Charlie M (10 page)

He had a five-day holiday, he realised, suddenly, sitting in the hotel bar that evening. He looked around the drab room. Hardly the place he would have chosen to spend it.

In the far corner, Bolton was in his accustomed role, the centre of a raucous group and involved in a story which needed much hand-waving.

Harrison smiled and nodded, but the tractor-salesman pointedly ignored him.

The C.I.A. cover for the Fair was through a legitimate firm of timber exporters based in Vancouver, British Columbia. From their observer, five stools further down the bar, had already gone the report of the unexpected presence that day of General Kalenin, following Ruttgers's alert to all Warsaw Pact stations to react immediately to the appearance of the man whose face they knew after twenty-five years' anonymity.

‘Bolton's bloody angry,' reported the Australian with the stall adjoining the British office equipment exhibit, nodding along the bar.

‘Why?' asked the C.I.A. man, politely. The Australian's tendency to drink beer until he was sick offended the American.

‘Reckons the bloody man screwed up an order from that important-looking Russian delegation that came through this morning.'

The C.I.A. man looked towards Harrison with growing interest.

‘Who is he?' asked the American.

The Australian, who had served in Vietnam and retained the vernacular like a medal, wanting people to recognise it, moved closer and affirmed, ‘I reckon a spook … a bleedin' pommie spook. From the questions he's been asking the exhibitors, he knows fuck all about trade.'

‘Excuse me,' said the C.I.A. man. ‘Reports to write for head office.'

Four days later, Harrison set off alone in a hired Skoda, driving slowly, unsure of the way, wishing within an hour of departure he had curbed his boredom and returned in convoy with the main British contingent.

He was moving along the wide, tree-lined highway about twenty miles outside of East Berlin when he first became conscious of the following car in his rear-view mirror. It was too far away to determine the number of occupants and Harrison kept glancing at the reflection, expecting it to overtake. It appeared to be keeping a regular distance and Harrison experienced the first jerk of fear. Immediately he subdued it; his trade cover was perfect and he carried no incriminating material whatsoever. There couldn't be the slightest danger.

So occupied was he with what was following that for those first few seconds Harrison thought the traffic ahead had slowed because of an accident. Then he realised it was a road block. He recognised soldiers as well as People's Police and saw that in addition to the vans that completely closed the highway, strips of spiked metal had been laid zigzag in front of them, to rip out the tyres of any vehicle that didn't slow to less than walking pace to negotiate the barrier.

Then he realised the following car had closed behind him. There were only five yards between them now and he could see five men jammed uncomfortably in the other vehicle.

‘Oh my God,' said Harrison, aloud.

In the first few seconds of unthinking confusion, he braked, accelerated, then braked again, so that the car leapfrogged towards the obstruction. Two soldiers in front of the spikes motioned him to stop and men began fanning out along either side of the road. The recollection of the burning Volkswagen and the dull, thudding sound that the bullets had made, hitting the body, forced itself into his mind and again he braked, sharply and with design this time, trying to spin the car in its own length so that he could be facing back up the road. The vehicle stuck, halfway around, the bonnet pointing uselessly towards the bordering field. To his right, Harrison saw the following car had anticipated the manœuvre and turned across the road, blocking any retreat.

Harrison was sobbing now, the breath shuddering from him. There was no reason why he should be detained, he assured himself, his lips moving. No reason. Or excuse. Don't panic. Act in the outraged manner of any important government official irritated by being stopped. The car episode was easily explained; just dismiss it as lack of control in an emergency situation in a hired car.

He thrust out of the vehicle and began walking purposefully towards the road block, protest disordered in his mind. But then he saw the uniforms and fear got control of him and he stopped. His mouth opened, but no sound emerged. And then he ran, stupidly, first towards the waiting soldiers, then sideways, trying to leap the ditch.

There was no sound of warning before the firing, which came almost casually from a machine gun mounted on a pivot near the driving position of the leading armoured car. Harrison was hit in mid-air and dropped, quite silently, into the ditch he was trying to leap.

The driver and one of the men from the following car walked slowly up the road, hands buried into the pockets of their leather topcoats, breath forming tiny clouds in front of them as they walked. For several minutes they stood staring down into the ditch, alert for any movement that would indicate he was still alive. Only Harrison's legs were visible, the rest of him submerged in the black, leaf-covered water. His foot jerked spasmodically, furrowing a tiny groove in the opposite bank. It only lasted a few seconds and then it was quite still.

‘It's not possible to spin a Skoda like that,' said the driver, as they turned to go back to their own vehicle.

‘No?'

‘No. Something to do with the suspension and the angle that the wheels are splayed.'

‘Must be safe on ice, then?'

‘I suppose so.'

‘We won't tell Snare,' decreed Cuthbertson. He stood at the window, watching a snake of tourists slowly enter the Houses of Parliament. They were Japanese, he saw, armoured in camera equipment and wearing coloured lapel pins identifying them with their guides, who carried corresponding standards in greens and reds and yellows.

‘All right,' agreed Wilberforce.

‘It would be quite wrong,' justified Cuthbertson, turning back into the room. ‘He'd go to Moscow frightened. A frightened man can't be expected to operate properly. It's basic training.'

‘Need he go at all?' asked Wilberforce. ‘Surely Harrison's report is pretty conclusive.'

‘Oh yes,' insisted Cuthbertson. ‘He's got to go. I'm convinced now, but we need to know the conditions that Kalenin will impose. And if he's made his own escape plans. A man like Kalenin won't just walk into an embassy and give himself up.'

‘Yes,' concurred Wilberforce. ‘I suppose you're right.'

They remained silent while Janet served the tea. It was several minutes after she had left the office before the conversation was resumed.

‘Was it a surprise?' asked Wilberforce, nodding to the door through which the girl had left the room.

‘What?' demanded Cuthbertson, pretending not to know what the other man was talking about.

‘To discover from the security reports that Janet was having an affair with that man Muffin.'

‘Not really,' lied the Director. ‘I gather he has a reputation for that sort of thing. Rutting always has been the pastime of the working class.'

He shook his head, like a man confronted with a distasteful sight.

‘Imagine!' he invited. ‘With someone like that!'

‘What are you going to do?' asked the second-in-command. ‘He's married and she's the daughter of a fellow officer, for God's sake.'

Cuthbertson opened the other file on his desk, containing the report of Harrison's death.

‘Let's see how Snare gets on,' he said, guardedly.

‘Over six months have passed since Comrade General Berenkov was sentenced,' recorded Kastanazy, gazing over his desk at Kalenin.

‘Yes,' said the K.G.B. officer.

‘Most of yesterday's Praesidium meeting was devoted to discussing the affair.'

‘Yes,' said the General.

‘Please understand, Comrade Kalenin, that the patience of everyone is growing increasingly shorter.'

‘Yes,' agreed the General.

Had Kastanazy purposely dropped his rank? he wondered.

(9)

Snare hated Moscow, he decided. It was claustrophobic and petty-minded and inefficient and irritating. He had attended the Bolshoi and been unmoved, the State Circus and been bored and the Armoury and been unimpressed with the Romanov jewellery, even the Fabergé clocks. The body of Lenin, enclosed behind glass in that mausoleum, was not, he had concluded, the embalmed body at all, but a waxwork. And a bad wax-work at that. He'd seen better at Madame Tussaud's, when he'd taken his young nephew for an Easter outing. The child had wet himself, he remembered, distastefully, and made the car smell.

The flattery of being lionised as a new face in an embassy starved of outside contact had worn off now and he pitied the diplomats and secretaries whose constant opening gambit was to refer to his thoughtfulness in bringing as gifts from London, Heinz baked beans, Walls pork sausages and Fortnum & Mason Guinness cake. It had been Muffin's advice, recalled Snare. Just the sort of sycophantic rubbish in which the man would have indulged, a gesture to make people like him.

He'd spent several evenings with the Director's friend, Colonel Wilcox, and rehearsed their approach if Kalenin attended the official function. But even Wilcox had erected a barrier, afraid any mistake could create an embarrassing diplomatic incident. So no one liked him, decided Snare. He didn't give a damn. Thank Christ, he thought, gazing out of the embassy window, that the stupid party was tonight and he could start thinking of his return to London. It was raining heavily, smearing the houses and roads with a dull, grey colour. It was hardly surprising, he thought, that the Russians seemed so miserable.

The interest of the Americans slightly worried him. They knew who he was, he accepted. That absurdly tall man who kept talking about basket-ball, moving his hands in a flapping motion as if he were bouncing a ball against the ground, was definitely an Agency man. Snare groped for the man's name, but had forgotten it. Odd how sportsmen liked to boast their chosen recreation, he considered. Harrison was always driving imaginary golf balls with his reversed umbrella.

Someone in the British embassy must have disclosed his identity, he thought. When he got back to London, he'd complain to Sir Henry Cuthbertson and get an investigation ordered. Bloody diplomats were all the same: trying to show off their knowledge, gossiping their secrets.

The fact that he was known to be an operative didn't matter, he rationalised. They'd be expecting him to do something befitting his role and all he had to do was attend an embassy party and, if Kalenin were there, carry on where Harrison had left the conversation in East Germany.

And because no one, apart from the British, knew what that conversation was, then all he would appear to be doing was behaving in a normal, social manner.

The thought of achieving his mission while they all watched, unaware of what was happening, amused him. It would have been pleasant, letting them know afterwards how stupid they had been. But probably dangerous. He sighed, abandoning the idea.

Snare turned away from the window, taking from the desk immediately behind it the coded report that had come from Whitehall three weeks earlier giving a complete account of Harrison's meeting with the General.

Harrison had done bloody well, congratulated Snare. When he got back to London, he'd take the man out for a celebration meal, to l'Étoile or l'Épicure. Some decent food would be welcome after what he had endured for the past month, when he'd been lucky enough to get any service at all in a hotel or restaurant.

Carefully, he traced the responses that Kalenin had given in Leipzig. There could be no doubt, he agreed, turning to Cuthbertson's assessment, that the General was a potential defector. The East German encounter had shown him the pathway, thought Snare. But it was still going to be difficult if Kalenin turned up, discovering the undoubted conditions that the man would impose. Secretly he hoped Kalenin wouldn't appear: then he could just go home. Yes, he thought, it would be better if Kalenin didn't attend. Because whatever he achieved tonight, if anything at all, would be secondary to Harrison's initial success. It was bloody unfair, thought Snare, irritably, that the other man had just got six days in East Germany and all the glory and he'd been stuck in Moscow for four weeks and had to perform the most difficult part of the whole operation.

He descended early to the ballroom, arriving with the first of the British party. He spoke briefly to the ambassador and Colonel Wilcox, discussed the quality of the Cambridge eight with the cultural attaché who had been his senior at King's and had got a rowing blue, and then edged away, to be alone. Being disliked had its advantages, he thought: no one bothered to follow.

The American contingent arrived early and there were more of them than Snare had expected. What an appalling life, sympathised Snare, playing follow-my-leader from one embassy gathering to another, repeating the same conversations like a litany and attempting to keep sane. Almost immediately behind the Americans, the rest of the diplomatic corps arrived, crushing into the entrance and slowly funnelling past the hosts towards the drinks tray and tables of canapés. Whatever did these people, all of whom had seen each other in the last week and to which absolutely nothing had happened in the interim, find to talk about? wondered the Briton.

At the far end of the chandeliered room, an orchestra was attempting Gilbert and Sullivan and Snare was reminded of the amateur musical society at his prep school.

‘Hi.'

Snare turned to the fat man who had appeared at his elbow. He seemed to be experiencing some difficulty in his breathing.

‘Braley,' the man introduced. ‘American embassy.'

Another C.I.A. man? wondered the Briton.

‘Hello,' he returned, minimally.

‘Could be a good party.'

Snare looked at him, but didn't bother to reply.