Brian Freemantle - Charlie M

‘I wish we could stay in France,’ said Edith, almost to herself.

‘I thought you were looking forward to seeing Austria and Germany in the autumn.’

‘I was,’ she agreed. ‘But not any more. Not now.’

‘What’s wrong?’ he asked.

‘You do love me, don’t you, Charlie?’

‘Yes, Edith,’ he answered, holding her eyes.

‘I know I’m inclined to keep a pretty close check on money,’ she said, looking down into her wine glass and embarking upon a familiar path. ‘But I can’t help it: it’s bred into me. But I regard it as our money, Charlie. Not just mine. Spend all of it, if you want to.’

He waited.

‘I mean, it wouldn’t matter if you were downgraded … we wouldn’t starve or anything. And it would be safer, after all.’

‘I’ll have Cuthbertson begging me for help,’ predicted Charlie. ‘And it’ll be my money that supports us.’

Why, thought the woman sadly, did he have to have that bloody grammar-school pride. Just like her damned father.

The priority coded warning had come from the C.I.A. Resident at the Moscow embassy in advance of the diplomatic bag containing the full report, so the Director was already alerted and waiting when the messenger arrived at Langley.

He spent an hour examining the messages, then analysing the station head’s assessment, reading it alongside the report that had come in two days earlier from the agency monitoring station in Vienna, which had fed his excitement the moment the initial Moscow report had been received.

Finally he stood up, gazing out over the Virginia countryside, where the leaves were already rusting into autumn.

Garson Ruttgers was a diminutive, frail man who deliberately cultivated a clerk-like appearance with half-lens spectacles that always appeared about to fall off bis nose and slightly shabby, Brooks Brothers suits, invariably worn with waistcoats, and blue, button-down-collared shirts. He smoked forty cigarettes a day against doctor’s advice, convincing himself he compensated by an almost total abstinence from liquor, and was consumed by the ambition to become to the C.I.A. what Hoover had been to the F.B.I.

In a period that included the last year of the Second World War — when he had been a major in the O.S.S. — and then in the Korean conflict, he had killed (by hand because weapons would have made a noise and attracted attention) ten men who had threatened his exposure as an agent. Never, even in moments of recollection, had he reproached himself about it, even though two of his victims had been Americans whose loyalty he only suspected but could not disprove, and so had disposed of just in case.

That more people had not been killed with the same detachment was only because he had spent nearly eighteen years in Washington and the need had not arisen. He was, Garson Ruttgers convinced himself, a complete professional. A psychiatrist, knowing of his tendency to kill without compunction, would have diagnosed him a psychopath.

Ruttgers shivered, suddenly frightened by the information that lay before him. There could only be one conclusion, he judged. And the British, whom he regarded as amateurs, were bound to screw it up.

He dispatched a ‘most urgent’ classified instruction to the embassy, ordering the Resident back to Washington on the next civilian aircraft, guaranteeing the man’s presence in the capital at dawn the following day by arranging for a military plane to be specially available at the first airfield in the west.

Building a margin for any flight problems, he arranged the meeting with the Secretary of State, Willard Keys, at noon, cautioning in their telephone conversation that Keys might want to request an immediate meeting with the President.

From the computer in the Langley headquarters Ruttgers had within two hours a complete print-out on the man named in the report lying on his desk. It was very brief, as Ruttgers had anticipated: a man like General Valery Kalenin used anonymity like a cloak, he knew. Annexed to the print-out was the brief confirmation: ‘no photograph known to exist’.

It had to be right, assessed Ruttgers, summarily cancelling all appointments and meetings during the next week.

There had never been an opportunity like this, he reflected. If they could get involved, the Agency would wipe away all the post-Watergate criticism. Internal telephone tapping, the Bay of Pigs and the Rockefeller Commission would be laughed at. And Garson Ruttgers would achieve the awe that had surrounded Hoover.

That night Ruttgers broke his habit and had two brandies after dinner; without them, he decided, he wouldn’t be able to sleep. He looked upon the second drink as a celebration in advance.

William Braley’s cover as C.I.A. Resident in Moscow was as cultural attache to the U.S. embassy. He was a puffyfaced, anaemic-looking man with a glandular condition that put him two stone overweight, pebble glasses that made him squint and the tendency to asthma when under pressure. He arrived in Washington at 10 a.m., delayed by fog at Frankfurt, gravel-eyed through lack of sleep and wheezing from apprehension.

Ruttgers would be furious if it transpired he had overreacted, he knew, thrusting the inhaler into his mouth in the back of the Pontiac taking him and the Director into Washington.

The prospect of meeting the Secretary of State terrified him: he wouldn’t be able to use the breathing aid at the meeting, he thought, worriedly. Keys might be offended. He was rumoured to have a phobia about health.

‘It could be nothing,’ Braley cautioned Ruttgers, hopefully. If he expressed doubt in advance, perhaps the recriminations wouldn’t be so bad.

Ruttgers shook his head, determined.

‘No way, Bill,’ dismissed the Director, who took pride in his hunches and knew this had the feel of a defection. ‘You got it right the first time. I’m proud of you.’

Keys was waiting for them in his office in the Executive Building, a taciturn, aloof man, whose careful enunciation, like a bored educationalist in a school for retarded children, concealed a word-stumbling shyness. He knew the shell of arrogance beneath which he concealed himself caused dislike, which exacerbated the speech defect when meeting strangers for the first time.

Ruttgers had submitted a full report overnight and it lay now, dishevelled, on the Secretary of State’s desk.

‘Don’t you think we’re assuming a lot?’ asked Keys, seating them considerately in armchairs before the fire. Braley remained silent, taking his lead from his superior sitting opposite. The fat man seemed unwell, thought the Secretary, distastefully. He hoped it wasn’t anything contagious.

‘I don’t think so, Mr Secretary,’ argued Ruttgers. ‘Consider the facts and equate them against the computer information.’

Keys waited, nodding encouragement. Ruttgers would think him obtuse, the Secretary knew, unhappily.

‘Until last week,’ explained Ruttgers, ‘there wasn’t a Western embassy in Moscow who had a clue what Kalenin looked like … no one even knew for sure that he existed. Then, without any apparent reason, he turns up at one of our own receptions, a party considered so unimportant that apart from our own ambassador, it was only attended by First Secretaries and freeloaders with nowhere else to go on a dull night.’

He nodded sideways to Braley, aware of the man’s apprehension and trying to relax him.

‘Thank God Bill was there, able to realise the significance.’

‘And what was that?’ asked Keys, seeking facts rather than impressions.

‘A man known only by an incredible reputation attends an unimportant function,’ he repeated. ‘He stays for two hours and makes a point of speaking almost exclusively to the British military attache …’