Brian Freemantle - The Blind Run

‘You’ve proved your loyalty,’ Wilson announced to Charlie, in the now cleared office. ‘I was satisfied after Italy, which is why I have been trying to help. But coming forward like this is the absolute proof.’

‘So we’ve got a deal?’ said Charlie.

‘Yes,’ said Wilson. ‘But not the sort you thought.’

‘What the hell…!’ started Charlie, the anger returning, but Wilson raised his hand, in a stopping gesture. ‘I’ll reinstate you,’ said the Director. ‘Not on active duty, perhaps. I guess you’ve probably had enough of that. Or will have. But I’ll bring you back into the department, restore all your allowance and pension rights. Wipe the slate clean.’

Charlie stood head to one side, trying to disguise the bewilderment. ‘What for?’ he demanded presciently. ‘What do I have to do?’

Wilson did not reply directly. Instead he looked down to the still-seated governor and said, ‘A little while ago I warned your officers that what they heard in this room was governed by the official secrets legislation.’

Two patches of red burned on Armitrage’s cheeks. ‘I heard,’ he said tightly.

‘I’m going to repeat that warning, to you. About what you are now going to hear.’

‘Which is insulting and offensive,’ protested Armitrage. ‘I don’t need reminding of my duty. Perhaps you need reminding that so far the only person whom you haven’t cautioned is serving a fourteen year sentence for being a traitor.’

‘No,’ said Wilson. ‘I don’t need reminding. It’s an involved story that isn’t worth repeating, in the time available to us, but as I said a few moments ago I am completely and absolutely sure of Charlie Muffin’s loyalty. If I weren’t, I wouldn’t be about to do what I am going to do now.’

‘What?’ asked Charlie, trying to force himself to think beyond Wilson’s offer. Reinstated! With a cushy job in headquarters, where the central heating kept you warm and the roof stopped the rain making you wet. Back doing a job he could do better than anybody else – well, as good as the best, anyway – and which he’d missed like hell for every minute of every day of every year, ever since he’d set them up for trying to set him up. There had to be a catch. There had to be the biggest catch in the history of catches, some utterly impossible demand to match the utterly impossible offer.

‘I want you to go,’ said Wilson quietly.

‘Go?’ said Charlie.

‘Over the wall, with Sampson. And all the way back to Russia.’

Charlie was speechless. He actually opened his mouth, to speak, but his thoughts were too jumbled to form a coherent sentence and so he stood in front of the Director with his mouth gaping.

It was the governor who spoke. ‘Are you telling me – expecting me – to agree to this!’ he said, outraged. ‘Do you think I am going to allow an escape from this jail of two men serving sentence for treason. You’re insane. Absolutely insane.’

Wilson nodded in the direction of the deputy governor’s office, from which he’d made the telephone calls, and said, ‘You will get a summons from the Home Office tomorrow. You’ll meet the Foreign Secretary. The Prime Minister, as well. Your instructions will be to co-operate fully.’

‘Just a minute,’ said Charlie, at last. ‘Now please, just a minute. You expect me to go along with Sampson, break out and go to Russia!’

Wilson turned to him. ‘If you won’t then I shall have you transferred from here tonight, to a maximum security prison. Where I shall personally see to it that you serve every last day of your sentence, never qualifying for parole. Further, I shall allow it to be known that the transfer was for your own protection because you’d grassed on other prisoners. Actually foiled an escape.’

‘Bastard!’ shouted Charlie. The biggest catch in the history of catches, he thought.

‘Yes,’ agreed Wilson, mildly. ‘Because I have to be. Because the prize is worth every sort of venality and pressure I’m capable of showing.’

‘What is it?’ said Charlie.

‘You’ll do it?’

‘I haven’t any choice, have I?’

‘Yes, you have,’ pointed out the Director.

Twelve years, two weeks and three days, remembered Charlie. ‘Acceptable choice,’ he qualified.

‘So you’ll do it?’

‘I’ll try. I don’t know if I can do it until I know fully what it is.’

Wilson smiled, appreciating the professionalism. ‘There’ll only be this one chance for any sort of briefing,’ he warned. ‘So make sure you understand everything completely. About three months ago there was an approach to the embassy, in Moscow. A first secretary retrieved his coat from the cloakroom at the Bolshoi and in the inside pocket there was a letter. Unsigned. Offering intelligence. And there was something else, part of a memorandum of a Politburo meeting that no one in the West had even suspected of being held, discussing the normalisation of relations with China. We were able, later, to establish through Peking that such approaches were being made.’

‘So it’s reliable stuff?’ probed Charlie. Christ it was good to be involved again; to be working.

‘Every time,’ said Wilson. ‘We’ve had three more messages concerning that meeting, plus some material from the space exploration centre at Baikonur. And there’s been crop yield figures confirmed from aerial satellite and details of improved SS20 silo construction around Moscow.’

‘I don’t understand what you want me to do,’ said Charlie.

‘We don’t know the source,’ admitted Wilson. ‘The letter, on that occasion at the Bolshoi, identified a drop. That first time it was a telephone kiosk near the Lenina metro station. That pick-up designated a subsequent drop. And that’s how it’s gone on, ever since.’

‘Blind drops,’ said Charlie. ‘Cautious.’

‘The last message said whoever it was wanted defection. For himself – and we’re assuming it’s male although we don’t know – and his family,’ disclosed Wilson. ‘The message said that everything we’d got so far was to prove his value. And we think that value is something like the most accurate intelligence we’ve managed to get out for years. The message also said that what he’d bring out with him would show everything he had provided thus far to be practically inconsequential.’

‘So help him across,’ said Charlie, simply.

‘I told you we don’t know who he is,’ said Wilson. ‘And like you said, he’s cautious. One of the most frightening pieces of information was the extent and the degree that our own embassy is under observation. And of the identification of our people. He won’t make a direct approach, for fear of interception. We’ve got to make contact with him. And with someone the Russians don’t know. Or suspect.’

‘Me?’ said Charlie, emptily.

‘You,’ said Wilson.

‘But how, for Christ’s sake!’ said Charlie. ‘That’s impossible.’

Wilson shook his head, in refusal. ‘You’d be well received, after what you did,’ he said. ‘Accepted. Berenkov’s back, you know. Attached to Dzerzhinsky Square itself, according to our information. Maybe you’d even get to him.’

‘So what?’

‘The contact instructions are quite explicit,’ said Wilson. ‘The west door of the GUM department store, on the third Thursday of any month. Your identification has to be a guide book and a copy of Pravda , the paper inside the book, carried always in your left hand. There won’t be any open approach, not until he’s absolutely sure.’

‘And how will I be sure?’

‘If I lived in Moscow, I don’t think I’d care what the weather was like,’ quoted Wilson. ‘It’s Chekhov. Your response is “People don’t notice whether it’s winter or summer when they’re happy”.’