Brian Freemantle - Comrade Charlie

‘All right!’ said Petrin. ‘Don’t worry! That’s how it will be done.’

‘Have you told Krogh yet there’s a duplicate for him to complete?’ asked Guzins. As always — as it always had to be for the monolingual Guzins — the conversation was in Russian.

‘Not yet,’ admitted Petrin. ‘Let’s wrap everything else up first.’

Which was what they did. There was a lot to occur elsewhere in an intervening period but in Kensington they worked on until everything was completed. And Zazulin did meet his commitment: he finished in time for all his photographic rolls to be included in that night’s diplomatic pouch to Moscow. Only one cassette was held back in London, that of the drawing that the unknowing Krogh had still to make again.

There were varying degrees of shock from almost everyone in the room, the two unnamed men showing it most. Charlie, who’d caused it, wasn’t shocked: he’d half expected something like this and thought he was a long way towards comprehending what had happened or was happening. Most of it anyway.

‘Sure?’ demanded Wilson, still gazing down at the drawing around which they were all grouped, on Witherspoon’s evidence table.

‘No,’ admitted Charlie, although for accuracy, not to reassure them. ‘All I can say is that it resembles drawings I was shown by the project leader when I made the Isle of Wight investigation.’

It had taken four hours to get the official search warrant authorized by a magistrate, locate the afterhours address of the managing director of the safe deposit company, persuade the man of the urgency of cooperating at once and finally to retrieve the blueprint from King William Street. While they waited — Charlie finally being allowed to sit — there had been sandwiches and coffee but little conversation. No one had spoken at all to Charlie until the drawing was unrolled and Charlie had announced its possible source. A disjointed, competing babble erupted the moment Charlie responded to the Director General’s question, with the Whitehall official with the Welsh accent fractionally in the lead. ‘Good God!’ said the man, aghast. ‘Have you any idea of the implications of this! The Foreign Office must be told: the Foreign Secretary himself …!’

The persistent, determined Harkness was already trying to make his point before the first man finished. ‘… The key!’ he tried, in fresh triumph. ‘The key found in Muffin’s flat fitted the safe deposit facility. And Muffin investigated on the Isle of Wight!’

‘… This is a disaster!’ endorsed the second official. ‘This will end any technological cooperation between us and the United States for years…a disaster…!’

‘…I think…’ began his colleague but Wilson cut him off, trying to restore some order. ‘Please be quiet!’ he said. He didn’t shout but despite the frailty there was authority in his voice and everyone stopped talking at once. The Director General looked around the room and said, more forcefully: ‘Let’s stop behaving like a lot of frightened chickens with a fox in the henhouse! I want to understand what we’ve got here, not listen to a bunch of hysterics!’

There was some embarrassment in the silence that settled. Harkness said: ‘I do not think the observation I made should be ignored.’

‘Nothing is being ignored,’ said Wilson, and on this occasion Charlie was convinced there was a note of weariness in the Director General’s tone towards the other man. He was aware of Wilson looking at him ‘Charlie?’ he invited.

‘Like you said,’ supported Charlie. ‘Don’t panic. The first thing to do is confirm that it is something from the space project.’

‘It means delay…’ the Welshman began to protest.

‘…no it doesn’t,’ corrected Charlie. ‘The Isle of Wight is less than an hour away, by helicopter. The factory even has its own landing pad. We already know Springley’s address: the local police can have him there waiting for us before the machine arrives…’

‘Yes,’ accepted Wilson at once, nodding towards Witherspoon. ‘Organize that now.’

‘Blackstone,’ insisted Harkness. ‘The man has to be arrested!’

‘No, he doesn’t!’ said Charlie, as Witherspoon left the room accompanied by Abbott, the second Special Branch officer. ‘And for the same reason as before: we don’t know yet if there’s a cut-off warning system in operation. We’ve got to take things in their proper order.’

‘Your accomplice…’ started Harkness, and Charlie exploded.

‘For Christ’s sake!’ he shouted, so loudly that Harkness actually stepped back and Smedley started forward from his guard position at the door before stopping again.

‘Listen!’ implored Charlie, more controlled. ‘Just listen and think. You want to argue that I received that drawing from Blackstone, put it in the safe deposit facility and then told Moscow, correct…?’

Harkness blinked back at him, saying nothing.

‘How?’ demanded Charlie. ‘Tell me — tell us all — how! And why! The bloody drawing is dated, isn’t it! With what is almost yesterday’s date. You know to the second where I’ve been for the past three, almost four days: that I haven’t been anywhere near the Isle of Wight to make any pick-up. You now who I’ve met, so you’re equally well aware that Blackstone hasn’t come to London, to give me anything. According to what you’ve said in this very room, I was actually under arrest when the message was intercepted to Moscow saying King William Street had been filled. So it couldn’t have been me who filled it, could it! Or sent the message, because you’ve also told us the transmission and receiving point is inside the Soviet embassy in Kensington Palace Gardens. And why was that message sent at all? Just to go on fooling you, like it’s fooled you all along. Why should the Soviet embassy receiving material from a dead letter box in King William Street alert Moscow before they pick it up! Surely even you can see the nonsense in that. Standard procedure — the only procedure — is to empty a box and then advise what you’ve got, if you want to, although that doesn’t make a lot of sense either…’ Charlie had to stop, breathless. He said: ‘You were fed the numbers-for-letter code, like you were fed everything else…the dead letter drop that got you an arrest…the courier against whom you couldn’t move. What did they amount to, either of them? Think about it! They didn’t matter a damn. It was just the bait, for you to swallow. Which you did. Moscow has sucked you up and blown you out in bubbles. That code is Boy Scouts’ stuff: senior Boy Scouts, maybe, but little more. It should never have been relied upon…had importance attached to it.’

‘I think that’s enough,’ halted the Director General. ‘I will say, however, that at this stage I agree with what has been said. It would seem to me that we are dealing with two separate things here. And for the moment the overwhelmingly important one is the discovery of a British document carrying the highest security classification being where it has no right to be. I want that run to ground first: everything else can wait.’

Harkness discernibly sagged. His immediate, concerned concentration focused upon the Whitehall officials and Charlie became even surer that they were in some way connected to the all-important Joint Intelligence Committee.

Everyone settled down to another period of waiting, for the arrival of Robert Springley. Harkness returned to the evidence table — although to the folders, not the drawing. The two Whitehall men withdrew pointedly to a part of the room where they could not be overheard and at once started an intense, head-bent conversation. The stenographer and the recording operator sat back, stretching, grateful for the temporary rest. The stiff-legged Wilson was the first to stand. The Director General caught Charlie’s eye, jerking his head, and Charlie crossed to where the man was, beyond the half-moon table.