Free Run Around by Brian Freemantle

Wilson.
    â€˜How about the last?’ asked Charlie. ‘“You will wrap the November catalogue.”’
    â€˜What’s the connection?’
    â€˜What political, public event, where something of maximum impact could possibly be achieved, was announced just prior to but certainly not after 8 July?’ suggested Charlie. ‘A political, public event scheduled to take place in November?’
    â€˜Oh yes,’ accepted the Director, finally. ‘Oh yes, I could go for that.’
    â€˜It’s a theory,’ allowed Harkness, grudgingly.
    â€˜The best we’ve got, after the mistakes so far,’ said Charlie.
    â€˜I think so, too,’ agreed the Director, at once.
    â€˜I’m glad,’ said Charlie. ‘I was late for this morning’s meeting because I’ve ordered from every British embassy in every European capital a complete list and breakdown of major political happenings in their countries throughout December as well as November just to be sure. I designated it maximum priority, with a copy in each case to the ambassador.’
    â€˜In whose name?’ asked Wilson, expectantly.
    â€˜Yours,’ said Charlie.
    Harry Johnson was pissed off, right up to the back teeth: five weeks to go before retirement, the lump sum he’d decided to take from his pension already deposited on the holiday bungalow in Broadstairs, the extra plot negotiated to his allotment and this had to happen, a hands-over-your-bum, watch-everything-that-moves red alert. It wasn’t fair: certainly the assignment wasn’t fair because the buggers had manoeuvred it so he got the worst surveillance of the lot, the one most likely to go wrong. And the last thing he could afford was anything going wrong: until the gold watch that had already been selected and the insincere speeches and the booze-up in the Brace of Pheasants. All he’d wanted – could surely have expected! – was a quiet, easy life, so that he could quit the service with a reasonably good record. Not this, something that was so obviously important and even more obviously dangerous.
    Johnson, a plump man who wore braces as well as a belt and who puffed a lot when he breathed, because of a tendency to bronchitis, saw the departure of Yuri Koretsky first, because Johnson was one of the most senior Watchers on the squad and only ever needed the sight of a quarry once. And Koretsky, who was the KGB rezident in London, had to be one of the most marked quarries of the whole stupid alert: Johnson was disappointed that the younger two, Burn, who was the driver, and Kemp, who was the back-up, hadn’t been quicker. According to regulations, as the senior man he should have reported them but he knew he wouldn’t. What was the point of being shitty, with only five weeks to go before retirement?
    â€˜There’s our man,’ he said, alerting them for the first time.
    Koretsky was in a car with a driver, which Johnson recognized at once to be significant. He said, in a further warning: ‘This could be it.’
    â€˜Why?’ asked Kemp.
    â€˜Watch and learn,’ said Johnson. He wondered what ‘it’ was? Throughout the majority of his MI5 career as a professional surveillance merchant he had followed and bugged and burgled and pried, rarely knowing the complete reason of any assignment, like he didn’t know the full purpose of this one. He frequently wondered whether any of it mattered.
    The Soviet car went up the Bayswater Road – ironically within a mile of the hotel Vasili Zenin was preparing to leave within the hour, to make the collection – and went to the right at Marble Arch, clogging at once in the Park Lane traffic. Their vehicle was two cars behind and Johnson said: ‘Don’t lose him! Close up.’
    The Soviet vehicle turned into Upper Brook Street to go past the American embassy but stayed to the left of Grosvenor Square, going in front of the Dorchester and