Brian Freemantle - Charlie M

He leaned back, eyes distant, reflecting his future.

‘I’ve retired, Charlie,’ he said. ‘Waiting for me in Moscow is a wife I’ve only ever seen for two or three weeks a year, on phoney wine-buying trips to Europe. And a son of eighteen I’ve met just once …’

He came back to the Briton.

‘… he’s studying engineering at Moscow University,’ continued Berenkov. ‘He’ll pass with a First. I’m very proud.’

Charlie nodded, knowing it would be wrong to interrupt the reminiscence.

‘I shall go back to full honours, feted as a hero. I’ve a government apartment I’ve never seen and a dacha in the hills outside Moscow. I’ll teach at the spy college and spend the summers in the sun at Sochi. Think of it, Charlie — won’t it be wonderful!’

‘Wonderful,’ said Charlie.

The Russian hesitated, appearing uncertain. The need to hit back at someone who had proved himself superior surfaced.

‘What about you, Charlie?’ worried the Russian. ‘What’s your future … where’s your sunshine …?’

Outside, the rain finally broke, driven against the windows with sharp, hissing sounds by the growing wind. Charlie moved his foot inside the worn-out shoe. Bugger it, he thought.

‘If I hadn’t been caught, Charlie, I’d have been withdrawn. Operatives our age are expendable.’

The memory of the exploding Volkswagen and the way it had ignited the body of Gunther Bayer pushed itself into Charlie’s mind.

‘I know,’ he said, softly.

‘But there is a difference,’ said Berenkov, scoring still. ‘Russia never forgets a spy … my release is guaranteed …’

He paused, allowing the point to register.

‘… but Britain couldn’t give a bugger,’ he sneered. ‘I’d hate to work in your service, Charlie.’

The man was right, accepted the Briton. The eagerness of the British Government to dissociate itself from a captured operative had always been obscene. How much enjoyment Cuthbertson and Wilberforce would get, cutting him off, thought Charlie, bitterly.

‘It’s a great incentive not to get caught,’ said Charlie, hollowly.

‘Bullshit,’ replied Berenkov quickly. ‘How your people can ever expect anyone to work for them I’ll never understand. Russia might have its faults … and it’s got them, millions of them. But at least it’s got loyalty.’

‘Moscow will be very strange to you, after so long,’ Charlie tried to recover.

Berenkov shrugged, uncaring.

‘But I’ll be able to wake up in the morning without those sixty seconds of gut-churning fear while you wait to see if you’re alone … without having to turn immediately, to ensure that the pistol is still under the pillow and hasn’t been taken by the man you always expect to be waiting at the end of the bed.’

It was as if the other man were dictating the fears that he was daily experiencing, thought Charlie.

‘How many more jobs will there be, Charlie?’ pressed the Russian. ‘Will we get you next time? Or will you be lucky and survive a little longer?’

Charlie sighed, unable to answer.

‘Perhaps I’ll get a Whitehall desk and a travel organiser’s job.’

Berenkov shook his head.

‘That’s not the way your people work, Charlie,’ he replied, correctly. ‘You’ll be for the dump.’

Cuthbertson had been prepared to sacrifice him, Charlie knew. Ordering the three of them to return from East Berlin separately, then leaking the number of the Volkswagen that would be crossing last, had been a brilliant man?uvre, guaranteeing that two operatives crossed ahead of it with the complete list of all Berenkov’s East European contacts to make the Old Bailey prosecution foolproof.

It had just meant the demise of Charlie Muffin, that’s all. Expendable, like Berenkov said.

‘Worried about your network?’ tried Charlie.

Berenkov smiled. ‘Of course not.’

‘So it hasn’t been closed down,’ snatched Charlie.

Berenkov’s smile faltered.

‘How would I know?’ he said. ‘I’ve been in custody for seven months already.’

‘We managed to get five,’ revealed Charlie.

The expression barely reached Berenkov’s face. So there were more, discerned Charlie.

‘Well, they had a good run and made some money,’ dismissed the Russian, lightly. ‘And I always let them have their wine wholesale.’

Charlie wondered the price of Aloxe Corton. It would be nice to take a bottle to Janet’s flat. He had?5 and might be able to get some expenses from Cuthbertson. Then again, he contradicted, he might not. Accounts claimed he was?60 overdrawn and Cuthbertson had sent him two memoranda about getting the debt cleared before the end of the financial year. Bloody clerk.

‘Will you come to see me?’ asked the Russian. Quickly he added: ‘Socially, I mean.’

‘I’ll try,’ promised Charlie.

‘I’d appreciate it,’ replied Berenkov, honestly. ‘They have given me a job in the library, so I’ll have books. But I’ll need conversation.’

The Russian would suffer, thought Charlie, looking around the prison room: the whole place had the institutionalised smell of dust, urine and paraffin heaters. It was a frightening contrast to the life he had known for so long. Charlie heard the scuff of the hovering warder outside the door. It had been a useful meeting, he decided. He wondered if Cuthbertson would realise it.

He rose, stretching.

‘I really will try,’ he undertook.

Again there was the bear-hug of departure: the man still retained the odour of expensive cologne.

‘Remember what I said, Charlie,’ warned Berenkov. ‘Be careful.’

‘Sure,’ agreed Charlie, easily.

Berenkov held him, refusing to let him turn away.

‘I mean it, Charlie …’

He dropped his restraining hands, almost embarrassed.

‘… You’ve got a feel about you, Charlie … the feel of a loser …’

General Valery Kalenin was a short, square-bodied Georgian who regarded Alexei Berenkov as the best friend he had ever known, and recognised with complete honesty that the reason for this was that the other man had spent so much time away from Russia that it had been impossible for him to tire of the association, like everyone else did.

General Kalenin was a man with a brilliant, calculating mind and absolutely no social ability, which he accepted, like a person aware of bad breath or offensive perspiration. Because of a psychological quirk, which had long ceased bothering him, he had no sexual inclination, either male or female. The lack of interest was immediately detected by women, who resented it, and by men, who usually misinterpreted it, and were offended by what they regarded as hostile coldness, verging on contempt for their shortcomings compared to his intellect.

With virtually nothing to distract him apart from his absorption in the history of tank warfare, in which he was an acknowledged expert, Kalenin’s entire existence was devoted to the Komitet Gosudarsivennoy Bezopasnosti and he had become a revered figure in the K.G.B. of which he was now chief tactician and planner.

Utterly dedicated, he worked sixteen hours a day in Dzerzhinsky Square or in any of the capitals of the Warsaw Pact, of which he was over-all intelligence commander. Any surplus time was spent organising solitary war games with his toy tanks on the kitchen floor of his apartment in Kutuzovsky Prospekt. Only during the war games did General Kalenin feel his loneliness and regret his inability to make friends: it was always difficult to perform as the leader of both sides, even though he was scrupulously fair, never cheating with the dice.

The arrest of Berenkov had affected him deeply, although it would have been impossible for anyone to have realised it from his composure in the small conference chamber in the Kremlin complex.