Red Star Burning (13 page)

“I imagine you’ll want equal participation in the support group?”

“Of course,” agreed Smith, content with the direction the other man had chosen.

“I suggested we accept Charlie’s argument about too many cooks spoiling the broth.”

“Absolutely.” This really was going far better than he could have hoped, thought Smith.

“I am thinking of no more than six, three of mine, three of yours. They could also handle finance, materiel, and travel: everything that Charlie might call upon once he establishes contact with Natalia.”

“Only
when
he calls upon them,” balanced Smith, choosing his moment. “The timing has to be absolutely precise. The major argument against what we’re proposing is the public debacle if we get things wrong by as much, or as little, as a second. We won’t get approval unless we can satisfy them there is no risk of that.”

“A show trial, you mean?”

“I mean totally satisfying them that success is guaranteed, with no risk of Charlie—or the government—being publicly exposed.”

Monsford lapsed into further silence but when Smith didn’t continue, the MI6 Director said: “You were adamantly opposed to a very specific insurance.”

“As I was opposed earlier today to Charlie’s participation, an objection I’ve since dropped.”

There was another although shorter silence before Monsford said: “As you are now conceding the need for an ultimate insurance, if such a move becomes essential?”

“If such a need arose, we would have lost the advantages of bringing Natalia, with all she potentially knows, here to safety. At which stage it would be containment time.”

“I agree,” fenced Monsford, consciously switching the direction of the conversation onto the other man as he recognized them to be entering the north London suburbs with perhaps only fifteen minutes left in the exchange before reaching their destination.

Smith shifted on his seat, discomfited at being outmaneuvered. “We understand what we’re talking about but it’s not an eventuality we can openly introduce into this afternoon’s discussion: the very purpose for…” The man hesitated, searching for the appropriate ambiguity. “For the airlock through which we have to communicate is to provide legally unchallengeable deniability in Parliament in the event of a catastrophe.”

Now it was Monsford who changed position. “Surely we can sufficiently infer such a guarantee without risking any misunderstandings?”

“There are practicalities that we would need completely to clarify to avoid any misunderstandings between ourselves,” insisted Smith, determined to recover the impetus. “Do you have such an asset?”

Monsford stirred again, aware how perfectly everything was slotting into place. “I have a station chief, Harry Jacobson, completely briefed upon the operation: following Eyes Only instructions, he’s supervised all my preliminary preparations.”

“Could he perform the ultimate insurance proposal?”

“He would need to be totally distanced from everything else. And obviously he was going to be one of my three in the combined support team. If he’s assigned the insurance necessity, I’d need another officer to maintain our three-to-three balance, which creates an imbalance, my four to your three.”

“I don’t think we need be that pedantic,” offered Smith, who hadn’t imagined it was going to be so easy.

“You’d be happy with a four-to-three imbalance?” questioned Monsford, who hadn’t imagined it was going to be so easy.

“We’re not actually on opposing sides, are we?” Smith allowed himself. “Being on opposite sides of the Thames is simply a geographical separation.”

“Of course we’re not on opposing sides.” Monsford sniggered, knowing he was expected to appear amused, which he was, although not at what Smith had said. “It’s been easier for us to understand each other without those damn women on our coattails. Hasn’t it?”

“Very much easier,” agreed Smith.

*   *   *

It had taken close to an hour after the other four left for Charlie’s euphoric mist to lift and for him to confront that his initial reaction had been more fogged than misted by his single-minded fixation upon saving Natalia and Sasha. Now, after that near-transcendental hour in the no-longer-locked-or-guarded room in what would soon no longer be his latest safe house, came the hard-assed examination. Summoning yet again that close-to-photographic recall of every incident and conversation since the numbing moment of hearing Natalia’s metallic-voiced pleas, Charlie for the first time set out to create a mosaic from the pieces he could safely assume, reserving—although not positively dismissing—what he judged the more outlandish hypotheses inevitable from the sparse information available.

His starkest, most frightening awareness had to be the relentless dedication with which the FSB were hunting him, their utter determination such that they’d consciously sacrificed three undetected diplomat-concealed spies in the ridiculous burglary of his Vauxhall apartment. It had to mean …

Charlie’s mind abruptly blocked at the first of the insufficiently considered anomalies.

How had the FSB discovered the Vauxhall flat and its telephone number, neither of which was traceable to him either from its shielded lease or its utility records? Nor was such information available through any documentation in the lawyer-supervised Jersey bank account. The remotest and already partially considered possibility—if true, a further confirmation of the Russian revenge obsession—was the FSB establishing a connection from his television exposure during the Lvov affair and his long ago faked defection. But that still wouldn’t have led them to his Vauxhall flat or its telephone number. Yes it could, came the instant contradiction.

After his initial return from Moscow, Charlie had always called Natalia from an untraceably anonymous, bought-for-cash telephone card, disposable when its charge value was exhausted. But she’d very occasionally telephoned from her apartment, ignoring his repeated, sometimes even angry insistence that she always call from an unlisted public kiosk.

There was another jarring halt to Charlie’s speculation. But always to charge the call collect. Under the pressure to which she had undoubtedly been subjected, reciting the words at least monitored if not actually dictated to her, it would have been far more logical—expected, even—for her to telephone from her apartment: more logical, too, for the FSB eavesdropping enforcers. So why hadn’t she? Had Natalia tried to convey something beyond her obvious coercion, something she was desperate for him to recognize by using a public facility?

He might, Charlie at once accepted, be stumbling in the wrong direction, as he had when trying to lull his protective minders in preparation for his unsupervised dash to Jersey. But it was an inconsistency in their arranged understanding, and intentionally introduced inconsistency was an acknowledged danger-alerting tradecraft signal. It was something to flag up, even if at this moment it didn’t contribute to his empty mosaic.

What was there that just might contribute? The FSB wasn’t the only intelligence organization wanting him hanged, drawn and quartered. There’d been a substantial clear-out within the CIA after his exposure but Charlie couldn’t see them making up any part of his unfilled picture. Or could he?

Irena Yakulova Novikov, first the initiating KGB and after their supposed dissolution the continuing FSB architect of the Lvov emplacement, had not so far been factored into the current context. What if, somehow, Irena Novikov was a continuing integral part of the Lvov bloodletting? In a desperate attempt to recuperate her brain child, Irena had staged her own faked defection in an ultimately failed attempt to prevent his uncovering the truth about Stepan Lvov. Now she was incarcerated somewhere in America—or perhaps a torture-permitting rendition country—undergoing the most extreme CIA interrogation to provide far more secrets about Russian intelligence.

Charlie doubted that someone as dedicated as Irena would break under American interrogation, no matter how brutal. But professionally it wasn’t a risk Russia could take: they’d do everything to get her back by following their unbreakable coda of demanding diplomatic access to negotiate her return.

It was far more likely, Charlie conceded, that his London address had been disclosed to Washington by the avenging disciples stable-cleaned along with the disgraced, CIA-pocketed former deputy director of MI5, Jeffrey Smale. And in turn offered to the FSB by the disgruntled CIA.

He was looking at a brick wall, Charlie acknowledged: hypotheses stacked upon hypotheses upon a quicksand of unknowns and uncertainties. He didn’t have enough about anything from which to make a half-intelligent guess, apart from the one unarguable fact of Natalia’s exposure. So why was he trying? Because he didn’t need the familiar foot twinge to warn him that distracted by his consuming, solely focused aim, he’d missed things that would have filled in a lot of his empty picture.

One of which surely had to be that Smith and Monsford’s lack of field experience didn’t by itself justify their comparatively easy agreement to his participation. The continuing foot pangs were sufficient to make him wince and with that discomfort came the further warning doubt. He’d already initiated the Moscow incursion with his hollow-voiced messages to the numbers from which Natalia had made her contact, which broke the inviolable rule that every mission, before commencement, be separately, independently vetted by experienced, field-savvy executives.

He’d had no reason for euphoria because he hadn’t won anything, Charlie accepted. He was caught up in something he didn’t properly understand without, at this precise moment, any hope of finding out.

About which he didn’t give a fuck, as long as it got him to Moscow.

*   *   *

Monsford had called ahead and Rebecca Street got to the Cheyne Walk flat before the MI6 Director flustered in, the demanded glasses and celebratory champagne set out in readiness.

“You won’t believe what happened!” Monsford greeted, exultantly.

“Then I won’t try to guess,” said the woman, who considered the man’s too-quickly-stirred excitability to be immature, like the haste of his lovemaking.

“On our way to the meeting, Smith actually
asked
me to set up Charlie’s assassination if there were a risk of his being seized by the Russians!”

“Did he actually use the word
assassination
?”

“Of course not!” said Monsford, irritated at the question. “It was the usual maypole dance of double-speak but it was protective assassination, pure and simple.”

“What about the internal inquiry that’s inevitable after Charlie’s killed? Smith will deny it was ever his suggestion.”

“Not when you corroborate what I’m telling you.”

By her not corroborating it, Monsford’s removal from the MI6 directorship would be automatic, leaving her his logical successor, calculated Rebecca. “Your last uncertainty has been resolved, hasn’t it?”

“Absolutely,” agreed Monsford. “What did you think of my establishing Camese as the code designation for what everyone believes to be Natalia’s extraction?”

Puerile, like most of your classical allusions, thought Rebecca. She said: “Very clever.”

“More than clever. Brilliant,” insisted Monsford. “Janus is going to be the code for Radtsic’s extraction. Everyone looking and thinking in the wrong direction!”

“Brilliant,” agreed Rebecca, dutifully. Asshole, she thought.

*   *   *

“Have you had Andrei’s letter?” asked Elana.

“It arrived today.”

“What’s the problem?”

“There isn’t one. I’d set up a contact system with the embassy that he was finding restrictive, so I’ve scaled it down. Which I was going to have to do anyway.”

“When are you going to tell him what’s happening?”

“When everything’s finalized by the British.”

“When’s that going to be?”

“Very soon.”

*   *   *

“You’re going to be briefed on a special, combined operation,” announced Monsford. “I’m appointing you supervisor of the MI6 contingent.”

“Thank you, sir,” accepted Stephen Briddle. He was an intense, quick-talking man nervous of his first personal encounter with the Director.

“You’ll learn all about the combined assignment at the general briefing. This conversation is strictly between the two of us and must remain that way, no one else. I’ve chosen you because of your special clearance, which might be called upon. I’m sure you won’t let me or the service down.”

“I won’t, sir,” assured Briddle, giving no indication of his immediate unease at the reference to special clearance.

“This meeting is precautionary. I might not need to issue the order so I won’t give you any further details but I will dispatch a weapon ahead of your arrival in Moscow in the diplomatic bag.”

“I understand.”

“Your sole understanding at this point is that this meeting, this conversation, is totally classified.”

“I do understand that.”

“You are going to have a long and assured career in this service.”

“Thank you, sir.”

11

Charlie Muffin disliked shared assignments that made him reliant upon others whose professional ability he didn’t know and therefore couldn’t trust, his unease increased by the inclusion of MI6 as well as by his belated recognition at how quickly his personal involvement had been agreed to. Charlie’s well-honed sensitivity to potential betrayal extended beyond the smell of a rat to being aware of them scuttling underfoot, which was the instinctive impression settling upon him.

His general discomfort began with his 8:00
A.M.
arrival not at his Thames House workplace, which he’d expected, but across the river at MI6’s tree- and shrub-festooned edifice, the smoked-glass car sweeping too fast through last-minute-opening steel doors into a basement garage from an unsuspected entrance a block and a half from the actual building. Charlie dismissed the security checks as far more perfunctory than they would have been at Thames House, unquestioningly following the two reimposed escorts who’d steadfastly refused conversation during the journey from Buckinghamshire. A matching electronic warning he guessed to have opened the garage doors had obviously alerted the two men waiting for him as the elevator doors opened.