Krysin remained hostile but Charlie ignored the man’s attitude, determined to take back with him as much as he could about the staff as well as the installation. He forced himself upon them in the recreation and dining areas and invented acceptable queries about the earlier training of those he was now instructing to intrude into their lecture halls and offices until finally Krysin summoned him and told Charlie that he was ignoring regulations and that all enquiries should be channelled through him, as director. Charlie was able to say – quite honestly – that he was unaware of any such regulations and Krysin had to admit to not having told him, which was further cause for ill feeling between them. Charlie didn’t care. By then he had the named identities of five other instructors in addition to Krysin and, by barging unannounced and uninvited into a classroom, a mental picture of four more agents undergoing infiltration training.
Every time he invited Natalia out, in the evenings, she agreed. They ate Azerbaydzhan food at the Baku and went to a recital at the Central Concert Hall and at her insistence, because she said he would never have seen anything like it, went to the Moscow State Circus and Charlie admitted she was right. At the end of each evening, at the door to her apartment, she politely extended her hand and Charlie politely shook it: after the circus he tried to kiss her but she turned her face, so that gesture ended in a peck on the cheek, further politeness.
Charlie planned for the contact Thursday. He knew Krysin had tried hard to find fault – and been unable to apart from his intruding where he shouldn’t – so the director’s resistance to the suggestion was predictable. Charlie prepared for it, arguing the need for them to put their training to practical street use and by setting it out as a challenge – putting their earlier instruction against his subsequent training – finally obtained the director’s agreement. He set it out as a challenge to the class, too, warning them on the Wednesday that the following day he was going to be the hare to their hounds and within an hour clear his trail completely of their pursuit. It hadn’t really been necessary to challenge them, Charlie knew; he just wanted to impress Natalia.
Charlie made extensive use of the Metro, criss-crossing the city and consciously losing Popov and Olga Suvorov by appearing to leave the train at the Kazan interchange and then reboarding at the last minute. He did change, twice, and emerged at street level at the Kiev station. He was lucky because a river boat was about to depart up the Moskva River and he hurried towards it, sideslipping into the last of the crowd and Belik tried to anticipate him and was at the rail, looking desperately around him, when the boat left with Charlie still ashore. He went underground again, travelling this time as far as the Kursk station. The Museum of Oriental Art was ideal, a large, rambling building with many confusing rooms and he used the emergency exit to get out not on to the main Obukha Street but into a side alley. He used the park alongside the Yauza River, actually entering the sanatorium, that had been created from the mansion in the grounds there and finding another side entrance so that he could avoid re-emerging from the same door. He chanced a street bus from the park, consciously going away from the direction he intended, leaving after two halts and backtracking, still by bus, until he saw a convenient metro station and went underground again. He switched trains twice, remaining the second time on the same line, and emerged from the Arbatskaya station near the Kremlin. He didn’t approach the GUM store direct but consciously went around Dzerzhinsky Square, gazing up at the goatee-bearded statue of the man after whom it was named and who established the Soviet secret service and then beyond, to the uneven facade of the headquarters of the KGB itself. He hadn’t got inside, as Wilson had hoped. Too much to have hoped for anyway. He’d got to Berenkov, which was as good. And penetrated Balashikha, which was also good. Bloody good. If only he could make the contact and pull the whole damned thing off. Charlie moved on, still with the building in view. It was conveniently situated to GUM if the informant were actually inside, he reflected.
Charlie entered the enormous store through the prescribed door and loitered with the identifying guidebook and copy of Pravda in his left hand, feeling uncomfortably conspicuous. He waited a full fifteen minutes and then went further inside. Charlie’s feet throbbed, from the exercise of losing his pursuers. At first without conscious intention but then with increasing determination he went to the shoe department, the one on the second floor, and looked this time with greater concentration than before. They all still seemed to be big but he finally found a pair that appeared to be made of something resembling the suede of the Hush Puppies that were so kind to him. He tried them on, wiggling his toes to test the restriction and then embarking on a brief trial walk. Not bad, he thought; they’d spread and be better than the ones he had. He paid and kept them on, having the ones he had been wearing put into the bag.
He went back to the deputed area and spent a further fifteen minutes there, alert for contact. Come on! he thought, in sudden exasperation. Whoever it was had to be a professional. And Charlie decided that if the man were a professional then he’d had ample opportunity to establish there was no surveillance to concern him. He looked about the store, seeking the familiar face of Berenkov. Around him, the shoppers swirled: at an adjoining counter an American couple debated the merits of engraved glass as souvenirs and decided against buying. Charlie moved his feet, hunching them inside his new shoes, trying immediately to mould them. He couldn’t see Berenkov anywhere.
‘Is there a prize?’
Although he was prepared – actually waiting for the approach – Charlie still jumped at the familiar voice.
Natalia smiled back at him.
‘What is it?’ The smile faded into a frown of concern.
‘Startled me,’ said Charlie, honestly. Could it be? She was in the service: but with the sort of access that Wilson indicated? Why not? As a debriefer and assessor she’d range over more than one department. Ideally placed, in fact. It didn’t have to be Berenkov. The questions crowded in, one jostling the other.
‘That’s conceited,’ she said.
‘What?’ said Charlie, regaining control.
‘Imagining you’d be able to lose everyone.’
It was, if she’d genuinely followed him: dangerous, too, because he’d checked constantly and been unaware of her. ‘From the beginning?’ he said.
Natalia nodded, pleased with herself. ‘I almost lost you on the metro, at Ploshchad Nogina. Only saw you switch at the last moment.’
Still needing time Charlie took her arm and began to walk her from the store. Where was the Chekhov quote that was going to confirm everything for him? Outside he actually shivered, to make it obvious – and easy – for her and said, ‘It’s cold, suddenly.’
‘I kept warm enough, chasing you,’ she said.
For him to make the approach would be against every rule and precaution. He said, ‘There is a prize.’ Nodding towards the Rossiya Hotel where they’d had their first meal, he said, ‘A congratulatory drink.’
The uncertainties remained, irritating him. If her being in the store were as she claimed it to be – simply the result of her expertise – then there was a good chance that the would-be defector, if he were watching, would have been frightened away by witnessing his being approached. Which would mean that he had been conceited. Worse, that he’d probably cocked everything up. He took her to the roof bar, adjoining the restaurant, and said, ‘I’m impressed.’