Life for Charlie became an existence in separate, settled compartments and the most settled of all developed with Natalia. He was allocated another apartment, smaller but better than the first, and nearer the centre of the city and they alternated between the two, sometimes at her place, sometimes his. At the weekends they stayed together all the time, sometimes going on river trips or journeys into the hills outside Moscow in her Lada car and sometimes not bothering to do anything at all, remaining in whichever apartment they had chosen, to read or listen to music, just enjoying each other. On a weekend when Eduard was released from school they went to the circus again – and slept apart, which seemed unnatural, so accustomed to each other had they become – and Charlie tried to make friends with the boy but Eduard remained distant and reserved, instinctively sensing competition for his mother’s affections.
Charlie didn’t mean it to develop like it did. It wasn’t how he conducted affairs, not even when Edith had been alive and he’d been cheating. He’d always been a slam-bam-thank-you-ma’am operator, fun on both sides – and fully recognised to be just that – and no tears or regrets when the time came to say goodbye. He’d actually tried to keep it light, at the very beginning, but the awkward artificiality had been obvious and so he’d let everything grow, knowing it was pointless and knowing it was stupid but not wanting it to stop. Which was selfish – as well as pointless and stupid – and worst of all, dangerous.
It was because of his growing awareness of the danger to her that he changed his mind about asking her to accompany him when the next invitation came from Berenkov, quite apart from the difficulty she might have felt in the presence of someone so high in the service. Charlie dutifully congratulated Georgi on his examination results and was amused at Berenkov’s boastful pride, joining in the toasts upon which Berenkov insisted, careless of the boy’s blushing discomfort. It was the first opportunity to thank the Russian since his appointment to the spy school and Charlie said how much he was enjoying it and Berenkov said he was impressed by what Charlie was doing and Charlie wondered if it were Natalia’s report to which he was referring. He didn’t think any praise would have come from Krysin.
His existence at the spy school was another compartment. The barrier still existed between Charlie and the other instructors but gradually, with their increasing and difficult-to-avoid acknowledgement of his expertise, some of them strayed beyond it and Charlie cultivated the approaches, draining everything he could from them.
He staged another pursuit exercise on the next contact Thursday and evaded them all again and won his bet with Natalia, because she lost him this time. By then he didn’t feel any competition between them, so it didn’t seem much of a victory. More important was the time he spent lingering in the department store, waiting for an approach which never came. Charlie’s feeling about that was ambivalent. Professionally he wanted the meeting. He wanted to identify the informant and make the crossing arrangements and to go back to England in complete and well deserved triumph. But if that happened it would mean leaving Natalia and increasingly the thought of leaving Natalia was becoming a burden. So as well as disappointment there was also relief when nothing happened in the GUM store that day and the relief was greater when he went there again, on the next appointed time and nothing happened then, either. By the time of that visit, he’d been given fresh operatives to work through their final training. It meant that the initial batch disappeared and he assumed might have been immediately infiltrated into Britain or America, which slightly unsettled Charlie, because he’d never actually intended them the opportunity to practise what he had taught them. He’d wanted to be back, in advance, able to issue the warnings and complete the photofits and get them swept up or turned. It also meant that Natalia left the class, which Charlie welcomed because by the end, when they were together every night and every weekend, having to adopt the role of lecturer to pupil during the day became practically a farce. Charlie’s dismay at suspecting some of those he had trained were already working, undetected, was tempered by the awareness that the second batch, six again, meant there were more agents whom he would subsequently be able to identify: and those that had gone ahead wouldn’t be able to do much damage, anyway. An essential part of his training had been that the primary requirement for their being successful was first of all completely to install themselves in their country of placing, to obtain bona fide jobs and bona fide accommodation and – as far as possible – apparently bona fide respectability. He tried to reassure himself by the thought that even if they had been put into place, it would be six months, maybe as long as a year, before they began properly to operate.
And he’d be out in a year, thought Charlie. Which naturally brought him back to thinking about Natalia and having avoided and sidestepped and looked the other way for so long Charlie forced himself properly to think about it. Was he using her: enjoying the comfort and the security and the normality of an affair in an uncomfortable, insecure, abnormal situation? Or was it more than opportunism: love? Charlie confronted the word, one he’d avoided most of all. Charlie was frightened of love. Of admitting it. He’d always thought of being in love as exposing part of himself he didn’t want anyone else to see, like sitting on a crowded bus with a trouser zip undone. Apart from the brief and soon-passed excitement of variation, a lot of the affairs when Edith had been alive had been Charlie wanting to feel that he wasn’t dependent upon one woman. Which he had been and which – too late – he’d accepted. Charlie, who always derided rules and formulae, wished to Christ there was a listed chart he could consult, a mathematically unarguable square root of love.
He kept the fifth date at the GUM store, as unsuccessful as all the others, and as he made his way back across Dzerzhinsky Square and past the headquarters of the KGB Charlie realised that according to the arrangements he’d made with Wilson, seemingly years before in the prison governor’s office, he only had a month left. At once Charlie found an alternative argument. Six months had been an arbitrary period, plucked from nowhere and agreed anyway because by then he’d expected things to be difficult. Charlie carried the reflection on. He’d been concentrating upon the risk of his own detection. What if the informant had been found, weeks or months before? There’d been the highly publicised affair with the British first secretary: that was unusual. The detection of the would-be defector would be an explanation – the obvious one – for there not having been any contact. Logical, as well as obvious. Except that one logic extended to another. If the Russians had got their man they’d have broken him and if they’d broken him then Charlie would not have been allowed to hang around Moscow stores unarrested.
So where was he?
Charlie recognised he was incredibly well-placed gaining intelligence of an incalculable value, increasingly trusted and in no danger. He’d actually considered, within the first few days of being in Moscow, that he might have to remain longer than the period he’d agreed with the British Director. So he’d stay on, Charlie determined. Just for a while longer, if no approach were made. He was, after all, a complete professional; and to stay would be the professional thing to do. And meant he didn’t have to consider the thought of losing Natalia. Shit, he thought; why was nothing ever easy?
The absence of any further messages did nothing to relieve the pressure from the Politburo upon Kalenin and therefore his demands upon those answerable to him. Rather, they increased. The Politburo insisted on explanations the KGB chairman didn’t have and his insistences permeated through his immediate deputies to division directors and their subordinates and spread the uncertainty not just throughout Dzerzhinsky Square but to the other divisional buildings in the capital. Even Charlie was aware of a change of attitude from Krysin but was unable to discover the reason, so he wrongly assumed it was just a further indication of alienation between them.
Because of the indications that the leaks were coming from the operational or planning divisions, the concentration evolved particularly on to Berenkov. Edwin Sampson made a further examination, as unsuccessful as those before, and separate competing committees were set up independent of each other – and the Briton’s efforts – to carry out their own enquiries. And were unsuccessful, too. The surveillance upon the British embassy became positive harassment. A car carrying an archivist and a secretary on a perfectly innocent outing to the Tchaikovsky Concert Hall on Sadovaya street was actually involved in a crash with a KGB observation group and the Britons were held for three hours in police custody before diplomatic pressure released them.
It is one of the anomalies of diplomacy that while no Soviet embassy in any Western capital will accept foreign nationals in any support capacity, in Moscow Western embassies employ Russian general help. The attempt was clumsily blatant and was realised almost at once by the internal security staff, who discovered two maids and a male cleaner within a week trying to install listening devices. The Foreign Office in London extended the protests beyond the natural complaint in Moscow itself by summoning the Russian ambassador personally to Whitehall. In addition they released the details to the media and there was extensive newspaper coverage, to which the Kremlin responded with their cliched rejection that it was anti-Soviet propaganda.
Berenkov recognised the intrusion but knew he had no alternative, because his official position required him to inform Kalenin. He chose the end of their now customary, daily-inconclusive-conference after Kalenin had cast aside the equally inconclusive reports and suggested the vodka, the chairman’s intake of which was noticeably increasing while the crisis continued unresolved.
Kalenin frowned when Berenkov began to talk of his son’s qualification successes, not immediately understanding, so that Berenkov had to repeat himself and Kalenin said, ‘Overseas?’
‘There’s a place for him, in Boston,’ said Berenkov. Remembering there were towns in both countries and conscious of the chairman’s apparent distraction, Berenkov hurriedly added ‘Boston, America, not Boston, England.’
There was no immediate reaction from Kalenin. He finished pouring and handed Berenkov his glass and said, ‘Going to the West?’
‘I think he would benefit,’ said Berenkov.
‘Are you sure that’s wise?’
‘Which is why I felt I should officially raise it with you,’ said Berenkov.
‘What do you imagine would happen if the Western intelligence agencies were to discover who his father was?’ said Kalenin.
‘I did not think that was a serious risk,’ said Berenkov.
‘Then I don’t think you’ve considered it sufficiently,’ said Kalenin. ‘The American Central Intelligence Agency actively recruits from universities: apparatus exists, for talent spotting. And if they’re that well organised they’d naturally focus upon visiting Russian students. I’d consider there would be a serious risk of Georgi becoming compromised.’
‘Are you telling me officially that he can’t take up the place?’ asked Berenkov, miserably.
‘I’m saying that I want to think further about it,’ said Kalenin. ‘That maybe we both should.’
‘He’s worked extremely hard,’ said Berenkov, emptily.
‘We’re currently experiencing enough difficulty,’ said Kalenin. ‘You’re a deputy within the Committee for State Security, at the very highest echelon. And someone known in the West. I think we should seriously consider the risk of any embarrassment beyond that which we are already suffering.’
That suffering – and that embarrassment – worsened.
The messages to London resumed in a sudden flurry, three intercepted by the KGB monitoring services on succeeding nights. Each formed part of a sensational whole, the complete identities – and their cover designation – of virtually the entire Soviet espionage system within Britain, from the embassy-based Resident under diplomatic title down through every other diplomatic listing and extending to the Soviet trade mission at Highgate.
The last of the three messages promised further identities of agents in the United States and France. And concluded, ‘Shortly intend making promised personal contact.’
In London Wilson said, ‘Well. Here we go.’
‘We hope,’ said the cautious Harkness.
Moscow intercepted London’s radioed reply. It was ‘People don’t notice whether it’s winter or summer when they’re happy.’