Comrade Charlie

‘Looking forward to it?’

More than she had anticipated anything for a very long time, reflected Natalia, even though she was trying to keep her hopes tightly controlled. ‘It will be an interesting experience,’ she said guardedly. She was anxious to identify the other KGB personnel: she did not consider she had a lot to fear from this man.

‘Tweed and woollen wear,’ announced the man. ‘That’s what my wife has told me to bring her back.’

Natalia wondered again if she would be able to get out to buy more clothes at the beginning of the trip. ‘I’ll take her advice.’

There was a pilot’s announcement that they had crossed the English coast and Natalia stared down at the pocket handkerchieves of fields set out far below.

‘It’s a very small country,’ volunteered Redin. ‘It’s always difficult to imagine how important it once was.’

‘Isn’t it important any more?’ asked Natalia mildly.

‘Oh no,’ said Redin, convinced. ‘It’s just one of the states of Europe now.’

‘I suppose it depends upon what you hope to find there,’ said Natalia, more to herself than to him.

32

Charlie considered carefully how to stage the recognition with Natalia, knowing how vital the timing and the circumstances were. He knew the scheduled arrival of the Moscow flight, and his initial idea was simply to be in the seating area of frayed brocade when she entered with the rest of the party. And then he decided against it. He had no way of knowing if she wanted to see him as much as he wanted to see her but it was logical she would have thought of the possibility. But for him to be openly in the foyer, practically making it a confrontation, was too abrupt. He had to guard against any startled reaction to his presence because she would be with the rest of the delegation on arrival, and among that delegation would be KGB watchers alert for any unusual response, to anything. It was better that he be nowhere around for whatever registration formalities were to be completed: that she had time to settle in and adjust, however slightly, to her surroundings.

Charlie debated with himself, waiting unobtrusively outside the hotel, just to see her, and actually repeated the reconnoitre of the previous days, seeking out vantage points. There were some – the doorway of a towering Regency house converted into offices and a tiny, centre-of-the-road coppice of trees preserved by a parks department – but Charlie was uncomfortable being outside the hotel after the Russians had entered. One or maybe more of those KGB watchers would inevitably establish a surveillance position in the foyer, noting who followed the party in. And over long years of experience Charlie had found it was human nature – certainly the human nature of supposedly trained intelligence officers, which it shouldn’t have been – to be more interested in people following behind than in people already established ahead. So he abandoned that intention as well.

Instead, for the Russian arrival, Charlie kept completely out of the way. He sat in his room and tried to read newspapers, which didn’t work because his concentration wouldn’t hold, and he tried to become interested in his flickering television, but that didn’t work either although he managed an hour watching horse racing from Goodwood and was glad he wasn’t there in person because every horse upon which he placed a mental bet got lost in the field. He considered dialling one of the in-house movies but abandoned that, too. At last, more than thirty minutes before the delegation should have got to the hotel, Charlie went to his window, which was at the side of the hotel with only the narrowest view of the main Bayswater road along which they would travel. He had to press very closely against it to see anything at all and there was a constant traffic stream of cars and coaches and buses from which it was impossible to distinguish one from another and Charlie quickly gave that up, like everything else.

He was downstairs in the bar within five minutes of its opening for the evening, the first in and able to get the previously chosen seat, the stool at the corner of the bar and the abutting wall. Unasked the barman poured the scotch and said: ‘They’ve arrived.’

‘Did it all go smoothly?’

The man gave a shrug, a gesture which seemed to be close to an affection with him. ‘I gather it was a bit chaotic, but then it normally is when a big party checks in.’

‘How many are there?’ asked Charlie, immediately alert.

‘Twenty-five,’ reported the informative man, just as quickly. ‘Quite a few women as well as men.’

Where, wondered Charlie, was the only one who mattered? He said: ‘They going to be difficult to look after as guests? I mean are there any special requests, that sort of thing?’

The barman replenished Charlie’s glass. ‘Not that I know of. There’s a few policemen about, in case there are any protests. There are sometimes, apparently.’

‘So I’ve heard.’

The barman moved away to serve another arriving customer, a man. From the suit Charlie guessed he wasn’t Russian and got the confirmation when the newcomer ordered in a heavy Scots accent. The first Russians entered soon afterwards, two men and a woman. Charlie was easily able to hear and understand the conversation, although he gave no indication of being able to do so. They were embarrassed at their uncertainty of whether to order at the bar or be seated for the barman to come to them. The difficulty was resolved when the man did go to them. The woman, who had urged that they be seated, said she’d known all along that she was right. The older of the two men stumbled out the order, for beer and scotch. The Soviet conversation ranged over the flight from Russia to how different London was from what the woman had expected – ‘a lot of buildings as big as in Moscow, which I hadn’t thought there would be’ – to where Harrods was and how worthwhile the forthcoming air show was going to be.

Their conversation became increasingly difficult for Charlie clearly to eavesdrop as other Russians came into the bar and either joined the original group or established their own parties and set up a conflicting chatter of cross-talk.

Charlie’s earlier friendliness paid dividends because increasingly busy though he became the barman didn’t forget him. Charlie sat alert to every new customer, each time feeling the bubble of half expectation when it was a woman he couldn’t at first properly see but none was Natalia. He was alert for other things, too. He watched for recognitions from the other already identified members of the delegation or listened for the recognizable language, to assure himself that each newcomer was Russian and not an independent, unassociated guest at the hotel. Having established from the barman the total number in the Soviet party Charlie kept count, so that he was constantly aware of how many were missing. And instinctively self-protective, he set about locating the KGB escorts. After half an hour he was convinced about two, an uncertain, hunchshouldered man who tried to join two separate groups which closed against him and a younger, aloof person with rimless spectacles and fair, almost white hair, who didn’t try to join in at all but who sat studying everyone over an untouched glass of mineral water. There would be more, Charlie knew. He wondered if they were travelling with the party or would be drafted in from the embassy less than a mile away.

Around seven thirty the first arrivals started to move and Charlie overheard several references to food and understood from the conversation that a section of the hotel dining room had been partitioned off for them. At no time had the number in the Soviet party amounted to more than fifteen, Natalia had never been among them and Charlie felt a sink of disappointment. Which he recognized to be unrealistic, because from their time together in Moscow Charlie knew that she scarcely drank at all and that a bar was not an automatic place for her to visit. But it had clearly been the assembly point and Charlie had built up a conviction in his mind that was where he would see her. He grew quickly impatient at his professional lapse. He was behaving like an immature, lovesick teenager instead of an experienced operative who had already risked too much by exposing himself to a great many unknowns where unknowns shouldn’t have been allowed. It was time to stop. To reverse the situation, at least: professionalism first, personal involvement second. Which was how it should be. And always had been, even with Edith. Charlie felt something approaching shock at realizing how his priorities had got out of sequence. Thank Christ he’d become aware of it this soon.

‘Another one?’