As they worked Petrin left his chair and came alongside. He said to Losev, ‘What is going on?’
‘Something that you have no right to know,’ rejected Losev again, haughtily. He spoiled it by adding carelessly: ‘Nothing that affects what you’re doing here.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ came back Petrin at once. ‘Of course it affects what we’re doing here! It involves one of the drawings!’
‘Separate from what is being done here,’ qualified Losev, regretting the lapse. ‘Therefore none of your business.’
‘I want your assurance of that,’ insisted Petrin.
Losev smiled at the other rezident patronizingly. ‘Then you have it. Just stay here and go on as you were. Doze, if you wish.’
Fortunately the drawing was of the final moulding process and not as detailed as some of the others had been, and Zazulin completed the copying in two hours. Losev thanked them with elaborate, taunting courtesy and was still out in the street again slightly after midday. Aware of the traffic congestion there would be travelling right across central London to the City by road Losev took the quicker underground, ironically using the line that took him through Knightsbridge station, where Charlie Muffin had arranged to meet Natalia.
Losev was received politely at the safe-custody facility in King William Street and escorted to the vault and to the box listed in Charlie Muffin’s name, the second key to which had been left in Charlie’s Vauxhall apartment. Losev deposited the drawing in seconds and, convinced of a good job well done, treated himself to an excellent fish lunch at Sweetings. A day or two before, his presence might have been recorded by the observation upon King William Street, although the safe-custody facility was not at the Narodny Bank. But that surveillance had been withdrawn, of course, in Harkness’ belief that he and Witherspoon had solved their mystery.
No one ate in the safe house in Kensington, through a combination of anger and the need to restore the work routine as it had been before Losev’s interruption.
‘The man is insufferable,’ complained Guzins.
‘It’s going to take me two hours at least to set up and check where I was, to make sure I don’t miss out a frame,’ supported Zazulin.
‘It’ll cause complete chaos in Baikonur,’ said Guzins. ‘They are going to get a set of photographs completely out of sequence and now there isn’t a supporting drawing.’
Petrin glanced at Krogh, who was working on unaware of what they were discussing in Russian. ‘That’s easily solved,’ he said. ‘When Emil has finished everything he can go back and work out a duplicate.’
‘What about the sequence in which the photographs are arriving?’ demanded Guzins. ‘That’s still going to be confusing.’
Petrin considered the question, thinking back to the facile bickering with Losev. ‘No it’s not,’ he said. ‘You heard what was said: whatever the drawing was wanted for, it had no relevance to what we’re doing here. We’ll simply hold the photographs here until the intervening drawings are copied and everything will arrive in Moscow and at Baikonur in their correct order. That way no one get’s confused.’
Guzins smiled shyly at the solution. ‘Vasili Palvovich Losev is still insufferable,’ he insisted.
Later, when he’d finished drawing for the day, Krogh said: ‘What was all that commotion about?’
‘Nothing,’ dismissed Petrin. He decided against telling the American about the duplicate drawing: he’d leave that until the man imagined he’d finished, to avoid unnecessarily upsetting him. It would only require an extra day, anyway.
It was done, thought Berenkov in euphoric triumph: everything in place, and once today’s waiting cable was dispatched from London in the code the British could read, it was done. Charlie Muffin would be destroyed far more effectively than by any bullet or bomb. Berenkov knew the man could never withstand any protracted period of imprisonment: Charlie Muffin was too independent, too rebellious. He’d crack. Become a vegetable or go insane. But before he did he’d know who did it to him. Know who’d been the ultimate victor.
There were twenty-three digits in the final message in that final arriving cable. It said: KING WILLIAM STREET FILLED.
42
The car went to Westminster Bridge Road, which was wrong because if the arrest had been proper he should have been taken to a police station with cells, and then Charlie realized how the arrest had been improper from the start. His first – startled – thought was about his theory on how some cases of people disgracing the department had been decisively handled, without recourse to a time-wasting trial. But Harkness wouldn’t deny himself whatever official recognition were possible. Which left only one other explanation. He smiled at Smedley in the elevator sweeping up to the ninth floor and said: ‘Nervous?’
Smedley said:’You don’t impress me, prick!’
‘You don’t impress me, either,’ said Charlie. ‘I’d be nervous, if I were you.’
On this occasion there was no delaying security check and the office that Laura Noland normally occupied was empty. They didn’t go to the Director General’s suite anyway. With Smedley leading they marched towards the minor conference room which Witherspoon had taken over, because it was big enough to accommodate all the waiting people, and all the assembled evidence was there.
Charlie was not immediately interested in all the people there, only one. Sir Alistair Wilson, the Director General, was the only one standing. He did so minimally supported against a chair back: it was the most comfortable way for him because a permanently stiffened leg, badly set after a wartime polo accident, made it difficult for him to sit for any long period. He was whey-faced and much thinner than Charlie remembered, the habitual check suit appearing too large for him.
‘It’s good to see you again, sir,’ said Charlie.
Wilson stared at him across the half-moon table at which two men whom Charlie didn’t know were sitting with Richard Harkness. Wilson did not reply and there was no facial expression whatsoever. Charlie was saddened but realistically accepted he couldn’t expect anything else in the circumstances. At right angles to the half-moon table was another at which Hubert Witherspoon sat, behind several folders and binders. Adjoining him but at a separate table again there was a girl at a stenography machine and a male technician at elaborate but surprisingly old-fashioned tape-recording apparatus. Charlie looked at them both and decided that his guess at why he had been brought to Westminster Bridge Road was right. Smedley positioned himself at the door, like a guard, which Charlie supposed was how the man regarded himself. Abbott, the other interrogator of his mother, released Charlie from the handcuff and went to the door to join the other man.
‘Here we all are then!’ said Charlie brightly. His wrist hurt where the cuff had chafed it, but he refused the Special Branch men the satisfaction of massaging it.
The two unidentified men looked between each other, and Charlie wondered who they were. The obvious surmise was members of the Joint Intelligence Committee. One looked up at the standing Director General and said: ‘Shall we get on then?’
Wilson sat at last, his left leg rigidly out-thrust beneath the table, and Charlie realized the man had been especially summoned to conduct the meeting. Harkness would have manoeuvred that, Charlie guessed: the deputy would want Wilson to supervise the destruction of someone he’d championed. Wilson looked sideways to Harkness, nodded and said: ‘Yes, let’s get on with it.’ Wilson’s voice was frail, like the man.