Brian Freemantle: Comrade Charlie

‘Not my words,’ allowed Kalenin honestly. ‘The opinion of the commendation from the Praesidium itself. We’re secure, Alexei. Secure. And you made us so.’

‘Everyone is being extremely generous,’ said Berenkov, remaining modest. So Kalenin, who’d been prepared to avoid the responsibility, was happy to be sharing the credit. Berenkov felt no resentment.

‘I did not expect Guzins simply to be deported as he was,’ qualified Kalenin. ‘The British made an incredible mistake there. Over the whole affair, in fact.’

Further luck, reflected Berenkov. He said: ‘I expected him to break: make a full incriminating confession.’

‘So all we’ve lost is Petrin.’

‘Always an acceptable sacrifice, like Obyedkov,’ pointed out Berenkov. ‘We can repatriate them, in time.’

‘And we’re permanently rid of Charlie Muffin!’

Berenkov smiled. The newspaper reports of Charlie Muffin’s trial had been brief, dictated by the restrictions of the hearing, but he’d had them all sent to him from London. He said: ‘Ten years. He’ll never be able to endure ten years.’

‘It was still a very great risk, doing what you did,’ said Kalenin soberly.

‘ Calculated risk,’ insisted Berenkov.

‘It worried me,’ admitted Kalenin.

Not as much as it worried me, at the very end, thought Berenkov. ‘It worked,’ he said, the conceit creeping through.

‘What are you going to do about the woman?’

‘Nothing,’ said Berenkov. ‘The function she fulfils is useful. Maybe I’ll transfer her back to debriefing, but not immediately.’

‘Did it ever occur to you that she might have defected, to be with him?’

‘It was a possibility,’ admitted Berenkov. ‘But we always had her son as a hostage. She would have known that.’

‘It’s unimportant now,’ judged Kalenin.

‘What’s the missile schedule?’ asked Berenkov.

‘Extremely advanced,’ said Kalenin. ‘The Foreign Minister is to make an announcement of our capability at a meeting on conventional weapons in Geneva next week. When the uproar subsides — we’re estimating a week — there’ll be the invitation to the Western media to witness the actual launch. All the Western ambassadors are going to be invited to Baikonur, as well…’ Kalenin smiled. ‘The intention is to make a big spectacle of it.’

‘We’ll certainly achieve that,’ said Berenkov.

‘I want to apologize to you, personally,’ declared Kalenin. ‘I was quite wrong to doubt you as I did.’

‘It is forgotten,’ dismissed Berenkov. ‘Friends can doubt each other occasionally, can’t they?’

‘Never again,’ assured Kalenin. ‘Never again.’

‘We’re going up to the dacha next weekend,’ said Berenkov. ‘Georgi is home. Valentina would like you to come up with us.’

‘I’d enjoy that,’ accepted Kalenin. ‘I’d enjoy that very much indeed.’

It was better now than when she had first returned: no one but Natalia would have been aware of the remaining scars because she’d rearranged an easy chair to cover the carpet burn and paid an odd-job man in the Mytinskaya apartment block to replace the shattered cabinet door in the kitchen.

It had been appalling when she’d got back. Like an animal cage from which the beasts had escaped or been driven. There had even been an animallike smell, a gagging stench of the crowded-together bodies of whoever Eduard had brought back with him for his leave while she had been away. Apart from the carpet burn — a large, through-to-the-floorboards hole where something had been allowed to smoulder for a long time — and the smashed cabinet there had been empty bottles strewn throughout the kitchen, the sink filled with unwashed crockery, and the toilet bowl blocked with unflushed faeces. But that wasn’t what caused Natalia’s greatest offence. That had been her own bedroom. Eduard had allowed someone to use her bed. And not merely someone — a single person — because it had really been used, the sheets marked and stained. Natalia had felt violated, abused. She’d stripped the bed, heaving with revulsion, but hadn’t washed the sheets because she’d known she wouldn’t ever be able to sleep in them again, not even if they were clean: she’d rolled them up into a ball and thrown them out and scoured and scalded everything in the flat and finally scoured herself in the hottest bath in which she could bear to immerse herself, trying to wash away the feeling of being befouled.

And cried.

The state of the flat had been the excuse that night. And for some nights after, but she couldn’t call upon it any more, not after all these weeks. Not that she wept so much, not any longer. Only when she let herself think back to those nights: remembered the tenderness and the words they’d said to each other, the promises made but not kept. Like now. Natalia felt her eyes begin to fill but didn’t care because she was quite alone in the apartment, as she was resigned to being for ever.

‘Why didn’t you come, Charlie?’ she sobbed aloud. ‘Oh dear God why didn’t you come!’

The Soviet publicity surrounding the launch was brilliantly engineered and manipulated. The Foreign Minister’s announcement in Geneva created the furore that Moscow anticipated, although it continued longer than expected, with Western analysts and commentators concluding that Moscow was at least ten years further advanced in its space technology than had been previously imagined and that the gap was probably too great for the United States to catch up. The Kremlin capitalized upon the reaction, staging a press conference for the world media at which the Foreign Minister expanded upon his initial announcement, pressing the fact that the Soviet Star Wars platform was entirely defensive — as America had always insisted theirs to be — and that its being put into space in no way affected or reversed the scaling down of missiles and weaponry already agreed and undertaken by the Warsaw Pact nations.

There was a frenzied response to the invitation to attend the actual launch, which was organized to obtain the maximum international impact. Satellites enabled television pictures to be transmitted live and worldwide, and the lift-off of the shuttle to take the missile into its two-hundred-mile-high geostationary orbit timed specifically to coincide with peak viewing time, particularly in America. As well as permitting full photographic facilities at the lift-off gantry, complete access was also made available inside the space control centre, to enable the launch to be followed up to orbiting height, where television cameras aboard the shuttle were to show the moment of launch and the establishment of the missile into its planned position in space.

The lift-off went faultlessly on a brilliantly clear day.

The shuttle arced off into its trajectory, with simultaneous translations into English of the crew conversation and after a momentary, snow-like flicker of interference the television pictures beamed back from space became perfectly clear.

The missile housing being disgorged from the belly of the shuttle looked remarkably like some space animal giving birth, which was how at least two television commentators described it. For the first few seconds it was hard to differentiate the platform from the shuttle but then, as it floated free, its shape became obvious.

It was about twenty yards from the mother ship when the explosion happened. One moment the television screens were filled with the picture of a square-shaped, box-like structure, the next it burst apart into a thousand fragments but in complete silence, which heightened the shock of its destruction. Then the television screens went blank.

‘Good God!’ said Wilson. Although he’d been expecting it — hoping for it — he still sounded shocked.