Free Comrade Charlie by Brian Freemantle Page B

asked.
    â€˜No,’ said Blackstone. ‘Some tie-up with America, a space job. It’s all very hush-hush. There was just a general memorandum inviting applications to become involved.’
    â€˜I think you’re ever so clever,’ praised the woman admiringly. ‘Would it mean you didn’t have to travel around so much?’
    â€˜Oh no,’ said Blackstone, quickly. ‘I’d still have to do that.’ The secret project carried another £1,000 a year and he reckoned he could just about manage on that.
    â€˜Go to America, you mean?’
    Blackstone hesitated, recognizing the opportunity. Holidays, manoeuvring sufficient time for both, was always a problem with the dual lives he led: a supposed fortnight’s business trip to the United States would be the ideal excuse. He said: ‘I don’t know yet. Nobody knows anything apart from the senior scientific staff. I would think it’s a strong possibility I’d have to go, if I got it.’ He was glad he’d started the conversation.
    â€˜When will you know?’
    â€˜Quite soon,’ said Blackstone. ‘There’s a lot of excitement at the factory about it.’
    Ann fingered the necklace again. ‘I think you’re the best husband anyone could have,’ she said.
    â€˜And I think you’re the best wife,’ said Blackstone. ‘Happy birthday, darling.’
    The telephone was answered on the second ring but without any identification beyond the single word, ‘Yes?’
    â€˜I don’t want to be laughed at: to be humiliated,’ said Krogh. His voice was weak and uneven, someone either on the point of tears or who had already succumbed to them.
    â€˜Of course you don’t,’ agreed Petrin soothingly.
    â€˜Nothing will go wrong, will it…? I mean, it’ll be…?’
    â€˜I’ve worked it all out,’ guaranteed Petrin.
    Which he had, observing the universally accepted intelligence maxim that an entrapment achieved has to be consolidated. The Russian dictated the contents and the place of the first handover, in a restaurant in that wharf area of San Francisco converted into a tourist attraction of waterside shops, amusements and exhibitions. Their meeting – and particularly when Krogh handed over the envelope – was extensively photographed by carefully placed KGB technicians. So a record was created of a millionaire American defence contractor passing information to someone who, if renewed or additional pressure were ever needed, could be identified as a KGB operative.

8
    It should have been a relaxed, contented occasion, but for Berenkov it wasn’t because abruptly – and unusually – he was troubled by doubts about what he intended doing. Not, actually, in initiating the secondary British operation that hopefully was to involve Charlie Muffin but at keeping it, for the moment, from Kalenin.
    Kalenin, who disdained a dacha of his own, had in the past shared a visit to the rambling, bungalowstyle country home of the Berenkovs and this weekend there was a particular reason for his being there because Georgi was home from engineering college. Berenkov was inordinately proud of his stranger son and inclined to over-compensate for the long period they had been apart: the boastfulness – urging him to tell his guardian of examination marks and commendations from his instructors – embarrassed the boy. He was tall and thickly dark-haired, like Berenkov, but avoided this father’s girth: Georgi played centre-field in the college soccer team and had also represented the college in cross-country skiing for two seasons.
    They read and walked in the woods and staged their own chess championship, with a ten-ruble prize, which Kalenin – who had played at Master level – let Georgi win.
    On the Sunday Berenkov and Kalenin sat in reclining chairs on the wood-strip verandah while Valentina and the boy cleared the midday