Brian Freemantle - Comrade Charlie

‘It could have been a very effective disinformation, if it had worked,’ admired Wilson. ‘We would have had to check back on everything you’d ever done…anyone you’d ever met. It would have taken years.’

Charlie shook his head in rejection. ‘It was too flawed.’

‘Only because you found the stuff in your flat ahead of the cable from Moscow and did what you did with it,’ insisted Wilson. ‘If everything had been intact when we rummaged I would have put it forward for a decision to prosecute to the Attorney General.’

Charlie swallowed. He hadn’t realized, until now, that it had been that close. ‘It would still have been defensible,’ he said insistently.

‘Even if you’d got off — and I’m still not sure you would have done — there would have been too much suspicion around you to keep you on,’ said the Director General.

Maybe it had been personal, thought Charlie: either way he would have been wrecked. He said: ‘How did it go in Kensington?’

‘Badly,’ conceded Wilson at once. Succinctly he outlined what had happened and said: ‘I’ve had complaints from both American directors already. It’s getting to be buck-passing time. There’s a lot of opposition to what we’re trying to do but I haven’t yet had a positive prime ministerial instruction to abort.’

‘Do you think it will come?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe.’

‘What about the three Russians?’

‘We’ve separated them, of course, although it’s probably too late. One we’ve already identified from his photograph as attached to the embassy: name’s Obyedkov. I guess the one picked up in the street to be professional, too. Neither’s said a word. The third one is practically melting all over the floor: he’ll break soon enough. There’s no doubt about the house though. It was all there: drawing board, all the equipment.’

‘And Krogh.’

Wilson glanced at his watch. ‘By now he should already have undergone one operation, in an attempt to lift the bone depression away from the brain. The prognosis, before the operation, was that it’s caused quite a lot of damage. He’ll be in intensive care for quite a while. So we still don’t know whether the Russians got the lot.’

‘If they had everything there wouldn’t have been any purpose in going to the house this morning, would there?’ pointed out Charlie.

The Director General shrugged. ‘There’s been too much guessing already: I don’t want to add any more.’

‘What are you going to do with the Russians?’

Wilson gave a wintry smile. ‘I haven’t decided yet,’ he said. ‘If the fat one who’s falling apart tells all then we could make a case against them: bring in Losev, too, on the basis of Blackstone’s confession. At the moment we can hold those we’ve got on suspicion of espionage: two of them for entry into Britain on false passports…’ The smile broadened, becoming warmer. ‘Or they could have a better, practical use, if we wanted some misleading information conveyed back to Moscow.’

‘Yes they could, couldn’t they?’ said Charlie, smiling back.

‘I’ve been doing most of the talking, Charlie.’

‘I’m sorry?’ queried Charlie.

‘I want to know about the hotel. And Natalia Nikandrova Fedova.’

Charlie told him. He held nothing back and was completely honest, from the affair in Moscow up to their last conversation, two nights before.

The Director General listened blank-faced and without any interruption until Charlie had obviously finished. Then he said at once: ‘You did not make an identification file, when you returned from Moscow?’

‘No.’

‘You should have done.’

‘Yes.’

‘Neither did you when you recognized the media reports?’

‘No.’

‘Which means you knowingly allowed a KGB officer to enter this country as a Soviet delegation member without any notification or alert to counter-espionage?’

‘Yes.’

‘And then went and set yourself down right in the middle?’

‘Yes.’

‘You’re a bloody fool!’ declared the older man.

‘I’ve explained my reasons,’ said Charlie.

‘Which don’t change the fact that you’re a bloody fool.’

Charlie said nothing because the assessment was the right one.

Wilson sighed. ‘I’ve tolerated a lot from you, for all the reasons we both know,’ he said. ‘There’s a limit.’

‘I did not behave — did not intend — to cause any embarrassment or to compromise this department.’

‘Bullshit!’ exploded the Director General. ‘You were there : have been photographed and are now known to counter-espionage to have been there! That embarrasses and compromises this department!’

‘I’ve honestly explained my personal reasons for doing what I did,’ tried Charlie. ‘But I also knew, by the time I went to the hotel, that some trap was being set. I wanted to spring it.’

‘Weak, Muffin, weak,’ dismissed the Director General.

He was no longer being called by his first name, acknowledged Charlie. ‘The truth,’ he insisted.

Wilson came slightly away from the table, bending forward for emphasis. ‘All right!’ he said. ‘So tell me this. If there had not been any of the other business — no hostile surveillance, no phoney evidence planted at your flat — and you’d learned as you did learn that Natalia Nikandrova Fedova was coming under some guise into this country? Would you have still made contact with her?’

Charlie hesitated. ‘Yes,’ he admitted finally.

Wilson shook his head in dismay. ‘And you believe it’s innocent!’

‘I still don’t know.’

‘Or want to decide?’

‘Maybe.’

‘Think, man! Think!’

‘I’ve done little else, for weeks.’

‘Then think some more!’ urged the Director General. ‘Naivety doesn’t become you: it’s got to be wrong!’

‘I’ll concede some. Not all.’

‘You really believe she’ll come over?’

‘I don’t know but I think so.’

‘She’d have to go through the system.’

‘I told you what she said about that.’

‘Rubbish! She doesn’t have a choice. You know that. She should know that. It would be a condition of her acceptance.’

‘I decided to deal with it once she’d crossed.’

‘And there’d be another condition, of course.’

Charlie hesitated again. Then he said: ‘Yes, I know.’

‘You prepared for that?’

‘Yes.’

‘I can’t accept that!’ disputed Wilson. ‘I don’t think you’ve properly considered it.’

‘I believe I have.’

‘What would you do?’

Charlie humped his shoulders. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Then you haven’t thought it through!’ insisted the Director General, slapping his thigh in finality. ‘Not to the extent that you should have done.’

‘Nothing about this episode has been easy to think through to it’s proper, logical conclusion,’ said Charlie.

Berenkov was concerned but not panicked. Not yet. The moment he received the alert from Losev he began the damage limitation, calculating step by step and with ice-cold expertise how bad the situation was. Bad, he judged: bad but not catastrophic. Petrin and Obyedkov were professionals and professionals daily faced the risk of seizure. They were trained for it: knew that if they were ever tried and imprisoned in the West an exchange would be arranged — as an exchange was every time arranged if a Russian intelligence officer were incarcerated — even if it meant jailing in Russia a visiting or diplomatic national from the arresting country on a trumped-up charge. Yuri Guzins was the weakness, the one who could make it a catastrophe. The man wasn’t trained: would have no confident expectation of release, in the event of being sent to prison. He’d be sitting in some cell now, unable to speak a word of the language, horrors crowding in upon horrors all around him. If he broke, confessed everything, Britain would have what they needed for a trial, and working in collusion with America — and the two countries would be working in collusion — there’d be enough for an enormous propaganda accusation throughout the West. And it didn’t end there: scarcely began, in fact. Guzins was a top Soviet space scientist. Under skilful interrogation — promises of leniency if he cooperated — the man could be tricked into disclosing hugely damaging secrets of genuine Soviet research at Baikonur. The burly Directorate chief shook his head, tempted to revise his judgement. Maybe it did go beyond being bad: come close to being catastrophic. Certainly the potential existed.