Brian Freemantle - The Blind Run

Deciding that he had appeared aimless for long enough, Charlie turned away from the unimpressive resting place for the father of the revolution and went at last towards what had now become the object of his visit. Outside of the store, in towering identity, was the full name from the initials of which the acronym is created, Gosudarstvennyy Universal’nyy Magazin. Once, thought Charlie, as he approached, the concentration of more than 1,000 different stores, each competing, each surviving. Now, like everything else – almost everything – a collective. But positioned where it was and with the captive market it had, perhaps a more successful collective than most within the system.

The west door, on the third Thursday of any month: those were the instructions. So where the hell was the west door: there appeared to be dozens of doors, all around the place. Utilising the sense of direction again Charlie used St Basil’s Cathedral, to the south of Red Square, as a marker. Charlie worked out the geography easily enough but still wasn’t sure that it would help. He actually entered the huge store from one of the doors to the west, immediately conscious of the activity inside, a huge, human beehive. And inside this beehive on the third Thursday of succeeding months there was going to be a queen bee who was going to pick him out as a very special worker bee. He hoped. A guide book wrapped around a rolled up copy of Pravda, Charlie recalled, continuing the instructions. Professionally he decided that the choice of meeting place was good and the book and the newspaper innocuous enough and the final part of the process – ‘If I lived in Moscow, I don’t think I’d care what the weather was like’ – the sort of simple exchange not likely to arouse suspicion. So what would? Charlie had survived for so long – been good for so long – because before embarking upon any operation – any problem – he always approached it from every possible direction because the danger always was that the bad guys would know a route he hadn’t thought of and use it to come charging down and scoop him up. Charlie eased his way through the crowded store, letting the movement of the crowd carry him, taking only seconds to isolate the flaw. Today’s visit was OK and maybe a subsequent one – on the third Thursday of any month, between eleven and noon that time – but anything beyond that would be dangerous. And the guidebook and the newspaper weren’t as good as he’d first thought: there would unquestionably have been watchers, today. Who would have seen him find his way without maps or directions. So the guidebook would look out of place, if his observers were as good as they should be. Just as it would look out of place if, on succeeding third Thursdays of succeeding months, he kept returning to a regular spot at regular times. Shit, thought Charlie. There was no despair; Charlie was too experienced for that. Having identified the flaws, Charlie immediately began seeking a way around them. It was simply – he hoped to Christ it was simple – a matter of clearing his trail. But doing it better than those watching had ever known before, so that the evasion of pursuit wouldn’t be a conscious attempt upon his part but an irritating mistake upon theirs: and be shown to be, at any subsequent enquiry. Having found the resolve, Charlie improved upon it. He wouldn’t try to dodge on the first identification visit: nothing was going to happen then – apart, he hoped, from his being identified by whoever it was who would later make contact – so better to let that trip be seen. Better still, he’d make lots of other apparently pointless visits, carrying the guidebook and the newspaper, to lots of other apparently innocent tourist spots. That way there’d be a logical reason for the book – which, the longer and more obviously he carried it, would cease to occupy the attention of those watching, because they would become accustomed to his always having it – and GUM would not register with any more significance than anywhere else he went.

It was going to involve a hell of a lot of walking, thought Charlie, remembering his recurrent personal problem. He actually stopped, looking down at his already throbbing feet too tightly enclosed in the shoes that had been provided for him on the night of the escape. And then he realised he was in the country’s biggest store and started to look around with greater attention, seeking the shoe department. There were, in fact, more than one and Charlie went to them all, looking for anything resembling the familiar Hush Puppies and becoming increasingly disappointed. Bloody amazing, he thought. Maybe it was something to do with all the snow they had in the winter but Charlie decided in boots like these, snowshoes wouldn’t have been necessary to cross the drifts. Some looked big enough actually to walk on water! It was going to be an uncomfortable time.

Charlie made an unhurried exit from the store but didn’t immediately leave the area, which again might have marked GUM out as the significant destination. He visited St Basil’s Cathedral and stopped and pretended to admire the monument to Minin and Pozharsky beside it and then went on, ambling down the Razina highway and decided, when he saw it there, to go into the Rossiya Hotel. Charlie’s unthinking intention was to have a drink but then he realised he didn’t have any money and recognised again just how much of a prisoner he remained. He sat instead in the downstairs foyer, preparing his feet for the return walk, getting up after half an hour with the awareness that his feet would never be prepared for any sort of walking.

It took him an increasingly uncomfortable hour to get back to the apartment. He boiled some water, diluted it to the right temperature and gratefully soaked the ache from his feet, savouring the relief and not wanting it to end, so it was almost an hour from his actual return when he went properly into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator and saw that in his absence the flat had been entered and restocked. So the surveillance was as active as it had ever been! He supposed the listening devices would have been replaced, too. He grinned and said, loudly ‘Thanks.’ In a cupboard in the main room he found a bottle of vodka, which was an addition to the previous supplies, which Charlie supposed to be an indication of acceptance. ‘Thanks again,’ he said, to the unseen and unknown listeners.

Charlie crossed and traversed again practically every tourist location in the Russian capital. He read the Pravda denunciation of Wainwright and wondered if it were all over anyway but he still kept the appointment at the GUM department store on the appointed Thursday, hoping that he wasn’t presenting himself for arrest and that Berenkov would emerge from the crowd.

He didn’t but he telephoned, actually on the evening that Charlie returned from the store.

‘Wondered if you might like to work?’ said Berenkov.

Charlie felt the jump of excitement. ‘You’re joking!’ he said. ‘I’m practically going out of my mind with boredom.’

‘How would you feel about instructing at a spy school?’

Charlie hesitated, although not from the reservation that Berenkov imagined. Bloody marvellous, thought Charlie, realising the advantages at once. To the Russian he said, ‘That sounds very interesting.’

‘You’ll do it?’

‘Yes,’ accepted Charlie. ‘I’ll do it.’

‘It was a great shame, about Wainwright,’ said Wilson.

‘More mentally affected than we suspected,’ agreed Harkness.

‘We’ve made all the arrangements?’

His deputy nodded. ‘He intended to retire to Bognor, apparently. That’s where the funeral has been arranged. The wife died, two years ago. But there’s a mother, in an old people’s home in Brighton: suppose that’s one of the reasons he chose to live nearby. I’ve arranged for his pension to be carried on, so that the fees for the home are paid. Pension people aren’t happy about it: they say it’s establishing a precedent.’