Charlie Muffin: The Blind Run Part 19

Natalia sighed but Charlie didn't think it was an expression of irritation. She said, 'I was married during my first year here, in Moscow. He was a major, in our Border Guard division. An incredible man, in every way. The most active way was s.e.xual and he expected me to understand the other women, but I couldn't. So I divorced him.'

'It sounds as if you still love him,' said Charlie.

'Oh, I do,' she admitted at once. 'Very much.'

Disappointment engulfed Charlie, like a blanket suddenly thrown over his head, blocking out the light. 'Why not try to get back together?' said Charlie.

'I tried,' said Natalia, honest still. 'He isn't interested.'

'I'm sorry,' said Charlie, carelessly.

'Why should you be?'

He smiled at her, recovering. 'One of those stupid, inconsequential Western reactions,' he said.

'At least there's Eduard,' she said. 'He's ten now. A very clever boy. I'm lucky, with the benefits of what I do. He's at a boarding academy, getting a wonderful education.'

It would be a KGB-run school, Charlie guessed. There seemed something obscene, battery-feeding a child that early into intelligence. It was the same, he supposed, with seminaries although he didn't imagine priests would have liked the comparison. 'How often do you see him?' asked Charlie.

'Not enough,' said Natalia. 'I'd prefer to have him home but it's better for him, the way it is.'

Neither wanted anything after the goulash. Charlie ordered coffee and brandy, Russian again. 'Well?' he said.

'Well what?'

'Has it been so bad?'

'No,' she said. 'It's been very nice. Thank you.'

Her apartment was far more central than his, just off Mytninskaya. There was the customary concierge on the ground floor and Natalia gave no reaction when Charlie walked confidently by, accompanying her to the elevator and then up to the apartment door. No smells, noted Charlie. At the door she turned and said 'No.'

'No what?' he said, innocently.

'Just no.' She extended her hand, formally and said, 'Thank you again. I've enjoyed it very much.'

Charlie took her hand, thinking how much better it was than finger touching but regretting this was all it was going to be. 'Me too,' he said. 'Don't be late for school in the morning.'

'Were they bad?' she said, seriously. 'As bad as you made out.'

'b.l.o.o.d.y awful,' said Charlie.

With his customary ebullience Berenkov insisted upon a celebration dinner and with her customary obedience Valentina complied. Berenkov, naturally, made himself responsible for the wines. There was imported French champagne for the repeated toasts and the dinner wine and brandy were French, too. Georgi, who still had to learn to know his father, was overawed by the flamboyance and further embarra.s.sed by the congratulations that Berenkov kept proposing, praises for pa.s.sing the examinations with almost maximum marks and forecasts of the successes that Georgi was going to know in whatever Western university accepted him. The boy drank slightly too much and went unsteadily to bed and after he left the table Valentina said, 'I can't reconcile myself to it. I've tried believing it will be as good for him as you tell me it will but I can't reconcile myself to it.'

'It'll be different from before,' a.s.sured Berenkov. 'Before we didn't know when we were going to be together again, you and I. It won't be like that this time.'

'How long will it be?' the woman demanded, wanting specifics.

'Two years,' said Berenkov. 'I'm sure it won't be any longer than two years.'

'Two years, without seeing him!'

'Maybe we'll be able to see him earlier than that; maybe it won't be a two year gap.'

'You mean he'll be able to come home on vacations?'

'I mean we'll see him,' said Berenkov. 'Of course we'll see him.'

Chapter Twenty-Four.

Charlie was a relentless, unremitting instructor because he had to be. To win. And to survive. Concentrating upon survival first which he always did Charlie knew from Natalia's warning that those he was teaching, who were after all supposed to be qualified, would report back to Krysin or someone else at Balashikha if he didn't appear to be giving everything and more. And by giving everything and more he won, because it enabled him to learn just how good they were and therefore the standard of their training and a lot about the installation off Gofkovskoy Shosse, all of which he intended carrying back to England. Under the pretext of improving their technique he had them take him through all their tradecraft, how they established cells and communicated within those cells, how they created message drops and contact procedures and most important how they'd been taught to maintain relations with Moscow. All the time he corrected and modified confident they would never have the opportunity to utilise the expertise he was giving them all the time aware that in addition to winning and surviving he was the focus of Natalia's attention and increasing admiration.

Charlie tempered although only to himself his initial impression of their ability. They'd been taught well, in some respects impressively. But by rote, with rarely any advice on how to improvise or adapt if the circ.u.mstances for which they had been prepared didn't accord with the expected pattern. Charlie thought those to whom he would subsequently report in London were going to be intrigued by how little individual initiative Moscow allowed its operatives.

And intrigued, too, by his account of Balashikha. Charlie wasn't aware of anything like it in England. He supposed the CIA's training facility at Camp Peary, in Virginia, was similar but guessed even that fell short of what was available here. It was an enclave within enclave design and Charlie estimated that in total it occupied several thousand acres. The lecture halls and administration offices were the hub. Operatives lived within the installation, in dormitory accommodation which adjoined the central block. In the grounds there had been constructed complete replicas of typical streets and houses in Western towns. Insisting he should monitor his cla.s.s's trade craft in as proper a setting as possible, Charlie managed to gain access to reproductions of English, American, Canadian and French townships. There were parts to which he was not permitted admission but from one section the explosions and noise were obvious and Charlie realised that at Balashikha the spetnaz units were trained, too. He wondered, in pa.s.sing, if Letsov and the other commando who had got him out of England had received their training here.

Krysin remained hostile but Charlie ignored the man's att.i.tude, determined to take back with him as much as he could about the staff as well as the installation. He forced himself upon them in the recreation and dining areas and invented acceptable queries about the earlier training of those he was now instructing to intrude into their lecture halls and offices until finally Krysin summoned him and told Charlie that he was ignoring regulations and that all enquiries should be channelled through him, as director. Charlie was able to say quite honestly that he was unaware of any such regulations and Krysin had to admit to not having told him, which was further cause for ill feeling between them. Charlie didn't care. By then he had the named ident.i.ties of five other instructors in addition to Krysin and, by barging unannounced and uninvited into a cla.s.sroom, a mental picture of four more agents undergoing infiltration training.

Every time he invited Natalia out, in the evenings, she agreed. They ate Azerbaydzhan food at the Baku and went to a recital at the Central Concert Hall and at her insistence, because she said he would never have seen anything like it, went to the Moscow State Circus and Charlie admitted she was right. At the end of each evening, at the door to her apartment, she politely extended her hand and Charlie politely shook it: after the circus he tried to kiss her but she turned her face, so that gesture ended in a peck on the cheek, further politeness.

Charlie planned for the contact Thursday. He knew Krysin had tried hard to find fault and been unable to apart from his intruding where he shouldn't so the director's resistance to the suggestion was predictable. Charlie prepared for it, arguing the need for them to put their training to practical street use and by setting it out as a challenge putting their earlier instruction against his subsequent training finally obtained the director's agreement. He set it out as a challenge to the cla.s.s, too, warning them on the Wednesday that the following day he was going to be the hare to their hounds and within an hour clear his trail completely of their pursuit. It hadn't really been necessary to challenge them, Charlie knew; he just wanted to impress Natalia.

Charlie made extensive use of the Metro, criss-crossing the city and consciously losing Popov and Olga Suvorov by appearing to leave the train at the Kazan interchange and then reboarding at the last minute. He did change, twice, and emerged at street level at the Kiev station. He was lucky because a river boat was about to depart up the Moskva River and he hurried towards it, sideslipping into the last of the crowd and Belik tried to antic.i.p.ate him and was at the rail, looking desperately around him, when the boat left with Charlie still ash.o.r.e. He went underground again, travelling this time as far as the Kursk station. The Museum of Oriental Art was ideal, a large, rambling building with many confusing rooms and he used the emergency exit to get out not on to the main Obukha Street but into a side alley. He used the park alongside the Yauza River, actually entering the sanatorium, that had been created from the mansion in the grounds there and finding another side entrance so that he could avoid re-emerging from the same door. He chanced a street bus from the park, consciously going away from the direction he intended, leaving after two halts and backtracking, still by bus, until he saw a convenient metro station and went underground again. He switched trains twice, remaining the second time on the same line, and emerged from the Arbatskaya station near the Kremlin. He didn't approach the GUM store direct but consciously went around Dzerzhinsky Square, gazing up at the goatee-bearded statue of the man after whom it was named and who established the Soviet secret service and then beyond, to the uneven facade of the headquarters of the KGB itself. He hadn't got inside, as Wilson had hoped. Too much to have hoped for anyway. He'd got to Berenkov, which was as good. And penetrated Balashikha, which was also good. b.l.o.o.d.y good. If only he could make the contact and pull the whole d.a.m.ned thing off. Charlie moved on, still with the building in view. It was conveniently situated to GUM if the informant were actually inside, he reflected.

Charlie entered the enormous store through the prescribed door and loitered with the identifying guidebook and copy of Pravda in his left hand, feeling uncomfortably conspicuous. He waited a full fifteen minutes and then went further inside. Charlie's feet throbbed, from the exercise of losing his pursuers. At first without conscious intention but then with increasing determination he went to the shoe department, the one on the second floor, and looked this time with greater concentration than before. They all still seemed to be big but he finally found a pair that appeared to be made of something resembling the suede of the Hush Puppies that were so kind to him. He tried them on, wiggling his toes to test the restriction and then embarking on a brief trial walk. Not bad, he thought; they'd spread and be better than the ones he had. He paid and kept them on, having the ones he had been wearing put into the bag.

He went back to the deputed area and spent a further fifteen minutes there, alert for contact. Come on! he thought, in sudden exasperation. Whoever it was had to be a professional. And Charlie decided that if the man were a professional then he'd had ample opportunity to establish there was no surveillance to concern him. He looked about the store, seeking the familiar face of Berenkov. Around him, the shoppers swirled: at an adjoining counter an American couple debated the merits of engraved gla.s.s as souvenirs and decided against buying. Charlie moved his feet, hunching them inside his new shoes, trying immediately to mould them. He couldn't see Berenkov anywhere.

'Is there a prize?'

Although he was prepared actually waiting for the approach Charlie still jumped at the familiar voice.

Natalia smiled back at him.

'What is it?' The smile faded into a frown of concern.

'Startled me,' said Charlie, honestly. Could it be? She was in the service: but with the sort of access that Wilson indicated? Why not? As a debriefer and a.s.sessor she'd range over more than one department. Ideally placed, in fact. It didn't have to be Berenkov. The questions crowded in, one jostling the other.

'That's conceited,' she said.

'What?' said Charlie, regaining control.

'Imagining you'd be able to lose everyone.'

It was, if she'd genuinely followed him: dangerous, too, because he'd checked constantly and been unaware of her. 'From the beginning?' he said.

Natalia nodded, pleased with herself. 'I almost lost you on the metro, at Ploshchad Nogina. Only saw you switch at the last moment.'

Still needing time Charlie took her arm and began to walk her from the store. Where was the Chekhov quote that was going to confirm everything for him? Outside he actually shivered, to make it obvious and easy for her and said, 'It's cold, suddenly.'

'I kept warm enough, chasing you,' she said.

For him to make the approach would be against every rule and precaution. He said, 'There is a prize.' Nodding towards the Rossiya Hotel where they'd had their first meal, he said, 'A congratulatory drink.'

The uncertainties remained, irritating him. If her being in the store were as she claimed it to be simply the result of her expertise then there was a good chance that the would-be defector, if he were watching, would have been frightened away by witnessing his being approached. Which would mean that he had been conceited. Worse, that he'd probably c.o.c.ked everything up. He took her to the roof bar, adjoining the restaurant, and said, 'I'm impressed.'

'I wanted you to be,' she said, in an abrupt moment of seriousness.

Charlie waited, hopefully, but she didn't go on. He said, 'I thought you were trained as a psychologist and as an a.s.sessor.'

'A complete a.s.sessor,' she expanded. 'Practical as well as everything else.'

She didn't have the identification phrase, Charlie realised. So it had been her expertise. And his inept.i.tude. He was unhappy at the awareness that she was his street equal: he didn't think anyone was. Conceited, like she'd accused him of being. He waited for their wine to be served, raised his gla.s.s and said, 'Congratulations.'

She giggled, recognising his att.i.tude. 'You're offended!' she said, pleased.

'No I'm not,' said Charlie, defensively.

'You are! I know you are. You thought you were better than anybody else.'

b.l.o.o.d.y psychologist, he thought. He said, 'The others failed. All of them. So we'll have to do it again. And you. Bet I'll beat you next time.'

'A bet,' she accepted, extending her hand to confirm it.

Charlie joined in the play acting and said, 'I'm getting fed up, shaking hands all the time.'

There was another moment of abrupt seriousness and Natalia said, 'So am I.'

They stayed looked directly at each other for several moments and Charlie felt the nervousness he'd known with her before. He said, 'It was scheduled to be an all day exercise: we don't have to go back to Balashikha.'

'No,' she agreed.

'My apartment is a long way out,' said Charlie. 'The neighbours cook cabbage all the time.'

She rose, without saying anything and they didn't talk on the way to her apartment. They walked by the familiar concierge and Natalia had the key ready, when they reached the door. It was neat and fastidious, like Natalia, a small place with a couch that came out to form a bed, turning the living area into a bedroom. She made the conversion, appearing embarra.s.sed now that he was actually in the apartment with her, unwilling to look at him. When she turned from the bed, still not looking, he held out his hand so that she had to stop and then he brought her to him. He could feel her trembling. He kissed her, not very well at first and then her nervousness started to go and she responded and it was better. Charlie was nervous, too, particularly about trying to make love to her because it had been such a long time and he didn't do it well the first time and that made him more nervous. Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s were very full, like he'd known they would be, and he kept caressing her and she reacted and Charlie knew he could make love again, which pleased him. It was much better, the second time: they were getting used to each other, each matching the other's pace. She climaxed ahead of him and that pleased him, too, and when it was over she clung to him tightly, not letting him withdraw.

'Wonderful,' she said. 'That was really wonderful.'

'For me, too,' said Charlie.

'I'd almost forgotten.'

'So had I.'

'Charlie.'

'What?'

'I want to tell you something. About my being in the cla.s.s.'

She released him as she spoke, so that he was able to move beside her: he lay propped up on his arm, so that he could look down at her. 'What about it?'

'It wasn't just to a.s.sess the others,' she said. 'I had to a.s.sess you, as well. Compare what happened against how you behaved during the debriefing.'

'So you did know I would be there, that first day?'

She nodded. 'It was done to off-balance you.'

And sodding well succeeded, thought Charlie. He said, 'Why the h.e.l.l let me into the place, if they don't trust me?'

'They trust you, as far as they're able. They just wanted to be absolutely sure.'

'Have you made the report?'

She nodded again, turning to look directly up at him. 'I told them I didn't consider there was any cause whatsoever to doubt you. That I thought you were fantastic. Which I do.'

That would turn out to be a d.a.m.ning opinion in a few months time, Charlie thought, in sudden realisation. He said, 'Thanks.'

'Are you angry? You've the right to be.'

'No,' he said. 'It's just business.'

'It's not now though, is it?'

'No,' he agreed. 'Not any longer.'

'I'm glad it's happened,' said Natalia. 'I was frightened of it happening but now it has I'm glad.'

'So am I,' said Charlie, sincerely. 'Very glad.'

'I won't lie to you again, Charlie. I promise.'

Charlie swallowed, covering the awkwardness he felt by leaning forward to kiss her. Why the h.e.l.l couldn't it have been Natalia who wanted to cross to the West, he thought, bitterly. With no fresh interceptions, there was no alternative but to re-examine those that had already been made and try to discover an indicator that had been overlooked. Edwin Sampson was retained at Dzerzhinsky Square, in the office close to that of Berenkov, and went unsuccessfully through everything they had. There were empty, daily conferences with Berenkov and having gone through every message without discovering anything new Sampson said, 'It's hopeless: there's nothing to indicate who it is. Just that it's someone here, in this building.'

'I suppose there's some satisfaction to be gained from the fact that the transmissions have stopped,' said Berenkov.

'Perhaps whoever it is is frightened. Thinking we're getting close.'

Berenkov snorted. 'I wish that we were!'

'It'll happen,' predicted Sampson. 'So far he's been lucky. But he'll make a mistake. It's inevitable that he'll make a mistake.'

'Maybe he'll be clever enough not to,' said Berenkov.