Brian Freemantle - See Charlie Run

Charlie had hoped to get through the gatehouse area, but the crackling-uniformed officer returned with another man who also wore a tropical suit but this one bagged and was actually dirty at the cuffs and lapel edges, the shirt rumpled beneath. Charlie thought he looked the sort of bloke to suffer the morning-after ravages of bad meat pies, but perhaps that was too much to expect.

The telephone call Charlie detected had gone further than he imagined because at the approach of the two men one of the additional guards opened a side door, gesturing Charlie into what he saw, when he got inside, to be an interview room. With the obvious limit on talking, Charlie passingly thought an interview room was an unnecessary luxury.

The crumpled man came in alone and did not attempt to identify himself. Instead he gestured with the paper upon which the commandant had recorded the registry number and demanded: ‘Where did you get this?’

‘It’s mine,’ insisted Charlie. Before the man could speak, Charlie added his department categorization, its clearance level, the communication code to London, with its standby alternative, and the demand code for the Director. ‘You’ll need to take a note, so I’ll repeat them more slowly,’ he finished. He’d just disclosed enough for a ten-year sentence under the Official Secrets Act, Charlie realized; maybe not as much as ten years. He’d only got fourteen for screwing two intelligence Directors. Certainly five then; and perhaps this time not the way out he’d been offered before.

There was a barely discernible relaxation in the man’s attitude. He said: ‘What do you want?’

‘Communication,’ said Charlie, simply. ‘Believe you’re good at it here.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ rejected the man, at once.

‘Ask London,’ said Charlie. When the man remained impassive, Charlie added: ‘Please!’

The duty officer looked towards the door behind which Charlie knew the four guards would still be waiting. Charlie extended his hands, palm upwards, and said urgently: ‘You have a facsimile machine here: take a full set of fingerprints and check them out with London, in addition to what I’ve already given you.’

‘You seem to be in a great hurry,’ said the man, still doubtful.

‘A hell of a hurry,’ agreed Charlie. ‘An emergency. Call London …’ He hesitated and added again: ‘Please.’ It had always been a difficult word for him.

‘It’s not the purpose or function of this facility,’ said the man, adamantly.

‘I said it was an emergency!’

‘I heard what you said.’

Charlie felt the sweat bubble, burst and then find its way down his back. He nodded towards the door. ‘Effectively I’m under arrest, even though I haven’t penetrated any part of this establishment. You can do with me what you like. I’m no danger, to you or anything that you’re doing here. All I want is secure liaison with London …’ The indication this time was to the paper upon which the man had made his notes. ‘You know that’s not bullshit.’

‘I know that if it’s genuine you’ve broken a lot of regulations.’

Dear God spare me from another Witherspoon, thought Charlie. He said: ‘Which I know. Like I said, an emergency …’ The thought came suddenly and Charlie said: ‘You’ll have to make contact with London anyway now, won’t you?’

‘I’ll need a passport as well as fingerprints,’ said the man.

‘You can have whatever you want,’ said Charlie, relieved.

There was a delay bringing the inkpad and paper, and when the man finally left the room Charlie experimentally tried the door and found it to be locked. He smiled, appreciatively, not offended. He’d risked — and endangered — everything by coming here like this. He closed his eyes, in brief contemplation rather than prayer: just one wrong word, the smallest misconception, and he’d be down the drain without even touching the sides. He was becoming accustomed to the perpetual apprehension.

It was a full hour before the man returned, an hour when, despite attempts not to, Charlie kept lapsing into a half-sleep, slumped awkwardly in a stiffly upright chair in an oppressively hot room. He dreamed but consciously, all the time part of him aware of what was happening, confronting a mental mirror of disjointed images: exploding planes and threatening Americans, an emotionless Russian and a big woman whose voice was too loud and who spoke with her hands on her hips, and more threats, from a Chinese who looked like a European this time, and then the voices and the faces and the threats got further confused, coming from the wrong faces with the wrong voices, and that aware part of him, the part that knew it was a dream anyway, tried to get everything back together, in their right compartments, properly to understand what was really happening, and that same, conscious reasoning part of his mind told him he’d come back to the major difficulty and that he still didn’t understand what was really happening, not at all.

He heard the turn of the key and managed to rouse himself to avoid the duty officer realizing how close he was to exhaustion; fully awake, Charlie realized he’d been right to fight against the collapse in the taxi on the way here. Now he felt bloody awful and some of the images still overlaid each other, more confused than they should have been.

‘You’re to come,’ announced the man.

Not that his knowing mattered, apart from pride, but Charlie managed to conceal the relief from the other man. The guards were outside and formed up into some sort of loose escort, restricting him precisely to where he was to go. It was to the main building and down a central corridor: politely Charlie indicated no interest in things that were not supposed to concern him, but there was an impression of sterility. There were no festooned notice-boards or indications of occupancy and like the CIA Residency at the American embassy none of the doors he passed showed any designation.

The communications chamber was not suspended, like those to which he was accustomed at embassies throughout the world, and it was far larger than he expected. There were telex and facsimile and photo-transmission and radio and secure telephone equipment Charlie knew how to operate, but there were also two separate banks of what appeared to be radio apparatus that he did not recognize and which he accepted he would be incapable of using. In addition there were six television sets, separated in booths with an individual chair before each. Charlie guessed they were for visual communication but wasn’t sure: the operating controls were on separate panels, linked by curled wire.

‘Do you need any assistance?’ asked the unnamed duty officer.

‘I think I can manage,’ said Charlie. ‘And thanks.’

‘There’s going to be trouble over this,’ predicted the man.

‘It seems to happen,’ said Charlie.

‘You’re to wait, for London to come through.’

‘I understand.’

‘We’ll be right outside …’ The duty officer paused and then added heavily: ‘All of us.’

The call came, on a red telephone in the second bank, minutes after the man quit the room. At once Sir Alistair Wilson said critically: ‘The only thing you didn’t provide was the colour of your underwear.’

‘After what’s happened, it might have been embarrassing,’ said Charlie.

‘Have you got the woman?’

‘Yes.’

There was a discernible sigh of relief, and the Director said: ‘Thank Christ for that.’

‘But there are problems,’ deflated Charlie, at once. Again, as in Tokyo, Wilson let him talk uninterrupted, and Charlie was surprised how quickly he was able to set out the overlapping and conflicting difficulties: something so complicated should have taken longer.