‘Noon,’ guessed Sokol, aloud, as the information about the American’s watch check was radioed into the control room.
Sokol was tensed in anticipation of what was going to happen. It would be a coup to trap Blair actually in the act of proveable espionage. If he could do the same with Brinkman – and he was determined to do the same with Brinkman – Sokol knew it would be the coup to make everything possible. Sokol stayed crouched forward over his maps table but not looking at them, concentrating instead upon the slow moving clock mounted against the far wall, watching the quarter, half and then three quarters eventually pass with no news from the now completely occupied park.
On his seat in that park, Blair decided to allow more time. There were a dozen reasons why Orlov could be late, although he’d never been late on the previous occasions. And a dozen more reasons why he wouldn’t be able to keep the appointment at all, this Friday or several Fridays after. Blair was still unsettled by Orlov’s non-appearance; although Blair knew all the reasons and all the difficulties he’d still unprofessionally convinced himself of the Russian’s appearance and was disappointed that it hadn’t happened. It still could, he thought, checking the time once more; it was still only one-thirty.
The park attendant completed his leaf collection and the lovers stopped short of positive intercourse and Blair actually read the Soviet newspaper, from cover to cover. At three o’clock he finally quit, rising slump-shouldered and catching the first taxi he managed to stop. Blair’s expertise was still such to prevent his being ordinarily careless, although his hop-scotch from car to metro to bus was always monitored, because the surveillance was extraordinary.
In the Dzerzhinsky Square radio room an equally dejected Sokol stared down at the scrawled pencil lines losing interest momentarily in the crackled requests for further instructions from the radio.
‘It was supposed to be a meeting,’ Sokol said, more to himself than to anyone else in the room. ‘I know it was intended to be a meeting.’
When he got back to his own office, Sokol found waiting for him the request to contact the chairman of the KGB, for a personal interview. Sokol threw down the memorandum, sighing. He was surprised it had taken so long in coming.
The reaction from Washington came close to hysteria. Blair factually reported that he had attended, as arranged, but that Orlov failed to appear and then emphasised that from the beginning he’d anticipated a quite understandable interruption to any regular, weekly meetings and arranged the fallback with the man. His attempted assurance – with which Blair was unhappy anyway – failed entirely to placate Langley headquarters. Blair’s attempts to maintain an open line of communication were constantly broken, with a flurry of questions some of which his messages had already answered and some of which were beyond answer at all. Aware, despite being so far away, of the growing inquest, Blair repeated Orlov’s concern about any approach to Harriet being made and asked for a categoric assurance that the agreement had been kept and that no KGB watch squad could have themselves become aware of the American surveillance. The apparent guarantee came but Blair thought it was muted and decided he’d made a telling point. He bet that Harriet Johnson was as sanitised and isolated as any goldfish-bowled astronaut on a moonwalk. And bet further that any intelligence operator worth his salt could have picked the observation up in five seconds flat, allowing for natural blinking.
Brinkman timed perfectly his arrival at the public kiosk on the Ulitza Gor’kova, its possible use the only uncertainty. It was empty, so even that wasn’t a problem. Brinkman hadn’t bothered to evade what he still believed to be only the normal embassy personnel attention, because having established his undetectable contact routine, evasion simply wasn’t necessary. Professional to the letter, he made the pretence of seeking a coin at the moment of entry and snatched the telephone from the rest at the beginning of the first ring, so successfully that Sokol’s radio van, with its directional pistol microphone, failed to pick up that it was an incoming call. Orlov hadn’t managed to get a delegation and Brinkman had nothing to say except that he would be at the subsequent kiosk at exactly the same time the following week. Brinkman succeeded in covering the exchange against any outside interest by fumbling with the rare and tattered directory until Orlov disengaged and then calling his own number, coin ready in the slot, finally – again for external observation if there was any – slamming down the headpiece, a man frustrated at being unable to make a connection.
Although outwardly Brinkman maintained the annoyed pretence, he left the telephone box hot with excitement, seeing Orlov’s contact the proof that the Russian had come over to the British and that he’d snatched the prize right from beneath Blair’s nose. The first prize, Brinkman told himself. There was another to follow, when Ann made her decision.
The telephone visit was recorded in the account of the observation upon Brinkman but so casual and quick was it that no specific importance was attached and Sokol did not single it out as anything of relevance, either.
Chapter Thirty-Four
It took every extreme of will-power and concentration that Pietr Orlov possessed – and then some the Russian didn’t know he had – but knowing that everything he wanted depended upon it he cleared his mind of a woman he loved called Harriet Johnson and an American he tolerated called Blair and an Englishman he despised called Brinkman and devoted himself entirely to the agricultural policy he recognised to be the passport for what he wanted. He rewrote and re-worked and then rewrote again the passages that had offended Sevin – rightly offended the man, Orlov acknowledged, because they were careless. – and when he got them right he started again until finally he was confident they were perfect.
Which Sevin assured him they were, accepting them practically without correction. Still Orlov forced himself, determined to maintain the standard, and Sevin remained congratulatory, angry at himself for displaying an old man’s lack of judgement and reflecting a lifetime’s suspicion, accepting the temporary distraction had after all been the disruption of a broken marriage.
The chance came – sooner than he expected it to – on the fourth week. Orlov evolved from the beginning a system of monitoring everything that was happening elsewhere – the work of the other committees and the other groups – involved in the agronomy review and into the net in exactly a month the system brought the memorandum from the central working committee discussing the delegation visit to Europe.
Orlov felt hollowed by the initial flood of excitement: at the quickness of its happening and his luck in discovering it and the thought of it all – everything – being settled. There was fear, too. As great as excitement. He hoped so much that he wouldn’t fail. He’d be all right, naturally, if things went smoothly. It was of the unexpected that Orlov was frightened. On the day the memorandum reached him, his hand positively trembled, so that he had difficulty in reading the words and had to put it down upon the unmoving desk and bend over it. France first – the inviting country – and then Denmark, to study their dairy system. A full fifteen days’ tour: starting in just three and a half weeks’ time.
Orlov prepared his approach to Sevin with the consummate care that he knew everything now required – the sort of care he’d taken over the embassy visit when he’d made contact with the American – getting approval for his latest section of his report first and then letting the conversation between them ramble into generalities before mentioning, in an apparent aside, the proposed European visit. When Sevin seized upon it, as Orlov guessed – and hoped – he would, the younger Russian said, more direct than before, ‘I thought I should be part of the delegation…’ He nodded towards the papers on Sevin’s desk. ‘All that is being written and compiled from previous reports and statistics. I’d be better able to argue innovations and change if I’d personally seen the methods of other, more advanced countries.’ What right had he had to question morality with Brinkman? thought Orlov.