See Charlie Run

by Brian Freemantle

  ‘You are working together?’

  Charlie wasn’t sure how to answer the question. He said: ‘Not together: we’re keeping to the arrangement that we thought we had, originally.’

  ‘Are you sure it is necessary to cross separately?’ asked Kozlov, doubtfully.

  ‘Aren’t you?’ said Charlie.

  Kozlov didn’t reply, and Charlie thought I’m ahead of you, you crafty bastard. He said: ‘You’re thinking, of course, why bother letting Olga come with me? Why don’t the both of you go together to the Americans? That’s what I’d be thinking, if I were you now. But you mustn’t ever forget the file, Yuri … the file that’s got more than McFairlane’s name on it. Names like Bill Paul and Valeri Solomatin … and a very special name, a Senator William Bales …’

  Kozlov was rigidly still and ashen, lips moving but without any intention of forming words.

  ‘Fucked, Yuri, unless you do it all my way,’ insisted Charlie. ‘Hayashi will tell you about the military planes, like I said. We’re watching them and they’re watching us, so I’d know before the wheels went up if you ducked me, to take Olga along with you. And then I’d have London tell Washington all the names they don’t know. Can you imagine the reception you’d get? I guess there’d be some debriefing: why waste an opportunity, after all? But then do you know what I think? I think you’d end up in some stockade and you’d be able to close your eyes and believe you were back in a Russian prison, after all. Maybe worse than a Russian prison: can you imagine that!’

  The words came at last, a croaking, strained sound: ‘I understand … there’s no need … no more …’

  ‘Oh yes,’ contradicted Charlie: ‘There’s more. I haven’t told you yet how you’re getting to England.’

  Kozlov was looking at him dully, practically glazed-eyed, someone completely defeated, and Charlie said: ‘You hearing what I’m saying?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Kozlov. ‘I’m hearing it all.’

  ‘We’re using the Americans to get you out, without the sort of battle that would occur, probably getting everyone seized, including both of you,’ set out Charlie. ‘In Washington, there will be the debriefing. String it out; make them work for everything. And be difficult. Complain about the restrictions of the safe house and say you want to take trips out. They let it happen: they shouldn’t but they do. Today’s the sixteenth. Three months from today, the sixteenth, get taken into Georgetown: all the restaurants are there. And a particular hotel. It’s called the Four Seasons and it’s at the very beginning of the district. There’s a large foyer bar and lounge: lots of plants. Break away from your escort on the sixteenth and come there. I shall be waiting from noon until four …’

  ‘But …’ Kozlov started to protest.

  ‘There could be a dozen reasons why you can’t make it,’ anticipated Charlie. ‘I know that. So we’ll run a fall-back precaution. If you can’t make that first time, the sixteenth of every month from then on.’

  Kozlov nodded, assimilating the instructions. ‘And then I would be with Olga?’

  ‘From that moment on,’ promised Charlie.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Kozlov, in abrupt gratitude.

  ‘It’s not altruism,’ said Charlie. ‘We want you both.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘At once: certainly in the next twenty-four hours.’

  ‘I’ll have to talk to Olga.’

  ‘Do you have a way to contact her?’

  ‘She is calling, to see if you came.’

  ‘Then tell her to come here.’

  ‘She’s a good Russian … like I think I am a good Russian.’

  ‘It’s too late,’ said Charlie, who’d heard it all before.

  ‘For me, maybe. Not for her. There could be a defence.’

  ‘We want her, too,’ said Charlie, quietly.

  Kozlov made an effort to straighten in front of Charlie and said: ‘I see.’

  ‘I told you it wasn’t altruism.’

  ‘You’d really use your Moscow source against her?’

  ‘Of course we would,’ said Charlie, brutally. ‘Don’t be naive.’

  ‘She can’t be hurt … mustn’t be hurt …’

  ‘Don’t let her be.’

  ‘What’s it feel like, not being able to lose?’ asked Kozlov, in abrupt viciousness.

  ‘What’s it feel like to have someone in the cross-hairs of a gun sight seconds before you press the trigger and know there’s not a damned thing the poor bastard can do, to avoid being killed!’ came back Charlie, just as viciously. ‘Don’t moralize to me! We’re not in the business of morals.’

  ‘It must be her choice.’

  Charlie didn’t know why the other man was playing games, but he said: ‘Set out all the alternatives and let her make it.’

  Which was what Kozlov did.

  First – while they were waiting for her to arrive – Kozlov checked with Hayashi at the airport and got the confirmation that the American and British military aircraft were there, officially in transit. And then reluctantly – once actually picking up the receiver and replacing it, before lifting it again – Kozlov called the Imperial Hotel and spoke to the Americans. Liaison was still Jim Dale, but the room this time was 2.02.

  The knock was hesitant and Olga Balan’s entry was uncertain, too, looking at Charlie with an expression difficult to define, a mixture of hostility and curiosity and fear. Kozlov said his name and she nodded and then he said her name and Charlie nodded back.

  Kozlov said: ‘I think we should talk alone,’ and Charlie said: ‘Don’t be stupid,’ intentionally reducing the man in front of his mistress. He was aware of the feeling registering on Kozlov’s face and thought I bet you’d like to, my son.

  ‘And in English,’ he said. Would he have remembered the Russian he’d learned so well – and anxiously, in love after so long – from Natalia? Probably, unless there had been some dialect difference: still better self-protection to let them believe he did not have the language. Was there a similarity between this Russian woman and Natalia? Perhaps, but then again perhaps he was trying too hard to find one. The other comparison, now that he could see Olga Balan other than in a photograph, obviously followed and Charlie thought again of Irena with a pimple on her strap-red but naked shoulder and decided, as he had in Hong Kong, that it was no contest. The rain had eased but Olga was still wet and the strain of the previous days was clearly visible; despite all of which she was beautiful. Startling, in fact. She sat oblivious to him, near the window through which the lights of the port were becoming clearer, head forward to hear everything Kozlov said, the femininity – and the sex – radiating from her. How did a pratt like Kozlov pull a bird like that, thought Charlie; life was never fair. The reflections held part of his mind but he listened to the Russian’s exposition as intently as Olga, alert for several things. He wanted to ensure Kozlov set out their earlier conversation but he was intent, too, to catch any small mistake or inflection to indicate that what was happening in front of him was a charade, an act put on to lull him into whatever false impression for them to try something that he hadn’t anticipated. There wasn’t anything.

  ‘Defect!’ she said, when Kozlov finally proposed it.

  ‘You got a better idea?’ said Charlie, coming into the conversation.

  Olga made a don’t-know shrug. ‘What would I do, in the West?’

  ‘Cooperate,’ said Charlie, regretting the glibness.

  ‘Be a traitor, you mean!’ she came back at him.

  ‘Yes!’ said Charlie. ‘It’s a hell of a lot more fun than being dead or shifting rocks with your bare hands for the rest of your life. Or becoming a gulag gang-bang hooker.’

  ‘Bastard!’ shouted Kozlov. He used the Russian expression, which conveys greater obscenity, and Charlie came back in Russian, just as fluent and using the word the same way. ‘Try to see what a bastard!’

  ‘We would be together, in the end?’ said the woman. ‘Yuri and I?’

  ‘Wasn’t that how Yuri explained it?�
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  ‘Only three months?’ she persisted.

  ‘Providing Yuri gets away the first time.’

  She sat staring at him, not speaking for several moments. Then she said: This is really ridiculous, isn’t it? We haven’t got any choice, have we?’

  ‘No,’ said Charlie, bluntly.

  ‘So what’s the point?’

  ‘You already asked that.’

  There was another protracted silence. Some tension seemed to go from her and she said: ‘Did you know him well?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Charlie. ‘There was a wife and a little girl.’

  ‘He wasn’t meant …’ She tried, but Charlie came in sharply and said: ‘Does it matter, now?’

  ‘I suppose not.’

  ‘Shall we go?’ Charlie said to her.

  Olga looked down at herself. ‘I didn’t come … I haven’t got anything …’

  Just like Irena, that day on the bus, thought Charlie. He said: ‘What is there?’

  There was another don’t-know shrug and this time a didn’t-know outburst. ‘Oh God! Dear God!’

  Not here or at the one-walled church in Macao, thought Charlie. He said: ‘Ready?’

  Kozlov and Olga both stood, looking at each other, restricted and embarrassed by the presence of Charlie, who remained neither restricted nor embarrassed, looking at them. They kissed, clumsily, as if they were coming together for the first time, and parted the same way.

  ‘Be careful,’ she said.

  ‘And you,’ he said, matching the banality.

  ‘No contact with the Americans until you know we are clear,’ reminded Charlie. He enjoyed the irony of invoking for his own protection the bullshit that Kozlov put forward to Irena, to get her into the firing line.

  ‘I know what to do.’

  ‘The sixteenth, three months from now,’ insisted Charlie.

  ‘I know that best of all.’

  ‘Just don’t forget,’ said Charlie.

  He alerted Clarke from the apartment and when they got out into the street they found the rain had stopped: in the heat that is always there during the season there was a rise of mist – more like a steam – and Charlie thought it really was like a swamp.

  ‘What about passport?’ she said, in the taxi.

  ‘It’s an entry, not departure document. And you’re going out under the aegis of the British government.’

  ‘What’s going to happen to me? To Yuri and me?’

  Kozlov certainly had a way of screwing up women, thought Charlie. Maybe it was literally that, but surely it couldn’t be just sex. He said: ‘It’ll be fine, you see.’

  There was no difficulty with the diplomatic departure and within thirty minutes of their arrival at Haneda they were airborne: as the plane gained height Charlie had the impression of a great weight being lifted from him, at the release of knowing Fredericks was keeping to the agreement.

  They sat separate from the army contingent, further along the body of the plane. Major Clarke was plugged into the pilot communication and after about fifteen minutes he walked up to where they sat in their canvas webbing seats and said: ‘We’ve cleared, sir. We’re on our way to England.’

  He seemed to expect some response from the woman, and when it didn’t come the soldier said: ‘Sorry about the seats. Not very comfortable, I’m afraid.’

  Charlie guessed it was the first time Clarke had been involved in an operation like this and that the man was enjoying it: material for a dozen dinner-table anecdotes – ‘Have I told you about the time I got a genuine KGB agent out from under the Russians’ noses!’ – but anyone who kept on calling him sir was welcome to whatever anecdote until it became threadbare. Answering for Olga, Charlie said: ‘The seats will be fine.’

  Clarke gave up on Olga. To Charlie he said: ‘It was really all remarkably easy, wasn’t it?’

  Charlie looked quizically up at the man, decided it was a genuinely innocent question. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I suppose you could say that. Easy as can be.’

  Winslow Elliott was with the Special Forces group who watched the British plane go and Elliott said: ‘She was there! It was all crap! He got her out tonight!’

  Jamieson said: ‘So maybe we struck out.’ It had turned out to be a shitty assignment. You win some, you lose some, he thought: just follow the orders and think of the pension and the PX facilities. It was stupid to make it a personal thing.

  ‘Know what I’m going to do! I’m going to turn in a report showing how Art Fredericks fucked this up, every step of the fucking way. That’s what I’m going to do,’ Elliott promised himself.

  The Special Forces colonel, more experienced in the way of buck-passing and report filing than the CIA fieldman, said: ‘Wait a while, buddy. See how the whole thing shakes down before you start throwing garbage into the wind.’

  At that moment Yuri Kozlov entered the enormous lobby of the Imperial Hotel, no longer concerned about security – no longer concerned about anything – and walked up to Fredericks, who was waiting for him at the steps leading into the sunken lounge.

  ‘Thank you for being here,’ said Kozlov.

  ‘I’m glad you finally made it,’ said Fredericks.

  Fredericks didn’t give a shit if the Russkie or any of the CIA guys watching were aware of how relieved he was. He’d just saved his ass.

  Chapter Thirty

  The airport arrival in London went as smoothly as the departure from Tokyo. The aircraft went to the private, northern section of Heathrow, where the transportation was ready: a helicopter for Olga – and female as well as male escorts – to fly her undetected by any doubtful Soviet interception to the safe debriefing house in Surrey. And a surprising limousine for Charlie, with the sealed instruction carried by the security-cleared driver to go directly to Sir Alistair Wilson’s house in Hampshire.

  ‘It’s Sunday,’ reminded the driver.

  Charlie lounged in the back of the vehicle, savouring the unaccustomed luxury. There was even a cocktail cabinet recessed into the seat in front, and Charlie pulled the flap down and saw that the cut glass bottles were full.

  ‘Help yourself,’ invited the driver. ‘Comes off the Ministry of Works budget.’

  ‘It’s been a long flight and it’s early,’ refused Charlie. Guessing the reason behind the invitation, he added: ‘Bottles don’t look full to me,’ and the driver smiled appreciately at him through the rear view mirror.

  It had been a long flight, and Charlie felt buggered. There hadn’t been any proper washing facilities on the transport plane – the lavatory had been a hear-the-splash affair behind a canvas screen – and he felt sticky and knew he was stubble-chinned: he wondered if there were any grey in the growth. He was aware the suit looked even more than usual as if he had slept in it, which on this occasion he had but not well, because the webbing seats he’d assured that cheery major would be fine had turned out to be damned uncomfortable: para-troopers weren’t brave, just smart enough to know how to get out of the bloody things as quickly as possible.

  A posh car with a driver in a uniform and a cubby-hole full of booze was a definite improvement. And indicative, If he were still in the shit he wouldn’t be getting the welcome-home little hero treatment: well, maybe hero was a bit strong, but the rest was near enough. On a scale of ten, he was shooting at least eight. Charlie glanced again at the drinks cupboard, reconsidering a celebration. Better not: always the chance of the unexpected steel-shod boot, and there had been too many of those in the past few days.

  The driver turned off at a Micheldever sign and looped through lanes that hadn’t been built for cars this size and certainly not at this speed, and Charlie hoped the driver didn’t go at the cocktail cabinet too hard before the journey back. He was grateful when they swept into an unmarked drive, past gate pillars surprisingly with no gate and a gatehouse even more surprisingly with no attendant. Charlie’s uncase was just forming when they came to the security, sensibly placed halfway up the drive where it was not visible from the road. Hidde
n though it was, the cordon was still discreet, the replacement gatehouse looking like its predecessor but less lavish, a box-like guard house designed to look like a retraction forced upon a land-owner whose fortunes were diminishing. It was, in fact, perfect protection, pitched upon an obvious elevation with a soldier’s eye-view of any approach from the highway. The attendant was close cropped and upright and clearly ex-army, and because he was looking hard Charlie managed to identify the concealed antennae which would be linked to the electronic surveillance of the place. Absence of any high wall was understandable: ground sensors and infra-red television cameras were far more effective. The pass check was very thorough, and when they went through Charlie saw there was a second man in the tiny building.

  Sir Alistair Wilson’s home was a square-built, weathered-red mansion with a parapet around the roof edge and matching, miniature parapets before all but the ground-floor facing windows. The front of the house was bearded with cut-close creeper, buried in which – because he was looking and recognized them – Charlie picked out three surveillance cameras but guessed there were more.

  The house was not, however, the focal point of the approach. It was the rose beds, laid out with the squared and rectangular perfection of the attack formations of Wellington’s red-coated armies and with the same regimentation of colours, beyond the reds to oranges and pinks and whites and yellows and crimsons and peach. Everywhere was dominated by the varying smells when Charlie was let out of the car: the driver called him sir and Charlie decided it was becoming a habit.

  A man with another soldier’s haircut opened the door, but the Director was already clumping across the black and white tiled entry hall, hand outstretched in greeting: ‘Charlie! Well done, Charlie! Good to see you back in one piece.’

  ‘There were times when I didn’t think I would be,’ said Charlie. He rubbed his chin and look down at himself: ‘Afraid I didn’t have time to …’

  ‘Didn’t expect you to,’ said Wilson, dismissively. He said – an order, not an invitation – “You’ll stay for lunch” and then, ‘Before drinks let’s walk in the garden,’ and set off despite the stiff leg at a pace Charlie had trouble matching. The Director led through a leather-furnished library, out of french windows and directly on to the rear of the house. There were even more rose beds in military formations, and Charlie thought an army to the back and an army to the front. At the rear, ramblers replaced the creeper of the approach and the cameras here were placed again to be scarcely visible: if he hadn’t been looking, he wouldn’t have seen them.