See Charlie Run

‘I said the bait looked good,’ qualified Charlie. ‘I didn’t guess at the fish. You did.’

‘You’re the smart-ass!’ challenged Fredericks. ‘Have you ever known a better cross-over offer?’

Charlie considered the question and then said, honestly: ‘No.’

‘So it’s kosher?’

‘I didn’t say that,’ contradicted Charlie.

‘For Christ’s sake!’ exploded Fredericks. ‘What does it take to convince you!’

‘Not even Him,’ said Charlie, twisting the American’s exasperation. ‘He should have fingered Judas as a double.’

‘What’s that mean?’

‘Nothing,’ evaded Charlie. ‘Just me smart-assing.’ Why should he keep warning the Americans that things were not always as they seemed? Let them work it out, like he hoped to do.

Fredericks looked doubtful. Then he said: ‘That’s it. You’ve got it all now.’

Charlie had distrusted people who told him he had it all from the moment he’d been parted from the tit. What he did have was enough – well, almost enough – for the moment: more, in fact, than he’d expected to get. He wanted just one more thing. In passing, Charlie wondered if Fredericks would ever know how much he’d conceded; and apparently missed. He said: The photographs?’ and recognized at once from the expression on the American’s face that Fredericks had hoped he would not make the request. Silly sod, thought Charlie; as if he’d overlook something as important as photographs.

‘I said …’ started Fredericks but Charlie interrupted him yet again, aware of the advantages he’d finally secured and aware, too, that the time was for apparent impatience. ‘Don’t!’ warned Charlie. ‘Don’t tell me that you sent everything for picture analyses to Washington and nothing is left here. Because I thought we’d agreed to stop being stupid towards one another, and if you told me that I’d say you were stupid to entrust something so important to a diplomatic pouch which might have been destroyed in an air-crash or intercepted and opened during an aeroplane hijack. And if you said it was done by personal air courier, I’d say you were mad to let go of one of the most importance pieces of material you’ve so far managed to obtain, since Kozlov’s approach. And then I’d go on to say that I don’t think you’re that stupid. Any more than I hoped you wouldn’t think I’d be stupid enough to believe it …’ Charlie grinned, accusingly. ‘Do you know what I think? I think that somewhere in a safe not very far away – maybe in this very room – you’ve not only got the negatives of every photograph you took of Kozlov but a whole interesting selection of prints, as well.’

Fredericks made as if to speak but then shook his head, in self-refusal. Instead he moved slightly to his left and opened what appeared to be a panel where the desk drawers should be. Charlie couldn’t properly see, from where he was sitting, but guessed it was a safe, floor-mounted. Unspeaking, the American offered four photographs to Charlie, who took them and said: ‘Thanks.’ They wouldn’t be all, and they wouldn’t be the best, Charlie knew: but at least he had four. He took his time, examining each. Fredericks’ assessment of the Russian being nondescript was very apt: ten Kozlovs had a place in every bus queue there’d ever been.

‘The right,’ insisted Charlie.

‘What?’

‘You said he parted his hair on the left. But you forgot the reversal effect of a photograph. It’s the right.’

‘It’s a deal: I won’t regard you as a fool,’ said Fredericks.

‘It’s a deal: I won’t treat you like one either,’ said Charlie. Which was altogether different from promising not to cheat and lie and do everything else he could to screw the other man, to come out on top. To achieve which it would, in fact, be stupid to consider Fredericks … well … stupid. Suddenly remembering, he added: ‘Stop having people follow me. It’s ridiculous.’

‘I won’t do it any more,’ promised the American, again too easily. He said: ‘There’s not a lot that we can do now until we get Kozlov’s meeting arrangements?’

‘No,’ agreed Charlie. Not much, Sunshine, he thought. Charlie extended the reflection, on the way back to the hotel from the US embassy. He’d still have liked to have known more. But then possibly, with the benefit of hindsight, so would the captain of the Titanic. What he had was sufficient, and it would take a lot of assembly and assessment, and he was glad there was going to be a gap before any possible meeting with the Russian. Thank God he’d contacted Harry Lu. He wondered what additional fall-out protection he could get together: sure as eggs were things that usually ended up all over his face, he was going to need some.

He called Cartright at once, and when they were connected he said: ‘I need to come into the embassy.’

‘You do,’ agreed Cartright. ‘There are messages.’

‘Problems?’ asked Charlie.

‘How do I know?’ said Cartright.

He was able to confront Harkness now, Charlie decided. He said: ‘Tell them I’m coming.’

Those sections of Soviet embassies occupied by the KGB – and by the Glavnoye Razvedyvatelnoye Upravleniye or GRU, the military branch of Russian intelligence – are internally the most restricted, without exception anywhere in the world forbidden to any ambassador or any supposedly genuine diplomatic staff. Intelligence personnel are an elite – as they are, indeed, within the Soviet Union – answerable to no one, beholden to no one. Except within their own rigidly enforced, rigidly observed confines, where KGB informs upon KGB and GRU informs upon GRU and each service informs upon the other. Ostensibly, for each service, there is a Rezident or chief, but so well is a tangled intricacy of suspicion constantly maintained that no Rezident knows whether he truly occupies the office or whether someone he considers his subordinate is in fact the real holder of the position, reporting upon him and monitoring his performance. The situation is further complicated by the official existence within each branch of the service in every embassy of a security officer, who is not responsible to the Rezident – and certainly not to the ambassador – reporting and monitoring as actively and as independently as everyone else.

The same-colour jigsaw creates the maximum suspicion and uncertainty, and the Soviet Politburo remain convinced since 1953, when Nikita Krushchev innovated the system, that it has preserved their intelligence organizations against dissent and defection better than any other in the world. Statistics of known defections appear to support that confidence.

Boris Filiatov was officially the KGB Rezident in Tokyo, but the security officer was a woman whose reputation was such that the majority of Tokyo-based Russian agents believed that Olga Balan was the bona fide Rezident, unencumbered by any unknown superior. Olga – whose job it was to know of these and other rumours – did nothing to discount them, because she enjoyed the respect and because it encouraged the informants to confide their secrets to her, which increased her reputation and revolved the wheel of rumour full circle. The earned reputation for ruthless determination contrasted with Olga Balan’s obvious and real femininity. She was taller than most Slavic women and she did not have the usual square-jawed features either, but a soft, oval face and a cowl of blonde hair: those who feared her complained her very appearance made her all the more frightening, because it concealed the sort of person she really was. The stories positively identified two agents who had been sent to number 27 gulag in the Potma complex upon her evidence of their enjoying too much the pleasures of the West and involving themselves in the black market, to guarantee some comforts back in Moscow against the time of their recall. They were true. One had been her fiance, for whom she had genuine affection and whom she had therefore warned several times to stop before filing her report. If she hadn’t, she knew someone else would have done, and she did not want to occupy a prison cell herself, either for failing properly to do her job or because of her known involvement with the man. Olga Balan regarded being a good Russian as more important than being a loyal fiancee, and anyway towards the end she found the man sexually lacking.

Olga conducted everything to order and most of all the weekly meetings. Kozlov entered precisely on time, because such things were noted, exchanged the formalized greeting and sat in the already arranged chair. Each KGB officer maintained a work-log, which was required to be submitted the morning in advance of the afternoon encounter; his was open in front of the woman.

‘Kamakura?’ she said, looking up at him. She had deep brown eyes.

‘Yes,’ said Kozlov. ‘A day visit.’

‘Why?’ She had an unnerving, staccato way of questioning.

‘We are maintaining observation on CIA personnel attached to the American embassy here. A joint operation with my wife, approved by Moscow. I was following their Resident, Art Fredericks,’ said Kozlov, pedantically. All interviews were recorded.