Brian Freemantle - The Run Around

Charlie decided it was a waste of time to drive all the way back into London for a secure conversation with the Director, only to have to drive back out again, so he used the open line once more, admiring the quickness with which Wilson acknowledged the guarded conversation. Charlie said he needed to go to Geneva at once and asked for a replacement to carry out the job interviews, determined the photograph should go on being checked by the other aircrews from the other airlines in case this sighting was a mistake, like that in Primrose Hill could still be a mistake. He would, he said, be leaving behind a list of people whose references he wanted officially checked and Wilson said he wasn’t quite sure what that meant and Charlie said he would be when he saw the list.

‘You want the Swiss firm advised of your arrival?’ asked the Director.

‘Definitely,’ said Charlie, at once. This wasn’t a one-man operation, although that was normally the way he liked to work. If Geneva were the right location it meant he had more time because neither the arms limitation session nor the Middle East conference was until the end of November but he still needed all the help he could get from as many branches of Swiss intelligence that there were: the haystack was still about as big as Mont Blanc.

‘Looking forward to a productive trip?’

‘Still not considering anything more than a fifty per cent return,’ warned Charlie, guardedly.

‘Anything else we can do from this end?’

‘There’s the hotel bill to settle.’

‘I’ll see it’s done.’

‘And a Mercedes to collect from the car park there.’

‘I’ll tell the Pool.’

Charlie wondered about mentioning the scratch and then decided it could be Harkness’s ulcer irritant for that day.

He reached Geneva’s Cointrin airport by mid-afternoon and made himself immediately known to the security colonel there. The man checked, as Charlie suggested, with the central intelligence unit in Bern, who confirmed his arrival had already been signalled from London and together they questioned the four immigration officers who had been on duty on the night of the 13th. One man said he thought the face in the photograph looked familiar but admitted when pressed that he could not swear to it. Charlie hopefully toured all the car rental desks at the airport but there was no recognition from any of them.

The colonel suggested the Beau-Rivage because it was the best hotel and Charlie, who hadn’t been to Geneva before, accepted the choice. The man insisted upon driving him into the city. As they drew up outside the hotel on the Quai de Mont Blanc the colonel, who had not been given a reason for the order to assist Charlie in everything, said: ‘This man likely to cause us a lot of trouble?’

‘If he’s who I think he is, more trouble than you’d believe,’ said Charlie.

Thirty minutes later Charlie stood at the window of his lake-fronting room, never to know that four days earlier Vasili Nikolaevich Zenin had enjoyed the same view from the hotel’s restaurant and later strolled into the town along the quai that Charlie could see below.

Charlie turned back into the room, gazing down at the picture which was becoming bent and cracked with use. ‘Got something else on you,’ he said. ‘You’re a rude bugger. Silly mistake to have made, sunshine, silly mistake to have made. But thank Christ you did.’

And then he remembered his own mistake and thought, Shit! He’d forgotten to ask those restaurants that knew him to agree those phoney receipts were theirs when Harkness’s men came around, as Charlie knew they would.

Roger Giles was grateful the marriage appeared to be ending amicably because he’d never been able to understand how people who had once loved could end up hating. And he and Barbara had loved each other once: gone as far as to talk about how sad it was that other people got divorced, never imagining it could happen to them. He still found it difficult to realize that it was happening. Or why.

It had been Barbara’s suggestion they stop sleeping together, although sex had not been the problem between them. Barbara stood in the doorway of his single bedroom at the Alexandria house, watching him pack.

‘Any idea when you’ll be back?’ Like the wives of all intelligence operatives, she never talked in specifics, like she never referred openly to his being a member of the CIA or blamed the Agency for what had collapsed between them, although she considered his commitment to the Agency the reason.

‘November 30,’ he said. ‘Definitely no later than 1 December.’

‘Unusual to be so definite.’

‘Positive dates this time.’

‘I can go ahead with lawyers’ appointments then?’

Giles hesitated and then said: ‘Sure.’

‘If I need to arrange anything on your behalf, can I do that too?’

‘Certainly,’ said Giles, quicker this time. ‘I’ve settled all the bills and there’s almost a thousand dollars in the checking account. Draw whatever you want.’

‘Thanks,’ said Barbara. They were each going to miss each other an awful lot, she knew. Somehow it all seemed so unnecessary, like the nonsense over the bedrooms. She could not think now why she had insisted upon it.

Charlie met the head of Swiss counter-intelligence in a tall-windowed, polish-smelling office on the corner of Spitalgasse, in the cuckoo-clock part of Bern. It was a ‘safe’ house, away from the headquarters of the service and Charlie admired the caution. But then, he thought, caution was a Swiss characteristic. The man’s name was Rene Blom and although he apparently had the rank of brigadier he wore civilian clothes, a grey suit with a waistcoat that appeared tight, like a corset. Blom was a stiff, reserved man, with an unusual and almost unsettling appearance. His hair and eyebrows were completely white but naturally, not through age: Charlie guessed the man to be no more than forty years old. A pink face contributed to the impression of albino but his eyes, behind square-lensed, rimless glasses, were sharply blue.

‘London marked the advisory cable highest priority,’ said Blom. And should have sent a senior official, he thought, offended.

‘I think it is,’ said Charlie. He recounted the story chronologically, from the moment of Novikov’s defection, going into detail about the debriefing and his assumptions from it and offering the photograph to Blom when he reached the part about the drop in Primrose Hill. Blom glanced at it, very briefly. When Charlie got to the Swissair identification at London airport Blom asked for the names of the airline staff, noting them on a pad in front of him. There was already a notation and Charlie wondered if it were the name of the immigration official who’d made the uncertain recognition at the airport the previous night. It would be basic trade-craft for the security chief to make what independent checks of his own were possible.

After Charlie finished Blom sat without any response for several moments, tapping his teeth with the thin silver pencil with which he had taken his brief notes. At last he said: ‘Which do you think, the Middle East conference or the disarmament talks?’

‘I don’t have a clue,’ said Charlie.

Blom picked on the word. ‘Clues seem to be in short supply,’ he said. The other man’s appearance, as well as inferior rank, was also offensive.

‘We’ve got more now than we had a few days ago,’ said Charlie, defensively. What the fuck else did the awkward sod expect, with what he’d had to work from? Miracles cost extra.

‘The Middle East conference starts first,’ reminded Blom.

‘So we’ve got just over two weeks,’ said Charlie.

‘For what?’

Charlie frowned, surprised by the question. ‘To stop it happening, of course.’