Brian Freemantle: See Charlie Run

‘It was meant to be,’ said the Russian. ‘I won’t be cheated. Or tricked.’

‘Like I’ve said …’ tried the American, but Kozlov talked across him.

‘So don’t bother saying it again,’ interrupted the Russian. ‘I accept that you were only doing what you were told to do, by Washington. But that means you hadn’t properly explained the situation, for them to understand how pointless it would be. It’s my way or it’s no way at all. You’ve known that from the beginning.’

Kozlov was arrogant as well as clever, decided Fredericks. He said: ‘All right. Your way, entirely.’

‘What about the British?’ demanded Kozlov.

‘There’s been some communication,’ qualified Fredericks. ‘No one has actually arrived yet.’

‘You delayed, to see what would happen today?’ anticipated Kozlov.

Now Fredericks smiled. ‘Yes,’ he admitted. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘I believe it wasn’t your fault,’ said Kozlov. ‘We suffer fools at Dzerzhinsky Square, too. It won’t happen again?’

‘No,’ promised Fredericks, hopefully. Damn Langley and empire builders, he thought.

‘How much longer?’ pressed Kozlov.

‘I’ll tell Langley today. Say it must be soon.’

‘Very soon,’ insisted the Russian. ‘It’s easy for suspicion to arise in a Soviet embassy.’

‘You think something is wrong?’ asked Fredericks, feeling new concern.

‘Not yet: I’m sure of that. Irena is as alert as I am, so I’m confident we would have detected something, between us …’ He smiled again. ‘I’m just a very cautious person; I was trained that way.’

‘I understand,’ assured Fredericks. ‘I’ll make everything very clear.’

‘I want you to leave here first,’ said Kozlov.

‘Of course.’

‘We’ll maintain the same method of contact?’ said the Russian.

‘Yes.’

‘Your people at Langley are stupid.’

‘Yes,’ agreed Fredericks, sincerely. ‘They’re very stupid.’

The American felt strangely self-conscious, going out of the temple with the Russian watching him. The feeling was soon overtaken by another, better sensation. Kozlov thought he controlled everything and that they jumped when he said jump, but Jim Dale was back there, watching everything the guy did. Which made him the cleverer of the two, decided Fredericks, satisfied.

The arrangement had been that each of the people guarding him returned to the US embassy at Akasaka Toranomon directly after the failed meetings, to avoid any danger of identification from the possibly watching Kozlov, so Fish and Levine were back in Tokyo ahead of Fredericks. While they awaited the arrival of Dale — together with Winslow Elliott and Takeo Yamada, the two other CIA men whose wait at the other places set out but not used by the Russian had been pointless — Fredericks encoded Kozlov’s reaction and transmitted it to Washington. He took a lot of trouble, wanting, without making the criticism obvious, CIA headquarters fully to understand how near they had come to fouling up the whole thing by imagining remote control was possible. Fredericks waited in the code room for half an hour, for their response. When it finally came, it was limited to the briefly formal acknowledgement of receipt, and Fredericks knew he’d got the message home. Now they’d be scurrying around, each trying to dump on the other and avoid the responsibility for coming so close to disaster.

By the time he got back to the CIA section within the embassy, the other three men had returned and were waiting for him, and Fredericks made no attempt to sanitize the account, as he had to Langley.

‘Kozlov’s right,’ said Levine, when the CIA supervisor finished the explanation. ‘Langley are stupid. Kozlov might appear calm, to you. But inwardly he’ll be screwed up tighter than a spring; he can’t be any other way. It’ll only take the slightest thing to spook him.’

‘I’ve told them that,’ reminded Fredericks.

‘What did they say?’ asked Fish.

‘Nothing.’

They all knew, like Fredericks, what the silence meant, and there were various smiles around the room.

‘You know what I think,’ said Elliott, who was irritated at what he considered a wasted day. ‘I think we should snatch him. Arrange another meeting, like today, put extra men in everywhere and then jump him. Get some sort of knock-out stuff from Technical Division, sedate him until we get him on to a military plane and stop all this screwing about.’

‘What sort of dumb-assed idea is that!’ erupted Fredericks, genuinely irritated but also venting some of his earlier anger upon the man. ‘That’s kidnapping, for Christ’s sake! We’d have Moscow going ape, Japan screaming and Kozlov hostile without the wife he eventually wants with him. Why stop at Kozlov, if that’s the way we’re going to operate! Why not snatch Gorbachev and the entire fucking Politburo and run the Soviet Union from some cosy little safe house in Virginia!’

Elliott shifted under the ferocity of the attack, looking embarrassed. ‘It was an idea,’ he said, awkwardly.

‘Dumb-assed,’ repeated Fredericks, dismissively. ‘Let’s start behaving professionally.’ He looked to the men who had waited fruitlessly at the first two shrines. ‘Well?’

‘No one was monitoring you,’ said Fish. ‘I’m sure of it.’

‘You were clean at the Enno-Ji temple, too,’ said Levine.

‘Jim?’ asked Fredericks.

The CIA agent who had monitored the actual encounter was a sandy-haired man newly posted from Washington. He nervously took off his glasses and said: ‘Squeaky clean. There was only one other group of Caucasians around the buddha …’

‘American …?’ interrupted Fredericks.

Dale nodded: ‘Made a point of checking, after you left. A Lions club, from Milwaukee. Throughout the entire time you were with Kozlov, no one showed the slightest interest.’

Fredericks was silent for several moments, remembering his assessment in the buddha temple. ‘If he’s by himself, it indicates he’s genuine,’ he said, trying the opinion out on the others. ‘If it were some sort of trick, some entrapment embarrassment for instance, he’d be mob-handed: people identifying me, stuff like that.’

‘I’d say so,’ agreed Yamada, an American-born Japanese.

‘Me too,’ said Fish.

‘Still seems a lot of screwing around,’ said Elliott truculently.

Fredericks ignored the man, returning to Dale. ‘What happened after I left.’

‘He checked, for surveillance,’ said the American, wanting to boast his recognition and avoidance. ‘Went right by me into the souvenir shop: actually bought a key-ring. Then he went inside the buddha. It’s hollow, you know.’

‘Spare me the tourist crap,’ said Fredericks. ‘I heard it all from Kozlov when he was clearing his path. Sure he didn’t spot you?’

‘Positive,’ said Dale. ‘I told you, I checked the Milwaukee group. Got into the conversation with a couple of old guys and left the temple with them, like I was one of the party.’

‘Good deal,’ praised Fredericks.

‘So we’ve got to work with the British?’ said Yamada, introducing into the conversation what everyone had been avoiding.

‘We’ve still to get the word from Langley,’ said Fredericks, cautiously. ‘But that’s how it looks.’

‘But him !’ protested Elliott, gesturing to the file that had been air freighted overnight from Washington and lay on Fredericks’ desk, a picture of Charlie Muffin uppermost.

‘Him,’ confirmed Fredericks. ‘He’s the person London nominated.’

‘Do you know what the son of a bitch did!’ demanded Elliott.

‘I know the stories, like everyone else,’ said Fredericks.

‘He’s a fucking Commie traitor!’