Brian Freemantle - The Run Around

‘You know what I find it impossible to understand?’

‘What?’

‘That people — ordinary people — actually believe working in intelligence is some sort of exciting job.’

As she spoke her husband was in the code room at the American embassy at Bern, translating the series of messages coming in from the CIA headquarters at Langley. The unnecessarily repeated theme through most was the high presidential authority attached to the conference, which had to be protected at all costs. The last said: ‘Distrust all offered British help. Consider their representative, Charles Muffin, as hostile to be treated as such at all times.’

Five streets from the US embassy, Vasili Zenin despatched the meeting instructions to Sulafeh Nabulsi at the poste restante section of the Geneva post office she had already isolated.

And in Geneva itself the hotel check by Swiss counterintelligence finally reached the small, breakfast-only auberge off the Boulevard de la Tour.

‘Yes,’ said the clerk, ‘I think I recognize him.’

Although he was ahead of the time given in the unexpected summons — wanting again to be first — Charlie was in fact the last to arrive in the Geneva office suite where he’d had the initial meeting with the other intelligence officials. They all appeared relaxed and settled, coffee already set out before them and Charlie wondered if there’d been a prior discussion between them from which he’d been excluded.

‘Tried not to be late, too,’ he said.

‘You’re not,’ said the Swiss intelligence chief, smoothly. He smiled, encompassing them all, and said: ‘It would seem, gentlemen, that our immediate problems are over.’ At once he corrected the expression of satisfaction, concentrating upon the CIA supervisor. ‘But that your FBI might have inherited them.’

‘What’s happened?’ asked Giles, at once.

‘There’s been a positive identification,’ declared Blom, triumphantly. ‘A night clerk at a small auberge in the city says the man in the picture booked in on the night of the thirteenth. He checked out on the morning of the sixteenth. His destination was New York.’

Nobody else offered so Charlie served his own coffee, noting the American’s reaction. He decided it was genuine so whatever they’d been talking about before he arrived it hadn’t been this. He said: ‘Identified by name?’

‘Klaus Schmidt,’ disclosed Blom, at once.

‘The ubiquitous Mr Smith, although a Swiss or German variation this time,’ said Charlie. There’d been three Smiths on the London flight. The bastard had tried to be too clever and ended up making another mistake.

The huge Israeli chief shifted in his chair, discerning Charlie’s disbelief, and said: ‘You don’t go along with it?’

‘No,’ said Charlie at once. ‘It can’t be him.’

‘Why not?’ demanded Blom, openly irritated by what appeared almost permanently sarcastic disdain.

‘The passport won’t support the name,’ said Charlie. ‘We know our man had an English passport, right? And can travel without it being examined from London to mainland Europe. But he couldn’t from Geneva to New York because airlines always confirm that the US visa is valid. If it isn’t they get fined and stuck with the expense of repatriating the person back to his airport of origin.’

‘What if there’s a British passport issued in the name of Klaus Schmidt?’ asked Giles. He wished he’d seen the flaw as quickly as the Englishman from whom he’d been warned away.

‘There won’t be,’ said Charlie. ‘But if there is we’ll be in luck because British passport applications must be accompanied by a duplicate photograph, which is kept in records. And it’ll be better than the one we’ve already got.’

Levy was nodding, also admiring. ‘If you’re right then there’s no doubt the man’s a professional.’

‘I’ve never had any doubt that he was but I don’t think this is professional,’ said Charlie.’I think he tried something outside his training …’ He looked to Giles. ‘You’ll have immigration searched, of course. And the applications?’

The American swallowed, uncomfortably. ‘Searched?’ he said.

‘Klaus Schmidt must have a US visa. And those applications have duplicate photographs, too,’ reminded Charlie. ‘I guess there’ll be a lot of them but it’ll give us another comparison. And an entrant into America has to give an address, on the incoming flight.’

Blom appeared to be deflating, like a leaking balloon. He said: ‘I do not think this sighting should be dismissed as cursorily as you are suggesting.’

Charlie frowned at the man. ‘The last thing I’ve been suggesting is that it should be cursorily dismissed,’ he said. ‘I’ve told you how I’m going to have it checked in Britain and suggested a similar way of doing it in America …’ He paused and said: ‘You do have a definite flight?’

‘There was a Klaus Schmidt on the Swissair midday departure, on the sixteenth,’ said Blom.

The man was already qualifying himself, Charlie recognized. He said: ‘What about picture comparison from the aircrew? Or from anyone at Geneva airport?’

‘There has not been time yet,’ said Blom, in further qualification. ‘It is being done.’

‘It should be,’ said Charlie. ‘Although it’ll draw a blank.’ He hadn’t intended the remark to sound as arrogant as it did, but Blom’s attitude from the beginning had been one of reluctance verging upon the obstructive, and Charlie was curious to know what they had been talking about before he arrived.

‘For a moment it looked as if our conference might have proceeded uninterrupted, too,’ said Levy.

Charlie was categorizing everyone more completely now, with the benefit of this second encounter. Blom was obstructive. Also, to a degree, frightened and therefore clutching at the smallest sprig of straw. Possibly, too, resentful at being expected to deal on what appeared an equal footing with a subordinate, which Charlie recognized himself clearly to be. And not just a subordinate, a street-working subordinate who’d blown a fair-sized hole in what the man had obviously considered a major detection breakthrough. Charlie decided there were similarities with Giles’s hand-on-the-nose attitude, which Charlie guessed from the advice that Sir Alistair Wilson had included in the diplomatic bag to be Langley’s ordered response to his presence. And to which he’d become resigned, after the episode with their Director. Which left David Levy. Neither hostile nor friendly: neutral, like the country they were in was supposed to be. Except that Charlie had never considered the Israeli neutral in anything. His assessment was more that Levy was at this stage quite comfortable upon the fence between them, gauging advantage against disadvantage, the only consideration the benefit to David Levy and the country he represented. In matching circumstances it was the way he would have behaved. Insistently he said: ‘It’s still got to be the most likely target.’

‘You’ve no justification at all for saying that,’ rejected the American. ‘You seem determined to substantiate a theory unsupported by any facts.’

He didn’t have to take any shit from the American, Charlie decided. He said: ‘Your people buggered up the debrief, mucking about with that silly lie detector machine. But about one thing you got the same answer, word perfect, as everyone else — Novikov insisting that the target is to be public and political.’ He paused, further advised by the material from London. ‘And the most dramatic, high profile political event in the calendar for November is the Middle East conference to which your President is personally committed … a President who seemingly just by chance is going to be here, in Europe, with the American Secretary of State. Just how does that look to you?’