Brian Freemantle - See Charlie Run

Charlie sat absolutely unmoving, needing to consider it all, analyse it properly: he would have liked hours — days — but he knew he didn’t have either, just a few minutes to think it through and get it right, after so long. And he had been right, that first day in the Director’s office, when he’d said it didn’t make sense: right, too, in the continuous feeling of uncertainty. Which was still there. Bits of the puzzle were beginning to fit together but there were still some pieces missing. The biggest piece was why? Charlie remembered a man named Sampson who called him sir and Harry Lu without an eye and wanted to shout and make demands from the woman but instead, rigidly controlled, he actually managed to smile back at her, encouraging, and said: ‘Tell me about it, Irena. Tell me how it worked.’

‘Very simply,’ she said. ‘We couldn’t liaise through the embassy, of course. Too dangerous. So he took an apartment, a safe house. The telephone there …’ She stopped, nodding towards the hotel accounts with the long-distance calls. ‘That was the contact point …’

Charlie didn’t want to interrupt the flow, but he needed to get the sequence right so he risked it. He said: ‘The day we first met, on the bus: when the Americans were following? You spoke to Yuri then?’

She nodded: ‘That was the arrangement: I’ve just told you.’

‘Where from, that day?’

‘The airport. Osaka.’

Charlie remembered something else from the tourist bus ride. He said: ‘A military plane!’

‘What?’

‘That same day on the bus: when I told you about Osaka you said you thought we’d go out from Tokyo and then you said “A military plane”. Why? Why specifically a military and not a commercial plane?’

For a moment Irena looked uncertain and then she shrugged and said: ‘We had a source, at the airport. We knew about your people coming in. The Americans, too.’

‘When?’ demanded Charlie. ‘When did you know?’

‘The night before.’

The idea came to Charlie and it irritated him because it was stupid and so he dismissed it. Trying to make the question seem as casual as it could be, in the circumstances, Charlie said: ‘How was Yuri, when you spoke to him that time? From Osaka?’

Irena shrugged and said: ‘He was …’ And then she stopped, both the gesture and the sentence.

‘Was what?’ pressed Charlie.

‘Nothing,’ she said.

‘Was what?’ repeated Charlie.

‘I thought he sounded strange; asked him about it. He said there was nothing wrong but perhaps he was nervous,’ remembered the woman.

‘He didn’t say anything about the plane blowing up?’

‘Not then?’

‘When?’

‘Hong Kong,’ said Irena. ‘Harry took me to the Mandarin when the plane wasn’t there and I called …’ She felt out, touching the hotel bill. ‘And Yuri told me what had happened …’ She paused and said: ‘I’ve told you about the bills now. Is this really necessary?’

Instead of answering, Charlie said, angrily: ‘And I missed it!’

‘Missed what?’

‘When I got to the Mandarin you asked a lot of questions, but you kept on about blowing the plane up,’ reminded Charlie. ‘And I already knew Harry hadn’t told you, because I asked him. And I hadn’t, either. Shit!’ Would Harry still be alive, if he’d been more alert? Maybe, like his wife would still be alive if he’d been more alert, all those years ago.

‘Does it matter?’

Charlie opened his mouth to reply but managed to halt the anger once more. Instead he said: ‘Go on. Tell me what Yuri said, when you spoke to him from Hong Kong?’

‘That the destruction of the plane showed how necessary it was, to maintain the arrangement … that it showed what the Americans were prepared to do …’

‘Moving!’ interrupted Charlie again. ‘You knew we were moving on because Harry had already told you. Did you tell Yuri?’

‘Of course,’ said Irena, grimacing as if it were another unnecessary question.

‘What did he say to that?’

‘That we had to go on being careful … that he would go on refusing to make any contact with the Americans until he knew I was safe …’ Irena stopped again and said, in head-lowered recollection: ‘And he called me darling.’

Was the earlier idea so stupid, wondered Charlie. Maybe, but then maybe not. It was still something difficult to believe. He said: ‘How was he going to know that: that you were safe?’

‘The same way.’

‘You were to keep telling him where you were?’

She nodded and then said: ‘The last time from the airport.’

‘So you called from the Hyatt?’

She gave another smile and said: ‘There it is, on the bill.’

Poor birch, thought Charlie: poor, stupid bitch, hearing what she wanted to hear, believing what she wanted to believe. He suddenly remembered the momentary brightness, just before they went out to eat, when she might have imagined she was to be left alone; and then the absurd modesty of getting into bed that night, which he didn’t think now had been modesty at all. He said: ‘What about from here! Have you called to tell him you’re here!’

‘I haven’t been able to, have I?’

Charlie covered the sigh of relief, convinced he was right but recognizing at the same time it was all surmise. Unless there were something more she still hadn’t told him. ‘How many calls?’

She blinked at the demand. ‘I don’t …’

‘From the time you met me, how many calls, to Yuri in Tokyo!’ insisted Charlie.

Irena hesitated, head bent again as she enumerated in her mind. ‘Osaka …’ she said, slowly. Then, gathering conviction: ‘The Mandarin …’ She looked up, satisfied. ‘And from Macao …’

‘Three!’ persisted Charlie. ‘Only three!’

‘Yes!’ she said, her demand matching his. ‘I’ve told you all there is! I want to go to sleep now: I’m tired.’

‘No!’ refused Charlie.

‘What do you mean, no?’

‘You don’t believe it, do you, Irena? Not after what happened today?’

‘You’re not making sense.’

‘A lot hasn’t, until now,’ said Charlie. Bringing in the recall again — the recall upon which he’d always relied so heavily but which this time had failed, too often — Charlie quoted: ‘“It’s got to be the Americans, hasn’t it?”’

She looked steadily at him, pretending not to remember, refusing to speak.

Relentlessly Charlie went on: ‘Your words, Irena. Today. But it hasn’t got to be the Americans, has it? We know — both know — what the Americans want; you, alive. Not in the wreckage of an aircraft or dead against the wall of a church that no longer exists. That’s what doesn’t make sense — never has — their trying to kill you.’

‘You told me they blew up the plane!’ she fought back.

‘It seemed the only logical conclusion, then,’ admitted Charlie. ‘It doesn’t now, not any longer.’

‘Who then!’

‘You tell me,’ said Charlie. ‘Who else but the Americans?’

‘You’re talking nonsense!’

‘What exactly am I saying that’s nonsense?’ said Charlie.

She shook her head, eyes downcast again.

‘What exactly am I saying that’s nonsense, Irena?’

Still she refused to speak.

‘Today was a professional attempt,’ continued Charlie. ‘Special gun: we both know that. Like we both know that Harry wasn’t the real target: that you were. Who’s the professional trying to kill you, Irena?’

The woman came up, in furious anger. ‘Not Yuri!’ she screamed, and Charlie was glad it was the sort of hotel it was. ‘He loves me,’ Irena raged on. ‘I keep telling you that …’ Her mind snagged on another thought, one she snatched at. More quietly, reasoning with an unarguable point, she said: ‘And it couldn’t have been Yuri, could it? How could he be in Tokyo, talking to me, and be in Macao, as well?’