‘Did he give any indication of what he wanted?’ Losev demanded at once from the duty telephone clerk.
The man shook his head. ‘Just that it had to be you. And that it was important.’
‘I’ll believe it when I hear it,’ said Losev.
Blackstone came on to the line precisely on time. He insisted he had been completely re-accepted as a loyal employee. When Losev pressed, the man said he hadn’t heard but that he was still confident of being taken on to the secret project: if he didn’t hear in a week he was going directly to ask for a reply.
‘So it’s looking hopeful?’ said Losev. The friendliness was difficult. There was nothing new or important in anything the man had said.
‘I think so. Certainly,’ said the eager Blackstone.
‘I’m very pleased. So will other people be,’ said Losev.
‘I was wondering…’ started Blackstone and then stopped. He was doubling his horse-racing bets now and hadn’t won for weeks.
‘Wondering what?’
‘This is just a setback, right? We’re still going to go on together?’
‘Of course we are,’ assured Losev. ‘I’ve got some news for you. There’s consideration being given to some sort of basic retainer, on the weeks when there isn’t anything positive.’
‘You really mean that!’ snatched Blackstone.
‘I’m still awaiting the final approval.’
‘I’d be so grateful! You can’t imagine how grateful!’
‘Just keep in touch,’ ordered Losev, reciting the instructions he’d been ordered by Berenkov to relay. ‘At the moment nothing is guaranteed but it looks promising.’
‘I’ll do my best for you,’ said Blackstone anxiously. ‘I promise I will.’
Whether or not the British had broken the entrapping Soviet code had to be conveniently monitored and witnessed, so Berenkov set both up for London.
The first genuine Soviet espionage emplacement to be sacrificed was a dead-letter drop in the no longer used part of Highgate cemetery. It was a split-apart and sagging vault less than two hundred yards from Karl Marx’s tomb. For a year it had been the undiscovered depository for minimally useful ship movement memoranda leaked by an Admiralty clerk, whom Berenkov also judged to be dispensable. Berenkov identified Highgate by acknowledging in code to the Russian embassy in London the importance of what they were receiving through it. Within twenty- four hours, fully observed by an undetected Soviet squad, the British set up their surveillance and twenty-four hours after that arrested the unwitting Admiralty clerk who was much later to be sentenced to eight years’ imprisonment.
The second test involved a supposed Cuban businessman who was, in fact, a courier for the Direccion General de Inteligencia. Berenkov knew the man would be carrying a terrorist-customer list for Czech arms on a flight from London’s Heathrow airport to Havana because Berenkov had ensured the delivery of the list, which was out of date anyway, to the Cuban embassy in London. On this occasion, in the same code, Berenkov cabled London on the value of the information being carried and supposedly ordered that any assistance sought should be given. Once more the airport seizure was witnessed by the watching Russians. The courier was not technically carrying anything illegal, for which he could have been arrested, but the terrorist list was seized on the grounds that it constituted information potentially useful to an enemy.
The code used by Berenkov for the two exchanges was the simple letter-transposed-for-figure cipher that the KGB’s Technical Division had devised specifically for Berenkov. And which had been faithfully recorded on the micro-dot now attached to the girlie calendar in Charlie’s apartment.
In Moscow Berenkov, satisfied that his code had been intercepted and broken, insisted on celebratory champagne and when Valentina asked what they were celebrating he said the very successful progress of an operation that was going to prove the advantage of sometimes acting audaciously.
In London Richard Harkness was equally ecstatic at their having penetrated a new Russian communication system although he didn’t consider champagne because he never touched alcohol of any sort.
Both of what Harkness believed to, be intelligence successes had been commanded by Hubert Witherspoon. He didn’t drink, either, so his celebration went unmarked as well.
24
William French, the electronics expert in the Technical Division, returned the favour sooner than Charlie had expected and Charlie knew he should have felt satisfied and vindicated but he didn’t because things weren’t sitting neatly in his mind, like he wanted them to sit. And there was a further uncomfortable dichotomy, an intrusion into his professional life by what he wanted privately to achieve by a reunion with Natalia. Which he quickly accepted was hardly a dichotomy at all because in these circumstances it was virtually impossible to differentiate between professional and private considerations.
He still tried.
Harkness was suddenly and unexpectedly leaving him alone, but realistically Charlie knew he couldn’t rely on that continuing throughout the time Natalia was scheduled to be in London. And that he had therefore to remove absolutely the possibility of Harkness imposing another meaningless chore which risked keeping him apart from her.
The answer appeared easy and Charlie wished everything else was. From the information already released from Moscow he knew that Natalia was part of the delegation attending the Farnborough Air Show. And the Farnborough Air Show ran for a prescribed week in September. Still with three weeks’ official leave due to him, Charlie filed the memorandum to Personnel and to Harkness requesting the entire period, to run before and after the show, to provide him with contingency time at either end and keep the period she would be in England sacrosanct from any interruption.
It was not difficult, either, to discover the hotel at which the Russian support staff were staying. A Permanent Secretary at the Foreign Office had earlier in his career been a cultural attache at the British embassy in Budapest, where Charlie had prevented the embarrassment of an injudicious involvement with an Hungarian secretary. The grateful diplomat returned Charlie’s call within twenty-four hours and said why didn’t he try the Blair, slightly off the Bays water Road. Just to be sure Charlie checked with an Inspector in the Special Branch Protection Unit, who confirmed the hotel while Charlie was still on the telephone.
Again Charlie allowed himself time at either end of the air-show week, reserving a day ahead and two days after the planned duration of the Russian visit. He followed up the telephone booking with a letter of confirmation and asked for confirmation in return, determined against anything going wrong.
And with conscious cynicism he continued to date Laura. He chose the weekend and rented a car and initially considered driving with her down to the Hampshire nursing home. But then changed his mind because when he telephoned ahead the matron said his mother hadn’t come out of the relapse and wouldn’t know he was there anyway. Instead they drove into Sussex and found a pub with oak beams and no slot machines or piped music in the bar.
On the way down Laura said Harkness appeared excited by the first major coup since his appointment as acting Director General but admitted she didn’t know what it was because at the moment it was restricted to verbal reports to the Joint Intelligence Committee with the Cabinet Secretary taking the formal, four-copy-only notation.
‘It’s got to be important then?’ queried Charlie curiously.
‘Harkness seems to think so. Oh, I forgot! Witherspoon is involved somehow.’
Charlie waited until they got to the pub before trying to resolve an uncertainty that had grown worryingly in his mind since the investigation on the Isle of Wight, directly asking Laura if she thought Harkness was still targeting him.
Laura frowned and said: ‘Not at this actual moment: he’s too caught up in this other thing, whatever it is. Why?’
