Comrade Charlie (16 page)

‘What is it?' demanded Berenkov at once.

Kalenin made an uncertain shoulder movement. ‘I've not been told. Just to come, like you.'

Berenkov's customary ebullient confidence dipped. He said: ‘It has to be serious for us to be called all the way to Baikonur.'

‘That's pretty obvious,' said Kalenin.

‘But what!' said Berenkov. ‘We're getting it all now, from both sources!'

Kalenin shook his head. ‘It's ludicrous, trying to speculate. We'll just have to wait.'

An airport official came hesitantly into the room, accompanied by a man in an undesignated military uniform to say their flight was ready. Berenkov hunched behind the other man out to the transporter, a shrouded grey-green shape in the darkness. There was no pretence at all about comfort. Only three sets of webbing seats had been rigged across the empty hull, which elsewhere remained cavernous and empty. The chemical toilet was behind a pull-round canvas curtain, the smell of its germicidal disinfectant quite heavy already. A coarse strap was looped across the seats to secure themselves for take-off. Neither Kalenin nor Berenkov bothered. A flight sergeant came to them almost at once after they cleared Moscow airspace to offer food but neither Kalenin nor Berenkov bothered about that, either. Fleetingly Berenkov considered asking if there were anything to drink but decided against it.

Kalenin shifted uncomfortably in his seat and said: ‘It would have been good if we could have got some rest.'

‘There's no point in trying,' said Berenkov. Could Kalenin really have slept, going towards so much uncertainty? The other man had lighted another cigar and Berenkov was grateful because it smelled better than the toilet chemicals. There appeared to be no heating and Berenkov thrust his hands into his topcoat pockets and burrowed his head down deeply into its collar. What! he demanded of himself. What could have gone wrong, so soon after the praise of the commendation? Kalenin was right about the stupidity of speculating, but Berenkov wanted
something
, some warning how to prepare himself for what was to come. He looked across the cold, vibrating aircraft to where Kalenin was huddled, like himself apart from the hand holding the cigar. It might be safer to follow Kalenin's lead, Berenkov thought, with rare modesty. The bearded man was a survivor of several previous regimes, adept at adjusting to headquarter circumstances and politics. One thought prompted another, this one disquieting. He'd been excluded from all such meetings until now, when it appeared there might be a problem. Was his inclusion the decision of the KGB chairman or the Politburo? Or of Kalenin, seeking a scapegoat?

A curtained limousine, a Zil, was already drawing towards the steps when the door swung back for their disembarkation. As he descended towards it Berenkov saw they were at neither a civilian nor a military airfield but at the facility for the space centre itself. It was far more extensive in ground area than a normal airport and there was none of the usual closetogether cluster of administration buildings or hangars. What office quarters there were appeared very distant, to their left. There were at least three radar towers, each with static and revolving antennae, and a fenced-off expanse of various-sized storage tanks. Around the fencing were a lot of signs warning of the danger of highly inflammable contents: some of the bigger tanks had a shimmering aura of mist or steam, the sort of reaction Berenkov associated with something very cold being exposed to air.

It was thankfully warm inside the car. The vehicle set off towards the far-away office block and as they got nearer Berenkov saw quite close to it an odd assortment of crane-like structures which he assumed at once to be mobile support gantries, for rockets, but which to him looked more like the skeletal derricks of oil exploration equipment.

‘You know what this looks like to me?' said Kalenin, beside him. ‘This is how I'd imagine some moon station to be. You see how very few people there are about?'

The place
was
oddly deserted, acknowledged Berenkov. He said: ‘I suppose it's a fitting appearance for the sort of work that goes on.'

At the main buildings, which turned out to be of two storeys with a glassed dome forming a third level, they were escorted by security personnel through a zig-zag of corridors before being ushered into a small conference room. Already waiting inside were four men, all civilians. They were grouped around a table set in front of a slightly elevated second section upon which there were two blackboards, on stands, with diagrams and charts already neatly pinned up. There were other papers strewn about the table and Berenkov believed he recognized some at least to be what had arrived from Petrin, in America. Kalenin pushed into the room ahead of Berenkov, nodding although not smiling to the assembled men, and Berenkov guessed there had been earlier meetings between them. Berenkov was only introduced formally to one of the four and assumed the man to be the senior of the group. His name was Nikolai Noskov. He was a stooped, carelessly dressed man with a difficult speech impediment: he had to struggle to get most words out, eyes closed with a combination of effort and frustration. It necessarily made him economical in everything he said, although another impression could have been that Noskov was rudely autocratic.

There were hand waves towards seats, almost impatient gestures of politeness. Noskov made several attempts and at last managed: ‘Your coming here is very necessary.'

Berenkov waited for a response to come from Kalenin, the senior officer, but the man said nothing so Berenkov didn't speak either.

Noskov shuffled through the disordered documents on the table, finally locating what he wanted. He pitched it slightly forwards, towards them, and said: ‘Useless! Absolutely useless!'

Still Kalenin did not move so Berenkov reached for it, identifying it instantly as the blueprint that had arrived from England. It was of some type of armature. He said: ‘Useless how?'

‘Look at the side,' stuttered Noskov: the L was particularly difficult for him to pronounce.

‘I don't understand,' said Berenkov.

‘Each drawing has to have a specification instruction accompanying it,' said the scientist. ‘A design drawing is no good without guidance to where it fits. Its function. Its component relationship to everything else.' He stopped, breathless, and from the discernible wheezing Berenkov guessed the man to be afflicted by asthma, as well.

‘There are instructions,' insisted Berenkov, immediately abandoning the aircraft reflection to let Kalenin lead.

‘Incomplete,' came back Noskov, just as insistent and without interruption on this one occasion. ‘Impossible safely to incorporate.'

The problem, isolated Berenkov: at last! His mind moved immediately on from that realization, throwing up other, connected thoughts and there was, too, a surge of annoyance at being before this anonymous group of men in this fashion, paraded literally like some guilty incompetent. He didn't know the role of any of them, any more than he knew their names apart from Noskov, but he guessed they didn't have any more influence than he did. It was a protection exercise, he decided, guessing further. He didn't doubt there was something incomplete with the British drawing – they wouldn't risk being caught out on something so easily challenged – but whatever was missing was the excuse, not the reason, for this overly dramatic summons. This group – an inner committee, probably – were taking out insurance against any disasters in the future. The arguments at this meeting could be produced in future – which meant it was being witnessed or recorded – if anything went wrong, hopefully to show that the fault had been that of the information-gatherers, not of the technicians and specialists assigned to translate that information into viable space equipment. Time to provide lessons in practical, personal survival, thought Berenkov, feeling relaxed for the first time in hours. He said: ‘I'm not at all surprised.' Everyone else was: even Kalenin, Berenkov suspected.

‘What did you say!' demanded Noskov. His forced outrage overrode the impediment, so the words came out quite clearly again.

‘I said that I am not at all surprised that information is coming incomplete,' elaborated Berenkov. ‘How can it be otherwise, if I am expected to work as I am at present! I am a trained intelligence officer, controlling other trained intelligence officers. None of us are scientists. How can we be expected to know whether what we get is complete or otherwise, separated as we are? I need the facility every time to check and consult, guaranteeing you people here get everything you need properly to fulfil what you have to do.' Pedantically verbose, conceded Berenkov. But very necessary. The onus was now entirely reversed, switching the responsibility on to them, and from the expressions around the table they realized it.

‘Which is an argument I have advanced from the very beginning,' came in Kalenin, further entangling the scientists. ‘It is an objection I have firmly registered in Moscow, although it was prior to our meetings there, Comrade Noskov. I would have advised you, of course, if I had been approached before this meeting instead of being simply instructed to attend it by the Politburo Secretariat.'

Noskov actually flushed. His mouth worked, desperately, but the words wouldn't come. He gave another hand gesture, a plea for help, and a studious, heavily moustached man to his left said: ‘We were unaware of this.'

‘We don't have the advantage of your name?' questioned Kalenin, with a cold smile.

‘Guzins,' said the man. ‘Yuri Ivanovich Guzins.'

‘And you complained without any reference?' said Kalenin.

‘This is regarded as extremely important,' tried Guzins in attempted explanation.

‘All the more reason for proper liaison,' repeated Kalenin.

Relentlessly re-entering the conversation, Berenkov said: ‘We've been shown one drawing: one out of forty-three I know so far to have been supplied. Is that the only one with which you find fault?'

‘So far,' managed Noskov.

‘The drawing you are rejecting was the last to be provided,' persisted Berenkov. ‘You
must
have examined the others. Are they fully satisfactory! Or not!'

‘They are satisfactory,' conceded the moustached Guzins.

‘I consider this has been a very premature protest,' said Kalenin. ‘Quite unnecessary at the level at which it was initiated, in fact.'

They'd won, decided Berenkov. Practically to the extent of it being no contest. He said: ‘How do you know the British drawing has omissions?'

‘We have the complete section of drawings from America to accommodate what arrived from Britain,' said Guzins. The British appear to be manufacturing the hinged arm to pivot the release doors, when an American destruct missile is fired upon any hostile attack rocket. There are no details of fitment, between one to the other.'

‘What about another drawing which we don't yet have?'

‘It should be upon this blueprint,' insisted Noskov.

‘You were speaking with qualification,' picked out Berenkov, to the man with the moustache. ‘You said the British
appear
to be constructing the release arm.'

Guzins looked briefly towards the man with the speech difficulty, who nodded. Guzins stoop up, going to the laid-out blackboards, and with a wooden pointer indicated two artist's impressions. The man said: ‘Study carefully the armature drawn here. Each is identical to the other: it's the positioning that's different. It would accord it entirely different functions. One way it would literally operate the garage door. The other it could be forming part of a combined arm-device, to activate
two
doors.'

‘What's the significance between the two?' asked Berenkov.

‘The Americans have always insisted their Strategic Defence Initiative is entirely
defensive
,' lectured Guzins. ‘One design makes this a comparatively simple, manoeuvrable container, conforming exactly to that insistence. The other gives it the combined capacity, to fire
offensive
missiles from space upon any target it chooses. You understand the importance of that difference?'

There were several moments of utter silence in the room. Then Berenkov said: ‘Yes, we understand.'

On their way back to Moscow in the cold transporter, uncomfortable on their hard-ridged webbing seats, Kalenin announced: ‘They'll be more cautious with complaints the next time.'

‘I can understand the importance that's being attached to this if the apparatus has dual capacity.'

‘There's no confirmation yet that it has.'

‘What the hell went wrong, in Britain!'

‘Something you've got to find out,' said Kalenin. ‘And make sure it doesn't happen in the future.'

Laura demanded to arrange the evening and when he arrived to collect her from the Chelsea house Charlie found she'd prepared dinner in. The attempt at domesticity vaguely unsettled him, like her husband's photograph. She had cooked duck with black cherries and told him where to find the
grand cru
Margaux to go with it. Charlie opened the bottle to breathe, and said: ‘so Paul's a wine connoisseur?'

Laura was at the separating doorway when he spoke, half turned towards the kitchen. She looked back into the room and then returned further into it, smiling and shaking her head. She stopped directly in front of him and said: ‘Sit down, Charlie Muffin.'

He did as he was told, looking up at her questioningly.

‘From everything I hear and from what I've read in reports I probably shouldn't have looked at, I'm prepared to accept you're a pretty shit-hot operative, hard as nails and twice as sharp,' said Laura. ‘But you know something else that you are?'

He didn't want this conversation, Charlie decided. ‘What?' he said.

‘You're a romantic,' declared Laura. ‘A genuine red roses, pink doves and violin-string romantic. Which you'll probably deny because you don't regard it as manly but which I think is lovely. But there's a risk of it getting in the way between us. I know you're uncomfortable being in another man's house and I'm sorry about that, although not as sorry as I was when I discovered how sweet-faced, innocent-looking Paul was cheating on me, because I loved him very much. I suppose I still do, in a way: my problem…' She swept her arm around the room. ‘He won't consider leaving me because I've got the inherited money to provide all this. And I won't risk telling him finally to get out because I've got this stupid fantasy that he might suddenly change and it'll be all right again. So at the moment we lead polite but separate lives. And I'm using you, Charlie Muffin. Like we both know you're using me, for what you want. If you like, we're both at the moment using each other for protection. So we're quits. I know this isn't love: that it won't be. I'm not even sure I'd want that encumbrance. OK?'