Brian Freemantle - The Run Around

‘I hear he’s making quite a lot of the time and effort being wasted in Bern,’ said the KGB chief.

‘He’s right,’ said Berenkov, objectively.

‘Unfortunately he is,’ agreed Kalenin. Would he cut himself off from his friend, if the need for survival demanded it? He hoped he was not confronted with the choice.

Vasili Zenin had always acknowledged — as had every instructor at Kuchino and Balashikha — that the greatest danger of his being identified would be going to the Soviet embassy in Bern to collect the weapons. But the bulk precluded their being left safely at any dead-letter drop, as the passport had been in London, and there was anyway the essential need for him to examine and approve what had been provided: his was the ultimate responsibility, overriding that of the officers at Balashikha who had packaged and despatched them. And any immediate, on-the-spot examination would have clearly been ridiculous anywhere but in the maximum security of the KGB rezidentura within the building, an area forbidden even to the ambassador himself.

Like everything else it had been rehearsed until supposedly perfect in the Kuchino complex, with mock-up streets and avenues and a re-creation of the front of the building behind the protection of its gates and iron railings. KGB personnel performed the role of ordinary diplomats, tradesmen and visitors using the embassy. Created all around were less elaborate false fronts upon which were specifically isolated spots to suggest where Swiss counter-intelligence Watchers might be placed. Their imagined positions had been indicated by automatic cameras triggered by remote control by Watchers of the Soviet service and for a week Zenin had done nothing but attempt to enter and leave without being photographed. On the last day he had managed three unrecorded entries and two missed departures.

He’d succeeded by improvising upon the instructor training, recognizing that what he had to carry marked him more obviously than anyone else going in or out. So he prepared himself to merge with it as naturally as possible into the background, like he had earlier done by becoming a jogger at Primrose Hill. He hoped they’d remembered to pack more than just the M21 and the Browning and their ammunition.

Having had a week to study workmen on the streets of Bern and Geneva, Zenin easily found the day before the planned pick-up a shop in the Speichergasse selling the most commonly worn type of dungarees, blue, with bib and braces. He bought a matching cap as well, a pair of heavy boots and a set of rubber wedges. A comparable bag was the most difficult to locate and it was late afternoon before he discovered a store off the Munstergasse. Everything, of course, had to be kept separate from the hotel in which he was staying, as a supposed tourist, so he took all the packages back to the lock-up garage in which he had parked the hired Peugeot. Unselfconsciously Zenin stripped naked, putting on only the overalls and for an hour vigorously exercised, bending and twisting to crease the newness from them and to get them as sweat-stained as possible. He dried his face with the cap, to mark that as much as he could and scuffed the boots along the floor and against the concrete sides of the garage. The bag was canvas, like that he had to collect, and he dirtied that with dust from the floor. The dungarees were damp with his perspiration when he took them off and Zenin screwed them tightly into a ball, so that they would dry further crumpled.

He approached the garage cautiously the following day, not wanting to be seen entering in a suit and emerging a workman, having to wait fifteen minutes before he was satisfied the road was clear. It was more difficult to leave, because his vision was restricted by the narrowly opened door but again he did so sure that he was unobserved. Zenin travelled back into the centre of town on a tram, confident he’d done a good job on the overalls when a woman already on the seat on which he lowered himself perceptibly moved away.

A hesitant man attracts more attention than a confident one and Zenin went assuredly along the most direct linking street into Brunnadernain, which, somewhat to his surprise, had been dismissed by the professional Watchers at Kuchino as being the unlikeliest to house surveillance spots. He hoped they were right. Protectively, Zenin wore the cap pulled low over his forehead and walked looking slightly down: if there were observation it would be from some elevation, to avoid street level obstruction, so his face was as hidden as it could be.

He made no pause going through the embassy gates, someone with a right to enter, and neither did he approach the main entrance. Instead he went to a smaller side door not obviously marked for tradesmen deliveries, but which was its proper purpose. And which he would have known if he were familiar with the building. To the guard he said: ‘Run Around,’ and was admitted immediately.

The KGB rezidentura was at the rear of the embassy, as distanced as it could be from any overlooking buildings from which directional listening devices could be aimed, an interlocking series of rooms absolutely divided from the rest of the legation by a barred and locked gate behind which sat a uniformed KGB guard. Zenin gave him the same operational identification but before he was admitted the man verified the code with the rezident -in-charge, Yuri Ivanovich Lyudin.

The locally based KGB officer was striding down the corridor, beaming, by the time the security gates thudded closed behind Zenin.

‘Vasili Nikolaevich!’ greeted the rezident .

‘Yuri Ivanovich,’ responded Zenin, more restrained.

Lyudin stopped some way away, still smiling, looking at the workman’s outfit. ‘There were many photographs from which to recognize you today. But we weren’t warned how to expect you!’

‘Of course you weren’t,’ said Zenin, more than restrained. He’d memorized Lyudin’s face from photographs as well but none had shown the man as fat or as flush-faced as he was.

‘It’s very good concealment,’ praised Lyudin.

‘I hope you’re right,’ said Zenin. ‘Have things arrived for me?’

‘A sealed container,’ confirmed Lyudin.

‘Which has remained sealed?’

‘Of course,’ said Lyudin. Why had Dzerzhinsky Square been so insistent that no indication be given to this man about the additional surveillance teams that had been drafted from Moscow?

‘I need an equally sealed room,’ demanded Zenin.

‘One is set aside,’ said Lyudin. ‘But perhaps a little refreshment first? I have some excellent Polish vodka.’

‘It’s ten-thirty in the morning,’ reminded Zenin.

‘I waited for you before I began,’ sniggered Lyudin, wanting the other Russian to accept it as the joke it was intended to be.

Zenin didn’t, nor did he smile. He said: ‘There were some requests from Moscow: detailed information about Geneva?’

Lyudin’s smile became hopefully broader at the awareness of Zenin’s involvement. ‘Which I personally responded to. Myself.’

‘And personally made the surveys?’

‘Yes,’ confirmed Lyudin. ‘I trust it was satisfactory.’

From a series of bars, guessed Zenin. It was easy to guess how Lyudin had gained the patriotic complexion. And why so much of the Geneva information had been inaccurate. The need for protest to Moscow was far more than personal now: such a man, particularly a man in a position of command like Lyudin, represented a positive danger to the entire rezidentura . But more importantly to the KGB itself. Zenin said: ‘I’ve decided upon my report to Moscow.’

‘I am grateful, Comrade Zenin,’ said the other Russian, misunderstanding.