‘What about the request for money?’
‘A stalling operation,’ guessed the C.I.A. chief. ‘They arc trying to send someone else in.’
‘Will we be able to spot him?’
Ruttgers shifted, uncomfortable at the question. ‘I don’t know,’ he replied, honestly. ‘I’ve got the Moscow embassy on full alert: the man will have to have some official cover, so we should be able to pick him up.’
Knowing the Secretary of State’s health fetish, Ruttgers never smoked in the man’s presence. The need for a cigarette was growing by the minute.
It was time he came to the point of the meeting, decided the Director.
‘The British are incredibly arrogant,’ he embarked. ‘It’s about time they forgot they were ever a world power and realised how unimportant they’ve become these days.’
‘What do you mean?’ demanded the Secretary of State, aware now that Ruttgers had a proposition.
‘The President is due to tour Europe in November?’
Keys nodded.
‘It would be a terrible snub if he visited every capital except London,’ predicted the C.I.A. chief.
‘You’ve got to be joking,’ rebuked Keys. ‘I could never make a threat like that.’
‘You wouldn’t have to,’ insisted Ruttgers. ‘Just to hint would be enough. Cuthbertson’s a pompous old fool … he’d collapse the moment any ministerial pressure was put upon him. And there would be pressure, without the need for an outright threat.’
Keys shook his head, still doubtful.
‘This could go badly wrong,’ he said.
‘Or be the most overwhelming success,’ balanced Ruttgers.
‘We’ll provide the money?’ guessed Keys.
‘Oh yes,’ agreed Ruttgers. ‘I’m going to make it available. Once we’re financially involved, we’ve got another lever to demand greater access.’
‘Keep a check on the money,’ said Keys. ‘Congress are almost insisting on petty cash vouchers these days.’
Ruttgers looked pained.
‘Of course we will,’ he guaranteed. ‘The numbers arc being fed through the computer now. We’ll have a trace on each note.’
‘I don’t like this,’ repeated Keys, looking out over the gardens again. The police had begun to break up the guitar session, he saw. Why couldn’t the kids have been allowed to continue? he wondered. They hadn’t been causing any harm.
‘It worries me,’ he added.
‘It’ll worry us more if the British get away with Kalenin by themselves,’ insisted Ruttgers.
‘True,’ agreed Keys, sighing.
‘Will you make the threat about cancelling the London visit?’ asked the Director.
‘I suppose so,’ said Keys, reluctantly.
Janet sat easily in the chair before her godfather, quite unembarrassed at his discovery of her affair with Charlie.
‘But why, for God’s sake?’ pleaded the soldier. ‘You can have absolutely nothing in common.’
Janet smiled, enjoying herself.
‘At first,’ she explained, ‘he intrigued me … he was so different from any man I’d encountered before … more masculine, I suppose …’
She paused, preparing her shock.
‘… and actually,’ she went on, alert for the old man’s reactions, ‘he’s really quite remarkable in bed.’
Cuthbertson’s face went redder than normal and he gazed down at his desk to avoid her look.
‘Do you love him?’ he asked, still not looking at her.
‘Of course not,’ said Janet, astonished at the question.
‘Good,’ said the Director, coming back to her.
Janet frowned, waiting.
‘I’ve involved him in the most vital operation in which he’s ever been engaged …’
‘… The Russian thing that killed Harrison?’
Cuthbertson nodded, apprehensively, but his goddaughter showed no feeling.
‘It is imperative that he succeeds,’ he said simply.
‘Why are you telling me this?’ demanded the girl.
‘Because from this moment on I want to know everything that the man does during every minute of his existence. I’ve got him under constant surveillance … and I want to know your pillow talk as well.’
Janet grinned at the expression: he must have got it from a women’s magazine, she supposed, the sort they read in Cheltenham.
‘… ask him the odd question … he’ll need to relax with someone … find out how he feels …’
Imperceptibly, he glanced at his watch. The electronic division would have completely bugged her flat by now, he estimated. Particularly the bedroom; some of what they heard would be unsettling, he thought, looking at the girl. Imagine, he recalled, he’d once held her in his arms in a baby’s shawl!
‘I know how he feels,’ reported Janet. She hesitated, then went on: ‘He resents your appointment … and the people you’ve brought in with you … the department is something to which he is deeply committed. Actually, I think it’s the only thing for which he has any real feeling.’
The Director sat nodding, accepting her assessment.
‘So he’ll do his best?’
‘For the department … not for you.’
Cuthbertson shrugged. ‘I still want to know how he feels about this assignment.’
‘You want me to spy on him?’ asked the girl.
Cuthbertson nodded. ‘Will you do it?’
‘I suppose so,’ she agreed, after a few seconds. ‘It all seems a bit daft, really.’
‘Good girl,’ praised Cuthbertson. ‘Oh,’ he suddenly remembered, ‘two more things.’
The girl sat, waiting.
‘Get those expenses back that I cut,’ he instructed. ‘I’m restoring them. And take a note for the Minister …’ He paused, assembling his words, then dictated the memorandum of praise for Charlie Muffin’s handling of the Berenkov affair. He had the girl read it back, then said: ‘One final paragraph.’
‘In fact,’ he dictated, ‘Charles Muffin was one of my most able and eager workers in the very difficult capture of Alexei Berenkov, which I initiated and headed.’
He smiled across the desk. ‘That’ll do,’ he dismissed, contentedly.
‘What you’re asking me to do is in the nature of an assignment, isn’t it?’ asked Janet, remaining seated.
‘Yes,’ he agreed, curiously.
‘So there’ll be some expenses, won’t there? Good expenses?’
He paused, momentarily.
‘Yes,’ he accepted, sadly. ‘There’ll be liberal expenses.’
Later, after she’d typed the memorandum, Janet sat back in her chair in the outer office and smiled down at her lover’s name.
‘Everyone in the world is trying to screw you, Charlie Muffin,’ she said, softly.
‘Poor Charlie,’ she added.
(11)
In other circumstances, decided Charlie, as the coach left Sheremetyevo airport and picked up the Moscow road, he’d have enjoyed the experience. Perhaps he and Edith would be able to take one of the weekend holidays, some time. Then again, perhaps not.
His method of getting to Moscow had been simple and he was confident that neither Cuthbertson nor the C.I.A., who surrounded their activities with mystique and confusion, would realise how it had been done.
He’d simply gone to the Soviet-authorised travel agency in South London, knowing they issued the Intourist coupons for Russian vacations, and bought himself a £56 weekend package tour to the Russian capital.
The visa had taken a week and he’d had a pleasant flight out with a clerk from Maidenhead on his first trip abroad (‘I read in a travel magazine that you need bath plugs; you can borrow mine if you like’) and fifteen members of a ladies’ luncheon club from Chelmsford fervently anxious to experience romance without actual seduction (‘there’s such excitement about forbidden places, don’t you think?’).