‘It appears to be taking a long time.’
‘We isolated another one, at Kamakura. Samuel Dale. We’ve confirmed it from their diplomatic list.’ He spoke intentionally in the plural.
‘Your wife is Control for this operation?’
‘She suggested it to Moscow,’ said Kozlov. ‘They approved.’
‘How is it worked?’
‘The object is identification,’ said Kozlov. ‘I maintain observation on known CIA officers and through them discover others.’
‘You operate as a team?’ persisted the woman.
‘We do not remain all the time together,’ qualified Kozlov. ‘That would be dangerous.’
‘Why dangerous?’
‘In the event of one of us being identified, leading to the other,’ said Kozlov.
‘You suspect your identities are known to a Western intelligence agency!’ The demand was peremptory.
‘I consider separation a sensible precaution,’ said Kozlov, qualifying again.
‘Any findings, from this surveillance?’
‘I believe there is a build up of CIA strength,’ said Kozlov.
‘Why!’ demanded the woman.
‘I hope to find out,’ said Kozlov.
Fredericks sanitized his account to the other CIA operatives, but even so it was clear that the Agency supervisor had conceded more than he wanted, in the encounter with Charlie Muffin.
‘Was it right, to disclose Ogurtsov?’ questioned Elliott.
‘Do you think I’d have done it, if it hadn’t been necessary!’ said Fredericks, upset at the obvious criticism from the other men.
‘He winked!’ said Levine. ‘The bastard winked at the monitor!’
‘Listen. And listen good,’ instructed Fredericks. ‘Don’t let tricks like that upset you. Because that’s what they are: nothing more than tricks.’
‘Why?’ questioned Yamada.
‘So we’ll underestimate him,’ judged Fredericks. ‘And that would be a mistake. We all know what he did once. He’s a tricky son-of-a-bitch.’
Charlie opened the first Suntory, closed the curtains against the intrusive glitter of the night-time awakening of Tokyo and sat at the desk facing the blank wall, paper and pen before him. As he set out the preparations, Charlie guessed Witherspoon would go apeshit at his writing down in insecure surroundings the conclusions of a secure briefing. It transgressed every regulation codified in the British intelligence system since Walsingham founded it after Queen Elizabeth I agreed it was a good idea if it singled out the bad guys in the black hats from the good guys, wearing the white ones, although not quite in those words. At least after four hundred years the principle remained the same. It was a pity, he reflected further, that the assholes who sat in panelled offices with the very pictures of Lord Walsingham and Queen Elizabeth I on the walls got their colours and images blurred and relied too much upon those old school ties when it came to judging Blunt and Cairngorm and Philby and Burgess and Maclean, and all the others who’d made the service a bad joke as well as an object of suspicion among other intelligence organizations. Was he one of the others, minus that all-important school tie? Charlie asked himself. Certainly Fredericks thought so; which showed clearly enough the thinking within the American agency. Rubbish, of course: absolute rubbish. He’d never been a traitor – just vindictive – and proved his right to re-entry in a Moscow operation that would have worked if Wilson had at the time trusted him completely. Not just a professional loss, either: personal, as well. Darling, wonderful Natalia who had refused to come back with him …
Consciously, as he had before, Charlie closed his mind to the distraction, concentrating upon what he’d got from the meeting with Fredericks. Which had been a hell of a lot. Charlie wrote ‘Leningrad 1940’ as a reminder for the major calculation he had to make, qualifying it at once by noting that he would be working from the birth dates which Kozlov provided, which might for any number of reasons be inaccurate. Against it he put 1983, which appeared to be a positive date because Fredericks insisted he’d checked Kozlov’s arrival with the Japanese Foreign Ministry records. Forty-three years then from the time of the man’s birth and his posting to Tokyo. In between which he’d worked in London and Bonn. And killed. Kozlov would not have been chosen for KGB training until high school or early university entry. Eighteen was the average, for initial entry. From his unsuccessful Moscow infiltration, Charlie knew there were two years of aptitude testing and training before specialized selection in the Soviet service. Full instruction took two years. And in the case of Department V, from which men emerged assassins, there was a further year of psychological evaluation, to guard against breakdown and the sort of revulsion from which Kozlov appeared to be suffering. Charlie added up a total from his jottings, did a quick subtraction from the forty-three and came out with a figure of twenty. There would not have been an immediate posting. Charlie reckoned he could afford to build in an extra year – maybe two – before Kozlov would have been judged safe for overseas service. Which gave him the date of 1963. Where? During the interview Fredericks had said London first, then Bonn. Was that the way Kozlov itemized the tours? Or the way Fredericks had translated them, because he was talking to an Englishman and London would have come more obviously to his mind? No way of knowing. Certainly not of checking with the American because it might show him the way. Thank God for computers, thought Charlie. He circled 1963 as the date from which London would have to start checking any suspicious political, trade union or expatriate dissident deaths and then considered the way the search could be narrowed. Fredericks had been insistent, more than once, that Kozlov’s name appeared on no diplomatic register or list in England or West Germany. But Russians serving at Highgate or with international commercial organizations like the Wheat Council were not accredited diplomats and therefore did not appear on any such lists. Any more than they did in Germany. It was an unlikely oversight, but Charlie was well aware how rigidly requests relayed through headquarters from one overseas intelligence Residency to another overseas intelligence Residency were frequently interpreted; asked to check diplomatic lists they only checked diplomatic lists, without spreading the enquiry further. Charlie wrote the unanswered questions on the page in front of him, listing identity first. Fredericks had twisted and turned and tried to avoid giving anything away. So had he been lying, in insisting they hadn’t found a trace of the man, anywhere? Or had they covered the trade outlets after all and maybe come up with some sort of cover posting in the United States, despite Fredericks’ denial? Maybe even knew someone he’d killed there? To his English and German checklist of trade missions Charlie added those in America and then made a further addition not just of the US diplomatic list but that of the United Nations in New York.
Charlie sat back, examining his graph of positive results from his meeting with Fredericks, beyond those which had been obvious to him at the time. With the bonus of the photographs, which he could wire to London from the embassy, it was pretty good: pretty damned good, in fact.
What about the not-so-positive intangibles? From the few indications that emerged from Fredericks, Kozlov
