Brian Freemantle - Comrade Charlie

Charlie paused, wishing he had water, like Harkness earlier. He said: ‘That’s when I realized who had really established the surveillance which had by now been in place for a considerable amount of time. And realized, too, that it was being directed very personally against me and was not some wider operation. So I decided to go on running hare …’

‘… that would have been entirely wrong: against every regulation,’ interjected the determined Harkness. ‘If it were true — and I do not believe this absurdly concocted story for a minute — it should have been immediately reported to me!’

He’d already concluded that if he handled this confrontation wrongly he was lost, Charlie remembered: that it was all or nothing. Staring straight at Harkness, Charlie said: ‘I did not have then — nor do I have now — any confidence whatsoever in this department properly to investigate what was or is happening. I was the obvious target: I decided to let it continue to run, to try to see at least if a direction or a purpose emerged, before reporting it officially.’

‘That action, like that remark, was quite wrong,’ said Wilson, and Harkness snatched a sideways look of gratitude to the Director General he had earlier criticized.

Shit, thought Charlie. And then another reflection: All or nothing. He said: ‘It would not have been one I would have taken had different circumstances prevailed in this department.’

‘The innuendo in that remark is even more improper,’ said Wilson angrily, turning perceptibly towards a blazing-faced Harkness. ‘I think it calls for an apology to certain people in this room.’

There were several moments of absolute silence, with everyone’s concentration entirely upon Charlie. He swallowed and shuffled slightly on aching feet. Then he said: ‘With respect to yourself, sir, I decline to make any apology to anyone in this room for anything I have so far said or implied.’ There! he thought. Not just irrevocably committed: he’d put the noose around his own neck and had the do-it-yourself trapdoor lever in his hand.

‘We have been very patient…’ began Wilson, but for the first time ever Charlie risked talking over the man: ‘Please!’ he said, knowing he had only the briefest chance to hold them. ‘Just another few minutes…!’ and when Wilson stopped talking, more in further anger than permission, Charlie hurried on: ‘That money over there, the thousand pounds by which such great store is being set as being a Soviet payment to me, is my money.’

‘What!’ demanded Wilson, no longer angry.

He’d saved himself but he was still hanging on by his fingertips, Charlie calculated. ‘There was a thousand pounds in that cavity, when I discovered it,’ explained Charlie. ‘A plant, like everything else has been planted. Not knowing — still not knowing even now — why it was being done, it was blatantly obvious I had to take what precautions I could to avoid any further mistakes. I made the discovery, as I have said, on August 6th, a Sunday. On the morning of Monday, August 7th, I took the thousand pounds and three of the top sheets off the cipher pad to my bank. It’s the Barclays branch just across Vauxhall Bridge, on Millbank. I deposited it with an assistant manager, named Frederick Snelgrove, with written authority that it should be released upon demand to Sir Alistair Wilson. I then withdrew, in consecutively numbered notes from the cashier Sally Dickenson, whose fingerprints are on those notes, one thousand pounds from my own account. I had those numbers recorded and that record is also part of the provably dated deposit.’

Charlie stopped, hopefully, Nobody spoke. He said: ‘No one seems to have realized the significance! All this was done on August 7th. The message — “Reactivate payment by one thousand” — was not sent from Moscow until August 26th, according to your evidence: nineteen days after, I had already found the thousand pounds, switched it and made arrangements that any investigation — any after, proper investigation — would lead to its being eventually released to the Director General of this department.’

The reactions were mixed, throughout the room. The two unidentified men — who looked like clones of all the Whitehall mandarins Charlie had ever encountered — were bent sideways towards each other in whispered conversation. Sir Alistair Wilson was staring at him with obvious curiosity but with no other indication of what he was thinking. Harkness had a finger sideways to his mouth, gnawing at it in concentration, trying to absorb what Charlie had said. Witherspoon was scurrying through his documentation, seeking something. It was time to finish, while he was marginally ahead, decided Charlie. He said: ‘There have been other things added to the bank deposit since that initial date. There is a long list of vehicle registration numbers, which I believe to have been used by various Soviet observation teams, particularly since I moved into the delegation hotel in Bayswater. I have not had the facility, away from this department, to check out the ownership for those registrations. I would suspect they are hired. Tracing the hiring back will, I hope, give us the names of some Soviet front companies which we might not at the moment be aware are being used by the KGB…’

He smiled back towards the rigid-faced Smedley. ‘… And there are also the numbers of our own people who have been in such painfully obvious position over the past three or four days. Three Fords, a Vauxhall and a Fiat…As I have already suggested, the investigation has been appallingly amateurish…’

‘Anything else?’ cut off Wilson. There was no longer any anger in the frail voice.

‘I hope there will be when I know what was in the King William Street drop,’ said Charlie. He turned to Harkness. ‘So what was it?’

Harkness’ hand came only partially away from his mouth. ‘There still needs to be further investigation to discover its whereabouts,’ the man conceded.

‘What!’ said Charlie. Confident now, he slightly overstressed the incredulity. ‘You mean you don’t even know where it is yet!’

‘It will be found,’ insisted Harkness.

‘And I thought it was something else you’d just omitted to say,’ said Charlie in disbelief. He turned to Witherspoon but with a positive body movement to include Smedley and Abbott. ‘Who tossed my flat?’

There was no immediate response. Then Witherspoon breathed in heavily and squared his shoulders and said: ‘It was done under my supervision.’

Charlie gestured to the other two men. ‘By those two.’

Witherspoon nodded.

‘And what did you find?’

‘You have already heard what we found.’

‘Jesus!’ exclaimed Charlie. He hadn’t imagined it was going to be this easy to exact the retribution for the harm he believed Smedley and Abott had caused his mother. He said: ‘So you missed the micro-dot!’

There was a throat movement from Witherspoon, and Smedley’s colour heightened. There was what might have been a groan from Wilson, but the sound was hardly audible and Charlie might have been mistaken.

Charlie began to look back to the assembled inquiry team but then hesitated. He said: ‘No one has yet said here, in this room, what sort of code it is. it’s a variable number-for-letter system: that’s what the micro-dot says. That’s right, isn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ mumbled Witherspoon.

‘And that message, the one that identifies King William Street. Was that all it said?’

From the look that passed between Harkness and Witherspoon Charlie didn’t need the answer, but it came anyway. ‘No,’ said the man.

‘What’s missing?’

It was Harkness who spoke, once more trying to take the pressure off his protege. ‘Some numbers which, at the moment, the cryptologists cannot decipher.’