47
It was a week before Charlie was called to the ninth floor, a week during which he was forbidden to go anywhere near his Vauxhall flat but had to live in a department-owned house in Hampstead and was required, each succeeding day, to build up in the minutest detail a report upon everything he had done from the moment he’d detected the Soviet surveillance on the Isle of Wight. There were two interviews with the executives from the department’s internal security division, hostile, antagonistic encounters with men who considered Charlie had exposed the inadequacies and failings of their colleagues and were determined to catch him out and find cause for some internal disciplining. Charlie didn’t believe they did, to any degree of seriousness, but was in any case hardly concerned. He obeyed the instructions and endured the interrogations but existed through it all in a slough of crushing despondency, his mind and feelings absorbed to the exclusion of anything else by that morning at the department store window, gazing down upon Natalia for the last time. He’d hesitated that day, at the moment of leaving the store, all the conflicting reasoning and common-sense decisions wiped out, his sole, overwhelming desire abruptly to run back and get to her. For several moments he’d remained just inside one of the exit doors, almost literally pulled in opposing directions. He’d fought against the yearning and carried on, quitting the place, but since then, every day and every night, he’d thought about nothing else, mentally rearranging the arguments, trying to reach – pointless though that would now be – a resolve different from that he’d made.
During the week the office across the corridor normally occupied by Hubert Witherspoon had remained empty and there had been no contact or communication from Richard St John Harkness, which Charlie had half expected but did not regret failing to receive.
He was curious, when he received the ninth-floor demand, if at last it was to be confronted by Harkness: the interview request was illegibly signed
But it hadn’t come from Harkness. At the reestablished security counter on the ninth floor he was collected by the primly permed Miss Harriet Jameson-Gore, Wilson’s personal secretary who had been in temporary charge of the typing pool during the Director General’s illness and escorted by her to the old man’s office, where Wilson was waiting. Wilson was by the window, where the sill was just the right height for him to perch and take the pressure off his leg without actually sitting down. There were two vases of pink parfait roses on the man’s desk, filling the room with their scent. Growing roses at his Hampshire home was Wilson’s overriding hobby: oddly it was the presence of the flowers, more than Wilson being there to receive him, that told Charlie the man was back permanently in control. Charlie still didn’t think the older man looked completely fit.
Wilson gestured Charlie towards the sagging visitor’s chair that had been absent during Harkness’ tenure, a scored and stained leather thing with a seat that kept descending after a person sat in it. Without extending any invitation the Director General poured Islay malt into two tumblers, which he held before him for examination and then added more whisky to both.
He handed one to Charlie and said: ‘I’ve got the report from internal security. And their recommendations. They’ve itemized eight positive breaches and recommend your severe reprimand and that those reprimands be logged on your service record.’
They’d have been pissed off at that being the best – or rather the worst – that they could do, Charlie knew. He said: ‘I suppose that’s about right.’
‘I’ll say it again,’ remarked Wilson. ‘You behaved like a bloody fool. An absolute bloody fool.’
‘Yes,’ accepted Charlie meekly. He didn’t accept it at all but now was not the time to argue, sitting there with a glass of the Director General’s whisky in his hand.
Wilson propped himself at the window again, gazing into his drink. ‘Did she turn up?’
‘Yes.’
‘Alone?’
‘She appeared to be. It was impossible in surroundings like that to be absolutely sure.’
‘Why didn’t you make the contact?’
‘It wasn’t right,’ said Charlie. ‘She had to know.’
Wilson nodded, in agreement. ‘I would have thought so. We could be wrong, of course, but I doubt it…’ He looked up from his glass. ‘Was it important to you?’
‘Yes,’ admitted Charlie at once. ‘Very important.’
‘Then I’m sorry. Personally sorry, I mean.’
Charlie shrugged, not immediately speaking. Then he said: ‘Whatever the full story, I had to allow the doubt.’
‘Let’s move on,’ said Wilson briskly. ‘There are other things that need to be discussed. I’ve read your account…’
‘Yes?’ said Charlie inquiringly.
‘My impression is that it is completely honest.’
‘It is,’ assured Charlie.
‘Then be honest about something else.’
‘What?’
‘Did you intentionally embark, before the Isle of Wight business, to set up the deputy Director General or Hubert Witherspoon?’ demanded Wilson. ‘Create situations – aware as you were of certain personal feelings concerning you – that would lead them to overstep the mark perhaps?’
Charlie stared directly across at the other man, holding his eyes. ‘No, sir,’ he lied, ‘I did not.’
Wilson gazed back, matching Charlie’s look just as directly. There were several moments of silence. Wilson said: ‘I want your assurance on this. You are being utterly truthful about that?’
‘Yes I am,’ said Charlie, feeling no discomfort.
Wilson nodded three or four times, quite slowly, and made a sound as if he were humming to himself. He said: ‘There were some serious management mistakes. The credibility of the department has been called into question.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ said Charlie. He still felt no discomfort. Remorse, either. The bastards wouldn’t have felt anything for him, if they’d caught him out in the beginning or if the Soviet manipulation had turned out differently. They’d have been out somewhere celebrating by now, two glasses of lemonade and lots of self-satisfied back-slapping about how clever they’d been, ridding the department of an embarrassing oddity called Charlie Muffin.
‘It’s been decided there should be certain changes,’ disclosed Wilson. ‘Mr Harkness is being appointed Finance Director.’
It was difficult for Charlie to remain straightfaced. No longer deputy Director General! Charlie had never expected that: imagined trying to achieve it, even, because he wouldn’t have thought it possible. And it wouldn’t have been, not from what he’d done, he recognized objectively. Their overreaction, their embarrassing mistakes, had been related to what they were fed by Moscow. His part in their downfall had been to expose the Soviet manoeuvre for what it was. He said: ‘Who is the new deputy Director General going to be?’
‘That’s still to be decided,’ refused Wilson.
‘And Witherspoon?’
‘Administration,’ said Wilson vaguely. ‘He will no longer be maintained on the active roster.’
Charlie supposed he should feel some satisfaction – be grateful at least that his two most active critics in the place had been dumped at the same time – but he didn’t. Somehow it now seemed quite unimportant. He said: ‘What about me? Is any change to be made to my role here?’
Wilson’s face relaxed, into something of a smile. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Nothing at all. But I want you to listen, very carefully. Don’t you ever take so many chances again: try to run everything like a one-man army. It’s an absolute bloody miracle that things did not turn out to be a bigger disaster than they were: a miracle that the whole Russian
