Brian Freemantle: See Charlie Run

The bus was crowded and he had to stand, every bump and hole in the road jarring through his head. He realized he wouldn’t make it when the bus reached the Embankment. He got off heaving, supporting himself tight-lipped and sweating against the river wall until the sickness passed. Sodding pie.

He felt slightly better for the short walk through St James’s Park, actually able to nod a greeting to the outside doorman and then the security officer who checked his documentation, according to the regulations, when he entered the building.

‘Nice day,’ greeted the security officer.

‘Needs to improve,’ said Charlie, with feeling.

Charlie’s office — which from earlier experience he thought of as a cell — was at the back of the building, a functional rectangular room overlooking an anonymous rectangular courtyard despised even by scavenging Whitehall pigeons who normally didn’t despise anything. Charlie didn’t know the identity of anyone whose regulation net-curtained window faced his regulation net-curtained window and was confident none of them knew about him, either. The room was equipped with the required, Civil Service-graded equipment: two five-drawer filing cabinets (central bar locking; colour green), rubberized-topped metal-based desk (colour green), rib-backed, adjustable chair (colour black), Anglepoise desk lamp (60 watt bulb), waste-paper basket (metal), coat-rack (five-armed), and carpet square (synthetic material, 4? x 4?) over a composite cork floor. If he were ever promoted, which Charlie doubted, the colour scheme would be beige and the carpet square would increase to 5? x 5?. It would still be synthetic, though.

Apart from the curtained window, some natural light penetrated the room through the partition directly opposite his desk which was fluted glass and provided a distorted image of the neighbouring occupant, Hubert Witherspoon. The man, whose name Charlie thought more fitting to a Noel Coward farce, was a university entrant who regarded Charlie as university entrants invariably seemed to do, as something unusual to be examined under a laboratory microscope. As Charlie slumped, relieved, into his chair, he was aware of the indistinct shape of the other man moving, to register his arrival. There was the appearance of writing and Charlie wondered if Witherspoon were keeping some sort of log upon him: there were provisions in the regulations for one member of the department to monitor the activities and work ability of another, and Witherspoon was as regulation as the colour-coded offices and the measurements of the carpet square. Sick though he still felt, Charlie flickered his fingers, in an obvious wave of greeting. Witherspoon didn’t respond, but then he never did.

Sighing in discomfited awareness of the forthcoming concentration necessary, Charlie opened his desk drawer and took out the three files upon the defection he was analysing, gazing down at the unopened folders. Jeremy Knott, the third secretary at the Bonn embassy who two months earlier had done a hop, skip and a jump over the Berlin Wall, was, Charlie decided, a right pain in the bum. Picked out as a Foreign Office rising star, the bloody man had served in Brussels and Rome, been accorded access to far too much NATO tactical material, and from all the evidence Charlie had so far assembled leaked to his KGB-trained East German mistress enough secrets to give the other Alliance partners the shits for a month, if they found out. They wouldn’t, of course. What London would be prepared to admit was enough to sour relations for a long time. Charlie opened the last file, recording the man’s initial entrance into the diplomatic service and the academic and entry examinations record upon which the prospects for a glittering career had been based, and tried to ignore the on-off band of pain tightening around his head. He read steadily, looking up in sudden recognition and, turning away to the rack of reference books behind him, taking out Who’s Who and the Diplomatic List. It didn’t take very long and Charlie sat back, smiling. It was only a hunch but Charlie was a man of hunches, a supreme professional who trusted an instinct honed from years of survival. It was certainly worth an investigation: and that would mean a report would have to be written with explanatory notes and that he could spend the rest of the day working on it, take a long lunch hour and go home early. Maybe it wasn’t turning out to be such a bad day, after all. Even the headache seemed to be easing. Hair of the dog at lunchtime, give the meat pies a miss, and by tonight he’d be back in as good a shape as he’d ever be.

Charlie went back to the files he had discarded as read and assimilated, looking for the connection he wanted, but was vaguely aware of Witherspoon moving in the other office although he didn’t realize the man was coming into his section until the door actually opened. Witherspoon stayed in the doorway, flax-haired, stripe-suited, school-tied and faintly disapproving, looking down at Charlie.

‘I took some messages for you, before you arrived.’

‘Thanks,’ said Charlie, ignoring the clearly implied criticism of his lateness.

‘Accounts telephoned that you’re four weeks behind with your expenses and that you’re?400 overdrawn: they won’t accept any more withdrawals, not even if they’re countersigned by the Director himself …’

Witherspoon was enjoying himself, Charlie realized; the man actually looked like something out of a Noel Coward production. He said: ‘That all?’

‘No,’ said the other man, confirming Charlie’s impression. ‘The Director called himself, asking for you. I had to say you weren’t in.’

‘Always essential to tell the truth,’ agreed Charlie.

‘Said he wanted to see you, when you finally got here.’

‘So why’d you wait half an hour, before telling me?’ The bastard, thought Charlie.

‘Didn’t see you arrive, not right away,’ said Witherspoon, easily. He came further into the tiny office, staring intently at Charlie. ‘You’ve got a piece of toilet-paper stuck on your face!’ he said.

‘Disguise,’ said Charlie.

‘Disguise?’

‘I’m trying to become shit of the week,’ said Charlie. ‘Thought maybe there was a competition.’

Witherspoon’s own face tightened. He said: ‘There’s something else. Security want you …’ He looked pointedly at the disordered files on Charlie’s desk. ‘Last night’s patrol discovered restricted material in an unlocked drawer in your desk. They’re red designation. Should have been returned to Records.’

‘Bet you can quote the regulation?’ challenged Charlie.

‘I can,’ said Witherspoon, a man devoid of humour. ‘It’s 120/B’.

‘I’ll try to remember that,’ promised Charlie.

‘It’s probably what the Director wants to see you about,’ said Witherspoon.

Charlie doubted it. General Sir Alistair Wilson was a professional interested in results, not books of rules. He said: ‘Looks like I might be in trouble.’

‘Which is entirely your own fault,’ lectured Witherspoon. ‘You know about expenses. Just like you know red designation files.’

‘I’m a fool to myself,’ said Charlie, weighing the cliche.

‘It’s not a joke!’

Charlie remembered the previous day’s shirt and wished he’d had some advance warning of the Director’s summons. It had to be seven months since he’d last met the man. He said: ‘Nothing is funny this morning.’

Charlie used the internal, secure line and was told by General Sir Alistair Wilson’s personal secretary to come up immediately, which meant it was priority and that he had probably been waiting. Charlie ascended the two floors burning with anger at Witherspoon purposely delaying the message: sneaky little bastard. When he reached the outer office the woman said: ‘You’re to go straight in,’ confirming Charlie’s apprehension.