Charlie M (16 page)

The man found it difficult to remain in any one position, thought Charlie, watching Ruttgers settle into the chair he had already quit four times during the course of the meeting.

Like Charlie, Ruttgers felt there was something indefinably wrong about the whole thing. But he did have what he wanted, a man involved from this moment in every aspect of the crossing, the American Director reassured himself.

‘Right,' he accepted. ‘We'll do what you suggest and hope it's right.'

‘That's the trouble,' seized Charlie. ‘None of us knows whether we're right or not. And we won't for three weeks.'

Berenkov looked a caricature of the man he had once been, thought Charlie. The Russian edged almost apprehensively into the room, all exuberance gone, standing just inside the door and staring at his visitor, awaiting permission to advance further.

The man's skin looked oily, but flaking, as if he were suffering from some kind of dermatitis and there was a curtain of disinterest over his eyes. He shuffled rather than walked, scarcely lifting his feet and when he spoke it was in the prison fashion, his lips unmoving.

‘Good of you to come, Charlie,' he said. The voice was flat, completely devoid of expression.

‘You don't look good, Alexei.'

The man stayed where he was, just inside the entrance.

‘Come in, Alexei. Sit down,' invited Charlie. He felt patronising.

‘It's been over a year,' mumbled Berenkov, through those unmoving lips, disordering his hair with a nervous hand as he settled at the table. ‘One year, three months and two weeks.'

And two days, knew Charlie. How long, he wondered, before men with a sentence as long as Berenkov's stopped marking the calendar?

He had nothing to say, realised Charlie.

‘I brought some magazines,' he tried, hopefully. They're being examined by the prison authorities, but it'll only take a few minutes. You should have them by tonight.'

‘Thank you,' said Berenkov, unresponsively.

He wouldn't read them, Charlie realised. The degree of apathy into which the Russian had sunk would mean he spent all his cell-time staring at the wall, his mind empty. Berenkov had the smell of cheap soap and the proximity of too many bodies, thought Charlie, distastefully.

‘Any tobacco?' cadged the Russian, hopefully.

Charlie pushed some cigarettes across the table. Berenkov took one, hesitated, then slid the rest into his pocket. He stopped, frozen for a second to await the challenge from Charlie. The Briton said nothing and Berenkov relaxed.

‘Doing anything interesting?' asked the Russian.

Charlie looked at him curiously. It was a question without hidden point, he decided.

‘No,' he generalised. ‘Just clerking.'

Berenkov nodded. He'd barely assimilated the words, Charlie saw.

‘But I'm going away on holiday for a few weeks,' covered Charlie. ‘I won't be able to see you for a while.'

Momentarily the curtain lifted and Berenkov frowned, like a child being deprived without reason of a Sunday treat.

‘You won't abandon me, Charlie?' he pleaded.

‘Of course I won't,' assured Charlie, holding without any self-consciousness the hand that Berenkov thrust forward. ‘I made you a promise, didn't I?'

‘Don't let me down, Charlie. Please don't let me down.'

In Janet's flat, three hours later, he swilled brandy around the bowl, watching it cling to the side. He looked up suddenly at the girl.

‘You know what?' he demanded.

‘What?' responded Janet.

‘Berenkov was right. All those months ago.'

‘About what?'

‘Me and imprisonment. He said I wouldn't be able to stand it and he was right. I'd collapse even before he's done.'

‘So what would you do?' asked the girl, seriously.

‘If I knew capture was inevitable,' asserted Charlie, ‘then I'd kill myself.'

She was going to cry, realised Janet. Shit, she thought.

Kalenin began setting out the tanks for Rommel's assault upon Tobruk and then stopped the displacement, half completed. He wouldn't play tonight, he decided. He straightened, staring down at the models. The forthcoming Czech visit and what was to follow made it unlikely that he would recreate the battle for some weeks.

If ever. The thought came suddenly, worrying him. Why, he wondered, was Kastanazy being so implacable in his campaign? It was an over-commitment in the circumstances and therefore stupid, likely to cause him problems. And Kastanazy wasn't usually a stupid man.

Kalenin shrugged, replacing the tanks into their boxes. Perhaps it was time Kastanazy was taught a lesson, he thought, sighing. The man wasn't liked in the Praesidium, Kalenin knew.

The General went into the regimented living-room, carefully positioned the cover over the headrest of the easy chair and sat down, looking with satisfaction around the apartment, enjoying its clinical neatness. Not one thing out of place, he thought. He smiled at the thought. The words that could sum up his life, he decided: everything in the right place at the right time.

He rose abruptly, without direction, bored with the inactivity. The next month was going to be difficult to endure, he realised.

He poured a goblet of Georgian wine, then stood examining it. Berenkov had been disparaging about his country's products, recalled Kalenin. ‘Bordeaux has much more body. And a better nose,' his friend had lectured, during their last meeting.

He envied Berenkov, Kalenin suddenly realised. The man was all he had ever wanted to be. But Berenkov had been caught, Kalenin rationalised. Which made him fallible.

Will I be detected? wondered Kalenin, finishing his wine.

(13)

A large map table had been brought into Cuthbertson's office and several two-inch ordnance sheets pinned out in sequence showing the Czech border with Austria, with all the routings into the capital. Beside the maps were boxes of blue and green flags, awaiting insertion.

It was an exercise that Cuthbertson understood and he moved around the table assuredly, aided by Ruttgers, who had returned that morning from Washington and from a meeting with both Keys and the President. The C.I.A. Director was pleased the President was involved; it elevated the operation to exactly the sort of status he considered necessary.

‘By the thirteenth, we'll have moved over a hundred men into Austria,' recorded Ruttgers. ‘And we're airlifting in sufficient electronic equipment to guarantee a complete radio link-up between every operative.'

Cuthbertson nodded. The previous day there had been a full Cabinet meeting which he had attended and he knew that afterwards there had been direct telephone calls be tween the Prime Minister and the American leader.

‘We're matching that commitment,' he confirmed. ‘Man for man.'

The resentment at the American involvement still rankled with him: the Cabinet hadn't shown sufficient outrage, he thought, critically.

Cuthbertson stared fixedly at Ruttgers, then at the map table.

‘Your cigarette is smouldering,' he complained. ‘Can't you extinguish it?'

‘Once Kalenin crosses that border,' said Ruttgers, casually stubbing the offensive butt and looking down at the map, ‘the net will be so tight that a fly couldn't escape.'

‘I'm still a little concerned about Austria,' said Wilberforce, ‘we can't mount an operation of this size without them learning about it.'

‘We can and we will,' bullied Ruttgers, immediately. ‘By the time they discover anything, it'll be all over.'

‘It still seems diplomatically discourteous,' protested the tall man.

‘That's not the way they'll see it,' guaranteed the C.I.A. chief. ‘Austria is the bridge between East and West, don't forget. They'd be scared gutless knowing in advance someone of Kalenin's importance was going to move through their territory. Sure they'll bleat and complain at the United Nations and both our governments will dutifully apologise at the intrusion. But privately Austria will be bloody glad we kept them out so their relations with Moscow don't suffer.'

Cuthbertson smiled patronisingly at Wilberforce, indicating he shared the American's assessment.

‘It'll be difficult to make all our displacements until we know when and how Kalenin intends crossing. But we can bottle up the city.'

He paused, looking at Ruttgers.

‘You sure your house is safe?'

‘For Christ's sake,' said Ruttgers, ‘the C.I.A. have owned it for twenty years …'

‘… which means the K.G.B. probably know about it,' intruded Wilberforce.

‘Not this one,' promised Ruttgers, who regarded it as vitally important that Kalenin should be lodged instantly at an American-owned property. He was growing increasingly confident he could elbow the British aside once Kalenin had defected.

‘Do you think I'd run the risk if I wasn't a hundred per cent certain?' he added.

Cuthbertson nodded, accepting the assurance. He took a gold flag indicating Kalenin from a third box and inserted it into the marked house on Wipplingerstrasse.

‘Anyway,' pointed out the British Director, ‘he won't be there longer than an hour. It will just be somewhere to stop, change his clothes and then leave for the airport.'

‘You've fixed that?' queried the American.

Cuthbertson, who had already entered another gold marker in Schwechat, nodded.

‘We've officially informed the Austrians we want to shift embassy furniture and equipment over a three-week period. There will be four dummy flights, moving things around for no reason except to get them used to it.'

As he talked, Cuthbertson was flagging the area around the house where Kalenin would be held. He worked on a grid pattern, marking down from the Danube Canal, bordered by the post office and Aspern Square across to the old city hall and Am Hof Square and embracing the Hofburg Palace, the Spanish Riding School and running up to Volksgarten. Blue flags indicated concealed observations; green designated open surveillance, on foot or in cars.

‘That's a hell of an area,' remarked Ruttgers, echoing Wilberforce's thoughts.

‘But necessary,' insisted Cuthbertson. ‘This outline covers the situation for a concealed, unpursued crossing …'

He opened a drawer and took out some red-headed pins.

‘… I think there should be a contingency situation for an emergency flight, possibly under pursuit …'

He held up the crimson markers.

‘… and we won't be able to insert these, showing it, until Muffin's meeting on the thirteenth from which I hope to know the crossing point.'

‘Then what?' queried Ruttgers.

Cuthbertson sighed.

‘I hope it doesn't happen,' he said. ‘But in case it does, we'll want a back-up team at the crossing spot. If the Russians learn it's Kalenin, they'll come across without bothering whose country they're violating. I'll have a transfer car waiting, into which we can put Kalenin …'

He hesitated at the American's frown.

‘I'll only need three minutes at the outside,' he said. ‘If the Russians chase, I want them to be able to locate almost immediately the crossing car, which will take off to loop Vienna and apparently make for the Italian border…'

‘While the real car completes the journey to the airport?' accurately guessed Ruttgers.

‘There's a lot wrong with that,' argued Wilberforce. The two Directors stood, waiting.

‘What do you imagine the Austrian authorities are going to do while all this is happening?' criticised the civil servant.

‘As much as possible,' said Cuthbertson, confidently. ‘All I want is the transfer. The Austrians will be chasing the car that crossed and which the Russians or Czechs followed. Not one of my operatives – or an American – will be involved, apart from the initial holding operation. From then on, Austrian police pursuit is exactly the sort of diversion I want.'

‘What about the driver of Kalenin's original car?' probed Wilberforce, obstinately.

‘He'll have to be sacrificed,' said Cuthbertson, easily. ‘I want an explosive device fitted, during the transfer. To detonate within five minutes.'

‘So who will be driving?' asked Wilberforce.

‘I had thought of Muffin,' said Cuthbertson.

‘He's too valuable: he'll have to travel on with Kalenin,' protested Ruttgers.

‘You're right, of course,' accepted the British Director. ‘It'll have to be somebody else.'

‘There's Cox, currently attached to our Moscow embassy,' offered Ruttgers, remembering his annoyance at the man's inability to detect Charlie's entry into Russia. ‘His involvement would be very natural. And he speaks Russian, which gives added validity for his secondment.'

‘A11 right,' agreed Cuthbertson, carelessly. ‘Let's use him.'

Wilberforce stood studying both men, wondering if cither was really medically sane. He supposed the sacrifice of one life was justified, but he would have expected some distaste from those making the decisions: Ruttgers and Cuthbertson appeared almost to be enjoying it.

‘Our debriefing team will be arriving in London next week,' reported Ruttgers, avoiding looking directly at Cuthbertson.

‘Yes,' said the ex-soldier. He still hoped to persuade the Cabinet to retract permission for the interviews with Kalenin to be Anglo-American.

‘We've houses available here?' asked Ruttgers.

‘Four,' replied Cuthbertson. ‘Each is as secure as the other. They're all in the Home Counties.'

‘We'd like to examine them first,' said Ruttgers.

The clerk-like American had been born out of his time, decided Wilberforce. He would have enjoyed bearbaiting or cock-fighting, watching animals gradually tearing themselves to pieces.

‘A pointless precaution,' defended Cuthbertson, holding his temper. ‘I will not have that sort of interference.'