Comrade Charlie (49 page)

The Director General nodded. ‘In camera again,' he agreed. ‘Charge can be something like receiving payment for unspecified acts of espionage. The Attorney General isn't going to like his courts being used like this but I think I can persuade him. We belong to the same club, you know.'

‘I didn't know,' said Charlie. ‘It's necessary, I suppose.'

‘If Berenkov believes you're out of circulation he isn't going to have another try, is he?'

‘No,' agreed Charlie. ‘So it's extremely necessary.'

Wilson laughed, adding whisky to both their glasses. ‘Just imagine!' he said. ‘Officially it'll mean you'll cease to exist.'

‘People have been treating me like that for years,' said Charlie.

‘Don't ever forget what I've said, about how you operate in the future?'

‘I won't,' promised Charlie. Let's cross each bridge when we come to it, he thought easily.

‘I mean it,' warned Wilson. ‘Any more wild independence and I'll have you out of this department so fast your feet will leave scorch marks!'

‘Trust me,' invited Charlie.

‘Always the trouble, Charlie. Always the trouble.'

‘I wanted to see you,' said Laura.

‘Been busy,' said Charlie. ‘Sorry.' If she had not actually come to the fifth floor and physically confronted him he would still probably have made an excuse to avoid their meeting – which, he decided, now they were together, was ridiculous. Why shouldn't they have a drink together?

‘I know bits,' said Laura. ‘Not a lot. Just bits.'

‘It's very complicated,' said Charlie, in attempted dismissal. ‘What's the financial department like?'

‘Better view,' said Laura. ‘He's trying to redesign the expenses claims forms. He wants much more detail.' The entire department Harkness now controlled was separate from Westminster Bridge Road, across the river and nearer to Whitehall. Refusing to be put off, Laura said: ‘I want to ask you something.'

‘What?'

‘That day in the street, when you told me you didn't want to keep the date? Did you know then that the Russians had picked you up?'

‘Yes,' said Charlie.

‘So it was to protect me?'

‘It was probably already too late by then,' apologized Charlie. ‘I wanted to keep you out of it if I could.'

Laura smiled and reached across the wine-bar table, pressing his hand. ‘Thanks,' she said.

‘I wish I'd realized sooner,' said Charlie. ‘I was slow.'

‘I did what you wanted, you know,' offered Laura. ‘Before that, I mean. I gossiped to Harkness, about you. He seemed to think it was very important.'

‘I'm sorry about that, too,' said Charlie. ‘Using you like that.'

‘Are you!' she demanded quizzically.

Charlie smiled back at her. ‘Sort of,' he said.

‘They say there was a woman involved,' said the girl. ‘Someone you knew?'

‘Yes,' said Charlie. The rumour mill was very active, he thought.

‘Can you tell me about it?'

Charlie topped up both their glasses from the Montrachet bottle between them. ‘No,' he said positively. Over, he thought: finished.

‘Oh,' said Laura, rebuffed.

‘There's nothing to tell,' said Charlie.

‘Paul's asked for a divorce,' she announced abruptly. ‘His girlfriend is pregnant again. They want to get married.'

‘I'm…' started Charlie, and stopped. He said: ‘No. It would sound trite.'

‘Thanks anyway.' She was silent for a moment and then she said: ‘That's not why I made contact. I mean I didn't think…' Her voice trailed off and she shrugged.

‘I didn't think it was,' said Charlie.

She smiled at him hesitantly. ‘I'd like to see you sometimes, though. If you'd like to, that is. Nothing serious. No commitment. Just a drink occasionally, like now.'

‘Yes,' said Charlie doubtfully. They were two lonely people, he thought. Why not?

‘I shouldn't have said that,' regretted Laura hurriedly.

‘Don't be silly.'

‘Was she beautiful?'

‘I thought so.'

‘Sure you don't want to talk about it?'

‘Very.'

‘I went over to Fulham last weekend, where Paul and the girl are living. Hung about. Actually saw them. They were taking the first baby out for a walk. One of those pushchairs with wheels that twist in every direction. It's a little boy, you know, their first baby. Peter. Can't think why I went there now. They seemed very happy. They were laughing. He had his arm around her.'

Charlie wished desperately he could think of something to say, to help. Maybe he was helping by not saying anything.

‘Sorry,' she said.

‘There's nothing to be sorry about, not to me.'

She smiled at him sadly. ‘You know that photograph that used to upset you, the one of Paul?'

‘Yes.'

‘He took it with him.'

‘Don't go to Fulham any more,' advised Charlie.

‘I won't.'

The bottle between them was empty. Charlie said: ‘Would you like some more?'

‘No,' refused Laura. ‘I should be getting home.' She looked directly at him and said: ‘I don't want you to come back with me.'

‘I wasn't going to suggest it,' said Charlie.

‘Just a drink, occasionally.'

‘That would be good.'

‘Life
is
a bitch, isn't it!' She said with sudden vehemence.

‘Every time,' agreed Charlie.

‘I thought there
was
going to be improvement, a week ago,' said the nursing home matron. ‘There were definitely signs of some emergence. But in the end nothing happened.'

Charlie put the chocolates on the woman's desk and said: ‘Why don't you have these?'

‘We mustn't lose hope,' insisted the woman.

‘I don't,' said Charlie. ‘Ever.' There was something else he was never going to lose, either. The doubt that by feeding things back to Harkness as he had, through Laura, he'd actually caused his mother to be interrogated as she had been: that her remission wasn't the fault of the Special Branch men but his.

48

‘Exceptional!' said Valeri Kalenin. ‘Absolutely exceptional!'

‘Thank you,' said Berenkov. This wasn't the first praise. Berenkov was accustomed to it, so the attitude was practised, humble deference. But today was particularly important to him. Berenkov was glad their friendship had been restored, the suspicion between them – more Kalenin's suspicion than his – swept away. He'd been fortunate, Berenkov accepted: incredibly fortunate. But only he knew it: would ever know it. Luck comes to the daring, he thought. He didn't think he would attempt to be the daring again. To himself – but only to himself – Berenkov conceded that he'd been badly frightened until that last drawing arrived from England in the diplomatic bag.

‘Not my words,' allowed Kalenin honestly. ‘The opinion of the commendation from the Praesidium itself. We're secure, Alexei. Secure. And you made us so.'

‘Everyone is being extremely generous,' said Berenkov, remaining modest. So Kalenin, who'd been prepared to avoid the responsibility, was happy to be sharing the credit. Berenkov felt no resentment.

‘I did not expect Guzins simply to be deported as he was,' qualified Kalenin. ‘The British made an incredible mistake there. Over the whole affair, in fact.'

Further luck, reflected Berenkov. He said: ‘I expected him to break: make a full incriminating confession.'

‘So all we've lost is Petrin.'

‘Always an acceptable sacrifice, like Obyedkov,' pointed out Berenkov. ‘We can repatriate them, in time.'

‘And we're permanently rid of Charlie Muffin!'

Berenkov smiled. The newspaper reports of Charlie Muffin's trial had been brief, dictated by the restrictions of the hearing, but he'd had them all sent to him from London. He said: ‘Ten years. He'll never be able to endure ten years.'

‘It was still a very great risk, doing what you did,' said Kalenin soberly.

‘
Calculated
risk,' insisted Berenkov.

‘It worried me,' admitted Kalenin.

Not as much as it worried me, at the very end, thought Berenkov. ‘It worked,' he said, the conceit creeping through.

‘What are you going to do about the woman?'

‘Nothing,' said Berenkov. ‘The function she fulfils is useful. Maybe I'll transfer her back to debriefing, but not immediately.'

‘Did it ever occur to you that she might have defected, to be with him?'

‘It was a possibility,' admitted Berenkov. ‘But we always had her son as a hostage. She would have known that.'

‘It's unimportant now,' judged Kalenin.

‘What's the missile schedule?' asked Berenkov.

‘Extremely advanced,' said Kalenin. ‘The Foreign Minister is to make an announcement of our capability at a meeting on conventional weapons in Geneva next week. When the uproar subsides – we're estimating a week – there'll be the invitation to the Western media to witness the actual launch. All the Western ambassadors are going to be invited to Baikonur, as well…' Kalenin smiled. ‘The intention is to make a big spectacle of it.'

‘We'll certainly achieve that,' said Berenkov.

‘I want to apologize to you, personally,' declared Kalenin. ‘I was quite wrong to doubt you as I did.'

‘It is forgotten,' dismissed Berenkov. ‘Friends can doubt each other occasionally, can't they?'

‘Never again,' assured Kalenin. ‘Never again.'

‘We're going up to the dacha next weekend,' said Berenkov. ‘Georgi is home. Valentina would like you to come up with us.'

‘I'd enjoy that,' accepted Kalenin. ‘I'd enjoy that very much indeed.'

It was better now than when she had first returned: no one but Natalia would have been aware of the remaining scars because she'd rearranged an easy chair to cover the carpet burn and paid an odd-job man in the Mytinskaya apartment block to replace the shattered cabinet door in the kitchen.

It had been appalling when she'd got back. Like an animal cage from which the beasts had escaped or been driven. There had even been an animallike smell, a gagging stench of the crowded-together bodies of whoever Eduard had brought back with him for his leave while she had been away. Apart from the carpet burn – a large, through-to-the-floorboards hole where something had been allowed to smoulder for a long time – and the smashed cabinet there had been empty bottles strewn throughout the kitchen, the sink filled with unwashed crockery, and the toilet bowl blocked with unflushed faeces. But that wasn't what caused Natalia's greatest offence. That had been her own bedroom. Eduard had allowed someone to use her bed. And not merely someone – a single person – because it had really been used, the sheets marked and stained. Natalia had felt violated, abused. She'd stripped the bed, heaving with revulsion, but hadn't washed the sheets because she'd known she wouldn't ever be able to sleep in them again, not even if they were clean: she'd rolled them up into a ball and thrown them out and scoured and scalded everything in the flat and finally scoured herself in the hottest bath in which she could bear to immerse herself, trying to wash away the feeling of being befouled.

And cried.

The state of the flat had been the excuse that night. And for some nights after, but she couldn't call upon it any more, not after all these weeks. Not that she wept so much, not any longer. Only when she let herself think back to those nights: remembered the tenderness and the words they'd said to each other, the promises made but not kept. Like now. Natalia felt her eyes begin to fill but didn't care because she was quite alone in the apartment, as she was resigned to being for ever.

‘Why didn't you come, Charlie?' she sobbed aloud. ‘Oh dear God why didn't you come!'

49

The Soviet publicity surrounding the launch was brilliantly engineered and manipulated. The Foreign Minister's announcement in Geneva created the furore that Moscow anticipated, although it continued longer than expected, with Western analysts and commentators concluding that Moscow was at least ten years further advanced in its space technology than had been previously imagined and that the gap was probably too great for the United States to catch up. The Kremlin capitalized upon the reaction, staging a press conference for the world media at which the Foreign Minister expanded upon his initial announcement, pressing the fact that the Soviet Star Wars platform was entirely defensive – as America had always insisted theirs to be – and that its being put into space in no way affected or reversed the scaling down of missiles and weaponry already agreed and undertaken by the Warsaw Pact nations.

There was a frenzied response to the invitation to attend the actual launch, which was organized to obtain the maximum international impact. Satellites enabled television pictures to be transmitted live and worldwide, and the lift-off of the shuttle to take the missile into its two-hundred-mile-high geostationary orbit timed specifically to coincide with peak viewing time, particularly in America. As well as permitting full photographic facilities at the lift-off gantry, complete access was also made available inside the space control centre, to enable the launch to be followed up to orbiting height, where television cameras aboard the shuttle were to show the moment of launch and the establishment of the missile into its planned position in space.

The lift-off went faultlessly on a brilliantly clear day.

The shuttle arced off into its trajectory, with simultaneous translations into English of the crew conversation and after a momentary, snow-like flicker of interference the television pictures beamed back from space became perfectly clear.

The missile housing being disgorged from the belly of the shuttle looked remarkably like some space animal giving birth, which was how at least two television commentators described it. For the first few seconds it was hard to differentiate the platform from the shuttle but then, as it floated free, its shape became obvious.