Brian Freemantle - Comrade Charlie

Losev approached the Kensington house by a circuitous, carefully checked route and did not hurry his final entry until he was completely sure that he was alone.

It was oddly quiet inside the large room where the drawing and the photographing were continuing, the atmosphere practically somnolent: Petrin was actually slumped in a chair, a discarded newspaper over his knees, heavy-eyed with boredom. There was a perceptible change when Losev entered the room, something like a stiffening going through the people in it, and Losev felt a flicker of satisfaction that the most discernible change came from Petrin.

‘All very restful,’ Losev jeered.

‘Why not?’ sighed Petrin. ‘What some of us are doing is more tiring than for others.’

‘Quite so,’ said Losev. ‘If it’s too much for you I can always draft in some help.’

Petrin looked away, uninterested in the childish exchange. He said: ‘I suppose there is some purpose in your coming here?’

‘More than you’ll ever know: or be permitted to know,’ said Losev, turning away himself. Generally, to the other Russians, he said: ‘I want an original drawing. And not one dated from several days ago because it’s got to comply with a schedule of events. Has anything been finished today?’

‘What’s going on now!’ demanded Guzins, in immediate protest.

‘Something that does not concern you,’ rejected Losev arrogantly. ‘Answer the question. Is there a finished drawing from today?’

‘I haven’t even been able to consider it yet!’ said Guzins.

‘And I haven’t photographed it, either,’ said Zazulin.

‘Do it now!’ ordered Losev. ‘Break off whatever you’re doing. Change the film. Take whatever pictures you want of today’s work and then let me have the drawing.’

‘But that’s going to confuse everything!’ argued Zazulin. ‘We’re trying to maintain some sort of order about what we’re doing.’

‘Do as I say!’ insisted Losev, exasperated.

‘This is preposterous! Ludicrous!’ said Guzins. ‘When I get back to Moscow I shall complain.’

‘Of course you will,’ said Losev. In a pained voice he said: ‘Now let’s get on and start doing what I want, shall we?’

To comply Guzins had to abandon what he was doing, sort through the unapproved and therefore unnumbered drawings and then insert the number, so the sequence would correspond, before handing it over to Zazulin. The photographer had to unload and reload his camera and transfer from its restraining frame the half-copied drawing for that upon which he now had to start working. Both men did so truculently, resentful of both the order and Losev’s attitude.

As they worked Petrin left his chair and came alongside. He said to Losev, ‘What is going on?’

‘Something that you have no right to know,’ rejected Losev again, haughtily. He spoiled it by adding carelessly: ‘Nothing that affects what you’re doing here.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ came back Petrin at once. ‘Of course it affects what we’re doing here! It involves one of the drawings!’

‘ Separate from what is being done here,’ qualified Losev, regretting the lapse. ‘Therefore none of your business.’

‘I want your assurance of that,’ insisted Petrin.

Losev smiled at the other rezident patronizingly. ‘Then you have it. Just stay here and go on as you were. Doze, if you wish.’

Fortunately the drawing was of the final moulding process and not as detailed as some of the others had been, and Zazulin completed the copying in two hours. Losev thanked them with elaborate, taunting courtesy and was still out in the street again slightly after midday. Aware of the traffic congestion there would be travelling right across central London to the City by road Losev took the quicker underground, ironically using the line that took him through Knightsbridge station, where Charlie Muffin had arranged to meet Natalia.

Losev was received politely at the safe-custody facility in King William Street and escorted to the vault and to the box listed in Charlie Muffin’s name, the second key to which had been left in Charlie’s Vauxhall apartment. Losev deposited the drawing in seconds and, convinced of a good job well done, treated himself to an excellent fish lunch at Sweetings. A day or two before, his presence might have been recorded by the observation upon King William Street, although the safe-custody facility was not at the Narodny Bank. But that surveillance had been withdrawn, of course, in Harkness’ belief that he and Witherspoon had solved their mystery.

No one ate in the safe house in Kensington, through a combination of anger and the need to restore the work routine as it had been before Losev’s interruption.

‘The man is insufferable,’ complained Guzins.

‘It’s going to take me two hours at least to set up and check where I was, to make sure I don’t miss out a frame,’ supported Zazulin.

‘It’ll cause complete chaos in Baikonur,’ said Guzins. ‘They are going to get a set of photographs completely out of sequence and now there isn’t a supporting drawing.’

Petrin glanced at Krogh, who was working on unaware of what they were discussing in Russian. ‘That’s easily solved,’ he said. ‘When Emil has finished everything he can go back and work out a duplicate.’

‘What about the sequence in which the photographs are arriving?’ demanded Guzins. ‘That’s still going to be confusing.’

Petrin considered the question, thinking back to the facile bickering with Losev. ‘No it’s not,’ he said. ‘You heard what was said: whatever the drawing was wanted for, it had no relevance to what we’re doing here. We’ll simply hold the photographs here until the intervening drawings are copied and everything will arrive in Moscow and at Baikonur in their correct order. That way no one get’s confused.’

Guzins smiled shyly at the solution. ‘Vasili Palvovich Losev is still insufferable,’ he insisted.

Later, when he’d finished drawing for the day, Krogh said: ‘What was all that commotion about?’

‘Nothing,’ dismissed Petrin. He decided against telling the American about the duplicate drawing: he’d leave that until the man imagined he’d finished, to avoid unnecessarily upsetting him. It would only require an extra day, anyway.

It was done, thought Berenkov in euphoric triumph: everything in place, and once today’s waiting cable was dispatched from London in the code the British could read, it was done. Charlie Muffin would be destroyed far more effectively than by any bullet or bomb. Berenkov knew the man could never withstand any protracted period of imprisonment: Charlie Muffin was too independent, too rebellious. He’d crack. Become a vegetable or go insane. But before he did he’d know who did it to him. Know who’d been the ultimate victor.

There were twenty-three digits in the final message in that final arriving cable. It said: KING WILLIAM STREET FILLED.

The car went to Westminster Bridge Road, which was wrong because if the arrest had been proper he should have been taken to a police station with cells, and then Charlie realized how the arrest had been improper from the start. His first — startled — thought was about his theory on how some cases of people disgracing the department had been decisively handled, without recourse to a time-wasting trial. But Harkness wouldn’t deny himself whatever official recognition were possible. Which left only one other explanation. He smiled at Smedley in the elevator sweeping up to the ninth floor and said: ‘Nervous?’

Smedley said:’You don’t impress me, prick!’

‘You don’t impress me, either,’ said Charlie. ‘I’d be nervous, if I were you.’