Charlie Muffin: The Blind Run Part 11

'Everything is an eagerness to please, to impress us,' pointed out Berenkov. 'We want to get whoever it is in contact with the British, not be misled by somebody saying anything that comes into his head, imagining it's going to be what we want to hear.'

Kalenin gestured towards the now blank screen in the viewing room. 'There was nothing there to give any indication that Sampson might do that,' Kalenin paused. 'In fact,' he added. 'From your a.s.sessment the person that might do that is Charlie m.u.f.fin.'

Berenkov shook his head. 'Charlie m.u.f.fin won't trick me again,' he said.

'He made it possible for you to be repatriated,' reminded the Chairman.

'Because it suited his purpose, not because of me,' said Berenkov. Now Berenkov indicated the screen in front of them. 'My first loyalty is always to me,' he quoted.

'Do you want to meet him again?' asked Kalenin.

'Very much,' admitted Berenkov. 'Very much indeed.'

Chapter Twelve.

Not bad, judged Charlie, reviewing the debriefing. But not good, either. A stupid start, from which he'd had to make a hurried recovery and he would never know if that recovery was obvious. And she'd backed him into a corner at the end. But they were minimal uncertainties. The biggest and one he'd failed to realise until now because everything had been so hurried was the possibility that Sampson knew, from his then undiscovered position in London, how Wilson had used the Italian amba.s.sador. Would there be any trace of his own involvement? The British Director had been personally involved, keeping it a top echelon matter, but Charlie supposed there would have had to be some headquarter discussion. And official paper work. Sampson had been number three on the Russian desk, he recalled. If there had been paper work, no matter how minimal, then at that clearance level Sampson would have read it. If he'd read it, then Sampson would have alerted Moscow, Charlie thought, carrying the internal discussion further. So why had she bothered to quiz him so closely? Maybe not the sort of test he'd imagined. Maybe he'd misinterpreted the whole d.a.m.ned thing and they'd just been checking to see whether he'd co-operate or lie. If that were the case then he'd emerged worse than he imagined. Worse but still recoverable. He'd said he wasn't sure he'd co-operate and if he were later accused of lying about Italy he could convincingly argue that he wasn't lying but uncertain at the time of his first debriefing about a full commitment. Could he argue it convincingly? He wouldn't know until he tried. Back in the familiar labyrinth, he recognised. Difficult to imagine that just a month earlier five weeks at the most he was actually missing it.

As Charlie entered the shared apartment, to find the anxious Sampson waiting directly beyond the threshold, Charlie realised a way to retrace some of his steps if he had been trapped.

'What happened?' demanded Sampson at once.

'A debriefing, that's all,' said Charlie, moving further into the main room.

'What do you mean, that's all! What happened? Was it a committee? Just one man? What do they want?' He jerked his hand, irritably towards the telephone. 'I've been sitting in this d.a.m.ned box all day and there's been nothing, nothing at all.'

'You keep telling me how important you are,' said Charlie. 'Perhaps they need time to prepare.'

'Cut it out,' insisted Sampson, voice quiet in his anger. 'I want to know what it's like.'

It had gone well, decided Charlie. 'Just one person,' he recounted. 'A woman in my case. Natalia Fedova. Said she knew nothing about me, which had to be a lie. You know as well as I do the sort of records they keep. Went over everything, in a pretty general manner, from the time I exposed the Director. Finally asked me if I'd co-operate.'

'You said yes, of course,' antic.i.p.ated the other man.

'No,' said Charlie.

'No!'

'Depends what they want me to do.'

'No it doesn't and you know it,' said Sampson. 'Christ, when are you going to learn?'

'I won't betray everything, not like you.'

'You haven't got any choice.'

Not the response he'd wanted, thought Charlie. 'Maybe you haven't,' he said. 'You're committed.'

'There was discussion about me!'

Better, thought Charlie. 'Yes,' he said.

'What? When?'

Perfect, decided Charlie, taking the second query. 'Soon after I was questioned about my detection in Italy. You knew all about that, of course.'

'About what?' asked Sampson, impatient again.

'My arrest in Italy. You were in London then?'

Sampson shook his head. 'Beirut,' he said. 'I didn't get back for several months after. The trial hadn't happened, but you were back in the country.'

So the man wouldn't have known! Safe, thought Charlie. It had been easier than he thought. Not wanting a later discernible pause he said, 'They asked if I knew anything of you in the service. What sort of person you were. Whether I liked you even.'

'What did you say?'

'That I never encountered you when I was working in the department, that I thought you were a s.h.i.+t and that I didn't like you.'

'b.a.s.t.a.r.d!' exploded Sampson.

'Do you think a reference from me is important?'

'Because of me you're not rotting in jail.'

'Because of you a copper is dead and a prison officer is probably brain damaged.'

'Aren't you ever going to forget that?'

'No,' said Charlie simply.

'You're a c.u.n.t.'

'One of us is.' Had he covered everything he wanted to? wondered Charlie. It had to be now. He said. 'You'll cooperate, naturally? As soon as you're asked?'

Sampson frowned, surprised at the question. 'This is the moment I've been working towards waiting for for ten years. I just can't understand why I'm being treated like this.'

'It's only the first day, for Christ's sake,' said Charlie. It seemed much longer.

'I don't deserve it,' protested Sampson, petulantly. 'After all I've done, the risks I've taken, I don't deserve to be ignored, not even on the first day.'

'Perhaps you're not as important as you think you are then,' jeered Charlie.

'We'll see,' said Sampson. He laughed, viciously, and said, 'And do you know what I'm going to do, when I get into some position of power?'

'What?' said Charlie.

'I'm going to screw you,' promised the other Englishman. 'I'm going to make your existence here as miserable as I can so you'll wish in the end that you'd stayed in jail.'

Can't happen, a.s.shole, thought Charlie. 'f.u.c.k you, too,' he said.

Charlie made the search much later, when he was sure Sampson was asleep, using the pretext of getting water to drink from the kitchen. One listening device was concealed in the overhead light a.s.sembly in the main room, almost directly beneath which they'd argued earlier and another was in the doorhandle of the bathroom. There would be more, Charlie guessed. But the transcripts from these would support the woman's examination. A field agent of his expertise would be expected to search and find them, he knew. But tonight might be a bit too obvious. Tomorrow would be soon enough. He'd spent two years in jail, after all; that would be explanation enough for not looking sooner. He'd got rusty.

Wilson stumped impatiently around the office, occasionally feeling down to his stiff leg. The pain was always worse when there was some professional pressure.

'It's the d.a.m.ned waiting,' he said. 'Waiting and with no way of knowing what's happening.'

'That's the way it always had to be,' reminded the more controlled Harkness. They'll be waiting, too, don't forget. And they'll be more anxious than us.'

Wilson sat at last. 'And it'll be worth everything, if it all works,' he rationalised. 'Spectacular, in fact.'

'Spectacular,' agreed Harkness, who normally wasn't given to hyperbole.

Chapter Thirteen.

It was a standard interrogation method when two people are involved, choosing one, then the other, before the first is completed, calculated to off-balance. Sampson responded excitedly to the summons the following day, smallboy enthusiasm returning. He sat forward on the edge of the seat as the car went along the capital peripheral, gazing around at his first proper view of the Moscow suburbs, several times asking the driver about buildings or monuments they pa.s.sed but getting no reply on any occasion. He sat respectfully on the seat that Natalia Fedova indicated, leaning forward from the edge for the questions, answering crisply and concisely, a hopeful applicant for a new job. He gave a full resume of his career within British intelligence, from the time of his university entrance, carefully listing the names of the operatives with whom he had come into working contact and actually spelling out their names when she paused, uncertainly. He gave a detailed background to all the information he provided, since his recruitment by Soviet intelligence, filling out the spa.r.s.eness of his earlier, cryptic messages and reminding her that one of his last communications had been the warning of a possible spy in Moscow.

'Did you find him?' he demanded.

'I ask the questions,' the woman cut off, abruptly. Then, confirming the questioner's role, she repeated the query she had made the previous day to Charlie, whether he would be prepared to co-operate. Sampson said at once, 'But of course; that's what I've been doing all these years and what I want to continue doing.'

'Why?' asked the woman.

'I don't understand,' protested Sampson.

'Why do you want to adopt our way of life?'

Sampson smiled. 'Because I believe it is the right way of life. I'm not nave enough to believe that there aren't faults in the communist system. Abuses, too. But I consider there are greater faults in the so-called Western democracy, which is nothing of the sort. The labour and socialist movements have tried and they've failed. Britain is controlled by vested, capitalistic interests. Capitalism destroyed any proper reforms considered by Mitterand in France. Money, profit and success to the already successful is the creed in America and their CIA maintain and manipulate fascist, right wing regimes throughout Central America and crush the first signs of liberalism. And Africa, too. The CIA put Mobutu into power in Zaire and have kept him there for more than a decade. And what's happened? He's corruptly become a billionaire with his money safely in Switzerland and his country is one of the most poverty stricken and suppressed on the continent ...' Sampson paused, breathlessly and then finished, 'So-called capitalism doesn't set people free. It makes rich men richer and suppresses the poor ...'

'You seem angry,' said the woman, mildly.

'I am angry,' agreed Sampson. 'Which is why I offered myself, all those years ago. And why I am offering myself now.'

'What are you prepared to do?'

'Anything,' responded Sampson, immediately.

'Unquestioned?'

'Unquestioned,' promised the man.

'Why did you bring the other one with you?'

'm.u.f.fin?'

'Yes.'

'I had no choice. We were in the same cell. I could have created a situation to get him moved I actually set out to do so but then I learned I'd have to have someone else. And that wouldn't have been someone who would have considered a life here. Nor someone you would have considered admitting.'

'Would m.u.f.fin have tried to prevent your escape? Raised an alarm, perhaps?'

'Who knows what he would have done?' said Sampson, contemptuously. 'I don't think he's aware half the time what he really is doing.'

'You didn't escape from the cell, according to m.u.f.fin. You escaped from the infirmary. m.u.f.fin didn't have to be involved at all.'

'Are you doubting me?' asked Sampson, indignantly.

'Yes,' said Natalia, openly.

'Then look at your records, of all the contacts with me inside prison. Only at the very end was apomorphine proposed. Intially I thought I'd have to escape from the cell. And there was no way I could have done that without Charlie m.u.f.fin knowing about it.'

'Why didn't you kill him, like you did the policeman?'

Sampson came forward even further, to reinforce what he had to say. 'I didn't want to kill anyone: cause any more harm than was absolutely necessary. And like I said, I thought I had to get away from our cell. There are regular cell checks, every few hours. He would have been discovered.'

'What about the prison officer you battered being discovered?'

Sampson smiled, as the points came his way. 'The infirmary isn't checked, during the night. There wasn't a risk of discovery.'

'There was with the policeman.'

'I had to make the decision on the spot. I didn't know whether the people you sent for me would drive off, at the first indication of danger. Whether I could subdue the man before he had time to sound an alarm. Could subdue him, even.' Sampson gave another pause. 'If I created a difficulty then I'm sorry. It seemed the only thing the right thing to do at the time.'

'Do you like killing? Hurting people?'

'Did that b.a.s.t.a.r.d say I did?'

'Do you like hurting people?' repeated the woman.

'No.'

'You told me you were prepared to do anything.'

'Yes,' remembered Sampson, cautiously.

'If you were told to kill someone, would you do it?'

It was several moments before Sampson replied. Then he said, 'I would argue against the order.'