Brian Freemantle: The Run Around

‘Latvians are second-class citizens, dispensable,’ was Novikov’s way of expressing it, which struck a cord with Charlie who never forgot how he’d once been considered dispensable. Or forgot, either, the fall-out that had contaminated so much and so many by his fighting back, creating his own personal Hiroshima.

According to the transcript the woman’s death marked the moment of Novikov’s turning traitor to Russia, doing his utmost to cause as much damage as possible to a society he finally regarded as a colonial oppressor, worse than any of the Western colonial oppressors daily criticized within the Soviet Union.

‘The mind of Albert Einstein coupled with the social conscience of Mother Theresa, judged Charlie, aloud, in the emptiness of his refuse-viewed office. Often — and unashamedly — Charlie talked to himself. Sometimes he gave himself the right answers: the right answers were always the most difficult.

Charlie was disappointed in that part of the transcript devoted to the supposed assassination, although he supposed he should not have been, forewarned by the meeting with Sir Alistair Wilson just how little was available. Worse than just little, qualified Charlie: what he had here was positively infinitesimal, the two cables to the Russian embassy in London’s Kensington the only positive, workable facts. Still, something, at least, upon which it was possible to work. Charlie continued on through the paperwork, looking expectantly for the recommendation and then, with equal expectation, for the confirming order, frowning in surprise when he didn’t find it.

‘Cunts!’ he erupted angrily, speaking aloud again. Being personally named as the investigatory chief and having the priority designation so clearly set out was going earlier to prove an advantage than he’d imagined. There were going to be more ruffled feathers than in a hen coop at mating time but fuck it: it was fucking that ruffled feathers at mating time anyway.

In addition to the operation’s priority coding, Charlie used the authority of Sir Alistair Wilson’s name in his insistent messages to MI5, Britain’s counter-intelligence service. In further addition he stipulated that the absolute, 24-hour checks extend beyond the Kensington Palace Gardens embassy and the known diplomatic addresses in Edith Road and Kensington’s Earl’s Terrace to include the offices of every accredited Russian journalist and television commentator in London, the Soviet Trade Mission at West Hill, in the Highgate suburb, the Intourist and Aeroflot offices in Regent Street and Piccadilly, the Wheat Council in Charing Cross, into which the KGB had in the past infiltrated agents, and the Russian Narodny Bank, whose premises were in the City’s King William Street. And still remained dissatisfied. According to the Director, Novikov had been across for two months. And the assassination would have undergone planning months prior to that. So why the hell hadn’t the debriefer or those analysing what was being produced taken the most obvious and most elementary precautions!

‘Cunts!’ said Charlie again, more angrily than before.

With his carte blanche authorization, Charlie drew the best car available from the motor pool, a small-bodied Mercedes with a specially adapted turbo-charged engine and absolutely secured radio patch communication, waiting until he cleared the London suburbs and was actually on the motorway before using it to call ahead and confirm his visit to the safe house already warned from Westminster Bridge Road of his impending visit. He took the car effortlessly up to 100 m.p.h., knowing from the special engine it was capable of at least another 50 m.p.h. Would he be able to get a nice second-hand little runner for the sort of overdraft he’d asked for, Charlie wondered, in rare naivety. He’d never actually bought a vehicle of his own. Edith had always purchased the cars because she had the money. After he’d screwed British and American intelligence and she’d been killed in the vengeance hunt Charlie had refused to touch his wife’s inherited estate, placing it instead in an unbreakable trust for the benefit of a children’s charity that had been one of Edith’s favourites. Be nice to have a little car like this: run out to a country pub on Saturday lunch-times and polish it like everyone else did in England on a Sunday morning. Might be a bit dodgy those nights when all the street lights seemed to join together, though. Or parking it in the roads around his flat, where even the police cars got their radios nicked and offered back for sale. Enjoy it while you can then, he told himself. Charlie fully opened the sun roof, reclined the seat back a further notch, and stared through the tinted glass to enjoy the Sussex countryside. Sir Archibald Willoughby, his first Director, had lived in Sussex. Not here though: on the coast, near Rye. They’d been the great days, under Willoughby. Allowed to roam, under Sir Archibald: make up his own rules. No pissing about over expenses with demands for certifiable receipts. Not that that was the fault of the present Director. Wilson was a good bloke, like Willoughby had been. Just surrounded by pricks, that’s all. Which had been the problem with Willoughby, as well. Odd that there were so many comparisons: even fanatical about rose growing. Harkness’s hobby was probably reciting tables, one twelve is twelve, two twelves are twenty four…. Charlie didn’t have the slightest doubt that the penny-pinching fart wouldn’t let him off the hook without a convincing explanation about those damned receipts: if he couldn’t think of one he supposed he’d have to accept the amounts being cut off, which would be losing out. Charlie didn’t like losing, certainly not fiddled expenses money. Not the biggest problem at the moment. The biggest problem at the moment was trying to find answers when he didn’t even know what the questions were. Or have a clue where to find them.

His speed was reduced when he had to quit the motorway for the minor road going to Pulborough but he was still ahead of the appointed time so he stopped at a pub promising home cooked food, deciding that if it served anything like he cooked at home he wouldn’t bother. It wasn’t. Instead of his customary Islay malt he chose beer, which was drawn from the wood, and ordered crisply baked bread and fresh pickles and tangy cheese and carried it all out to a table and bench which a craftsman had clearly spent hours fashioning to appear as something that had been knocked up in minutes by a child with a Christmas gift carpentry set. All around geraniums blazed from tubs and window boxes and there was a dovecot for real birds which commuted between it and the thatched roof of the pub. Charlie identified it as just the sort of place to which people drove for those Saturday lunchtime sessions, wearing cravats tucked into checked shirts and cavalry twill trousers and suede shoes and complained that the English cricket selectors didn’t have a damned clue, did they? Charlie stretched his feet out before him. At least he had the suede shoes. And they looked bloody marvellous after the going-over he’d given them, for the meeting with the bank manager. Last another year at least: maybe longer, if he were careful. It was always important to be careful, about his Hush Puppies. Took a long time to break them in properly: had to be moulded, like a sculptor moulded his clay. What was the saying about feet of clay? Charlie couldn’t remember precisely but it didn’t apply to him anyway. His feet usually felt as if he were walking on that other stuff sculptors worked with, hard and sharp.

He used the car radio system to advise the gatehouse of his imminent arrival, so they were waiting for him when he pulled into the driveway of the house, about five miles outside of the town. The first man wore an unidentifiable but official-looking uniform and was posted at what appeared to be the proper gate, a huge and secured affair with a crest on top. His function — apart simply from opening the gate — was to deter casually enquiring or wrongly directed strangers. The real checks came at the guard post out of sight of the road, where the electronic surveillance began and where the guard staff were armed. Charlie presented his documentation and stood obediently for his photograph to be taken and checked by one of those electronic systems not just against the picture on his pass but against the film records to which it was linked in London.