‘When I tell Yuri. He explained how you tried to persuade him to have both of us come to you, like the Americans. When I tell him what’s happened, he’ll abandon them and come to you. We both will.’
‘That will be good,’ said Charlie. Something to pass on to Wilson. In fact, there was a lot to discuss with the Director and he had to stop Cartright – initially anyway – mistakenly crossing to Macao.
‘Thank you, for looking after me like you have,’ said Irena.
What would a dark-haired woman whose name meant Dawn Rising feel about the way he’d looked after her husband, thought Charlie, suddenly. The entry documents were waiting at the High Commission; something else he shouldn’t forget. He squeezed her hands in attempted reassurance and said: ‘It’s going to work out just fine.’
‘I hope Yuri is all right, now.’
‘Don’t worry,’ urged Charlie. How was he going to manage all that had to be done? It would take at least three hours, there and back, getting first to Hong Kong island and then across to the signals station, and he couldn’t leave Irena Kozlov alone, not now. And he couldn’t take her with him, either: apart from the risk of their being re- identified during the journey, it was inconceivable to take a KGB agent – albeit a defecting one – anywhere near an installation with the security classification that existed at Chung Hom Kok. It looked like rule-breaking time again.
It took a long time for him to be connected with the duty officer: Charlie sat perched on the bed-edge, aware how hard it was, wondering if the bathroom cockroaches had any friends between the covers. When the man came on to the line, Charlie dictated his Foreign Office number, conscious of the intake of breath from the other end at the breach of security, and hurried on, stopping any protest or reaction, giving the hotel and the room and insisting Cartright be directed there the moment he made contact.
Able finally to speak, the man began: ‘London will …’ but Charlie put the receiver down before he could continue: he bet London – Harkness – would complete the threat, whatever it was.
Irena was at the window, staring out at the dark, inner courtyard, properly standing to one side so that she would not be openly visible. There seemed more than a difference in the way she was behaving; she appeared physically smaller, weighed down by what had – and was – happening. She was probably wishing she’d never defected and if she was, she would be thinking there was no going back.
‘Are you hungry?’
Irena turned, without coming away from the window. ‘Would it mean going out?’
‘Only immediately outside; I saw some places, in the same road as we are.’
‘No.’
‘Tell me, if you change your mind.’
‘We just left him, sitting there!’ she burst out.
‘He was dead: we couldn’t do anything.’
‘Was he married?’
‘Yes.’
‘Children?’
‘A girl.’
She shuddered. ‘What will happen to them?’
‘I’ll see to it.’
Some sort of emotion moved through her again and Irena said: ‘It’s awful, this business, isn’t it?’
The disillusionment that brought about the defection? wondered Charlie; it seemed a strange reaction from someone knowingly married to a killer. Coaxing, he said: ‘Is that what Yuri thinks?’
‘He says not – that it’s imprisonment he’s frightened of – but I know it is.’
Charlie didn’t want to lose the momentum, but he had to make the briefest of pauses, correctly to phrase the question. He said: ‘He’s worked a lot, then?’
Now Irena hesitated, not lost in any reverie but very aware of what she was being asked. ‘A lot,’ she said, not offering any more.
A mistake to push in that direction, decided Charlie. He said: ‘Did you find it difficult?’
Irena considered the question and said positively: ‘No, not at all.’
‘Where were you, before Tokyo?’
She moved finally, coming further into the room. ‘Is this the start, the debriefing?’
‘No,’ said Charlie.
‘Acceptance interview?’
‘It’s a little late for that, isn’t it?’
Irena smiled, big-toothed. ‘Far too late. What then?’
‘Obvious, professional interest.’
The woman examined him curiously, as if she didn’t fully believe him, and said: ‘Bonn. It was the first posting Yuri and I had together; he was in London by himself.’
An attempted deflection, gauged Charlie. ‘And you stayed behind in Moscow, throughout the time he was in England?’
The smile came again. ‘No,’ she said. ‘For part of the time, but then I worked supposedly as a secretary at the Soviet consulate in San Francisco.’
Which monitors the American hi-tech industry to the south, in Silicon Valley, thought Charlie. There was a determined and recognizable pattern from the places where Irena Kozlov had worked: Silicon Valley, the technology crucible of the West, from there to West Germany, the major European smuggling conduit, and then on to Japan, the major Asian route to the Soviet Union. The complete cell-building, spy-suborning tour, in fact: Moscow would unquestionably and immediately order her killed, to prevent what she knew being passed on. At once came the stumbling block question: so why hadn’t it been done? Knowing that all defectors try to elevate their importance – and wanting to prod Irena’s previous boastfulness – Charlie said: ‘You must be highly regarded.’
She sat on the bed, the only place available at the bottom, away from him, and said: ‘Yes, I am.’ The boastfulness he’d expected wasn’t there.
Remembering the fears that prompted their split defection, Charlie said: ‘You will be well treated, in England. I can promise you that.’
‘I’m afraid it might be a problem,’ she said.
‘There’s bound to be uncertainty, a period of adjustment …’ began Charlie, but she talked across him.
‘Not that,’ she said. ‘I know what will be expected of me … the cooperation. I think that’s what I will find difficult …’ The smile came once more, a sad expression this time. ‘I’m well aware of what I’ve done but I still regard myself as a loyal Russian. Does that surprise you?’
‘Utterly,’ admitted Charlie. Weren’t there enough ambiguities, without this!
‘I did it because of Yuri,’ disclosed Irena. ‘It was he who wanted to come over, not me.’
More guidance for Wilson; or rather for the debriefer who would eventually handle Irena, if he managed to get her out. It meant the woman would have to be treated quite differently from how they might have envisioned: not as someone hostile but certainly as someone who would be reluctant to impart what she knew. Charlie thought back to his earlier reflection about how defectors usually embroidered, to enhance their value; Irena Kozlov was going to be the reverse. One reflection prompted another: now he definitely hoped he wasn’t going to be the unlucky sod appointed her case officer. Get her out first, Charlie reminded himself, soberly. Unable to think of anything better, he said again: ‘Believe me, things will be fine.’
‘I’d like to think so,’ she said. ‘So much has happened, so quickly, that I’m not finding it easy.’
Neither am I, love; neither am I, thought Charlie. He was spared the search for further echoing assurances by Cartright’s knock, a hard sound, just once. Irena started up from the bed and went to the wall by the window again, the furthest point from the door. She remained there after the Tokyo Resident identified himself and was admitted by Charlie who said to her: ‘It’s OK.’
Cartright offered his hand, which she took hesitantly, and then the man looked doubtfully around the room.
‘It’s what the brochures call unchanged,’ said Charlie.
‘What’s happened?’
Charlie gave an edited account in front of the woman, avoiding any reference to Chung Hom Kok or the pressure Harry Lu had imposed, for the cooperation that cost the man his life. Throughout Cartright stood nodding, and when Charlie finished he said: ‘I never knew Harry Lu.’
