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.
He decided that the house of converted offices was the best spot but that to establish himself there at once would make him too obvious, so he walked fully out into the Bayswater Road. At the junction he considered he was concealed from the hotel. For almost thirty minutes he maintained observation from there and while he was doing so he located the convenient newsagent’s shop. When he felt he could not stay so far away from the hotel any longer Charlie bought two newspapers to hide behind deep in the entrance porchway of the Regency house. It was better concealment than Charlie had believed it would be. There was a half-enclosing, pillared fronting wall and a porticoed roof and inside it was encouragingly dark, too dark, in fact, even to use the newspapers as he intended.