Read Online Run Around by Brian Freemantle - Free Book Online

returning it to the pool, which regulations required. In the morning he found the Mercedes insignia had been ripped off the bonnet.
    â€˜Shit,’ he said. Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea after all to buy a car of his own. He wondered if the bank manager’s letter had arrived yet.
    The summons was for ten o’clock and Charlie intended getting to the department an hour earlier, with a lot to do beforehand, but the traffic was worse than he had expected and so he was delayed. He still hadn’t finished all the Foreign Office requests by the time he should have left for the confrontation with the Director. He worked on. At fifteen minutes past Alison Bing came on from Wilson’s direct line and said: ‘It’s no good hiding: we know you’re there.’
    â€˜Ten more minutes,’ said Charlie.
    â€˜Now!’ she said.
    It only took Charlie five minutes to complete the last message, to Moscow, and he left in what was for him a run which with his feet he never normally attempted. As he went by the window he saw that the upside-down training shoes weren’t in the courtyard rubbish any more.
    Sir Alistair Wilson was sitting formally behind his desk, which he rarely did and there was none of the personal affability of which Charlie was usually conscious. Harkness was in his customary chair, prim hands on prim knees, making no attempt to hide the expression of satisfaction: Charlie thought he looked like a spectator at a Roman arena waiting for the thumbs down. Attacking at once, the deputy said: ‘You were specifically told ten o’clock.’
    â€˜One or two things came up,’ said Charlie. ‘Sorry.’
    â€˜Just what the hell do you think you’re doing!’ erupted Wilson. The complete whiteness of his hair was heightened by his red-faced anger.
    â€˜About what, precisely?’ Charlie hadn’t intended the question to sound insolent but it did and he was aware of Harkness’s sharp intake of breath.
    â€˜You have caused absolute bloody chaos,’ accused the Director, hands clasped for control in front of him on the desk. ‘In my name – but without any reference or authority from me – you’ve demanded – not politely asked but demanded – MI5 mount a massive surveillance operation on every Soviet installation in London.’
    â€˜Yes,’ agreed Charlie. ‘I have.’
    â€˜Have you any idea of the manpower involved?’ said Wilson.
    â€˜Or the overtime payments?’ came in Harkness, predictably.
    â€˜Quite a lot,’ said Charlie, answering both questions.
    â€˜MI5 is not our service,’ lectured Wilson. ‘When we want co-operation we ask, politely. We don’t insist. And we don’t make requests which will tie up every Watcher they’ve got and require extra men being seconded. Do you know what their Director said, when he complained! That Britain’s entire counter-intelligence service was at the moment working for us .’
    â€˜I hope they are,’ said Charlie.
    â€˜What are you talking about?’ said Harkness.
    Instead of answering the man Charlie said to the Director: ‘But are they doing it?’
    Wilson frowned, momentarily not replying. Then he said: ‘Yes. I wasn’t going to cancel without knowing what was happening, but by God you’d better have a good explanation – a bloody good explanation.’
    Charlie sighed, relieved. ‘I’m glad,’ he said.
    â€˜And not just an explanation for that,’ said Harkness. ‘We’ve studied the full transcript of your interview with Novikov.’
    â€˜And?’ lured Charlie. Come on, you penny-pinching arsehole, he thought.
    â€˜Appalling,’ judged Harkness. ‘Unnecessarily antagonistic, putting at risk any relationship that might have been built up between the man and other debriefers. And absolutely unproductive.’
    â€˜Absolutely unproductive?’