‘But why?’ demanded Charlie.
‘To allow the murder warrants,’ explained Wilson, gently. ‘If getting you out hadn’t gone as smoothly as it did – and I think we were lucky there – we had a warrant alleging murder against you. Moscow couldn’t have demanded to keep a murderer, could they?’
‘Sampson pretended to kill a copper to protect me!’
‘Yes,’ said Wilson.
‘Oh God,’ said Charlie, emptily.
‘All you really had to do, to make your part of the operation work, was actually get to Moscow and then get back again,’ said Wilson. ‘The business with GUM was just to make you believe there was a point in your going…’ Wilson broke away. ‘Getting into that spy school was a hell of a bonus, by the way. Well done.’
‘Berenkov fixed it,’ repeated Charlie.
Wilson nodded. ‘He was the target,’ said the director. ‘All the messages were carefully planted pointed to Berenkov’s division. I wonder if we haven’t taken too much of an obvious chance, making the supposed identification Chekhov quotations. We’ve no news of any move against him: won’t have for months yet.’
‘The messages,’ said Charlie. ‘How could you make the supposed information you were getting out of Moscow genuine enough to hope to convince them?’
Wilson shifted against the radiator, pulling his stiff leg into a more comfortable position. ‘Had to be very careful there,’ he conceded. ‘Drew on America a lot, although they don’t know it. Asked for special help, from their satellite surveillance system. If the Soviets knew – instead of believing it came from one of their own people – they’d realise just how effective and complete that satellite spying is. All the stuff from Baikonur and about crop yields came from satellites. The American NSA and our own radio and telephone intercept people at Cheltenham helped a lot, too – again not knowing just how much – and we managed to get quite a bit more from that. The information I told you about in jail, about Politburo decisions, actually came from microwave intercept. We made a big fuss, finally. We blanketed the Soviet embassy here and over the course of several months – while you were still in jail and actually before Sampson got sentenced – began to identify their agents here. We pouched the information to Moscow and had them transmit it back and then expelled most of them, a couple of months back.’
‘My coming out turned the key completely on Berenkov?’ said Charlie, the picture practically formed in his mind now. ‘We’d known each other, here. The messages – the indication that the informant wanted to defect – pointed to him. My going to Moscow – then getting out – would confirm the final suspicion?’
‘That’s right,’ said Wilson.
‘Did you know about Georgi?’
‘Georgi?’
‘His son passed an examination qualifying him for an exchange course education, somewhere in the West,’ explained Charlie.
‘Marvellous!’ said Wilson, enthusiastically. ‘I didn’t have any idea but that’s a hell of a bonus, too. Like your actually getting to him. I thought it might happen but I recognised it as a long shot.’
‘Poor Alexei,’ said Charlie, wistfully.
Wilson frowned at the sympathy. ‘Can’t you understand how this will turn the Russian service on its head!’ he demanded. ‘Everything with which Berenkov has been involved since his return and rehabilitation in Russia will be suspect. And not just that. Everything he ever sent from here, as well. It’ll take them years to sort out and send them in more wrong directions that we can count.’
‘Yes,’ agreed Charlie, ‘It’s very clever.’ He stopped and then began again. ‘What about Sampson?’
‘He does what it was always intended he should do, when I took over the Willoughby operation. I always intended to stage his arrest, to get him repatriated to Russia…’ Wilson paused, in further admiration, ‘I don’t think I know of a man with more courage or conviction. I didn’t force the decision upon him, you understand. I gave him weeks, to make his mind up. Set it out as clearly as I could that he was committing himself to a situation that I didn’t think many men could endure. He insisted on going through with it. There’s a chance he would have been involved in their attempts to find out who the supposed defector was: he sent the first warning message, after all. If he is, then he can further tilt everything in Berenkov’s direction. But that again would be a bonus and I think we’ve had enough of those. What we’re hoping for is that he’ll get brought in to their service…’ There was another smile. ‘And then we’ll have what the Russians think we’ve already got. We’ll have a spy in place.’
‘Christ!’ said Charlie.
‘He won’t be able to go on forever, of course,’ said Wilson. ‘The same murder warrant exists against him. The understanding is that he can run whenever he wants. Knowing Sampson, I expect him to stay for the agreed period. Five years. For five years he’s going to feed us everything he can. And when he gets back here I’m personally going to see that he gets every reward and honour it’s possible for him to have.’
‘You should have told me,’ insisted Charlie, flat-voiced. ‘You really should have told me.’
The relevant times were logged and the evidence was in her favour and Kalenin decided the woman had made a desperate attempt to stop the escape. It had been his mistake wrongly to send the seizure squads to the spy school and to Charlie Muffin’s apartment. Only later – too late – did he identify from photographs the stranger whose abrupt entry into the British embassy was probably timed thirty minutes after Natalia Fedova’s attempted approach to him, an approach Kalenin now realised he should have responded to earlier. By the time the photograph had been identified as that of Charlie Muffin the damned man was already aboard the aircraft at Sheremetyevo. Kalenin had been halfway to the airport when the report came in on the car radio that the aircraft had taken off. They were fools, not to have stormed it; or to have shot the tyres out instead of standing helplessly around waiting for orders from higher authority. In his fury, Kalenin determined they would regret that indecision for the rest of their imprisoned days. The KGB chairman stopped the reflection, coming back to the woman sitting nervously in front of him.
‘Again,’ insisted Kalenin. ‘Tell me the salient points again.’
‘I encouraged the affair between us,’ repeated Natalia. ‘Without having any evidence I could bring before you or anyone else I was unhappy with the initial interviews and again with his performance at Balashikha.’ Natalia paused, unsure if she were fully expressing herself as she intended. ‘Never any evidence; no proof. Just a feeling. When we were together there was always an attitude, an uncertainty. Again, only a feeling. I started to follow him. Twice it was the same rendezvous, the GUM department store. It was obviously a point of contact. I followed him there again today, because I wanted positive proof that something was not as we suspected it. I knew he saw me. There was no obvious indication, but I knew I had been identified.’
‘So he fled,’ said Kalenin, reflectively. ‘He penetrated us, because of the stupidity of someone who should have known better. Damn Alexei Berenkov!’ He looked up at Natalia. ‘You’ve no doubt at all about the person you saw him meet on every occasion?’
‘None,’ said Natalia. ‘I knew, of course, why my debriefing was cut short. Knew what Edwin Sampson was being called upon to do. It was definitely Sampson, at every meeting. Despite all the indications to the contrary, that they disliked each other, they retained contact.’
‘Charlie Muffin is a survivor,’ mused Kalenin. ‘A professional survivor. Knowing you’d identified him, he’d have cut his losses and abandoned everything: better to save part of an operation than nothing at all.’
‘There’s still Sampson.’
‘Yes,’ said Kalenin, his fury returning. ‘There’s still Sampson and by the time his interrogation is over there is absolutely nothing that Sampson will not have told us.’