Comrade Charlie (22 page)

‘Stop it!' tried Krogh desperately.

‘Not just yet,' refused Petrin. ‘I want you to think it through very fully. Can you conceive what it would be like, in a jail? All the violence? The homosexuality: male rapes, things like that? The filth and the stink? Everything sub-human.'

‘I said stop it!'

‘That's what I mean about not wanting to go back to Russia,' carried on Petrin, as if the other man hadn't spoken. ‘If we can't get what we want and decide to wreck the Star Wars programme a different way, letting Washington know what we've got and who we got it from, it means I'd have to be safely returned to Moscow ahead of the revelation, so I couldn't be arrested…' Artificially the Russian stretched his legs and put his face to the sun again. ‘You any idea what the Russian winters are like, Emil? It gets cold enough there to freeze the balls off a statue. Much nicer here.'

‘It won't work!'

‘Yes it will.'

‘It's the whole point of splitting the project up: a part of the security, to avoid anyone knowing the full picture!'

‘But not to keep it from you, because you're special: you're the man who negotiated everything with the Pentagon. Who's every right to know all that's going on.'

Krogh, a drowning man snatching for straws, imagined he saw a passing, drifting chance of survival. ‘It won't be my fault if I make the approach and I'm refused.' He wouldn't even bother, he decided. He'd let some time pass and tell Petrin he'd been denied access.

‘It would be sad though, wouldn't it?' suggested Petrin mildly. ‘We wouldn't have any choice then, would we? We'd have to disclose these photographs anyway to ensure Washington knew the programme was compromised and force them to rethink the whole thing. Billions, like I said: tens of billions.'

‘Oh Jesus!' said Krogh despairingly.

‘So you will do it, won't you Emil?'

‘I'll try.'

‘No,' lectured Petrin. ‘You won't try: you'll
do
it. You understand what I'm saying?'

‘Yes,' said Krogh numbly.

‘I knew you would,' said Petrin encouragingly. ‘You want to take those photographs as a reminder, like the stuff involving Barbara and Cindy?'

‘Get them away from me!'

‘I've never been to England, although I hear the weather won't be like it is here.'

‘What?'

‘England,' said Petrin. ‘I'll be coming with you. Not on the same aircraft or anything like that, but I'll be in England while you're there, so you'll have a friend all the time. We think it's best to keep liaison with someone you know: you'd like that, wouldn't you?'

‘You're a shit!' erupted Krogh. ‘A complete and utter shit.'

‘No I'm not,' disputed Petrin unoffended. ‘I'm a Soviet intelligence officer successfully carrying out an important assignment.'

‘You know what I'd like to do to you!'

‘Forget it, Emil,' cautioned Petrin, still unperturbed. ‘You're too old and too slow. And what would it prove anyway? Stop trying to behave like someone in those old black and white movies they show on late-night television.'

‘Bastard!'

‘There's something else I've got to tell you,' said Petrin, proving the accusation. ‘You certainly can pick a piece of ass. That Barbara was the best fuck I've had for ages…much better than Cindy, I thought. Did I ever tell you that Cindy calls you her Daddy?'

When Krogh returned to his car there was a parking ticket fluttering from the windscreen wiper. It was white, like a flag of surrender.

There was the backlog of In-Tray traffic, as there always was after an absence from the office, and it built up for a further two days while Charlie did what he considered necessary after the Isle of Wight investigation. Which involved invoking special friendships. The man's name was William French. He was an electronics expert in the department's Technical Division and he owed Charlie for covering up a bungled radio interception during a Soviet Foreign Ministry visit to London a year before. The man complained it wasn't going to be easy, and Charlie said nothing was. Then he said that because of the personal approach he assumed it was unofficial and Charlie agreed that it was, for the moment. French said he would do his best and Charlie said he was grateful. Only then, with meticulous care, did Charlie get around to composing the report to comply with Harkness' regulations.

It was not until the third day of his return to the London office that Charlie began on the official publications, but because it was quite close to the top of the pile he found the reference to Natalia's forthcoming visit to England within the first hour. It was in the English-language
Morning Star
, with a photograph of the entire Soviet delegation. Natalia was wearing a suit she'd worn in an earlier photograph of the Canadian trip, severe and businesslike, with her hair different from the earlier photographs, lighter against her head this time. Charlie thought she looked wonderful.

Charlie knew at once what he was going to do. He was going to be with Natalia again!

23

Vitali Losev was a greatly disappointed man. From being at the very centre of a major assignment, with all the personal benefits emanating from it, he now believed himself shunted aside on to its periphery, relegated to the role of a messenger boy. Certainly there'd been the congratulatory cable from Berenkov in Moscow, praising him for locating someone called Charlie Muffin. And there seemed to be some importance attached to the identification, from the activity that had followed. But Losev knew that obtaining the space information had been what really mattered: that would have been the prize to earn the recorded commendations. The prize and commendations denied him because of the idiotic Blackstone, an idiot he still had to humour and befriend, according to the inexplicable instructions from Moscow.

Losev bitterly accepted he had lost out completely to Alexandr Petrin, who was flying in triumphantly from the United States to remain the case officer on everything: case officer on the American and case officer responsible for the missing material. Leaving him on the sidelines.
A support function
. Those were the precise words in the instructions from Dzerzhinsky Square. What did a support function and all the other chores accompanying it mean other than he was a messenger boy!

Losev felt a burn of frustration. A messenger boy, and there was nothing he could do to reverse or change the position. Worse, he guessed he could be relieved even of that menial role – although he was head of the London
rezidentura
– if he made the slightest mistake, because Moscow had made it frighteningly clear that no error or oversight would be permitted. So he had to continue obediently in his subsidiary support position, a bystander to others gaining the glory he'd once seen to be his.
Deserved
to be his.

Dismayed though he was by the twist of events, Losev remained too professional to allow his despair to affect what he had to do, peripheral or lowly though he considered it to be. He personally supervised the imposed surveillance upon Charlie Muffin, monitoring the Vauxhall apartment and the journeys to and from Westminster Bridge Road and to a pub on the Thames embankment called The Pheasant and to a mews house in Chelsea which the convenient Voters' Register showed to be owned by a Mr and Mrs Paul Nolan.

And when Berenkov's specific instructions arrived, Losev again took personal charge, rehearsing everything that had to be accomplished before moving.

The entry into the Vauxhall flat and what had to be deposited there was obviously the essential part of the operation so Losev decided that was where his presence had to be. He divided the operatives into two groups, himself with the KGB break-in team in one, six field officers in the other. They stayed together on the Thursday morning outside the Vauxhall block until Charlie left, to be picked up at once by the field officers. They, in turn, divided again. Three rotated foot surveillance on Charlie while the others followed to Westminster Bridge Road in a radio-transmitter-equipped car from which they could warn Losev, wearing an ear-piece receiver, if Charlie left the headquarters building with the possibility of returning to Vauxhall before the break-in squad completed what they had to do.

Such was the degree of caution Losev observed, although what had to be accomplished inside Charlie's flat was not going to take a great deal of time, because like everything else Losev had planned ahead.

Losev insisted his team remain in their cars until he got the message that Charlie had entered the office building. And then initially he dispatched only one lock-picking expert into the apartment block, unwilling to risk arousing the suspicion of another resident or a caretaker with the entry of any larger group. The rest entered at staged, five-minute intervals: Losev was the first, so he could supervise everything when they arrived inside the flat to ensure their entry and departure remained completely undetected.

Individual responsibilities had been assigned before they'd left the embassy. The locksmith's function finished with the actual entry, although the man remained just inside the door and alert for any outside activity, like an attempted entry by a cleaner or a services inspector, such as a meter reader. Against any such surprise the man began fitting rubber wedges beneath the door and rubber-cushioned clamps at the two top corners. Another positioned himself at once at the window overlooking the street, a guard against the unexpected return of Charlie Muffin if the man succeeded in leaving Westminster Bridge Road unseen by the observers in the radio car. The third man, Andrei Aistov, was to work with Losev. Before they began Losev warned the inside group not to touch or disturb anything that didn't need to be touched.

‘Although it would hardly matter,' he said, gazing around the disordered room. ‘This place is more like some sort of nest than a home.'

‘What's so important about this man?' queried Aistov.

Losev shrugged. ‘Something we haven't been told.' Messenger boy, he thought again bitterly. ‘Let's get started.'

‘Where?' asked Aistev.

‘The bedroom,' said Losev at once. ‘That's where people hide money they shouldn't have.'

The station chief followed Aistov from the living room. It was Aistov who found the place in the skirting board, a break in the panelling where an additional piece of wood had been inserted to complete the length running along the wall against which the bed and a small dressing table abutted.

‘I don't want the slightest mark.'

Aistov looked up sourly. ‘There aren't going to be any.'

The man lay full length on the floor, the bed eased carefully away to allow him room to work. The fill-in boarding was held in place by four screws. Aistov worked patiently but surely, testing the resistance of each fastening before unscrewing it, not wanting the screwdriver to slip and noticeably score the screwhead. He had trouble with only one screw but he was able to release it by gently tapping the screwdriver handle, jarring it loose. Behind, when the panel came free, there was a hollowed gap about six inches deep.

‘Perfect,' assessed Aistov. From his pocket he took £1,000, all in £50 notes and all contained in a Russian-manufactured envelope, together with one of the keys to the safe-custody facility in King William Street. After feeling around, to guarantee there were no unseen holes or spaces down which the cache could drop and be lost, he placed everything carefully inside. He said: ‘It could be a terrible waste of money.'

‘Moscow's loss,' reminded Losev.

Aistov replaced the panelling with the care with which he'd taken it out and stood back for Losev's examination. The man lay as close as Aistov had, gazing intently not just at the metal screws but at the disturbed wood, finally straightening up and nodding. ‘A good job,' he praised.

From the bedroom Losev and Aistov went directly into Charlie's cluttered kitchen. They found the electric meter in a cupboard alongside an overcrowded sink and Losev stood back while the other man squeezed in to dismantle a casing panel as gently as he'd worked earlier in the bedroom.

‘Is there sufficient room?' asked Losev, unable from where he stood to see past the other KGB man.

‘Just,' guessed Aistov. From his pocket the man took the one-time cipher pad and taped it tightly against the inside of the casing section, hefting it in his hand to gauge the additional thickness he had created. Satisfied, he inched it back into its housing, cautious to avoid the obstruction interfering with the working mechanism. It went home without any halting blockage and as he tightened the butterfly screws to secure it into position Aistov said to his supervisor: ‘This will bring it even further from any moving parts.'

‘Let's be sure,' insisted Losev. Still unable to squeeze into the meter cupboard himself, the
rezident
gazed around the kitchen, seeking a site for the third item to be left in Charlie's flat, smiling as the ideal spot presented itself.

‘It's fine,' came a muffled voice. ‘The dial arms are revolving exactly as they should.'

‘Let me see,' insisted Losev.

The technician stood back to give Losev room. The
rezident
squinted at the unmarked meter, wrinkling his nose at the damp, undersink smells of the space into which he was jammed, offended by them. The arms spun around the faces of the dials, as the technician had assured him they did. Losev backed out and said: ‘It's all going remarkably easily.'

‘Why shouldn't it?' asked Aistov. ‘What about the micro-dot?'

Losev pointed to the calendar on the inside of the kitchen door: the illustration for this month was a nakedly splayed, hugely busted woman with a wisp of chiffon draped to conceal her sex.

Aistov said: ‘I've never known a woman with a body like that.'

‘Not many men have,' agreed Losev. ‘You choose: what month?'