Comrade Charlie

Barbican. And he went to movies and he read books. But filled was the operative word. There was almost a conscious anxiety completely to occupy one off-duty period until he could go the next morning to Westminster Bridge Road. Charlie thought he was like a pit pony that had spent all its life down an old-fashioned coal mine until it went blind and couldn’t find its way around in any other environment: all he’d ever known, all his working life, was espionage. He wouldn’t know what to do without it. Stirring himself to reply, Charlie said: ‘Never thought of what I do as a pensionable occupation.’

Shearer moved through the papers assembled on the desk before him and Charlie wondered if he were genuinely reading them or doing it for effect. The Director looked up abruptly and said: ‘One of the blood tests is good for measuring residual alcohol content. You know that?’

‘No,’ admitted Charlie uncomfortably.

‘You’re a good friend to the whisky distillers.’

‘I take a drink or two sometimes,’ said Charlie.

‘You take more than a drink or two a lot of the time,’ disputed the man responsible for presenting the final report upon him. ‘You think it’s a problem for you?’

‘Definitely not,’ said Charlie, as forcefully as possible. Harkness was a teetotaller: it was the sort of thing he would seize upon. Medical progress was a bloody nuisance.

‘Why so sure?’

‘Drunks get swept up. Caught. I haven’t been swept up. I won’t be.’

‘It’s only got to happen once.’

‘It won’t,’ insisted Charlie.

‘Liver shows no fatty tissue, which it would if the body regarded the intake as excessive,’ mused Shearer. ‘In fact, considering how you abuse yourself, you’re remarkably fit.’

Something else that was good to know: when he was a kid the teachers said abusing yourself when they meant masturbation. Charlie decided against trying to make a joke of it. ‘I feel fine,’ he said.

Shearer half raised himself from his chair, so he could look unnecessarily over his desk, then sat down again. ‘Still scuffing about in those preposterous shoes?’

Charlie gazed down at the Hush Puppies that had expanded and shaped themselves to his feet over months of wear. He wished he hadn’t had to thread new laces: it made them look odd. He guessed it wouldn’t take long for them to age in. He said: ‘Got bad feet.’

‘You’ve got flat feet, with a slight bone deformity in the left one, so slight it required an X-ray to show it up,’ corrected Shearer. ‘What you need are the opposite to what you’re wearing. You need proper leather, built up to create a support.’

‘Tried it,’ said Charlie, ‘didn’t work.’

‘Surveillance people commented about them,’ disclosed Shearer. ‘About the ramshackle way you dressed: said rather than making you fade into the background it marked you out.’

Charlie became immediately attentive. ‘If that’s so, if I make it so easy, how come they lost me as completely as they did?’ he demanded. He wasn’t having the disgruntled bastards score off him like that.

‘Touche!’ acknowledged Shearer.

‘And I was able to describe how every one of the people tracking me was dressed!’ reminded Charlie.

‘It’s all here,’ accepted Shearer, patting the files. ‘No one is saying you didn’t do well. I already told you that.’

Charlie recognized, discomfited, that there had been a petulance in his voice, and hoped the other man hadn’t discerned it. He said: ‘Now all I’ve got to do is maintain the standard.’

‘Things OK between you and Harkness, now he’s acting Director General?’

‘Why shouldn’t they be?’ sidestepped Charlie. He’d forgotten how complete the knowledge of the assessors, and particularly the spy school Director, had to be. If one of these people defected the rest of them might as well shut up shop and go home.

‘Don’t answer my question with another question,’ rebuked Shearer sharply.

The whole bloody lot of them were a bunch of schoolmasters, thought Charlie. He said: ‘There’s an adequate working relationship.’

Shearer nodded, as if he understood more than Charlie had said. ‘He’s requested an assessment be marked for him personally, as well as one going through the normal channels.’

Charlie stared steadily across the desk at the Director. Not a fussy schoolmaster, he corrected. Why was Shearer telling him? A private Charlie Muffin rule: Never stop anyone being indiscreet if that’s the way the mood takes them. He said: ‘That all?’

‘He’s asked for your case history file, as well.’

The same case history file the prat couldn’t get out of the computer. Which had to mean it was still being denied the man. Why was Shearer telling him? Did Harkness want him to know, to be unsettled by the interest? Charlie said: ‘Such a file is in Records, at Westminster Bridge Road.’

‘I know,’ said Shearer. ‘There’s a procedure for my making it available but because of the medical details it contains there’s a requirement that the subject’s permission be obtained.’

Thank you Lord for doctors’ confidentiality and Whitehall bureaucracy, thought Charlie: much more of this and he’d have to start observing the regulations himself. He said: ‘The requirement specifically governing this place?’

‘Yes,’ confirmed Shearer.

So it wouldn’t have been in the Westminster Bridge Road rule book, so Harkness wouldn’t know it! Got you again, shithead, decided Charlie. He said: ‘So I could refuse?’

‘You have the right,’ agreed the Director.

‘And Harkness would have to be told I’d refused?’

‘Yes.’

So what did the file contain? His illegitimacy, but Charlie didn’t give a sod about anyone knowing that, any more than his mum had: he’d done very well as a kid from all those uncles passing briefly through the house. School records and the fact that he didn’t go to university, which Harkness might regard as indicative of some failing or other but something else Charlie couldn’t give a stuff about. Probably the details of that petrol sale episode during his army service in the fuel supply depot. But the investigation had been inconclusive. And there hadn’t been a formal charge so there was no ammunition there and it was far too long ago anyway. The case histories themselves, every assignment upon which he’d worked. No problem there. Harkness knew, because that was how the man had come to be appointed, how he screwed the previous Director and deputy Director for trying to sacrifice him: he’d been forgiven and re-admitted to the department so there was no mileage for Harkness in stirring those longdead embers. Charlie said: ‘What about the reverse? What if I give my permission now? Would Harkness be told?’

Shearer shrugged. ‘It’s not essential: we’d just supply the information, as requested.’

‘But you could,’ stressed Charlie. ‘I mean you could, as required by regulations, attach some sort of notification that I’d approved the release of the details? So that he’d know?’

Shearer looked down at his disordered desk so Charlie was not able to see if the man were smiling. The Director was certainly serious-faced when he looked up again. ‘I could do that,’ the man agreed.

‘I don’t see any reason whatsoever why I should object,’ said Charlie.

‘You think the changes apparently going on in Russia are important?’ asked Shearer abruptly.

‘That’s what I said in one of the political papers,’ reminded Charlie. ‘It’s quite a second revolution.’

‘I mean at our level,’ elaborated the school’s Director. ‘You imagine any real difference affecting us and what we do?’

‘Not for a considerable time,’ judged Charlie. ‘The most compelling reason for the Soviet change of course is that their economy is up the spout. They’re practically skint. To become anywhere near efficient they need Western technology and they can’t afford to buy it. So they’ll steal it. Or try to. Which means that the KGB remains as important as it ever was.’

‘That’s what I think,’ said Shearer. ‘I’m glad you believe that, too.’

‘Glad?’ queried Charlie, guessing there had been a purpose to the exchange he hadn’t yet discerned.

‘They’re the people we should be watching out for: regarding as the opposition,’ said Shearer. ‘There