Brian Freemantle - Comrade Charlie

That first night he requisitioned a conference room on the ninth floor, deciding he needed more room than there was in his cramped offices adjoining Charlie’s and because the move brought him closer, with immediate access, to Richard Harkness. He ordered the photographic surveillance in King William Street increased and called for the observation reports of all the other agencies — but particularly Ml5 — over the previous month upon every Soviet and Eastern bloc installation, not just embassies and consulates but trade missions, tourist offices and national airline buildings. He demanded, for comparison, all cable and radio traffic intercepts and asked for a squad of four cryptologists to do nothing but run those comparisons against what they had obtained via the Soviet number-for-letter code. To speed that process he overnight asked scientists at Britain’s worldwide listening facility, the Government Communications Headquarters at Cheltenham in Gloucestershire, to programme a computer to respond to trigger words and to feed in each — and then a combination of each — from the cables they had been reading in the hope of some earlier recognition. Gathering together the cryptologists gave Witherspoon the idea and he extended it, ordering the formation of small groups of men — never more than four or five — specifically to monitor and backcheck every suspicious report or inexplicable event involving Eastern bloc activity over the period being investigated. Again, for speed, Witherspoon requested a computer be programmed to throw up any connection with the Soviet code. He further had a physiognomy programme created for tell-in-seconds computer analysis of all surveillance photographs against known or suspected Eastern bloc officers operating in Britain.

The intended organization was as comprehensive as Witherspoon could conceive, although issuing the encompassing orders for its creation by others was completed comparatively quickly, before midnight. Fuelled by adrenaline, Witherspoon was back in his elevated ninth-floor room, high above all the activity he had initiated, soon after dawn, running it all through his mind in a search for anything he might have forgotten. It was all-encompassing, he assured himself. Yet the need was for a positive target, a way forward, and he hadn’t been able to isolate that. The Soviet embassy, he thought, remembering the previous day’s conversation with the acting Director General. They had agreed that was the conduit so it was upon the embassy that he had to concentrate. Witherspoon reviewed the requests and instructions he had already sent out covering the Kensington Palace Gardens building, looking for gaps and not finding them. He was sure he had covered everything. He’d demanded biographies upon the entire diplomatic staff, with the known and therefore more easily monitored rezidentura , and all available details of movements in and out, and the Foreign Office were checking visa applications, to show up any changes in the last month. A new arrival could fit the cable words, reflected Witherspoon: visitor or guest. How ironic it could be if the lead came as easily as that, without the necessity of everything else he had set up. The reflection ran on. Visitor and guest, thought Witherspoon, actually writing the words down on a reminder pad in front of him. Who in God’s name was Visitor and who was Guest! Who…he began again and then halted. Who indeed! Were there visitors: guests? Witherspoon felt a lurch of anxiety because it was obvious — blatantly, absurdly obvious — and he hadn’t thought of it! They hadn’t thought of it! Maybe he’d been wise, calling upon God in time. It wasn’t too late to recover, to add this demand to all the rest. It wouldn’t appear an oversight, even, because it could be argued that the orders he’d already given covered parties of visiting Russians. What he now had to do was focus the demand, with a direct reference and connection to the embassy.

The resentment was obvious from the counterintelligence contingent now under his jurisdiction but Witherspoon was peremptory with it, insisting upon a quick response because it was an easily answered question. Which indeed it proved to be. Within an hour there was confirmation of a delegation of visiting Russians in the country — attending the Farnborough Air Show — that they were staying at a monitored hotel and that there had been reasonably continuous but entirely understandable contact between it and the Russian embassy, less than a mile away down the Bayswater Road.

It was still, at that stage, nothing to become unduly excited about although Witherspoon was excited, exaggerating in his mind a possible connection. The expression ‘monitored’ meant a photographic record had been maintained and Witherspoon instructed that a picture of every member of the Russian delegation be run through the nowestablished physiognomy check. He also extended the profile comparison to include every supposed diplomat who had maintained contact from the embassy. Additionally, with no conscious forethought and certainly with no scientific facility for comparison, Witherspoon asked for a complete set of the photographs to be sent up for him to examine on the ninth floor.

It formed a fairly bulky dossier and was not confined to the hotel. From the different backgrounds as he flicked through Witherspoon realized that some of the snatched, concealed-camera photographs had been taken not in London but at the air show itself, where a man — or several men — with a camera would not have aroused any suspicion.

Witherspoon almost missed it, although he was never to admit it. He’d put the picture aside and had finished considering another and was about to place that upon the discard pile when he hesitated, recognition coming belatedly, and returned to the earlier one. He gazed down, bringing his head close over the print in astonishment, and openly giggled, loudly, in incredulous disbelief. He started instinctively to move but stopped himself, wanting to be sure because it wasn’t absolutely clear. Witherspoon went back to the very beginning and studied again all the photographs he had already examined, although not this time concentrating upon the obvious subject but upon the background and people in that background. The picture at which he’d initially stopped was the first shot of Charlie Muffin, partially obscured by the door of a van or minibus. But there was a much clearer photograph further on in the selection, probably taken on a different day because the van or bus wasn’t there any more. It was full face and unmistakable and Witherspoon sat back in his chair positively trembling at a discovery he did not have the slightest idea how to interpret. Only that it was enormous: utterly staggering. And he’d been the man to make it!

The access to Harkness was immediate. The pastel-shirted acting Director General — the suit was brown today — smiled up at Witherspoon’s entry and said inquiringly: ‘I wasn’t expecting to hear from you this soon?’

Witherspoon wanted very much to make the announcement dramatic but couldn’t find the appropriate words. So without saying anything he laid the two prints on the desk in front of Harkness, deciding, relieved, that the gesture was fairly dramatic as it was.

The acting Director General remained staring down at them for several moments. When, finally, he raised his head his pink face was already flushing red as it did when he was excited or angry or both. ‘Why are these important?’ he demanded, his voice tightly controlled.

‘They are taken at a Bayswater hotel at which an official Soviet delegation is staying. They’re attending the Farnborough Air Show.’

Harkness could not curb the start of a smile. ‘When?’

‘Two days ago.’