Brian Freemantle - Comrade Charlie

Were there to be the miracle — were they to meet again — how different was it likely to be from before, in Moscow? Another impossible question, with too many subsidiary queries and doubts and considerations. What about the consideration: the only thing that mattered. Whether this time she would stay with him.

Eduard had been the barrier before. How old would the boy be now? Eighteen: maybe nineteen, he wasn’t sure because he couldn’t remember the actual birthday. Whatever, no longer a boy: no longer the dependent barrier behind which she’d once hidden, frightened like it was understandable she should have been frightened.

Something else he would attempt, if there were ever a second chance. Beg her, plead with her, try to explain better and more convincingly than he had in Moscow. Anything, just to get her to stay.

Charlie finally let the fantasies, like the nostalgia, flow unchecked. They could be happy together, he knew. Not immediately, because that wasn’t sensible to expect, but the difficulty wouldn’t exactly be unhappiness. It would be uncertainty, while she adjusted and came to trust a new life: became accustomed to all the changes because it was Natalia who would be called upon to make more sacrifices than he would.

There was, though, one sacrifice that would be the same: maybe, even, greater in his case. He’d have to give up the service, the beloved existence in which he’d immersed himself and never imagined himself ever leaving, despite peripheral irritations like Harkness. He would have to give it up. It was unthinkable — quite inconceivable — for him to delude himself into thinking that if he and Natalia ever came together again he could somehow continue as he was.

Was he prepared to do that for her, like he would be asking her do, for him: like he’d already, once, asked her to do for him? Yes, Charlie decided at once, without any lingering doubt or caveat. To have Natalia permanently with him, to marry her and live with her as naturally as they would ever be able to do anything naturally in their particular circumstances, Charlie knew he was prepared to give it all up. Everything. Without a moment’s hesitation.

It was the weekend before the reflective Charlie completed his search for references to Natalia, the weekend he’d arranged the long-delayed date with Laura, after going down to Hampshire. Now he wished he hadn’t. It was a reluctance he was quickly to put aside.

Charlie sat for almost half an hour holding the paper-skinned, unmoving hand and talking of whatever came into his head, trying for some shared reminiscence to lure her out from the private world into which she had retreated again, but his mother sat propped up in bed staring into emptiness, unaware he was there. He gave up, finally, leaving the chocolates with hard centres near where her hand lay on the bed, and made his way to the matron’s office.

Ms Hewlett looked up as he entered and said at once: ‘I’m sorry. It looked so promising, too.’

‘When did it happen?’

‘Quite soon after your last visit. She kept on about the pension inspectors but it became confused, of course. Twisted in her mind. She came to think she’d done something wrong and that they were going to punish her: that she was going to have to leave here. Kept saying she didn’t want to go. I tried to explain it wasn’t so, that they didn’t mean any harm, but I don’t think I really got through to her…’ The woman paused, shaking her head. ‘I was so hopeful.’

‘I want to know something,’ said Charlie, very slowly. ‘Those inspectors. In your opinion was their visit responsible for my mother regressing, as she has?’

The matron adopted a doubtful expression, turning down the corners of her mouth. ‘Impossible to say,’ she said. ‘Maybe. Then again, maybe not. People your mother’s age, senile like she is, their minds fasten on the strangest things.’

‘But if they hadn’t come, there wouldn’t have been the incident to fasten on to in the first place, would there?’

The matron frowned. ‘You can go through life saying “if only…” but it doesn’t get you very far,’ she said philosophically.

‘What are the chances of her coming out of it, like she did before?’

‘There’s always the possibility.’

‘You don’t sound as if you expect it to happen?’

‘I never lose hope.’

‘I left the chocolates on her bed.’

‘I’ll keep them safe here in the office, just in case.’

Charlie returned determinedly to London, glad after all he’d made the date for that evening. He got to the bar sufficiently ahead of Laura to have two drinks before she arrived. She offered herself to be kissed, so he did, and this time they went to a restaurant that had not been recommended in any food guide, and the meal was fine. He let Laura lead the conversation because he did not want to appear to do so in anything, agreeing it was fortunate the hospital had discovered Paul’s infection to be caused by a virus and not by the heat, particularly as Paul had to spend a month in Brazil.

‘Harkness is wary of you now,’ she suddenly disclosed. ‘There really was the most awful row, you know?’

‘It did get to the Joint Intelligence Committee, didn’t it?’

She nodded. ‘He didn’t even have me type up the memorandum of explanation. He insisted on doing it himself.’

Charlie smiled contentedly. ‘Serves the bastard right.’

‘I don’t think he’ll stop picking on you,’ judged the girl. ‘I think he’s just waiting…catching his breath.’

‘So am I,’ said Charlie. ‘And I’ve had more practice than he has.’

‘I feel that I’ve been waiting for ever,’ said Laura provocatively.

There were no messages this time on the answering machine at the Chelsea house. She poured brandy and wormed her way very close to him on the small couch and kept insisting that he kiss her, which Charlie did, wishing Paul didn’t appear to be watching from the studio photograph.

‘I’m so glad we’re here like this at last,’ she said.

‘Would you do something for me?’ asked Charlie, choosing his moment.

‘I’ll do whatever you want,’ she said, misunderstanding.

‘The two who went down to the nursing home to question my mother,’ said Charlie. ‘Do you think you could get their names, off the file? They would have submitted reports, wouldn’t they?’

‘What do you want to know that for?’

‘Just curious,’ said Charlie.

‘Catching his breath?’ queried Harkness.

‘That’s what he said,’ confirmed Laura.

‘Without any indication of what that meant?’

‘None,’ said the girl.

The acting Director General came around from behind his desk, so that he was closer to her. ‘You really are doing remarkably well,’ he said. ‘I’m most grateful.’

It was an important conference, the first assessment session between the KGB chairman and Valeri Kalenin to consider the Star War material collected so far, and once again Berenkov travelled from the Moscow outskirts to wait for his friend at Dzerzhinsky Square.

Berenkov recalled the last occasion he had waited like this, standing before this same window overlooking the square, and decided he’d done very well obtaining what he had. Well enough, in fact, for headquarters etiquette to have been eased for him to be invited to the conference instead of being kept waiting cap-in-hand for the outcome to be relayed to him. Berenkov resented being kept out. It made no sense: it could actually be counterproductive always for there to be an intermediary despite that intermediary being someone he trusted as completely as Kalenin. Having spent so much of his operational life absolutely alone Berenkov felt difficulty in relying upon anyone else. It was all the more frustrating that he could do nothing about it, but to attempt to do so — suggest he should be included in the future, for instance — risked offending the other man. And worse, hinting that there was not complete trust between them. What about Kalenin’s trust in him, he thought uneasily. There was no comparison: whatever happened, he wouldn’t call upon Kalenin’s protection.