Comrade Charlie (42 page)

Charlie stopped, hopefully, Nobody spoke. He said: ‘No one seems to have realized the significance! All this was done on August 7th. The message – “Reactivate payment by one thousand” – was not sent from Moscow until August 26th, according to your evidence:
after
,
nineteen days after, I had already found the thousand pounds, switched it and made arrangements that any investigation – any
proper
investigation – would lead to its being eventually released to the Director General of this department.'

The reactions were mixed, throughout the room. The two unidentified men – who looked like clones of all the Whitehall mandarins Charlie had ever encountered – were bent sideways towards each other in whispered conversation. Sir Alistair Wilson was staring at him with obvious curiosity but with no other indication of what he was thinking. Harkness had a finger sideways to his mouth, gnawing at it in concentration, trying to absorb what Charlie had said. Witherspoon was scurrying through his documentation, seeking something. It was time to finish, while he was marginally ahead, decided Charlie. He said: ‘There have been other things added to the bank deposit since that initial date. There is a long list of vehicle registration numbers, which I believe to have been used by various Soviet observation teams, particularly since I moved into the delegation hotel in Bayswater. I have not had the facility, away from this department, to check out the ownership for those registrations. I would suspect they are hired. Tracing the hiring back will, I hope, give us the names of some Soviet front companies which we might not at the moment be aware are being used by the KGB…'

He smiled back towards the rigid-faced Smedley. ‘… And there are also the numbers of our own people who have been in such painfully obvious position over the past three or four days. Three Fords, a Vauxhall and a Fiat…As I have already suggested, the investigation has been appallingly amateurish…'

‘Anything else?' cut off Wilson. There was no longer any anger in the frail voice.

‘I hope there will be when I know what was in the King William Street drop,' said Charlie. He turned to Harkness. ‘So what was it?'

Harkness' hand came only partially away from his mouth. ‘There still needs to be further investigation to discover its whereabouts,' the man conceded.

‘What!' said Charlie. Confident now, he slightly overstressed the incredulity. ‘You mean you don't even know where it is yet!'

‘It will be found,' insisted Harkness.

‘And I thought it was something else you'd just omitted to say,' said Charlie in disbelief. He turned to Witherspoon but with a positive body movement to include Smedley and Abbott. ‘Who tossed my flat?'

There was no immediate response. Then Witherspoon breathed in heavily and squared his shoulders and said: ‘It was done under my supervision.'

Charlie gestured to the other two men. ‘By those two.'

Witherspoon nodded.

‘And what did you find?'

‘You have already heard what we found.'

‘Jesus!' exclaimed Charlie. He hadn't imagined it was going to be this easy to exact the retribution for the harm he believed Smedley and Abott had caused his mother. He said: ‘So you missed the micro-dot!'

There was a throat movement from Witherspoon, and Smedley's colour heightened. There was what might have been a groan from Wilson, but the sound was hardly audible and Charlie might have been mistaken.

Charlie began to look back to the assembled inquiry team but then hesitated. He said: ‘No one has yet said here, in this room, what sort of code it is. it's a variable number-for-letter system: that's what the micro-dot says. That's right, isn't it?'

‘Yes,' mumbled Witherspoon.

‘And that message, the one that identifies King William Street. Was that all it said?'

From the look that passed between Harkness and Witherspoon Charlie didn't need the answer, but it came anyway. ‘No,' said the man.

‘What's missing?'

It was Harkness who spoke, once more trying to take the pressure off his protégé. ‘Some numbers which, at the moment, the cryptologists cannot decipher.'

‘They didn't need to,' sighed Charlie. He wouldn't allow them any respite, any let-up on their exposure: they'd sought utterly to destroy him,
were
still intent upon destroying him. He said: ‘The key was already there if you'd correctly looked for it. Somewhere in the grouping the figures one and five and zero feature, don't they?'

Witherspoon hurried back to his message folder. ‘At the end.'

‘Three digits, out of a grouping of nine?' demanded Charlie. To Wilson he said: ‘The grouping of nine was on the micro-dot: it's listed in the bank package for you. Could I ask you to cast your mind back to King William Street, sir?'

‘Good God!' said Wilson, in recollection at last.

‘Yes,' said Charlie. ‘Berenkov wanted me to know he'd planned whatever it is that's going on. Which is arrogant, but then he always was an arrogant man. It was probably his only failing.'

‘I can't follow this,' protested one of the unidentified men. He had a pronounced Welsh accent.

‘A number of years ago,' said Charlie. ‘I was responsible for the arrest and jailing of an extremely successful Soviet illegal, a trained KGB officer who was infiltrated into this country and who for several years ran a series of spy cells throughout Europe. At 150 King William Street, in the City of London, there is a privately owned safe-custody facility: clearing banks used to offer the service as a safe deposit box but very few do now. A number of private firms have filled the gap. Quite unknown by the company who own it, he used King William Street as a safe cut-out, a dead letter box to pass material between himself and KGB officers attached to the embassy here in London, without there ever being a requirement for them openly – or incriminatingly – to meet…' He glanced at Witherspoon. ‘This investigation of me that you masterminded? Didn't you check my operational file: everything I'd ever done?'

There was a despairing head movement of confirmation and Charlie felt not a jot of pity for the man. Charlie said: ‘It's all there, in the Berenkov case file. And if you'd worked out that 150 King William Street was the address then I would have hoped that even you could have guessed at the other numbers not being part of the code at all. But the number of the facility itself.'

There was a new briskness to Wilson's voice when he said: ‘It's just past six o'clock: it'll be closed.'

‘Which just might be to our benefit,' suggested Charlie. ‘They'll have monitored the drop, after filling it. Because they'll want to know we've understood what they want us to. At the moment they'll think we haven't understood…' Charlie allowed the glance towards Harkness. ‘Which until now we haven't, have we?'

‘You think the company will cooperate?' asked Wilson.

‘They did with Berenkov: they allowed us afterhours access then.'

It had suddenly become a planning discussion between two men, Charlie and the Director General, and Harkness flustered to intervene.

‘There are other considerations!' he insisted. ‘What about this man form the Isle of Wight factory? Blackstone? He should be arrested immediately.'

‘No!' said Charlie, practically shouting. ‘I was picked up on the Isle of Wight: and Blackstone has an access telephone contact. For all we know there's a timed system: an automatic alert if he does
not
call. Blackstone is neutralized: leave him.'

‘I don't think you're in any position to say what will or will not be done!' rejected Harkness.

‘He'll be left,' decided Wilson curtly.

Harkness actually flinched at being so obviously overruled. Trying to recover, he said: ‘There's more I want explaining. What has Muffin been doing for almost a week at a hotel housing a Soviet delegation? And what is the connection between him and Natalia Nikandrova Fedova?'

It was Charlie's turn to create the awkward silence: although he should have been prepared, he wasn't, because he hadn't been able to think of any way
to
prepare himself. With absolute honesty he said: ‘I went to the hotel for personal reasons, to make contact with the woman.'

‘What's she got to do with all this other business?' demanded Harkness, not properly thinking out his question.

‘At the moment I don't know,' admitted Charlie, in further honesty.

‘That isn't a proper answer!' protested Harkness.

‘I think the proper answers have got to come in the proper sequence,' intruded Wilson, urgent again. ‘Which for far too long they haven't been doing. I want to find out – and find out quickly – what's in King William Street. Everything else can wait. We're going to recess but nobody goes anywhere. We're staying here, all of us, until this is completely resolved.'

No one actually did attempt to move anywhere in those first few moments. Witherspoon was the first to stir, getting uncertainly to his feet and bringing his binders together in some sort of clearing up tidiness.

‘Hubert!' said Charlie.

Witherspoon looked up, apprehensively questioning.

‘The correct answer was “fools”,' said Charlie.

‘What?' gaped the man, in utter bewilderment.

‘That crossword clue you filled in when you came poking around my office a long time ago: the one about life being a walking shadow, from
Macbeth
. You wrote “idiot” but the correct answer was “fools”…either would have fitted perfectly here, though, don't you think?'

The atmosphere became much better inside the Kensington house and for obvious reason. It was Petrin who brought it about, his bored impatience finally coming to a head. He set out quietly, genuinely not wishing to foment a fresh dispute between himself and Losev, not because he was frightened of the man but because the perpetual arguments were very much part of his boredom. From apparently casual conversation with the photographer he learned there were only three outstanding drawings remaining to be copied in the absolute detail with which Zazulin was working. Continuing the query further, he discovered that Yuri Guzins had six drawings he still needed to go through with Krogh. And the American finally conceded that he was working on the last reproduction.

‘So!' seized Petrin at once. ‘We can finish!'

‘What!' It was Zazulin who spoke, expressing the surprise of everyone.

‘Finish,' repeated Petrin. ‘If we work on now – don't stop – we could get everything done. End it.'

‘I've got a lot…' started Guzins, but Petrin refused him. ‘Nothing that you couldn't get through with Emil if you stayed at it. He's practically completed the last of the original drawings: there's nothing to interrupt or distract the two of you now.'

‘Maybe I could do it,' conceded Guzins reluctantly.

‘What about you, Emil? You prepared to carry on, to clear everything up?'

‘
Really
finish!'

Petrin paused. Still not the time to mention the one replacement drawing that was still needed. ‘Really finish,' he said.

‘I'll work for as long as is necessary,' guaranteed Krogh sincerely.

‘I could certainly get all the photographs finished,' guaranteed Zazulin. ‘I didn't know we were coming so near to the end of the original drawings.'

Predictably Losev felt cheated by being beaten to the suggestion by Petrin but even the London
rezident
was anxious for it to end now. To Zazulin he said: ‘Could you finish in time to get a shipment to Moscow?'

‘I think so.'

‘Not the held-back cassette!' insisted Guzins at once. ‘I must see an original: have an opportunity of discussing it with Krogh. The references on the photographs must accord to the drawings.'

‘All right!' said Petrin. ‘Don't worry! That's how it will be done.'

‘Have you told Krogh yet there's a duplicate for him to complete?' asked Guzins. As always – as it always had to be for the monolingual Guzins – the conversation was in Russian.

‘Not yet,' admitted Petrin. ‘Let's wrap everything else up first.'

Which was what they did. There was a lot to occur elsewhere in an intervening period but in Kensington they worked on until everything was completed. And Zazulin did meet his commitment: he finished in time for all his photographic rolls to be included in that night's diplomatic pouch to Moscow. Only one cassette was held back in London, that of the drawing that the unknowing Krogh had still to make again.

43

There were varying degrees of shock from almost everyone in the room, the two unnamed men showing it most. Charlie, who'd caused it, wasn't shocked: he'd half expected something like this and thought he was a long way towards comprehending what had happened or was happening. Most of it anyway.

‘Sure?' demanded Wilson, still gazing down at the drawing around which they were all grouped, on Witherspoon's evidence table.

‘No,' admitted Charlie, although for accuracy, not to reassure them. ‘All I can say is that it resembles drawings I was shown by the project leader when I made the Isle of Wight investigation.'

It had taken four hours to get the official search warrant authorized by a magistrate, locate the afterhours address of the managing director of the safe deposit company, persuade the man of the urgency of cooperating at once and finally to retrieve the blueprint from King William Street. While they waited – Charlie finally being allowed to sit – there had been sandwiches and coffee but little conversation. No one had spoken at all to Charlie until the drawing was unrolled and Charlie had announced its possible source. A disjointed, competing babble erupted the moment Charlie responded to the Director General's question, with the Whitehall official with the Welsh accent fractionally in the lead. ‘Good God!' said the man, aghast. ‘Have you any idea of the implications of this! The Foreign Office must be told: the Foreign Secretary himself …!'