Run Around by Brian Freemantle Page B

don’t want to take anything for granted.’
    â€˜At the moment it is insufficient to consider cancellation.’
    â€˜Are you using it for some other purposes I don’t know about?’ challenged Berenkov, openly.
    â€˜If I’m protected then so are you,’ replied Kalenin, obtusely.
    Berenkov allowed the pause, hoping the other man would continue but he did not. Berenkov said: ‘Is that your promise?’
    â€˜What else would it be?’ demanded Kalenin.
    â€˜Let’s build up at the Bern embassy!’ urged Berenkov. ‘Blanket the place with additional people of our own, so that we’ll detect the moment anything changes there.’
    â€˜That would probably be wise,’ agreed Kalenin. ‘What about the British communication codes to their embassy here?’
    â€˜We can decipher all of them.’
    â€˜Let’s order a concentration on that: build up the intercepts as well.’
    â€˜Have there been any further protests from Lvov?’ asked Berenkov.
    â€˜Not to me,’ said Kalenin.
    â€˜What about elsewhere?’
    â€˜I’ve no idea.’
    â€˜He could be a dangerous man,’ said Berenkov.
    â€˜So could I,’ said Kalenin.

Chapter Nine
    Charlie Muffin was irritated, for more than one reason. The most obvious cause was the forthcoming encounter with Harkness but the greater feeling came from the frustration of not being able to do anything but sit and wait and rely on others. Charlie didn’t like sitting and waiting: most definitely not on an operation like this, one with a time limit. And he never liked relying on others because it was far too easy to slip on their dropped banana skins. Which was perhaps an unfair reflection on this particular job. He’d had re-run the one half-face picture of Primrose Hill through all the physiognomy checks possible, trying for comparisons with all known Eastern bloc agents going back for three years, using the computer system as well as human analysis. And come up with a blank, like the first time. So objectively it was unlikely that any immigration officer or Special Branch man, despite their training, was going to do any better. It was a bastard, a right bastard. Maybe, ultimately, they would have to pick up Harkness’s suggestion and sound a general alarm, impractical though it had seemed during the meeting with the Director. Which was further cause for irritation. Charlie didn’t like being unable to come up with a better idea than that prick of a deputy.
    Sighing, he left his cubby-hole office in good time for the appointment, reluctant to provide the man with more grounds for complaint than he already had. Charlie was ten minutes early and was told by the stiffly coiffeured secretary that he had to wait. He did so patiently, refusing to be riled any more than he already was, knowing damned well there was no reason for Harkness to delay the interview and that the man was playing his usual silly buggers. Charlie bet that Harkness had been one of those snotty little kids who take their bats home if they weren’t allowed to have first crack at the ball.
    Harkness’s office was lower than the Director’s and further to one side, so the vibration from the underground trains hummed up from the foundations. The man was waiting neatly behind his desk: the suit today was blue-striped, the colour-coded accessories pastel-blue. The office was antiseptically clean, as it always was.
    â€˜Anything come in since yesterday?’ said Harkness.
    â€˜Nothing,’ said Charlie. The man knew damned well that if there had been anything he would have been informed.
    â€˜You drew a Mercedes from the pool,’ announced Harkness.
    â€˜What?’ said Charlie. If Harkness could play silly buggers, then so could he. In fact Charlie reckoned he was better at it than the other man.
    â€˜For the Novikov debriefing you drew a Mercedes from the pool,’ repeated Harkness,