Brian Freemantle - Charlie M

‘I’ll need to know that it’s been done.’

They turned on to a bisecting path.

‘What date do you have in mind?’

‘The nineteenth,’ said Kalenin. That will give me a week in Prague.’

‘We’ll need to meet again,’ said Charlie.

‘You’ll have to be careful of the Americans,’ continued Kalenin. ‘They might leak it to the Statni Tajna Bezpec-nost and the involvement of the Czech secret police could be embarrassing.’

‘I’ll think of something,’ promised Charlie. After today’s meeting there could be protection in American presence, he decided.

They walked in silence for several minutes.

‘Alexei Berenkov is probably my best friend,’ Kalenin announced, suddenly.

‘Yes,’ prompted Charlie.

‘How is he adapting to prison?’

‘Badly,’ said Charlie, honestly.

‘He would,’ agreed Kalenin. ‘He’s not a man to be caged.’

Kalenin would have adjusted fairly easily, assessed Charlie. The General was a man who lived completely within himself.

‘Poor Alexei,’ said the Russian.

Again there was silence.

‘Do you think there’ll be any serious problems?’ demanded Kalenin, suddenly, stopping on the pathway to reinforce the question and looking intently up at the Briton.

Charlie answered the look.

‘I don’t know,’ he replied. ‘Are you frightened?’

Kalenin considered the question, hands deep inside the pockets of his overlarge coat. He was right to feel uncomfortable in that hat, decided Charlie; he looked ridiculous.

‘Yes,’ replied the General, finally, ‘I’m a planner, not a field operative like you. So I’m very scared. I’m under intense pressure from a man in the Praesidium. That’s why I want it all over so quickly.’

‘Being a field operative doesn’t help,’ offered Charlie. ‘I’m nervous too. I always am.’

The smaller man stood examining him for several moments.

‘The other two men wouldn’t have admitted that, Mr Muffin,’ he complimented. ‘I’d heard you’re very sensible.’

It came as no surprise to learn the K.G.B. had a file upon him.

‘I’m a survivor,’ agreed Charlie.

‘Aren’t we all?’

‘We’ll know the answer to that on the nineteenth,’ said Charlie.

They stopped inside the park gate, hidden by shrubbery.

‘If the crossing is to be on the nineteenth, then I will be in Prague by the thirteenth,’ undertook Charlie.

‘It should be a casual encounter, like that of today,’ advised Kalenin.

‘Do you know the Charles Bridge?’

The Russian nodded.

‘Let it be at midday on the fourteenth, on the side looking away from Hradany Castle towards the sluices.’

Kalenin nodded, but stayed on the pathway, looking downwards. His shoes were brightly polished, Charlie saw.

‘The Americans frighten me,’ said Kalenin.

Charlie waited, frowning.

‘I could arrange quite easily for you to have a minder,’ offered the Russian.

Charlie laughed, genuinely amused.

‘A British operative guarded by the K.G.B.?’ he queried. ‘Oh, come on!’

‘It could be done without suspicion,’ insisted Kalenin.

Such detailed surveillance would pad the file already existing upon him in Dzerzhinsky Square, he realised. The awareness alarmed him.

‘I prefer to work completely alone,’ reminded Charlie. ‘I always have.’

‘As you wish,’ said Kalenin. ‘But sometimes that’s not possible.’

So I’m to be watched, realised Charlie. In Kalenin’s position, able to invent any reason for such observation, he would have taken the same precautions, he knew. The irony amused him. It would soon need a small bus to accommodate the number of people assigned to him.

‘Until the thirteenth,’ said Kalenin, offering his hand.

‘Yes,’ agreed Charlie.

‘Isn’t that number considered unlucky in your country?’ asked the Russian, suddenly.

‘I’m not superstitious,’ rejected Charlie.

‘No,’ said Kalenin. ‘But I am.’

Charlie arrived back at the hotel in time for the afternoon tour, content with the morning’s encounter. He was very alert, conscious of everyone around him, but was unable to identify anybody who could obviously have been an American paying special attention to his party.

When he attempted to run his bath that night, he discovered the plug missing. Smiling, he crossed the corridor and paused outside the clerk’s doorway, listening before knocking. The noise they were making, thought Charlie as he turned away, was quite astonishing. But then, some girls were inclined to shout a lot. At the top of the corridor, he saw one of the women concierges who occupy a desk on every floor of Russian hotels. She had a pen in her hand and a book was open before her. She was staring fixedly towards the sounds.

‘My friend suffers from catarrh,’ said Charlie, smiling.

The woman looked expressionlessly at him, then began writing.

‘Miserable sod,’ judged Charlie, going back to his own room and jamming the bath with a wad of toilet paper.

‘I have been asked,’ said Cuthbertson, stiffly, ‘to make this operation a joint one between our two services.’

‘Yes,’ said Ruttgers, happily. He looked appreciatively around the Whitehall office: the British knew how to live, he thought. All the furniture was genuine antique.

‘It might not be easy,’ protested the Briton.

Ruttgers spread his hands, expansively.

‘Not a mater for us, surely?’ he said, soothingly. ‘We merely have to obey the instructions from our superiors.’

Cuthbertson sat staring at him, saying nothing. The left eye flickered its irritation and Ruttgers looked down at the cigarette in his hand: just like Keys, he thought. There was a hostility in the man beyond that which the American had expected from being told to co-operate.

‘I’m sure it will work fine,’ said Ruttgers, briskly. ‘Now what I want to do is send in one of my men to make contact with Kalenin. You haven’t had much success so far, after all.’

From Moscow that morning he’d been assured that no new operatives had been posted to the British Embassy. Now was the time to make demands, when they were unsure of themselves.

‘I’m afraid things have progressed beyond that point,’ said Cuthbertson, smirking.

Ruttgers waited, apprehensively.

‘We have made very successful contact with Kalenin and arranged a crossing,’ continued Cuthbertson, condescendingly. ‘There really is very little that we will need you for.’

Ruttgers flushed, furiously. Braley had been right, he thought. Cox was an incompetent idiot to have placed him in this position. He’d order the withdrawal immediately.

‘It’s a ministerial order that we co-operate,’ reminded Ruttgers. He was confused, trying to recover his composure.

‘I wonder,’ mused Cuthbertson, completely sure of himself, ‘if that order would have been issued had the Cabinet had the opportunity to listen to what Kalenin had to tell my man in Moscow.’

‘What?’ demanded the C.I.A. Director, nervously.

‘I know how Harrison and Snare were detected, Mr Ruttgers,’ said the Briton.

‘It’s a lie,’ snapped the American, instinctively.

‘What?’ pounced Cuthbertson.

Ruttgers fidgeted, annoyed with himself.

‘Any allegation about my service,’ he insisted, inadequately.

‘I’m accepting your presence, under protest, because it’s an order,’ said Cuthbcrtson, in his familiar monotone. ‘I’m making the transcript available to the Cabinet, together with my feelings about it. But make no mistake, Mr Ruttgers. The part you and your service play in this matter will be a very subservient one.’

The matryoshkas dolls, the rotund, Russian figures that fit one in the other, making a family of eight, were displayed on the dressing-table, reflected into the bedroom by the mirror. She’d liked the caviar, too, thought Charlie.