‘You’ve wrapped up Herbert Bell?’ asked Charlie, at once. Everything depended upon their known spy still being in place.
‘No,’ said Wilson, at once.
‘So we could use him as the conduit?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then it could succeed in stages, couldn’t it?’ pressed Charlie. ‘Every stage that comes off is a benefit: if it goes wrong, it goes wrong. We don’t — we can’t — suffer.’
‘It’s very clever,’ conceded Wilson, reluctantly. ‘Ingenious.’
‘Soldiers died,’ reminded Charlie, adding to the pressure. ‘Harry Lu, too. Someone I liked.’
‘Someone could suffer,’ disputed Wilson. ‘You.’
‘Not now,’ said Charlie. ‘Not now I think I know what’s happening.’
‘Have you got a name?’
‘Boris Filiatov,’ listed Charlie. ‘He’s the Rezident: that alone makes it worthwhile.’
‘What’s he supposed to have done?’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Charlie. ‘Anything you like.’
‘It would be marvellous, if it all came off,’ said Wilson, reflectively.
‘I think it can,’ said Charlie. ‘Just like I think we can get Cartright and the woman out.’
‘How?’
Charlie told the Director, who said at once: ‘Whose idea was that?’
‘Cartright’s,’ said Charlie, who refused to take other people’s credit like he refused to be responsible for their mistakes. ‘I suppose it was obvious why it didn’t occur to Harry Lu but I should have thought of it.’
‘When will you know?’
‘They’re seeing if it’s possible now.’
‘What about Commander Clarke?’
‘I left the military until we’d talked,’ said Charlie. ‘I wanted your agreement, first.’
‘You’re right, I suppose; about losing nothing.’
‘So I can go ahead?’
There was the now familiar pause. ‘Boris Filiatov?’ Wilson said.
‘That’s the name.’
‘I’ll do it today.’
‘Make it good,’ urged Charlie. ‘I want it to happen quickly.’
‘You think Irena’s a worthwhile catch?’
‘Tremendous.’
‘Something for the Americans,’ said Wilson, moving on. ‘Bonn looks like an American senator. The name was William Bales: ascribed at the time as an assassination carried out by the Baader Meinhoff gang. It was a shotgun. Messy, like Kozlov admitted.’
‘Doesn’t that add to what I’ve already said?’ seized Charlie. ‘Kozlov could never have risked that coming out.’ He decided it was something more for him than the Americans, at the moment.
‘I’m prepared to go along, Charlie,’ said Wilson, in final capitulation. ‘Prove to me you’re right.’
‘I intend to,’ said Charlie. The reason for that determination recurred to him and he went on: ‘There was a difficulty, about Lu’s entry permission?’
‘The Foreign Office didn’t like it.’
‘But they haven’t withdrawn it?’
‘Isn’t that an academic question now?’
‘There’s still the wife and a child. A girl.’
‘I don’t know, Charlie,’ said the Director, cautiously. ‘It’s outside the existing laws.’
‘So’s getting a funny sort of bullet in the head.’
‘There’ll be hell to pay, when they find out.’
‘Harry was working for us when he was killed.’ Fucking Whitehall mandarins, thought Charlie: why was the world full of regulation-governed wankers?
‘It won’t be so bad if you can bring everything off.’
Charlie accepted the further demand, on top of all the others. By the time he succeeded or failed, Harry’s wife and kid could be in England: he’d find a way of arguing from there, if he had to. He said: ‘I’ll bring it off,’ and remembered Harkness and the stupid accounts: he’d have to clear that off Harry’s records to prevent the man doing something bloody awkward.
The Director said: ‘You think Irena will cooperate now?’
‘More than ever now,’ assured Charlie. ‘She believes she’s been abandoned and sees cooperating as some way of getting retribution: all we’ll have to do is keep irritating the nerve.’
‘Kozlov’s quite a bastard, isn’t he?’
It was a crowded honours list, thought Charlie. He said, determinedly: ‘I’d like to get him.’
‘Good luck,’ said the Director.
He was getting it, decided Charlie: not before sodding time. For several moments he sat unmoving in the communications room, conscious of what he had to do and how essential it was to get it all in the right sequence. Which meant the Americans first. Harry Lu’s family after that. Cartright’s idea remained an uncertainty, so Charlie decided he couldn’t fit that into any scheme, not yet. Then Kozlov. Charlie felt a stir of anticipation, in no personal doubt that the Russian had completely sucked him up and blown him out in bubbles. Now it was book balancing time: in a way, thought Charlie, he and Harkness were very much alike. Charlie just sought different results.
The first part was easy. While he was waiting for the British troop commander to be brought to the telephone at the airport, Charlie reflected where he should establish the meeting and decided upon the Mandarin again: he deserved a bit of comfort after the Kowloon hotel and there might still exist the need to draw the Americans off if Cartright hadn’t been successful. Clarke came on the line and called him sir at once, and Charlie remembered Sampson and decided he liked working with special troop units. He stipulated the Mandarin and made the man repeat the message and Clarke said: ‘Would you like me to be there?’
Charlie thought about the offer, wondering about the need for protection. Then he remembered that if Cartright’s route wasn’t possible they would need the military plane and everyone attached to it, and reluctantly said: ‘Better you stay there.’
Clarke queried liaison procedure and with continuing reluctance Charlie decided against giving the soldier the Kowloon address, maintaining the security of one-way contact against any American military interception or surveillance.
The first-day escorts and the unkempt duty clerk were at their posts outside the communications room when Charlie emerged, and Charlie supposed a lot of the now put-aside complaints had emanated from the man. He grinned and said: ‘That’s all for now. But I’ll be back later …’ He allowed the pause and said: ‘You know my name; shouldn’t I know yours?’, setting himself a personal wager on the man’s reaction.
The signals official actually went red with indignation and said: ‘You know perfectly well the answer to that! And I’ll need further authority from London.’
Won a fiver, decided Charlie: he’d pay himself out of Harkness’s expenses advance, which was actually getting pretty low. About time he asked for more. He said cheerfully: ‘You’ve got all day to get it. Shan’t be back until this evening.’
Charlie savoured the trip back over the Peak, enjoying it more than on the first occasion and knowing the reason went far beyond his no longer being exhausted. He wasn’t behind any more, unable to see what was going on because of other people’s dust being kicked up in his face. Now he was in front, throwing up the obscuring dirt: he wondered if he were going to be able to create a sufficient fog to confuse everybody. What he’d told Wilson was true — they couldn’t really lose — but winning completely would be far better. Always was.
Charlie paid the car off at the beginning of Wanchai, wanting to see Harry Lu’s apartment free from any observation. It wasn’t easy to be satisfied: the district was similar to Kowloon, that part of the island where the Chinese lived and worked and ate, a one-on-top-of-the-other jumble of homes and shops and food stalls and restaurants, the lot finished off with the inevitable Christmas cake decoration of coloured neon. For a while Charlie maintained his own observation and then remembered his sequenced time schedule and thrust into the entrance to the second and third-floor apartments, through the door alongside the open-fronted duck stall. The stairs held the smells of the shops below and echoed with the noise, too. On the first landing, Charlie saw that a corridor ran the length of several of the blocks, guessed that each would be served by separate stairways as well as perhaps some elevators and recognized that Harry had chosen a place to live with careful, professional care. It would be difficult to the point of impossibility to get trapped here.