‘It’s wrong,’ judged Braley. ‘We’ve been set up.’
‘That’s what I’m afraid of.’
‘Incidentally,’ side-tracked Braley. ‘That gun was visible when you sat down.’
Charlie loosened his jacket, annoyed at the criticism. He hadn’t checked its concealment by sitting down; a stupid mistake.
‘Did you mean it, Charlie?’ asked Braley, interested. ‘If there had been any C.I.A. involvement during the meeting, would you have shot me?’
‘Yes,’ said Charlie, immediately.
Braley paused, then shook his head slightly. It was impossible to discern whether the attitude was one of disbelief or incredulity.
The C.I.A. man jerked his head in the direction in which Kalenin had disappeared.
‘What do you think he’s going to do?’
Charlie slowed in the shadow of the covered pavement.
‘I wish to Christ I knew. I’ve tried every possible permutation and it still doesn’t come out right.’
Braley looked pointedly at his watch.
‘He’s been gone fifteen minutes,’ said the American. ‘If we were going to be arrested, it would have happened by now.’
Charlie nodded agreement, having already reached the same conclusion.
‘The table would have been the best spot,’ he enlarged. ‘During the conversation, his men could have got so close that we wouldn’t have had a chance to blink.’
‘So we
It was a hopeful question, recognised the Briton. He shrugged, unhelpfully. ‘How the hell do I know?’
They went through the archway and began to walk towards Wenceslaus Square.
‘If they’re going to arrest us, it won’t really matter,’ said Charlie. ‘But I think we should immediately part to double the chances of what’s been said getting back to London.’
Braley nodded.
‘If I manage to reach it, I’m going to remain in the embassy until the last possible moment for the flight,’ advised Charlie.
‘Right,’ agreed Braley, enthusiastically.
‘There’s a flight at 1530 tomorrow, BE 693,’ listed Charlie. ‘Aim for that.’
Charlie’s walk back across the Charles Bridge to the embassy was a pleasant, relaxed meander. He ate alone in his room that night, drinking nothing and left the following day with just two hours to reach the airport, knowing the flight would have been called by the time he reached the departure lounge.
Braley was waiting for him aboard the aircraft, the asthma gradually subsiding.
‘Well?’ queried Charlie. ‘Now what do you think?’
‘It doesn’t make sense,’ said Braley. ‘It just doesn’t make bloody sense.’
‘Good trip?’ asked Edith.
‘All right,’ agreed Charlie.
‘Surprised you came straight home,’ said his wife, accusingly.
Charlie stared back at her, curiously. For several seconds she held his gaze, then looked away.
‘There’s been a reason every time I’ve been late home,’ he insisted. ‘You know that.’
‘So you keep telling me,’ she said, unconvinced.
‘Don’t be stupid,’ he said. He snapped his mouth shut. It would be wrong to argue with her, using her to relieve his nervousness, he thought.
She ignored the challenge.
‘So it is definitely the nineteenth?’ she said.
‘Looks like it.’
She looked directly at him again, the hostility gone.
‘I’m frightened, Charlie,’ she said.
‘So am I,’ said her husband. ‘Bloody frightened.’
Kastanazy paused at the end of his account to the full Praesidium. There was no movement from the other fourteen men.
‘And that, Comrades, would appear to be a full summation of the situation thus far,’ he said. No one believed him, he saw.
‘Are you sure?’ demanded the Party Secretary.
Kastanazy nodded.
‘Incredible,’ judged Zemskov. ‘Absolutely incredible.’
(16)
Cuthbertson would think of it as a war-room, thought Charlie, watching the British Director move around the office, indicator stick held loosely in his right hand. He had used it like a conductor leading a symphony orchestra all morning.
Charlie yawned, unable to conceal the fatigue. It had been a series of fifteen-hour days since their return from Czechoslovakia. After the combined report from him and Braley, Ruttgers had been withdrawn to Washington for final consultations with the Secretary of State and the President, and two special Cabinet meetings had been called at which Cuthbertson had given the complete details at the personal prompting of the Premier.
There had been a final, direct telephone liaison between the American leader and the Prime Minister and then joint approval given for the crossing plan devised by Cuthbertson and Ruttgers.
One hundred and fifty British and American operatives had already been drafted into Vienna and three tons of mobile electrical equipment flown in and housed at the American embassy. Fifty more men were being moved in that day.
In Cuthbertson’s room, the map displacements had been completed. A gold flag marked Kalenin’s crossing at Laa and then markers indicated his anticipated journey along the minor roads through Stronsdorf to Ernstbrunn, then to Korneuburg and into Vienna through Lagenzerdorf.
If there were pursuit, then the decoy car was to ignore the Ernstbrunn turning and carry on towards Mistelbach. Separate coloured pins marked this contingency.
If the crossing went unchallenged, Kalenin would be brought to Vienna through a corridor of operatives, all linked by radio, so that they could close in behind, surrounding the Russian general in a circle of safety.
For two hours that morning, Cuthbertson and Ruttgers had stood before the map-table, lecturing on the crossing to the four section heads who were leaving that afternoon for the Austrian capital to co-ordinate the surveillance of the field operatives.
James Cox had already been withdrawn from Moscow and was in Vienna, waiting to be briefed on the decoy man?uvre he would perform on the Mistelbach road if the necessity arose.
Only the American section head knew about the explosive device and had been briefed in the privacy of the C.I.A. Director’s Washington office before the Atlantic flight. The explosive package had been flown to Austria with the electronic equipment.
The section leaders had filed out fifteen minutes before, leaving the five of them in the room.
‘All you’ve got to do,’ said Ruttgers, talking to Charlie, ‘is get him just one yard across that border; from then on there’ll be no way it can go wrong.’
Both he and Cuthbertson were hoarse with talking and it was Wilberforce who took up the discussion.
‘Even so,’ he said, ‘we’ve been cornered at the conviction of both of you that there’s still something wrong with this operation.’
Charlie humped his shoulders, resigned.
‘It’s not a new feeling with me,’ he reminded them. ‘I’ve had doubts from the beginning.’
‘Which have so far proven groundless,’ rasped Cuthbertson.
