There was one false alarm, when four Russians Charlie recognized from the bar the previous evening emerged from the hotel, but they merely walked down to the main road, towards the park, and then back again. By the time they reached the entrance the nervous KGB escort was on the steps. Charlie first thought the man was checking for the wandering group but he ignored them and then relaxed at the arrival of the expected transport. There were two large limousines and a back-up minibus. The man fussed about the order in which they were parked, after which he took a list from his pocket and hurried back inside the foyer. The first party of Russians straggled from the hotel almost at once.
Natalia was among the second loose grouping.
Charlie felt a jolt deep in his stomach, a physical sensation almost like a kick. She was wearing a highnecked suit, grey he guessed from where he stood, and carried a briefcase. Her hair was definitely shorter than he remembered and he had the impression that she was taller, which was obviously absurd. She seemed quite assured, with none of the shuffling apprehension of some of the others around her. Charlie thought she looked beautiful and decided at that moment that whatever risk – even sacrifice – he’d taken was worth it, just to see her again.
There was the customary confusion that always arises getting a body of people into different vehicles and for a few moments there was a lot of disordered milling around in the forecourt, with none of the Russians going anywhere.
Which was the moment Charlie made his move and when Natalia saw him. Charlie knew at once that she had, although with superb control she gave not the slightest outward reaction apart from the briefest stiffening in the way she stood and Charlie was sure that only he was aware of it because for that fleeting moment he allowed himself to look directly at her. Then he looked away and continued on into the hotel and on up to his room without looking back or paying any attention whatsoever to the later-assembling Russians.
Charlie pressed against the door to close it behind him and remained there for a few moments, realizing that he was shaking very slightly. He wasn’t concerned at the nervousness: a nervous tension was necessary, protective, in a lot of situations. It only became an embarrassment during hostile interrogation. Charlie smiled at the reflection, intrigued at the connection of thoughts: the last time he’s undergone a hostile interrogation was facing Natalia in a Moscow debriefing house after his supposed escape from British imprisonment and defection to Moscow.
The shaking went very quickly. Charlie sat on his still unmade bed and took off the Hush Puppies to free his feet from their minimal incarceration and smiled to himself in satisfaction. She knew he was here: here and waiting for her. And he was sure she’d know where to look for him, that night.
With time to kill now, Charlie had a leisurely breakfast with greatly improved tea and read the previously ignored newspapers before leaving the hotel again to walk unerringly to one of the several public telephone boxes he had marked during his earlier study of the area.
Charlie bypassed the main switchboard at Westminster Bridge Road, dialling the number he knew would connect him directly to William French in the Technical Division.
‘Anything?’ asked Charlie, without any greeting.
‘Yes,’ said French, not needing it.
‘How many?’
‘Two.’
‘Same as before?’
‘Yes.’
‘You made a trace yet?’
There was a long hesitation from the technical expert. Then French said: ‘That’s going further than we agreed.’
‘Not a lot of point in leaving a thing half finished, is it?’ prodded Charlie.
‘You’re a bastard!’
‘Actually,’ said Charlie mildly. ‘My mother says my father’s name was William. But I don’t think she’s too sure.’ He’d have to call the Hampshire nursing home, to find out how she was.
The drawings shipped from London in the overnight diplomatic bag brought the tally of those so far provided by the American up to nine. And there was the advice from the separately received rezidentura cable that there would be a further four in the next shipment. That news alone was sufficient to make Alexei Berenkov a very happy man but there had been other separate cables and what he’d learned from them made Berenkov’s satisfaction complete.
There were a series of reports from the London surveillance teams permanently monitoring Charlie Muffin. There was the record of his arriving at the hotel and of his lingering in the bar in the obvious hope of seeing Natalia – who irritatingly had not appeared until dinner and then been late – but most important of all was the message of a few moments earlier, the report of the passing contact encounter between them that very morning, at the entrance to the hotel.
They were definitely his marionettes, Berenkov determined: his own puppets whose strings he could pull and jerk to make them dance to whatever tune he chose to play. He smiled at his metaphor and then continued it: dance they would be made to do and it was time to turn up the music.
The message was already prepared and waiting for transmission to London on the broken code, because Berenkov had the sequence well established in his mind now. The transmission was in the full and supposedly more difficult combination code, mixing Cyrillic Russian with English with two numbers – three and five – introduced as variables. The message consisted of twenty-six digits.
It was instantly intercepted, which Berenkov was sure it would be, and partially deciphered within two hours by decoders now exclusively assigned to its transcription and therefore familiar with all the permutations that the Russian Technical Division had designed.
Richard Harkness attached enormous personal importance to his service’s ability to read the cipher transmission, believing his proper utilization of it to be the way to his permanent appointment as Director General. He had taken a risk, which was quite out of character, in so early bringing the code-breaking to the attention of the Joint Intelligence Committee – and could still remember their frowned surprise – but it had paid off brilliantly with the two quick successes. Now they no longer frowned, because they were impressed, which they should have been. And Harkness was determined to continue impressing the group upon which his future so closely depended.
Always the man of rules, Harkness had issued a written decree that he should be alerted at the moment of an interception – even before its successful translation – and by the time Hubert Witherspoon responded to the summons to the top floor of Westminster Bridge Road the decode and its original lay side by side on the expansive and meticulously tidy desk.
‘Another one?’ anticipated Witherspoon at once. He was enjoying the increased favouritism since Harkness had got the acting directorship and was convinced it could only get better.
‘But incomplete,’ qualified Harkness, swivelling the message, already in its file binder, so that the other man could read it. The latter part of the transmission was deciphered in full – King William Street – but it was preceded by a group of nine numbers, 759001150.
Witherspoon frowned up. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘No one in the decoding division does, either,’ said Harkness. ‘It won’t decipher. Whichever key the decoders try it still comes out gibberish. They’re reprogramming the computer but they’re not happy.’ Neither was Harkness. So far there had not been any difficulty that hadn’t been quickly overcome, and the hindrance made him uneasy: he wanted uninterrupted success, not setbacks.