Brian Freemantle - Comrade Charlie

‘They didn’t need to,’ sighed Charlie. He wouldn’t allow them any respite, any let-up on their exposure: they’d sought utterly to destroy him, were still intent upon destroying him. He said: ‘The key was already there if you’d correctly looked for it. Somewhere in the grouping the figures one and five and zero feature, don’t they?’

Witherspoon hurried back to his message folder. ‘At the end.’

‘Three digits, out of a grouping of nine?’ demanded Charlie. To Wilson he said: ‘The grouping of nine was on the micro-dot: it’s listed in the bank package for you. Could I ask you to cast your mind back to King William Street, sir?’

‘Good God!’ said Wilson, in recollection at last.

‘Yes,’ said Charlie. ‘Berenkov wanted me to know he’d planned whatever it is that’s going on. Which is arrogant, but then he always was an arrogant man. It was probably his only failing.’

‘I can’t follow this,’ protested one of the unidentified men. He had a pronounced Welsh accent.

‘A number of years ago,’ said Charlie. ‘I was responsible for the arrest and jailing of an extremely successful Soviet illegal, a trained KGB officer who was infiltrated into this country and who for several years ran a series of spy cells throughout Europe. At 150 King William Street, in the City of London, there is a privately owned safe-custody facility: clearing banks used to offer the service as a safe deposit box but very few do now. A number of private firms have filled the gap. Quite unknown by the company who own it, he used King William Street as a safe cut-out, a dead letter box to pass material between himself and KGB officers attached to the embassy here in London, without there ever being a requirement for them openly — or incriminatingly — to meet…’ He glanced at Witherspoon. ‘This investigation of me that you masterminded? Didn’t you check my operational file: everything I’d ever done?’

There was a despairing head movement of confirmation and Charlie felt not a jot of pity for the man. Charlie said: ‘It’s all there, in the Berenkov case file. And if you’d worked out that 150 King William Street was the address then I would have hoped that even you could have guessed at the other numbers not being part of the code at all. But the number of the facility itself.’

There was a new briskness to Wilson’s voice when he said: ‘It’s just past six o’clock: it’ll be closed.’

‘Which just might be to our benefit,’ suggested Charlie. ‘They’ll have monitored the drop, after filling it. Because they’ll want to know we’ve understood what they want us to. At the moment they’ll think we haven’t understood…’ Charlie allowed the glance towards Harkness. ‘Which until now we haven’t, have we?’

‘You think the company will cooperate?’ asked Wilson.

‘They did with Berenkov: they allowed us afterhours access then.’

It had suddenly become a planning discussion between two men, Charlie and the Director General, and Harkness flustered to intervene.

‘There are other considerations!’ he insisted. ‘What about this man form the Isle of Wight factory? Blackstone? He should be arrested immediately.’

‘No!’ said Charlie, practically shouting. ‘I was picked up on the Isle of Wight: and Blackstone has an access telephone contact. For all we know there’s a timed system: an automatic alert if he does not call. Blackstone is neutralized: leave him.’

‘I don’t think you’re in any position to say what will or will not be done!’ rejected Harkness.

‘He’ll be left,’ decided Wilson curtly.

Harkness actually flinched at being so obviously overruled. Trying to recover, he said: ‘There’s more I want explaining. What has Muffin been doing for almost a week at a hotel housing a Soviet delegation? And what is the connection between him and Natalia Nikandrova Fedova?’

It was Charlie’s turn to create the awkward silence: although he should have been prepared, he wasn’t, because he hadn’t been able to think of any way to prepare himself. With absolute honesty he said: ‘I went to the hotel for personal reasons, to make contact with the woman.’

‘What’s she got to do with all this other business?’ demanded Harkness, not properly thinking out his question.

‘At the moment I don’t know,’ admitted Charlie, in further honesty.

‘That isn’t a proper answer!’ protested Harkness.

‘I think the proper answers have got to come in the proper sequence,’ intruded Wilson, urgent again. ‘Which for far too long they haven’t been doing. I want to find out — and find out quickly — what’s in King William Street. Everything else can wait. We’re going to recess but nobody goes anywhere. We’re staying here, all of us, until this is completely resolved.’

No one actually did attempt to move anywhere in those first few moments. Witherspoon was the first to stir, getting uncertainly to his feet and bringing his binders together in some sort of clearing up tidiness.

‘Hubert!’ said Charlie.

Witherspoon looked up, apprehensively questioning.

‘The correct answer was “fools”,’ said Charlie.

‘What?’ gaped the man, in utter bewilderment.

‘That crossword clue you filled in when you came poking around my office a long time ago: the one about life being a walking shadow, from Macbeth . You wrote “idiot” but the correct answer was “fools”…either would have fitted perfectly here, though, don’t you think?’

The atmosphere became much better inside the Kensington house and for obvious reason. It was Petrin who brought it about, his bored impatience finally coming to a head. He set out quietly, genuinely not wishing to foment a fresh dispute between himself and Losev, not because he was frightened of the man but because the perpetual arguments were very much part of his boredom. From apparently casual conversation with the photographer he learned there were only three outstanding drawings remaining to be copied in the absolute detail with which Zazulin was working. Continuing the query further, he discovered that Yuri Guzins had six drawings he still needed to go through with Krogh. And the American finally conceded that he was working on the last reproduction.

‘So!’ seized Petrin at once. ‘We can finish!’

‘What!’ It was Zazulin who spoke, expressing the surprise of everyone.

‘Finish,’ repeated Petrin. ‘If we work on now — don’t stop — we could get everything done. End it.’

‘I’ve got a lot…’ started Guzins, but Petrin refused him. ‘Nothing that you couldn’t get through with Emil if you stayed at it. He’s practically completed the last of the original drawings: there’s nothing to interrupt or distract the two of you now.’

‘Maybe I could do it,’ conceded Guzins reluctantly.

‘What about you, Emil? You prepared to carry on, to clear everything up?’

‘ Really finish!’

Petrin paused. Still not the time to mention the one replacement drawing that was still needed. ‘Really finish,’ he said.

‘I’ll work for as long as is necessary,’ guaranteed Krogh sincerely.

‘I could certainly get all the photographs finished,’ guaranteed Zazulin. ‘I didn’t know we were coming so near to the end of the original drawings.’

Predictably Losev felt cheated by being beaten to the suggestion by Petrin but even the London rezident was anxious for it to end now. To Zazulin he said: ‘Could you finish in time to get a shipment to Moscow?’

‘I think so.’

‘Not the held-back cassette!’ insisted Guzins at once. ‘I must see an original: have an opportunity of discussing it with Krogh. The references on the photographs must accord to the drawings.’