“It’s not the same,” protested Halliday, weakly.
“He certainly wasn’t the same when they finished with him,” pressured Charlie. “Did you hear how he was tortured? He only had one arm and they used acid to take off the fingertips of the one hand he still had, to stop his being identified. They took his eyes out, too. And his tongue. All while he was alive…” Charlie could hear uneven, gulped breathing from the other man. “Our being able to talk like this means you’re in the rezidentura by yourself. Where’s everyone else? Do you know how you fit into the complete picture?”
“It was you who reminded me how operations are compartmented!” blurted Halliday.
“Which I shouldn’t have needed to tell you,” coaxed Charlie, sure he had the other man well and truly on his line. “It’s the first lesson, hammered home. But I never accepted it: it was such an obvious one-way ticket to the cliff edge. I kept the golden rule always in the forefront of my mind, as I was told to, and on every assignment I worked my ass off, breaking it to find out as much as I could about what I wasn’t supposed to know. Which wasn’t disobedience or disloyalty or any contravention of any Official Secrets Act. It was to keep myself alive in an environment in which we’re also taught we’re indispensable until that rule’s changed for a greater indispensable need. And why I’m still alive and you’re all by yourself in an empty rezidentura without a fucking clue what you’re doing and won’t be told if you ask. The only thing you can be sure about is that you don’t know whether you’re going to get a pat on the back or a knife stuck into it.”
The breathing was heavier and more uneven, although Charlie didn’t believe Halliday was actually breaking down. There was, eventually, a word that Charlie didn’t catch but then it came again and Charlie heard: “Bastards.”
“Why are they bastards?” Charlie asked at once, not wanting to lose the momentum he’d created.
“Keeping me out: treating me like this.”
He’d made another mistake with Halliday, Charlie acknowledged, although not as great as MI6 by inducting Halliday. He didn’t any longer think Halliday’s constant sideways shuffle from difficulty was his pension concern. It was an abject terror of a job he’d got but never wanted once he’d discovered what it entailed and from which he’d always been running. “I’m here to help you help yourself, David. I can get you safely through this if you trust me.”
“It is the extraction I thought it was.”
He still had to be careful Halliday didn’t spit the hook out. “Who?”
“Janus. The code name’s Janes. I told you that.”
More self-justification, Charlie recognized. Now the all-important question. “What’s the genuine identity?”
“All I know is Janus. That’s the name I’ve got to use calling Straughan.”
“You haven’t managed to get back into Jacobson’s safe?”
“I can’t break the combination, either into his office or the safe itself.”
It had to be a major extraction for the MI6 operations director to be personally involved. “Tell me about Janus.”
“It’s the launch code.”
“It’ll be specific,” demanded Charlie, professionally.
“Janus has gone.”
“That’s the green code, Janus has gone?”
“Yes.”
“What’s the red?”
“Janus is stopped.”
“Is it today?”
There was the first hesitation. “I’m on twenty-four-hour standby.”
“At the embassy?”
Another pause. “I already told you I’m working from inside.”
“Who actually briefed you?
“Straughan.”
Confirmation that it was a major extraction, decided Charlie, positively. “Who’s your relay, here?”
“I don’t know.”
“What’s Jacobson’s function?”
“I don’t know.”
He’d started to row back. “They’re really keeping you out, aren’t they?”
“You’re doing the same. You’re not telling me what you’re going to do.”
And I don’t intend to, thought Charlie, a decision half formed. “Keep out of the way, until your thing’s over.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I believe I was intended to be the disposable part in the Janus extraction.”
“None of the special team is involved in Janus,” challenged Halliday.
“How do you know that?”
“I asked Straughan: said I assumed they were on the same assignment. That was when I got the compartmentalization argument. He said they were nothing to do with it and that I should keep myself apart from them.”
And why it had been easy persuading the paranoid Halliday that he wasn’t safe, realized Charlie. “They haven’t been withdrawn?”
“You think I should watch myself?” demanded Halliday, anxiously.
“I don’t think you should explore dark alleys with them,” goaded Charlie. “They still ostracizing you in the commissary?”
“Maybe not as much as in the beginning. I had a couple of drinks with Pat Wilkinson last night. I didn’t get anything specific, certainly not what they’re here for. But one of the others, Denning I think it was, said something about being pissed off hanging around, not knowing what was happening.”
Getting indicators from Halliday was like pulling teeth with eyebrow tweezers, thought Charlie. “Nothing about me by name?”
“Not that I heard.”
“Keep in mind what I told you: watch your back,” encouraged Charlie. “Why not bring the Rossiya into the conversation, see what their reaction is?”
“Straughan told me to stay away.”
“Don’t you think Straughan could have gone further than telling you to recite the sort of phrases you’d use teaching a monkey to talk,” ridiculed Charlie. “It feels good to know I’m safe. How do you feel?”
“Who are you really trying to help, Charlie, me or yourself?”
“You’ll have your answer to that this time tomorrow,” promised Charlie, which was an exaggeration because his idea still wasn’t completely formulated.
“How the hell am I supposed to respond to that?” protested Halliday.
“By trying harder to break the door and safe combinations. And thinking back over this conversation to decide if you gained anything by holding back as I know you’ve held back.” Charlie heard the other man say, “No … wait…” in the seconds before he replaced the phone.
“Why’d you keep me waiting?” demanded Rebecca Street. “We left Gerald more than an hour ago.”
“I needed to guarantee the quality: enhance it if necessary,” replied Straughan, easily, gesturing to the recorder on the desk between them.
“Did you have to?”
“Not at all, which I’m glad about. If the need arises to use it I don’t want any technical indication of interference, not that enhancement should register. From where you were sitting, were you able to see?”
Rebecca nodded. “He turned off during the references to the assassination. And when he slagged off Palmer and Bland.”
“You did well, getting a lot of that stuff on our copy,” praised Straughan.
“And you did even better,” returned the woman.
“You think we should go on recording our meetings with him?”
“Absolutely. I’m not going to be his scapegoat, like the Ambsersom woman before me. What odds would you give about tomorrow?”
“I don’t gamble on things like this,” refused Straughan, stiffly. “When Jacobson asked him directly about handing over the passport and tickets, Radtsic was adamant he hadn’t called Paris. But there’s no way we can be sure. Jacobson was certainly relieved by Radtsic’s new attitude: not a trace of the old arrogance.”
“We’ve done the right thing, taking the precautions we have,” insisted Rebecca, unprompted.
“And broken every rule and regulation in the book,” qualified Straughan.