When Krogh returned to his car there was a parking ticket fluttering from the windscreen wiper. It was white, like a flag of surrender.
There was the backlog of In-Tray traffic, as there always was after an absence from the office, and it built up for a further two days while Charlie did what he considered necessary after the Isle of Wight investigation. Which involved invoking special friendships. The man’s name was William French. He was an electronics expert in the department’s Technical Division and he owed Charlie for covering up a bungled radio interception during a Soviet Foreign Ministry visit to London a year before. The man complained it wasn’t going to be easy, and Charlie said nothing was. Then he said that because of the personal approach he assumed it was unofficial and Charlie agreed that it was, for the moment. French said he would do his best and Charlie said he was grateful. Only then, with meticulous care, did Charlie get around to composing the report to comply with Harkness’ regulations.
It was not until the third day of his return to the London office that Charlie began on the official publications, but because it was quite close to the top of the pile he found the reference to Natalia’s forthcoming visit to England within the first hour. It was in the English-language Morning Star, with a photograph of the entire Soviet delegation. Natalia was wearing a suit she’d worn in an earlier photograph of the Canadian trip, severe and businesslike, with her hair different from the earlier photographs, lighter against her head this time. Charlie thought she looked wonderful.
Charlie knew at once what he was going to do. He was going to be with Natalia again!
23
Vitali Losev was a greatly disappointed man. From being at the very centre of a major assignment, with all the personal benefits emanating from it, he now believed himself shunted aside on to its periphery, relegated to the role of a messenger boy. Certainly there’d been the congratulatory cable from Berenkov in Moscow, praising him for locating someone called Charlie Muffin. And there seemed to be some importance attached to the identification, from the activity that had followed. But Losev knew that obtaining the space information had been what really mattered: that would have been the prize to earn the recorded commendations. The prize and commendations denied him because of the idiotic Blackstone, an idiot he still had to humour and befriend, according to the inexplicable instructions from Moscow.
Losev bitterly accepted he had lost out completely to Alexandr Petrin, who was flying in triumphantly from the United States to remain the case officer on everything: case officer on the American and case officer responsible for the missing material. Leaving him on the sidelines. A support function. Those were the precise words in the instructions from Dzerzhinsky Square. What did a support function and all the other chores accompanying it mean other than he was a messenger boy!
Losev felt a burn of frustration. A messenger boy, and there was nothing he could do to reverse or change the position. Worse, he guessed he could be relieved even of that menial role – although he was head of the London rezidentura – if he made the slightest mistake, because Moscow had made it frighteningly clear that no error or oversight would be permitted. So he had to continue obediently in his subsidiary support position, a bystander to others gaining the glory he’d once seen to be his. Deserved to be his.
Dismayed though he was by the twist of events, Losev remained too professional to allow his despair to affect what he had to do, peripheral or lowly though he considered it to be. He personally supervised the imposed surveillance upon Charlie Muffin, monitoring the Vauxhall apartment and the journeys to and from Westminster Bridge Road and to a pub on the Thames embankment called The Pheasant and to a mews house in Chelsea which the convenient Voters’ Register showed to be owned by a Mr and Mrs Paul Nolan.
And when Berenkov’s specific instructions arrived, Losev again took personal charge, rehearsing everything that had to be accomplished before moving.
The entry into the Vauxhall flat and what had to be deposited there was obviously the essential part of the operation so Losev decided that was where his presence had to be. He divided the operatives into two groups, himself with the KGB break-in team in one, six field officers in the other. They stayed together on the Thursday morning outside the Vauxhall block until Charlie left, to be picked up at once by the field officers. They, in turn, divided again. Three rotated foot surveillance on Charlie while the others followed to Westminster Bridge Road in a radio-transmitter-equipped car from which they could warn Losev, wearing an ear-piece receiver, if Charlie left the headquarters building with the possibility of returning to Vauxhall before the break-in squad completed what they had to do.
Such was the degree of caution Losev observed, although what had to be accomplished inside Charlie’s flat was not going to take a great deal of time, because like everything else Losev had planned ahead.
Losev insisted his team remain in their cars until he got the message that Charlie had entered the office building. And then initially he dispatched only one lock-picking expert into the apartment block, unwilling to risk arousing the suspicion of another resident or a caretaker with the entry of any larger group. The rest entered at staged, five-minute intervals: Losev was the first, so he could supervise everything when they arrived inside the flat to ensure their entry and departure remained completely undetected.
Individual responsibilities had been assigned before they’d left the embassy. The locksmith’s function finished with the actual entry, although the man remained just inside the door and alert for any outside activity, like an attempted entry by a cleaner or a services inspector, such as a meter reader. Against any such surprise the man began fitting rubber wedges beneath the door and rubber-cushioned clamps at the two top corners. Another positioned himself at once at the window overlooking the street, a guard against the unexpected return of Charlie Muffin if the man succeeded in leaving Westminster Bridge Road unseen by the observers in the radio car. The third man, Andrei Aistov, was to work with Losev. Before they began Losev warned the inside group not to touch or disturb anything that didn’t need to be touched.
‘Although it would hardly matter,’ he said, gazing around the disordered room. ‘This place is more like some sort of nest than a home.’
‘What’s so important about this man?’ queried Aistov.
Losev shrugged. ‘Something we haven’t been told.’ Messenger boy, he thought again bitterly. ‘Let’s get started.’
‘Where?’ asked Aistev.
‘The bedroom,’ said Losev at once. ‘That’s where people hide money they shouldn’t have.’
The station chief followed Aistov from the living room. It was Aistov who found the place in the skirting board, a break in the panelling where an additional piece of wood had been inserted to complete the length running along the wall against which the bed and a small dressing table abutted.
‘I don’t want the slightest mark.’
Aistov looked up sourly. ‘There aren’t going to be any.’
The man lay full length on the floor, the bed eased carefully away to allow him room to work. The fill-in boarding was held in place by four screws. Aistov worked patiently but surely, testing the resistance of each fastening before unscrewing it, not wanting the screwdriver to slip and noticeably score the screwhead. He had trouble with only one screw but he was able to release it by gently tapping the screwdriver handle, jarring it loose. Behind, when the panel came free, there was a hollowed gap about six inches deep.