‘I must know the truth.’
‘That is the truth.’
‘He would never talk about it … the possibility of it happening,’ she remembered. ‘Whenever I tried to discuss it, he always said it couldn’t happen.’
It shouldn’t have done, thought Charlie. He said: ‘It was the truth about being a friend, too.’
‘I thought there weren’t supposed to be any, among you people.’
‘There aren’t,’ admitted Charlie. He was glad he had remained within the building: there was something he’d overlooked.
‘What do I have to do now?’
‘Nothing,’ said Charlie. ‘You can go to England as soon as you like. Providing the police do not object.’
‘I can’t imagine their bothering, from the way they’ve behaved so far,’ she said. ‘And thank you, for being Harry’s friend. My friend, too. I was rude today. I’m sorry.’
‘It’s forgotten,’ promised Charlie.
‘Will we see you in London?’
Why not, thought Charlie. He said: ‘You’ve got the number.’
Charlie stood in the foyer, watching her go out into the skyscraper area, glad there had been no hitch: his luck really was holding. Definitely with the business about Harkness and the report: prissy bugger was going to regret that.
Charlie had to ask directions for the reference library, where the assistance was much more immediately courteous than it had been in the more public section. It only took him fifteen minutes to get the names he wanted from the out-of-date but retained diplomatic registers, including those from an old guide to the official Chinese news agency through which Beijing — when it had been called Peking — had maintained representation before the 1997 agreement with London.
It was still only mid-afternoon when Charlie got back to Kowloon and he was happy that his time schedule was being maintained. It stayed that way when he got back to the hotel to find Cartright and Irena already there, waiting for him.
‘No problem,’ announced Cartright at once, actually producing his passport as if he feared Charlie would not believe him. ‘Entry visas into China. We can train to Canton, fly from there up to the capital and then transfer at Beijing directly on to a London flight. I’ve checked: Pakistan Airways have a service.’
And the intercepting Americans could sit around at Kai Tak airport until Hell froze over, wondering how they’d got away from Hong Kong, thought Charlie. He said: The Director knows it’s your idea.’
‘That was good of you,’ said Cartright.
‘It was a bloody clever idea,’ said Charlie, who wished it had occurred to him. He looked at the subdued Irena and said: ‘You OK?’
‘I’ve heard more sensible questions.’
She’d been right in her self-assessment the previous night, thought Charlie: she couldn’t stop being aggressive if she tried. He said: ‘You really can be in London by this time tomorrow. I think I promised you that: it seems a long time ago.’
‘To what?’ she said.
‘Better than you’d get if you went back to Moscow.’
She looked away at the rebuke, swallowing, and Charlie wished he hadn’t come back at her so hard. She had every right to her self-pity: she’d been dumped into what was going to a pretty shitty existence and to remind her she was alive — just — wasn’t much compensation, not yet.
‘No point in our hanging around?’ said Cartright.
‘None,’ agreed Charlie. ‘I want you as far away from here as possible before I even get in the same room as Fredericks.’
‘What’s going to happen to Yuri?’
Charlie turned back to the woman’s question. ‘That’s what I’m going to discuss with the Americans.’
‘Can you get him across?’
‘I don’t know: I hope so.’
‘Tell them … tell the Americans … that I’ll make everything available,’ said Irena. ‘All that he’s ever done against their people. He’s done a lot, you know? Killing, I mean.’
‘I think I do know some of it. And I’ll tell them,’ said Charlie, who had no intention of doing so. Hell, fury and woman scorned, he thought. And the play was The Mourning Bride, too.
‘I want him to suffer,’ said the woman, venomously quiet.
‘Seems quite a lot of people do,’ said Charlie. It was almost possible to feel sorry for the poor bugger: almost, but not quite.
‘Run it by me again!’ insisted Art Fredericks.
‘I still don’t believe it either,’ said Jamieson. ‘Their group commander, a guy called Clarke, wanders across the apron, says good morning like some jerk out of a B-movie and then asks me to set up a meeting between you and Charlie Muffin. The Mandarin, he says. If you don’t show up, he’ll take it you’re not interested.’
‘Son of a bitch!’ exploded the permanently uptight Elliott.
‘It’s another crappy decoy,’ suggested Levine. ‘Drawing us all across to the island while they sneak her out through the airport.’
‘That’s the most obvious,’ agreed Fredericks. To the army colonel he said: ‘I want everybody ready and waiting.’
‘We’ve been ready and waiting for days,’ said Jamieson, always annoyed at how the CIA imagined command.
‘What about the rest of us?’ asked Fish.
‘We’ll all go,’ decided Fredericks, at once. He looked at Fish and Dale and said: ‘I think he’s got a make on everyone except you two. So you stay in the foyer, for any pursuit. This time we’re not going to lose the bastard.’
‘I think we should stop pissing into the wind,’ said Elliott. ‘We get him, we keep him. We squeeze him by the balls, his heart and mind will follow.’
‘I heard the same philosophy in Vietnam, too,’ said Fredericks. ‘But maybe you’re right. Maybe we’ve got to make him tell us where she is.’
‘I want to do it!’ demanded Elliott, predictably.
‘Don’t move, until I give the word,’ insisted Fredericks.
In the Shinbashi apartment in Tokyo, Yuri Kozlov stared in frightened disbelief at the telephone upon which he had finally — at last — spoken to the jabbering Olga Balan, trying to comprehend everything she had said. Before he could, it rang again.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
‘It’s me this time, Yuri. Not Irena.’
Charlie knew the initial seconds were vital, the time he hooked Kozlov into completing the missing parts or lost him, from one wrong word, a misplaced nuance even.
Before Kozlov could respond, Charlie said: ‘She told me how you kept in contact: told me a lot, in fact.’
In the apartment with its view of the park, the receiver was slimed in Kozlov’s hand, so that he had to use both hands to hold it. He strained to clear his mind of the conversation with Olga — ‘I killed someone … can’t do it … I just can’t’ — to concentrate on the Englishman, to pick his way through the words like a lost man in a minefield. Told him a lot, the Englishman said; she must have done, to have given away the telephone number. The Russian strained further, to clear his voice of the surprised reaction literally soaking through him and said: ‘How is she?’
Good response, judged Charlie: didn’t seem concerned and the seemingly innocuous question put the onus on him to disclose more. Charlie said: ‘Very well, considering.’ First tighten the line, then loosen it.
‘Considering what?’ If she’d told him a lot, where was it? Kozlov felt the vaguest flicker of recovery at the clutch-at-straw thought that the other man didn’t know as much as he had indicated.
‘All that’s happened,’ said Charlie. The man was still doing welclass="underline" let the line stay loose for the moment.
‘What has happened? She’s all right, isn’t she!’ The confidence was growing, the apparent concern well pitched.
Run too fast and that hook is going to embed itself, asshole, thought Charlie. He said: ‘You don’t know what happened?’
‘No! Tell me!’ The concern remained perfect and alone in the apartment Kozlov took one hand from the receiver, no longer needing the extra support.
‘But she’s all right.’ Almost time, thought Charlie.
‘Tell me what happened! Let me speak to her!’