The disposal of the flat meant Charlie had briefly to move into an hotel, which he did ahead of consulting Gerald Williams, which when the bills came in formed the basis of the inevitable dispute over which the deputy Director had to arbitrate. That the decision was in Charlie’s favour worsened the already bad feeling between them. Charlie fought for, and got, the most expensive of the three apartments the Moscow embassy housing officer suggested, a sprawling conversion in a pre-revolutionary mansion on Lesnaya with bathrooms attached to both bedrooms and a dining room separate from the main living area. Charlie negotiated an extra?20 a day cost-of-living allowance, on top of the highest rate allocated in Washington and Tokyo, and had the longest and most heated argument of all to operate not on a system of fixed expenses but on fixed exchange rates. And to be allowed to submit claims for whatever he spent in the currency in which he spent it. As dollars were an even more common currency than roubles in Moscow it meant Charlie gained the Washington diplomatic dollars-to-sterling equal parity conversion to compensate for the official rate fluctuation. The ruling gave him as much as a fifty per cent profit on every dollar claimed.
Through the Washington embassy Charlie discovered the FBI agent specifically tasked with nuclear smuggling was James Kestler, although there was no file upon him. Neither was there any Records listing for the man in London archives, but a man named Barry Lyneham showed up as the Bureau’s station chief. Charlie also studied all the traffic between London and Moscow about his posting, eager for the one Russian name that would have meant something to him. Natalia did not appear anywhere. Neither was she listed among interior Ministry executives supplied by Moscow station. Maybe, Charlie thought, Natalia had left instead of being transferred. Or perhaps been moved to another ministry like so many former British intelligence officers had switched to other, peripherally connected departments.
From his Moscow enquiries Charlie learned the department’s existing intelligence chief was Thomas Bowyer, whom he had not previously known but who sent a personal welcome. The interchange provided Charlie with a further advantage, although at that stage he wasn’t sure how to utilize it: within an hour of the cable exchange between himself and Bowyer, Charlie was lectured by the deputy Director how Bowyer’s seniority had at all times to be respected, convincing Charlie of a back-channel link between London and Moscow upon which his performance and activities would be constantly monitored. Forewarned was forearmed, he reminded himself.
One of Charlie’s final acts, with the overseas disruption grant Gerald Williams predictably opposed but which Charlie quoted precedence to obtain, was to buy two new suits and a sports jacket and shirts and underwear, which was the largest expenditure on clothes he could ever remember making, another positive change in a changed life. The very last purchase was a new pair of Hush Puppies he had no intention of trying to wear in the immediate future but which he considered a worthwhile investment against the uncertainty of Russian footwear. At the same time he bought a set of shoe-trees two sizes larger upon which hopefully to stretch them until the tentative day he put them on.
Charlie never seriously considered a farewell party because he didn’t have enough acquaintances to invite so he gatecrashed someone else’s. Billy Baker had been chief of the Hong Kong station, which was being closed down entirely in advance of the colony’s 1997 return to China and Baker arrived back in London the week before Charlie’s departure with enough made-in-three-days,?20 Hong Kong suits to last a lifetime, a container load of Japanese electronic equipment, a Chinese mistress described as a housekeeper and a small, expenses-purchased William and Mary mansion in Devon from which, in his retirement, he intended to lord it over the manor like he’d lorded it over Hong Kong: a lot of the suits were tweed, for him to dress the part.
The whole affair was a parade – or maybe a parody – into the past. Baker staged it in the upstairs room of The Pheasant, the pub they’d all used when they were based at Westminster Bridge Road and when Charlie got there intentionally late, to cover his uninvited arrival, there were so many people he had difficulty getting into the room and even more difficulty getting a drink. The room was beginning to cloud with cigarette smoke and the ice had already run out. In the first five minutes, after which he gave up counting, Charlie identified twenty operational and London-based officers whom he had known and sometimes worked with, as well as a lot of Special Branch policemen who had been the legally arresting arm of the service. Everyone seemed to have a frenzied determination to follow the host’s example and get fall-down drunk as quickly as possible. Billy Baker held court at the bar, the Chinese girl, who had to be thirty years his junior, bewildered by his side but doubtlessly happy at the escape from Beijing rule. When he saw Charlie, Baker embraced him wetly, thanked him for coming, and said wasn’t it all a bloody mistake and a bloody disgrace. Charlie said yes, to both. It was the persistent, in fact the only, theme in every group he joined and just as quickly left, not having anything to contribute and not interested enough to invent a lie about what he was going to do in the future to make them all believe he’d been dumped, like they had. The constant movement took him frequently to the bar. He was there when the voice behind him said, ‘Pretty depressing, isn’t it?’
Charlie wished he could remember if her name was Juliet or June, which he should have been able to do because she was one of the Director-General’s secretaries whose bed he had almost, although not quite, shared pursuing his pillow talk self-preservation policy. ‘Very. Drink?’
‘Gin. Large.’
‘You OK?’
‘Saw it coming, so I moved over to the Department of Health a year ago, before it turned into a St Valentine’s Day massacre. Secretarial supervisor in the minister’s office. Boring as hell but it’s rent.’
She was still very attractive in a carefully preserved, carefully coiffeured sort of way, although the hair was beginning to stray in the heat and the crush. ‘Wise girl.’
‘Lucky,’ she said, looking around the room. ‘There’s got to be at least forty people here who’ve been told to go or moved elsewhere.’ She came back to Charlie. ‘How about you?’
‘Moving on,’ said Charlie, which wasn’t, after all, a lie.
‘Sorry, Charlie.’
Would he be? wondered Charlie. ‘It’ll work out.’
‘Charlie the Survivor,’ she declared, gin spoiling the coquettish smile. ‘That’s what they always said about you, Charlie. Even the Director-General.’
Now she decides to tell me! thought Charlie. How much more would he have learned if she had admitted him to her bed? Too late to be of any use now: the Director-General she was talking about had died at least six years ago. ‘Is that what they all said?’
She nodded. ‘That. And a lot more. How are things otherwise?‘
‘Otherwise?’ said Charlie, playing the game. It wasn’t much but it was better than sobbing into their drinks like everyone else.
‘You happy?’
‘Happy enough.’
‘With anyone?’
‘On and off.’
‘Nothing permanent then?’
‘Nothing permanent.’
‘Me neither.’
Why couldn’t it have been like this when he’d tried to know her better? ‘That won’t last, someone as pretty as you,’ he said, gallantly. She didn’t try to refasten the top button of her shirt that suddenly gave way under the strain.
‘Do you want to stay here much longer?’ she invited.
‘I wasn’t going to, anyway,’ said Charlie. ‘Got something fixed up.’ It had been a depressing mistake to come at all.
‘Oh,’ she said, crushed.
‘I’m sorry,’ apologized Charlie, still gallant. ‘I didn’t know you’d be here. Can’t cancel it now.’
‘Some other time maybe,’ she suggested, without offering a telephone number.
‘Sure,’ agreed Charlie, without asking for one.