‘We haven’t talked about Yuri Kozlov yet,’ said the Director.
Charlie set out the meeting and the ultimatums of the previous day in Tokyo and Wilson sat nodding and adding to their glasses when it was necessary, and when Charlie finished the Director said: ‘I like that. I like that a lot.’
‘I want to make it happen,’ said Charlie, a promise to himself.
‘I don’t think you can go, not the way the Americans feel,’ said the Director.
‘I told him I would be the one.’
‘I suppose you could use a different passport, but we’ve hammered that system a bit lately,’ said Wilson, doubtfully.
‘We’ve got time to think it through,’ said Charlie.
‘You’re right,’ agreed the Director, reaching around for the second bottle. He said: ‘You must be bloody tired, what with the flight and everything.’
Charlie recognized it wasn’t a polite, social enquiry. Accepting the opening, he said: ‘Yes I am. Very tired.’
‘Why not spend a couple of days at home, resting up? No need to come into the department until, let’s say, Wednesday at the earliest.’
‘That’s extremely thoughtful,’ said Charlie.
‘Never have been able to get over the tragedy, losing a first class field soldier over a miserable?1800,’ reflected the Director.
‘Like you said,’ agreed Charlie, ‘a tragedy.’
‘An absolute tragedy.’
When Charlie opened the cocktail cabinet on the return to London he found the whisky decanter half empty: the driver took the lanes back to the motorway with considerable care and Charlie decided that half a bottle for half the speed was a pretty good deal. He said. ‘Sorry I can’t offer you one.’
‘Never drink and drive,’ assured the man. ‘Good meeting?’
‘Couldn’t have been better,’ said Charlie.
The memorandum from Harkness, demanding an immediate meeting, was uppermost in Charlie’s in-tray when he arrived at the office on the Wednesday, so he put it to the bottom and summoned a messenger instead of using the inter-office postal system, entrusting to the man his own expenses with an explanation of the addendums and, in a separate envelope, enclosed a list of informants with a second memorandum that they constituted the omissions from Harry Lu’s accounts. Hubert Witherspoon was a blurred figure through the fluted glass. Charlie flickered his fingers but the man didn’t respond, and Charlie thought fuck you then.
The telephoned summons did not come until after lunch, which was longer than Charlie had expected, and he guessed the deputy had been adding up the figures and he hoped he’d got them near enough right.
‘You wanted to see me?’ he said, ingenuously, as he entered Harkness’s office. It was directly below the Director’s, with a lowered view of the park.
‘Do you believe in coincidence!’ demanded Harkness.
‘I’ve heard it said that life’s full of them,’ replied Charlie.
The pink face became pinker. ‘You seem to have realized your previous expenses had a discrepancy of something like?1802: and although you drew?1000 before you went to Japan, you seem to have spent?500 more than that.’
‘Lucky I had my American Express card,’ said Charlie. ‘I attached those little blue receipt things.’
‘You didn’t use the card and retain the money!’
‘Of course not,’ said Charlie. ‘That wouldn’t be honest, would it?’
‘No,’ said Harkness, sharply. ‘It wouldn’t have been honest.’
‘I don’t find accounts easy,’ said Charlie, apologetically. ‘You may even have thought that yourself. But I do try to keep a rough tally. According to my records, the department owes me?500.’
It seemed difficult for Harkness to talk. He said: ‘To be precise, it’s?502.’
‘See!’ smiled Charlie. ‘I don’t find it easy.’
‘I don’t find some things easy, either,’ said Harkness. ‘Like coincidence, for example. I’ve checked the registers, against the names you list for informants to whom you paid money and against the names that you’ve offered to whom Harry Lu paid money. And do you know what I found?’
‘What!’ said Charlie, his voice apparently excited at the thought of a revelation from Harkness.
‘All the names on your list and all the names on Lu’s list are of diplomats or staff who were serving at an East bloc consulate or installation but have since been withdrawn.’
Charlie regarded the other man innocently. ‘If they were still serving in the West, you could hardly ask them if they were acting as spies for Britain, could you?’
‘Were they!’
‘But of course!’ said Charlie. ‘In my case, I’d swear to it. I can only pass on the names that Harry gave me, naturally. He didn’t feel it was safe, from a security point of view, to put them in those reports that you ordered.’
There was a long silence from the man at the desk opposite. ‘Reports?’
The case histories you asked for: a record, in fact, of what Harry did for us over a lot of years,’ said Charlie. ‘I know I can talk to you in the strictest confidence …’ He sniggered, as if he’d made a joke. ‘What else, considering what we are and what we do? But he told me he was very surprised and I must confess that I was, too, at assembling together in one document something that would cause so much trouble with Peking — sorry, they call it Beijing now, don’t they? — if it ever became public. You know what?’
‘What?’ Harkness’s face was crimson masked, like the make-up of those actors in the traditional Japanese theatre that Charlie hadn’t this time had the opportunity to see.
Charlie extended the moment, enjoying it. He said: ‘Harry was bloody good. Although I understand some people didn’t think so. Harry actually thought there was something odd in the request: maybe that there’d been some Chinese or maybe KGB infiltration into the department here. He took precautions, of course.’
‘Precautions?’ Harkness was actually talking now with the strained, grunted delivery of that Japanese theatre.
‘Well, he didn’t want to let us down, did he?’ invited Charlie. ‘Maintained a copy, along with all the requests from London. From you. Just to be on the safe side.’
‘Does his wife have the copy?’
‘She knows about the document, but Harry was too professional to entrust it to her,’ said Charlie. ‘Said something about it being an insurance for her. A bank maybe …’ Charlie smiled, brightly. ‘Talking of which, no objections to my drawing that 502, are there?’
‘No,’ said Harkness. It was obviously difficult for him. Then, distantly, he said: ‘One day.’
Charlie, who knew what the promise meant, thought one day, asshole: but it would be a long time coming.
Epilogue
There is a narrow sliver of green where M-Street leads into Georgetown, and there are bench seats beneath the few trees. It was upon one of them that Charlie sat, on the sixteenth of the third month, and not in the jungled interior of the Four Seasons lounge. So far, he thought, so good. In the end they had decided against over-using the passport issuing facility but Charlie had been cautious, not attempting to enter America directly but flying first to Canada and then crossing the border from there. The check had been cursory, but Charlie wasn’t relaxing. Everyone else seemed to be. It was difficult to believe, watching the shorted and halter-topped promenade before him, that the tie and suit manufacturers of America could ever make a living: and why didn’t jogging do what it was supposed to? It couldn’t, judging from the wobbly-bodied Sony-Walk-manned runners. Charlie knew he wouldn’t wobble, if he tried it: be more like an uncertain, plunging-everywhere-at-the-same-time landslide. Meat pies in pubs had all sorts of hidden dangers. Not that the size of his stomach was a consideration, anyway. He wondered if any of those funny laced or belted or buckled or even buttoned trainer shoes would be better than Hush Puppies. Maybe he’d try them out, if he had time: if everything resolved today. He still hadn’t checked to see if the Hush Puppies he was wearing could be repaired against the sort of rain he’d suffered in Tokyo: there was always a reluctance against exposing old friends to terminal judgment. A bra-less woman in T-shirt that read ‘Yes But Not With You’ and shorts tight into her bum, and who shouldn’t have risked either, went bounce-bounce by, and Charlie thought automatically of Irena and then, naturally, of Olga. The demands, from both — Olga first, then Irena — had begun at least a month earlier, and the debriefings had ground practically to a standstill. Charlie knew that if he could bottle and market the effect that the inconspicuous little bastard had upon women — one way and another — he could make a fortune.