‘Thought it was proving time,’ said Charlie. If the chain were to be pulled, flushing him down the toilet, the hand had to be reaching up by now. So there was no further point in blowing bubbles at each other. He said: ‘So OK. Are we going to meet?’
The silence lasted for several moments and then Fredericks said: ‘Of course we have a meeting. I thought we decided that last night.’
Charlie grinned at the blank wall in front of him. He’d demanded a review as well as an encounter with Kozlov, and if Fredericks were agreeing to that then he was also agreeing to his seeing Kozlov. Things were on an upswing. Charlie said: ‘I’m glad things are working out,’ letting the sentence trail, so that ‘my way’ was clearly inferred.
‘This afternoon?’ suggested Fredericks, who got the point.
The response showed yet more anxiety, like coming to the hotel the previous night. Recognizing that it was bridge-building time, Charlie said: ‘Why don’t I come down to see you at the embassy?’
‘That’ll be fine,’ said Fredericks, tightly.
Charlie signalled his emergence from the code room and Cartright was waiting when he lowered the walkway and went back into the main body of the embassy. ‘Always feel uncomfortable in these things: like I’m in one of those funny spy films where people have code names and kill each other,’ said Charlie.
‘Sometimes it happens, and it isn’t in films,’ said Cartright.
‘You know something?’ said Charlie. ‘Until now it’s been a great day. You just pissed all over it.’
‘Well?’ demanded Wilson.
‘It could have been luck,’ said Harkness, with insufficient thought.
‘Luck had nothing to do with it,’ insisted the Director. ‘It was intelligent assessment from a damned good operator …’ He paused and said: ‘Disappointing that Witherspoon didn’t establish any possible connection.’
Witherspoon was a protege of the deputy director, who ignored the remark. Instead he said: ‘How did we get such an immediate confession out of Knott?’
Wilson smiled and said: ‘Promise of an early parole review and a five-year reduction of the sentence.’
‘We’re going to do that!’ exclaimed Harkness, surprised at the concessions.
‘Of course not,’ said Wilson, surprised in his own turn. ‘I wanted a confession in a hurry and that was the way to get it. The bastard will serve his full time, with no remission or parole consideration.’
‘What about Herbert Bell: he’s dangerously in place.’
‘Don’t want another espionage trial, so soon upon the other one,’ said Wilson. ‘It would unsettle NATO more than they are at present: particularly the Americans. And I definitely don’t want any uncertainty between us and Washington, no matter how peripheral, until this business in Japan is settled.’
‘We can’t just leave him,’ protested Harkness. ‘He’s been positively identified as a Soviet spy.’
‘I’m not going to leave him,’ said Wilson. ‘I’m going to use him. I’m going to make Herbert Bell a conduit for as much confusing disinformation to Moscow as I can possibly manage. And then, when we do arrest him, the Russians won’t know what they can and what they can’t trust, out of everything he’s sent, for years.’
‘Let’s hope Charlie Muffin is as lucky in Japan as he was on this thing,’ said the deputy.
‘I keep telling you, it wasn’t luck,’ insisted Wilson. ‘Charlie’s better than most, for all his faults.’
One day Charlie Muffin would make a mistake impossible to cover up or lie about, thought Harkness: a mistake he was determined to uncover and expose. Hopefully Cartright would provide it. Harkness wondered how long the Director’s strange loyalty would last, after Charlie Muffin made the inevitable slip.
Kozlov concluded the arrangements with the letting agency and then went by himself to the apartment in Shinbashi, overlooking the Hamarikyu Garden and the sea beyond. Aware of the accommodation problems of Tokyo, Kozlov decided it was extremely good: a bedroom separate from a living area, a small kitchen and – most important – an existing telephone. The Russian would have enjoyed staying longer but he was late and Hayashi was important.
Hayashi was waiting at the appointed railway-arch
‘You
‘Yes,’ said Hayashi, at once. He’d ordered but wasn’t eating.
‘I must know of any US or British arrivals,’ said Kozlov.
‘I can guarantee it,’ promised Hayashi.
Beneath the table Kozlov handed the man his retainer: a bourgeois revolutionary, thought the Russian, contemptuously.
Charlie set himself the test as he left the embassy, guessing at the black Mazda, and got the confirmation that it was the CIA surveillance car when it pulled out at once and began following his taxi. Charlie turned back inside his vehicle, shaking his head. It was something he’d have to sort out with the American: things were going to be difficult enough as it was, without constant game playing between them. Not this sort of elementary game playing, anyway. He still needed positively to know whether Fredericks had checked his abort authorization. The man should have done, if he were the professional that Cartright suggested. And if the American believed he had the power, then Charlie knew he possessed the lever which put him slightly ahead, in the forthcoming bargaining. About bloody time. He tried to shrug off, literally, the irritation of the previous night. He’d been caught with his pants down and his pride had been hurt, but it was stupid – and worse, a distraction – to go on thinking about it. Keep it in mind, for when the opportunity came. But in its rightful, second place, where the need to even the score didn’t intrude.
At the entrance to the compound he identified himself to the Marine guard and then again to the receptionist in the main vestibule. While the receptionist made a muffled telephone confirmation a second Marine checked his identification, closely comparing Charlie’s photograph against the man in front of him, obviously reluctant to allow him any further into the embassy.
He’d worn a fresh shirt, too, thought Charlie. Indicating the photograph, he said: ‘I could have been in pictures. A star.’
The soldier looked back, face unmoving. ‘You got any ID other than this?’
Miserable bugger, thought Charlie. ‘Afraid not,’ he said.
From behind the guard, the receptionist said: ‘Someone’s coming. Will you wait?’
‘There,’ said the unhappy Marine, pointing to a seating area near the door, where Charlie would have been directly in sight.
Charlie ignored it, going instead to the American Tourist Office information rack and leafing through the brochures. It had been a long time since he’d been to America: during the time he’d been on the run from his own people, after setting the Directors up. Which had been a silly thing to do, he thought, in rare self-recrimination. They had been prepared to sacrifice him at a Berlin border crossing and so they deserved the embarrassment of Soviet arrest and humilating exchange. But he hadn’t properly calculated the personal cost. And not just the running and the hiding; he could have managed that, because so much of his professional life had involved running and hiding. It was the other things. If he hadn’t determined his own personal vengeance, Edith wouldn’t have been killed, in their retaliation hunt for him. So lonely, for so long. And then Natalia … Charlie snapped the unfocussed brochure shut, closing out with it the reflections and the unaccustomed self-pity. His wife was dead and Natalia beyond reach, and to think about either was another distraction he couldn’t afford: he’d made his mistakes and they couldn’t be undone and he had to live with them.
