Charlie Muffin: The Blind Run Part 4

'f.u.c.king liar!'

'A state registered male nurse got sentenced for gross indecency: the hospital was the obvious place for him. So I had to be moved on.'

'I could hurt you,' said Charlie, striving for control. 'I could knock s.h.i.t out of you and put you in so much pain you'd wish you'd never been born.'

Sampson frowned up at Charlie's bulged, sagging figure and then down at himself. Sampson never appeared to do any proper physical exercise but he was tautly thin, his body hard and muscle-ridged and Charlie wondered if it were a threat he could carry out.

'Maybe you could and there again, maybe you couldn't,' said Sampson, stretching back challengingly to expose himself to any attack Charlie might make. 'But I've made friends here. Friends who might decide that if I get hurt they have to try to even the score for me. You thought about that?'

Defeated, Charlie slumped back on to his own bunk. 'b.a.s.t.a.r.d,' he said, emptily.

'A lot of inst.i.tutionalised prisoners do that,' said Sampson. 'Talk to themselves, I mean.'

General Valery Kalenin was a career intelligence officer, a man who entered the Soviet system although fortunately from the safely protected distance in the early years from Georgia when it was known as the NKVD and under the direction of Lavrenti Pavlovich Beria, and risen to the rank of chairman of what is now known as the Komitet Gusudarstvennoy Bezo-pasnosti, the KGB, by the combination of outstanding ability and unfailing political awareness. Kalenin was a man who enjoyed his job and the power and privileges it gave him and more than any previous chairman personally involved himself in the workings and running of the agency's myriad divisions. Kalenin, whose devotion to the service precluded marriage, even casual, pa.s.sing affairs, all hobbies except the history of tank warfare and the enjoyment of a wide circle of friends, recognised that his refusal to delegate could be construed as a fault. But it was a fault he could not despite some half-hearted efforts correct. He was the controller and he needed completely to feel that he was in control.

Which was why the monitoring of the messages from the British emba.s.sy had come so early to his attention, rather than be filtered and relayed through a deputy, who might have waited for their cryptologists to break the code before bringing it forward. That might, Kalenin reflected, have been better anyway because at the moment all he had was an unintelligible jumble that he knew to be a coded message, was obviously therefore important but without the slightest indication of what it might be. Or what the dangers were that it might represent.

Kalenin stood at the window of his spa.r.s.e office, gazing down upon the memorial to the network's founder in Dzerzhinsky Square. First, months before, the warning that there was a spy within their service. Now this, a new code, so far defying all attempts at deciphering. Kalenin didn't need it to be deciphered to know it was confirmation of the earlier intelligence.

He turned back to his desk and the telephone. The conversation with the code-breaking department was sharp and demanding, no instructions further than he'd already given, the call simply to let them know the transmissions had the personal attention of the chairman himself and were therefore important.

'I don't think that man's human at all,' protested the head of the a.n.a.lysts' department, a mathematician named Malik. 'I think he was made by a team of engineers and scientists in a d.a.m.ned laboratory somewhere.'

'Then they made a mistake,' said his a.s.sistant, not looking up from the message they were unsuccessfully trying to understand. They over-tuned his engine.'

Chapter Five.

They didn't hurry. They didn't have to. They knew and Charlie knew they could play with him as long as they liked, a communal cat with a captive mouse: a mouse, reflected Charlie bitterly, that didn't have a hole to run to.

The workshop in which the registration plates were made was a hot, chemical-smelling, metal-clattering sh.e.l.l of a place, L-shaped with the furnace that caused the heat and made the metal malleable at one end, feeding out on to a conveyor belt lined either side by the indentation punches and continuing on to the bend in the L, where the spraying was done before the final sequence, the baking on of the paint in a small series of ovens almost as hot as the furnace at the other end. And every step of the process and cranny of the workshop a potential for attack, Charlie recognised, professionally. He drew on that professionalism, desperate to remember every trick and hint, trying to get a workspot on the outer section of the conveyor, where the wall was to his back and not in the middle corridor, the main walkway where people would always be behind him, straining to identify the main danger points in a roomful of danger. The furnace was the most obvious. It was gas-heated and the protection doors were always being opened and closed, for temperature checks, with frequent opportunities for him to be pushed forward, so the outstretched hand to save himself would go instead into the flames. And directly beyond, as well. The plates came out glowing, soft and ready for the numbered imprint, hot enough to take the skin off if they came into contact with an unprotected part of his body. The tidy-up section was the safest, Charlie decided: the plates were cool enough to handle here, beyond the impression stamp that could have crushed his hand from his arm if it were suddenly thrust into it. In the tidy-up section two banks of men, either side of the belt, honed off with rough chisels the unnecessary metal chips and edges from the stamping process and rejected any plate that had been badly printed, clipping it back into the return half of the belt for recycling. Charlie's apprehension rose, further on. Here the plates were sprayed, under-coat first, then top-coat, men encased in protective clothing and helmeted and masked by filtering headgear, armed with spray guns that only needed the slightest redirection not to cover the intended plate but squirt instead a blinding stream into his eyes. And the apprehension remained at the drying ovens, where the danger of being thrust into the flames was even greater than at the furnace because they were open ended, the plates in continuous and slow moving procession through the banks of fire.

Although they didn't hurry they did play. The first day, when Charlie was a.s.signed to direct the dangerously hot metal towards the stamp and was concentrating on not getting burned and caught in the press, one of the chisellers, someone Charlie didn't know, feigned a mistake, carrying the rasp on from the edge of a plate so that it grooved across the back of Charlie's hand, stripping the skin. And at the end of that week, when he was posted by the drying ovens, vents which should always have been positioned to throw the heat away from the benches were suddenly reversed, blasting a searing gust towards him. It was obviously fixed and timed, because when it happened only Charlie was where the blast came, everyone else miraculously clear at the precise moment.

Charlie didn't protest or complain to the screws, about the chisel attack or the burning, because he knew they wanted him to do that and that he would have made it worse for himself and because he was b.l.o.o.d.y sure the screws were aware of what was going on so any complaint would have been a waste of time anyway. Charlie tried to keep the nervousness from showing, to deny them the satisfaction and was successful at the very beginning but there was nothing he could do, no self-control he could impose, to halt the tic that started to pull near his left eye towards the end of the second week and around that time the hand-shaking got bad, so bad that at an evening meal he actually spilled tea from his mug. Prudell saw it happen and laughed and everyone at Prudell's table laughed with him. b.u.t.terworth was on mess duty that night and shouted for him to clear up the mess, so that others in the hall would know it too.

It happened during the third week and at the very section that Charlie had determined to be the safest, where the plates were tidied. He'd been grateful to be a.s.signed there, actually getting on the outside with the wall behind him and was only worried about the chisels being used as they had been that first day, which was the mistake because he hadn't properly isolated the danger from the overhead belt. It was constructed in a loop here, an inner revolving system so that rejected plates could be returned without having to cover the full room-encompa.s.sing circuit. Every three feet along the belt there were grips, sprung jaws into which the plates could be clamped, several at a time. There were six in the grip that collapsed directly over where Charlie worked, an intentionally practised overload designed to fail exactly as it did. Despite the unremitting noise of the workshop, Charlie heard the sound as they broke away, a snap as the suddenly freed jaws came together. There was even a warning shout, too late to have helped but a shout nevertheless because for the injury that was intended there would have to be a later enquiry and everything had to be answerable. The injury wasn't as bad as they intended. It would have been, if Charlie's reactions had been slower, the whole pile coming down on top of him: maybe even a skull fracture. It was instinctive professionalism to jerk away at the overhead jaw snap, a sound different from every other one he identified and with infinitesimally more time a fraction of a second the falling load would have missed him completely. But it didn't, not quite. The plates had been wired together, to form the crushing weight, and they came down solidly over Charlie's left forearm. He felt it break, an excruciating crack, but he only screamed once, at that initial pain, still determined to deny them as much as he could.

The skin was torn as well, because the metal was sharp, and although the wound was cleaned almost immediately an infection developed from the air laden with paint and solvent spray the doctor thought which meant Charlie was detained in the infirmary. Safe again, thought Charlie; like he had been on restrictions, when Sampson first arrived. The relief, at that awareness of safety, was a physical thing; the muscles of his body ached, at the tenseness with which he'd held himself and now he relaxed he felt that ache the discomfort almost as much as that from his arm, dulled by local anaesthetic. Was Hargrave right? Now it had happened, now that he'd taken his punishment, would things get better? Dear G.o.d, he hoped so. He knew always objective that he couldn't go on as he had, these last few weeks. He wanted to continue defying them. And the system. Christ, how he wanted to! But like Hargrave said and like Sampson said, it wouldn't work. Couldn't work. He had to adjust. Not conforming: not giving in. Just adjusting. Just being realistic. Was it true, what Sampson had said, about his still having a reputation within the department for realism? He liked to think so. Be good, to be remembered in the department. To be admired. Abruptly Charlie stopped the reverie. If it were admiration, it would be begrudging, after what he'd done.

Miller, the state registered nurse who replaced Sampson as the hospital orderly, made the approach to Charlie after supper the first night. He was a flaking skinned, nervously smiling man: Charlie thought he looked capable of indecency but hardly of making it gross.

'Sampson said he's sorry you got hurt.'

'Tell him thanks,' said Charlie.

'Want anything for the arm? I could give you some pain killers.'

'It'll be all right.'

'Sampson sent you this,' said the man, offering his hand palm down, his body shielding the gesture from the doctor and the duty prison officer in the ward cubicle. Charlie cupped his hand beneath Miller's and looked down at the small container.

'It's whisky,' identified Miller.

Another medicine bottle, Charlie saw. Would it be watered like last time. 'Thank him for this, too,' he said.

'He said to say if there was anything else you wanted.'

'Tell him this will be fine. That I'm grateful.'

Charlie waited until long after lights out, the bottle hidden within the pillow cover, his fingers against its hard edge. Set-up, like he'd feared before? Or the bridge that Sampson said he was offering? Adjust, remembered Charlie; he'd decided to adjust. And it would, after all, be a way to discover if the pressure were still on. Easily able to conceal the movement from the ward cubicle, Charlie eased the small bottle from its hiding place, unscrewed the cap and drank. It wasn't watered this time. It was malt and smooth and although the bottle had seemed small there seemed to be a lot of it and Charlie took it all. If it were a set-up then Charlie decided he couldn't give a d.a.m.n; it was worth it.

But it wasn't a set-up. There was no search and no discovery and two nights later Miller brought in more and Charlie got away with that as well.

Charlie's arm was still strapped when he was released from the hospital, which meant he didn't return to the registration plate workshop. He thought he might have got kitchen duties but instead was seconded back to the library, a temporary a.s.signment because they were restocking and needed someone who knew the system. Charlie went direct from the hospital to the library the first day, so it was not until the evening that he returned to his cell and felt able to talk openly to Sampson.

'Appreciated the whisky,' he said. 'Thanks.'

'Glad you felt able to drink it this time,' said Sampson.

Charlie hesitated at the moment of commitment, finding it difficult. Sampson was still a snotty little sod who got up his nose. At last he said, 'There doesn't seem a lot of point in fighting running battles.'

There was no obvious triumph in Sampson's smile and Charlie was glad of it. 'No point at all,' agreed the other man.

Charlie sat down on his bunk and gazed around the tiny cell. 'Forgotten how small it was, after the s.p.a.ce of the hospital,' he said.

'Notice anything new?' demanded Sampson.

Charlie did, as the man spoke, standing and going over to the small table, better able to see the radio. 'How the h.e.l.l did you get this?'

'Applied for it,' said Sampson, simply. He came beside Charlie and indicated a coiled aerial wire. 'I can run that up to the cell window,' he said. 'The reception is terrific.'

'This will make life much more pleasant,' said Charlie.

Sampson smiled at him again and said, 'You'd be surprised.'

Alexei Berenkov had been repatriated from British imprisonment to Moscow aware of his in absentia promotion to general as a recognition of a lifetime of spying in the West, expecting a dacha at Sochi and maybe a sinecure lecturing at one of the spy colleges. He wondered, initially, if his appointment instead to the planning department of the KGB, attached to the Dzer-zhinsky Square headquarters itself, was nepotism, the visible indication of the friendship that existed between himself and Kalenin. There were obviously some who felt the same thing and clearly the relationship between himself and the chairman was an important factor but Berenkov knew he would not have got the posting if Kalenin hadn't thought he was capable of performing the function of division director officially designated a deputy because Kalenin was too adroit to do anything that might cause him personal difficulty. And Berenkov was pragmatic enough to know that he hadn't caused the man any difficulty. The reverse, in fact. There hadn't been a single, important mistake since Berenkov's appointment and two one in Tokyo, the other in Iran impressive successes.

Berenkov was glad to be home. He missed the comparable freedom of the West a freedom he was sufficiently personally confident enough to talk about openly and discuss and the bon viveur life he'd been able to enjoy in London under his cover as a wine importer. But in Moscow he had a wife he loved but from whom he'd spent too long apart and a son he adored. And secretly a secret he'd confessed to no one, not even Valentina and certainly not to Kalenin, friendly though they might be Berenkov knew that after so long in the West, constantly living a pretence, constantly expecting the arrest that finally came, his nerve had begun to go. Now no one would know. So now he could savour the unaccustomed domesticity, which he did, and enjoy the unexpected and important job, which he did also, and consider himself a lucky man, fulfilled and content and safe.

Kalenin summoned him officially instead of socially before the cryptologists had broken the code, needing the benefit of Berenkov's experience in England, an experience no one else in the ministry possessed. The chairman showed Berenkov the meaningless interceptions but because they were meaningless Berenkov merely glanced at them, putting them aside on his friend's desk.

'Not a code we know?' he said.

Kalenin shook his head. 'And one that's being difficult: it's even defying computor a.n.a.lysis at the moment.'

'Then it's important,' judged Berenkov, confirming the opinion Kalenin had already reached.

'How good are the British?' demanded Kalenin.

Berenkov shrugged. 'Don't forget I've been away for a long time,' he reminded. 'Almost two years in prison and then back here for two years. Cuthbertson was the Director, during the end of my time. A fool and shown up to be one.'

'Sir Alistair Wilson is the successor,' said Kalenin.

Berenkov shook his head. 'Don't know of him,' he said. 'I've always felt that Cuthbertson and his crowd were an aberration, a mistake that occasionally arises in any service, because it can't after all be avoided. For all the supposed expertise of the CIA, I've always had more respect for the British service.'

Kalenin shuffled through the intercepted messages. 'Twenty,' he said.

'Important,' repeated Berenkov. 'There's someone here in Moscow, a spy we don't know about, shifting an enormous amount of information to which the British attach the utmost priority and importance.'

'Where?' demanded Kalenin, simply.

'We'll break the code, of course. Eventually,' said Berenkov.

'Of course,' agreed Kalenin.

'Then we need to work backwards,' said Berenkov, the superb professional. 'Knowing what the messages contain will only give us some indication of the damage. It won't unless we're very lucky quickly identify the source and that's what we need: a way of stopping the flow quickly.'

'We don't have anyone in place in British intelligence, not any more?'

'It was Sampson who warned us,' remembered Berenkov. 'Said he suspected there was someone here. I was making arrangements anyway to get him out. This makes his release even more important. Once there's a transcription he might be able to indicate a direction.'

'Get him out as soon as possible,' ordered Kalenin. He paused. 'Try to embarra.s.s the British doing it, too.'

Chapter Six.

The pressure stopped. Not immediately, because the hostile screws like Hickley and b.u.t.terworth were initially suspicious and Prudell and the other landing bosses were uncertain, too, at Charlie's adjustment. And Charlie didn't find it easy, not at first. Or even later. It was difficult not to show, by unspoken insolence, what a.s.sholes he thought some of the screws were. And let Prudell and the other bullies know he still wasn't scared of them. The adjustment was a conscious, forced effort, something he was not able to forget, not for a moment, in case in that moment his real att.i.tude came to the surface and they saw through the charade that it was. But the relief was terrific, so good that he had to remain aware of that, as well, to prevent himself slipping into the inst.i.tutionalised demeanour of acceptance. The library job was bigger than Charlie thought it to be, upon his arrival from the hospital, the actual transfer from the limited room in which it had been housed into a bigger area, further along the corridor. Although Hargrave retained the nominal t.i.tle of librarian it was soon obvious that Sampson had taken over and because of Sampson's relationship with the prison officers, even the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds, they were able to work at their own pace, providing books were available and by maintaining the service, which wasn't really difficult, Sampson was able to convince any officer who did query the work-rate that keeping the library open slowed the move. Although Charlie made and rigidly maintained the adjustment, he was also aware that the changed response of others to him was in some measure due to his obviously changed relationship with Sampson. Which was as difficult for him as everything else. It made sense for them to behave towards each other as they were but the thought of existing under Sampson's protection and patronage was one that really p.i.s.sed Charlie off. He accepted it though with gut churning reluctance because there was nothing else he could do. Another helplessness of where he was, doing what he was. And he could never forget that. Because Sampson knew anyway, Charlie openly kept the daily record of his imprisonment, the morning ritual before every day began, even slop-out.

Sampson's radio became very important, as important as the calendar count. It was a positive, tangible link with outside, something through which Charlie was able to feel that he was not completely cut off and isolated. Sampson was as generous with it as he had been with the hospital whisky and he still supplied that, too, although Charlie bought his share rarely imposing his preference for programmes over Charlie's choice, appearing as eager as Charlie for the current affairs and talk series. They even found they liked the same music.

It took six weeks to move the library because Sampson evolved a way of even further delaying the work by insisting upon a complete re-indexing. But after six weeks even the most gullible of the prison officers were becoming impatient.

'Heard where you're going?' Sampson asked. It was a Thursday and they knew that the following day was the very last that Charlie could expect to remain on library secondment.

Charlie shook his head. 'Maybe administration.' By lying about a non-existent pain in his broken arm and saying he still found difficulty in gripping with his hand, Charlie had managed to get a hospital report insisting he should be excused from any heavy work so he hoped to avoid the workshops, even though they would probably be safe now.

Sampson, who was lying on his bunk and looking up at the ceiling, said, 'I tried to stop you coming back here, you know?'

Charlie frowned across the cell. 'What?'

'Tried to stop you coming back here,' repeated Sampson. 'After your release from the hospital.'

'What the h.e.l.l for?' demanded Charlie. He felt a stomach-lurch of uncertainty, at the thought of the collapse of their fragile relationship and the physical reaction angered him because he recognised that despite all his efforts to remain aware of what was happening, he had come to rely upon it and didn't want it to end and go back like it had been before.

Sampson did not immediately respond. Instead he swung up into a sitting position on his bunk, groped to the supports beneath where he hid the whisky and poured into both their mugs. Then he said, 'Because of the risk.'

'What risk?'

'My risk,' said Sampson.

'You're not making sense.'

'You weren't, before you went into hospital,' said the other man. 'Now you are.'

Charlie sipped the drink, looking warily over the mug at Sampson. 'I still don't understand.'

Sampson jerked his head towards the table and Charlie's carefully annotated calendar. 'Twelve years, three weeks and two days' he said. 'You think you can last another twelve years, three weeks and two days in here, Charlie?'

Charlie drank more deeply this time, not wanting to confront the question. Another indication of becoming inst.i.tutionalised, he thought, 'I don't know,' he said.

'I do,' said Sampson. 'I think you'll go mad. Or try to kill yourself, to get it all over.'

Charlie couldn't imagine attempting suicide because nothing had ever got that bad. But he wasn't sure. 'There's parole,' he said.

Sampson made a dismissive gesture. 'Not for people like us,' he said. 'Not for spies and child molesters.'

'What's the point you're trying to make?' said Charlie.

'Do you want out?' asked Sampson, simply. 'Out with me?'

'Out!'

Sampson made another gesture towards the table, to the radio this time. 'You didn't think I got that to listen to the London Philharmonic and Letter from America, did you?'

Charlie stared at the radio, then back to Sampson.

'It was always established this way, if I got caught,' said Sampson. 'I knew the radio to get and the long wave frequency to which to tune and how to recognise the messages, when they started to be transmitted. And they have started. Along with other things.'

Charlie felt a tingling numbness, the sort of sensation he'd sometimes known during a heavy boozing session outside, when he'd been celebrating or relaxing. But this wasn't drunkenness. This was excitement, exhilarating excitement. Careful, important thing that had ever happened in his life so he couldn't afford a single, minor, miniscule mistake.

'That's why I had to get into the library,' continued Sampson. 'I got that instruction even before the radio, from a small ad in the personal column of the Daily Telegraph. Every third Tuesday in the month is my contact day, the day I have to look to see if there's a message for me. I didn't know why the library was important, not at first, but I do now: that's why everything has been moved.'

'Why?' said Charlie.

'Outside construction,' said Sampson. 'Extension to the wing. Which means scaffolding and ladders and ropes.'

'How do you know?'