See Charlie Run (8 page)

‘That'll be fine,' said Fredericks, tightly.

Charlie signalled his emergence from the code room and Cartright was waiting when he lowered the walkway and went back into the main body of the embassy. ‘Always feel uncomfortable in these things: like I'm in one of those funny spy films where people have code names and kill each other,' said Charlie.

‘Sometimes it happens, and it isn't in films,' said Cartright.

‘You know something?' said Charlie. ‘Until now it's been a great day. You just pissed all over it.'

‘Well?' demanded Wilson.

‘It could have been luck,' said Harkness, with insufficient thought.

‘Luck had nothing to do with it,' insisted the Director. ‘It was intelligent assessment from a damned good operator …' He paused and said: ‘Disappointing that Witherspoon didn't establish any possible connection.'

Witherspoon was a protegé of the deputy director, who ignored the remark. Instead he said: ‘How did we get such an immediate confession out of Knott?'

Wilson smiled and said: ‘Promise of an early parole review and a five-year reduction of the sentence.'

‘We're going to do that!' exclaimed Harkness, surprised at the concessions.

‘Of course not,' said Wilson, surprised in his own turn. ‘I wanted a confession in a hurry and that was the way to get it. The bastard will serve his full time, with no remission or parole consideration.'

‘What about Herbert Bell: he's dangerously in place.'

‘Don't want another espionage trial, so soon upon the other one,' said Wilson. ‘It would unsettle NATO more than they are at present: particularly the Americans. And I definitely don't want any uncertainty between us and Washington, no matter how peripheral, until this business in Japan is settled.'

‘We can't just leave him,' protested Harkness. ‘He's been positively identified as a Soviet spy.'

‘I'm not going to leave him,' said Wilson. ‘I'm going to use him. I'm going to make Herbert Bell a conduit for as much confusing disinformation to Moscow as I can possibly manage. And then, when we do arrest him, the Russians won't know what they can and what they can't trust, out of everything he's sent, for years.'

‘Let's hope Charlie Muffin is as lucky in Japan as he was on this thing,' said the deputy.

‘I keep telling you, it wasn't luck,' insisted Wilson. ‘Charlie's better than most, for all his faults.'

One day Charlie Muffin would make a mistake impossible to cover up or lie about, thought Harkness: a mistake he was determined to uncover and expose. Hopefully Cartright would provide it. Harkness wondered how long the Director's strange loyalty would last, after Charlie Muffin made the inevitable slip.

Kozlov concluded the arrangements with the letting agency and then went by himself to the apartment in Shinbashi, overlooking the Hamarikyu Garden and the sea beyond. Aware of the accommodation problems of Tokyo, Kozlov decided it was extremely good: a bedroom separate from a living area, a small kitchen and – most important – an existing telephone. The Russian would have enjoyed staying longer but he was late and Hayashi was important.

Hayashi was waiting at the appointed railway-arch
yakatori
stall where it was a habit for homegoing commuters to stop, for chicken and sake. He smiled anxiously when he saw the Russian and said: ‘The message said it was important.'

‘You
do
control the military section of the airport?'

‘Yes,' said Hayashi, at once. He'd ordered but wasn't eating.

‘I must know of any US or British arrivals,' said Kozlov.

‘I can guarantee it,' promised Hayashi.

Beneath the table Kozlov handed the man his retainer: a bourgeois revolutionary, thought the Russian, contemptuously.

Chapter Five

Charlie set himself the test as he left the embassy, guessing at the black Mazda, and got the confirmation that it was the CIA surveillance car when it pulled out at once and began following his taxi. Charlie turned back inside his vehicle, shaking his head. It was something he'd have to sort out with the American: things were going to be difficult enough as it was, without constant game playing between them. Not this sort of elementary game playing, anyway. He still needed positively to know whether Fredericks had checked his abort authorization. The man should have done, if he were the professional that Cartright suggested. And if the American believed he had the power, then Charlie knew he possessed the lever which put him slightly ahead, in the forthcoming bargaining. About bloody time. He tried to shrug off, literally, the irritation of the previous night. He'd been caught with his pants down and his pride had been hurt, but it was stupid – and worse, a distraction – to go on thinking about it. Keep it in mind, for when the opportunity came. But in its rightful, second place, where the need to even the score didn't intrude.

At the entrance to the compound he identified himself to the Marine guard and then again to the receptionist in the main vestibule. While the receptionist made a muffled telephone confirmation a second Marine checked his identification, closely comparing Charlie's photograph against the man in front of him, obviously reluctant to allow him any further into the embassy.

He'd worn a fresh shirt, too, thought Charlie. Indicating the photograph, he said: ‘I could have been in pictures. A star.'

The soldier looked back, face unmoving. ‘You got any ID other than this?'

Miserable bugger, thought Charlie. ‘Afraid not,' he said.

From behind the guard, the receptionist said: ‘Someone's coming. Will you wait?'

‘There,' said the unhappy Marine, pointing to a seating area near the door, where Charlie would have been directly in sight.

Charlie ignored it, going instead to the American Tourist Office information rack and leafing through the brochures. It had been a long time since he'd been to America: during the time he'd been on the run from his own people, after setting the Directors up. Which had been a silly thing to do, he thought, in rare self-recrimination. They had been prepared to sacrifice him at a Berlin border crossing and so they deserved the embarrassment of Soviet arrest and humilating exchange. But he hadn't properly calculated the personal cost. And not just the running and the hiding; he could have managed that, because so much of his professional life had involved running and hiding. It was the other things. If he hadn't determined his own personal vengeance, Edith wouldn't have been killed, in their retaliation hunt for him. So lonely, for so long. And then Natalia … Charlie snapped the unfocussed brochure shut, closing out with it the reflections and the unaccustomed self-pity. His wife was dead and Natalia beyond reach, and to think about either was another distraction he couldn't afford: he'd made his mistakes and they couldn't be undone and he had to live with them.

‘You'd never get a visa.'

Charlie turned, to the huge figure of Art Fredericks, putting the booklet back into the rack. ‘Got some good references.'

‘Soviet or British?'

Fuck you, thought Charlie. Take your pick,' he said.

Charlie walked deeper into the embassy alongside the CIA Resident, grinning at the Marine as he passed and thinking what an incongruous couple they must look; Charlie realized he scarcely reached the other man's shoulders. There was a further identity check from more Marines at the actual entrance to the intelligence section of the embassy, and Fredericks signed his personal authority for Charlie's admission. Beyond the desk, the corridors were blank walled and the doorways contained no glass, so that the offices beyond were completely concealed. Charlie looked up expectantly, found the camera monitor and winked.

Fredericks' office was large, because he was the CIA officer in charge, but it still didn't seem big enough for the man. Charlie guessed the enormous enveloping chair had been specially imported. There was the obligatory US flag in the corner and the nameplate on the front of the desk, and behind, on a low cabinet, an array of sports pictures and pennants. Charlie identified the boxing prints and thought there was also a photograph of Fredericks in American football kit. It would, thought Charlie, have been a sight to see. On the desk itself was a family photograph of a pretty blonde-haired woman and two blonde-haired girls, faces of both dominated by freckles and a foundry's supply of steel that always seemed to go into American teeth braces.

‘So we're going to work together?' said Charlie.

‘That was always the plan.'

‘You're setting up the meeting for me, with Kozlov?'

Fredericks hesitated, glad he'd given the undertaking the previous night and was not being forced into an open capitulation or admission of how he'd tried to screw the scruffy son-of-a-bitch. Harry Fish was right; the bag women on 42nd Street were in better shape. He said: ‘I've started things off. Like I said, it'll take a while.'

‘You also said you thought Kozlov was genuine. Why?'

There was another pause from the American. He'd worked his butt off, regarding this as probably the most important case he was likely to encounter in a dozen years, and now this guy was coming in and expecting to be fed it all on a plate. ‘Everything he's said checks out.'

Charlie sighed, conscious of the attitude. Openly to challenge would make things worse. He said: ‘OK, let's start at the beginning. Anything known, in your records?'

Fredericks shook his head. ‘We've run the name – and his wife's – through every computer there is: ours, FBI, NSA and military and navy. FBI have two Kozlovs, both who served in Washington at one time or another. One is now in the Soviet embassy in Ankara, the other in Paris …'

‘Photo-comparisons, to make sure they're the same people?' interrupted Charlie.

‘Of course we made photo checks!' said Fredericks, irritably. ‘The Kozlovs who are in Ankara and Paris are the guys who were in Washington. Neither of the wives' names were Irena, either. Kozlov's clean.'

‘Sure that's his real name?'

‘We've no way of telling.'

Charlie frowned openly at the evasion. ‘You want me to believe you haven't taken a photograph, during one of your four meetings!'

Fredericks smiled, in reluctant admission. He said: ‘Twice. We freighted the pictures back to Washington. He's not on any mug file we or any other agency have.'

‘Born?'

‘Leningrad, 1940.'

‘Age seem right?'

‘Yes.'

‘Anything unusual?'

‘Unusual?' queried Fredericks.

The man knew what he meant, for Christ's sake! Charlie said: ‘Facial hair. Or lack of hair. Scars. A limp. Missing fingers. Jewellery. Odd-shaped rings. That kind of unusual.'

Fredericks decided that Charlie's mind was sharper than his suit. He said: ‘No.'

‘No what?' pressed Charlie, determinedly.

‘Nothing unusual whatsoever. No facial hair. He's not losing it up top, either. Full head. No scars or limps. Doesn't wear any jewellery at all, not even a ring,' itemized the American.

‘Full head?' isolated Charlie. ‘Do you mean he's got more than you'd expect, for a man of his age?'

‘No, I don't think so.'

‘Colour?'

‘Lightish brown.'

‘Lightish brown? Or a tendency to greyness?'

Fredericks paused and then said: ‘I'm sorry. Would you like a coffee or a drink or something?'

‘Nothing,' said Charlie, refusing a deflecting interruption. ‘Genuine light brown or greying?'

Beneath the desk, Fredericks gripped and ungripped his hands in frustration. Why this guy, of all people? ‘Genuine brown.'

‘You said light brown,' reminded Charlie. ‘So what is it, light brown? Or brown?'

‘What the hell is this, a fucking inquisition!' erupted the American, at last.

‘If you like,' agreed Charlie, unperturbed by the outburst. ‘You've already told me it's my ass. And it is. And I've already told you that I'm not risking it until I'm satisfied. Which I'm not … not by a long way. If I don't get it all, then we both get nothing…' He hesitated, wondering if he should take the risk, and thought shit, why not? He said: ‘London confirmed my authority to abort, didn't they?'

‘Wouldn't you have checked?' said Fredericks, defensively.

‘Of course I would. That's what I'm doing now,' said Charlie. No doubt about it: General Sir Alistair Wilson was a bloody good man to have watching your back. Or ass, which seemed the buzzword.

‘Light brown,' capitulated the American. ‘His hair is definitely light bown, without any grey.'

‘Eyes?'

‘Blue.'

‘Light blue or dark blue?'

‘Dark blue.'

‘Spectacles?'

‘Yes.'

Charlie came forward slightly in his chair. ‘Don't you regard that as an unusual feature?'

‘No,' said Fredericks.

‘Of course it is,' disputed Charlie. ‘Heavy framed, light frame, metal frame or frameless?'

‘Heavy,' replied Fredericks. There was very little he was going to be able to hold back, for themselves.

‘Heavy what?'

‘Plastic, I guess. Black.'

‘Thick lens?'

‘Not particularly.'

‘So they could be false, some sort of minimal disguise?'

‘It would be minimal, wouldn't it?'

‘That's all it's got to be, in most cases,' lectured Charlie. ‘People, even trained people, respond to immediate impressions, not careful studies. Heavy black glasses are a feature, and if they are missing when you expect them the immediate impression might be that it's the wrong person … the sort of hair you've described can easily be tinted, to heighten the change …' Charlie stopped, annoyed at an oversight of his own. ‘Is it parted?' he said.

‘Yes,' said Fredericks.