‘What about Paul? And Solomatin?’ questioned Fredericks, at once.
‘He doesn’t have any idea that you know,’ said Charlie, honestly.
‘Would your people charge him?’
‘Probably,’ said Charlie, the cynicism prepared like everything else. ‘Can you imagine the uproar in Parliament if they found out we were protecting someone who’d assassinated a government minister! And if we’d got all we wanted from Kozlov, a public trial would be a hell of a propaganda coup against the Russians, wouldn’t it? Your people will arraign him, if there’s a benefit in it. You know they will.’
Fredericks was nodding, agreeing the amoral logic of an amoral business, and Charlie wondered if the same argument would work when he used it later, but in reverse. Fredericks smiled, the briefest of insincere expressions, and said: ‘I think we’ve got a deal.’
Directly regarding Elliott, Charlie said: ‘Straight play: no fucking about?’
‘Straight play,’ agreed the CIA supervisor.
‘I can make him cross. Or I can make him stay, by letting him know I’ve told you about the CIA magazine people,’ insisted Charlie, unhappy with the quick assurance. ‘If I pick up any surveillance … anything I don’t like …’ He gave himself the necessary pause. ‘If I get the slightest impression that I’m not safe, he stays. And you’re all drawing Welfare. Understood?’
‘Understood,’ said Fredericks, with difficulty. ‘How we going to play it?’
‘Same as before,’ said Charlie. ‘Set up a room at the Imperial. I’ll make him contact you there.’
‘You seem very sure,’ said Fredericks.
‘Would I have openly met you here today, if I hadn’t been?’ said Charlie.
‘How long is it going to take?’ demanded Fredericks.
‘Just days,’ promised Charlie. ‘He’ll have to move quickly, now that he’s lost Irena.’
‘I agree the ground rules: everything your way,’ conceded Fredericks. ‘Straight play, all the way … He allowed himself the hesitation. ‘This time.’
‘As long as we both understand each other,’ said Charlie. He wondered if Fredericks would remember and try to invoke the threat if everything worked as he intended? Something to worry about then, not now.
‘You wouldn’t believe how much I understand you!’ said Fredericks. ‘You just wouldn’t believe!’
Must be nice to be liked, just occasionally, thought Charlie. He wondered if his mother had liked him; she’d never said. ‘Everything’s agreed, then?’
‘It had better be.’
‘I’m going back immediately,’ said Charlie. ‘Could you be in position at the Imperial by tonight.’
‘Of course,’ said Fredericks, nodding to Yamada again to start making the arrangements immediately.
‘You know what’s going to happen?’ said Charlie.
‘What?’
‘It’s all going to work out like it was supposed to, from the beginning. You get him and I get the woman.’
‘We’d better,’ said Fredericks, another threat. ‘Believe me, we’d better.’
Kozlov stood aside for Olga to enter the apartment, startled by her appearance. She was bedraggled, her hair lank and her clothes crumpled where she hadn’t bothered to undress, to sleep. Closer, he didn’t think she’d bothered to wash, either: there was a smell. He reached out for her, uncertainly, and just as uncertainly she regarded the gesture, unsure whether to accept it, and when she did, finally, she merely stood in his embrace, making no effort to respond and embrace him in return. Kozlov decided the smell was definitely from her.
‘How are you?’ he said, which he knew was a ridiculous question but all he could think of saying in his surprise.
‘Do you know what you made me do!’
‘You already told me.’
‘He just sat there, like he was asleep!’
Kozlov moved from the ridiculous way they were standing. He poured from what remained of their supposed celebration bottle of vodka – how many millions of years ago had they talked about their own private, secret party! – and offered it to her. Olga looked at the glass as if she had never seen one before and then took it but didn’t drink. Kozlov swallowed half his glass in one, topping it up at once. Because she appeared to have no motivation of her own, Kozlov led her to a seat by the window, pushing her down into it, and said: ‘I’m sorry. So very sorry. It was a mistake.’
Olga snorted a laugh, cynical now. ‘That’s what it was!’ she said bitterly. ‘A mistake: one big, huge mistake.’
Kozlov had been unsure how to tell her but decided now that it was the way to break Olga out of her crushed and beaten lethargy. He said: ‘She knows. Irena knows about us. I’ve no idea how she discovered it but she knows.’
It worked. Olga blinked, as if she were coming awake, and said: ‘But how do you …!’
Kozlov gestured towards the telephone. ‘The Englishman, Charlie Muffin. He used the system: called me. Talked about everything.’
‘Oh my God!’ said Olga, not even consciously aware of the invocation any more.
‘And then he said I was to see what happened to Filiatov because they had a disinformation source and could do whatever they wanted.’
Olga’s lassitude was completely gone. She was tensed forward, the glass in two hands before her. ‘And Filiatov …?’
‘They came for him. A squad. They got here quickly, from Sakhalin …’ said Kozlov.
‘They’re still here!’ she demanded, the fear immediate.
He shook his head. ‘Took everything with them … files, cable records, everything. Drugged Filiatov, of course. And had a closed off section on an Aeroflot flight.’
Olga brought her hand up against her mouth to prevent the mew of despair, but didn’t quite succeed. ‘What’s going to happen to us!’
‘He said – the Englishman said – I had to stay here. Wait for him to come,’ said Kozlov, practically as listless now as Olga had earlier been.
‘What’s going to happen to us?’ she repeated, her mind blocked by only one thought.
‘He’s proved it,’ said Kozlov. ‘He can do anything to us he wants: we’ve got to wait, like he says.’
Olga gulped at her drink, heavily. ‘I was right, wasn’t I?’ she said. ‘We are trapped.’
‘Yes,’ admitted Kozlov. ‘Absolutely trapped.’
‘You know what he did!’ said Elliott. ‘He made us eat shit! Eat shit! That’s what he made us do!’
‘We don’t have any alternative, not on this occasion,’ said Fredericks. ‘But there’ll be another time. I promise myself there’ll be another time.’
They were all in the Peninsula suite, even Harry Fish and Jim Dale, whom Fredericks had withdrawn from the Mandarin surveillance, strictly observing the agreement. Everyone was gripped with the feeling of impotence but only Elliott was openly expressing it.
‘You sure Langley would agree with that!’ demanded Elliott.
‘Why don’t you ask them!’ demanded Fredericks. ‘Why don’t you tell them how we were suckered by the Russian as well as the Englishman and how you think we should blow Charlie Muffin away just to get our rocks off and not go for Kozlov after all.’
‘You like the sound of all that crap he gave you!’ said Elliott, shouting.
‘I like the sound of it a damned sight better than I like the sound of the word Welfare,’ said Fredericks. ‘How’s Welfare sound to you?’
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The rainy season had literally descended on Tokyo when Charlie landed, as if the clouds had split at the seams to spill everything out at the same time. It was thick, impenetrable, at the airport and the car, more like a boat than something on wheels, crested through water-cascading streets into the city, where the pavements were mushroom fields of umbrellas. So much for English weather, thought Charlie; compared to this, London and Manchester in November were positively tropical. He had come up in the military aircraft – enjoying again being called sir by Clarke, whose rank turned out to be a major and whose Christian name was Allan – and from the flight control exchanges he knew that the American C-130 was behind them. And while, as far as he could establish, Fredericks had kept the no-surveillance agreement, Charlie was still careful, knowing the CIA could have put people in ahead of his arrival, to pick him up when he got there. The weather made it easy. He got out at Nijubashimae, ducked off the Toei Shinjuku service after one stop and emerged from the Underground at Kamiyacho, deciding within yards of setting out for Shinbashi that while in theory the tradecraft was good, in practise it was bloody stupid. It was still pissing with rain, and by the time he got to what Yuri Kozlov regarded his safe house Charlie felt anything but safe: the rain had got through his topcoat and jacket and his shoulders were damp, and he knew, from the sticky slip-slip when he moved his toes, that both his shoes were leaking. Maybe, with luck, they could be repaired.