The resentment was obvious from the counterintelligence contingent now under his jurisdiction but Witherspoon was peremptory with it, insisting upon a quick response because it was an easily answered question. Which indeed it proved to be. Within an hour there was confirmation of a delegation of visiting Russians in the country – attending the Farnborough Air Show – that they were staying at a monitored hotel and that there had been reasonably continuous but entirely understandable contact between it and the Russian embassy, less than a mile away down the Bayswater Road.
It was still, at that stage, nothing to become unduly excited about although Witherspoon was excited, exaggerating in his mind a possible connection. The expression ‘monitored’ meant a photographic record had been maintained and Witherspoon instructed that a picture of every member of the Russian delegation be run through the nowestablished physiognomy check. He also extended the profile comparison to include every supposed diplomat who had maintained contact from the embassy. Additionally, with no conscious forethought and certainly with no scientific facility for comparison, Witherspoon asked for a complete set of the photographs to be sent up for him to examine on the ninth floor.
It formed a fairly bulky dossier and was not confined to the hotel. From the different backgrounds as he flicked through Witherspoon realized that some of the snatched, concealed-camera photographs had been taken not in London but at the air show itself, where a man – or several men – with a camera would not have aroused any suspicion.
Witherspoon almost missed it, although he was never to admit it. He’d put the picture aside and had finished considering another and was about to place that upon the discard pile when he hesitated, recognition coming belatedly, and returned to the earlier one. He gazed down, bringing his head close over the print in astonishment, and openly giggled, loudly, in incredulous disbelief. He started instinctively to move but stopped himself, wanting to be sure because it wasn’t absolutely clear. Witherspoon went back to the very beginning and studied again all the photographs he had already examined, although not this time concentrating upon the obvious subject but upon the background and people in that background. The picture at which he’d initially stopped was the first shot of Charlie Muffin, partially obscured by the door of a van or minibus. But there was a much clearer photograph further on in the selection, probably taken on a different day because the van or bus wasn’t there any more. It was full face and unmistakable and Witherspoon sat back in his chair positively trembling at a discovery he did not have the slightest idea how to interpret. Only that it was enormous: utterly staggering. And he’d been the man to make it!
The access to Harkness was immediate. The pastel-shirted acting Director General – the suit was brown today – smiled up at Witherspoon’s entry and said inquiringly: ‘I wasn’t expecting to hear from you this soon?’
Witherspoon wanted very much to make the announcement dramatic but couldn’t find the appropriate words. So without saying anything he laid the two prints on the desk in front of Harkness, deciding, relieved, that the gesture was fairly dramatic as it was.
The acting Director General remained staring down at them for several moments. When, finally, he raised his head his pink face was already flushing red as it did when he was excited or angry or both. ‘Why are these important?’ he demanded, his voice tightly controlled.
‘They are taken at a Bayswater hotel at which an official Soviet delegation is staying. They’re attending the Farnborough Air Show.’
Harkness could not curb the start of a smile. ‘When?’
‘Two days ago.’
Harkness nodded, as if he were receiving confirmation of an already known fact. ‘Right,’ he said, softly and to himself. ‘I’ve always been right. Known I was right.’
‘What are we going to do?’ asked Witherspoon. This was too important for him to volunteer suggestions and ideas this early anyway.
‘Guard against the slightest error,’ warned Harkness cautiously. He sat back in his too-large chair, making a tower from his put-together fingertips. ‘Our earlier investigations – the investigations he thought he’d turned back upon us – will show we were quite correct to be suspicious. But he’s still a serving officer in this organization: some opprobrium is unavoidable.’
‘He was not your appointee,’ said Witherspoon sycophantically. ‘Neither was it your decision to re-admit him into the service, after his apparently proving his loyalty in Moscow.’
Harkness nodded gratefully, and smiled more fully, ‘All the more reason for taking care now, when we’ve got him in circumstances that are indefensible. He’s got a gutter cunning: let’s never forget that’.
‘But what is it?’ pressed Witherspoon. ‘Is our finding him like this an entire coincidence? Or is there a connection, a link, to the other business? Some of the intercepted messages could seem to fit.’
Harkness shook his head positively. ‘Too soon for any conjecture,’ he insisted. ‘At the moment we proceed in the belief that it is a coincidence, one quite apart from the other.’
‘A separate investigation then?’ accepted Witherspoon.
‘But which I want you to supervise,’ insisted the acting Director General. ‘You know all the facts, everything. It can only be you.’
‘I understand,’ said Witherspoon. There could be no explanation Charlie Muffin could make, so the outcome was inevitable. Just as, Witherspoon determined, his own gaining of further and increased credibility in Harkness’ opinion was inevitable.
‘It has to be as thorough as it’s possible to be: I’m not having the confounded man slip off the hook again. I want every case he’s ever been engaged upon examined…’ Harkness smiled in recollection. ‘Which will be easy because the arrogant swine gave me permission to access his personnel file at the assessment school. Tear his office apart. And the place where he lives. I want that stripped, taken apart by experts, by the best people we’ve got. And the maximum observation, of course. We’re to know what he’s doing, every minute of the day. And night.’
‘Why wait?’ demanded Witherspoon urgently. ‘Why not arrest him immediately? He’s a serving intelligence officer, like you said. In a hotel, without orders, containing a group of Russians! That’s enough, surely!’