Charlie looked up at the barman, shaking his head in his newfound determination to start conducting himself properly. He knew the aloof Russian he’d guessed to be KGB had registered him in the bar and decided it would be careless to remain any longer in a position so openly to monitor the Soviet party. Just as it would be a mistake, desperate though he was to do it, to eat in the hotel dining room in the hope of still catching sight of Natalia. Working as closely as this – much too close to be sensible – he had to ease himself from people’s consciousness, not positively attract their attention by always being around.
He ate a disappointing meal in a Lebanese restaurant in the Edgware Road, remained attentive and therefore satisfied with everything that happened about him, and when he returned to the Bayswater hotel used the pretext of reading theatre bills around the reservation desk to check the bar again. There was quite a lot of noise and audible snatches of Russian but Natalia still wasn’t there so he went directly up to his room.
Lying in the darkness Charlie let the disappointment sweep over him once more but did not get angry at the emotion as he had in the bar, because there was no longer any danger in the indulgence. It hadn’t gone at all how he’d wanted. He’d imagined a recognition being made and of a meeting somehow arranged and of telling her the things he never had in Moscow – that how very often he’d wished he’d stayed instead of running – and of her saying things back that he wanted to hear. Never this; never absolutely nothing, not so much as a snatched glance of anyone who just
What if she hadn’t, in the end, been one of the delegates at all! What if for any one of a dozen reasons her participation had been cancelled! Or the announced composition of the Russian party had been wrong! Or changed! The doubts and the questions flooded in on Charlie, so quickly it was difficult for him to evaluate one before another demanded attention. And then he stopped bothering to try to evaluate any of them separately because he recognized each was a distinct possibility. He tried to think beyond, to its significance, and couldn’t because there was still so much by which he was confused and found impossible to work out.
He snapped on the sidelight, near the tea-making things, and booked an early morning call from the hotel operator. Charlie did not sleep properly, despite the assurance of waking up on time. He didn’t dream: Charlie was rarely aware of dreaming. Instead he remained in a half-awake state, always knowing where he was and why he was there and he was already fully awake when the telephone rang. He made himself some tea from a sachet on a string and wished he hadn’t, so he left it, and was shaved and showered by seven. He guessed he was far too early, which he proved to be, but he didn’t think there was another way of doing it. A vaguely detached night porter – not the attentive old man with the ill-fitting teeth – was still on duty when Charlie descended to the foyer, which bustled with a surprising number of maids with vacuum cleaners and floor polishers, maintaining the artificial marble. Charlie saw no one he identified as Russian.
He decided that the house of converted offices was the best spot but that to establish himself there at once would make him too obvious, so he walked fully out into the Bayswater Road. At the junction he considered he was concealed from the hotel. For almost thirty minutes he maintained observation from there and while he was doing so he located the convenient newsagent’s shop. When he felt he could not stay so far away from the hotel any longer Charlie bought two newspapers to hide behind deep in the entrance porchway of the Regency house. It was better concealment than Charlie had believed it would be. There was a half-enclosing, pillared fronting wall and a porticoed roof and inside it was encouragingly dark, too dark, in fact, even to use the newspapers as he intended.
There was one false alarm, when four Russians Charlie recognized from the bar the previous evening emerged from the hotel, but they merely walked down to the main road, towards the park, and then back again. By the time they reached the entrance the nervous KGB escort was on the steps. Charlie first thought the man was checking for the wandering group but he ignored them and then relaxed at the arrival of the expected transport. There were two large limousines and a back-up minibus. The man fussed about the order in which they were parked, after which he took a list from his pocket and hurried back inside the foyer. The first party of Russians straggled from the hotel almost at once.
Natalia was among the second loose grouping.
Charlie felt a jolt deep in his stomach, a physical sensation almost like a kick. She was wearing a highnecked suit, grey he guessed from where he stood, and carried a briefcase. Her hair was definitely shorter than he remembered and he had the impression that she was taller, which was obviously absurd. She seemed quite assured, with none of the shuffling apprehension of some of the others around her. Charlie thought she looked beautiful and decided at that moment that whatever risk – even sacrifice – he’d taken was worth it, just to see her again.
There was the customary confusion that always arises getting a body of people into different vehicles and for a few moments there was a lot of disordered milling around in the forecourt, with none of the Russians going anywhere.
Which was the moment Charlie made his move and when Natalia saw him. Charlie knew at once that she had, although with superb control she gave not the slightest outward reaction apart from the briefest stiffening in the way she stood and Charlie was sure that only he was aware of it because for that fleeting moment he allowed himself to look directly at her. Then he looked away and continued on into the hotel and on up to his room without looking back or paying any attention whatsoever to the later-assembling Russians.
Charlie pressed against the door to close it behind him and remained there for a few moments, realizing that he was shaking very slightly. He wasn’t concerned at the nervousness: a nervous tension was necessary, protective, in a lot of situations. It only became an embarrassment during hostile interrogation. Charlie smiled at the reflection, intrigued at the connection of thoughts: the last time he’s undergone a hostile interrogation was facing Natalia in a Moscow debriefing house after his supposed escape from British imprisonment and defection to Moscow.
The shaking went very quickly. Charlie sat on his still unmade bed and took off the Hush Puppies to free his feet from their minimal incarceration and smiled to himself in satisfaction. She knew he was here: here and waiting for her. And he was sure she’d know where to look for him, that night.
With time to kill now, Charlie had a leisurely breakfast with greatly improved tea and read the previously ignored newspapers before leaving the hotel again to walk unerringly to one of the several public telephone boxes he had marked during his earlier study of the area.
Charlie bypassed the main switchboard at Westminster Bridge Road, dialling the number he knew would connect him directly to William French in the Technical Division.
‘Anything?’ asked Charlie, without any greeting.
‘Yes,’ said French, not needing it.
‘How many?’
‘Two.’
‘Same as before?’
‘Yes.’
‘You made a trace yet?’
There was a long hesitation from the technical expert. Then French said: ‘That’s going further than we agreed.’
‘Not a lot of point in leaving a thing half finished, is it?’ prodded Charlie.
‘You’re a bastard!’
‘Actually,’ said Charlie mildly. ‘My mother says my father’s name was William. But I don’t think she’s too sure.’ He’d have to call the Hampshire nursing home, to find out how she was.
The drawings shipped from London in the overnight diplomatic bag brought the tally of those so far provided by the American up to nine. And there was the advice from the separately received
There were a series of reports from the London surveillance teams permanently monitoring Charlie Muffin. There was the record of his arriving at the hotel and of his lingering in the bar in the obvious hope of seeing Natalia – who irritatingly had not appeared until dinner and then been late – but most important of all was the message of a few moments earlier, the report of the passing contact encounter between them that very morning, at the entrance to the hotel.
They were definitely his marionettes, Berenkov determined: his own puppets whose strings he could pull and
