Charlie’s Apprentice

Ministry that to press for the north might lead to a straightforward refusal. He instantly switched the persuasion to a southerly route.

It took a lot of discussion to finalize a route. It allowed him as far south as Chongqin, to return eastwards through Wuhan up to Shanghai before going more directly north, back to Beijing. It put him close to at least five restricted areas and maybe six closed cities. It would have been naive to hope to get into all, but if he penetrated just one or two the trip could be more than worthwhile. An additional benefit was that for the first few days he could travel alone without any official supervision.

It was not until Zhengzhou, on the sixth day, that he was scheduled to meet an escort to take him through the restricted areas. The guardian’s name was Li Dong Ming. His photograph showed a bland-faced, bespectacled man with rather large ears. Snow guessed him to be about thirty years old. If he was, they would be exactly the same age.

Natalia Nikandrova Fedova accepted that professionally she had been extremely fortunate.

She had been exonerated from any responsibility for the ultimately failed operation in England, which, incredibly, had turned out to be a personal affair for the ego-inflated satisfaction of the Directorate head, Alexei Berenkov. And then escaped completely the KGB reorganizational purges after the failed coup of 1991. Not just escaped: positively and materially benefited, when the KGB had been transferred to the jurisdiction of the Russian Federation, still headquartered in Moscow, but renamed as an internal security agency now. There had, of course, been the advantage in those early days of her being an officer in the external First Chief Directorate, not attached to any internal part of the oppressive apparatus which deservedly bore the brunt of the mass sackings, blood- lettings and even elimination of entire departments.

Natalia supposed there was a supreme irony that with her elevated rank of Major-General she now occupied the position once held – and finally abused – by Alexei Berenkov, who had been prepared to sacrifice her in his personal vendetta against Charlie Muffin, an adversary for whom one-time admiration became unreasoning competitiveness. Now Berenkov was disgraced, dismissed and stripped of all rank and privilege. And Charlie, who’d beaten Berenkov first with a phoney defection to Moscow and then again by refusing to fall into the London trap as a supposed Russian agent, was … was where? She wished, how very much she wished, that she knew. Whatever and wherever, he would still be in intelligence. He was too good to dump.

Natalia slowed the car at the traffic intersection at what she still thought of as Marx Prospekt, despite the Communist-cleansing name change which had altered the street maps of Moscow. She turned almost instinctively at the pause, looking into the rear of the car, annoyed with herself for forgetting to leave the bag with the clothes change and fresh nappies at the creche: she knew there would be spare things available at the nursery but she’d still telephone as soon as she got to the office.

Was it allowing too much self-pity for her to think she had been sacrificed, personally? Yes, she decided at once. Charlie had acted the only way possible – the only way he knew – as a professional intelligence officer. The setup was wrong and they’d both known it. She’d decided to take the chance. He hadn’t. And in the event she’d managed to rejoin the Soviet visiting group from which she had been prepared to defect without being missed, so there had been no inquiry or punishment.

The traffic began to move and Natalia looked away from the back of the car. Sasha couldn’t be considered a factor: neither had known then. Would it have made a difference, if Charlie had known? Perhaps. She liked to think it would. But she could never be sure. Determinedly Natalia rejected another reflection, this one probably more pointless than the rest. Whatever there might have been – could have been – for her and Charlie Muffin had ended: closed off forever, with no possibility of ever being opened or restored.

She had a baby whom she adored. A privileged life, despite the democratization which was supposed to have swept privilege away. And a high executive position, providing everything she could conceivably need, in addition to privilege. She was a lucky woman.

But not complacent. She could not afford to be, with Fyodor Tudin at her back. She’d made a mistake, agreeing to Tudin remaining as her immediate deputy. He was an old-timer, a relic of as far back as the Brezhnev era. Natalia knew she would always have to be wary of the depths of Tudin’s resentment of her being the Directorate chairman, rather than him.

As Natalia edged off the ring road at Yasenevo, into the skyscraper block of the original and still retained First Chief Directorate, she wondered if Charlie was as fortunate. She hope so.

Just over fifteen hundred miles away, Charlie Muffin stared down at the summons that had finally arrived from the deputy Director-General and hoped exactly the same thing.

Four

Patricia Elder’s suite came off the second arm of the new triangular ninth-floor layout at the centre of which reigned the starchily formal Julia Robb.

But the deputy Director’s room had none of the sterility of Miller’s. There were two flower arrangements, one on a small, elaborately carved cabinet of a sort that Charlie had never seen before in a government office. There was a display of art deco figures on the same cabinet and on a mantelpiece in the centre of which was a gold filigree and ormolu clock. There were screening curtains of festooned lace at the window, which had a partial view of the Big Ben clock and the crenellated roofing of the Parliament buildings. The deputy Director sat in front of the window, at a proper wooden and leather desk, not something fashioned from metal and plastic which looked as if it had popped out of a middle-price Christmas cracker. The only similarity Charlie could find with Miller’s quarters was the complete absence of any personal photographs. There would have hardly been room on the desk anyway: there were two red box containers and a string-secured manila folder Charlie recognized from the three – or was it four? – disciplinary hearings he’d endured over the years.

The woman’s suit was as formal as that of their initial meeting: today’s was grey, high-collared and as figure-concealing as before. Charlie automatically checked her left hand: there was still no wedding ring.

She studied him just as intently with her black-brown eyes, and at once Charlie felt like a schoolboy called to explain his hand up a knicker leg behind the bicycle sheds.

Patricia breathed heavily, before she spoke: the sigh, dismissive, remained in her voice. ‘So now we come to talk about Charles Edward Muffin …’

Charlie easily remembered the last two occasions he’d been addressed with such formality: both times at the Central Criminal Court at London’s Old Bailey. The first a set-up prosecution and an escape-intended imprisonment, all to create a phoney defection to the then Soviet Union: the unsuspected beginning of so many things. The initial encounter – his debriefing – with Natalia that had led to a love neither of them had foreseen and which he, ultimately, had ruined by not going to her in London. The operation – the purpose of which he’d never known until he’d innovated his own special self-protection – to discredit Alexei Berenkov. Which had nevertheless partially succeeded and led to Berenkov’s close-run retribution, involving a manipulated Natalia again. The second court appearance had been phoney too, like the announced ten year sentence, to convince the Russians his entrapment had succeeded in part. It should have protected Natalia, as well. There was no way of knowing if it had. Double disaster. Double abandonment. Belated double despair. So many things … Charlie stopped the nostalgia, forcing himself to concentrate, although the recollection of the trial stayed with him. ‘That sounds very official: should I stand to receive my sentence?’

There was no facial relaxation. She patted the box files and said: ‘There’s enough to merit a sentence.’

‘A man is always presumed innocent until proven guilty by the weight of evidence. I was always innocent!’ said Charlie, brightly, trying to build bridges between himself and his new Controller.

‘There are parts that are impressive,’ she said. ‘But the bad outweighs the good: Charlie Muffin, forever making up his own rules but to whom no rules ever need apply.’ She paused. ‘Right?’

‘I’ve never failed, when it mattered,’ Charlie fought back. ‘When operations went wrong, it’s because they would have gone wrong anyway: they were impractical or incorrectly planned. Or I needed to innovate to survive, not having been properly briefed.’ What the fuck was this? It was like having to explain himself for being caught behind the bicycle sheds!

‘One of the central themes,’ isolated the deputy Director. ‘Your personal survival.’

A poor shot, seized Charlie. ‘I’ve always thought personal survival is a fairly basic principle; a blown intelligence officer is a failed operation and invariably an embarrassment, to be explained away. There aren’t any