Comrade Charlie (30 page)

‘What went on back there?' asked Krogh when they were out in the street.

‘Nothing important,' said Petrin dismissively. ‘A stupid difference of opinion.'

Berenkov was irritated by the message when it reached him from London. Passingly he had thought of the possibility of friction between the two equally ranked men but put it from his mind. Now he looked upon it as an unnecessarily distracting squabble between two prima donnas who should have known better. Berenkov's immediate reaction was to give Petrin overall command but he held back. Losev
was
the British station chief. For the man to have Petrin appointed over him would be a blatant demotion and exacerbate the ill feeling which clearly already existed between them. The counter-balance was that the control of Emil Krogh had to remain with Petrin, who had succeeded – and was continuing to succeed – brilliantly in suborning and manipulating the American industrialist. So there could be no question of his surrendering that role to someone else.

Berenkov attempted to resolve the clash of vanities by neither giving nor taking from either, which was no resolve at all. He replied that Vitali Losev was head of the KGB
rezidentura
in London and should be accorded that authority. But that in the unusual circumstances of the assignment Alexandr Petrin retained unchallengeable control of the American and that nothing would be permitted to affect that. In an effort at long-distance head-banging Berenkov reminded both of the importance of what they were doing and said he did not wish to referee any further demarcation disputes.

The effect was for Petrin to consider his attitude vindicated and for Losev to believe his authority
had
been diminished.

‘Satisfied?' demanded Losev when the reply came.

‘Very,' said Petrin. That day Krogh completed the remaining drawings he considered easy and got more than halfway through the first of those he considered more difficult.

Natalia was allocated a window seat and Gennadi Redin, whom she had already decided to be one of the KGB escorts, sat next to her – which she regretted because his nervousness became even more apparent on an aeroplane. He fidgeted and sweated excessively and drank a lot of vodka, which appeared to do nothing to allay his fears. It didn't make him drunk, either.

‘Have you been to London before?' he asked her.

Natalia shook her head. ‘No.'

‘Looking forward to it?'

More than she had anticipated anything for a very long time, reflected Natalia, even though she was trying to keep her hopes tightly controlled. ‘It will be an interesting experience,' she said guardedly. She was anxious to identify the other KGB personnel: she did not consider she had a lot to fear from this man.

‘Tweed and woollen wear,' announced the man. ‘That's what my wife has told me to bring her back.'

Natalia wondered again if she would be able to get out to buy more clothes at the beginning of the trip. ‘I'll take her advice.'

There was a pilot's announcement that they had crossed the English coast and Natalia stared down at the pocket handkerchieves of fields set out far below.

‘It's a very small country,' volunteered Redin. ‘It's always difficult to imagine how important it once was.'

‘Isn't it important any more?' asked Natalia mildly.

‘Oh no,' said Redin, convinced. ‘It's just one of the states of Europe now.'

‘I suppose it depends upon what you hope to find there,' said Natalia, more to herself than to him.

32

Charlie considered carefully how to stage the recognition with Natalia, knowing how vital the timing and the circumstances were. He knew the scheduled arrival of the Moscow flight, and his initial idea was simply to be in the seating area of frayed brocade when she entered with the rest of the party. And then he decided against it. He had no way of knowing if she wanted to see him as much as he wanted to see her but it was logical she would have thought of the possibility. But for him to be openly in the foyer, practically making it a confrontation, was too abrupt. He had to guard against any startled reaction to his presence because she
would
be with the rest of the delegation on arrival, and among that delegation would be KGB watchers alert for any unusual response, to anything. It was better that he be nowhere around for whatever registration formalities were to be completed: that she had time to settle in and adjust, however slightly, to her surroundings.

Charlie debated with himself, waiting unobtrusively outside the hotel, just to
see
her, and actually repeated the reconnoitre of the previous days, seeking out vantage points. There were some – the doorway of a towering Regency house converted into offices and a tiny, centre-of-the-road coppice of trees preserved by a parks department – but Charlie was uncomfortable being outside the hotel after the Russians had entered. One or maybe more of those KGB watchers would inevitably establish a surveillance position in the foyer, noting who followed the party in. And over long years of experience Charlie had found it was human nature – certainly the human nature of supposedly trained intelligence officers, which it shouldn't have been – to be more interested in people following behind than in people already established ahead. So he abandoned that intention as well.

Instead, for the Russian arrival, Charlie kept completely out of the way. He sat in his room and tried to read newspapers, which didn't work because his concentration wouldn't hold, and he tried to become interested in his flickering television, but that didn't work either although he managed an hour watching horse racing from Goodwood and was glad he wasn't there in person because every horse upon which he placed a mental bet got lost in the field. He considered dialling one of the in-house movies but abandoned that, too. At last, more than thirty minutes before the delegation should have got to the hotel, Charlie went to his window, which was at the side of the hotel with only the narrowest view of the main Bayswater road along which they would travel. He had to press very closely against it to see anything at all and there was a constant traffic stream of cars and coaches and buses from which it was impossible to distinguish one from another and Charlie quickly gave that up, like everything else.

He was downstairs in the bar within five minutes of its opening for the evening, the first in and able to get the previously chosen seat, the stool at the corner of the bar and the abutting wall. Unasked the barman poured the scotch and said: ‘They've arrived.'

‘Did it all go smoothly?'

The man gave a shrug, a gesture which seemed to be close to an affection with him. ‘I gather it was a bit chaotic, but then it normally is when a big party checks in.'

‘How many are there?' asked Charlie, immediately alert.

‘Twenty-five,' reported the informative man, just as quickly. ‘Quite a few women as well as men.'

Where, wondered Charlie, was the only one who mattered? He said: ‘They going to be difficult to look after as guests? I mean are there any special requests, that sort of thing?'

The barman replenished Charlie's glass. ‘Not that I know of. There's a few policemen about, in case there are any protests. There are sometimes, apparently.'

‘So I've heard.'

The barman moved away to serve another arriving customer, a man. From the suit Charlie guessed he wasn't Russian and got the confirmation when the newcomer ordered in a heavy Scots accent. The first Russians entered soon afterwards, two men and a woman. Charlie was easily able to hear and understand the conversation, although he gave no indication of being able to do so. They were embarrassed at their uncertainty of whether to order at the bar or be seated for the barman to come to them. The difficulty was resolved when the man did go to them. The woman, who had urged that they be seated, said she'd known all along that she was right. The older of the two men stumbled out the order, for beer and scotch. The Soviet conversation ranged over the flight from Russia to how different London was from what the woman had expected – ‘a lot of buildings as big as in Moscow, which I hadn't thought there would be' – to where Harrods was and how worthwhile the forthcoming air show was going to be.

Their conversation became increasingly difficult for Charlie clearly to eavesdrop as other Russians came into the bar and either joined the original group or established their own parties and set up a conflicting chatter of cross-talk.

Charlie's earlier friendliness paid dividends because increasingly busy though he became the barman didn't forget him. Charlie sat alert to every new customer, each time feeling the bubble of half expectation when it was a woman he couldn't at first properly see but none was Natalia. He was alert for other things, too. He watched for recognitions from the other already identified members of the delegation or listened for the recognizable language, to assure himself that each newcomer
was
Russian and not an independent, unassociated guest at the hotel. Having established from the barman the total number in the Soviet party Charlie kept count, so that he was constantly aware of how many were missing. And instinctively self-protective, he set about locating the KGB escorts. After half an hour he was convinced about two, an uncertain, hunchshouldered man who tried to join two separate groups which closed against him and a younger, aloof person with rimless spectacles and fair, almost white hair, who didn't try to join in at all but who sat studying everyone over an untouched glass of mineral water. There would be more, Charlie knew. He wondered if they were travelling with the party or would be drafted in from the embassy less than a mile away.

Around seven thirty the first arrivals started to move and Charlie overheard several references to food and understood from the conversation that a section of the hotel dining room had been partitioned off for them. At no time had the number in the Soviet party amounted to more than fifteen, Natalia had never been among them and Charlie felt a sink of disappointment. Which he recognized to be unrealistic, because from their time together in Moscow Charlie knew that she scarcely drank at all and that a bar was not an automatic place for her to visit. But it had clearly been the assembly point and Charlie had built up a conviction in his mind that was where he would see her. He grew quickly impatient at his professional lapse. He was behaving like an immature, lovesick teenager instead of an experienced operative who had already risked too much by exposing himself to a great many unknowns where unknowns shouldn't have been allowed. It was time to stop. To reverse the situation, at least: professionalism first, personal involvement second. Which was how it should be. And always had been, even with Edith. Charlie felt something approaching shock at realizing how his priorities had got out of sequence. Thank Christ he'd become aware of it this soon.

‘Another one?'

Charlie looked up at the barman, shaking his head in his newfound determination to start conducting himself properly. He knew the aloof Russian he'd guessed to be KGB had registered him in the bar and decided it would be careless to remain any longer in a position so openly to monitor the Soviet party. Just as it would be a mistake, desperate though he was to do it, to eat in the hotel dining room in the hope of still catching sight of Natalia. Working as closely as this – much too close to be sensible – he had to ease himself from people's consciousness, not positively attract their attention by always being around.

He ate a disappointing meal in a Lebanese restaurant in the Edgware Road, remained attentive and therefore satisfied with everything that happened about him, and when he returned to the Bayswater hotel used the pretext of reading theatre bills around the reservation desk to check the bar again. There was quite a lot of noise and audible snatches of Russian but Natalia still wasn't there so he went directly up to his room.

Lying in the darkness Charlie let the disappointment sweep over him once more but did not get angry at the emotion as he had in the bar, because there was no longer any danger in the indulgence. It hadn't gone at all how he'd wanted. He'd imagined a recognition being made and of a meeting somehow arranged and of telling her the things he never had in Moscow – that how very often he'd wished he'd stayed instead of running – and of her saying things back that he wanted to hear. Never this; never absolutely nothing, not so much as a snatched glance of anyone who just
might
have been Natalia.

What if she hadn't, in the end, been one of the delegates at all! What if for any one of a dozen reasons her participation had been cancelled! Or the announced composition of the Russian party had been wrong! Or changed! The doubts and the questions flooded in on Charlie, so quickly it was difficult for him to evaluate one before another demanded attention. And then he stopped bothering to try to evaluate any of them separately because he recognized each was a distinct possibility. He tried to think beyond, to its significance, and couldn't because there was still so much by which he was confused and found impossible to work out.

He snapped on the sidelight, near the tea-making things, and booked an early morning call from the hotel operator. Charlie did not sleep properly, despite the assurance of waking up on time. He didn't dream: Charlie was rarely aware of dreaming. Instead he remained in a half-awake state, always knowing where he was and why he was there and he was already fully awake when the telephone rang. He made himself some tea from a sachet on a string and wished he hadn't, so he left it, and was shaved and showered by seven. He guessed he was far too early, which he proved to be, but he didn't think there was another way of doing it. A vaguely detached night porter – not the attentive old man with the ill-fitting teeth – was still on duty when Charlie descended to the foyer, which bustled with a surprising number of maids with vacuum cleaners and floor polishers, maintaining the artificial marble. Charlie saw no one he identified as Russian.