‘It’s going to be interesting for you then,’ said the man.
‘How’s that?’ asked Charlie ingenuously.
‘Got a special party arriving.’
‘Special?’
‘A group of Russians. Here for the Farnborough Air Show.’
‘In this very hotel!’ exclaimed Charlie, suitably impressed.
The barman nodded and smiled, content with the reaction. ‘Practically taken over an entire floor.’
‘That must create a headache for you all, an important group like that?’ lured Charlie.
There was another nod. ‘We’ve had a lot of Russians from the embassy, making sure everything is going to be all right. All the staff have been checked.’
‘You personally?’
‘Sure.’
‘You mind that?’
A shrug this time. ‘Not really. Unusual experience, really.’
‘Practically an entire floor, you say?’
The man responded as Charlie hoped he would. ‘The sixth,’ he confirmed. ‘And those rooms that aren’t occupied have to stay empty while the party is here.’
‘All rather exciting,’ said Charlie. Would the restrictions the Russians imposed mean the sealing of the entire floor?
‘I suppose so,’ said the barman, a seen-it-all-before remark. ‘You’d better get here early at night if you want a place to sit.’
‘I will,’ assured Charlie.
In the Soviet car outside Viktor Nikov, whose tour of personal observation it was, said bitterly: ‘Drinking! He sits in the bar drinking and we sit here, with nothing!’
It was almost two months from their last being together, that weekend at the dacha, when Valentina finally raised it. They were making plans to go again, during another of Georgi’s college breaks, and Valentina asked if Kalenin were coming and Berenkov admitted that he had not invited the man.
‘Are you going to?’ she demanded. Throughout the years that Berenkov’s overseas postings had kept them apart Valentina had developed a peremptory independence unusual for the wife of an intelligence officer.
‘I don’t think so,’ shrugged Berenkov.
‘Why not?’ She was a big woman, blonde and strong-featured. Impatient and uninterested in dieting she was putting her faith in tight corsetry and accepted that it was not really working.
‘I don’t think he’d welcome an invitation, at the moment.’
‘So there is a difficulty between you?’ seized Valentina, recalling her impression of quietness from the last dacha visit.
‘It’s not serious,’ said Berenkov. I hope, he thought.
‘Can you talk about it?’
‘No,’ refused Berenkov shortly, retreating at last behind the expected security-consciousness of his job.
‘Who’s right?’
Berenkov laughed, unoffended at his wife’s directness. ‘It’s not like that. It’s just different viewpoints.’
‘Nothing could ever happen to us, could it?’ asked the woman, with sudden concern. ‘Nothing to upset the life we now have, I mean.’
Berenkov laughed at her again, in reassurance this time. ‘Of course not,’ he said. ‘Why do you ask a thing like that?’
Valentina shook her head, refusing the question. ‘I wouldn’t want anything to upset the way we are now,’ she said.
31
A pattern quickly developed and Emil Krogh relaxed further as he became accustomed to the work surroundings at the Isle of Wight factory. When he returned the second day Robert Springley took him on a tour of the moulding rooms and explained in detail the difference between the British-evolved thermoplastic resin process, which enabled the carbon fibre to be reshaped without any loss of strength, and the more easily shattered and unchangeable thermoset system that had been employed at Krogh’s plant in California. He watched the fibre and resin matrix being created in a temperature- and climatecontrolled environment and even before studying the waiting blueprints in detail was able to understand how this section was going to assemble with what they were building in America to create the missile housing for the defence system.
The promised side office was made available to him and at first Springley stayed close at hand to take him through the drawings, which was an intrusion Krogh didn’t want but could do nothing about. It was well into the afternoon before the man left him alone and Krogh was finally able to make the notes he considered necessary to reproduce the manufacturing plans. He did so in a way to satisfy Petrin and take the pressure off himself. He separated the drawings according to Springley’s definition and concentrated first upon the eleven easy ones. It took him that day and most of the following to make sufficient notes and late that afternoon returned with Petrin to the Kensington house to begin work.
Vitali Losev was already there with the frightened Yuri Guzins, and in the first half hour other men entered and left the room which had been set up as Krogh’s drawing office. The American prepared his board and clipped his notes to it and set his lights, all the while feeling like a laboratory experiment under the scrutiny of so many people.
The progress was slower than Krogh anticipated. As soon as the American started to draw, Guzins, to whom he was never introduced, came and stood at his elbow and practically at once began asking highly technical questions which had to be painstakingly translated back and forth between them by Petrin. When Krogh, exasperated, asked what the hell was going on Petrin said it was a precaution they believed worthwhile to prevent any mistake, to which Krogh complained that his constantly being interrupted risked mistakes being made instead of being guarded against. Petrin accepted the protest and told Guzins to wait until a drawing was finished before querying it, which was the method they adopted, but by midnight Krogh had produced only six copies and was aching with exhaustion. His announcement that he couldn’t draw any more provided the catalyst for the row that had simmered between Petrin and Losev from the moment of their first meeting.
Krogh spoke to Petrin when he said he wanted to stop but it was the unidentified Losev who responded.
‘Work on!’ ordered Losev, brusquely and in English.
‘I said I’m too tired,’ repeated Krogh.
Losev went to speak but Petrin got in first. ‘I’ll decide how he works,’ said Petrin. He spoke in Russian.
‘He’s got to do more!’ insisted Losev, also speaking in Russian. ‘Who gives a damn how he feels!’
‘Idiot!’ said Petrin. ‘Didn’t you hear the conversation about mistakes? Tired men make mistakes!’
Krogh couldn’t understand what was being said but their tone was sufficient for him to realize it was an argument.
‘You don’t have the authority to overrule me!’ said Losev.
‘Nor you to supercede me,’ Petrin shouted back. ‘So let’s get it ruled from Moscow. Until which time I decide what Krogh will do and what he won’t: he’s my responsibility.’
Guzins stood with nibbled fingers to his mouth, looking apprehensively between the two men, bewildered by the sudden eruption. Surprisingly trying the role of peacemaker, he said: ‘What’s an argument like this going to achieve?’