Comrade Charlie

Charlie felt out and locked it.

Natalia smiled at the precaution and said: ‘I won’t try to get away.’

‘I don’t want you to, not again.’

Her face straightened. ‘Not yet. Let’s not talk about anything yet.’

At the beginning, horrified, Charlie did not think in his anxiety that he would be able to make love to her. Natalia realized it and was very patient, coaxing and soothing, and he finally did and it was as perfect as they both wanted it to be. They climaxed in complete harmony, Natalia making tiny, muffled pleasure sounds, and Charlie wanted to do it again almost at once and it was perfect the second time. Afterwards they remained locked tightly together, as if to part would break the mood, Charlie with his head against Natalia’s neck, stroking her thigh and running his hand up to her breast and then back again, Natalia feeling his face in the darkness like someone without sight etching his features into her mind.

It was Charlie who finally spoke, still not moving from how he lay against her. ‘There’s a lot to say.’

‘Not tonight,’ said Natalia. ‘Tonight I just want it to be like this.’ Oddly, Natalia felt frightened of words. She was back with Charlie, in Charlie’s arms, and it was wonderful and she didn’t want to think about anything else.

‘Did you guess I’d get to you?’

‘I hoped.’ She wished he’d stop.

‘I meant it. About your not getting away again.’

Natalia moved her fingers just slightly on his face to put them against his mouth, in the quieting gesture she’d made when she’d first come to him. ‘ Later.’

‘Why later?’

Because I know it’s a decision I have to make and now I’ve got to make it I’m frightened, thought Natalia. ‘Please!’ she said.

‘OK! All right!’ said Charlie, hurriedly retreating. He was wrong to pressure and crowd her so soon. They were together, which neither had believed ever to be possible, and that should be enough for the first night.

‘Don’t be angry,’ pleaded Natalia, concerned she was spoiling the moment.

‘Don’t be silly,’ said Charlie. ‘How long can you stay?’

He felt her shrug. ‘Not too long. Bondarev is very diligent.’

‘What’s your room?’

‘Six twenty. But don’t try to come: it’s a sealed floor.’

‘I know,’ said Charlie. ‘What about tomorrow?’

‘You’ll have to wait for me, like tonight.’

‘Be careful.’

‘I’ll be all right,’ said Natalia. ‘You want to know something?’

‘What?’

‘I didn’t believe I could ever be this happy any more.’

The problem that developed was caused by Yuri Ivanovich Guzins and in a way no one had foreseen.

The scientist’s nervousness had worsened, not improved, as the days passed in the Kensington house, not helped by his refusal ever to leave it, so unreasonably frightened was he of British counterintelligence detection. Although it was of his own choosing Guzins felt increasingly imprisoned and like a lot of imprisoned men his objectivity distorted. His constant preoccupation became the responsibility imposed upon him by his having to approve each drawing before its dispatch to Moscow in the embassy diplomatic bag. The breaking point came with a query relayed back from Baikonur on a drawing he had already sanctioned and too brusquely put by Vitali Losev, himself preoccupied by the conflict with Alexandr Petrin. It was actually a misunderstanding by a junior technician at the Soviet space complex, with no reflection at all upon Guzins, and corrected in minutes. But Guzins misconceived criticism in Moscow and decided that if he were to protect himself in future he had to go exhaustively through every tracing, practically debating every line with the American, before releasing it.

The language difficulty meant each question and answer had to be put either through Losev or Petrin, and the insistence delayed Krogh so much that he was only managing to complete half instead of an entire drawing at each session.

By the night of the reunion between Charlie and Natalia, just three miles away across Hyde Park, the backlog of drawings for which Guzins was withholding permission had reached six and there hadn’t been a shipment to Moscow for two days.

‘It’s impossible to go on like this!’ protested Losev.

‘Then get instructions from Moscow that I don’t have to arbitrate any more,’ said Guzins hopefully.

34

The next day Charlie walked all the way to Marble Arch, where he finally succumbed to the protests from his feet. From there, on impulse, he took a cab to his home territory and The Pheasant. There the landlord, who knew him, suggested it was a nice day and Charlie said he’d known better. He didn’t eat, because he didn’t feel like it, and back at the hotel he avoided the bar in the evening. Natalia slipped into his room before midnight.

Charlie said: ‘I worried like hell, all day.’

Natalia kissed him and said: ‘There was no need.’

‘We’ve got to talk.’

‘Yes.’

‘You first,’ urged Charlie.

‘What?’

‘Everything. From the day I left you.’

Natalia’s shoulders rose and fell. ‘The strange thing is there doesn’t seem a lot to say. I thought there would be but there isn’t.’ There was another shrug. ‘I know that’s silly and there must be but I can’t think of it. All I can think of is being with you again.’

Charlie pressed her into the only easy chair in the room, perched himself on the edge of the bed directly in front of her and said: ‘Tell me what there is. What you can think of.’

Natalia started hesitantly, unprepared. She talked of being finally admitted by Kalenin the day Charlie fled and of recounting the story they had rehearsed and of how frightened she had been, but how she’d been believed. ‘Actually congratulated,’ she volunteered.

‘What happened to Edwin Sampson?’ interrupted Charlie.

‘I don’t know. I told Kalenin he was a plant to infiltrate the KGB, like you said I should, but I never learned the outcome.’

‘Poor bastard,’ said Charlie softly.

‘I thought you despised him.’

‘He was a plant,’ disclosed Charlie, telling her because there was no further hurt the man could possibly suffer. ‘I didn’t know it. I really thought he was a traitor from the very heart of our service but he wasn’t. He’d been prepared for years, built up his credibility by leaking a lot of good stuff to convince Dzerzhinsky Square he was genuine. The idea was to embed him deeply into your Moscow headquarters to be the best source we’d ever had.’

‘He would have broken under interrogation,’ said Natalia distantly. ‘It’s easier to understand now why my story was accepted so readily.’

‘I hope he did confess quickly enough,’ said Charlie. ‘There wouldn’t have been any point in his resisting: in suffering. But he wouldn’t have known that, would he?’

‘No,’ agreed Natalia, conscious of Charlie’s guilt. ‘Like you said, poor man.’

‘I didn’t know,’ repeated Charlie.

‘What about you?’ demanded Natalia quickly. ‘What was your part in the operation if you didn’t know about Sampson?’