Charlie M by Brian Freemantle

the rest of him submerged in the black, leaf-covered water. His foot jerked spasmodically, furrowing a tiny groove in the opposite bank. It only lasted a few seconds and then it was quite still.
    â€˜It’s not possible to spin a Skoda like that,’ said the driver, as they turned to go back to their own vehicle.
    â€˜No?’
    â€˜No. Something to do with the suspension and the angle that the wheels are splayed.’
    â€˜Must be safe on ice, then?’
    â€˜I suppose so.’
    â€˜We won’t tell Snare,’ decreed Cuthbertson. He stood at the window, watching a snake of tourists slowly enter the Houses of Parliament. They were Japanese, he saw, armoured in camera equipment and wearing coloured lapel pins identifying them with their guides, who carried corresponding standards in greens and reds and yellows.
    â€˜All right,’ agreed Wilberforce.
    â€˜It would be quite wrong,’ justified Cuthbertson, turning back into the room. ‘He’d go to Moscow frightened. A frightened man can’t be expected to operate properly. It’s basic training.’
    â€˜Need he go at all?’ asked Wilberforce. ‘Surely Harrison’s report is pretty conclusive.’
    â€˜Oh yes,’ insisted Cuthbertson. ‘He’s got to go. I’m convinced now, but we need to know the conditions that Kalenin will impose. And if he’s made his own escape plans. A man like Kalenin won’t just walk into an embassy and give himself up.’
    â€˜Yes,’ concurred Wilberforce. ‘I suppose you’re right.’
    They remained silent while Janet served the tea. It was several minutes after she had left the office before the conversation was resumed.
    â€˜Was it a surprise?’ asked Wilberforce, nodding to the door through which the girl had left the room.
    â€˜What?’ demanded Cuthbertson, pretending not to know what the other man was talking about.
    â€˜To discover from the security reports that Janet was having an affair with that man Muffin.’
    â€˜Not really,’ lied the Director. ‘I gather he has a reputation for that sort of thing. Rutting always has been the pastime of the working class.’
    He shook his head, like a man confronted with a distasteful sight.
    â€˜Imagine!’ he invited. ‘With someone like that!’
    â€˜What are you going to do?’ asked the second-in-command. ‘He’s married and she’s the daughter of a fellow officer, for God’s sake.’
    Cuthbertson opened the other file on his desk, containing the report of Harrison’s death.
    â€˜Let’s see how Snare gets on,’ he said, guardedly.
    â€˜Over six months have passed since Comrade General Berenkov was sentenced,’ recorded Kastanazy, gazing over his desk at Kalenin.
    â€˜Yes,’ said the K.G.B. officer.
    â€˜Most of yesterday’s Praesidium meeting was devoted to discussing the affair.’
    â€˜Yes,’ said the General.
    â€˜Please understand, Comrade Kalenin, that the patience of everyone is growing increasingly shorter.’
    â€˜Yes,’ agreed the General.
    Had Kastanazy purposely dropped his rank? he wondered.

(9)
    Snare hated Moscow, he decided. It was claustrophobic and petty-minded and inefficient and irritating. He had attended the Bolshoi and been unmoved, the State Circus and been bored and the Armoury and been unimpressed with the Romanov jewellery, even the Fabergé clocks. The body of Lenin, enclosed behind glass in that mausoleum, was not, he had concluded, the embalmed body at all, but a waxwork. And a bad wax-work at that. He’d seen better at Madame Tussaud’s, when he’d taken his young nephew for an Easter outing. The child had wet himself, he remembered, distastefully, and made the car smell.
    The flattery of being lionised as a new face in an embassy starved of outside contact had worn off now and he pitied the diplomats and secretaries whose constant