‘What about your wife?’ demanded the woman.
It was several moments before Charlie replied, confronting the deepest and bitterest regret of all. Then he said, ‘I was almost caught, after the first year. A combined operation by my own service and the CIA, because I exposed their Director, too, and the Americans wanted me as well. I got away. She was killed.’ Dear Edith, he thought. Neglected and cheated on and forced by what he did into a life of a fugitive, which she’d hated. And never a moment of complaint or criticism. Why the hell had it taken her death to make him realise how much he’d loved her?
‘And then?’ persisted the woman, bent over the papers in front of her.
‘The British service was by tradition one of university graduates,’ remembered Charlie. ‘I never did fit. I was kept on by a marvellous man, one of the best Directors ever. He had a son, a Lloyds underwriter. He let me work for him – it had never been made public, what I did, because of the embarrassment it would have caused, so he didn’t know.’
‘You were working for him when you were caught?’
Charlie nodded, ‘In Italy,’ he started. The pause was momentary and he didn’t think she would have noticed it before he finished – differently from the way he intended – by saying ‘Two and a half years ago.’ Part of the original deal – the deal he believed Wilson had reneged on – had been to say nothing at the trial, even though it was held in camera, about the entrapment in Italy of the British ambassador as a Soviet spy because Wilson wanted to keep the conduits open to feed as much disinformation as he could to Moscow. Dismissive of this meaningless encounter with the woman Charlie realised he’d allowed himself to become careless, unthinking about the answers. Unthinking! The word stayed with him, an accusation. He was being unthinking. And stupid and arrogant and the worst – unprofessional – in imagining the meeting was meaningless. She’d made the mistake and he’d almost missed it. Natalia Nikandrova Fedova had said she knew nothing about him and then interposed the question about Edith: about whom she was supposed to have no knowledge. So the clerk-demeanour was a trick, a trick that had worked to achieve precisely the effect it had, lulling him into carelessness by the time they reached the point of the meeting, their need to know if the Italian ambassador had been uncovered. Charlie remembered the beaten prison officer and the murdered policeman and supposed Sampson would be absorbed into the Soviet service. Maybe it was a convoluted way of getting back at the man – misleading the KGB Sampson would undoubtedly join – but at the moment it was the only opportunity he had. He’d have to be careful to maintain his earlier attitude.
‘What were you doing for Willoughby’s son?’
Another mistake, isolated Charlie. He hadn’t named Willoughby as the Director for whom he’d worked all those years and ended practically idolising. Charlie said, ‘He was an underwriter, like I said. Sometimes some of the claims seemed suspicious. I’d investigate them.’
‘What was suspicious about Italy?’ pressed the woman.
‘It was a huge jewel robbery, involving the wife of the British ambassador,’ said Charlie, lounged in the chair physically to convey the uncaring attitude he wanted her to go on believing; the hidden cameras, too. ‘It coincided with the renewal at a vastly increased valuation of the policy and it looked a bit doubtful. People sometimes over-insure and then conveniently lose things if they’re short of money.’
She smiled disarmingly across the desk and said, ‘Even British ambassadors?’
‘Even British ambassadors,’ said Charlie, trying to recapture the earlier flirtation.
‘Was there?’
‘Was there what?’ said Charlie, knowing the question but maintaining the pretence.
‘Anything suspicious about the robbery?’
Charlie shrugged. ‘Never had time to find out. The station officer at the embassy for British intelligence was someone who had been in the department with me. He recognised me and sounded the alarm. And I got caught.’
The basic lesson of every interrogation course Charlie had ever undergone – and reinforced during countless actual sessions when he was operating – was that a good liar tells as few lies as possible, to minimise the chance of being caught out. He’d been as vague and as flippant about Italy as he had about everything else and he knew damned well they couldn’t trap him upon what he had said so far.
‘Was America involved in your capture?’ asked Natalia, approaching from another direction. ‘You said they tried in an earlier operation; the one in which Edith was killed.’
He hadn’t mentioned Edith by name, remembered Charlie: another slip. He said, ‘No, just the British.’
‘Still a large operation, though?’
The ambassador would have warned Moscow of the influx and the personal danger, Charlie supposed. He said, ‘I caused the disgrace of both the British and American Directors. And they failed to get me once. They didn’t take any chances, the second time. They flooded the place with people.’ He stopped for just the right amount of time and added, ‘And they got me, well and truly.’
‘Why did you betray your country?’ she demanded, suddenly.
‘I didn’t betray my country,’ responded Charlie, instinctively. Yet another direction surprised him and he decided definitely that she wasn’t as inexperienced as he had first thought. With that realisation came another; so he wasn’t being dismissed as unimportant. It pleased him.
‘Of course you did,’ she said. ‘You exposed two Directors to arrest and enabled the repatriation of a Russian your country had jailed as a spy.’
‘It was a personal thing,’ insisted Charlie. ‘I told you they were prepared to screw me: I screwed them instead.’
‘What gave you the right to question the decision of your superiors?’
‘The fact that it was my life they were making a decision about,’ said Charlie, vehemently.
‘To whom do you consider the first loyalty.’
‘Me,’ said Charlie at once. ‘My first loyalty is always to me.’ There was no danger in this philosophising but Charlie was cautious now, conscious how she used directional changes in attempts to off-balance.
‘There must have been many times, as an active field agent, when you were engaged in an operation which put your life at risk.’
‘No,’ said Charlie, refusing the argument. ‘All the other operations carried the acceptable risks, which I knew and understood. This time they made an active, positive decision to sacrifice me. That wasn’t acceptable.’
‘To you?’ she said.
‘To me,’ agreed Charlie. He thought he knew the tactic: to prod and goad until he lost his temper. Never lose your temper: another caution in interrogation.
‘Many people would regard that attitude as arrogant,’ said the woman. She paused and added. ‘Which it is.’
‘And many people would regard it as an instinct for survival,’ said Charlie. ‘Which it is.’ He feigned annoyance, raising his voice, curious where she was leading the questioning.
‘The court that sentenced you thought otherwise.’
Back to Italy, recognised Charlie. Very clever. He said, ‘I didn’t expect anything else.’
She waited several moments, waiting for him to continue. When he didn’t she said, ‘Didn’t you try to put your point of view to the court?’
It had been a secure hearing and he didn’t think there could have been any way for them to learn of the evidence. He said, ‘Of course I did. But they didn’t want to listen, did they! Made their minds up before the trial started.’
‘They weren’t seen to get their revenge, were they?’ she said. The hearing was in secret.’
Good again, admired Charlie. He said, ‘It’s customary, under our law, in the case of security. Like I’ve already said, they’d have been embarrassed if the full facts had come out about their own Director being seized.’