Run Around (16 page)

‘I could bring more men in from America, to help your people,' offered Giles.

‘No!' rejected Blom, at once, seeing professional criticism in everything. Appearing to realize the brusqueness, he said more quietly: ‘No thank you. This must at all times remain a Swiss enquiry.'

‘I was offering assistance,' emphasized Giles. ‘I wasn't in any way suggesting that my Agency should take over.'

Charlie sighed, feeling very much the onlooker. He'd never known a committee operation yet that hadn't been like this, everyone staking claims and guarding their sovereignty, like virgins with their hands over the rude bits. Which was why he always insisted, whenever he could, on working absolutely alone and independently. At least that way the mistakes and oversights were his own, not somebody else's cock-up to be landed with.

More diplomatically, Levy said: ‘Is there anything at all that my service can do to help?'

‘Just run the picture and description through your records,' said Blom. ‘That way we get the benefit of three separate services. An unprecedented check, surely?'

‘I would have thought so,' said Levy.

‘It would be far better – and more effective – simply to publish the picture,' said Charlie, obstinately.

‘It would endanger the conference,' said Giles, almost as quickly as Blom had earlier rejected the offer of CIA assistance.

The second time the American had come out against going public, Charlie recognized. It was a query worth channelling back to Washington. He said: ‘Someone being killed would also be a hell of a way to ruin the conference. Wouldn't do the victim a lot of good, either: probably make his eyes water.'

‘Shouldn't we let your enquiry run its course in England, while we carry out our record searches?' suggested Levy.

‘Publishing the picture wouldn't affect that,' argued Charlie. ‘Of course everything should continue. And will continue.'

‘I think we should defer to the wishes of our host country,' came in Giles, supportively.

‘So do I,' agreed Levy.

‘I appreciate your understanding,' said Blom.

They were like the original models for the three wise monkeys, thought Charlie: hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil because it might be something nasty we don't want to hear, see or talk about. It didn't make him angry: Charlie's feeling was uneasiness. And not for some poor sod who at the moment risked being despatched to the great big stripe-trousered bureaucracy in the sky. Determinedly he said: ‘OK, so what happens if the records of the Mossad and the CIA come up with nothing, which I think they will? And the Swiss investigation doesn't take us any further forward, either?'

‘I think we should wait until we encounter that bridge before we attempt to cross it,' said Blom, satisfied with the way the conference had gone and intentionally invoking the English cliché to put the scruffy little man in his place.

‘Know what bridges are for?' demanded Charlie.

‘What!' said Blom, more in surprise than in response to the question.

Charlie took it the way he wanted. He said: ‘They're to stop people falling into the water and getting out of their depth.'

‘Motherfuckers!' erupted the President.

James Bell's grimace was almost imperceptible. He wondered how future historians would interpret the gross obscenity when they listened to the Oval Office tapes at the Austin memorial archive. As forcefully as possible, he said: ‘There's no proof whatsoever that it's the Geneva conference, Mr President.'

‘I want you to call in the Soviet ambassador,' said Anderson, red faced, a vein pumping in the middle of his forehead. ‘You let him know. You tell him if his people try to play dirty pool we'll break the fucking cue stick over their heads.'

‘We can't do that, Mr President,' said Bell.

‘Why not!' demanded Anderson, happy to have someone tangible upon whom to vent his anger.

‘Giles is quite clear in his cable. It's supposition on the part of the British—'

‘It looks good enough to me,' stopped Anderson.

‘Diplomatically I have no reason nor grounds to summon the Soviet ambassador to make any protest,' said Bell, formally, his mind on the tape system dating from the Nixon years. Bell thought it was a stupid concession to posterity: but then so in hindsight had Nixon.

‘Do you know what I think of diplomacy?'

‘What?'

‘I think it's a pain in the ass.'

‘As do most diplomats,' conceded the Secretary of State. ‘We need a system of guidelines.'

‘You make it sound like a railroad track.'

‘In many ways that's exactly what it is.'

‘Remember the phrase in Vietnam? No one being sure whether the light at the end of the tunnel was the ultimate exit or an oncoming train?' demanded Anderson, who had served in those last months in 1975 and actually piloted one of the rescue helicopters from the roof of the American embassy. The Purple Heart he'd been awarded, aged only twenty-two, had been his war hero's ticket into Congress.

‘I remember,' said Bell, who'd endured all the wartime reminiscences and couldn't understand the point of this reminder.

‘I'm not going to be run down on this,' announced Anderson, answering the unasked question.

‘Giles has got the handle on it,' assured Bell.

‘He did well, keeping the cap on,' remembered Anderson. ‘Let him know I appreciate it: tell Langley, too, so it'll go on his record.'

‘He'll be grateful,' assured Bell.

‘Are you quite sure we can't eyeball the Soviets over this?'

‘Quite sure.'

‘What then?'

‘I think we've got to go with Giles,' said the Secretary of State. ‘Let it run and see what happens: we've got the intelligence communities of four countries involved, after all.'

Anderson was unimpressed and let it show. He said: ‘What have CIA records come up with?'

‘Zero.'

‘Switzerland?'

‘The same.'

‘England?'

‘Nothing.'

‘Israel?'

‘We're waiting to hear.'

‘You want to mark that out of ten for me?'

The trouble with worrying about oncoming trains was that it gave a person tunnel vision, thought Bell. He said: ‘How bad will it be if Geneva is a target? And there is an assassination?'

Anderson leaned forward on the table, starimg at his friend. ‘You want me to answer that?'

‘Yes, Mr President, I want you to answer that,' said the other man. It would be some years anyway before the tapes were available to historians.

‘It'll be a disaster,' said Anderson. ‘An absolute, unmitigated disaster, that's what it'll be.'

‘The British are allowing us access to this man Novikov,' reminded the Secretary of State.

‘So?'

‘We'll have our own evidence of a Soviet assassination intention from a defector,' continued Bell.

Anderson began to smile, in growing awareness. ‘Which could be made public?' he suggested.

‘Which could be made public,' confirmed Bell. ‘The way I see it we've got insurance. If this is a false alarm – which it could easily be – then we've the chance of achieving the Middle East peace. Which was the original intention. But if there's an assassination and the conference is wrecked we can immediately produce the evidence – evidence supported by Britain and Switzerland and Israel, all of whom have had or will have access to Novikov – to prove that Moscow were the architects.'

Anderson's smile broadened. ‘So we can't lose?'

‘Not from the way I'm looking at it, Mr President.'

‘Is that what you call diplomacy?'

‘That's part of it,' said Bell.

‘I like it,' said Anderson. ‘I like it a lot.'

The diplomatic bag is rarely, in fact, a bag: the term generically describes any cargo precluded by international agreement from Customs interception or examination in the receiving or despatching country by the appropriate designation of the embassy involved. Sometimes the diplomatic bag comprises the hold of an entire cargo plane: frequently the counter-intelligence service of a country stand helplessly by as crates and boxes are loaded, well knowing – but unable to prove – that some technological advance is being smuggled out in front of their eyes, to be lost forever.

The special American M21 sniper's rifle with all its adaptations, together with the American Browning automatic and matching – but even more specially chosen – ammunition for both did not, however, need a crate when they arrived in Geneva. Both were accommodated in a small container of the sort long ago identified by the Swiss as that used by Moscow to transport embassy office furniture. Which was how it would have been described upon the counter-intelligence report if one had been submitted. But no report was submitted. So many men were needed to conduct the new surveillance demands that the observation at Geneva airport was suspended. It was, after all, just routine.

Chapter Sixteen

There was a queue to interview Vladimir Novikov, although it did not actually extend to the Sussex border. There should not have been, because the meetings were arranged with sufficient intervals between each. The delay was created by the Americans. They did not depute someone from their London embassy to conduct the questioning but on the President's instructions flew overnight a Russian-speaking interrogator from Washington, accompanied by a polygraph team. Novikov at once displayed the arrogance that Charlie had encountered and protested at being subjected to a lie detector test, refusing to submit to it and there was a delay of two hours and a flurry of telephone calls between Whitehall, Westminster Bridge Road and the US legation in Grosvenor Square before he could be persuaded. Novikov remained hostile and it showed on the first polygraph test so the operator asked for a second, to make comparisons against his first readings, further antagonizing the defector. For the first hour of the interview he was intentionally awkward, choosing to misunderstand at every opportunity. A debriefing that had been timed for two hours took four and was still ended without being as comprehensive as that which Charlie obtained.

A Mossad team followed, a man and a woman, both Russian speakers again and they capitalized upon the preceding episode, flattering Novikov by insisting they did not doubt his genuineness or honesty and asked for his co-operation instead of demanding it.

It was the better approach to a man of Novikov's ego. He consciously tried to provide more than he had for the Americans, volunteering information he thought the couple had failed to seek, which they hadn't: they just let Novikov talk himself out and then confirmed what he had provided by asking their questions in a different form.

Novikov complained of tiredness when it came to the Swiss interview, at first giving clipped answers, only expanding them properly after the initial thirty minutes when he realized that the interrogator intended persisting with the same questions until he was satisfied with replies.

The focus of each session was whether Novikov believed the assassination was planned for either of the Geneva meetings and he became irritated again, this time at the persistence about something of which he had no knowledge.

Each debriefing was, of course, automatically recorded on the electronic system installed in the Sussex house and simultaneously translated, so that complete transcripts were available to Sir Alistair Wilson and his deputy within an hour of the completion of the final meeting.

‘Not a thing that Charlie didn't get, despite their having the advantage of his interview to prepare themselves in advance,' judged the Director. ‘We'll pouch it to him, with the other stuff.'

‘I'd like to see the detailed assessment of the analysts before committing myself,' said Harkness, with his customary reluctance.

‘How about the airline interviews?'

‘All completed,' said Harkness. ‘No other recognition whatsoever.'

‘And the Watchers?'

‘Nothing.'

‘So all we can do is go on the belief that it's Geneva,' said Wilson.

‘Why not let it remain there?'

‘Bring Charlie home, you mean?'

‘You said he should withdraw, if the Swiss remained difficult.'

‘What are you worried about?'

‘What I'm always worried about with that man,' said the deputy. ‘Of his doing something to damage our interests. At the moment we've got the gratitude of the intelligence agencies of three countries, America among them. That's sufficient, surely?'

‘We'll stay involved, for a little longer,' decided Wilson. ‘Like Charlie, I don't really like leaving things half done. I only talked about his coming home to keep him in line.'

‘I'd like to get him back in London,' said Harkness, more directly.

‘Why?'

‘There are some financial difficulties to be resolved.'

‘They can wait, can't they?'

‘There's something else.'

‘What?'

‘He's applied for a bank overdraft. For £10,000,' disclosed Harkness. ‘The bank referral was naturally channelled to me.'

‘So?'

Harkness blinked, disappointed with the Director's response. ‘Considering the man's history, I would have thought an apparent need for money was something with which we should concern ourselves. It's obviously necessary to bring it to the attention of the Review Board.'

Wilson made clear his stifled laugh. ‘You think there's a risk of Charlie going across to the other side for thirty pieces of silver!'

‘He did before.'

‘No he did not,' refused the Director, no longer amused.

‘The point's academic.'

‘The point is that he won when he was supposed to lose and others lost in the process.'

‘We had to replace an embarrassed Director. So did the CIA.'