‘Charlie,’ reminded the operative.
‘Charlie,’ accepted the Director, tightly.
Charlie smiled, openly, so both men could see. He would have to be very careful not to go too far, he decided.
‘Do you want the defection … if defection there is … to work?’ asked Charlie.
‘Yes,’ said the other man, instantly.
‘Then I want to operate as I always have done.’
‘If it goes wrong,’ cautioned the Director, ‘then you’ll be the sufferer.’
‘Sir Henry,’ accepted Charlie, smiling. ‘We both know why I’m being brought back into active service. And what will happen if I fail.’
Cuthbertson did not answer the accusation.
‘I’ll need a large petty cash advance,’ stipulated Charlie. He’d take some good wine to Janet’s flat that evening, he decided.
The Director nodded, defeated.
‘I’ll want to know what’s happening all the time,’ said Cuthbertson, hopefully. ‘And I’ll need receipts.’
Charlie nodded.
‘Of course,’ he agreed.
Cuthbertson waited, guessing there was more.
‘… And it would help to have my old office back,’ said Charlie. ‘If we’re going to work on this, we’ll need instant contact with each other …’
Cuthbertson nodded, his normally red face puce with emotion.
‘I’m very worried about this,’ said Wilberforce, after Charlie had left.
‘I’m terrified,’ confessed Cuthbertson. Why couldn’t it have been Charlie Muffin shot in an East German ditch, he thought, regretfully. Even if he succeeded in this operation, decided the Director, he’d still ease him from the department, despite the promises he’d given. The man was quite insufferable.
The orange blossom trees were in full bloom, whitening the shrubbery outside Keys’s office. Far away, people wandered ant-like into the Lincoln memorial, and in the park in front teenagers were clustered around an improvised guitar recital. It was very American and comforting, he thought.
‘So how do you assess it?’ demanded the Secretary of State, turning back into the room.
Ruttgers, who had arrived in Washington just one hour before and knew he would be affected by jet-lag very soon, shrugged, unwilling to commit himself.
‘I don’t honestly know,’ he said. ‘Kalenin has appeared, almost too easily. And from my last meeting with the British Director, it’s obvious the man is discussing asylum.’
‘Do you believe it’s genuine?’
‘I don’t know enough about it to make a judgment,’ avoided Ruttgers, easily.
‘Do the British suspect why their operatives have been hit?’
‘They haven’t a clue,’ assured Ruttgers, confidently. They think it’s just K.G.B. surveillance and Kalenin being over-cautious.’
‘What about the request for money?’
‘A stalling operation,’ guessed the C.I.A. chief. ‘They arc trying to send someone else in.’
‘Will we be able to spot him?’
Ruttgers shifted, uncomfortable at the question. ‘I don’t know,’ he replied, honestly. ‘I’ve got the Moscow embassy on full alert: the man will have to have some official cover, so we should be able to pick him up.’
Knowing the Secretary of State’s health fetish, Ruttgers never smoked in the man’s presence. The need for a cigarette was growing by the minute.
It was time he came to the point of the meeting, decided the Director.
‘The British are incredibly arrogant,’ he embarked. ‘It’s about time they forgot they were ever a world power and realised how unimportant they’ve become these days.’
‘What do you mean?’ demanded the Secretary of State, aware now that Ruttgers had a proposition.
‘The President is due to tour Europe in November?’
Keys nodded.
‘It would be a terrible snub if he visited every capital except London,’ predicted the C.I.A. chief.
‘You’ve got to be joking,’ rebuked Keys. ‘I could never make a threat like that.’
‘You wouldn’t have to,’ insisted Ruttgers. ‘Just to hint would be enough. Cuthbertson’s a pompous old fool … he’d collapse the moment any ministerial pressure was put upon him. And there would be pressure, without the need for an outright threat.’
Keys shook his head, still doubtful.
‘This could go badly wrong,’ he said.
‘Or be the most overwhelming success,’ balanced Ruttgers.
‘We’ll provide the money?’ guessed Keys.
‘Oh yes,’ agreed Ruttgers. ‘I’m going to make it available. Once we’re financially involved, we’ve got another lever to demand greater access.’
‘Keep a check on the money,’ said Keys. ‘Congress are almost insisting on petty cash vouchers these days.’
Ruttgers looked pained.
‘Of course we will,’ he guaranteed. ‘The numbers arc being fed through the computer now. We’ll have a trace on each note.’
‘I don’t like this,’ repeated Keys, looking out over the gardens again. The police had begun to break up the guitar session, he saw. Why couldn’t the kids have been allowed to continue? he wondered. They hadn’t been causing any harm.
‘It worries me,’ he added.
‘It’ll worry us more if the British get away with Kalenin by themselves,’ insisted Ruttgers.
‘True,’ agreed Keys, sighing.
‘Will you make the threat about cancelling the London visit?’ asked the Director.
‘I suppose so,’ said Keys, reluctantly.
Janet sat easily in the chair before her godfather, quite unembarrassed at his discovery of her affair with Charlie.
‘But why, for God’s sake?’ pleaded the soldier. ‘You can have absolutely nothing in common.’
Janet smiled, enjoying herself.
‘At first,’ she explained, ‘he intrigued me … he was so different from any man I’d encountered before … more masculine, I suppose …’
She paused, preparing her shock.
‘… and actually,’ she went on, alert for the old man’s reactions, ‘he’s really quite remarkable in bed.’
Cuthbertson’s face went redder than normal and he gazed down at his desk to avoid her look.
‘Do you love him?’ he asked, still not looking at her.
‘Of course not,’ said Janet, astonished at the question.
‘Good,’ said the Director, coming back to her.
Janet frowned, waiting.
‘I’ve involved him in the most vital operation in which he’s ever been engaged …’
‘… The Russian thing that killed Harrison?’
Cuthbertson nodded, apprehensively, but his goddaughter showed no feeling.
‘It is imperative that he succeeds,’ he said simply.
‘Why are you telling me this?’ demanded the girl.
‘Because from this moment on I want to know everything that the man does during every minute of his existence. I’ve got him under constant surveillance … and I want to know your pillow talk as well.’
Janet grinned at the expression: he must have got it from a women’s magazine, she supposed, the sort they read in Cheltenham.
‘… ask him the odd question … he’ll need to relax with someone … find out how he feels …’
Imperceptibly, he glanced at his watch. The electronic division would have completely bugged her flat by
