Comrade Charlie

Blackstone did, with chosen precision, just before the ship docked. The Russian feigned perfectly the surprise at hearing that Blackstone was an industrial tracer and said wasn’t that a coincidence and wasn’t the world a small place and did Blackstone know how difficult it was to find reliable industrial tracers, which the bemused Blackstone said he didn’t.

Losev suggested a drink at a pub called the Keppel’s Head, named after an admiral and practically on the quay against which they moored, and Blackstone looked at his watch and said all right but he only had time for one. Losev allowed Blackstone to bring the conversation back to the shortage of tracers and what, exactly, it was he wanted tracing. Losev was intentionally vague, talking generally of creating manufacturing drawings and blueprints from engineers’ specification notes and Blackstone shook his head and sniggered and agreed that it was coincidentally a small world because that was exactly the sort of work he did all the time.

‘Ever do any freelance work?’ asked Losev ingenuously.

‘Freelance work?’

‘That’s all I’m looking for at the moment.’ said Losev. ‘Someone reliable I can trust to take the load off my permanent draughtsmen and tracers; we’ve got so much work on we don’t know which way to turn.’

‘Maybe I could take something on,’ said Blackstone, in what he foolishly imagined to be an opening bargaining ploy.

‘You’re not serious!’ said the obviously delighted Losev.

‘Why not?’ shrugged Blackstone, not wanting to appear as desperately eager as he was. ‘You want a tracer. I’m a tracer. Why don’t we give it a try?’

‘You wouldn’t know how grateful I’d be: how much of a relief it would be.’

‘We’d come to some financial arrangement, of course?’

‘Of course,’ agreed Losev enthusiastically. He smiled, nudging the other man. ‘And a proper financial arrangement. Cash. No nonsense with income tax or anything like that. You interested?’

Blackstone was so excited he did not immediately trust himself to speak, so he sipped his beer to cover the gap. Then he said: ‘I wouldn’t mind giving it a go.’

‘Could we meet here again, say, tomorrow night, for me to give you the specification notes?’

‘Sure,’ agreed Blackstone. He had to ask, to get it finalized! He said: ‘What sort of money are we talking about here?’

‘This is a rush job, very important to me,’ said Losev. ‘You get a set of drawings back to me by the weekend and I’ve got a good chance of securing a contract that’s going to make me a very happy man. So you do that for me and there’s five hundred pounds in your pocket, no questions asked.’

Blackstone hid behind his beer glass again. Finally he managed: ‘Here this time tomorrow night then?’

‘I can’t believe how lucky we are to have met,’ said Losev.

‘Neither can I,’ said Blackstone, deeply sincere. ‘I don’t even know your name.’

‘Stranger,’ said Losev, reciting the Moscow-dictated legend name. ‘Mr Stranger.’

Legend name for Petrin, in San Francisco, was Friend. Both had been selected by Alexei Berenkov with much forethought.

Berenkov had the summons hand-delivered to Natalia in her office three floors below him in the First Chief Directorate headquarters on the Moscow ring road, knowing she would be there to receive it because he’d made himself responsible for her movements.

Natalia sat for several moments held by the shock, the words blurring before her, then becoming clear, then bluring again. It had finally come, she decided at once: the demand she’d feared every day since Charlie’s departure.

Natalia, who’d observed her religion even before the Gorbachev relaxations made church attendance easier, thought: Oh God! Dear God, please help me!

10

Berenkov stood politely as the woman entered his office and went halfway across the room to greet her, escorting her to the overly ornate visitors’ chair he’d moved specially, to bring her closer to his desk, not to its front but to one side. That was the extent of the relaxation: there was a less official area of chairs and couches to one side, near the window, but Berenkov decided it would have been going too far.

‘Welcome, Natalia Nikandrova,’ said Berenkov. ‘Welcome indeed.’

‘Comrade General,’ responded Natalia. Her voice was higher than it should have been but he would expect some apprehension at the personal interview. She put her hand up to the thick-rimmed spectacles before she realized she was doing it and stopped the nervous gesture; it would have seemed like a fatuous wave. Why this clumsy, artificial politeness? Where were the escorting guards and the stenographer, to note the interrogation for later production as evidence at a trial?

‘There has not been the opportunity before for me to congratulate you upon your promotion.’

Nor the need, thought Natalia, further bewildered. Unable to think of anything better, she said: ‘Thank you, Comrade General.’ There was an approach taught like this at the training academy: the soft, beguiling beginning, lulling into a sense of misleading security. Everything was undoubtedly being recorded by hidden microphones so she supposed there was no necessity for official stenographers.

‘Well deserved,’ said Berenkov. Truthfully he added: ‘I’ve spent time considering your entire career. It is extremely commendable.’

She and Charlie had tried to prepare for an encounter like this. It was imperative, Charlie had insisted, that she remain unshakable in her story of never imagining he intended to return to the West until the very day she’d denounced him. She could go as far as admitting their affair – which she had done to Kalenin – but insist it was contrived by her, without any real affection, to trick him into some indiscretion to confirm her growing suspicion of his loyalty to Moscow. Survive, Charlie had repeated again and again: Think of nothing except surviving. Cautiously, stiffly, she said: ‘I am gratified you should think so, Comrade General.’

‘And your son is an exemplary student at the military academy,’ said Berenkov.

The alarm flared through her. The beginning of the pressure, the remainder of what she had to lose? She said: ‘He appears to be doing well.’

‘But away for most of the time now? No longer needing his mother’s guidance?’

Which direction was this? A hint at how vulnerable Eduard was? Or the first move to take the apartment away from her? ‘That is so,’ she conceded. She was terrified of the moment coming but she almost wished, fatalistically, that the bloated man would stop playing with her and come out openly with the accusation.

‘So there is no personal reason against your taking another job?’ Definitely nervous, decided Berenkov. But controlling it well. Then again, she had been educated to control her emotions.

‘I’m afraid…I don’t quite…another job?’ stumbled Natalia, badly. ‘Forgive me,’ she recovered, more forcefully. ‘What job could I have different from what I already do…for which I have been particularly schooled?’ She was now totally bewildered, too confused to anticipate or guess at anything Berenkov might say.

‘Everyone and everything has to adjust to the times through which we are going,’ said Berenkov. ‘Ourselves included. I fully recognize that yours has until now been a specialized subject and that you might not have considered any other field. But there is one; one for which your language expertise fits you very well indeed.’

What was all this! Certainly not, apparently, what she’d feared. Natalia stopped the relief, before it had time properly to form. Everything was still far too uncertain, too jumbled, for her to feel relief. ‘What else could I do but debrief?’

There was suspicion, gauged Berenkov. There should have been apprehension, at being called to the Director’s office and there should have been surprise, at what he was nebulously offering. But suspicion didn’t have a place. He wanted very much to produce Charlie Muffin’s name, to observe her reaction. But he couldn’t, he accepted; she always had to remain the unknowing bait, against her warning him if Charlie Muffin did respond. He