Charlie Muffin: The Blind Run Part 14

There was another dismissive laugh from the man. 'Do you expect me to tell you that?'

'Why not?'

'Don't be b.l.o.o.d.y stupid!'

He had been stupid, Charlie realised, in self-recrimination: he'd tried to push too hard too quickly. Still believing that Sampson's conceit was the man's weakness, he said, 'I don't believe you. I think you're full of c.r.a.p.'

It didn't work. There was yet a further jeering laugh and Sampson said, 'Full of c.r.a.p, eh!' He gestured around the ugly apartment. 'You like it here?'

Charlie frowned, uncertain where the conversation was going. 'No,' he said. 'I don't like it here. I think it stinks. Literally.'

'Neither do I,' said Sampson. 'So I'm not staying. I'm going somewhere else somewhere better away from the smell of cooking ...' He paused, to make the point. 'And away from you. It's taken me long enough, maybe too long, but at last I'm getting away from you, you down-trodden, scruffy backward-looking little sn.o.b. I told them that's what I wanted and that's what I'm getting. That seem c.r.a.p, to you?'

If Sampson had got that sort of concession agreed, so quickly and there was no reason for the man to be lying, because he'd be seen to be a liar at once then whatever he was involved in was important. Surely it could only be the would-be defector whom Wilson wanted him to find! Sampson's so recent posting on the Russian desk dictated that it had to be. Would the b.a.s.t.a.r.d know enough, to uncover whoever it was before him? Always objective, Charlie recognised that from the simple chronology of how long he'd been away from the department, compared to Sampson, then Sampson had to have an advantage. If his surmise were correct and he still wanted more, to be absolutely sure it meant he and Sampson were working against each other. He'd like that, Charlie decided. He'd wanted to teach the snotty little sod a lesson and what better way than s.n.a.t.c.h a defector whom the man was seeking right out from under his nose. Almost at once came the balance. The chronology, remembered Charlie again. And not just the chronology. Official, Soviet backing and resources, too. The b.a.s.t.a.r.d had all the advantages. And more. Son of a b.i.t.c.h, thought Charlie. He said, 'No, that doesn't seem like c.r.a.p. That seems like a two way deal in which I gain as much as you. I can stand the cabbage smells.'

'Go to h.e.l.l, Charlie,' said the other man. 'Go to h.e.l.l and stay there.'

'Up yours,' said Charlie.

Kalenin listened patiently while Berenkov outlined the arrangements he had made with the Englishman, his face showing no reaction, so that it was impossible to gauge whether the KGB chairman approved or not. Finally he said, 'You appear to have changed your mind about the man?'

'Absolutely,' admitted Berenkov at once. 'He was completely honest making no effort to exaggerate and impress me. I think we should use him and use him to the utmost.'

'But he was excluded!' protested Kalenin, driving a fist into the palm of his other hand, in an unusual show of emotion.

'It would certainly seem that way,' said Berenkov. 'But I think if we make everything available to him then he might be able to find some intelligent a.s.sessments of something ... transmission source, at least. At the moment we've got nothing.'

'I don't need reminding what we haven't got,' said Kalenin. Rarely at any time since his chairmanship or even before could he remember feeling so impotent. The feeling extended beyond impotence, to an uncertainty he couldn't even define.

'Then it's certainly worth trying,' insisted Berenkov.

'Yes,' agreed Kalenin. 'It's certainly worth trying ...' He hesitated and said, 'If we make everything available to Sampson and I accept that we must, to give the effort any point in the first place then he's going to become a very knowledgeable man, isn't he?' There was an even further pause. 'Many might say too knowledgeable.'

'I don't have any doubt about him,' repeated Berenkov.

'It's unusual, utilising a defector like this.'

'The circ.u.mstances are unusual,' reminded Berenkov. 'And we'd have complete control over him, at all times.'

'Yes,' agreed Kalenin, the doubt still obvious. 'We haven't any alternative.'

'There's something else,' said Berenkov.

The KGB chairman looked across his desk at the other man, waiting.

'Do you have any official objection to my seeing Charlie?'

'Officially seeing him?' queried Kalenin.

'No,' said Berenkov, at once. 'I was never able to thank him, for what happened before.'

'You said that was for his benefit, not yours,' remembered Kalenin.

'I was the person who won,' said Berenkov. 'Charlie lost.'

Kalenin was silent for several moments. Then he said, 'No, I don't see any reason why you shouldn't meet him ...' He smiled up. 'I wouldn't mind seeing him again myself. I liked him.'

Chapter Seventeen.

Sampson's transfer was more of a leap than a move. The new apartment was directly off Pushkinskaya Ulitza, a smaller but far more modern and complete place than that he shared with Charlie. And without smell or neighbour intrusion, a special place for special people. The furnishings were modern mostly from Finland he discovered, by turning them over and seeing their country of origin and the decoration unmarked anywhere, so that he knew everything had been redone before his occupation. There was a modern refrigerator and stove in the kitchen where the previous ones had been antiquated and barely running and a disposal unit and a television in the lounge, neither of which had been available before. Sampson surveyed everything with smiling satisfaction. A special place for special people, he thought again. They'd even thought of providing alcohol, the inevitable vodka and imported whisky and gin. The initial satisfaction increased, with every day. He was allocated a car a Lada and comparatively small, but still a car and before the end of the first week was officially informed that he was being placed on salary, 4,000 roubles a month which he recognised even without a gauge with which to compare as being high. By some standards exceptionally so. And even higher if equated against the additional grant of access to the special concessionary stores. No day pa.s.sed without there being for Sampson some reminder of the accepted and adjusted change in his importance but the most indicative was the selection of his place of work. Dzerzhinsky Square itself. There was a practical reason for the choice Kalenin was there and Berenkov was there and the specially selected cryptologists were there but for Sampson to gain admission to the KGB headquarters was for the man the most positive and the most dramatic evidence of what he was required to do. Sampson responded fittingly and properly, accepting the elevation but not becoming over-confident because of it.

Everything was provided for him: the raw, originally incomprehensible interceptions and then the increasing decipherment and from them he was able to distinguish that his original a.s.sessment during the meeting with Berenkov that the code was random computer choice was wrong. It was computer. But not random. It was a mathematical alternative, and then with an alternative built in. Within intelligence it was called a ripple code. A denominator figure was decided upon, from base in this case London and from it letters accorded to figures. The letter against figure numbers rippled twice, once from the origin of the original message and then upon a factor of two, to quadruple two times two the transmitted message. An additional precaution that the British had imposed a precaution that had delayed the final translation for a month, even though with hindsight the protection was obvious was that even from the dispatch from Moscow the receiving message had to be multiplied by a factor of two to be intelligible.

Sampson's influence did not end with the apartment allocation or by the admission into Dzerzhinsky Square. There was an office staff secretaries and two aides and he utilised them completely, ordering easels and graph charts and spending days creating his own charts and maze paths, calling upon the advantage that the cryptologists and their computers did not could not possess. Which was his awareness of the customs of the British and Russian desk working pattern.

Employing their best technology to confuse the first metaphor the Russians had unpicked a haystack, straw by straw. And found not a pin but a needle. Without knowing what pattern the needle would knit. Further to mix the metaphor, Sampson recognised his function to be to continue the unravelling of that pattern and reverse the finished design. Metaphor was actually the word that Sampson used, in his by-now regular meetings with Berenkov of whose ident.i.ty he was finally aware, a further pointer to his importance in a continuing admission of difficulty.

'There's somebody here, within these headquarters, with access from division to division,' said Sampson. 'It runs right throughout the building.'

'We're already aware of that,' said Berenkov, disappointed. He'd swung completely behind the man: provided a guarantee almost. He'd expected more than this. And quicker.

'You're insisting that I work backwards, to find source,' said the Englishman. 'Why can't you? The number of people who have access over that sort of range must be limited. It has to be.'

Berenkov had thought of that, too. It came down to six deputies and their immediate subordinates. Twelve people at most. Thirteen, if Kalenin were to be included. And he had to be included, unthinkable though it might be. Berenkov had imposed his own surveillance and from it learned of other surveillance imposed upon himself. Kalenin, he guessed. He was not offended. It would not take long, Berenkov recognised, before the uncertainty started to become insidious and undermine the very centre of their organisation.

'How much longer?' demanded Berenkov, wanting the impatience to show.

'I don't know,' said Sampson. 'I've got everything perhaps too much but I can't progress beyond it: the one thing I don't have is the key they are using in London.'

'We do,' insisted Berenkov. 'Our mathematicians worked out the multiples and the progressions.'

Sampson had come prepared for the dispute, because it hadn't been the first. He threw across four of the raw messages and the transcriptions and said, 'OK, what's missing?'

Berenkov sighed, prepared also. 'The complete ident.i.ty line,' he admitted.

'Right!' said Sampson, triumphantly. 'We can read the message but not anything beyond the recipient, Sir Alistair Wilson. Why haven't your cryptologists been able to get past the addressee?'

'It's a different code,' said Berenkov, making a further concession.

'Which you're expecting me to crack without a computer: or even mathematical training!'

'You worked there!' came back Berenkov. 'People make codes, not the computers that merely put them into practice. What code would Wilson have created, for absolutely secure and personal messages, that only he and maybe a handful of other people were handling?'

Sampson smiled, a moment of sudden and hopeful understanding. 'It would smell,' he said.

Berenkov looked at the other man in blank incomprehension.

'And they're a favourite in Britain,' added Sampson.

It was for Charlie m.u.f.fin a suspended time, existence within some sort of capsule. Almost literally that because apart from the interrogation periods with Natalia it was spent incarcerated in the odorous apartment, a prison like the other prison he had known. Two nights after Sampson's departure he had tried to leave, to be immediately confronted outside the main entrance by a plain-clothes guard who told him in English, which meant the man was specifically a.s.signed that he wasn't allowed out of the building. With no other access to anyone in authority, Charlie complained to Natalia, who appeared unimpressed even uninterested in his protests. So he taught them all a lesson and to prove that he could still do it slipping out through the rear entrance and managing to avoid the obvious guard posted there. He stayed out for over two hours, just aimlessly wandering the streets belatedly aware that he didn't possess any roubles to do anything else before presenting himself at the front of the building through which he wasn't supposed to pa.s.s and in such a way that the concierge as well as the guard saw him, so that both had to report upon one another. He knew both had, from the next meeting with Natalia. She attempted, in her usual method of interrogation, to approach it obliquely but, completely accustomed to her now, Charlie avoided it until finally she had to ask outright and he grinned at her, like he had on the occasion presenting the listening devices and said, 'I was out spying!'

She sighed, although not unkindly. 'Do you know something?' she said.

'What?'

'I've got to make a recommendation about you,' she said. 'I've got to a.s.sess all our conversations and all our debriefings and I've actually got to make a recommendation about what use you could be, if you stayed here.'

Charlie was glad of her impatience because he was impatient also. Although it was only conjecture he was increasingly convinced he had been correct about the reason for Sampson's abrupt removal. Which had been three and a half weeks ago. Which taking into account the period it had taken them to reach Moscow meant one of his six months had already gone and he'd achieved absolutely f.u.c.k all except to soften the att.i.tude and he was sure he'd softened the att.i.tude of a very attractive girl with big t.i.ts. Which wasn't the point of his being there. 'I haven't got any money,' he said, wanting to increase her annoyance.

Natalia frowned, accustomed by now to his changes. 'So what?' she said.

'So I can't invite you out to dinner. Why don't you ask me?' It worked better than he expected.

Allowing her irritation to show which she rarely did, despite his previous provoking she said, 'Why don't I recommend your being sent back to England, as someone no use to us?'

'Is that what happened to Sampson?' demanded Charlie.

Her face became fixed, almost a pained expression. 'What happened to Sampson isn't of any concern to you.'

'It would be, if he'd gone back,' said Charlie, refusing to give up. 'I'd like to know the b.a.s.t.a.r.d has been sent back.'

'He hasn't been,' she said, exasperated. 'There was a purpose for him.'

'More than me?' demanded Charlie, at once, not wanting to lose the momentum.

'Yes,' she said, recovering quickly. 'Far more than you.'

'Great mistake,' said Charlie.

'Prove it!' she came back, just as determined.

'Let me,' he said, matching her.

That night, in the lonely, smell-steeped apartment in which nothing ever happened the telephone rang. So unusual was it that Charlie stared at the instrument, surprised, only s.n.a.t.c.hing it off the cradle when he realised the caller might ring off.

'Charlie?'

'Yes.'

'Alexei,' said the voice. 'Alexei Berenkov.'

Thank Christ, thought Charlie.

Chapter Eighteen.

Having decided to meet there was a difficulty with the venue. Berenkov knew it would be inappropriate forbidden, in fact for Charlie to come to Dzerzhinsky Square and Charlie without a proper reason for the feeling, because it was not of his choice or making was reluctant for the Russian to come to him among the cooking smells. The decision came from Berenkov and Charlie said he would like very much to go to the Russian's home and meet his family. Until now apart from the one rebellious walkabout Charlie's existence had been within the apartment, the telephone-arranged pick-up and Natalia Fedova's office alongside the peripheral road and as he left that night, emerging from the apartment block with no obvious guard in place, Charlie had the impression of escaping again. The driver was as taciturn as they all appeared to be but at least he accorded Charlie the respect of holding open the door of the car. It was a large vehicle, a Zil, opulent by Soviet standards, an official car. The driver used the government-reserved centre lane, like the man who took him out for the debriefings but Berenkov's Zil seemed to belong whereas the debriefing transport always appeared to Charlie to be an intrusive interloper. The route was different, too, back towards the centre of the city. Even the street lighting was brighter and he actually saw the illumination around the Kremlin and Red Square. He made the guess and was proven right when they moved into the Kutuzovsky Prospekt complex. The government enclave, Charlie knew. Which meant Berenkov had returned in triumph. And was still held in active and more important working respect. Charlie tried to curb the excitement. Even before they met he had confirmation of Berenkov being in Dzerzhinsky Square: Wilson hadn't been sure, that night in the governor's office. Maybe you'd even get to him. And he had. Things were suddenly looking good: better than he'd dare hope they would, in fact. Still too early to start counting chickens the eggs weren't even laid yet, let alone hatched but at least he was being given a look inside the henhouse.

There were the predictable security checks and as they moved forward Charlie stared up at the carefully segregated blocks, wondering what Politburo member was behind what lighted window. He made another sure guess and was right again; there wasn't any odour of cabbage.

Berenkov was in the lobby of his section, to take Charlie past the final security. For a few moments each man stood on opposing sides of the foyer, gazing at each other in silent recollection. Berenkov, always the more exuberant of the two, broke the mood, striding across with both arms outstretched and booming, 'Charlie! Charlie! ... it's good to see you!'

Charlie accepted the embrace, conscious of the attention of the driver and inner guards: Berenkov smelled as Charlie remembered from their initial, fencing encounters before he'd made a case and was able to arrest the Russian of expensive cologne and expensive cigars. 'And you, Alexei,' he said, sincerely. 'It's good to see you.'

From a cubicle one of the security men said something Charlie didn't catch but indicating a book, a clear reference to some noted entry formality, but Berenkov waved his hand dismissively, typically refusing to conform, leading Charlie instead towards the elevators. 'Clerks!' he said. 'The world is full of clerks.'

They stood apart in the elevator, each surveying the other again. Berenkov shook his head and said, 'You don't look good, Charlie. I've seen you look better.'

'I've been better,' confessed Charlie. 'You look fine.' The Russian did: much fatter than Charlie remembered, even from before the arrest, actually appearing physically bigger than Charlie's memory. Florid-faced, too, he saw, remembering Sampson's description. High liver, by the look of him. Berenkov certainly looked like a high liver. But then, he always had been.

'Things are pretty good,' said the Russian, as the lift stopped.

Eighth floor, Charlie noted. He wondered if degree of importance were indicated by the level of the apartment. If they were it would make Berenkov very important.

Valentina and Georgi stood waiting, nervous and uncertain in the main room: they were overawed as much maybe more by Berenkov's physical presence as by encountering someone from the West, Charlie guessed. With no reason for having made any prejudgment, Charlie was surprised at how neat and diminutive Valentina was; he'd expected Berenkov to have a wife matching him in size, battleship to battleship. Georgi was about the same height as his father but without the weight and much darker, too, darker skinned and darker haired. The greetings were shyly hesitant, the boy and his mother deferring to Berenkov's boisterous lead. Charlie wished he'd had the facility and money to bring Valentina a small gift. Commerce had been easier in the nick than it was here, he thought, in pa.s.sing. Berenkov gushed whisky into gla.s.ses and apologised for its inferior quality and Charlie drank it gratefully and said it was wonderful, which he thought it was. Valentina laid out pick-ups, tiny dishes of smoked fish and nuts and olives and Georgi sat alertly attentive. Forcing himself to make the contribution, the boy said, 'How long have you been in Moscow?'

'Not long: only three or four weeks,' said Charlie. Berenkov wouldn't have told either of them, he supposed; not everything anyway.

'How long do you expect to stay?'

It didn't look as if he'd told the boy anything. 'A long time,' said Charlie, easily. He felt no difficulty. It was business; their type of business at which they were both expert. Berenkov would understand, later.

'My father was a long time in the West.'

Charlie smiled sideways at Berenkov, who was sitting contentedly listening to the boy practise his English in the conversation. 'I know he was,' said Charlie. 'He was very successful there.'

'You were a close friend of my father's?'

Charlie smiled again, aware of Berenkov's attention upon him now. 'Your father and I had the same sort of job but we were compet.i.tors,' said Charlie. 'There was a lot of mutual respect between us.'

Berenkov laughed, approvingly, and echoed, 'A great deal of mutual respect.'

Books lined two walls of the Moscow apartment, as they had in the Eaton Square flat which Berenkov had occupied in London. The identification for the person he had to contact was Chekhov: and Berenkov had used Chekhov, for his London codes. The spy was someone in headquarters, Wilson had said: Berenkov was at headquarters. As likely as it seemed, Charlie knew he could make no move whatsoever. He could be mistaken. And Berenkov was too astute to miss an approach.

'I'm very glad, to be able to thank you,' said Valentina: she had a predictably small voice. 'I've always felt that you made it possible for Alexei to come back home.'

'I suppose I did,' said Charlie. She clearly knew more than the boy.