Run Around by Brian Freemantle Read Free Book Online Page A

announced Witherspoon, triumphantly.
    â€˜Terrific,’ said Charlie.
    â€˜That hole-in-one cost me a fortune in the bar afterwards. It’s a tradition to treat everyone, you know.’
    â€˜No,’ said Charlie. ‘I didn’t know.’
    Witherspoon nodded in the direction of the drawing room and said: ‘Nothing I hadn’t got, was there?’
    Jesus! thought Charlie. He said: ‘Hardly a thing.’
    â€˜Wasted journey then?’
    Caught by Witherspoon’s complaint at having to buy drinks in the club-house and remembering the forgotten lunchtime receipt, Charlie said: ‘You wouldn’t by chance have a spare restaurant bill from anywhere around here, would you?’
    Witherspoon’s face coloured. He said: ‘You don’t imagine I am going to get caught up in your petty little deceits, do you!’
    â€˜No,’ said Charlie, wearily, ‘of course not.’
    When he got to the Mercedes Charlie found the red communication light burning, indicating a priority summons. He was patched directly through to the Director’s office and recognized Alison Bing’s strained-through-a-sieve voice at once.
    â€˜The bomb’s gone off right beneath you,’ said the Director’s secretary. ‘I don’t think there’s going to be enough pieces to bury.’
    Arrival security – Special Branch and immigration and Customs checks – at all the Scottish fishing ports is ridiculously inefficient, so lamentable that the KGB regard them as open doorways into Europe.
    Vasili Nikolaevich Zenin arrived at Ullapool on a Russian trawler but did not go ashore that first night, letting the genuine Russian seamen attract what little attention there might be. He went with them the second day, but not to drink. In a pub lavatory he stripped off the sweater and leggings that covered his suit, for one of the seamen to carry back to the trawler, and caught a meandering bus to Glasgow, arriving in time for the overnight sleeper to London.
    He collected the waiting suitcase from the left luggage locker at King’s Cross station and went directly to the Ennis Hotel, in Bayswater.
    â€˜You have a reservation for me: the name’s Smale,’ he said.
    â€˜Travelled far, Mr Smale?’ asked the girl, politely.
    â€˜A long way,’ said Zenin, which was so very true.

Chapter Four
    The KGB exercise the greatest care in the selection of operatives for Department 8 of Directorate S of its First Chief Directorate, devoting more time to their instruction than to any other agent in any other division of its service.
    A prime consideration is one of mental attitude because the most essential requirement in a department in which men are trained to kill is that they do not want to kill, which is not as illogical as it may first appear: there is no place for a psychopath because psychopaths cannot be relied upon to behave rationally and a professional killer must at all times remain absolutely rational. Psychopaths do, however, have their function in the final week of the training period.
    Vasili Zenin graduated from that as he graduated from every course at Balashikha, with a maximum assessment which confirmed his accolade as the most outstanding recruit of the year. The only way to fail the ultimate test was to die.
    A Ukrainian serving a life sentence in Gulag 16 in the Potma complex for killing three people – one his mother – was not immediately shot after cutting the throat of a fellow prisoner while he slept in order to steal the man’s boots. Instead, having psychiatricly been found to be insane he was offered the choice of entering a kill-or-be-killed situation, assured that if he were the victor he would be granted his freedom. Which was, of course, a lie. Had he killed Zenin the delayed execution would have been carried out anyway, but warning the man he was to be hunted tilted the odds against Zenin; in a proper operation a true victim