Charlie M

William Braley’s cover as C.I.A. Resident in Moscow was as cultural attache to the U.S. embassy. He was a puffyfaced, anaemic-looking man with a glandular condition that put him two stone overweight, pebble glasses that made him squint and the tendency to asthma when under pressure. He arrived in Washington at 10 a.m., delayed by fog at Frankfurt, gravel-eyed through lack of sleep and wheezing from apprehension.

Ruttgers would be furious if it transpired he had overreacted, he knew, thrusting the inhaler into his mouth in the back of the Pontiac taking him and the Director into Washington.

The prospect of meeting the Secretary of State terrified him: he wouldn’t be able to use the breathing aid at the meeting, he thought, worriedly. Keys might be offended. He was rumoured to have a phobia about health.

‘It could be nothing,’ Braley cautioned Ruttgers, hopefully. If he expressed doubt in advance, perhaps the recriminations wouldn’t be so bad.

Ruttgers shook his head, determined.

‘No way, Bill,’ dismissed the Director, who took pride in his hunches and knew this had the feel of a defection. ‘You got it right the first time. I’m proud of you.’

Keys was waiting for them in his office in the Executive Building, a taciturn, aloof man, whose careful enunciation, like a bored educationalist in a school for retarded children, concealed a word-stumbling shyness. He knew the shell of arrogance beneath which he concealed himself caused dislike, which exacerbated the speech defect when meeting strangers for the first time.

Ruttgers had submitted a full report overnight and it lay now, dishevelled, on the Secretary of State’s desk.

‘Don’t you think we’re assuming a lot?’ asked Keys, seating them considerately in armchairs before the fire. Braley remained silent, taking his lead from his superior sitting opposite. The fat man seemed unwell, thought the Secretary, distastefully. He hoped it wasn’t anything contagious.

‘I don’t think so, Mr Secretary,’ argued Ruttgers. ‘Consider the facts and equate them against the computer information.’

Keys waited, nodding encouragement. Ruttgers would think him obtuse, the Secretary knew, unhappily.

‘Until last week,’ explained Ruttgers, ‘there wasn’t a Western embassy in Moscow who had a clue what Kalenin looked like … no one even knew for sure that he existed. Then, without any apparent reason, he turns up at one of our own receptions, a party considered so unimportant that apart from our own ambassador, it was only attended by First Secretaries and freeloaders with nowhere else to go on a dull night.’

He nodded sideways to Braley, aware of the man’s apprehension and trying to relax him.

‘Thank God Bill was there, able to realise the significance.’

‘And what was that?’ asked Keys, seeking facts rather than impressions.

‘A man known only by an incredible reputation attends an unimportant function,’ he repeated. ‘He stays for two hours and makes a point of speaking almost exclusively to the British military attache …’

Ruttgers grew discomforted at Keys’s complete lack of reaction.

‘… And if that isn’t odd enough,’ the Director hurried on, desperately, ‘a man of whom no photographs are known to exist, willingly poses for his picture to be taken …’

‘How do we know it is Kalenin,’ butted in Keys, ‘if there haven’t been any pictures.’

‘Known pictures,’ qualified Ruttgers. ‘We’ve had photographs compared with every Praesidium group taken over the last twenty years. The one established fact about Kalenin is his incredible survival … he appears in official pictures dating back two decades …’

Ruttgers waved his own file, like a flag. ‘… examine it,’ he exhorted the Secretary. ‘Six photographs of the most secretive man in the Soviet Union …’

Keys sighed. On amorphous interpretations such as this, he thought, the policies of a nation could be changed. It was little wonder there were so many crises.

‘All this,’ stressed Ruttgers, ‘just three days after one of the most vicious diatribes ever published in Pravda and by Izvestia about lack of State security … an attack that can only be construed as a direct criticism of Kalenin …’

Keys waved a hand, still unconvinced.

‘What do you think, Mr Braley?’ he asked. He was not interested, but it would give him time to consider what he’d read in the file and consider it against Ruttgers’s conviction.

‘It’s strange, sir,’ managed the fat man, breathily. ‘I know it appears vague. But I seriously interpret it as indicating that Kalenin is considering the idea of coming across. Which is what worries me …’

‘Worries you …?’

‘Our reception was the only Western diplomatic function that week … Kalenin used us, just to reach the British. As soon as we realised who he was, I and the ambassador tried to get involved. The man was positively rude in rejecting us.’

Keys pursed his lips, with growing acceptancy. On the other side of the desk, Ruttgers frowned, annoyed the Secretary wasn’t showing the enthusiasm he had expected. He gestured towards the dossier.

‘And don’t forget the Viennese reports,’ he continued encouragingly. ‘In Prague, according to our Austrian monitor, Rude Pravo have actually named Kalenin. No newspaper in the East does that without specific Praesidium instructions … the man’s being purged. There can’t be any doubt about it. He knows it and wants to run.’

‘To the British?’

‘That’s how it looks.’

‘I’d like more information upon which to make a judgment,’ complained Keys, cautiously. He’d use the antiseptic spray in the office when the two had gone: Braley looked as if he could be consumptive.

‘As far as Russia is concerned, sir,’ offered Braley, ‘the indications we’ve got so far and those which are in the last report, are amazingly informative.’

‘Have you tried the British?’

‘Of course,’ said Braley. ‘Their attitude encourages our conviction.’

Keys waited.

‘They’ve gone completely silent,’ reported Braley. He paused, like Ruttgers expecting some reaction. When none came, he added: ‘For a closed community like Moscow, that’s unheard of. We live so cut off from everything that embassy-to-embassy contact, particularly between ourselves and the British, is far greater than anywhere else. For the past five days, I’ve tried to encourage a meeting, on any level …’

‘And?’

‘The British Embassy is tighter than the Kremlin itself.’

‘It certainly looks unusual,’ conceded Keys, finally. ‘If Kalenin is thinking of coming over, for whatever reason, how close are we to the British for access?’

Ruttgers controlled the sigh of impatience. He wasn’t waiting until the British had finished, he had decided. That could take years.

‘That’s what made me request this meeting,’ said the Director. ‘The British have just had a major overhaul, throwing out nearly everyone.’

‘So?’

‘I don’t think they could properly handle something this big. It’ll go wrong.’

‘How important is Kalenin?’ asked Keys.

Ruttgers hesitated. At last, he thought, the doubtful son of a bitch is coming round.

‘I don’t think,’ he replied, slowly, ‘that I can think of a Russian whose defection would be more important in the entire history of communism … except perhaps Stalin.’

Keys sat back, bemused at the analysis. Ruttgers was absolutely convinced, he decided.

‘But surely …’ he started to protest.

‘… he’s lived through it all,’ insisted Ruttgers. ‘Stalin … Beria … Krushchev and Bulganin … Brezhnev … there is not one single Russian better able to tell us not only what happened in the past, but what might occur in the future. His value is incalculable.’

Ruttgers had been right in seeking the meeting, decided Keys. He’d tell the President at the afternoon briefing.

‘I agree,’ said the Secretary. ‘We’ve got to get involved.’