head covering for a change of appearance, wondering if the now-belted raincoat had a different-color reversible lining. He was concerned at a couple, the man visibly older than the woman, who appeared to follow closely behind Natalia until they settled on a bench and began fumbling each other under the imagined cover of the inadequate half-light. There was no other even vaguely suspicious pursuit and Charlie replaced the receiver, taking both newspapers with him as he moved in the opposite direction from the main entrance, against what would have been any professionally recognizable surveillance upon Natalia, separately dropping each newspaper into a different refuse bin. He studiously ignored the open pod from which Natalia had spoken but hesitated, as if seeking a direction, to study everywhere around it, relieved again at detecting nothing. He continued until he reached a bisecting junction, taking the right-hand path to a side exit from which he looped along the outside road to the main highway.
Charlie picked Natalia out long before he reached her, the raincoat already reversed, and was sure she saw him, although she gave no indication.
When he reached her she said: “I’ve caused a lot of trouble, haven’t I?”
“Nothing I can’t sort out,” he said, wishing he believed it.
Natalia finally backed away from the embrace in which they’d held each other, neither speaking, each satisfied by the feel and touch of the other. She grimaced around the hotel room as they parted and said: “This isn’t what I’ve got special memories of.”
“Try to keep them as they were. Sit on the chair, not the bed. There are things that bite.”
Natalia did as she was told, frowning as Charlie perched himself cautiously on the very edge of the bed. She said: “The FSB have been in turmoil ever since Lvov’s killing, not just at the Lubyanka but in a lot of outstations, too. I’ve inferred a lot but there’ll be a lot more I haven’t got right. It’ll help to fill in the missing parts if you go first.”
Charlie started awkwardly, unprepared, needing initially to go back and elaborate until he got the chronology in order, realizing that for the very first time he was actually sharing espionage intelligence with her. At first Natalia gazed directly at him, intent on everything he said, but gradually dropped her head in what Charlie guessed to be either contemplation or disbelief or a combination of both. Charlie began imagining it would be a long explanation and was surprised how quickly he finished. For what seemed a long time, almost as long as they’d clung to each other, Natalia remained with her head bowed until he finally said: “Natalia?”
It was still several moments before she brought her face up, her hands, too, as if wanting to shield the frowned, shadowed expression that Charlie couldn’t read until, uneven-voiced, she stumbled: “I got so much wrong … didn’t understand so much. Dear God, I’m so sorry,” and he realized she was genuinely, deeply, frightened.
“I said I could sort things out.”
Natalia shook her head. “Not this time, Charlie. And it’s me who’s trapped you so because you won’t be able to get away again. God only knows what they’ll do to you.”
“Now I need to understand,” encouraged Charlie, who from the beginning had found a dichotomy between Natalia’s piety and her profession, in which he’d never recognized any religion or any creed.
“I got so much wrong … made so many mistakes,” she said again.
“I have to understand what you’re talking about, Natalia. Tell me all of it.”
She didn’t begin at once and groped for the words when she finally started, needing twice to stop and start again. “It was the body at the embassy … I knew that’s what you were here for the last time … you made that much clear when we met and then there was television. I did what I promised then, made all the plans to follow you back to England … realized how stupid I’d been for so long, not to have come with you when you asked me … sorry for that … sorry for so much … I didn’t know what happened, of course. Not when you left so quickly. Didn’t understand your last call, that I couldn’t come after all … and then there was the Lvov killing and the others that followed. I guessed there had to be a connection, although I couldn’t understand what it was because you were back in England when it happened. I didn’t guess a connection until I was called in-”
“Called in!” interrupted Charlie, following her so far but wanting absolute clarity. “You were interrogated?”
“A formal interrogation, recorded and transcribed for me to sign.”
“About us? How much about us?” She was recovering, becoming more coherent.
“About your defection. How you tricked me.”
“Nothing more?”
Natalia shook her head. “Just your faked defection and my debriefing, all that time ago. I’d sanitized everything I could retrieve from those old KGB files after we got together. You knew I had, to keep us safe. I obviously had to leave some details though, in case there was a cross-reference. Which there must have been: I don’t know about that. But it can only have been picked up after you left this last time. The first session didn’t start out as hostile. It took your idea to change the original file to indicate you’d been passed on to another more-senior interrogator after me, which I’d done to prevent myself being held responsible for your going back to England then. I was able to say I’d doubted your defection, which was why you had been transferred up the line-”
“You said the first session wasn’t hostile? Did things change?” broke in Charlie again, to keep Natalia on track.
She nodded once more. “I thought it was all over, after that first interview: that I’d satisfied them. The tone changed when I was recalled a week later. They wanted to know why I hadn’t recognized you from the publicity on the embassy killing and flagged it up.”
“What did you say?”
“That I simply
“But they didn’t believe you?”
“The third interrogation came after another week. I had to identify what newspapers and television I’d seen and was ordered to identify you from a collation of photographs and freeze-frames. You weren’t in four sections of the collation: obviously testing me for a reaction, which I didn’t give. It wasn’t actually difficult. I’ve been on the other side, catching people out in debriefings for almost twenty years, after all.”
“What did you do?”
“Replied as I knew I had to reply: stuck to my denial. I insisted there’d only been three debriefings before you were transferred, that it had all been ten years ago, and that I genuinely didn’t remember or recognize you.”
“You think they believe you?”
“I don’t know. There’ve been three occasions when I thought I was under surveillance and I am not sure about my telephone: that’s why I made the calls I did from public booths, as you always told me to.”
“I told you I called back.”
“I still don’t understand that.”
“Our technical people checked. The supposition was that you’d been forced to make the calls under duress. That any replies would be recorded.”
“I chose the phones myself, at random. No one was with me, forcing me to do or say anything.”
The feeling was one of numbness, an unreal sensation he’d never before experienced of being suspended without any control over himself. Too much surmise and supposition, he thought: situations virtually invented where nothing at all needed invention. He could so easily have come back alone, needing only false passports to be available from the embassy, and simply flown back to London with them. There’d been no need for the Amsterdam switch or the tourist diversion: no need for sixteen terrified people to be arrested. “It wasn’t just you who made mistakes. I made far too many.”
“But I’ve trapped you: trapped you and all the others you came in with.”
“They’ll be released, eventually.”
“Eventually, not immediately,” qualified Natalia. “The FSB know you’re here now: those poor people will be used. And when they’re released you won’t be among them. Every way out is going to be locked down against you.”
This far they’d been looking backward, Charlie acknowledged, hearing-but not accepting-Natalia’s defeat. Now they had to look in the opposite direction. No, not yet, Charlie stopped himself at a sudden, still-backward thought. “There’s something else. From what you’ve just told me there’s no way the FSB could have learned my London telephone number?”
