Comrade Charlie

44

Charlie didn’t sleep. There was a small dormitory at Westminster Bridge Road, for the overnight duty officers, but Charlie didn’t bother to use it because there was hardly time to justify it. He slumped instead in his own office chair, feet up on the desk, and imagined at first it would be quite comfortable but quickly realized that it wasn’t, not at all. He doubted that he would have slept, anyway. His mind was too full: overcrowded, in fact. And not just with what they’d done throughout the night and were going to have to go on doing, during the day.

There was still Natalia. Was she part of it? Was she a knowing cog in some entrapment machinery he still didn’t fully comprehend? Charlie shook his head in the half light of the office. She couldn’t have been! He knew her: had loved her and lived with her in Moscow. Really knew her. She couldn’t have maintained the artifice during the time they’d been together now, in the hotel. He was sure she couldn’t. There would have been a slip, some mistake. And yet…?

Charlie straightened more fully in the chair, abandoning the idea of trying to get comfortable. How about approaching it from another way, from what he could think through? Berenkov had set out, knowingly and intentionally, to inveigle him: bury him under a welter of phoney facts and evidence which could so easily have destroyed him. Actually got him jailed. Could still harm him: I still want a fuller explanation, the Director General had said. But why! thought Charlie, mentally echoing his earlier outburst when Harkness had presented his inept case. Why had Berenkov tried to bring him down? The only conclusion was revenge for what had happened in the past, and Charlie rejected that as ridiculous. The breaking of Berenkov’s cells and his arrest and imprisonment hadn’t been personal. It was business: professional, accepted, understood business. Maybe the Moscow episode had been slightly different: then Berenkov had been positively pursued, with himself as the unknowing pursuer, but from what Natalia had told him the whole thing had failed, so that hardly counted.

Could Berenkov regard what he’d attempted to do as business, as well? Thought of it with the professional detachment with which Charlie regarded their previous confrontations? It was a possibility: perhaps the only conclusion. But why connect it so closely with another operation, the stealing of the Strategic Defence Initiative drawings? That wasn’t professional: not properly – even literally – detached. It was a cardinal rule, for every intelligence service, that an operation should never overlap another sufficiently to put one at risk and by so doing endanger both. Which led on to another logical conclusion: that one – obtaining the drawings – was so far advanced and already successful that it could not be endangered. In which case they had been wasting their time, staying up all night.

A full circle, without finding an answer, recognized Charlie: an answer to anything. One step at a time, he decided: he’d argued throughout the night for them to proceed in the proper order, so that’s what he had to do. Keep the sequence right. And there was a lot he had to do before deciding about Natalia. The self-honesty refused him. He was dodging the issue, he knew. Wanting it to go away – be resolved for him – so that the decision wouldn’t be his. He was only sure about one thing. That he loved her. Wanted her. That none of this – whatever this was – had changed or affected his feelings for Natalia at all. What then? Muddied the waters, he supposed, unhappy at the cliche. Made it difficult, certainly, for him to see – to think – clearly.

Charlie left his office long before the appointment time, descending to the basement cafeteria where the just-finished security-cleared cleaners were bunched at tables and who looked accusingly at his intrusion into their early morning domain, some – because of his unshaven and more than usually dishevelled appearance – even with suspicion. Charlie smiled a general good morning. No one said anything back. He bought grey-coloured coffee and a glazed bun with currants on top, which was stale and filled up his throat before finally going down in an uncomfortable lump. When he blinked it was like closing his eyes against sandpaper and he kept wanting to yawn. Charlie decided he felt like shit. It would be better soon, when he was calling up the adrenaline to work things out. At least he hoped it would be. He abandoned the bun and the coffee, guessing that for the refreshments the previous night – or was it strictly speaking the same night? – they must have sent out because everything had been a bloody sight better than this. It was no wonder ail those blokes like Burgess and Maclean and Philby and Blunt had gone over to the other side: they were probably just trying to get away from the canteen food.

In the brief period they’d been away the furniture in the conference room had been rearranged. The half- moon table remained, to provide a focus, but there was only one chair behind it now. Some – but Charlie didn’t think all, from his recollection of the bulk – of the folders and binders were stacked at one end of it. The table at which Witherspoon had sat and upon which the evidence had previously rested had gone completely. There were a new stenographer and a new recording technician at the note-taking desk, which had been moved to a further and less obtrusive side of the room. A series of chairs had been set out in the room itself, possibly no more than ten although Charlie didn’t bother to count.

Wilson was already there, crumpled and unshaven like Charlie. The Director General was in conversation with Springley, who turned and at once introduced Charlie to the third man, John Bishop. The company chairman was putty-faced and clearly disorientated, shaking his head for no particular reason, just in general, all-encompassing horror.

The man said: ‘I can’t believe it! Won’t believe it. It just couldn’t be. Impossible.’

‘It isn’t and it has,’ said Charlie brutally. The basic belief of man, he thought: Misfortune always befalls someone else. This would have been the moment for that remark about life being a bitch. Then again, maybe not. He said: ‘Have you any idea where Krogh stayed, in London?’

‘I already asked,’ said Wilson.

Bishop answered anyway. He gave a helpless shrug and said: ‘My secretary might have kept a number…’ He looked at his watch. ‘She won’t be at the factory yet. I wasn’t told what it was all about until I got here.’

‘We’ve got someone going to her home, to get her there early,’ said the Director General. He went on, talking over the two men: ‘I’ve had Blackstone put in a police cell.’

Charlie nodded. ‘Let him sweat. No conversation with anyone, not even when he’s served food or drink. He folded up last time at the thought of long imprisonment: let him get a taste of what it can really be like inside a cell.’

There was the sound of further arrivals behind. The two Whitehall men entered first and remained anonymous because Wilson made no attempt to introduce them to the company chairman. He didn’t introduce the following Harkness by name, either, just as his deputy. Charlie stared at Harkness in open surprise. The man had completely changed, into a brown suit with cream accessories, and was fresh and pinkly shaved: around him hung a miasma of cologne, with lemon the predominant aroma.

‘Bloody hell!’ Charlie muttered.

‘Did you say something?’ demanded Harkness.

‘Nothing,’ said Charlie.

‘This isn’t over, you know!’ said Harkness. ‘All this. It isn’t over.’

Charlie gazed at him, innocent-faced. ‘I know it’s not over,’ he said, intentionally misunderstanding. ‘That’s why we’ve all come back here.’

The Americans’ arrival prevented the exchange continuing. The two men halted uncertainly just inside the door and then the one slightly in front, a plump man with a crewcut and rimless spectacles isolated the Director General and smiled in recognition. He said: ‘Sir Alistair! It’s good to see you!’

Wilson gestured the men further into the room and named the names. The crewcut man turned out to be the CIA station chief, Hank Bowley. The FBI liaison, a much thinner, unsmiling man but about the same height as the other American, was identified as Philip McDonald.

Charlie watched them while the handshakes were exchanged, aware of both men looking intently at everyone – particularly their appearance – and thought, hopefully, that they seemed professional. They were certainly crisply fresh. There was a further smell of cologne, too.

‘So what’s all this about!’ demanded Bowley. ‘Our duty man said you put a fire-alarm and earthquake priority classification on this!’

‘Yes,’ accepted Wilson. ‘I suppose that’s about right. Why don’t we sit down, first?’

The Director General went to the one chair behind the half-moon table and the rest spread themselves