‘You think the company will cooperate?’ asked Wilson.
‘They did with Berenkov: they allowed us afterhours access then.’
It had suddenly become a planning discussion between two men, Charlie and the Director General, and Harkness flustered to intervene.
‘There are other considerations!’ he insisted. ‘What about this man form the Isle of Wight factory? Blackstone? He should be arrested immediately.’
‘No!’ said Charlie, practically shouting. ‘I was picked up on the Isle of Wight: and Blackstone has an access telephone contact. For all we know there’s a timed system: an automatic alert if he does not call. Blackstone is neutralized: leave him.’
‘I don’t think you’re in any position to say what will or will not be done!’ rejected Harkness.
‘He’ll be left,’ decided Wilson curtly.
Harkness actually flinched at being so obviously overruled. Trying to recover, he said: ‘There’s more I want explaining. What has Muffin been doing for almost a week at a hotel housing a Soviet delegation? And what is the connection between him and Natalia Nikandrova Fedova?’
It was Charlie’s turn to create the awkward silence: although he should have been prepared, he wasn’t, because he hadn’t been able to think of any way to prepare himself. With absolute honesty he said: ‘I went to the hotel for personal reasons, to make contact with the woman.’
‘What’s she got to do with all this other business?’ demanded Harkness, not properly thinking out his question.
‘At the moment I don’t know,’ admitted Charlie, in further honesty.
‘That isn’t a proper answer!’ protested Harkness.
‘I think the proper answers have got to come in the proper sequence,’ intruded Wilson, urgent again. ‘Which for far too long they haven’t been doing. I want to find out – and find out quickly – what’s in King William Street. Everything else can wait. We’re going to recess but nobody goes anywhere. We’re staying here, all of us, until this is completely resolved.’
No one actually did attempt to move anywhere in those first few moments. Witherspoon was the first to stir, getting uncertainly to his feet and bringing his binders together in some sort of clearing up tidiness.
‘Hubert!’ said Charlie.
Witherspoon looked up, apprehensively questioning.
‘The correct answer was “fools”,’ said Charlie.
‘What?’ gaped the man, in utter bewilderment.
‘That crossword clue you filled in when you came poking around my office a long time ago: the one about life being a walking shadow, from Macbeth. You wrote “idiot” but the correct answer was “fools”…either would have fitted perfectly here, though, don’t you think?’
The atmosphere became much better inside the Kensington house and for obvious reason. It was Petrin who brought it about, his bored impatience finally coming to a head. He set out quietly, genuinely not wishing to foment a fresh dispute between himself and Losev, not because he was frightened of the man but because the perpetual arguments were very much part of his boredom. From apparently casual conversation with the photographer he learned there were only three outstanding drawings remaining to be copied in the absolute detail with which Zazulin was working. Continuing the query further, he discovered that Yuri Guzins had six drawings he still needed to go through with Krogh. And the American finally conceded that he was working on the last reproduction.
‘So!’ seized Petrin at once. ‘We can finish!’
‘What!’ It was Zazulin who spoke, expressing the surprise of everyone.
‘Finish,’ repeated Petrin. ‘If we work on now – don’t stop – we could get everything done. End it.’
‘I’ve got a lot…’ started Guzins, but Petrin refused him. ‘Nothing that you couldn’t get through with Emil if you stayed at it. He’s practically completed the last of the original drawings: there’s nothing to interrupt or distract the two of you now.’
‘Maybe I could do it,’ conceded Guzins reluctantly.
‘What about you, Emil? You prepared to carry on, to clear everything up?’
‘Really finish!’
Petrin paused. Still not the time to mention the one replacement drawing that was still needed. ‘Really finish,’ he said.
‘I’ll work for as long as is necessary,’ guaranteed Krogh sincerely.
‘I could certainly get all the photographs finished,’ guaranteed Zazulin. ‘I didn’t know we were coming so near to the end of the original drawings.’
Predictably Losev felt cheated by being beaten to the suggestion by Petrin but even the London rezident was anxious for it to end now. To Zazulin he said: ‘Could you finish in time to get a shipment to Moscow?’
‘I think so.’
‘Not the held-back cassette!’ insisted Guzins at once. ‘I must see an originaclass="underline" have an opportunity of discussing it with Krogh. The references on the photographs must accord to the drawings.’
‘All right!’ said Petrin. ‘Don’t worry! That’s how it will be done.’
‘Have you told Krogh yet there’s a duplicate for him to complete?’ asked Guzins. As always – as it always had to be for the monolingual Guzins – the conversation was in Russian.
‘Not yet,’ admitted Petrin. ‘Let’s wrap everything else up first.’
Which was what they did. There was a lot to occur elsewhere in an intervening period but in Kensington they worked on until everything was completed. And Zazulin did meet his commitment: he finished in time for all his photographic rolls to be included in that night’s diplomatic pouch to Moscow. Only one cassette was held back in London, that of the drawing that the unknowing Krogh had still to make again.
43
There were varying degrees of shock from almost everyone in the room, the two unnamed men showing it most. Charlie, who’d caused it, wasn’t shocked: he’d half expected something like this and thought he was a long way towards comprehending what had happened or was happening. Most of it anyway.
‘Sure?’ demanded Wilson, still gazing down at the drawing around which they were all grouped, on Witherspoon’s evidence table.
‘No,’ admitted Charlie, although for accuracy, not to reassure them. ‘All I can say is that it resembles drawings I was shown by the project leader when I made the Isle of Wight investigation.’
It had taken four hours to get the official search warrant authorized by a magistrate, locate the afterhours address of the managing director of the safe deposit company, persuade the man of the urgency of cooperating at once and finally to retrieve the blueprint from King William Street. While they waited – Charlie finally being allowed to sit – there had been sandwiches and coffee but little conversation. No one had spoken at all to Charlie until the drawing was unrolled and Charlie had announced its possible source. A disjointed, competing babble erupted the moment Charlie responded to the Director General’s question, with the Whitehall official with the Welsh accent fractionally in the lead. ‘Good God!’ said the man, aghast. ‘Have you any idea of the implications of this! The Foreign Office must be told: the Foreign Secretary himself …!’
The persistent, determined Harkness was already trying to make his point before the first man finished. ‘… The key!’ he tried, in fresh triumph. ‘The key found in Muffin’s flat fitted the safe deposit facility. And Muffin investigated on the Isle of Wight!’