‘I was considered the best, wasn’t I?’ asked Berenkov. There was no boastfulness in the question.
‘Yes,’ agreed Kalenin.
‘He caught me,’ reminded Berenkov. ‘Just like he caught those idiots in his own department who considered him expendable.’
‘I don’t understand the point you’re making,’ complained the KGB chairman.
‘Charlie’s brilliant,’ said Berenkov, simply. ‘He’s also the most awkward bastard imaginable.’
Chapter Ten
Charlie was handcuffed for the return to England after his Italian arrest and there had been an escort of at least two warders for every remand appearance and then the eventual taking to Wormwood Scrubs and there was the impress of deja vu during the journey to Moscow, another guarded trip to another sort of imprisonment. Sampson was ill throughout the voyage to Murmansk, rarely leaving the cabin – for which Charlie was grateful – but recovered dramatically when they got ashore. Almost at once he started behaving like a deprived child on its first outing, using his Russian wherever he could, pointlessly reading out signs and posters and staring around excitedly at buildings and streets. Letsov and the other Russian, whose name emerged as Orlov, remained with them throughout, right to Moscow, but increasingly during the voyage and more so once they reached the Russian mainland their attitude grew into one of undisguised boredom and disinterest, men whose task had been completed now burdened with the irksome task of babysitting.
It was dark when the plane from Murmansk arrived at Sheremetyevo airport, which seemed larger and more brightly lit than when Charlie had last landed there, ten years earlier on secondment to the embassy. And the journey into Moscow appeared to take longer than he remembered. It was difficult, because of the darkness, to recognise any landmarks. He thought he isolated the river but wasn’t sure. He definitely located one of the red stars illuminated above the Kremlin and using that as a marker realised they were being driven far out into the suburbs of the city.
Orlov, who was driving as usual, had difficulty finding their destination, twice having to stop and ask directions. It was an apartment block, a vast, anonymous pile of a place, seeming to stretch the entire block and rise blackly up into the night sky. Only a few windows were lighted and the impression was of abandonment, which Charlie decided was fitting.
Orlov didn’t bother to get out of the car, leaving Letsov to complete the final part of the assignment. The bulky Russian led the way into the building and up a flight of chipped and smelling stairs to an apartment at the far end of an unlighted corridor. From behind the closed doorways they passed came the scuffing and murmur of occupation and once the louder sound of a radio; a woman was singing a melancholy Slavic dirge and Charlie decided he knew how she felt. The pervading smell was of cabbage.
Letsov entered the apartment peremptorily, snapping on the lights and indicating the place with a take-it-or-leave-it gesture with his hand.
‘You must stay here,’ he said. ‘You will be contacted.’
‘Together?’ demanded Charlie, at once.
‘Stay here,’ repeated Letsov. He pointed towards the telephone. ‘Tomorrow.’
Charlie looked around the room. It was a spartan place, just a couch and two chairs, with a table and two more chairs against the far wall. Beside the table an opening, without a door or curtaining, led into a kitchen. To the left was a short corridor. As he watched Sampson, still with his little-boy excitement, discovered the bathroom and two separate bedrooms.
‘Goodbye,’ said Letsov, at the doorway.
‘Thanks again,’ said Charlie. During the voyage he had attempted some approach to the man, whom he recognised as a complete professional, but like a complete professional Letsov had rejected anything more than the most necessary conversation. Charlie regretted it. He thought Letsov was the sort of man he could have liked; understood at least.
‘Good luck,’ said the Russian, making a last minute concession.
‘Thanks for that, too,’ said Charlie.
Sampson emerged from the further bedroom as the Russian left and announced, with his predictable command of every situation. ‘I’ll have this one. You take the other.’
Charlie shrugged, uninterested in arguing about it. He hoped to Christ they weren’t together for much longer. ‘Where did you get your Russian?’ he said.
‘I get my degree in modern languages at Oxford,’ said Sampson. ‘Got an aptitude for it. And for almost the last two years I was number three on the Russian desk.’
‘You were in the Russian section?’ said Charlie. He wondered why the man hadn’t boasted about that earlier, like he had about almost everything else.
‘I was ordered to penetrate it, from here, when I was on station in Beirut.’
‘So for two years Moscow had an open door into everything we knew or thought about them!’ demanded Charlie. What a bastard, he thought.
‘And a lot of what NATO thought: Washington too,’ reminded the other man. ‘I told you I was important, didn’t I?’
‘Yes,’ said Charlie, emptily. He went to the uncurtained window, staring out. There appeared to be a matching apartment block on the opposite side of the street, picked out with as few lights as theirs. He wondered if that smelled of overcooked cabbage as well. Six months, he thought. Six months was bearable. But was it time to achieve what Wilson demanded? And would the deal still stand, either way, after the murder? There was, of course, another alternative. The one he had been deliberately shunting aside in his mind. What if the Russians came to suspect what he was really doing? And that’s all they would need to do, just suspect. Another prison, if they let him live at all. And no limit on the sentence this time. Compared to the gulags, Wormwood Scrubs would have been a village in the sun. Charlie shuddered, a physical reaction and from his side Sampson said, ‘It’s not cold.’
‘No,’ said Charlie, who hadn’t been aware of the man’s approach. If I lived in Moscow, the weather would not matter, he thought.
‘This is it, Charlie,’ said Sampson, with his undiminished enthusiasm. ‘Like the captain said, a new life.’
‘Yeah,’ said Charlie, unimpressed.
‘Aren’t you excited?’
‘No.’
‘You’re going to have to do it, you know,’ said Sampson. ‘Just like in the nick.’
‘What?’ said Charlie.
‘Adjust. Stop being a bloody fool and adjust.’
He wasn’t going to be a bloody fool, Charlie decided. Sampson thought he was the clever one, the expert: but that wasn’t how it was going to be. Charlie determined that no matter how difficult or impossible it seemed he was going to find whoever the unknown defector was and arrange his escape and show this arrogant, conceited smart-ass – and Moscow and the department in London – that he was still what he always had been. Better than any of them.
‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘I am being a bloody fool. It’s going to be great, when I get used to it.’
‘That’s better,’ said Sampson, actually throwing his arm around Charlie’s shoulders.
Charlie managed to resist pulling away at the touch. If Sampson was as important as he claimed – and appeared to be, from the rescue – the man might actually be the way to get to people in Dzerzhinsky Square. And he’d need short cuts. Only six months, after all. ‘I wonder how long the debriefing will take?’ he said.
‘Longer for me than for you; you’ve been away from things for too long.’
Jesus! thought Charlie. ‘You’re right,’ he said, actually managing to intrude the impression of admiration into his voice. ‘You’re the one they really rescued, after all.’
It was Sampson, of course, who answered the telephone when it rang, the following morning, the expectant greeting fading into a frown of annoyed incomprehension when he replaced the receiver. ‘You,’ he said to Charlie. ‘They’re sending a car for you first. I’m to wait.’
Satisfaction warmed through Charlie, the feeling remaining as he left the apartment building thirty minutes later. He didn’t look up but hoped Sampson was at the window. The unspeaking chauffeur drove quickly, using the centre lane reserved exclusively for government vehicles, but not, Charlie realised, back into the centre of the capital but still further out, towards the peripheral road. The KGB had extensive offices in the suburbs, Charlie remembered; but Dzerzhinsky Square was the headquarters he had to penetrate and he was going in the opposite direction.