Brian Freemantle - Dead Men Living

And Charlie did.

Charlie drove obliviously, thoughts in free fall, for several miles before the most essential awareness forced its way to the forefront of his mind. How much-how badly-had he lost?

It didn’t matter that Sir Peter Mason, without any doubt in Charlie’s mind, was the murdering second officer or what the obvious implications were of his having been all his life at the heart of British government. He’d failed to get an admission, and the log of a long-dead doctor was insufficient evidence. What about the rest? He needed a jury, Charlie decided: a tribunal, at least. And there was no way he’d get that now. Mason would have an explanation, no matter how thin.

The man would complain to the director-general. Probably to a lot of other people, as well. There wasn’t a defense against confronting Mason, but Charlie needed to get his explanation-and what little was left-to Sir Rupert Dean first. What was initially indefensible was his being unofficially in England at all, which he knew and the consequences of which he had to accept. By the end of the day he’d doubtless have had confirmed what he already knew them to be, so he could wait until then to call Natalia. Would she give up everything and bring Sasha to live in London? Or would she look upon it as the obvious breaking point that she’d virtually declared during last night’s row?

As always, too many questions with too few answers. The first step-which professionally would be his last-was to get through the encounter with Sir Rupert. So totally upon that was Charlie’s concentration that he wasn’t aware of the siren or of the flashing lights of the police car until it actually came up alongside, with the observer waving him into the roadside. Charlie’s first thought was of Henry Packer.

He kept the window closed and the locks down, pointless though that would have been, until he was satisfied the two uniformed men walking back toward him really were policemen. And not armed. When Charlie finally wound down the window, the observer said, “Every unit in Norfolk is looking for this car and this number. Idon’t know what you’ve done, my son, but it’s upset a lot of important people.”

“I know,” said Charlie. He gave the same reply to the Special Branch officers who greeted him at Norwich police headquarters with the practically identical remark.

“I thought we were going to do some ourselves!” protested Irena.

“Of course not!” said Cartright, irritably. There was a virtual sea of tourists washing around the Arbat and it really was like forcing their way against a fast-running current. He felt more disoriented than discomfited.

“What are you going to do, then?”

“Find a particular man. Ask him to identify the photograph.” He patted the pocket containing the picture of Charlie Muffin, to reassure himself it was still there. There’d be a lot of pickpockets in a crowd like this.

“Why did you want me to come?” demanded Irena, still protesting.

“The man I’m looking for will feel more comfortable with a Russian than with a foreigner.”

“They have some nice jewelry in the foreign outlet store on Ser-ebryany.”

“We’ll look afterwards,” sighed Cartright.

“What’s the name?”

“Arkadi Orgnev. He works around the Buratino.”

“There it is,” she said, pointing to the cafe with the illustrations of Pinocchio after which it was named.

Cartright prompted Irena to ask and they were misdirected to two people before a short, rotund man in a baseball cap, T-shirt and Levi’s jeans was pointed out to them.

“Arkadi Orgnev?” asked Cartright, taking over.

“Maybe,” said the man.

“I think you might be able to help me.”

“How much?”

Cartright pulled the money from his pocket sufficiently for the man to see it was dollars. “Of course, I’m prepared to pay for what I want.”

The man put a whistle in his mouth and blew it and five menmaterialized from the crowd, surrounding them. One was the second person Irena had asked to point out the money-changer.

“How did the cocksucker find out I hadn’t been fired?” demanded Miriam.

“I don’t know,” said Nathaniel Brindsley, in Washington. “Asked the director outright, apparently. The director didn’t have any alternative.”

“The son-of-a-bitch!”

“I’m sorry, honey. Really sorry. When Kenton Peters comes on the line, God takes the call.”

“What am I to do?” Miriam suddenly felt lost.

“Pack up. Close your apartment. We’ll do our best about severance. Personal word of the director himself.”

“Fuck you. Fuck all of you!” Miriam shouted down the telephone.

“Know how you feel,” sympathized the Bureau’s overseas director.

“You know fuck-all, like the rest of them,” said Miriam.

There was instant professional-to-professional recognition and they didn’t ask Charlie why they’d had to arrest him and Charlie didn’t offer any explanation, which would have been difficult anyway, his not being precisely sure. There was bound to be a wide choice under the Official Secrets Act. The policemen tried with soccer, to which Charlie couldn’t contribute because he didn’t follow it on his satellite sports channels, and eventually they found common ground with movies, agreeing there was too much sex and violence. The driver mourned the passing of those wonderful musicals and admitted an unrequited passion for Doris Day.

Charlie’s curiosity was answered when they passed between the headquarters of both intelligence agencies on opposing sides of the Thames to sweep into the entrance tunnel of the Foreign Office. As Charlie was signed into the custody of a Foreign Office uniformedcustodian, like the special delivery he supposed he was, one of the Special Branch officers wished him luck and Charlie thanked him. As the custodian escorted Charlie along darkened corridors and into noiseless elevators, the man said Charlie would probably need it because James Boyce was a bastard. Charlie didn’t bother to reply, passingly surprised at the indiscretion, more immediately aware that his not being escorted into the building by the Special Branch-being brought in fact to the Foreign Office instead of a police station-meant he wasn’t under arrest. It was essential for whatever was awaiting him to seize every pointer like that.

The corner office, on the fourth floor overlooking the statued square, the Houses of Parliament and across Westminster Bridge, immediately designated the sleek, diminutive man behind the regulation landing-strip desk as a permanent secretary. Charlie assumed him to be James Boyce, although once more there were no introductions. There were six other men already waiting. Sir Rupert and Patrick Pacey, the department’s political officer, both sat stone-faced, unsympathetic mourners at a funeral.

Charlie guessed the only way Sir Peter Mason could have arrived ahead of him after giving Special Branch the rented car number was by helicopter, which was significant.

It put the final piece in the puzzle to make everything crystal clear. Charlie had only once before, a long time ago, been involved with a traitor who had been given amnesty in exchange for all that he’d known and done for the other side. It had been one of the few occasions-apart from now with Natalia, which was totally different-that he’d been unable to separate business from personal animosity. He could recite backward all the professional justification for turning a traitor back upon his masters, but it was one of the few established practices of a totally amoral professional that was anathema to Charlie. He assumed from the proprietorial way Mason sat easily in one of the encompassing leather armchairs by the Parliament Square windows that the room had once been the man’s own.