son.
‘And in English,’ he said. Would he have remembered the Russian he’d learned so well – and anxiously, in love after so long – from Natalia? Probably, unless there had been some dialect difference: still better self- protection to let them believe he did not have the language. Was there a similarity between this Russian woman and Natalia? Perhaps, but then again perhaps he was trying too hard to find one. The other comparison, now that he could see Olga Balan other than in a photograph, obviously followed and Charlie thought again of Irena with a pimple on her strap-red but naked shoulder and decided, as he had in Hong Kong, that it was no contest. The rain had eased but Olga was still wet and the strain of the previous days was clearly visible; despite all of which she was beautiful. Startling, in fact. She sat oblivious to him, near the window through which the lights of the port were becoming clearer, head forward to hear everything Kozlov said, the femininity – and the sex – radiating from her. How did a pratt like Kozlov pull a bird like that, thought Charlie; life was never fair. The reflections held part of his mind but he listened to the Russian’s exposition as intently as Olga, alert for several things. He wanted to ensure Kozlov set out their earlier conversation but he was intent, too, to catch any small mistake or inflection to indicate that what was happening in front of him was a charade, an act put on to lull him into whatever false impression for them to try something that he hadn’t anticipated. There wasn’t anything.
‘Defect!’ she said, when Kozlov finally proposed it.
‘You got a better idea?’ said Charlie, coming into the conversation.
Olga made a don’t-know shrug. ‘What would I do, in the West?’
‘Cooperate,’ said Charlie, regretting the glibness.
‘Be a traitor, you mean!’ she came back at him.
‘Yes!’ said Charlie. ‘It’s a hell of a lot more fun than being dead or shifting rocks with your bare hands for the rest of your life. Or becoming a
‘Bastard!’ shouted Kozlov. He used the Russian expression, which conveys greater obscenity, and Charlie came back in Russian, just as fluent and using the word the same way. ‘Try to see what a bastard!’
‘We would be together, in the end?’ said the woman. ‘Yuri and I?’
‘Wasn’t that how Yuri explained it?’
‘Only three months?’ she persisted.
‘Providing Yuri gets away the first time.’
She sat staring at him, not speaking for several moments. Then she said: This is really ridiculous, isn’t it? We haven’t got any choice, have we?’
‘No,’ said Charlie, bluntly.
‘So what’s the point?’
‘You already asked that.’
There was another protracted silence. Some tension seemed to go from her and she said: ‘Did you know him well?’
‘Yes,’ said Charlie. ‘There was a wife and a little girl.’
‘He wasn’t meant …’ She tried, but Charlie came in sharply and said: ‘Does it matter, now?’
‘I suppose not.’
‘Shall we go?’ Charlie said to her.
Olga looked down at herself. ‘I didn’t come … I haven’t got anything …’
Just like Irena, that day on the bus, thought Charlie. He said: ‘What is there?’
There was another don’t-know shrug and this time a didn’t-know outburst. ‘Oh God! Dear God!’
Not here or at the one-walled church in Macao, thought Charlie. He said: ‘Ready?’
Kozlov and Olga both stood, looking at each other, restricted and embarrassed by the presence of Charlie, who remained neither restricted nor embarrassed, looking at them. They kissed, clumsily, as if they were coming together for the first time, and parted the same way.
‘Be careful,’ she said.
‘And you,’ he said, matching the banality.
‘No contact with the Americans until you know we are clear,’ reminded Charlie. He enjoyed the irony of invoking for his own protection the bullshit that Kozlov put forward to Irena, to get her into the firing line.
‘I know what to do.’
‘The sixteenth, three months from now,’ insisted Charlie.
‘I know that best of all.’
‘Just don’t forget,’ said Charlie.
He alerted Clarke from the apartment and when they got out into the street they found the rain had stopped: in the heat that is always there during the season there was a rise of mist – more like a steam – and Charlie thought it really was like a swamp.
‘What about passport?’ she said, in the taxi.
‘It’s an entry, not departure document. And you’re going out under the aegis of the British government.’
‘What’s going to happen to me? To Yuri and me?’
Kozlov certainly had a way of screwing up women, thought Charlie. Maybe it was literally that, but surely it couldn’t be just sex. He said: ‘It’ll be fine, you see.’
There was no difficulty with the diplomatic departure and within thirty minutes of their arrival at Haneda they were airborne: as the plane gained height Charlie had the impression of a great weight being lifted from him, at the release of knowing Fredericks was keeping to the agreement.
They sat separate from the army contingent, further along the body of the plane. Major Clarke was plugged into the pilot communication and after about fifteen minutes he walked up to where they sat in their canvas webbing seats and said: ‘We’ve cleared, sir. We’re on our way to England.’
He seemed to expect some response from the woman, and when it didn’t come the soldier said: ‘Sorry about the seats. Not very comfortable, I’m afraid.’
Charlie guessed it was the first time Clarke had been involved in an operation like this and that the man was enjoying it: material for a dozen dinner-table anecdotes – ‘Have I told you about the time I got a genuine KGB agent out from under the Russians’ noses!’ – but anyone who kept on calling him sir was welcome to whatever anecdote until it became threadbare. Answering for Olga, Charlie said: ‘The seats will be fine.’
Clarke gave up on Olga. To Charlie he said: ‘It was really all remarkably easy, wasn’t it?’
Charlie looked quizically up at the man, decided it was a genuinely innocent question. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I suppose you could say that. Easy as can be.’
Winslow Elliott was with the Special Forces group who watched the British plane go and Elliott said: ‘She was there! It was all crap! He got her out tonight!’
Jamieson said: ‘So maybe we struck out.’ It had turned out to be a shitty assignment. You win some, you lose some, he thought: just follow the orders and think of the pension and the PX facilities. It was stupid to make it a personal thing.
‘Know what I’m going to do! I’m going to turn in a report showing how Art Fredericks fucked this up, every step of the fucking way. That’s what I’m going to do,’ Elliott promised himself.
The Special Forces colonel, more experienced in the way of buck-passing and report filing than the CIA fieldman, said: ‘Wait a while, buddy. See how the whole thing shakes down before you start throwing garbage into the wind.’
At that moment Yuri Kozlov entered the enormous lobby of the Imperial Hotel, no longer concerned about security – no longer concerned about anything – and walked up to Fredericks, who was waiting for him at the steps leading into the sunken lounge.
‘Thank you for being here,’ said Kozlov.
‘I’m glad you finally made it,’ said Fredericks.
Fredericks didn’t give a shit if the Russkie or any of the CIA guys watching were aware of how relieved he was. He’d just saved his ass.
