‘What for?’
‘To get rid of Irena. That’s why the plane blew up and Harry Lu got shot.’
‘You mean he pushed her across and then put his people in pursuit!’ said Fredericks, incredulous.
‘Yes,’ said Charlie, shortly. He intended telling them only what he had to, and that didn’t include anything about Olga: they might learn about her later, in the little time available to them, if they were lucky.
‘That’s ridiculous!’ refused Fredericks.
‘Did you blow up the plane in Tokyo?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Or shoot Harry Lu?’
‘No,’ said Fredericks, more quietly and with obvious growing acceptance.
‘Well we certainly didn’t destroy a squad of our own soldiers or kill our leading agent here, did we?’ demanded Charlie. ‘So who the hell did?’
‘Jesus!’ said Fredericks. He looked sideways at Yamada’s return. The man said: ‘Pakistan Airways confirm that a Rose Adams and a Richard Cartright were on the London flight. And it was scheduled to land at the time he said.’
Charlie decided Yamada’s re-entry had come precisely at the right moment, one truth coming right on top of another accepted truth. He said: ‘I can make him come across to you.’
Fredericks sat regarding him cautiously. ‘How?’
‘How is my business,’ refused Charlie. ‘You want him or not?’
‘Why?’ said Fredericks, the suspicion more open now. ‘If you’ve got some way of making Kozlov cross over, why not keep him for yourself?’
The American had isolated the weakest part of the whole proposition, accepted Charlie: he hoped he’d prepared a strong enough reply. Greatly exaggerating but knowing there was no risk in being caught out, Charlie began: ‘He doesn’t want England. We’ve got Irena.’
‘There’d be no reason for them ever to get together,’ persisted Fredericks.
The man wasn’t stupid, Charlie decided. He was glad he’d started as he had. He said: ‘I told you about Bill Paul, one of your guys, when Kozlov was in England. And Valeri Solomatin?’
Fredericks nodded, remembering the reverberations the information had brought from Langley.
‘That wasn’t the only killing,’ said Charlie. ‘There was an anti-Soviet politician named Harold McFairlane, who was expected to become our Prime Minister. Kozlov knows we’ve the proof that it was him and thinks we’d charge him, once we’d debriefed him.’
‘What about Paul? And Solomatin?’ questioned Fredericks, at once.
‘He doesn’t have any idea that you know,’ said Charlie, honestly.
‘Would your people charge him?’
‘Probably,’ said Charlie, the cynicism prepared like everything else. ‘Can you imagine the uproar in Parliament if they found out we were protecting someone who’d assassinated a government minister! And if we’d got all we wanted from Kozlov, a public trial would be a hell of a propaganda coup against the Russians, wouldn’t it? Your people will arraign him, if there’s a benefit in it. You know they will.’
Fredericks was nodding, agreeing the amoral logic of an amoral business, and Charlie wondered if the same argument would work when he used it later, but in reverse. Fredericks smiled, the briefest of insincere expressions, and said: ‘I think we’ve got a deal.’
Directly regarding Elliott, Charlie said: ‘Straight play: no fucking about?’
‘Straight play,’ agreed the CIA supervisor.
‘I can make him cross. Or I can make him stay, by letting him know I’ve told you about the CIA magazine people,’ insisted Charlie, unhappy with the quick assurance. ‘If I pick up any surveillance … anything I don’t like …’ He gave himself the necessary pause. ‘If I get the slightest impression that I’m not safe, he stays. And you’re all drawing Welfare. Understood?’
‘Understood,’ said Fredericks, with difficulty. ‘How we going to play it?’
‘Same as before,’ said Charlie. ‘Set up a room at the Imperial. I’ll make him contact you there.’
‘You seem very sure,’ said Fredericks.
‘Would I have openly met you here today, if I hadn’t been?’ said Charlie.
‘How long is it going to take?’ demanded Fredericks.
‘Just days,’ promised Charlie. ‘He’ll have to move quickly, now that he’s lost Irena.’
‘I agree the ground rules: everything your way,’ conceded Fredericks. ‘Straight play, all the way … He allowed himself the hesitation. ‘This time.’
‘As long as we both understand each other,’ said Charlie. He wondered if Fredericks would remember and try to invoke the threat if everything worked as he intended? Something to worry about then, not now.
‘You wouldn’t believe how much I understand you!’ said Fredericks. ‘You just wouldn’t believe!’
Must be nice to be liked, just occasionally, thought Charlie. He wondered if his mother had liked him; she’d never said. ‘Everything’s agreed, then?’
‘It had better be.’
‘I’m going back immediately,’ said Charlie. ‘Could you be in position at the Imperial by tonight.’
‘Of course,’ said Fredericks, nodding to Yamada again to start making the arrangements immediately.
‘You know what’s going to happen?’ said Charlie.
‘What?’
‘It’s all going to work out like it was supposed to, from the beginning. You get him and I get the woman.’
‘We’d better,’ said Fredericks, another threat. ‘Believe me, we’d better.’
Kozlov stood aside for Olga to enter the apartment, startled by her appearance. She was bedraggled, her hair lank and her clothes crumpled where she hadn’t bothered to undress, to sleep. Closer, he didn’t think she’d bothered to wash, either: there was a smell. He reached out for her, uncertainly, and just as uncertainly she regarded the gesture, unsure whether to accept it, and when she did, finally, she merely stood in his embrace, making no effort to respond and embrace him in return. Kozlov decided the smell was definitely from her.
‘How are you?’ he said, which he knew was a ridiculous question but all he could think of saying in his surprise.
‘Do you know what you made me do!’
‘You already told me.’
‘He just sat there, like he was asleep!’
Kozlov moved from the ridiculous way they were standing. He poured from what remained of their supposed celebration bottle of vodka – how many millions of years ago had they talked about their own private, secret party! – and offered it to her. Olga looked at the glass as if she had never seen one before and then took it but didn’t drink. Kozlov swallowed half his glass in one, topping it up at once. Because she appeared to have no motivation of her own, Kozlov led her to a seat by the window, pushing her down into it, and said: ‘I’m sorry. So very sorry. It was a mistake.’
Olga snorted a laugh, cynical now. ‘That’s what it was!’ she said bitterly. ‘A mistake: one big, huge mistake.’
Kozlov had been unsure how to tell her but decided now that it was the way to break Olga out of her crushed and beaten lethargy. He said: ‘She knows. Irena knows about us. I’ve no idea how she discovered it but she knows.’
It worked. Olga blinked, as if she were coming awake, and said: ‘But how do you …!’
Kozlov gestured towards the telephone. ‘The Englishman, Charlie Muffin. He used the system: called me. Talked about everything.’
‘Oh my God!’ said Olga, not even consciously aware of the invocation any more.
‘And then he said I was to see what happened to Filiatov because they had a disinformation source and could do whatever they wanted.’
Olga’s lassitude was completely gone. She was tensed forward, the glass in two hands before her. ‘And Filiatov …?’
‘They came for him. A squad. They got here quickly, from Sakhalin …’ said Kozlov.
‘They’re still here!’ she demanded, the fear immediate.
He shook his head. �
��Took everything with them … files, cable records, everything. Drugged Filiatov, of course. And had a closed off section on an Aeroflot flight.’
Olga brought her hand up against her mouth to prevent the mew of despair, but didn’t quite succeed. ‘What’s going to happen to us!’
‘He said – the Englishman said – I had to stay here. Wait for him to come,’ said Kozlov, practically as listless now as Olga had earlier been.
‘What’s going to happen to us?’ she repeated, her mind blocked by only one thought.
‘He’s proved it,’ said Kozlov. ‘He can do anything to us he wants: we’ve got to wait, like he says.’
Olga gulped at her drink, heavily. ‘I was right, wasn’t I?’ she said. ‘We are trapped.’
‘Yes,’ admitted Kozlov. ‘Absolutely trapped.’
‘You know what he did!’ said Elliott. ‘He made us eat shit! Eat shit! That’s what he made us do!’
‘We don’t have any alternative, not on this occasion,’ said Fredericks. ‘But there’ll be another time. I promise myself there’ll be another time.’
They were all in the Peninsula suite, even Harry Fish and Jim Dale, whom Fredericks had withdrawn from the Mandarin surveillance, strictly observing the agreement. Everyone was gripped with the feeling of impotence but only Elliott was openly expressing it.
‘You sure Langley would agree with that!’ demanded Elliott.
‘Why don’t you ask them!’ demanded Fredericks. ‘Why don’t you tell them how we were suckered by the Russian as well as the Englishman and how you think we should blow Charlie Muffin away just to get our rocks off and not go for Kozlov after all.’
‘You like the sound of all that crap he gave you!’ said Elliott, shouting.
‘I like the sound of it a damned sight better than I like the sound of the word Welfare,’ said Fredericks. ‘How’s Welfare sound to you?’
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The rainy season had literally descended on Tokyo when Charlie landed, as if the clouds had split at the seams to spill everything out at the same time. It was thick, impenetrable, at the airport and the car, more like a boat than something on wheels, crested through water-cascading streets into the city, where the pavements were mushroom fields of umbrellas. So much for English weather, thought Charlie; compared to this, London and Manchester in November were positively tropical. He had come up in the military aircraft – enjoying again being called sir by Clarke, whose rank turned out to be a major and whose Christian name was Allan – and from the flight control exchanges he knew that the American C-130 was behind them. And while, as far as he could establish, Fredericks had kept the no-surveillance agreement, Charlie was still careful, knowing the CIA could have put people in ahead of his arrival, to pick him up when he got there. The weather made it easy. He got out at Nijubashimae, ducked off the Toei Shinjuku service after one stop and emerged from the Underground at Kamiyacho, deciding within yards of setting out for Shinbashi that while in theory the tradecraft was good, in practise it was bloody stupid. It was still pissing with rain, and by the time he got to what Yuri Kozlov regarded his safe house Charlie felt anything but safe: the rain had got through his topcoat and jacket and his shoulders were damp, and he knew, from the sticky slip-slip when he moved his toes, that both his shoes were leaking. Maybe, with luck, they could be repaired.
Despite the discomfort, Charlie didn’t enter at once. He went past the building, checking intently, and returned on the opposite side, not so much looking for American observation now but Russian: it still hurt when your balls got caught in the vice, irrespective of who manufactured the pincer machine, and he was not yet sure if Kozlov were sufficiently worried.
Satisfied at last, Charlie squelched into the foyer, shaking himself like a dog to get rid of the surface dampness, aware of the puddle forming around him where he stood. Charlie’s irritation went beyond his physical discomfort: he attached a lot of importance to psychological advantage in the sort of encounter he was about to have and psychologically, arriving like someone emerging from a swamp, he was in the disadvantaged position. He took his coat and jacket off and shook them, and then used his handkerchief to dry his face and hair.
Yuri Kozlov opened the door before Charlie got his hand down from the knock and Charlie decided the swamp-look wasn’t quite the drawback he’d feared; Kozlov would have had to be waiting directly behind the door, to respond that quickly. The man was nervous, then. There was no greeting, from either of them: Kozlov simply stood back and Charlie entered.
Charlie was surprised by the Western-style appearance of the apartment and guessed the view was of the park and the port beyond: the rain was too heavy to see anything now. It was the briefest of inspections – nothing more than to establish the siting of any doors so that he could avoid making himself vulnerable to anyone or anything behind them – and Charlie was back facing Kozlov when the Russian closed the door behind him.
‘Well,’ said Kozlov. ‘I’m here.’
Which tells me a lot, thought Charlie. ‘Quick to get Filiatov, weren’t they?’ he said, confidently. The arrest had already happened for Kozlov to be frightened into keeping the appointment.
‘You know then?’ said Kozlov, in unthinking confirmation.
‘Of course I know,’ said Charlie. ‘I told you how it would be, didn’t I?’ Kozlov had to believe he was practically omnipotent.
‘What will they do to him?’
‘You can guess that better than me. It’s your country; your service.’
‘I meant what have you accused him of?’
‘I didn’t come here to talk about Boris Filiatov,’ dismissed Charlie. He thought the Russian was far smaller than the last time and then remembered he had never seen Kozlov standing, only in a car.
‘You going to tell me now what you want?’
‘It was a hell of a scheme you worked out, wasn’t it?’ said Charlie, avoiding the reply: nothing had to go as Kozlov wanted.
‘Nobody knew, only Olga and I,’ said Kozlov, in sudden urgency. ‘How did you find out?’
This time the man could be answered, because it conveyed the impression of Charlie’s complete control. Charlie said: ‘It’s a big file, Yuri. You and Olga in London, before here. You weren’t very discreet, you know; not very discreet at all.’
‘Nobody knew!’ shouted Kozlov, in desperate defiance.
Charlie didn’t reply. Instead he took from his bag the same photograph that had brought about Irena’s collapse and offered it to the man. For several moments Kozlov made no effort to take it, but at last he reached forward. Attentive, Charlie saw that the man’s hands were shaking. Kozlov held the print for a much longer time and Charlie had the impression of the man becoming visibly smaller, in front of him. Charlie said, with practised carelessness: ‘There’s a lot more.’
Kozlov’s reaction was not what Charlie expected. When the Russian looked up he appeared wet-eyed. He said: ‘I love her, you know. I love Olga.’
‘Like you loved Valentina?’ There was a gain in continuing this conversation.
Kozlov winced, as if he had been struck. ‘Irena told you everything, didn’t she?’
‘A lot,’ said Charlie, wondering what else he could learn.
‘I thought I loved Valentina, at the time. I don’t know, not now. I only know about Olga.’
This was like being a bloody Agony Aunt: Dear Charlie, I am humping three different women but can’t make up my mind which one … Charlie said: ‘What about Irena?’
‘Have you any idea what the woman’s like!’
‘Some.’
‘She’s made me live in hell, for years.’
‘Bad enough to kill for?’
‘I asked her for a divorce.’
‘She told me. For Valentina, not Olga.’
‘I don’t care what you think: what you believe,’ said Kozlov.
Charlie was thinking and believing a lot. He believed that Kozlov did love Olga Balan, and he thought that was going to make every
thing a lot easier than it might have been. Time to start wrapping it all up into neat little parcels. He said: ‘I made the right assessment, didn’t I?’
Kozlov looked at him, uncomprehending.
‘You are fucked, aren’t you, Yuri? Every way you look. How much longer before Moscow discovers Irena’s not around any more? Filiatov is back there now, talking his head off to stop the pain. And any moment I want I can feed the information through …’
‘All right!’ The yell this time was despair, not defiance.
‘You didn’t let me finish the option, Yuri.’
‘What do you want?’
‘To help you,’ announced Charlie, simply. He stopped, intentionally, wanting the idea to register with the other man.
‘Help me?’
‘Well, you don’t want to go back to an interrogation cell in Butyrki and then on to some gulag for the rest of your life, do you!’
‘Help me how?’
‘Get you safely out, to the West …’ Charlie made another intentional hesitation. ‘And Olga, too,’ he finished.
‘Olga!’
‘You want to be with her, don’t you?’
‘Yes, but …’
‘No buts. Both of you.’
‘Together?’
The training was emerging, through all the confusion, recognized Charlie. He said: ‘Not to begin with. You told me how the Americans wanted you and Irena, when we both thought it was a genuine defection. If I try to take you and Olga out, the same thing would happen: a pitched battle. My way you both get out and then you’re reunited, very soon.’
‘How soon?’ insisted the man.
‘I’d even arrange a date,’ said Charlie. ‘That’s part of the proposal.’
‘I want to hear it all,’ said Kozlov.
‘I’ll tell you and you can check,’ said Charlie. ‘Irena told me about Hayashi, at the airport. He’ll confirm the Americans are there, with a military plane. So are we. I will take Olga, first. You follow, as soon as you know that we’ve cleared air space and can’t be intercepted by the Americans. Fredericks is setting up the same contact procedure for you as before, at the Imperial. He expects to hear from you …’
See Charlie Run Page 28