It had been late when he got back from Sussex the previous night, practically pub closing time, and so Charlie kept the car instead of returning it to the pool, which regulations required. In the morning he found the Mercedes insignia had been ripped off the bonnet.
‘Shit,’ he said. Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea after all to buy a car of his own. He wondered if the bank manager’s letter had arrived yet.
The summons was for ten o’clock and Charlie intended getting to the department an hour earlier, with a lot to do beforehand, but the traffic was worse than he had expected and so he was delayed. He still hadn’t finished all the Foreign Office requests by the time he should have left for the confrontation with the Director. He worked on. At fifteen minutes past Alison Bing came on from Wilson’s direct line and said: ‘It’s no good hiding: we know you’re there.’
‘Ten more minutes,’ said Charlie.
‘Now!’ she said.
It only took Charlie five minutes to complete the last message, to Moscow, and he left in what was for him a run which with his feet he never normally attempted. As he went by the window he saw that the upside-down training shoes weren’t in the courtyard rubbish any more.
Sir Alistair Wilson was sitting formally behind his desk, which he rarely did and there was none of the personal affability of which Charlie was usually conscious. Harkness was in his customary chair, prim hands on prim knees, making no attempt to hide the expression of satisfaction: Charlie thought he looked like a spectator at a Roman arena waiting for the thumbs down. Attacking at once, the deputy said: ‘You were specifically told ten o’clock.’
‘One or two things came up,’ said Charlie. ‘Sorry.’
‘Just what the hell do you think you’re doing!’ erupted Wilson. The complete whiteness of his hair was heightened by his red-faced anger.
‘About what, precisely?’ Charlie hadn’t intended the question to sound insolent but it did and he was aware of Harkness’s sharp intake of breath.
‘You have caused absolute bloody chaos,’ accused the Director, hands clasped for control in front of him on the desk. ‘In my name – but without any reference or authority from me – you’ve demanded – not politely asked but demanded – MI5 mount a massive surveillance operation on every Soviet installation in London.’
‘Yes,’ agreed Charlie. ‘I have.’
‘Have you any idea of the manpower involved?’ said Wilson.
‘Or the overtime payments?’ came in Harkness, predictably.
‘Quite a lot,’ said Charlie, answering both questions.
‘MI5 is not our service,’ lectured Wilson. ‘When we want co-operation we ask, politely. We don’t insist. And we don’t make requests which will tie up every Watcher they’ve got and require extra men being seconded. Do you know what their Director said, when he complained! That Britain’s entire counter-intelligence service was at the moment working for us.’
‘I hope they are,’ said Charlie.
‘What are you talking about?’ said Harkness.
Instead of answering the man Charlie said to the Director: ‘But are they doing it?’
Wilson frowned, momentarily not replying. Then he said: ‘Yes. I wasn’t going to cancel without knowing what was happening, but by God you’d better have a good explanation – a bloody good explanation.’
Charlie sighed, relieved. ‘I’m glad,’ he said.
‘And not just an explanation for that,’ said Harkness. ‘We’ve studied the full transcript of your interview with Novikov.’
‘And?’ lured Charlie. Come on, you penny-pinching arsehole, he thought.
‘Appalling,’ judged Harkness. ‘Unnecessarily antagonistic, putting at risk any relationship that might have been built up between the man and other debriefers. And absolutely unproductive.’
‘Absolutely unproductive?’ coaxed Charlie. He didn’t just want Harkness to dig a hole for himself; he wanted a damned great pit, preferably with sharpened spikes at the bottom.
‘Not one worthwhile thing emerged from the entire meeting,’ insisted Harkness. Confident enough to try sarcasm, he said: ‘And for whose benefit was the whisky episode!’
‘Mine,’ said Charlie at once. ‘I wanted to break his concentration. It was going so well that I didn’t want to lose anything: it can sometimes happen if a defector becomes too tense.’ He smiled and said: ‘Islay malt is a favourite of mine. His, too, it seems.’
There were several moments of complete silence in the room. Charlie waited, comfortably relaxed. The roses today were predominantly yellow and heavily scented: Charlie wondered if the block of buildings beyond were Waterloo Station or the County Hall, uncertain whether it were either.
‘Going so well?’ It was Harkness who spoke, his voice edged with uncertainty.
‘And about time,’ said Charlie. ‘I think too many mistakes have already been made. I hope we’re not too late …’ He smiled again, directly at Wilson this time. ‘That’s why I’m glad the Soviet surveillance is being maintained: it is something that should have been in place weeks ago. The biggest mistake of all, in fact.’
‘I said I wanted an explanation,’ complained Wilson. ‘I’m not getting it in a way I can understand.’
Charlie recognized there was no longer any anger in the man’s voice. He said: ‘There were a number of reasons for my being what you regarded as antagonistic. It is always necessary, in the first place, to regard any defector as a hostile plant—’
‘You’d already been told that in the opinion of other debriefers Novikov was genuine,’ broke in Harkness.
‘I’m not interested in the opinion of other debriefers,’ said Charlie. ‘Only my own. And having read the transcripts of their sessions and seen the oversights and the errors I didn’t think their opinions were worth a damn anyway.’
‘So what is your opinion?’ said Wilson.
‘I’ve asked this morning for some corroboration, from Moscow,’ said Charlie. ‘But provisionally I think he’s OK.’
‘What other reasons were there for your approach?’ demanded Harkness, fully aware of the unspoken criticism of Witherspoon, who was his protégé.
‘Novikov is arrogant,’ said Charlie. ‘Isn’t that obvious from the transcript?’
‘Yes,’ conceded Harkness reluctantly.
‘He’s been handled wrongly, from the start,’ said Charlie. ‘Allowed to dominate the sessions, instead of being dominated himself. I wanted him to know I didn’t trust him: that he had to prove himself. Which he did.’
‘You said mistakes had been made,’ queried Wilson.
‘A lot,’ said Charlie. ‘One of the most serious is the lack of response to the word “catalogue”. It’s not in any of the debriefing guide books, but it is most frequently used by the KGB to cover an agent from their assassination department. Who will be sent in specially. That’s why I mounted the surveillance: I want a comparison between their known operatives and someone we don’t know. If it’s not too late, that is.’
Wilson nodded and said: ‘If you’re right, I agree. But why couldn’t catalogue refer to the victim?’
Charlie shook his head against the qualification. ‘Novikov had encountered the description before,’ he reminded. ‘Both times in connection with an assassination. He refused to be absolutely positive, but his belief was that it’s the code for the operative. And I think the debriefing proved that the operation does not just involve England.’
‘Prove?’ demanded Harkness.
‘Novikov agreed that the cipher division of the KGB is not a general department, that it’s compartmented like everything else,’ said Charlie.
Harkness nodded, in recollection.
‘The assumption by all the previous debriefers had been that Novikov was part of some centralized system,’ insisted Charlie.
‘Yes,’ said Wilson, looking directly at Harkness. ‘And it was a mistake.’
‘I wanted particularly to establish the limitations of what Novikov handled, despite the Politburo clearance,’ disclosed Charlie. ‘The numbering told me.’
‘Number four was his first involvement,’ remembered Wilson.
‘I think I know what happened to the previous three,’ announced Charlie.
‘What?’ asked the Director.
‘Novikov agreed with me that he worked for the Directorate’s Third Department, which we know from previous defectors covers England. The logical conclusion is that the previous messages, perhaps identifying the target, went through other departments,’ said Charlie.
‘Which means the killing could be anywhere in the world!’ exclaimed Wilson.
Charlie shook his head, in another refusal. He said: ‘I think we can narrow it down.’
‘How?’
‘Although separate in department control, England is considered part of Europe,’ said Charlie. ‘My guess is that England is the staging post for a killing that is to be carried out somewhere in Europe.’
‘A guess,’ pounced Harkness.
‘Which might have been easier to confirm if surveillance had been imposed earlier,’ came back Charlie.
‘Why England at all, if the assassination isn’t to be here?’ asked Wilson.
Charlie shrugged, unable positively to answer. ‘It’s trade-craft always to conceal the point of entry,’ he suggested.
‘Everything is still too vague,’ said Harkness.
‘No,’ disputed Charlie again. ‘The debriefing told us how to look. And where.’
‘What!’ shouted Wilson.
‘The dates,’ said Charlie. ‘I’m sure it’s in the dates.’
‘Tell me how?’ insisted the Director.
‘The pattern fits,’ argued Charlie. ‘Novikov was cut off on 19 August?’
‘Yes,’ agreed the Director. He was leaning intently across the desk.
‘The last message he encoded was 12 August?’
‘Yes.’
‘Before that, 5 August?’
‘And you anticipated the first, 29 July,’ remembered Harkness.
‘All Fridays,’ said Charlie.
There was another brief silence, then Harkness said: ‘So?’
‘The Politburo of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics always convenes on a Thursday,’ said Charlie. ‘Novikov’s first message, to the Politburo, was an acknowledgement of an instruction for a public and political assassination. The other two were outwardly transmitted messages, establishing London as a link in that planning.’
Harkness shook his head in rejection. ‘I don’t agree that assumption,’ he said. ‘Or still understand the guide it gives us, even if I could accept it.’
‘Allow me the assumption,’ urged Charlie. ‘We’ve got three unknown messages, before Novikov was given his, numbered four in the sequence. So let’s work backwards, from those dates. If I am right, then the assassination was discussed at three previous Politburo sessions, 22 July, 15 July and 8 July, with 8 July being the date of the initial concept.’
‘I am finding this as difficult to follow as Harkness,’ protested the Director. ‘But if I do allow you the assumption, I still don’t see what we have got.’
‘“The need is understood that a political, public example has to be set, for the maximum impact,”’ quoted Charlie.
‘I don’t need reminding of the first cable,’ said Wilson.
‘How about the last?’ asked Charlie. ‘“You will wrap the November catalogue.”’
‘What’s the connection?’
‘What political, public event, where something of maximum impact could possibly be achieved, was announced just prior to but certainly not after 8 July?’ suggested Charlie. ‘A political, public event scheduled to take place in November?’
‘Oh yes,’ accepted the Director, finally. ‘Oh yes, I could go for that.’
‘It’s a theory,’ allowed Harkness, grudgingly.
‘The best we’ve got, after the mistakes so far,’ said Charlie.
‘I think so, too,’ agreed the Director, at once.
‘I’m glad,’ said Charlie. ‘I was late for this morning’s meeting because I’ve ordered from every British embassy in every European capital a complete list and breakdown of major political happenings in their countries throughout December as well as November just to be sure. I designated it maximum priority, with a copy in each case to the ambassador.’
‘In whose name?’ asked Wilson, expectantly.
‘Yours,’ said Charlie.
Harry Johnson was pissed off, right up to the back teeth: five weeks to go before retirement, the lump sum he’d decided to take from his pension already deposited on the holiday bungalow in Broadstairs, the extra plot negotiated to his allotment and this had to happen, a hands-over-your-bum, watch-everything-that-moves red alert. It wasn’t fair: certainly the assignment wasn’t fair because the buggers had manoeuvred it so he got the worst surveillance of the lot, the one most likely to go wrong. And the last thing he could afford was anything going wrong: until the gold watch that had already been selected and the insincere speeches and the booze-up in the Brace of Pheasants. All he’d wanted – could surely have expected! – was a quiet, easy life, so that he could quit the service with a reasonably good record. Not this, something that was so obviously important and even more obviously dangerous.
Johnson, a plump man who wore braces as well as a belt and who puffed a lot when he breathed, because of a tendency to bronchitis, saw the departure of Yuri Koretsky first, because Johnson was one of the most senior Watchers on the squad and only ever needed the sight of a quarry once. And Koretsky, who was the KGB rezident in London, had to be one of the most marked quarries of the whole stupid alert: Johnson was disappointed that the younger two, Burn, who was the driver, and Kemp, who was the back-up, hadn’t been quicker. According to regulations, as the senior man he should have reported them but he knew he wouldn’t. What was the point of being shitty, with only five weeks to go before retirement?
‘There’s our man,’ he said, alerting them for the first time.
Koretsky was in a car with a driver, which Johnson recognized at once to be significant. He said, in a further warning: ‘This could be it.’
‘Why?’ asked Kemp.
‘Watch and learn,’ said Johnson. He wondered what ‘it’ was? Throughout the majority of his MI5 career as a professional surveillance merchant he had followed and bugged and burgled and pried, rarely knowing the complete reason of any assignment, like he didn’t know the full purpose of this one. He frequently wondered whether any of it mattered.
The Soviet car went up the Bayswater Road – ironically within a mile of the hotel Vasili Zenin was preparing to leave within the hour, to make the collection – and went to the right at Marble Arch, clogging at once in the Park Lane traffic. Their vehicle was two cars behind and Johnson said: ‘Don’t lose him! Close up.’
The Soviet vehicle turned into Upper Brook Street to go past the American embassy but stayed to the left of Grosvenor Square, going in front of the Dorchester and then crossing Bond Street to the next square. There the car went immediately left, to cross Oxford Street and Johnson said: ‘Wrong! It would have been quicker to have gone north up the Edgware Road.’
‘Maybe the driver made a mistake,’ said Burn, who frequently did.
‘Maybe Santa Claus drives a Snowmobile,’ said Johnson. He had the seniority and certainly enough reasons to depute the younger man but instead he said to Kemp: ‘If he jumps, I’ll follow.’
‘What do you want me to do?’ asked the younger man.
‘Stay with the car,’ ordered Johnson. ‘And don’t, for Christ’s sake, lose it!’
‘What do we look for!’ asked Burn.
‘Everything there is to see.’
Koretsky made his move actually in Oxford Street and Johnson was only yards behind him. The Russian went directly into the underground system, using the ticket queue to check for pursuit. Johnson got his ticket from the dispensing machine, paying the maximum fare, and was only five people behind the Russian on the downward escalator. Koretsky went to the east bound platform and Johnson let more people come between them, to provide the buffer. He tensed at the Oxford Circus station, because of its link with the Bakerloo Line, but the Russian remained just inside the door, standing as Johnson was standing, ready for an instant departure. Koretsky darted off at the Tottenham Court Road junction, timing it practically at the moment of the doors closing, so that Johnson was only just able to get out to continue the pursuit. Koretsky pretended to check the indicator map in order to make another surveillance check, so Johnson had to go by and fumble for change for a guitar-playing busker. Koretsky overtook him and he picked up the Russian’s trail on to the northbound Northern Line. Johnson managed the adjoining carriage again, discarding his topcoat and turning it so that the colouring was hidden, the only change possible in his appearance. Johnson was ready at Euston, because of the interconnecting lines, but Koretsky didn’t move, seemingly relaxed now in a seat alongside the door. Too complacent, boyo, thought the Watcher. He actually moved ahead of Koretsky at Camden Town, alighting first and ascending to street level ahead of the man although keeping him constantly in view behind, in case he doubled back. He didn’t. Johnson got to the exit hoping that Burns had kept close to the Soviet car if this were a pick-up, feeling the jump of alarm when he failed at once to recognize their car and then relief when he couldn’t see the Russian vehicle either.
Johnson let people intrude between them as much as he felt it safe to do so as they walked down Camden High Street but was almost caught out at the bus stop at which Koretsky stopped without warning. Fortunately the 74 bus was actually approaching, so there was no time for the Russian to make a proper search behind. Once again, with no idea how far they were going, Johnson took the maximum fare, more tense now than at any time because of their closeness. He was on the rear bench and Koretsky sat on the first cross seat next to it, close enough for Johnson to have reached out and touched him.
Alert as he was, Johnson saw the Russian begin to move as they approached Primrose Hill, so he was able to get up and away from the bus before Koretsky actually disembarked. The Russian immediately crossed the road into Albert Terrace, striding on the side where the railings edged the grassed park. Johnson followed as far back as possible and on the opposite side of the road, where the houses were. In the last house before the terrace connected with Regent’s Park Road Johnson dropped his topcoat behind a low garden wall, once more trying to alter his appearance as much as possible. As he did so, he saw Koretsky enter the park through the corner gate.
It had been a mistake not to bring Kemp with him, to alternate the tail to reduce being detected by the Russian: it would be just the way his luck was going for Koretsky to pick him up and abort, making the whole business a complete waste of time. The Russian’s entry into the park provided at least some minimal cover: it meant Johnson could walk parallel up Regent’s Park Road, keeping him in sight but not directly behind. Had he been, Johnson realized he would have been spotted, because twice Koretsky turned, making an obvious check. But even this was a mixed advantage, because the road began to bend away from the park, actually now putting too much distance between them, so that when it happened Johnson almost missed it. Had he not been as experienced as he was, he would have done.
The dead-letter drop was almost at the end of the avenue along which Koretsky was walking, by a refuse bin against the sixth lamp-post from the commencement of the path. At the moment of approach, Koretsky flicked something to his left, not into the bin but alongside it. Then the Russian paused, as if troubled with the lace of his shoe and Johnson saw the man mark the post with a smear of yellow chalk which would have looked like some failed graffiti to anyone but himself.
Johnson had already decided to abandon Koretsky, even before the Soviet car swept down Primrose Hill Road for the pick-up, because Koretsky was simply part of a chain and the necessity now was to discover the next link. Then Johnson saw the car in which he had earlier travelled, grimacing as he did. The stupid bastards were far too close. If he tried to stop it, to get back-up from Kemp, Johnson knew he’d be identified by association.
‘Stupid sods!’ he said, bitterly and aloud.
As the cars convoyed back down Regent’s Park Road, Johnson entered the enclosure. There were thickly leafed trees all along the pathway along which Koretsky had walked, with occasional benches. He chose the one furthest away from the drop, eyes focused on what Koretsky had delivered. It was impossible to be sure from this distance but it appeared to be a manila envelope but bigger than that for a normal letter, maybe five inches across and 8 inches deep: he wished he were able to judge its thickness but that was impossible.
Johnson shivered, wanting the discarded topcoat but unable to risk going back even the short distance to get it. Expert that he was, Johnson knew he was observing what is called in the trade an open letterbox, a deposit arrangement from which the recipient was expected to collect very quickly what had been left, to prevent its accidental discovery by some casual stranger. So close to a rubbish bin, Johnson decided that the larger-than-normal envelope was very vulnerable, from a foraging tramp or a conscientious rubbish collector.
He focused the camera on to the bin, guaranteeing the range, and then settled back to wait. How long, he wondered.
The specific request from Alexei Berenkov in Moscow, demanding immediate warning of increased surveillance, was waiting for Koretsky when he got back to Kensington Palace Gardens. He quickly encoded a reply, assuring Berenkov that he had remained clean that day and that the Watchers had gone on a wild goose chase behind the car, which had been the intention.