Brian Freemantle - The Blind Run

‘Will you?’ urged Charlie. He was unsure about Berenkov but knew he had to maintain the link.

Berenkov hesitated, appearing to consider the question. Then he said, ‘Yes. It’s not a commitment, you understand: it could be rejected, by other people.’

‘I understand,’ said Charlie. ‘I’d appreciate it. I don’t want to atrophy, like I was atrophying in prison.’

‘I owe you a favour, Charlie,’ said Berenkov. ‘A very big favour.’

Georgi emerged from his room, to bid them goodnight and Charlie wished him luck with the examinations which could qualify the boy for the exchange course. And then he looked back over the table where the French wine stood and accepted some more French brandy from his hospitable host and decided he should try further. To Berenkov Charlie said, ‘If Georgi passes, when would he go?’

‘This year, sometime,’ said Berenkov, rekindling his cigar. ‘About nine months, I supposed. Maybe sooner.’

According to Wilson, whoever their mystery informant was wanted all his family out. With Georgi freed by the exchange, that would only leave Valentina. Charlie looked around the spacious apartment and at the books again. He had a delicate game to play, Charlie realised; probably a game more delicate than he’d ever played before in his life. If he made the slightest, infinitesimal mistake – and a monstrous mistake like wrongly believing it was Berenkov who wanted to cross back to the West where he’d lived for so long – then the Russian would identify it, immediately. And being the absolutely dedicated professional he was, Berenkov would see him inside a gulag so fast there’d be scorch marks left on the ground. Remembering the look that had earlier passed between Berenkov and his wife, Charlie said, ‘How would Valentina feel about his going?’

‘You still don’t miss a lot, do you Charlie?’

‘Like you, it’s automatic.’

‘Valentina thinks of the West as some sort of monster that swallows up people she loves.’

‘How do you think of it?’ risked Charlie.

‘I had a hell of a time,’ admitted Berenkov, nostalgically. ‘I got nervous, in the end. And it was always unreal, without Valentina. Georgi, too. But it was good to me. Damned good.’

Careful, decided Charlie. He was going to have to be very, very careful.

‘Whatever happens – about the job, I mean – we’ll have to meet some more,’ said Berenkov.

‘I’d like that,’ said Charlie.

Tanks had been in the forefront of the Ardennes offensive, the last attempt in the Second World War to break through the Allied front in the West, seize Antwerp and bottleneck supplies for the British and American armies about to invade Germany, and so the Battle of the Bulge was one frequently recreated by Kalenin. He’d had papier mache models created, to scale, of the contours and the geography, with towns like Charleville and Sedan and Revin picked out and he had his tank forces to scale, as well. Kalenin admired von Rundstedt’s strategy – bringing the vehicles across terrain supposedly impossible for them – and regarded Montgomery’s success more due to luck than tactics. Another hour, another day, another person looking in another direction and the outcome might have been completely different, he thought. To test the theory, he moved the American tanks that Montgomery controlled just fifty kilometres from where they’d actually been, using Reims as the marker, and timed von Rundstedt’s assault twenty four hours earlier. Completely different, he thought again. Was he looking in the right direction, to find the traitor opening a window for the British to look right inside his very own headquarters? Kalenin had permanent, twenty-four hour surveillance on the deputies and their immediate subordinates – everyone with likely access – and the reports were being channelled directly to him, even here, at night. The observation reports from the British embassy, too. And discovering nothing, not the slightest squeak from an unseen, unsuspected tank track. The feeling of impotence – and that vaguer feeling of uncertainty beyond – was worsening, as every day passed. When, oh when, was he going to be able to realise where the break had been made? Kalenin rearranged the tanks, in the properly recorded formations and divisions. It hadn’t been necessary in the Ardennes, at the very end of 1944, but it was always possible to detect an assault by inviting one, remembered Kalenin: it had even been an earlier strategy successfully practised by von Rundstedt.

The KGB chairman straightened from his war-games table and crossed to the desk upon which lay the latest batch of meaningless surveillance reports. Beside them lay the master-list of the people under suspicion. He’d have to invite an attack, Kalenin decided, staring down at the twelve names. To each – but exclusively to each – would have to be given specific and apparently vitally sensitive material. They’d broken the key, after all. As soon as they intercepted the message, they’d know the source. Kalenin was irritated that the subterfuge hadn’t occurred to him before. Commanders who took too long to think of strategies usually lost battles. Sometimes even the war.

Although there are many natural varieties, botanists recognise 250 distinct species of rose, which is perfectly divisible by a factor of two. Sampson summoned the mathematicians who broke the earlier code and instructed them what he was looking for – suggesting the ripple attempt which had been successful before – and had to wait a full, irritating week because there weren’t the necessarily complete listings available in any Soviet textbook. Even when the books from the West were provided, there were still variations which had to be cross-computed and the initial reaction from men accustomed to working within the conforming rigidity of patterned figures was one of scepticism at the aberrations of a clearly deranged romantic. The final entry into the machines began with the hybrid Agnes and concluded with the Zephirine Drouhin, officially designated a rambling, climbing rose. The first week’s failures were confirmation for the men of practical science that they were dealing with a madman. Sampson insisted upon further cross-referencing – discovering, for instance, that the hybrid tea Michele Meilland had been omitted because the programmer had considered the floribunda Michelle to be the same flower – and listing in full, instead of by general description, the spinossima species. The attitude of the mathematicians – men of patterns and design after all – changed when they realised a shape was appearing and by the end of the second week Sampson told Berenkov he considered he had broken the hitherto unintelligible identity line. From the first indication, Berenkov spent all the time with Sampson, watching the designation of operative and sender of the secret messages gradually emerge from the morass. There was practically euphoria with the completion of the sender’s name, which was Wainwright and whom Berenkov knew immediately, from the complete Soviet awareness of the British embassy staffing, was the designated first secretary whom Sampsom had already identified, from his debriefing with Natalia Fedova, as the British intelligence chief of station, the Resident. Wainwright was involved in fifteen of the most immediate messages but then the control changed, the name now appearing as Richardson, whom it was equally easy to identify as someone who served as cultural attache. The early excitement – an excitement with which the ebullient Berenkov immediately infected Kalenin, who was anxious for just this sort of breakthrough – faded within hours with the discovery that while Wainwright was still on station, Richardson had been withdrawn to London a month earlier, at the conclusion of a normal and accepted diplomatic tour of duty.