‘Tell me from the beginning,’ said Olga, confused and trying to understand.
Kozlov halted by the window, gazing out over the gardens, still gripped by anger. Instead of replying directly, he said: ‘I should have known! I thought the photograph was to identify her: I should have guessed a passport!’
‘From the beginning,’ prompted Olga again.
‘Hayashi alerted me as soon as the military planes arrived,’ began Kozlov. ‘It was easy, that late at night, to get on to the apron: he knows the airport very well. The British aircraft was locked, of course, so I put the explosive into two different engine cowlings. Pressure activated …’ He stopped, drinking deeply from his glass. ‘For the meeting I went through the usual routine: ran the Americans all over town, choosing the place. Then insisted that I be left alone, with the Englishman …’ Kozlov paused again, halted by a thought. ‘He was clever: knew things about the KGB that surprised me: somehow he had linked me with McFairlane …’ He shook his head. ‘I wasn’t careful enough. I’d confused the Americans and I thought I’d confused him: didn’t imagine anything could go wrong.’
‘He didn’t query the separate crossings?’ asked the woman.
‘Of course he queried them,’ said Kozlov. ‘He seemed satisfied, by what I said. We arranged how he was to contact Irena and afterwards I took her through it … everything was going just as I’d planned …!’
‘How did you learn it had gone wrong?’
‘After she left this morning I came here. Heard the news reports of the explosion and thought it had all worked …’ He drank heavily again. ‘You know the precautions … this place and this telephone …’
‘This was supposed to be our place,’ she interrupted.
Kozlov was suddenly aware of her need. He crossed to her, cupping her face into his hands, and kissed her, gently. ‘It is,’ he said. ‘And it’s going to be.’
‘Why did she have to know?’
Kozlov frowned at the question. ‘You know why! There had to be a telephone point between us, away from the embassy which would have made her suspicious. Don’t forget the British and the Americans intended trying to get us both; the Englishman openly admitted it to me! This was the failsafe, to stop the Americans interfering. I told her I would not cross to Fredericks until I had heard positively from her. She was to tell the Americans, if they intercepted, that I wouldn’t cross at all until they’d released her and let the arrangements remain as they were supposed to be. That way I could guarantee her being on the British aircraft. This place was the last part of the perfect murder.’
‘And she called?’
Kozlov nodded, adding more vodka to both their glasses. ‘I thought it was you! She actually guessed something, from my voice; asked me what was wrong!’
‘What did you say?’
‘Difficult to say anything, at first. Told her she was imagining it and that maybe I was nervous.’
‘Where was she?’
‘Osaka airport. About to take off for Hong Kong.’
‘So why did you let her leave!’ demanded Olga.
‘There has to be proveable contact with a foreign intelligence organization,’ insisted Kozlov. ‘All your interrogations were geared to show that, on the tapes and films and the involvement of Filiatov … bringing her back to Tokyo would have ruined it all.’
‘But what’s to prevent her getting on the next flight to London, from Hong Kong!’
‘Me,’ said Kozlov. For the first time he smiled. ‘She’ll realize at once that something has gone wrong, because the plane isn’t going to be there. She’ll imagine some disaster here …’ He indicated the telephone. ‘She’ll call,’ he said.
The woman shook her head, doubtfully. ‘I think you’ve taken a terrible risk.’
‘I didn’t have any alternative,’ said Kozlov.
‘Darling,’ said Olga, slowly, ‘why not just let her go: you tricked her into defecting. Isn’t that enough?’
Kozlov wondered if Olga would agree to what he wanted, to make things right. ‘You know it isn’t enough,’ he said. ‘It’s all part of the explanation, to satisfy Moscow. That we realized at the last moment what she was doing, establishing the contact: and that I proved my loyalty by stopping her, as she tried to defect. It can’t work, any other way. The families of Russian defectors are always interrogated and always remain on the suspect list. In my case, it would be a hundred times worse. I’d be taken back to Moscow under arrest …’ Kozlov paused, for the most important fact to register. ‘It would mean the end of it, all that we’ve planned, so carefully and for so long … the end of us, darling.’
Olga bit her lip, making a performance of sipping her drink to cover the closeness of tears. ‘Damn her!’ she said. ‘Why couldn’t the bloody woman have agreed to a divorce!’
‘I told you what happened before,’ reminded Kozlov. ‘Before I came to England and we met. She said she’d never be a rejected woman … never be abandoned.’
‘I would have accepted things going on as they were,’ said Olga.
‘I wouldn’t,’ said Kozlov, positively. ‘I want to get rid of her completely. I want you as my wife, not a mistress from whom I can be parted by a whim of some posting, from Moscow, for either of us. Look how long it took us to get together again, here …!’ Kozlov put his drink aside, sat next to her and said: ‘I love you, my darling. Completely and absolutely. So no more half-measures. No more hiding from everyone in the embassy, frightened of a chance look or gesture being seen and interpreted.’
‘I’m frightened,’ conceded the woman. ‘I thought it was a brilliant idea and I know I went along with it, but now it’s …’ She moved her hands in front of her, searching for the words. ‘Now I think it’s impossible: that it can’t succeed,’ she said.
‘It can,’ said Kozlov, coaxingly. Was now the time to tell her what she had to do?
Before he could speak, she said: ‘Did she ever come here?’
Kozlov hesitated. Then he said: ‘She had to; she had to think it was for her protection. I told you that.’
‘Did you make love to her here?’
Kozlov’s hesitation this time was longer. At last he said: ‘It was meaningless … nothing …’
‘Just something else that had to be done!’
‘Olga!’ he said, consciously trying to avoid a different irritation. ‘For fifteen years I lived with a woman able to find fault with everything, hidden reason in everything and question in everything. If I said it was day, she said it was night. Black was white and white was black. I could have lied just now. I could have said Irena never came here, only knew the telephone number, and that I didn’t go to bed with her here. I didn’t because I love you and don’t intend ever lying to you. I brought her here and made love to her here because I thought it was necessary: because she had to believe and not, for once in her life, question.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said the woman. ‘I’m really sorry …’ She smiled and said: ‘This has got to be our place, from now on. Somewhere secret, which nobody else knows. Make love to me now …’
Kozlov felt out for her and she was coming to him when the telephone sounded stridently into the room. Each jerked away from the other, startled. Kozlov said: ‘I told you it would be all right.’
He nodded, in unnecessary confirmation, when he heard Irena’s voice and said: ‘Darling!’
Olga, softly, said: ‘Bitch.’
The aircraft made its lower-than-the-hilltops approach to Hong Kong and then the sharp starboard turn as if it was going to land among the skyscrapers, instead settling on the water’s-edge postage stamp that is Kai Tak airport. With only a travel bag, Charlie had no luggage collection delay, hurrying through the terminal and out into the melee of the taxi and hire car area. It was markedly warmer than Tokyo, a heat blanket wrapping around him, and Charlie felt the perspiration form at once.
He pushed his way through the touts, passing the taxis and then the hire car reservations, going to the very end of the line. It was a yellow Mercedes, the For Hire flag on the passenger side. The driver was uniformed, a black or maybe dark blue outfit, and wore a peaked cap. Charlie got into the rear, settling back as the driver manoeuvred himself through the traffic crush and then out of the airport complex.