Comrade Charlie

Newsweek, passing to an identifiable KGB officer all the details of America’s intended Strategic Defence Initiative. You any idea how embarrassing it could be, if the authorities ever had access to these! They make whatever there was with Barbara and Cindy look like kid’s stuff. Think of it, Emil. Think of the arrest and the trial and being put into some jail for about a thousand years. And it would be about a thousand years, wouldn’t you say? Because if Washington knew the Soviet Union had the details then the Strategic Defence Initiative would be dead, wouldn’t it? They’d have to start all over again. And that just wouldn’t cost billions: that would cost tens of billions. I’d bet you that the President and the Administration would be so mad their eyes would pop. I know all about the judiciary being independent of the government but don’t you think a word would be dropped here and there to the judges, to make sure an example was made …’

‘Stop it!’ tried Krogh desperately.

‘Not just yet,’ refused Petrin. ‘I want you to think it through very fully. Can you conceive what it would be like, in a jail? All the violence? The homosexuality: male rapes, things like that? The filth and the stink? Everything sub- human.’

‘I said stop it!’

‘That’s what I mean about not wanting to go back to Russia,’ carried on Petrin, as if the other man hadn’t spoken. ‘If we can’t get what we want and decide to wreck the Star Wars programme a different way, letting Washington know what we’ve got and who we got it from, it means I’d have to be safely returned to Moscow ahead of the revelation, so I couldn’t be arrested…’ Artificially the Russian stretched his legs and put his face to the sun again. ‘You any idea what the Russian winters are like, Emil? It gets cold enough there to freeze the balls off a statue. Much nicer here.’

‘It won’t work!’

‘Yes it will.’

‘It’s the whole point of splitting the project up: a part of the security, to avoid anyone knowing the full picture!’

‘But not to keep it from you, because you’re special: you’re the man who negotiated everything with the Pentagon. Who’s every right to know all that’s going on.’

Krogh, a drowning man snatching for straws, imagined he saw a passing, drifting chance of survival. ‘It won’t be my fault if I make the approach and I’m refused.’ He wouldn’t even bother, he decided. He’d let some time pass and tell Petrin he’d been denied access.

‘It would be sad though, wouldn’t it?’ suggested Petrin mildly. ‘We wouldn’t have any choice then, would we? We’d have to disclose these photographs anyway to ensure Washington knew the programme was compromised and force them to rethink the whole thing. Billions, like I said: tens of billions.’

‘Oh Jesus!’ said Krogh despairingly.

‘So you will do it, won’t you Emil?’

‘I’ll try.’

‘No,’ lectured Petrin. ‘You won’t try: you’ll do it. You understand what I’m saying?’

‘Yes,’ said Krogh numbly.

‘I knew you would,’ said Petrin encouragingly. ‘You want to take those photographs as a reminder, like the stuff involving Barbara and Cindy?’

‘Get them away from me!’

‘I’ve never been to England, although I hear the weather won’t be like it is here.’

‘What?’

‘England,’ said Petrin. ‘I’ll be coming with you. Not on the same aircraft or anything like that, but I’ll be in England while you’re there, so you’ll have a friend all the time. We think it’s best to keep liaison with someone you know: you’d like that, wouldn’t you?’

‘You’re a shit!’ erupted Krogh. ‘A complete and utter shit.’

‘No I’m not,’ disputed Petrin unoffended. ‘I’m a Soviet intelligence officer successfully carrying out an important assignment.’

‘You know what I’d like to do to you!’

‘Forget it, Emil,’ cautioned Petrin, still unperturbed. ‘You’re too old and too slow. And what would it prove anyway? Stop trying to behave like someone in those old black and white movies they show on late-night television.’

‘Bastard!’

‘There’s something else I’ve got to tell you,’ said Petrin, proving the accusation. ‘You certainly can pick a piece of ass. That Barbara was the best fuck I’ve had for ages…much better than Cindy, I thought. Did I ever tell you that Cindy calls you her Daddy?’

When Krogh returned to his car there was a parking ticket fluttering from the windscreen wiper. It was white, like a flag of surrender.

There was the backlog of In-Tray traffic, as there always was after an absence from the office, and it built up for a further two days while Charlie did what he considered necessary after the Isle of Wight investigation. Which involved invoking special friendships. The man’s name was William French. He was an electronics expert in the department’s Technical Division and he owed Charlie for covering up a bungled radio interception during a Soviet Foreign Ministry visit to London a year before. The man complained it wasn’t going to be easy, and Charlie said nothing was. Then he said that because of the personal approach he assumed it was unofficial and Charlie agreed that it was, for the moment. French said he would do his best and Charlie said he was grateful. Only then, with meticulous care, did Charlie get around to composing the report to comply with Harkness’ regulations.

It was not until the third day of his return to the London office that Charlie began on the official publications, but because it was quite close to the top of the pile he found the reference to Natalia’s forthcoming visit to England within the first hour. It was in the English-language Morning Star, with a photograph of the entire Soviet delegation. Natalia was wearing a suit she’d worn in an earlier photograph of the Canadian trip, severe and businesslike, with her hair different from the earlier photographs, lighter against her head this time. Charlie thought she looked wonderful.

Charlie knew at once what he was going to do. He was going to be with Natalia again!

23

Vitali Losev was a greatly disappointed man. From being at the very centre of a major assignment, with all the personal benefits emanating from it, he now believed himself shunted aside on to its periphery, relegated to the role of a messenger boy. Certainly there’d been the congratulatory cable from Berenkov in Moscow, praising him for locating someone called Charlie Muffin. And there seemed to be some importance attached to the identification, from the activity that had followed. But Losev knew that obtaining the space information had been what really mattered: that would have been the prize to earn the recorded commendations. The prize and commendations denied him because of the idiotic Blackstone, an idiot he still had to humour and befriend, according to the inexplicable instructions from Moscow.

Losev bitterly accepted he had lost out completely to Alexandr Petrin, who was flying in triumphantly from the United States to remain the case officer on everything: case officer on the American and case officer responsible for the missing material. Leaving him on the sidelines. A support function. Those were the precise words in the instructions from Dzerzhinsky Square. What did a support function and all the other chores accompanying it mean other than he was a messenger boy!

Losev felt a burn of frustration. A messenger boy, and there was nothing he could do to reverse or change the position. Worse, he guessed he could be relieved even of that menial role – although he was head of the London rezidentura – if he made the slightest mistake, because Moscow had made it frighteningly clear that no error or oversight would be permitted. So he had to continue obediently in his subsidiary support