadn’t told him. ‘How many calls?’

  She blinked at the demand. ‘I don’t …’

  ‘From the time you met me, how many calls, to Yuri in Tokyo!’ insisted Charlie.

  Irena hesitated, head bent again as she enumerated in her mind. ‘Osaka …’ she said, slowly. Then, gathering conviction: ‘The Mandarin …’ She looked up, satisfied. ‘And from Macao …’
r />   ‘Three!’ persisted Charlie. ‘Only three!’

  ‘Yes!’ she said, her demand matching his. ‘I’ve told you all there is! I want to go to sleep now: I’m tired.’

  ‘No!’ refused Charlie.

  ‘What do you mean, no?’

  ‘You don’t believe it, do you, Irena? Not after what happened today?’

  ‘You’re not making sense.’

  ‘A lot hasn’t, until now,’ said Charlie. Bringing in the recall again – the recall upon which he’d always relied so heavily but which this time had failed, too often – Charlie quoted: ‘“It’s got to be the Americans, hasn’t it?”’

  She looked steadily at him, pretending not to remember, refusing to speak.

  Relentlessly Charlie went on: ‘Your words, Irena. Today. But it hasn’t got to be the Americans, has it? We know – both know – what the Americans want; you, alive. Not in the wreckage of an aircraft or dead against the wall of a church that no longer exists. That’s what doesn’t make sense – never has – their trying to kill you.’

  ‘You told me they blew up the plane!’ she fought back.

  ‘It seemed the only logical conclusion, then,’ admitted Charlie. ‘It doesn’t now, not any longer.’

  ‘Who then!’

  ‘You tell me,’ said Charlie. ‘Who else but the Americans?’

  ‘You’re talking nonsense!’

  ‘What exactly am I saying that’s nonsense?’ said Charlie.

  She shook her head, eyes downcast again.

  ‘What exactly am I saying that’s nonsense, Irena?’

  Still she refused to speak.

  ‘Today was a professional attempt,’ continued Charlie. ‘Special gun: we both know that. Like we both know that Harry wasn’t the real target: that you were. Who’s the professional trying to kill you, Irena?’

  The woman came up, in furious anger. ‘Not Yuri!’ she screamed, and Charlie was glad it was the sort of hotel it was. ‘He loves me,’ Irena raged on. ‘I keep telling you that …’ Her mind snagged on another thought, one she snatched at. More quietly, reasoning with an unarguable point, she said: ‘And it couldn’t have been Yuri, could it? How could he be in Tokyo, talking to me, and be in Macao, as well?’