Comrade Charlie

who wore a ponytail tied with a spotted ribbon and knew Cindy by her christian name, fashioned a take-home tinfoil doggy bag in the shape of a long-necked swan.

‘You coming back so I can thank you properly for my car?’

‘I should get back,’ said Krogh. He would go into the plant. His father-in-law would hear about it even if the man weren’t there: things like that – his dedication to work – were important. He was as safe as hell and up to his ass in stock options but his father-in-law retained the title of President and controlled the stockholders’ votes. Krogh enjoyed impressing the old man, like he enjoyed facing down the critics who’d sneered at the shopfloor draughtsman who’d gone for the main chance and married the boss’s daughter. It was going to be difficult to criticize now, after the Star Wars deal.

Cindy ran him to the airport and Krogh promised to call. There were no delays on the flight nor hindrance on the road after landing in San Francisco and Krogh was at the plant by four, making sure he was seen going through the office level to the executive suites. He tried Barbara’s number, just to talk, but got the answering machine and rang off without leaving any message. Peggy picked up the call at home and when he told her he was at the plant said: ‘You work too hard. You don’t allow any time for yourself.’

‘I will,’ said Krogh easily.

‘Busy trip?’

‘I’m worn out.’

It was the sort of club that could exist only in Los Angeles or New York, a flowered place for the butterfly people to flutter and briefly settle before moving on. Cindy’s sort of place.

She cruised the jostled bar and the fast and slow disco, sure of herself and in no hurry to prove anything. She refused two quick approaches, hello goodbye, hello goodbye, already aware of the man at the bar, like he was aware of her: a hunk and knowing it, very dark-haired, chisel-faced, smiling at her but not doing anything else. In the end Cindy made the move, detouring on her way back from the powder room. When she got to him she said: ‘I just checked for my second head: I couldn’t find it.’

‘The one you’ve got is fine.’

‘Glad to hear it. At last.’

He bought her kir royale, champagne and cassis, without asking what she wanted, and stayed with vodka, neat, for himself, and danced like a dream. When he suggested dinner at Spago she said he’d never get a table and he did, without her seeing any money change hands, and they both knew he was coming back to Malibu without their even talking about it.

‘I like the car,’ he said, outside the restaurant.

‘My daddy bought it for me,’ said Cindy.

‘You must have a very generous daddy,’ said Alexandr Petrin.

5

There had been occasions, quite a few in fact, when Charlie had regarded the assessments sessions to be a holiday: sitting in the sun, hat-over-the-eyes stuff. But not this time. He derided Harkness for behaving like a prissy schoolmaster – perhaps school mistress was more accurate – but that was exactly what this was going to be, just like being at school with all the report marked up in credit and debit columns. And Charlie was bloody sure – absolutely convinced – that if he didn’t get well over passmark in every course Harkness would have him. All the reasons could be manufactured, to bury him in some clerical division: failure to reach minimal but required standards, lack of concentration, inability to cope with the demands of the job, etcetera, etcetera.

So Charlie tried. He couldn’t recall trying so hard in a practice environment because before he’d always considered war-games to be just that, kids’ games, bang, bang, you’re dead. Now it was different. Now it wasn’t playing pretend. It was him against Harkness, although it wasn’t quite a physical contest. Near enough, though. Important for him to win: always for him to win.

There was a week of practical fieldwork, mostly around London. The second surveillance exercise was much cleverer and more difficult for him to isolate, although he did. And his target failed to pick Charlie up at all when the situations were turned around and he became the Watcher. He got four Dead Letter boxes, which was the maximum, observing genuine message caches used by the Czechoslovak and Cuban consulates and broke a sample code for which he was allowed two hours in just under one hour. Marksmanship was a real pain, in every meaning of the word. Charlie didn’t like or trust guns because they went off with a hell of a noise and attracted too much attention in a genuine situation, they made his wrist hurt and his ears ache, despite the protectors, and he could never stop his eyes from blinking at the moment of pressing the trigger, when they should have been open. He made a real effort and got five points above the pass level, which with anything else would have worried him but didn’t here. The department had a section composed of men who were experts with guns: funny blokes who didn’t smile much and who always looked behind doors and wore jackets with lots of room in the shoulders. Charlie had his own method of responding to armed confrontation: turn the other way and run like buggery, even with feet as difficult as his.

The second week was spent in Herefordshire, on a totally secure army base where Charlie lived in barracks and didn’t have a single drink and was disappointed that he didn’t feel any better than he normally did when he woke up in the mornings. Charlie was confident about the language examinations, both written and oral, and felt he’d done well in the three papers of political analysis he was set. He didn’t enjoy the medicals. He had to pee in a lot of bottles and had fingers jabbed up his bum and panted on treadmills and had enough blood drawn for a vampires’ Christmas party. His eyes and ears and nose and throat were peered and poked into and he was attached to machines that blipped and told doctors things from their jumping wavy lines. There were also psychiatric and psychological tests where in the past Charlie had mucked about, quite sure the examiners were dafter than he’d ever be, but now he remained serious and didn’t try to make jokes to risk offending them.

Charlie felt quite sad in the middle of the third week when the assessment drew to a close and he realized that even being away from the same surroundings as Harkness was practically a holiday. It was an unsettling, sobering reflection because Charlie, who was always scrupulously honest with himself if rarely with anyone else, recognized at once that really was how he felt. Which meant Harkness was getting to him far more insidiously than he’d realized. And that had to stop, right away. He was buggered if he’d let the prick make his life that much of a misery.

The final session was with someone with whom he’d concluded such visits before, a balding, heavily moustached man named Shearer. He was the Director of the spy school and Charlie was always curious why the man wore a white coat, as if he were a member of the medical section. The time before last they’d played a few games of chess together when all the tests of the day were over, and the man had even kept it on then. Perhaps Shearer didn’t like his role and felt the protective clothing prevented his becoming contaminated.

‘Quite a turn-up for the books in every subject this time,’ announced Shearer. ‘You’ve excelled yourself.’ He’d cut himself that morning shaving and it had stained the collar of his check shirt.

Although he was sure he’d done well it was still good to hear it for a fact. Charlie said: ‘You know me: always try my best.’

‘I do know you, so cut the bullshit,’ stopped Shearer. ‘You usually treat all this as a great big joke. Why the sudden seriousness?’

‘I’ve always passed,’ insisted Charlie.

‘Because you don’t find it as difficult as most because you’re a born cheat and a liar and that’s what good intelligence officers mostly are, born cheats and liars,’ said the Director. ‘And that’s not an answer to my question. I asked why the sudden seriousness?’

‘No reason,’ avoided Charlie. Was he a cheat and a liar? Only when he had to be: circumstances forced it on him, more often than not.

‘Worried about lasting to collect your pension,’ demanded Shearer with unknowing prescience.

Not the pension, conceded Charlie, honest again with himself. It was the other bit: the staying on. It was, he supposed, all part of the loneliness. He filled his spare time well enough, at the Festival Hall and the Old Vic and the