Brian Freemantle - The Run Around

‘I got a hole-in-one and two birdies,’ announced Witherspoon, triumphantly.

‘Terrific,’ said Charlie.

‘That hole-in-one cost me a fortune in the bar afterwards. It’s a tradition to treat everyone, you know.’

‘No,’ said Charlie. ‘I didn’t know.’

Witherspoon nodded in the direction of the drawing room and said: ‘Nothing I hadn’t got, was there?’

Jesus! thought Charlie. He said: ‘Hardly a thing.’

‘Wasted journey then?’

Caught by Witherspoon’s complaint at having to buy drinks in the club-house and remembering the forgotten lunchtime receipt, Charlie said: ‘You wouldn’t by chance have a spare restaurant bill from anywhere around here, would you?’

Witherspoon’s face coloured. He said: ‘You don’t imagine I am going to get caught up in your petty little deceits, do you!’

‘No,’ said Charlie, wearily, ‘of course not.’

When he got to the Mercedes Charlie found the red communication light burning, indicating a priority summons. He was patched directly through to the Director’s office and recognized Alison Bing’s strained-through-a-sieve voice at once.

‘The bomb’s gone off right beneath you,’ said the Director’s secretary. ‘I don’t think there’s going to be enough pieces to bury.’

Arrival security — Special Branch and immigration and Customs checks — at all the Scottish fishing ports is ridiculously inefficient, so lamentable that the KGB regard them as open doorways into Europe.

Vasili Nikolaevich Zenin arrived at Ullapool on a Russian trawler but did not go ashore that first night, letting the genuine Russian seamen attract what little attention there might be. He went with them the second day, but not to drink. In a pub lavatory he stripped off the sweater and leggings that covered his suit, for one of the seamen to carry back to the trawler, and caught a meandering bus to Glasgow, arriving in time for the overnight sleeper to London.

He collected the waiting suitcase from the left luggage locker at King’s Cross station and went directly to the Ennis Hotel, in Bayswater.

‘You have a reservation for me: the name’s Smale,’ he said.

‘Travelled far, Mr Smale?’ asked the girl, politely.

‘A long way,’ said Zenin, which was so very true.

The KGB exercise the greatest care in the selection of operatives for Department 8 of Directorate S of its First Chief Directorate, devoting more time to their instruction than to any other agent in any other division of its service.

A prime consideration is one of mental attitude because the most essential requirement in a department in which men are trained to kill is that they do not want to kill, which is not as illogical as it may first appear: there is no place for a psychopath because psychopaths cannot be relied upon to behave rationally and a professional killer must at all times remain absolutely rational. Psychopaths do, however, have their function in the final week of the training period.

Vasili Zenin graduated from that as he graduated from every course at Balashikha, with a maximum assessment which confirmed his accolade as the most outstanding recruit of the year. The only way to fail the ultimate test was to die.

A Ukrainian serving a life sentence in Gulag 16 in the Potma complex for killing three people — one his mother — was not immediately shot after cutting the throat of a fellow prisoner while he slept in order to steal the man’s boots. Instead, having psychiatricly been found to be insane he was offered the choice of entering a kill-or-be-killed situation, assured that if he were the victor he would be granted his freedom. Which was, of course, a lie. Had he killed Zenin the delayed execution would have been carried out anyway, but warning the man he was to be hunted tilted the odds against Zenin; in a proper operation a true victim is usually unaware of being a target. Additionally, Zenin was not told the Ukrainian was expecting an attack.

Balashikha is a huge but frequently divided complex. Areas are separated according to their instructional needs sometimes by barbed and electrified wire and occasionally with high concrete walls the tops of which are again electrically guarded. The concreted sections are those of maximum secrecy and it was in one, located at the very centre of the camp, that the contest was staged. Here there had been re-created in a vast, aircraft-type hanger a typical European city street — because Zenin was selected to operate in Europe — with shops and a cafe and apartment houses. Every part of it was monitored and surveyed by television cameras, so that the movements and behaviour of both men was relayed to a control room in which sat the panel of assessors.

Zenin was slightly built and small featured with the dark colouring of a man born in Azerbaijan, which was a further reason for his being selected for the specific mission already then being planned for him. He moved with the quiet but assured confidence of someone sure — but without conceit — of his own abilities, which had been one of the first qualities isolated by the assassin division recruiters when the man had been accepted into the Kirovabad office of the KGB. He spoke four languages, English and French with a fluency that betrayed no accent, and had no moral difficulty with killing, satisfied assassination was justified because his victims were legally judged enemies of the state before he was entrusted with the responsibility of carrying out the sentence imposed upon them. The Ukrainian fitted into the same category, a criminal proven guilty of a crime.

The Ukrainian was allowed no weapon. And Zenin’s instructions were that the killing had to appear to have been an accident or suicide. He was told he could have a weapon of choice or any one of the six Soviet-perfected poison-spray guns, the gas of which dissipates within thirty seconds, leaving no trace to be found in any later post-mortem examination. Zenin refused anything.

The test, he was told, was timed for one hour: if the encounter had not taken place by then, he would begin losing assessment points. If twenty points were deducted, he would be dismissed from the course.

Zenin entered the hanger door low and fast, moving immediately sideways, unsure what to expect but knowing he was an obvious target framed in the doorway. Once inside, however, he did nothing fast, observing the basic teaching to merge into any background, to become a wallpaper man. The mock-up was artificially illuminated to represent natural sunlight, providing shadows, and Zenin used every one available, never once disclosing himself. A constant theme through each training session at Balashikha was self reliance and awareness beyond the instruction at those sessions, to think ahead beyond the obvious. Zenin at once recognized the unreality of a confrontation in such a ghost town setting, guessing the possibility of an ambush. So he observed another lecture, switching from hunter to hunted. He slipped into the supposed cafe, intentionally because it was so obvious, soft-footedly exploring the outer area and the kitchen, and having satisfied himself they were unoccupied he checked the upstairs rooms, discovering a make-believe bathroom. By the time he regained the ground floor Zenin had isolated a disparity in the cafe. It was complete in every respect — even to cooking materials which he decided to utilize — but there were no knives or forks in the customer area nor knives in the kitchen to be used as weapons. It was always possible, of course, that his opponent or opponents would have been offered weapons like he had been but if they had there would have been no purpose in precluding them from the fake restaurant. There were a lot of bottles and glasses, which could be broken to provide a cutting edge, but Zenin considered anything makeshift easier to defend himself against. Of course they were personally denied him, because it was essential for his killing not to appear a killing at all. He found three containers of oil and emptied them into pans and lighted a high gas beneath each. Noise was important so he stood back, ensuring it was loud enough. Satisfied, Zenin returned to the main room and sank to his haunches by the window, with a perfect view of the outside street.