See Charlie Run (24 page)

‘Don't, Charlie. There isn't any reason,' urged the other man.

Irena, a professional, detected the atmosphere and said: ‘What's the problem?'

Both men ignored her. Charlie said: ‘I wouldn't like there to be, Harry.'

‘I'm trusting you,' reminded the man. ‘It's got to go both ways.'

Lu was right, Charlie accepted: and he didn't have any alternative anyway. Charlie never liked operating without at least one alternative. Preferably more. He repeated: To whom?'

Lu didn't reply at once, conscious of Charlie's refusal to meet him on the assurance. Then he said: ‘People: people very anxious to know where you are …'

The man finished speaking by turning to include Irena who said at once: ‘Something else has gone wrong, hasn't it? Tell me!'

‘Nothing else has gone wrong!' said Charlie, urgently, trying to quell the woman's obvious rising anxiety.

‘So what is it between you?' persisted the woman.

‘A misunderstanding,' said Charlie. It had been stupid, allowing the exchange in front of her. Trying to rebuild a bridge with Lu, Charlie added: ‘My fault.'

Lu gave no response and Charlie decided the apology had come too late. The annoyance flushed through him, self-anger at his own stupidity: things were bad enough, without his making additional contributions to the fuck-up. ‘My mistake,' he said again, directly and to the man alone this time.

‘We've got a deal?' asked Lu.

‘Yes,' agreed Charlie, who still hadn't considered how to achieve – even if he
could
achieve – what Lu demanded.

‘Then I'll keep my side of it,' undertook the man.

‘Freelance!' identified Irena, showing further expertise. Accusingly, to Charlie, she said: ‘You involved a freelance!'

‘I involved the best man,' insisted Charlie. The whole bloody conversation was getting out of hand.

The uncertain doubt was obvious in Irena's look. She said: ‘Yuri thought you were good,' in a voice indicating that she didn't agree with the assessment.

Irritated with the dispute – and not knowing how to continue it without further unsettling the woman – Charlie turned back to Lu and said: ‘So what do these people say?'

‘The Americans have arrived. In force. Military, too.'

Charlie recalled his reflection on the journey from the airport: it looked as if a military as well as a civilian aircraft departure was going to be difficult, without some sort of pitched battle. He said: ‘Where are they?'

‘I don't know: not yet.' Lu smiled, fleetingly, and said: ‘I will, of course.'

‘Hope you find them before they find us,' said Charlie, sincerely. He gestured around the hotel room and said: ‘Where, after this?'

Lu nodded across the waterway, towards the mainland. ‘It's got to be Kowloon, hasn't it?'

Obvious, thought Charlie again. He said: ‘What about Macao?'

Lu frowned. Surprise? Or annoyance at a change to an already-conceived arrangement? wondered Charlie.

‘It's small,' argued Lu.

‘That's the problem: everywhere's small and easily covered,' said Charlie. ‘But it's an alternative, isn't it?'

‘I suppose so,' said Lu, still reluctant.

‘We'll make it Macao,' decided Charlie. To the woman, he said: ‘Let's go.'

At the doorway she stopped, looking directly at him. She said: ‘You lied. Everything
has
gone wrong. I know it has.'

Olga Balan used an Australian passport – describing her as a single woman named Hebditch – and landed in Hong Kong on the gritty-eyed dawn arrival flight which was the first available, and which had originated in Hawaii, with a Tokyo stop-over. Not that it would have been possible for her to have slept, had she tried. She knew she was right, in telling Yuri they were trapped. They
were
trapped and she
felt
trapped. Unless she killed Irena. Why couldn't Yuri have understood, when she said she was frightened! But then how could he know? No one knew. Only her.

Chapter Twenty

Charlie fought against the light-headedness of fatigue, trying to calculate the last time he'd properly slept and abandoning the exercise because it was an intrusion and there were enough intrusions already. At least Irena Kozlov was safely resting now. He hoped. Like he hoped so much else.

It was omens time and certainly luck had been following them with the hydrofoil. They'd managed to catch the last one to the Portugese colony, changed the harbour cab for another once they reached the tiny township and used a third to cross the sweeping bridge over the Pearl River to the Hyatt. Where he'd spent exactly five minutes in his own room, after settling Irena, before moving again. Not strictly true. There'd been the further fifteen minutes in the bar with Harry, trying to restore things between them and drinking the Scotch he'd needed at the time but now wished he hadn't had, because it was contributing to his tiredness. Had he buggered things up with Harry? Certainly with the suspicion in front of Irena, but alone, in the bar, the man had appeared to relax: actually showed photographs of his Chinese wife whose name translated to Dawn Rising and their child, a five-year-old girl called Open Flower. Not just relaxing, Charlie accepted. It had been necessary for the man to introduce his family, so there would be no mistakes about the entry documents required. Wrong to read too much into it then.

Charlie sighed, staring through the water-flecked windows of the early morning return hydrofoil at the land chips of the outlying islands, haloed in a permanent haze-made rainbow. Wrong, as well, to dwell too long upon it. Harry had made his ultimatum clear enough, so it was ridiculous for either of them to imagine their relationship remaining as it had been, no matter how many different ways Harry said it was nothing personal and Charlie assured him there were no hard feelings. If Harry blew the whistle on him to the Americans, it was going to be very personal indeed and his feelings were going to be hard, fucking hard. And they both knew it.

There were other far more immediate considerations. Like keeping ahead of a mob-handed CIA squad now backed by some sort of military presence on a colony all too easily sealed. And placating a nervously demanding woman who knew very well things had gone disastrously wrong, despite the lies he tried to make sound convincing. And most important of all, at this moment, conning his way into one of the most secret spy installations maintained by Britain.

The hydrofoil edged alongside the pier from which he'd left just a few hours earlier, and Charlie slotted himself into the main body of departing passengers, instinctively using them as cover. He ignored the waiting taxis, walking instead towards the clustered-together Connaught Centre and Chartered Bank and the Landmark complex, giant trees that man made. Tiredness carried the usual ache from his feet into his legs and Charlie envied the people around him who'd slept the previous night. Further to clear his trail he detoured off the main highway several times, moving through side alleys where he could be more aware of people around him; outside several shops incense sticks burned from tiny holders to fend off evil spirits, and Charlie hoped the protection extended to passers-by who needed it, like he did.

He waited until Exchange Square with its fresh skyscrapers before hailing a cab. Once more he was cautious, isolating Repulse Bay for the first leg, settling back against the seat and momentarily closing his eyes against the growing sun glare as the vehicle began its climb over Victoria Peak. Almost at once he felt the sink of sleep and blinked awake, fighting it off, knowing he'd feel worse if he relaxed and had to start functioning again, after only an hour.

How easy would it be, to get into the Composite Signals Station? Something else he should have fixed with the Director, before severing contact in Tokyo: just like he should have agreed to the despatch of some sort of military aircraft. Charlie shifted, moving against the recurring drowsiness but also in irritation, worried at the things he had overlooked. If you lose your touch, my boy, your balls are going to end up on a hook, he told himself.

The car started its descent from the high spine of the island, edging down to sea level on the back-upon-itself road, and after one of the curves Charlie caught the first sight of the orange-roofed villas of Repulse Bay and thought it looked like a part of the French Riviera that had been put down for a moment and then forgotten.

He paid the cab off by the beach and walked slowly further into the tiny settlement while the taxi reversed and then set off for the return trip. It was more difficult than he'd thought it would be to get another car, and when he finally managed it and gave the address at Chung Hom Kok he was aware of the driver's examination, in the mirror. To be expected, Charlie supposed. The Composite Signals base is an electronic intelligence-gathering installation with equipment sufficiently powerful for Britain to listen to radio and telephone communication as far away as Beijing and to both the Soviet naval headquarters at Vladivostok and the Russian rocket complex on Sakhalin Island. Charlie wondered what would happen to it after 1997: it would certainly be on a spy category list even greater than any upon which Harry Lu's name appeared. Moscow were probably shitting themselves, aware of how the Chinese could use the ready-made and well functioning station. He hoped to Christ he could use it too.

He came forward in his seat as the car approached. There were a lot of angled radio dishes and Nissen-hut hedgehogs of bristling radio antennae, but like most secret installations Charlie had ever visited, it still looked like a temporary army barracks, ready for a war. Which perhaps it was. Alert, Charlie saw the camera monitor manoeuvre to their arrival, to record the car – and its number – before he even alighted, and as he walked towards the gate-house Charlie registered the inner protection of wire which he guessed was electrified and the further array of cameras beyond that focussed upon him and guessed the perimeter would be sensor-seeded, to detect any entry which got past either.

Self-rehearsed, Charlie asked for the guard commandant, and when the man – sparse-haired, sun-worship brown and in a tropical uniform so uncreased Charlie expected the starch to crack with each movement – came curiously across the quadrangle, Charlie asked for the duty officer. For identification he provided his Foreign Office registry number, as well as his name. It was obvious that the registry number meant something to the man, who withdrew without asking any questions: seconds after he disappeared into what appeared to be the main administrative building at the end of the entry road Charlie heard the muffled ring of a telephone in the gatehouse complex, and soon after that three more uniformed gatehouse attendants appeared to support their original colleague and Charlie accepted he was under guard. Which was fine with him and he wished he had more of it. He smiled at them. No one responded, but at least there wasn't the disdain of the American embassy reception in Tokyo.

Charlie had hoped to get through the gatehouse area, but the crackling-uniformed officer returned with another man who also wore a tropical suit but this one bagged and was actually dirty at the cuffs and lapel edges, the shirt rumpled beneath. Charlie thought he looked the sort of bloke to suffer the morning-after ravages of bad meat pies, but perhaps that was too much to expect.

The telephone call Charlie detected had gone further than he imagined because at the approach of the two men one of the additional guards opened a side door, gesturing Charlie into what he saw, when he got inside, to be an interview room. With the obvious limit on talking, Charlie passingly thought an interview room was an unnecessary luxury.

The crumpled man came in alone and did not attempt to identify himself. Instead he gestured with the paper upon which the commandant had recorded the registry number and demanded: ‘Where did you get this?'

‘It's mine,' insisted Charlie. Before the man could speak, Charlie added his department categorization, its clearance level, the communication code to London, with its standby alternative, and the demand code for the Director. ‘You'll need to take a note, so I'll repeat them more slowly,' he finished. He'd just disclosed enough for a ten-year sentence under the Official Secrets Act, Charlie realized; maybe not as much as ten years. He'd only got fourteen for screwing two intelligence Directors. Certainly five then; and perhaps this time not the way out he'd been offered before.

There was a barely discernible relaxation in the man's attitude. He said: ‘What do you want?'

‘Communication,' said Charlie, simply. ‘Believe you're good at it here.'

‘Don't be ridiculous!' rejected the man, at once.

‘Ask London,' said Charlie. When the man remained impassive, Charlie added: ‘Please!'

The duty officer looked towards the door behind which Charlie knew the four guards would still be waiting. Charlie extended his hands, palm upwards, and said urgently: ‘You have a facsimile machine here: take a full set of fingerprints and check them out with London, in addition to what I've already given you.'

‘You seem to be in a great hurry,' said the man, still doubtful.

‘A hell of a hurry,' agreed Charlie. ‘An emergency. Call London …' He hesitated and added again: ‘Please.' It had always been a difficult word for him.

‘It's not the purpose or function of this facility,' said the man, adamantly.

‘I said it was an emergency!'

‘I heard what you said.'

Charlie felt the sweat bubble, burst and then find its way down his back. He nodded towards the door. ‘Effectively I'm under arrest, even though I haven't penetrated any part of this establishment. You can do with me what you like. I'm no danger, to you or anything that you're doing here. All I want is secure liaison with London …' The indication this time was to the paper upon which the man had made his notes. ‘You know that's not bullshit.'