Brian Freemantle - Comrade Charlie

Charlie gazed at him, innocent-faced. ‘I know it’s not over,’ he said, intentionally misunderstanding. ‘That’s why we’ve all come back here.’

The Americans’ arrival prevented the exchange continuing. The two men halted uncertainly just inside the door and then the one slightly in front, a plump man with a crewcut and rimless spectacles isolated the Director General and smiled in recognition. He said: ‘Sir Alistair! It’s good to see you!’

Wilson gestured the men further into the room and named the names. The crewcut man turned out to be the CIA station chief, Hank Bowley. The FBI liaison, a much thinner, unsmiling man but about the same height as the other American, was identified as Philip McDonald.

Charlie watched them while the handshakes were exchanged, aware of both men looking intently at everyone — particularly their appearance — and thought, hopefully, that they seemed professional. They were certainly crisply fresh. There was a further smell of cologne, too.

‘So what’s all this about!’ demanded Bowley. ‘Our duty man said you put a fire-alarm and earthquake priority classification on this!’

‘Yes,’ accepted Wilson. ‘I suppose that’s about right. Why don’t we sit down, first?’

The Director General went to the one chair behind the half-moon table and the rest spread themselves among the waiting chairs. Charlie sat in the front row, at one end of the line. No one tried to join him. At the table Wilson cleared his throat, sighed and said: ‘There’s no pleasant or easy way to put this. We’ve every reason to believe that details of your most recent Strategic Defence Initiative development are compromised.’

There was one of those complete silences to which Charlie was becoming so accustomed. It was McDonald who broke it. The man said: ‘I’d like you to run that by us again, real slow.’ He had a very broad Southern accent, Texas or perhaps Louisiana.

Wilson picked up from the table the drawing that had been removed from the King William Street deposit box, starting to offer it and then stopping. Because he was nearest Charlie got up and ferried it to the two American intelligence men.

‘What is this?’ asked Bowley at once. There was no longer any affability about the man.

Wilson indicated the white-haired Springley, separated from the Americans by two rows of seats. Formally the Director General said: ‘It has been positively identified by the project leader involved as a genuine copy-drawing from one forming part of the British participation in a Star Wars defensive missile due to be put into permanent, geo-stationary orbit by American shuttle.’

The Americans were professionals, both of them. There were no theatrical I-don’t-believe-it or it’s-adisaster or calls upon the Almighty. The questions snapped out, quiet-voiced, calmly: How? Where? Why? When? Wilson tidied the account when he replied, not confusing it in any way by introducing Charlie’s supposed involvement.

‘Sure it’s not your guy, Blackstone?’ pressed Bowley anxiously. ‘That it’s not confined just to the British end?’

‘Krogh spent practically a week at the factory,’ reminded Wilson. ‘Studying every single drawing. What other reason would he have for doing that? Blackstone was closed off, from everything, after that one instance.’

‘Son of a bitch!’ said Bowley, his first expression of anger.

‘What have you done, so far?’ asked the steadier McDonald.

‘Do you want to take it, Charlie?’ invited the Director General wearily.

Charlie swivelled in his front seat, the better to see everyone. He considered standing but remembered that despite his bad leg Wilson had remained seated on this occasion, so he decided to do the same. As he spoke Charlie was aware of the expressions of astonishment growing on the Americans’ faces and when he finished Bowley said: ‘That’s the stupidest, most half-assed idea I’ve ever heard of in my entire life.’

‘Something like that,’ accepted Charlie, unmoved.

‘But what’s the point!’ came in McDonald.

‘To see what happens, at the deposit facility. It’ll give us some sort of guide, maybe, how bad things are. And taking a desperate, hopeless chance because of the date on the drawing you’ve got there in your hands. Let’s face the fact: you’ve lost it. We’ve both lost it. Anything, I don’t care how stupid or how half-assed, is worth a try.’

‘And this is the best you could come up with: giving the goddamned thing back!’

‘What would you like to do!’ came back Charlie, irritated. ‘Call up Dzerzhinsky Square and say they’ve played dirty pool and ask for everything back? Or invade Russia? Krogh’s your traitor, not ours. So you think of something better!’

‘There’s nothing to be gained by fighting among ourselves,’ warned Wilson.

‘You think Krogh’s still in this country?’ questioned the calmer McDonald.

‘Now that it’s daylight and the main computers are open we’re checking all airline bookings over the past week,’ said Charlie. ‘But I think he’s more likely still to be here than back in California. According to the date that drawing is hardly more than twenty-four hours old. And it’s number twenty-one: there should be three more to go.’

‘So we check every hotel in London,’ announced Bowley.

Charlie nodded towards Springley and Bishop. ‘We’re trying to short-circuit the time it would take to do that by having the factory records checked. But there might be a quicker way. From the telephone check on Blackstone, we’ve located a safe house that’s not on our records: a place just off Rutland Gardens, in Kensington.’

‘Then why aren’t we there!’ demanded Bowley in fresh anger.

‘We are,’ assured Charlie quietly. ‘It’s sealed: it has been for some hours.’

‘OK!’ said Bowley urgently. ‘I know it’s your jurisdiction but he’s our national. We want in. Joint operation.’

Charlie looked for the decision to the Director General, who nodded. Charlie said: ‘We could do with a wire picture, from your people. There must be one of Krogh from his Pentagon clearance.’

‘I’ve got a lot to ask Washington: a lot to tell them, too,’ said Bowley miserably. ‘Is there an office here I could use? I don’t want to waste time going back to the embassy.’

‘Of course,’ said Wilson. ‘Advise your people that I’ll make personal contact with your directors, both of them, later today. But tell them I’m sorry.’

‘We’re all sorry, Sir Alistair,’ said Bowley. ‘Sorry as hell.’

‘Let’s get it over with,’ said McDonald to his CIA counterpart. ‘I want to assign as many people as I can to that safe house. Including myself.’

Krogh looked at the Russian across the taxi taking them to Kensington and said: ‘I still can’t understand why I’ve got to do this.’ Late the previous night, after everything else had been cleared up, he’d made a token protest when he was finally told he had to make a duplicate drawing but Petrin had told him curtly to shut up, and so he had.

‘He wants it so let’s get it done,’ sighed Petrin.

‘I’m making a reservation to go home tomorrow,’ said Krogh, straining for a tiny gesture of defiant independence.

‘Sure,’ said Petrin, letting the American have it. There’d be no difficulty cancelling it — or even refusing to let the man make it in the first place — if something came up later that morning to make it inconvenient.

‘What about you?’

Petrin had been gazing uninterestedly away from the American, through the taxi window. He answered the man’s look now, seeing the need. If I threw a stick, he thought, this man would run after it and bring it back to me. He said: ‘I’ll be going back, too.’