Charlie Muffin: The Blind Run Part 16

Wainwright's bladder went. A deepening, dark stain began to grow and he looked down at himself and the watching Russians heard him say 'Oh no ...' Almost at once, in private conversation with himself, Wainwright said, 'Knew it would happen: always knew it would happen.' He slumped back in the chair again, legs apart now for a different sort of comfort.

The torture recording had been made under psychological supervision. The sounds didn't end, at once. They seemed to come from a distance, fresh sounds of agony and then gradually subsiding groaning, the screams becoming sobs, then discernible, helpless crying.

Wainwright sat comparatively upright but with his head lolled forward, as if he were examining the wetness of his lap, hands together in a loose praying gesture. Despite the sensitivity of the listening devices, Wainwright's words were at first difficult for Kalenin or Berenkov to hear. They strained and at last identified it, a mantra to which he was still trying to cling.

'... accredited as the first secretary to the emba.s.sy of Her Britannic Majesty, Queen Elizabeth ... protected by Vienna Convention ... accredited as the first secretary to the emba.s.sy of Her Britannic Majesty, Queen Elizabeth ...'

Kalenin jabbed at the console in front of him, depressing the b.u.t.ton that would send Koblov back into the room. The Russian's entry was different this time a continuation of technique no longer curtly abrupt but less hurried, more sympathetic.

'They'll be here soon,' he said, soft-voiced also. 'Maybe fifteen minutes. I'm sorry. It's not my way.'

'No!' said Wainwright, pleading.

'I'm sorry,' repeated Koblov. 'I don't decide.'

'Please no.'

'They're impatient.'

'Let me tell you: let me tell you now.'

Because the room was completely wired, they were ready outside. The sound at the door was not a knock but the flat-handed thump of a familiar workman demanding access to a repet.i.tive job. Wainwright cringed from the sound. There was fresh wetness and he reached out to Koblov and said again 'Please no. Please!'

Koblov appeared to consider the plea and then shouted, in Russian. 'Wait! In a moment.' The response from outside was gutteral, a muttered protest of impatience and Koblov shouted, 'I said wait. Give me a moment.' He actually smiled at Wainwright and said, 'You'll have to hurry.'

'What?' said Wainwright, emptily. 'Tell me what you want.'

'Everything,' urged Koblov. 'Tell me everything, from the very beginning.'

Wainwright did. He started at the moment of contact, when he received the note in the pocket of a coat he retrieved from the cloakroom at the Bolshoi and of the information that accompanied it, alerting them to level of intelligence available. And then of the subsequent drops, every item as startling and as important as that which preceded it. Wainwright recounted London's excited, anxious response and the establishment of the special code and the decision, after he had made fifteen pick-ups, to transfer the control to another of their station men, Brian Richardson, because London was determined against losing the source by detection.

'That's when I stopped being control,' said Wainwright. 'Two and a half months ago.'

Koblov didn't hurry or depart from the procedure, despite the need for urgency, of which he was well aware. He took Wainright back to the beginning again, the Bolshoi itself, and filled in the gaps that Wainwright had hurried by, in his anxiety, establishing that the drops were always dictated to and never by Wainwright. He took the slips from the file again and went through them, one by one, formally establishing each in their order of transmission and at last approached the essential of the arrest and the interrogation, the ident.i.ty of the source. Koblov even did that circ.u.mlocutiously.

'What was the code cover: the name by which he was known?'

'Rose,' said Wainwright and behind the mirror Berenkov smiled wryly and shook his head.

'Always Rose? The code never altered?'

'It may have done, when Richardson took over. I would have expected it to be changed, with a new control. That is the procedure.'

'What's the real name?' Koblov asked the vital question quietly, dismissively almost, continuing the impression that all he was doing anyway was confirming what they already knew.

'I don't know,' said Wainwright, at once.

Beside him Berenkov felt Kalenin stiffen.

Koblov, the professional questioner, showed no reaction. 'The person who made contact at the Bolshoi. And then on the other fourteen occasions,' he elaborated, as if he imagined Wainwright had misunderstood the initial question. 'Who was he? What was his name?'

Wainwright looked back curiously at the Russian. 'But I thought I made that clear,' he said. 'There was never a meeting; an open contact. It was a blind approach at the Bolshoi and that was the way it continued. When we picked up from each drop there would be the next one specified. He if it is a he was only ever Rose.'

'We were wrong to pick him up,' said Kalenin, distantly. 'We knew the other man had already gone; we should have let Wainwright run.'

In the interview room, Koblov was continuing smoothly on, his outward demeanour giving no indication of his inward frustration: he was aware of being literally under the eyes of the chairman himself and wanted the interrogation to be a triumph. 'After you ceased being control, Richardson took over?'

'Yes,' reiterated Wainwright.

'But you're station chief: the resident?'

'Yes.'

'So you were in charge of Richardson?'

Wainwright shook his head. 'I told you that, too,' he said. 'When London realised what it had they suspended some of the normal procedures. Richardson worked entirely independently: taking over the cipher codes. The Rose operation itself. I was actually told not to become involved, so that I wouldn't know.'

'You must have talked,' persisted Koblov, still gentle. 'It had been your operation, to begin with. And it was a spectacular one, according to London's reaction. You must have talked about it to Richardson.'

Wainwright smiled, an unusual expression for the man. 'Not about the subsequent information. I was banned from that. And there wasn't anything to talk about anyway. They continued to be blind contacts.'

'So you discussed the ident.i.ty!' seized Koblov.

'I asked him if he'd met Rose,' qualified Wainwright. 'I've never known an operation like this before; neither had Richardson.'

'And?' prompted Koblov.

'Richardson said it was the same for him as it had been for me: he'd never met Rose.'

'Did you believe him?'

Wainwright hesitated. 'I had no reason not to.'

'But you'd been moved from control,' reminded Koblov. 'Distanced from what was happening. Richardson would have lied to you, wouldn't he, if he'd been told to?'

'Oh yes,' agreed Wainwright at once. 'But I didn't get the impression that he was. I think I would have known.'

'Richardson's been withdrawn,' reminded Koblov.

'Yes.'

'So who's the new control? Richardson took over from you. Who's taken over from Richardson?'

'I don't think anyone has,' said Wainwright.

'You wouldn't think,' said Koblov, minutely increasing the pressure because he felt the Briton was relaxing. 'You're still the resident. You'd know.'

'I'm unaware of anyone taking over control.'

'Are you saying that the Rose operation is over?' demanded Koblov.

'No,' said Wainwright.

'What then?'

'We didn't talk about the messages, like I said,' explained Wainwright. 'But from the quickness in the way things happened and from the impression I got from Richardson although he didn't actually say anything I thought he'd gone back to arrange a crossing.'

In the viewing room Kalenin said, 'If that were to happen it would mean disaster on top of disaster.'

'Crossing?' said Koblov.

'Defection,' provided Wainwright, needlessly. 'One of the last conversations I had with Richardson he said "I wonder how much longer Rose can carry on?" It struck me as odd at the time.'

'Those were the exact words? "I wonder how much longer Rose can carry on?"'

'I don't remember exactly,' said Wainwright. 'That was the meaning of what he said.'

'We shouldn't have openly arrested the d.a.m.ned man,' said Kalenin, exasperated. 'We should have trapped him; turned him, so that he could have told us if a new control were being imposed.'

'If his inference is right, then there won't be a new control,' said Berenkov. 'There'll be a defection.'

'They don't just happen,' said Kalenin. 'A crossing has to be arranged and someone has to do the arranging. And that will have to be through the emba.s.sy. Picking up Wainwright was a disaster.'

'I'm sorry,' apologised Berenkov. 'It seemed the right thing to do, in the circ.u.mstances.'

'It is as much my fault as yours,' said Kalenin. 'I approved the decision, before it was put into operation.'

Although he did not doubt the friendship, Berenkov wondered if Kalenin would share the guilt before any Politburo enquiry. And the way this was going, a Politburo enquiry looked increasingly likely. It got worse.

Determined to strip Wainwright to the bone in case he were a consummate professional rather than a pant-wetting man wrongly retained beyond his time Kalenin held the diplomat far longer than was acceptable even by the usual disregarding Russian standards against the British diplomatic protests. There was no physical indication of pressure when the man was finally released into British protection from Lefortovo because no physical pressure had been necessary but mentally he had been reduced to admitting and confronting every weakness, fear and cowardice in that perpetually reflecting mirror in that stark interrogation room. Moscow publicly named Wainwright and announced the smashing of a major Western-inspired spy ring actually recalling the Soviet amba.s.sador from London for an undisclosed period, which was unprecedented and Whitehall responded with a contemptuous denial.

Moscow announced Wainwright's expulsion and in another rare departure it was fully reported in Pravda and Izvestia and upon Moscow television, because Kalenin was grabbing at straws and thought the publicity might frighten whoever their spy was from defection until they found another way to locate him and in the customary t.i.t-for-tat response London declared a senior trade counsellor at the Soviet trade delegation at Highgate persona non grata.

No one thought properly thought of Wainwright. A brave man who had known he was a coward but tried instead to be a brave man and failed an abject coward Wainwright on the night before his recall locked the door of the emba.s.sy residence room in which, womb-like, he felt quite secure. Completely aware that courage was a quality he lacked, he consciously drank half a bottle of vodka to obtain it falsely and when that proved insufficient drank more, so that when they broke the door down the following morning more than three quarters of the bottle had gone. Like the defiance of his interrogation, Wainwright's attempt at suicide was a miserable, clumsy, near failure. The emba.s.sy beam was more than sufficient to support his body weight and the belt didn't break, either. But he placed the buckle wrongly, in the final, drunkenly brave seconds and so when he kicked away the chair he didn't die quickly, from the neck-break of hanging, but twisted and turned in the sort of agony that had always been his ultimate fear and which was confirmed by later autopsy and died slowly, from strangulation.

It was, therefore, a month before Berenkov felt able to raise positively the suggestion he had mentioned in pa.s.sing to Kalenin and even then, from Kalenin's absent-minded reaction, Berenkov knew it was premature.

'Spy school?' queried Kalenin, the distraction obvious.

'Charlie m.u.f.fin,' reminded Berenkov. 'The debriefing is finished now. I think he'd be an a.s.set.'

'He can be your responsibility,' agreed Kalenin, distracted still. 'If you think he can be of some use, put him to it.'

Chapter Twenty.

It was a long month for Charlie. Frustrating, too. Increasingly so. There was no formal announcement from Natalia Fedova that the debriefing was ending. They had become repet.i.tive, certainly, but that was not infrequent with such interviews and Charlie had become to rely upon them, his only source of outside, daily contact. He left the by now familiar building by the peripheral one evening expecting another summons getting up at the regularly established time and bathing and waiting for the telephone to ring on several subsequent days but nothing happened. Charlie was disorientated by the abrupt halt, recognising that his reliance upon the encounters extended beyond the simple fact of meeting another human being. He recognised, too, his was a predictable response: there'd even been lectures about it, during the instructional sessions, the attachment that a subservient interviewee psychologically develops towards his debriefer in situations of stress, cut off and far from home. Knowing the att.i.tude, Charlie was surprised it had happened to him; the instructional sessions were, after all, warnings to prevent it. Had it been what the psychologists had warned about? OK, so he was cut off and far from home but he knew the way back. And the stress of the unstarted mission wasn't anything he didn't think he could handle. Charlie didn't like falling into categories evolved by mind doctors, most of whom he thought were a b.l.o.o.d.y sight dafter than the people they were supposed to treat anyway. So what was it then? Had he fancied her? She was the first woman he'd seen been near at all for a long time because of the circ.u.mstances. And he had, on several occasions, got the impression that she was responding to the flirta tion: wasn't offended by it at least. Yes, he answered himself finally: he had fancied her. Which was dafter than he'd just considered all psychologists to be. The debriefed didn't pull their debriefers; Charlie smiled, realising another definition for the word. Debriefers kept their briefs on, he thought. He supposed there was nothing wrong in fantasising as long as he didn't lose sight of the fact that that was exactly what it was, a fantasy. Still a b.l.o.o.d.y attractive woman: big t.i.ts, too. And the termination meant he was imprisoned again, stuck inside the smelly flat.

He was disappointed, too on a professional as well as a social level that there was no further contact with Berenkov. He'd expected it they'd arranged it that night, after all but no calls came. After the first four empty, echoing days, Charlie decided upon another rebellion and found things different there, as well. No one tried to stop him.

Charlie had an excellent, inherent sense of direction and he had the advantage of the drive even though it had been at night on his way to Berenkov's apartment so he set off confidently towards the centre of the city. The excursion began as the test to see if he were still under restriction but as he walked he realised what he'd find in the centre of the city and thought why not? It was the only contact point he had. And it was the reason for his being in Moscow at all. Having decided actually to go to the GUM complex, Charlie wondered about clearing his trail, smiling as he had earlier in the apartment as the tradecraft expression came automatically to mind. No, he determined. Not on this, the first outing. He didn't have any doubt that there was surveillance but if he evaded it they'd become suspicious and that was the last thing he wanted. It was better to make the journey just that, an apparently aimless outing of someone trying to relieve his boredom and he genuinely felt that, after all by visiting the most obvious tourist spots in the city. Which naturally unsuspiciously included the largest department store in the Soviet Union. For those who watched unseen and he didn't intend even trying to see them it would be nothing. For Charlie, it would be a useful reconnoitre for the real thing. If the real thing ever happened.

The streets were drab and uniform and depressing and Charlie thought how crushing it would be to imagine having to spend the rest of his life here. Which was what Sampson would do. Enthusiastically. For how long? Charlie wondered. The stupid b.u.g.g.e.r was eager enough now, full of cliche and cant but Charlie couldn't believe that later a year, maybe two, maybe five but some time later he wouldn't realise he'd just changed prisons. Serve the b.a.s.t.a.r.d right. Charlie hoped the realisation came sooner, rather than later. Christ, how Charlie wished there were some way he could really find out if Sampson were involved in trying to trace the Russian traitor. He thought he b.l.o.o.d.y well knew that he'd rather confront and defeat Sampson in a compet.i.tion of professional ability than he would compete in the best of three falls in Natalia Fedova. It would be a h.e.l.l of an experience, falling on to Natalia Fedova. Silly, fantasising sod, he thought.

The ma.s.sive expanse of Red Square opened up before him and Charlie experienced a spurt of satisfaction at having found his way unfailingly there. He hoped after the absence that all the other abilities were still as good. For the benefit of those dutifully observing, Charlie meandered without any apparent direction through Kitav-Gorod, the oldest part of the Soviet capital. Charlie remembered the Russian for what was now the dominating area, pleased once more that things were coming back so well. It was, he was sure, Krasnaya Ploshchad. And it meant Beautiful Square. And it was beautiful, compared to the drab boxes upon boxes arranged around the regimented rectangles through which he'd walked on his way there. The very centre of Soviet history, for four hundred years, reflected Charlie. Here had been enacted slaughters and executions and triumphs and failures. And only a few hundred yards away maybe not even that was the meeting place with an unknown stranger through whom, if he were very clever and very devious and very lucky, he was going to be able to rehabilitate himself completely and go back to a life he should never in a moment of conceited vindictiveness have considered abandoning. Another 'if, held like an admonishing finger. Would Red Square Beautiful Square be for him a triumph or a failure? Charlie wondered. And was the Russian really unknown? If it were Berenkov and circ.u.mstantially there were enough pointers then the man would have been astonished to find Charlie in Moscow. And until his actual appearance at GUM wouldn't anyway know he was the deputed route-master. Charlie hoped very much it was Berenkov.

Charlie had forgotten, from his previous, long-ago visit, how vast the architecture was. Gulliver's houses in the land of Lilliput. No, he thought, unhappy with the impression. All around were the despised edifices of the Tsars and Tsarinas and the oppressive, heel-crushing rich which the new tsars and tsarinas and oppressors chose not to hate but to occupy, like grateful hermit crabs warm and safe inside the sh.e.l.ls that had once been the homes of bigger, better crabs. Charlie grimaced, to himself. He wasn't sure the succeeding impression was any better than the first. Maybe he should stop trying; trying so hard at least.

Lenin's mausoleum didn't accord with the surroundings. The memorial to the goatee-bearded opportunist who chased away the bigger crabs was an ill-fitting apology of a place. If they were going to bother, they should have got it right, thought Charlie. Whether Lenin had been an opportunist or a dedicated revolutionary against an unjust regime and Charlie thought he was more of an opportunist than dedicated revolutionary he had caused a pretty dramatic body swerve in world history. So he deserved more than something that looked like a 1940s bomb shelter against a chance air raid. Charlie wondered if the always-present, dutifully waiting queue were they really genuine visiting Soviet territory tourists or permanently employed actors, on a job for life? were as disappointed as he was.

Deciding that he had appeared aimless for long enough, Charlie turned away from the unimpressive resting place for the father of the revolution and went at last towards what had now become the object of his visit. Outside of the store, in towering ident.i.ty, was the full name from the initials of which the acronym is created, Gosudarstvennyy Universal'nyy Magazin. Once, thought Charlie, as he approached, the concentration of more than 1,000 different stores, each competing, each surviving. Now, like everything else almost everything a collective. But positioned where it was and with the captive market it had, perhaps a more successful collective than most within the system.

The west door, on the third Thursday of any month: those were the instructions. So where the h.e.l.l was the west door: there appeared to be dozens of doors, all around the place. Utilising the sense of direction again Charlie used St Basil's Cathedral, to the south of Red Square, as a marker. Charlie worked out the geography easily enough but still wasn't sure that it would help. He actually entered the huge store from one of the doors to the west, immediately conscious of the activity inside, a huge, human beehive. And inside this beehive on the third Thursday of succeeding months there was going to be a queen bee who was going to pick him out as a very special worker bee. He hoped. A guide book wrapped around a rolled up copy of Pravda, Charlie recalled, continuing the instructions. Professionally he decided that the choice of meeting place was good and the book and the newspaper innocuous enough and the final part of the process 'If I lived in Moscow, I don't think I'd care what the weather was like' the sort of simple exchange not likely to arouse suspicion. So what would? Charlie had survived for so long been good for so long because before embarking upon any operation any problem he always approached it from every possible direction because the danger always was that the bad guys would know a route he hadn't thought of and use it to come charging down and scoop him up. Charlie eased his way through the crowded store, letting the movement of the crowd carry him, taking only seconds to isolate the flaw. Today's visit was OK and maybe a subsequent one on the third Thursday of any month, between eleven and noon that time but anything beyond that would be dangerous. And the guidebook and the newspaper weren't as good as he'd first thought: there would unquestionably have been watchers, today. Who would have seen him find his way without maps or directions. So the guidebook would look out of place, if his observers were as good as they should be. Just as it would look out of place if, on succeeding third Thursdays of succeeding months, he kept returning to a regular spot at regular times. s.h.i.t, thought Charlie. There was no despair; Charlie was too experienced for that. Having identified the flaws, Charlie immediately began seeking a way around them. It was simply he hoped to Christ it was simple a matter of clearing his trail. But doing it better than those watching had ever known before, so that the evasion of pursuit wouldn't be a conscious attempt upon his part but an irritating mistake upon theirs: and be shown to be, at any subsequent enquiry. Having found the resolve, Charlie improved upon it. He wouldn't try to dodge on the first identification visit: nothing was going to happen then apart, he hoped, from his being identified by whoever it was who would later make contact so better to let that trip be seen. Better still, he'd make lots of other apparently pointless visits, carrying the guidebook and the newspaper, to lots of other apparently innocent tourist spots. That way there'd be a logical reason for the book which, the longer and more obviously he carried it, would cease to occupy the attention of those watching, because they would become accustomed to his always having it and GUM would not register with any more significance than anywhere else he went.

It was going to involve a h.e.l.l of a lot of walking, thought Charlie, remembering his recurrent personal problem. He actually stopped, looking down at his already throbbing feet too tightly enclosed in the shoes that had been provided for him on the night of the escape. And then he realised he was in the country's biggest store and started to look around with greater attention, seeking the shoe department. There were, in fact, more than one and Charlie went to them all, looking for anything resembling the familiar Hush Puppies and becoming increasingly disappointed. b.l.o.o.d.y amazing, he thought. Maybe it was something to do with all the snow they had in the winter but Charlie decided in boots like these, snowshoes wouldn't have been necessary to cross the drifts. Some looked big enough actually to walk on water! It was going to be an uncomfortable time.

Charlie made an unhurried exit from the store but didn't immediately leave the area, which again might have marked GUM out as the significant destination. He visited St Basil's Cathedral and stopped and pretended to admire the monument to Minin and Pozharsky beside it and then went on, ambling down the Razina highway and decided, when he saw it there, to go into the Rossiya Hotel. Charlie's unthinking intention was to have a drink but then he realised he didn't have any money and recognised again just how much of a prisoner he remained. He sat instead in the downstairs foyer, preparing his feet for the return walk, getting up after half an hour with the awareness that his feet would never be prepared for any sort of walking.

It took him an increasingly uncomfortable hour to get back to the apartment. He boiled some water, diluted it to the right temperature and gratefully soaked the ache from his feet, savouring the relief and not wanting it to end, so it was almost an hour from his actual return when he went properly into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator and saw that in his absence the flat had been entered and restocked. So the surveillance was as active as it had ever been! He supposed the listening devices would have been replaced, too. He grinned and said, loudly 'Thanks.' In a cupboard in the main room he found a bottle of vodka, which was an addition to the previous supplies, which Charlie supposed to be an indication of acceptance. 'Thanks again,' he said, to the unseen and unknown listeners.

Charlie crossed and traversed again practically every tourist location in the Russian capital. He read the Pravda denunciation of Wainwright and wondered if it were all over anyway but he still kept the appointment at the GUM department store on the appointed Thursday, hoping that he wasn't presenting himself for arrest and that Berenkov would emerge from the crowd.

He didn't but he telephoned, actually on the evening that Charlie returned from the store.

'Wondered if you might like to work?' said Berenkov.

Charlie felt the jump of excitement. 'You're joking!' he said. 'I'm practically going out of my mind with boredom.'

'How would you feel about instructing at a spy school?'

Charlie hesitated, although not from the reservation that Berenkov imagined. b.l.o.o.d.y marvellous, thought Charlie, realising the advantages at once. To the Russian he said, 'That sounds very interesting.'

'You'll do it?'

'Yes,' accepted Charlie. 'I'll do it.'

'It was a great shame, about Wainwright,' said Wilson.

'More mentally affected than we suspected,' agreed Harkness.

'We've made all the arrangements?'

His deputy nodded. 'He intended to retire to Bognor, apparently. That's where the funeral has been arranged. The wife died, two years ago. But there's a mother, in an old people's home in Brighton: suppose that's one of the reasons he chose to live nearby. I've arranged for his pension to be carried on, so that the fees for the home are paid. Pension people aren't happy about it: they say it's establishing a precedent.'