‘Defect!’ she said, when Kozlov finally proposed it.
‘You got a better idea?’ said Charlie, coming into the conversation.
Olga made a don’t-know shrug. ‘What would I do, in the West?’
‘Cooperate,’ said Charlie, regretting the glibness.
‘Be a traitor, you mean!’ she came back at him.
‘Yes!’ said Charlie. ‘It’s a hell of a lot more fun than being dead or shifting rocks with your bare hands for the rest of your life. Or becoming a gulag gang-bang hooker.’
‘Bastard!’ shouted Kozlov. He used the Russian expression, which conveys greater obscenity, and Charlie came back in Russian, just as fluent and using the word the same way. ‘Try to see what a bastard!’
‘We would be together, in the end?’ said the woman. ‘Yuri and I?’
‘Wasn’t that how Yuri explained it?’
‘Only three months?’ she persisted.
‘Providing Yuri gets away the first time.’
She sat staring at him, not speaking for several moments. Then she said: This is really ridiculous, isn’t it? We haven’t got any choice, have we?’
‘No,’ said Charlie, bluntly.
‘So what’s the point?’
‘You already asked that.’
There was another protracted silence. Some tension seemed to go from her and she said: ‘Did you know him well?’
‘Yes,’ said Charlie. ‘There was a wife and a little girl.’
‘He wasn’t meant …’ She tried, but Charlie came in sharply and said: ‘Does it matter, now?’
‘I suppose not.’
‘Shall we go?’ Charlie said to her.
Olga looked down at herself. ‘I didn’t come … I haven’t got anything …’
Just like Irena, that day on the bus, thought Charlie. He said: ‘What is there?’
There was another don’t-know shrug and this time a didn’t-know outburst. ‘Oh God! Dear God!’
Not here or at the one-walled church in Macao, thought Charlie. He said: ‘Ready?’
Kozlov and Olga both stood, looking at each other, restricted and embarrassed by the presence of Charlie, who remained neither restricted nor embarrassed, looking at them. They kissed, clumsily, as if they were coming together for the first time, and parted the same way.
‘Be careful,’ she said.
‘And you,’ he said, matching the banality.
‘No contact with the Americans until you know we are clear,’ reminded Charlie. He enjoyed the irony of invoking for his own protection the bullshit that Kozlov put forward to Irena, to get her into the firing line.
‘I know what to do.’
‘The sixteenth, three months from now,’ insisted Charlie.
‘I know that best of all.’
‘Just don’t forget,’ said Charlie.
He alerted Clarke from the apartment and when they got out into the street they found the rain had stopped: in the heat that is always there during the season there was a rise of mist — more like a steam — and Charlie thought it really was like a swamp.
‘What about passport?’ she said, in the taxi.
‘It’s an entry, not departure document. And you’re going out under the aegis of the British government.’
‘What’s going to happen to me? To Yuri and me?’
Kozlov certainly had a way of screwing up women, thought Charlie. Maybe it was literally that, but surely it couldn’t be just sex. He said: ‘It’ll be fine, you see.’
There was no difficulty with the diplomatic departure and within thirty minutes of their arrival at Haneda they were airborne: as the plane gained height Charlie had the impression of a great weight being lifted from him, at the release of knowing Fredericks was keeping to the agreement.
They sat separate from the army contingent, further along the body of the plane. Major Clarke was plugged into the pilot communication and after about fifteen minutes he walked up to where they sat in their canvas webbing seats and said: ‘We’ve cleared, sir. We’re on our way to England.’
He seemed to expect some response from the woman, and when it didn’t come the soldier said: ‘Sorry about the seats. Not very comfortable, I’m afraid.’
Charlie guessed it was the first time Clarke had been involved in an operation like this and that the man was enjoying it: material for a dozen dinner-table anecdotes — ‘Have I told you about the time I got a genuine KGB agent out from under the Russians’ noses!’ — but anyone who kept on calling him sir was welcome to whatever anecdote until it became threadbare. Answering for Olga, Charlie said: ‘The seats will be fine.’
Clarke gave up on Olga. To Charlie he said: ‘It was really all remarkably easy, wasn’t it?’
Charlie looked quizzically up at the man, decided it was a genuinely innocent question. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I suppose you could say that. Easy as can be.’
Winslow Elliott was with the Special Forces group who watched the British plane go and Elliott said: ‘She was there! It was all crap! He got her out tonight!’
Jamieson said: ‘So maybe we struck out.’ It had turned out to be a shitty assignment. You win some, you lose some, he thought: just follow the orders and think of the pension and the PX facilities. It was stupid to make it a personal thing.
‘Know what I’m going to do! I’m going to turn in a report showing how Art Fredericks fucked this up, every step of the fucking way. That’s what I’m going to do,’ Elliott promised himself.
The Special Forces colonel, more experienced in the way of buck-passing and report filing than the CIA fieldman, said: ‘Wait a while, buddy. See how the whole thing shakes down before you start throwing garbage into the wind.’
At that moment Yuri Kozlov entered the enormous lobby of the Imperial Hotel, no longer concerned about security — no longer concerned about anything — and walked up to Fredericks, who was waiting for him at the steps leading into the sunken lounge.
‘Thank you for being here,’ said Kozlov.
‘I’m glad you finally made it,’ said Fredericks.
Fredericks didn’t give a shit if the Russkie or any of the CIA guys watching were aware of how relieved he was. He’d just saved his ass.
Chapter Thirty
The airport arrival in London went as smoothly as the departure from Tokyo. The aircraft went to the private, northern section of Heathrow, where the transportation was ready: a helicopter for Olga — and female as well as male escorts — to fly her undetected by any doubtful Soviet interception to the safe debriefing house in Surrey. And a surprising limousine for Charlie, with the sealed instruction carried by the security-cleared driver to go directly to Sir Alistair Wilson’s house in Hampshire.
‘It’s Sunday,’ reminded the driver.
Charlie lounged in the back of the vehicle, savouring the unaccustomed luxury. There was even a cocktail cabinet recessed into the seat in front, and Charlie pulled the flap down and saw that the cut glass bottles were full.
‘Help yourself,’ invited the driver. ‘Comes off the Ministry of Works budget.’
‘It’s been a long flight and it’s early,’ refused Charlie. Guessing the reason behind the invitation, he added: ‘Bottles don’t look full to me,’ and the driver smiled appreciately at him through the rear view mirror.
It had been a long flight, and Charlie felt buggered. There hadn’t been any proper washing facilities on the transport plane — the lavatory had been a hear-the-splash affair behind a canvas screen — and he felt sticky and knew he was stubble-chinned: he wondered if there were any grey in the growth. He was aware the suit looked even more than usual as if he had slept in it, which on this occasion he had but not well, because the webbing seats he’d assured that cheery major would be fine had turned out to be damned uncomfortable: para-troopers weren’t brave, just smart enough to know how to get out of the bloody things as quickly as possible.