Brian Freemantle - The Run Around

‘You think he came out with that mass exit, recorded at lunchtime?’ asked Levy, referring to his own copy of the Watchers’ log.

‘It’s the most obvious answer,’ said Charlie. He looked at the Swiss intelligence chief. ‘And your Watchers did not think that was significant enough to report specially either, did they?’

‘There appears to have been some slackness,’ conceded Blom, with no choice. ‘I still think it would be wrong to twist it to fit the circumstances.’

‘I’m not twisting it to fit any circumstance,’ argued Charlie. ‘It’s actually got a pattern. He almost beat us by merging into the background in England and he beat us here by merging into the background again. It was actually a mistake on his part.’

‘What about a different exit?’ said Giles.

‘I went to Bern and looked at the embassy for myself,’ said Charlie, unaware of his own mistake. ‘They’re all covered.’

‘I think the squad on duty when the workman went in should be interrogated to see if we can get a description that matches the one we’ve already got,’ said Levy.

‘It was the pick-up,’ said Charlie, in adamant frustration. ‘This was when he collected the weapon. Or weapons.’

‘There’s no record on the log of anyone in that lunch-time crowd carrying anything out,’ said Giles.

‘The squads should be interrogated on that, too,’ said Charlie.

‘They will be,’ promised Blom.

‘You’ve got five days before the Middle East conference begins,’ reminded Charlie. ‘The delegation leaders start arriving in the next forty-eight hours.’

‘So?’ said Blom.

‘So publish the damned photograph!’ said Charlie. ‘Frighten the bastard off!’

‘I don’t think anything has happened to change the attitude on that,’ said the Swiss.

‘Suggest it again,’ urged Charlie, looking to each of the other three men. ‘And warn the other delegations.’

‘I won’t start a panic,’ said Blom.

‘It’s the way to avert one,’ said Charlie.

‘Give me some positive proof,’ demanded Blom. ‘Better proof than this.’

‘By the time you accept it, it’ll be too late,’ warned Charlie.

‘I’ll raise it again with Jerusalem,’ undertook Levy.

‘I’ll play it back, too,’ said Giles.

‘I’m sure the answer will be the same as before,’ said Blom, confident his security committee would not change their minds.

‘If it is it’ll be a mistake,’ said Charlie. Christ how he hated working with a committee!

Sulafeh stirred and Zenin shook her gently, fully awakening her.

‘We should go,’ he said.

‘I don’t want to.’

‘It’s late.’

‘Can we come here again tomorrow?’

‘Yes.’

‘Every day?’

‘We’ll see,’ avoided the Russian. ‘I think we should leave separately. You first.’

‘Shall we meet at the same place tomorrow?’

‘No.’

‘Where?’

Zenin hesitated and then said: ‘The Cornavin terminal: the main concourse.’

‘What time?’

‘Three.’

‘Make love to me again.’

Alexei Aleksandrovich Berenkov regarded Charlie Muffin as his equal, which was an accolade. The Russian had frequently concluded during those long, sleepless and gradually despairing nights in London’s Wormwood Scrubs that no one but Charlie Muffin would have persisted, sifting and checking and cross-checking and then pursuing with the relentlessness of a starving Siberian wolf the labyrinthine maze Berenkov had created for his own protection and which eventually ensnared him. Or behaved, either, as Charlie had after the arrest. Not treating him as a hydra-headed monster, to be looked at like some fairground curiosity through the prison-door peephole, but treated as an equal, professional to professional. It had been a challenge, being debriefed by Charlie. Berenkov still sometimes wondered what the score had finally been, before his release. He’d meant to ask, when they’d met later in Moscow, but the occasion had not presented itself. They’d been fools, the British, to imagine such a man as expendable. But to his benefit, Berenkov recognized. If the British had not decided to use Charlie Muffin as the disposable bait in the crossing of the Berlin Wall — and been caught out by the man doing so — Berenkov guessed he could still now be decaying in that damp-walled cell with the stinking pisspot in the nighttime corner and the eight boring hours in the prison library and the one boring hour in the exercise yard and the rest of the time alone with the smell of damp and piss. Charlie Muffin had hardly been his capturer then. Saviour in fact. No, that was not correct, either. There might have been professional admiration between them, but that was where the feeling ended: where it had to end, as professionals. His repatriation to the Soviet Union in exchange for the British and American intelligence directors whom Charlie lured into Soviet entrapment in Vienna had been convenient, that’s all. He’d been an advantage and Charlie had used him, like he used all advantages. Which was why the man was so dangerous. And why he had to be destroyed. Berenkov reached the conclusion quite dispassionately: again it was professional, not personal. He knew Charlie Muffin would understand that. Were the situation reversed, it was the sort of decision Charlie would have reached. It was regrettable but necessary: that was why he had not mentioned the man’s name to Valentina. She’d liked Charlie: perhaps rightfully considered him to be the man who had restored a husband to her, after so many — too many — years as an espionage agent in the West. Women thought like that; with their hearts rather than with their heads. Men had to think differently.

Berenkov arrived first at Dzerzhinsky Square, of course, but Valery Kalenin was close behind, with such a short distance to travel from Kutuzovsky Prospekt: Berenkov had considered their coming together in the same car but decided upon some time to himself, fully to consider the implications of the Swiss sighting.

‘A problem?’ demanded Kalenin at once.

Instead of replying, Berenkov handed the other man the set of photographs.

The KGB chief gazed down at them, slowly shaking his head. Then he looked up and said: ‘Charlie Muffin!’

‘They were taken today outside the embassy in Bern,’ announced Berenkov.

‘How many were there!’ demanded the KGB chief, at once.

‘That’s the confusing part,’ admitted Berenkov. ‘I checked, obviously. But it was not a concentrated sweep. Just Charlie Muffin. And he was too late. Zenin had already made the pick-up.’

‘I don’t understand a fishing expedition,’ complained Kalenin.

‘If the British knew more there would have been a build-up,’ insisted Berenkov. ‘The Swiss would be swamping the embassy. And they’re not.’

‘Still worth letting it run, then?’

‘We’ve still got the embassy covered,’ reminded Berenkov. ‘If there’s any sort of change in the surveillance we can still turn Zenin off at the apartment. I know it’s not in the planning and there’s a risk of panicking him but it’s always an option for us.’

‘Charlie Muffin, of all people!’ said Kalenin, reflectively. Kalenin had posed as the defector bait to lure the English and American directors to Vienna and there had necessarily been supposed planning meetings between himself and Charlie.

Berenkov knew the KGB chairman had about the man a professional regard similar to his own. He said: ‘I know Charlie Muffin. So do you. His being there worries me.’

‘But you said he was alone.’

‘How professional were the cells I ran in England and Europe regarded?’ asked Berenkov, confusingly.