There was still a chance, Berenkov decided frantically. He knew the safe custody facility in King William Street hadn’t yet been cleared by the investigating British, because of course he’d ordered the closest observation to tell him everything had succeeded against Charlie Muffin. Now that wasn’t important any more. The operation – the attack – upon Charlie Muffin had to be abandoned, forgotten if necessary. Only one thing was important now: recovering the drawing.
Berenkov sent his instructions, specifically entrusting Vitali Losev with the task of emptying the King William Street box, within two hours of learning that the film cassette was useless.
Losev went nervously. He knew there had been no formal protest yet to the Soviet embassy but it was impossible to assess how fast or in what direction the British investigation was proceeding. What he did know was that King William Street had been set up for the British to discover and that there was a very real risk of his walking into a trap of his own creation.
He was extremely careful approaching the security firm’s offices, scouring the street and overlooking buildings for the slightest indication of surveillance but not finding it. He entered at last and asked for the box, every moment expecting an authoritative challenge or an arresting hand upon his shoulder. It was as quick to empty the box as it had been earlier to fill it, a matter of seconds, and then he was outside again, still without any interception. Knowing it could still happen – that the British would most likely have waited for him to get something incriminating in his possession before moving at all – Losev remained twitchingly tense. He’d intended recrossing London by underground but when the time came he decided against it, wanting the security of being enclosed and alone rather than to be among a lot of other people. He hailed a taxi and asked for Notting Hill Gate, leaving himself with just a short walk into Kensington Palace Gardens and the embassy.
Losev travelled alert to every vehicle around them on the jammed London streets, only starting to relax when they came close to Hyde Park. He walked hurriedly into the diplomatic enclave after paying off the cab, letting the breath gush from him when he pushed closed the side door admitting him to the embassy and the protection of what was officially regarded as Russian territory, where his safety was guaranteed.
Throughout the visit to King William Street, the recovery of the drawing and his return across London, Losev had been constantly monitored by British intelligence officers.
47
It was a week before Charlie was called to the ninth floor, a week during which he was forbidden to go anywhere near his Vauxhall flat but had to live in a department-owned house in Hampstead and was required, each succeeding day, to build up in the minutest detail a report upon everything he had done from the moment he’d detected the Soviet surveillance on the Isle of Wight. There were two interviews with the executives from the department’s internal security division, hostile, antagonistic encounters with men who considered Charlie had exposed the inadequacies and failings of their colleagues and were determined to catch him out and find cause for some internal disciplining. Charlie didn’t believe they did, to any degree of seriousness, but was in any case hardly concerned. He obeyed the instructions and endured the interrogations but existed through it all in a slough of crushing despondency, his mind and feelings absorbed to the exclusion of anything else by that morning at the department store window, gazing down upon Natalia for the last time. He’d hesitated that day, at the moment of leaving the store, all the conflicting reasoning and common-sense decisions wiped out, his sole, overwhelming desire abruptly to run back and get to her. For several moments he’d remained just inside one of the exit doors, almost literally pulled in opposing directions. He’d fought against the yearning and carried on, quitting the place, but since then, every day and every night, he’d thought about nothing else, mentally rearranging the arguments, trying to reach – pointless though that would now be – a resolve different from that he’d made.
During the week the office across the corridor normally occupied by Hubert Witherspoon had remained empty and there had been no contact or communication from Richard St John Harkness, which Charlie had half expected but did not regret failing to receive.
He was curious, when he received the ninth-floor demand, if at last it was to be confronted by Harkness: the interview request was illegibly signed pour procurationem on Director General notepaper but during Sir Alistair Wilson’s absence Harkness had frequently used it, according himself the promotion that had never occurred in reality.
But it hadn’t come from Harkness. At the reestablished security counter on the ninth floor he was collected by the primly permed Miss Harriet Jameson-Gore, Wilson’s personal secretary who had been in temporary charge of the typing pool during the Director General’s illness and escorted by her to the old man’s office, where Wilson was waiting. Wilson was by the window, where the sill was just the right height for him to perch and take the pressure off his leg without actually sitting down. There were two vases of pink parfait roses on the man’s desk, filling the room with their scent. Growing roses at his Hampshire home was Wilson’s overriding hobby: oddly it was the presence of the flowers, more than Wilson being there to receive him, that told Charlie the man was back permanently in control. Charlie still didn’t think the older man looked completely fit.
Wilson gestured Charlie towards the sagging visitor’s chair that had been absent during Harkness’ tenure, a scored and stained leather thing with a seat that kept descending after a person sat in it. Without extending any invitation the Director General poured Islay malt into two tumblers, which he held before him for examination and then added more whisky to both.
He handed one to Charlie and said: ‘I’ve got the report from internal security. And their recommendations. They’ve itemized eight positive breaches and recommend your severe reprimand and that those reprimands be logged on your service record.’
They’d have been pissed off at that being the best – or rather the worst – that they could do, Charlie knew. He said: ‘I suppose that’s about right.’
‘I’ll say it again,’ remarked Wilson. ‘You behaved like a bloody fool. An absolute bloody fool.’
‘Yes,’ accepted Charlie meekly. He didn’t accept it at all but now was not the time to argue, sitting there with a glass of the Director General’s whisky in his hand.
Wilson propped himself at the window again, gazing into his drink. ‘Did she turn up?’
‘Yes.’
‘Alone?’
‘She appeared to be. It was impossible in surroundings like that to be absolutely sure.’
‘Why didn’t you make the contact?’
‘It wasn’t right,’ said Charlie. ‘She had to know.’
Wilson nodded, in agreement. ‘I would have thought so. We could be wrong, of course, but I doubt it…’ He looked up from his glass. ‘Was it important to you?’
‘Yes,’ admitted Charlie at once. ‘Very important.’
‘Then I’m sorry. Personally sorry, I mean.’
Charlie shrugged, not immediately speaking. Then he said: ‘Whatever the full story, I had to allow the doubt.’
‘Let’s move on,’ said Wilson briskly. ‘There are other things that need to be discussed. I’ve read your account…’