He was disappointed, too – on a professional as well as a social level – that there was no further contact with Berenkov. He’d expected it – they’d arranged it that night, after all – but no calls came. After the first four empty, echoing days, Charlie decided upon another rebellion and found things different there, as well. No one tried to stop him.
Charlie had an excellent, inherent sense of direction and he had the advantage of the drive – even though it had been at night – on his way to Berenkov’s apartment so he set off confidently towards the centre of the city. The excursion began as the test to see if he were still under restriction but as he walked he realised what he’d find in the centre of the city and thought why not? It was the only contact point he had. And it was the reason for his being in Moscow at all. Having decided actually to go to the GUM complex, Charlie wondered about clearing his trail, smiling as he had earlier in the apartment as the tradecraft expression came automatically to mind. No, he determined. Not on this, the first outing. He didn’t have any doubt that there was surveillance but if he evaded it they’d become suspicious and that was the last thing he wanted. It was better to make the journey just that, an apparently aimless outing of someone trying to relieve his boredom – and he genuinely felt that, after all – by visiting the most obvious tourist spots in the city. Which naturally – unsuspiciously – included the largest department store in the Soviet Union. For those who watched unseen – and he didn’t intend even trying to see them – it would be nothing. For Charlie, it would be a useful reconnoitre for the real thing. If the real thing ever happened.
The streets were drab and uniform and depressing and Charlie thought how crushing it would be to imagine having to spend the rest of his life here. Which was what Sampson would do. Enthusiastically. For how long? Charlie wondered. The stupid bugger was eager enough now, full of cliche and cant but Charlie couldn’t believe that later – a year, maybe two, maybe five but some time later – he wouldn’t realise he’d just changed prisons. Serve the bastard right. Charlie hoped the realisation came sooner, rather than later. Christ, how Charlie wished there were some way he could really find out if Sampson were involved in trying to trace the Russian traitor. He thought – he bloody well knew – that he’d rather confront and defeat Sampson in a competition of professional ability than he would compete in the best of three falls in Natalia Fedova. It would be a hell of an experience, falling on to Natalia Fedova. Silly, fantasising sod, he thought.
The massive expanse of Red Square opened up before him and Charlie experienced a spurt of satisfaction at having found his way unfailingly there. He hoped – after the absence – that all the other abilities were still as good. For the benefit of those dutifully observing, Charlie meandered without any apparent direction through Kitav-Gorod, the oldest part of the Soviet capital. Charlie remembered the Russian for what was now the dominating area, pleased once more that things were coming back so well. It was, he was sure, Krasnaya Ploshchad. And it meant Beautiful Square. And it was beautiful, compared to the drab boxes upon boxes arranged around the regimented rectangles through which he’d walked on his way there. The very centre of Soviet history, for four hundred years, reflected Charlie. Here had been enacted slaughters and executions and triumphs and failures. And only a few hundred yards away – maybe not even that – was the meeting place with an unknown stranger through whom, if he were very clever and very devious and very lucky, he was going to be able to rehabilitate himself completely and go back to a life he should never – in a moment of conceited vindictiveness – have considered abandoning. Another ‘if, held like an admonishing finger. Would Red Square – Beautiful Square – be for him a triumph or a failure? Charlie wondered. And was the Russian really unknown? If it were Berenkov – and circumstantially there were enough pointers – then the man would have been astonished to find Charlie in Moscow. And until his actual appearance at GUM wouldn’t anyway know he was the deputed route-master. Charlie hoped very much it was Berenkov.
Charlie had forgotten, from his previous, long-ago visit, how vast the architecture was. Gulliver’s houses in the land of Lilliput. No, he thought, unhappy with the impression. All around were the despised edifices of the Tsars and Tsarinas and the oppressive, heel-crushing rich which the new tsars and tsarinas and oppressors chose not to hate but to occupy, like grateful hermit crabs warm and safe inside the shells that had once been the homes of bigger, better crabs. Charlie grimaced, to himself. He wasn’t sure the succeeding impression was any better than the first. Maybe he should stop trying; trying so hard at least.
Lenin’s mausoleum didn’t accord with the surroundings. The memorial to the goatee-bearded opportunist who chased away the bigger crabs was an ill-fitting apology of a place. If they were going to bother, they should have got it right, thought Charlie. Whether Lenin had been an opportunist or a dedicated revolutionary against an unjust regime – and Charlie thought he was more of an opportunist than dedicated revolutionary – he had caused a pretty dramatic body swerve in world history. So he deserved more than something that looked like a 1940s bomb shelter against a chance air raid. Charlie wondered if the always-present, dutifully waiting queue – were they really genuine visiting Soviet territory tourists or permanently employed actors, on a job for life? – were as disappointed as he was.
Deciding that he had appeared aimless for long enough, Charlie turned away from the unimpressive resting place for the father of the revolution and went at last towards what had now become the object of his visit. Outside of the store, in towering identity, was the full name from the initials of which the acronym is created, Gosudarstvennyy Universal’nyy Magazin. Once, thought Charlie, as he approached, the concentration of more than 1,000 different stores, each competing, each surviving. Now, like everything else – almost everything – a collective. But positioned where it was and with the captive market it had, perhaps a more successful collective than most within the system.
The west door, on the third Thursday of any month: those were the instructions. So where the hell was the west door: there appeared to be dozens of doors, all around the place. Utilising the sense of direction again Charlie used St Basil’s Cathedral, to the south of Red Square, as a marker. Charlie worked out the geography easily enough but still wasn’t sure that it would help. He actually entered the huge store from one of the doors to the west, immediately conscious of the activity inside, a huge, human beehive. And inside this beehive on the third Thursday of succeeding months there was going to be a queen bee who was going to pick him out as a very special worker bee. He hoped. A guide book wrapped around a rolled up copy of Pravda, Charlie recalled, continuing the instructions. Professionally he decided that the choice of meeting place was good and the book and the newspaper innocuous enough and the final part of the process – ‘If I lived in Moscow, I don’t think I’d care what the weather was like’ – the sort of simple exchange not likely to arouse suspicion. So what would? Charlie had survived for so long – been good for so long – because before embarking upon any operation – any problem – he always approached it from every possible direction because the danger always was that the bad guys would know a route he hadn’t thought of and use it to come charging down and scoop him up. Charlie eased his way through the crowded store, letting the movement of the crowd carry him, taking only seconds to isolate the flaw. Today’s visit was OK and maybe a subsequent one – on the third Thursday of any month, between eleven and noon that time – but anything beyond that would be dangerous. And the guidebook and the newspaper weren’t as good as he’d first thought: there would unquestionably have been watchers, today. Who would have seen him find his way without maps or directions. So the guidebook would look out of place, if his observers were as good as they should be. Just as it would look out of place if, on succeeding third Thursdays of succeeding months, he kept returning to a regular spot at regular times. Shit, thought Charlie. There was no despair; Charlie was too experienced for that. Having identified the flaws, Charlie immediately began seeking a way around them. It was simply – he hoped to Christ it was simple – a matter of clearing his trail. But doing it better than those watching had ever known before, so that the evasion of pursuit wouldn’t be a conscious attempt upon his part but an irritating mistake upon theirs: and be shown to be, at any subsequent enquiry. Having found the resolve, Charlie improved upon it. He wouldn’t try to dodge on the first identification visit: nothing was going to happen then – apart, he hoped, from his being identified by whoever it was who would later make contact – so better to let that trip be seen. Better still, he’d make lots of other apparently pointless visits, carrying the guidebook and the newspaper, to lots of other apparently innocent tourist spots. That way there’d be a logical reason for the book – which, the longer and more obviously he carried it, would cease to occupy the attention of those watching, because they would become accustomed to his always having it – and GUM would not register with any more significance than anywhere else he went.