Comrade Charlie

‘I shouldn’t have said that,’ regretted Laura hurriedly.

‘Don’t be silly.’

‘Was she beautiful?’

‘I thought so.’

‘Sure you don’t want to talk about it?’

‘Very.’

‘I went over to Fulham last weekend, where Paul and the girl are living. Hung about. Actually saw them. They were taking the first baby out for a walk. One of those pushchairs with wheels that twist in every direction. It’s a little boy, you know, their first baby. Peter. Can’t think why I went there now. They seemed very happy. They were laughing. He had his arm around her.’

Charlie wished desperately he could think of something to say, to help. Maybe he was helping by not saying anything.

‘Sorry,’ she said.

‘There’s nothing to be sorry about, not to me.’

She smiled at him sadly. ‘You know that photograph that used to upset you, the one of Paul?’

‘Yes.’

‘He took it with him.’

‘Don’t go to Fulham any more,’ advised Charlie.

‘I won’t.’

The bottle between them was empty. Charlie said: ‘Would you like some more?’

‘No,’ refused Laura. ‘I should be getting home.’ She looked directly at him and said: ‘I don’t want you to come back with me.’

‘I wasn’t going to suggest it,’ said Charlie.

‘Just a drink, occasionally.’

‘That would be good.’

‘Life is a bitch, isn’t it!’ She said with sudden vehemence.

‘Every time,’ agreed Charlie.

‘I thought there was going to be improvement, a week ago,’ said the nursing home matron. ‘There were definitely signs of some emergence. But in the end nothing happened.’

Charlie put the chocolates on the woman’s desk and said: ‘Why don’t you have these?’

‘We mustn’t lose hope,’ insisted the woman.

‘I don’t,’ said Charlie. ‘Ever.’ There was something else he was never going to lose, either. The doubt that by feeding things back to Harkness as he had, through Laura, he’d actually caused his mother to be interrogated as she had been: that her remission wasn’t the fault of the Special Branch men but his.

48

‘Exceptional!’ said Valeri Kalenin. ‘Absolutely exceptional!’

‘Thank you,’ said Berenkov. This wasn’t the first praise. Berenkov was accustomed to it, so the attitude was practised, humble deference. But today was particularly important to him. Berenkov was glad their friendship had been restored, the suspicion between them – more Kalenin’s suspicion than his – swept away. He’d been fortunate, Berenkov accepted: incredibly fortunate. But only he knew it: would ever know it. Luck comes to the daring, he thought. He didn’t think he would attempt to be the daring again. To himself – but only to himself – Berenkov conceded that he’d been badly frightened until that last drawing arrived from England in the diplomatic bag.

‘Not my words,’ allowed Kalenin honestly. ‘The opinion of the commendation from the Praesidium itself. We’re secure, Alexei. Secure. And you made us so.’

‘Everyone is being extremely generous,’ said Berenkov, remaining modest. So Kalenin, who’d been prepared to avoid the responsibility, was happy to be sharing the credit. Berenkov felt no resentment.

‘I did not expect Guzins simply to be deported as he was,’ qualified Kalenin. ‘The British made an incredible mistake there. Over the whole affair, in fact.’

Further luck, reflected Berenkov. He said: ‘I expected him to break: make a full incriminating confession.’

‘So all we’ve lost is Petrin.’

‘Always an acceptable sacrifice, like Obyedkov,’ pointed out Berenkov. ‘We can repatriate them, in time.’

‘And we’re permanently rid of Charlie Muffin!’

Berenkov smiled. The newspaper reports of Charlie Muffin’s trial had been brief, dictated by the restrictions of the hearing, but he’d had them all sent to him from London. He said: ‘Ten years. He’ll never be able to endure ten years.’

‘It was still a very great risk, doing what you did,’ said Kalenin soberly.

‘Calculated risk,’ insisted Berenkov.

‘It worried me,’ admitted Kalenin.

Not as much as it worried me, at the very end, thought Berenkov. ‘It worked,’ he said, the conceit creeping through.

‘What are you going to do about the woman?’

‘Nothing,’ said Berenkov. ‘The function she fulfils is useful. Maybe I’ll transfer her back to debriefing, but not immediately.’

‘Did it ever occur to you that she might have defected, to be with him?’

‘It was a possibility,’ admitted Berenkov. ‘But we always had her son as a hostage. She would have known that.’

‘It’s unimportant now,’ judged Kalenin.

‘What’s the missile schedule?’ asked Berenkov.

‘Extremely advanced,’ said Kalenin. ‘The Foreign Minister is to make an announcement of our capability at a meeting on conventional weapons in Geneva next week. When the uproar subsides – we’re estimating a week – there’ll be the invitation to the Western media to witness the actual launch. All the Western ambassadors are going to be invited to Baikonur, as well…’ Kalenin smiled. ‘The intention is to make a big spectacle of it.’

‘We’ll certainly achieve that,’ said Berenkov.

‘I want to apologize to you, personally,’ declared Kalenin. ‘I was quite wrong to doubt you as I did.’

‘It is forgotten,’ dismissed Berenkov. ‘Friends can doubt each other occasionally, can’t they?’

‘Never again,’ assured Kalenin. ‘Never again.’

‘We’re going up to the dacha next weekend,’ said Berenkov. ‘Georgi is home. Valentina would like you to come up with us.’

‘I’d enjoy that,’ accepted Kalenin. ‘I’d enjoy that very much indeed.’

It was better now than when she had first returned: no one but Natalia would have been aware of the remaining scars because she’d rearranged an easy chair to cover the carpet burn and paid an odd-job man in the Mytinskaya apartment block to replace the shattered cabinet door in the kitchen.

It had been appalling when she’d got back. Like an animal cage from which the beasts had escaped or been driven. There had even been an animallike smell, a gagging stench of the crowded-together bodies of whoever Eduard had brought back with him for his leave while she had been away. Apart from the carpet burn – a large, through-to-the-floorboards hole where something had been allowed to smoulder for a long time – and the smashed cabinet there had been empty bottles strewn throughout the kitchen, the sink filled with unwashed crockery, and the toilet bowl blocked with unflushed faeces. But that wasn’t what caused Natalia’s greatest offence. That had been her own bedroom. Eduard had allowed someone to use her bed. And not merely someone – a single person – because it had really been used, the sheets marked and stained. Natalia had felt violated, abused. She’d stripped the bed, heaving with revulsion, but hadn’t washed the sheets because she’d known she wouldn’t ever be able to sleep in them again, not even if they were clean: she’d rolled them up into a ball and thrown them out and scoured