Comrade Charlie

misunderstanding you say it is, why are you so nervous?’

Blackstone frantically thought he saw an escape. He was engulfed by fear and recognized it as desperate but it was a matter of the lesser against the greater and his mind was blocked by the thought of a lifetime sentence if he admitted what he’d done. He said: ‘You’re a policeman, aren’t you?’

‘Not really,’ said Charlie. ‘Why should that be important?’

‘It’s not, I don’t suppose,’ said Blackstone. ‘But you don’t believe me, do you? So you’re going to go on digging and if you go on digging long enough you’re going to find out, aren’t you?’ He was committed now. There was no going back: lesser against the greater, he tried to convince himself. Nothing could be greater than thirty years.

Here it comes! thought Charlie. He’d have to get Slade in to witness whatever the confession was when it came to be written down. Not time yet, though: the hurdle of the first admission was always the most difficult. Once they started talking they usually found it impossible to stop. He said: ‘What is it I’m going to find out, Henry?’

‘Two wives,’ mumbled Blackstone. ‘I’ve got two wives. Not legally allowed to do that, am I?’

Charlie held back from laughing out loud but it wasn’t easy. ‘Not my line of business,’ he said. A reasonable enough explanation for the nervousness, he acknowledged.

‘You’re not interested in that!’ An uncertain hope came through all the other switchbacking emotions. Surely he wasn’t going to get away with it completely!

Charlie shook his head. ‘Like I said, I’m not a policeman. That’s nothing to do with me.’

‘I thought it would be.’ The man had accepted it! Blackstone decided hopefully.

A time to press hard and a time to behave softly, thought Charlie. Abruptly he announced: ‘I think that’s enough for today.’

‘For today?’

‘There are a few other things I’d like to cover but not today,’ said Charlie. ‘Why don’t we break now? See each other again tomorrow morning.’

He had escaped, accepted Blackstone. Temporarily perhaps, but it was enough, just to get away from the back-and-forth questioning that had his head in a whirl, confusing him, so he couldn’t think. He said: ‘Of course. Whatever you say.’

‘How about ten o’clock?’

Blackstone nodded agreement to the time and said: ‘So you’re not a policeman?’

‘Nope.’

‘Will you tell the police about me?’

‘I told you, I’m not interested,’ repeated Charlie.

For the first time there was a twitch of a smile, like a light clicking on and off. He’d well and truly deflected the other man, like he’d set out to do, determined Blackstone triumphantly. ‘Appreciate it,’ he said. ‘Not as if I’m hurting anyone, is it? I treat them both the same. They’re both happy.’

‘That’s not why I’m here,’ assured Charlie.

He’d won but only just, Blackstone realized objectively as he left the factory. And there was no telling for how long. He needed to talk to someone and there was only one person to whom he could talk. The urge was overwhelming to go to the first public kiosk he could find but Blackstone forced himself to stay calm, waiting until he’d crossed the river and was going inland before stopping at the telephone box he normally used, three miles outside of Newport. It wasn’t Losev who took the call, of course, but Blackstone said at once there was an emergency and that he had to speak to the man with whom he personally dealt, refusing any explanation. It was arranged he should call back in fifteen minutes and when he did the Russian was there, waiting. The dam broke the moment Blackstone was connected. He babbled disjointedly and Losev stopped him and told him to relax, then demanded the account in a controlled, consecutive way. Blackstone managed it but not easily, pumping coins into the pay phone as one time period expired to run into another.

When Blackstone finished the Russian said: ‘Why didn’t you warn me when you were first caught?’

‘I knew I’d got away with it that time.’

‘And now you’ve admitted your bigamy?’

‘I couldn’t think of any other way to get him off my back: I couldn’t think straight.’

‘He’s not going to do anything about it?’

‘He said he wasn’t.’

Losev was furious once more at the renewed difficulties Blackstone’s detection posed for him personally, his mind far ahead of the immediate problems. It meant he couldn’t recover with Moscow as he’d hoped over the incomplete drawing with which the bastard had already tricked him. And that even if Blackstone got through the postponed interrogation he couldn’t risk using the man for a long time. He said: ‘You really think the project manager is looking favourably upon your re-application?’

‘That’s the impression I got. He was very friendly. I don’t know what could happen now.’

So the man still had potential, acknowledged Losev, despite his anger. Too much for him to be disregarded or cast off, which was what Losev would have liked to do. As emphatically as possible he assured Blackstone there was nothing for him to worry about: that the only risk was in the man confessing. All Blackstone had to do was keep his head and he would be safe. ‘Do you think you can do that?’

‘I’ll try,’ said Blackstone, subdued.

‘You’ve got to do it,’ insisted Losev, as forcefully as possible. ‘The only person who can put you in jail is yourself.’

‘Should I keep in touch?’

‘Not for a week or two. Don’t do anything that might attract suspicion or attention,’ ordered Losev.

‘It frightens me to be questioned by someone I know to be an intelligence official, although he looks like a tramp.’

It worried Losev, too. Which was why the Soviet station chief rushed a surveillance squad to the Isle of Wight overnight, to be in position when Charlie went into the interrogation room that Blackstone had identified during his terrified call. They succeeded in getting a total of five photographs of Charlie. Losev was a very diligent as well as a very ambitious intelligence officer. He made the routine comparison at once with the dossier that Berenkov had sent from Moscow weeks before. And realized that while he might have encountered a setback with one assignment he had succeeded in another. He’d identified the whereabouts of someone called Charlie Muffin.

Which an hour later, in Moscow, Berenkov regarded as very important indeed.

‘This isn’t like it used to be, is it?’ asked Barbara. ‘Not like it’s supposed to be?’

‘No,’ agreed Krogh, glad she had initiated the conversation.

‘I’m sorry.’ She’d tried hard to make it work for him that night, but it hadn’t. She sat at the side of the bed now, voluptuous and full breasted, wearing a diaphanous cover that secured at the neck with a tie and ended just short of her crotch. Her hair was unsecured, falling to her shoulders.

‘One of those things, I guess,’ said Krogh.

‘I never think these sort of situations should end badly: people saying things that hurt.’

‘I don’t think that either,’ agreed Krogh. It was all happening remarkably easily. Thank Christ something was, at last.

Barbara gestured around the San Francisco apartment. ‘This is your place: I know that.’

‘Take as long as you want. No hurry.’

‘Thanks.’

‘You need any money?’

‘I guess the apartment agents will want a deposit. They often do.’

‘Five thousand OK?’

‘Thanks again.’

‘I should be going.’

‘Sure.’

‘Take care.’

‘You, too.’

‘I will,’ assured Krogh. ‘I really will.’