He called Cartright at once, and when they were connected he said: ‘I need to come into the embassy.’
‘You do,’ agreed Cartright. ‘There are messages.’
‘Problems?’ asked Charlie.
‘How do I know?’ said Cartright.
He was able to confront Harkness now, Charlie decided. He said: ‘Tell them I’m coming.’
Those sections of Soviet embassies occupied by the KGB – and by the Glavnoye Razvedyvatelnoye Upravleniye or GRU, the military branch of Russian intelligence – are internally the most restricted, without exception anywhere in the world forbidden to any ambassador or any supposedly genuine diplomatic staff. Intelligence personnel are an elite – as they are, indeed, within the Soviet Union – answerable to no one, beholden to no one. Except within their own rigidly enforced, rigidly observed confines, where KGB informs upon KGB and GRU informs upon GRU and each service informs upon the other. Ostensibly, for each service, there is a Rezident or chief, but so well is a tangled intricacy of suspicion constantly maintained that no Rezident knows whether he truly occupies the office or whether someone he considers his subordinate is in fact the real holder of the position, reporting upon him and monitoring his performance. The situation is further complicated by the official existence within each branch of the service in every embassy of a security officer, who is not responsible to the Rezident – and certainly not to the ambassador – reporting and monitoring as actively and as independently as everyone else.
The same-colour jigsaw creates the maximum suspicion and uncertainty, and the Soviet Politburo remain convinced since 1953, when Nikita Krushchev innovated the system, that it has preserved their intelligence organizations against dissent and defection better than any other in the world. Statistics of known defections appear to support that confidence.
Boris Filiatov was officially the KGB Rezident in Tokyo, but the security officer was a woman whose reputation was such that the majority of Tokyo-based Russian agents believed that Olga Balan was the bona fide Rezident, unencumbered by any unknown superior. Olga – whose job it was to know of these and other rumours – did nothing to discount them, because she enjoyed the respect and because it encouraged the informants to confide their secrets to her, which increased her reputation and revolved the wheel of rumour full circle. The earned reputation for ruthless determination contrasted with Olga Balan’s obvious and real femininity. She was taller than most Slavic women and she did not have the usual square-jawed features either, but a soft, oval face and a cowl of blonde hair: those who feared her complained her very appearance made her all the more frightening, because it concealed the sort of person she really was. The stories positively identified two agents who had been sent to number 27 gulag in the Potma complex upon her evidence of their enjoying too much the pleasures of the West and involving themselves in the black market, to guarantee some comforts back in Moscow against the time of their recall. They were true. One had been her fiancé, for whom she had genuine affection and whom she had therefore warned several times to stop before filing her report. If she hadn’t, she knew someone else would have done, and she did not want to occupy a prison cell herself, either for failing properly to do her job or because of her known involvement with the man. Olga Balan regarded being a good Russian as more important than being a loyal fiancée, and anyway towards the end she found the man sexually lacking.
Olga conducted everything to order and most of all the weekly meetings. Kozlov entered precisely on time, because such things were noted, exchanged the formalized greeting and sat in the already arranged chair. Each KGB officer maintained a work-log, which was required to be submitted the morning in advance of the afternoon encounter; his was open in front of the woman.
‘Kamakura?’ she said, looking up at him. She had deep brown eyes.
‘Yes,’ said Kozlov. ‘A day visit.’
‘Why?’ She had an unnerving, staccato way of questioning.
‘We are maintaining observation on CIA personnel attached to the American embassy here. A joint operation with my wife, approved by Moscow. I was following their Resident, Art Fredericks,’ said Kozlov, pedantically. All interviews were recorded.
‘It appears to be taking a long time.’
‘We isolated another one, at Kamakura. Samuel Dale. We’ve confirmed it from their diplomatic list.’ He spoke intentionally in the plural.
‘Your wife is Control for this operation?’
‘She suggested it to Moscow,’ said Kozlov. ‘They approved.’
‘How is it worked?’
‘The object is identification,’ said Kozlov. ‘I maintain observation on known CIA officers and through them discover others.’
‘You operate as a team?’ persisted the woman.
‘We do not remain all the time together,’ qualified Kozlov. ‘That would be dangerous.’
‘Why dangerous?’
‘In the event of one of us being identified, leading to the other,’ said Kozlov.
‘You suspect your identities are known to a Western intelligence agency!’ The demand was peremptory.
‘I consider separation a sensible precaution,’ said Kozlov, qualifying again.
‘Any findings, from this surveillance?’
‘I believe there is a build up of CIA strength,’ said Kozlov.
‘Why!’ demanded the woman.
‘I hope to find out,’ said Kozlov.
Fredericks sanitized his account to the other CIA operatives, but even so it was clear that the Agency supervisor had conceded more than he wanted, in the encounter with Charlie Muffin.
‘Was it right, to disclose Ogurtsov?’ questioned Elliott.
‘Do you think I’d have done it, if it hadn’t been necessary!’ said Fredericks, upset at the obvious criticism from the other men.
‘He winked!’ said Levine. ‘The bastard winked at the monitor!’
‘Listen. And listen good,’ instructed Fredericks. ‘Don’t let tricks like that upset you. Because that’s what they are: nothing more than tricks.’
‘Why?’ questioned Yamada.
‘So we’ll underestimate him,’ judged Fredericks. ‘And that would be a mistake. We all know what he did once. He’s a tricky son-of-a-bitch.’
Chapter Six
Charlie opened the first Suntory, closed the curtains against the intrusive glitter of the night-time awakening of Tokyo and sat at the desk facing the blank wall, paper and pen before him. As he set out the preparations, Charlie guessed Witherspoon would go apeshit at his writing down in insecure surroundings the conclusions of a secure briefing. It transgressed every regulation codified in the British intelligence system since Walsingham founded it after Queen Elizabeth I agreed it was a good idea if it singled out the bad guys in the black hats from the good guys, wearing the white ones, although not quite in those words. At least after four hundred years the principle remained the same. It was a pity, he reflected further, that the assholes who sat in panelled offices with the very pictures of Lord Walsingham and Queen Elizabeth I on the walls got their colours and images blurred and relied too much upon those old school ties when it came to judging Blunt and Cairngorm and Philby and Burgess and Maclean, and all the others who’d made the service a bad joke as well as an object of suspicion among other intelligence organizations. Was he one of the others, minus that all-important school tie? Charlie asked himself. Certainly Fredericks thought so; which showed clearly enough the thinking within the American agency. Rubbish, of course: absolute rubbish. He’d never been a traitor – just vindictive – and proved his right to re-entry in a Moscow operation that would have worked if Wilson had at the time trusted him completely. Not just a professional loss, either: personal, as well. Darling, wonderful Natalia who had refused to come back with him …