See Charlie Run (37 page)

Charlie was thinking and believing a lot. He believed that Kozlov did love Olga Balan, and he thought that was going to make everything a lot easier than it might have been. Time to start wrapping it all up into neat little parcels. He said: ‘I made the right assessment, didn't I?'

Kozlov looked at him, uncomprehending.

‘You
are
fucked, aren't you, Yuri? Every way you look. How much longer before Moscow discovers Irena's not around any more? Filiatov is back there now, talking his head off to stop the pain. And any moment I want I can feed the information through …'

‘All right!' The yell this time was despair, not defiance.

‘You didn't let me finish the option, Yuri.'

‘What do you want?'

‘To help you,' announced Charlie, simply. He stopped, intentionally, wanting the idea to register with the other man.

‘Help me?'

‘Well, you don't want to go back to an interrogation cell in Butyrki and then on to some
gulag
for the rest of your life, do you!'

‘Help me how?'

‘Get you safely out, to the West …' Charlie made another intentional hesitation. ‘And Olga, too,' he finished.

‘Olga!'

‘You want to be with her, don't you?'

‘Yes, but …'

‘No buts. Both of you.'

‘Together?'

The training was emerging, through all the confusion, recognized Charlie. He said: ‘Not to begin with. You told me how the Americans wanted you and Irena, when we both thought it was a genuine defection. If I try to take you
and
Olga out, the same thing would happen: a pitched battle. My way you both get out and then you're reunited, very soon.'

‘How soon?' insisted the man.

‘I'd even arrange a date,' said Charlie. ‘That's part of the proposal.'

‘I want to hear it all,' said Kozlov.

‘I'll tell you and you can check,' said Charlie. ‘Irena told me about Hayashi, at the airport. He'll confirm the Americans are there, with a military plane. So are we. I will take Olga, first. You follow, as soon as you know that we've cleared air space and can't be intercepted by the Americans. Fredericks is setting up the same contact procedure for you as before, at the Imperial. He expects to hear from you …'

‘You are working together?'

Charlie wasn't sure how to answer the question. He said: ‘Not together: we're keeping to the arrangement that we thought we had, originally.'

‘Are you sure it is necessary to cross separately?' asked Kozlov, doubtfully.

‘Aren't you?' said Charlie.

Kozlov didn't reply, and Charlie thought I'm ahead of you, you crafty bastard. He said: ‘You're thinking, of course, why bother letting Olga come with me? Why don't the both of you go together to the Americans? That's what I'd be thinking, if I were you now. But you mustn't ever forget the file, Yuri … the file that's got more than McFairlane's name on it. Names like Bill Paul and Valeri Solomatin … and a very special name, a Senator William Bales …'

Kozlov was rigidly still and ashen, lips moving but without any intention of forming words.

‘Fucked, Yuri, unless you do it all my way,' insisted Charlie. ‘Hayashi will tell you about the military planes, like I said. We're watching them and they're watching us, so I'd know before the wheels went up if you ducked me, to take Olga along with you. And then I'd have London tell Washington all the names they don't know. Can you imagine the reception you'd get? I guess there'd be some debriefing: why waste an opportunity, after all? But then do you know what I think? I think you'd end up in some stockade and you'd be able to close your eyes and believe you were back in a Russian prison, after all. Maybe worse than a Russian prison: can you imagine that!'

The words came at last, a croaking, strained sound: ‘I understand … there's no need … no more …'

‘Oh yes,' contradicted Charlie: ‘There's more. I haven't told you yet how you're getting to England.'

Kozlov was looking at him dully, practically glazed-eyed, someone completely defeated, and Charlie said: ‘You hearing what I'm saying?'

‘Yes,' said Kozlov. ‘I'm hearing it all.'

‘We're using the Americans to get you out, without the sort of battle that would occur, probably getting everyone seized, including both of you,' set out Charlie. ‘In Washington, there will be the debriefing. String it out; make them work for everything. And be difficult. Complain about the restrictions of the safe house and say you want to take trips out. They let it happen: they shouldn't but they do. Today's the sixteenth. Three months from today, the sixteenth, get taken into Georgetown: all the restaurants are there. And a particular hotel. It's called the Four Seasons and it's at the very beginning of the district. There's a large foyer bar and lounge: lots of plants. Break away from your escort on the sixteenth and come there. I shall be waiting from noon until four …'

‘But …' Kozlov started to protest.

‘There could be a dozen reasons why you can't make it,' anticipated Charlie. ‘I know that. So we'll run a fall-back precaution. If you can't make that first time, the sixteenth of every month from then on.'

Kozlov nodded, assimilating the instructions. ‘And then I would be with Olga?'

‘From that moment on,' promised Charlie.

‘Thank you,' said Kozlov, in abrupt gratitude.

‘It's not altruism,' said Charlie. ‘We want you both.'

‘When?'

‘At once: certainly in the next twenty-four hours.'

‘I'll have to talk to Olga.'

‘Do you have a way to contact her?'

‘She is calling, to see if you came.'

‘Then tell her to come here.'

‘She's a good Russian … like I think I am a good Russian.'

‘It's too late,' said Charlie, who'd heard it all before.

‘For me, maybe. Not for her. There could be a defence.'

‘We want her, too,' said Charlie, quietly.

Kozlov made an effort to straighten in front of Charlie and said: ‘I see.'

‘I told you it wasn't altruism.'

‘You'd really use your Moscow source against her?'

‘Of course we would,' said Charlie, brutally. ‘Don't be naive.'

‘She can't be hurt … mustn't be hurt …'

‘Don't let her be.'

‘What's it feel like, not being able to lose?' asked Kozlov, in abrupt viciousness.

‘What's it feel like to have someone in the cross-hairs of a gun sight seconds before you press the trigger and know there's not a damned thing the poor bastard can do, to avoid being killed!' came back Charlie, just as viciously. ‘Don't moralize to me! We're not in the business of morals.'

‘It must be her choice.'

Charlie didn't know why the other man was playing games, but he said: ‘Set out all the alternatives and let her make it.'

Which was what Kozlov did.

First – while they were waiting for her to arrive – Kozlov checked with Hayashi at the airport and got the confirmation that the American and British military aircraft were there, officially in transit. And then reluctantly – once actually picking up the receiver and replacing it, before lifting it again – Kozlov called the Imperial Hotel and spoke to the Americans. Liaison was still Jim Dale, but the room this time was 2.02.

The knock was hesitant and Olga Balan's entry was uncertain, too, looking at Charlie with an expression difficult to define, a mixture of hostility and curiosity and fear. Kozlov said his name and she nodded and then he said her name and Charlie nodded back.

Kozlov said: ‘I think we should talk alone,' and Charlie said: ‘Don't be stupid,' intentionally reducing the man in front of his mistress. He was aware of the feeling registering on Kozlov's face and thought I bet you'd like to, my son.

‘And in English,' he said. Would he have remembered the Russian he'd learned so well – and anxiously, in love after so long – from Natalia? Probably, unless there had been some dialect difference: still better self-protection to let them believe he did not have the language. Was there a similarity between this Russian woman and Natalia? Perhaps, but then again perhaps he was trying too hard to find one. The other comparison, now that he could see Olga Balan other than in a photograph, obviously followed and Charlie thought again of Irena with a pimple on her strap-red but naked shoulder and decided, as he had in Hong Kong, that it was no contest. The rain had eased but Olga was still wet and the strain of the previous days was clearly visible; despite all of which she was beautiful. Startling, in fact. She sat oblivious to him, near the window through which the lights of the port were becoming clearer, head forward to hear everything Kozlov said, the femininity – and the sex – radiating from her. How did a pratt like Kozlov pull a bird like that, thought Charlie; life was never fair. The reflections held part of his mind but he listened to the Russian's exposition as intently as Olga, alert for several things. He wanted to ensure Kozlov set out their earlier conversation but he was intent, too, to catch any small mistake or inflection to indicate that what was happening in front of him was a charade, an act put on to lull him into whatever false impression for them to try something that he hadn't anticipated. There wasn't anything.

‘Defect!' she said, when Kozlov finally proposed it.

‘You got a better idea?' said Charlie, coming into the conversation.

Olga made a don't-know shrug. ‘What would I do, in the West?'

‘Cooperate,' said Charlie, regretting the glibness.

‘Be a traitor, you mean!' she came back at him.

‘Yes!' said Charlie. ‘It's a hell of a lot more fun than being dead or shifting rocks with your bare hands for the rest of your life. Or becoming a
gulag
gang-bang hooker.'

‘Bastard!' shouted Kozlov. He used the Russian expression, which conveys greater obscenity, and Charlie came back in Russian, just as fluent and using the word the same way. ‘Try to see what a bastard!'

‘We would be together, in the end?' said the woman. ‘Yuri and I?'

‘Wasn't that how Yuri explained it?'

‘Only three months?' she persisted.

‘Providing Yuri gets away the first time.'

She sat staring at him, not speaking for several moments. Then she said: This is really ridiculous, isn't it? We haven't got any choice, have we?'

‘No,' said Charlie, bluntly.

‘So what's the point?'

‘You already asked that.'

There was another protracted silence. Some tension seemed to go from her and she said: ‘Did you know him well?'

‘Yes,' said Charlie. ‘There was a wife and a little girl.'

‘He wasn't meant …' She tried, but Charlie came in sharply and said: ‘Does it matter, now?'

‘I suppose not.'

‘Shall we go?' Charlie said to her.

Olga looked down at herself. ‘I didn't come … I haven't got anything …'

Just like Irena, that day on the bus, thought Charlie. He said: ‘What is there?'

There was another don't-know shrug and this time a didn't-know outburst. ‘Oh God! Dear God!'

Not here or at the one-walled church in Macao, thought Charlie. He said: ‘Ready?'

Kozlov and Olga both stood, looking at each other, restricted and embarrassed by the presence of Charlie, who remained neither restricted nor embarrassed, looking at them. They kissed, clumsily, as if they were coming together for the first time, and parted the same way.

‘Be careful,' she said.

‘And you,' he said, matching the banality.

‘No contact with the Americans until you know we are clear,' reminded Charlie. He enjoyed the irony of invoking for his own protection the bullshit that Kozlov put forward to Irena, to get her into the firing line.

‘I know what to do.'

‘The sixteenth, three months from now,' insisted Charlie.

‘I know that best of all.'

‘Just don't forget,' said Charlie.

He alerted Clarke from the apartment and when they got out into the street they found the rain had stopped: in the heat that is always there during the season there was a rise of mist – more like a steam – and Charlie thought it really was like a swamp.

‘What about passport?' she said, in the taxi.

‘It's an entry, not departure document. And you're going out under the aegis of the British government.'

‘What's going to happen to me? To Yuri and me?'

Kozlov certainly had a way of screwing up women, thought Charlie. Maybe it was literally that, but surely it couldn't be just sex. He said: ‘It'll be fine, you see.'

There was no difficulty with the diplomatic departure and within thirty minutes of their arrival at Haneda they were airborne: as the plane gained height Charlie had the impression of a great weight being lifted from him, at the release of knowing Fredericks was keeping to the agreement.

They sat separate from the army contingent, further along the body of the plane. Major Clarke was plugged into the pilot communication and after about fifteen minutes he walked up to where they sat in their canvas webbing seats and said: ‘We've cleared, sir. We're on our way to England.'

He seemed to expect some response from the woman, and when it didn't come the soldier said: ‘Sorry about the seats. Not very comfortable, I'm afraid.'

Charlie guessed it was the first time Clarke had been involved in an operation like this and that the man was enjoying it: material for a dozen dinner-table anecdotes – ‘Have I told you about the time I got a genuine KGB agent out from under the Russians' noses!' – but anyone who kept on calling him sir was welcome to whatever anecdote until it became threadbare. Answering for Olga, Charlie said: ‘The seats will be fine.'