Red Star Burning (16 page)

“And direct from Buckinghamshire he was brought here to London for the briefings and after that immediately taken to the Moscow flight.…”

“Yes,” said Smith.

“What about luggage?”

“His suit carrier left on the plane. We brought everything up to the lodge from Chelsea.”

“He’s got to get back here, to England,” predicted the former SAS man. “And to do that he’ll have to use the cover passport, until he can make the switch to whatever else he’s got. I want to issue a passport watch on the cover name.”

“Extend it to Jersey,” ordered Smith. “That’s where he could have it.”

“What do we do when we pick him up?”

“I’ll decide that when we get him.”

“And if we don’t?”

“Then we can’t do anything other than follow
his
lead.”

“And the Russian passport he asked for?”

Smith hesitated. “Prepare it as Charlie wants. I don’t trust Monsford either.”

*   *   *

All Harry Jacobson’s fragile reassurances had gone, compounded by the breach of tradecraft that he hadn’t properly taken into account until now, when he was actually making his way to the failsafe rendezvous with Maxim Radtsic. It was an inviolable rule in defector extractions that no target meetings should ever be at the same place twice and they’d already met once before at the river-cruise terminal: Jacobson had agreed to its emergency use only because, unprofessionally, he’d never expected it to be necessary. Jacobson’s most obvious fear was that he was walking blindly into an FSB entrapment, almost equaled by the apprehension that Radtsic had lost his already overstretched nerve and wouldn’t turn up a second time. Which, added to his infantile airplane loss of Charlie Muffin, would inevitably mean his dismissal from the service.

Jacobson arrived almost an hour early at the Klenovy Boulevard terminal, scouring every approach as he had at the previous failed meeting place for the slightest indication of an ambush. Having failed to find one, he positioned himself at the highest possible vantage point above the pier, his concentration upon the throng of embarking and disembarking passengers, seeking close-together groups or gatherings of people who did not fit the tourist profile. And failed again to locate anything that triggered his suspicion.

Jacobson rigidly followed Radtsic’s trail-clearing insistence of boarding fifteen minutes ahead of the Russian, stationing himself at the rail overlooking the gangway to ensure Radtsic wasn’t followed. So tensed was Jacobson that the skin of his arms tingled at the slight pressure of his leaning against the rail and he was overly aware of people close to him, twitching away from the briefest contact.

Ten minutes until departure, Jacobson saw. Where the hell was Radtsic! He should have been here by now, visible on the pier to ensure there was no surveillance. So why wasn’t he? Because he wasn’t going to show, Jacobson answered himself. He’d panicked or been found out or lost his nerve, all or any of which could mean his arrest or an attack and then God knows …

There he was, snatched Jacobson, at the first sighting. And making no effort to merge into his tourist surroundings. The barrel-chested, swarthy Maxim Radtsic was wearing a collar and tie with his three-piece business suit, shouldering his way through the last-minute boarders, and Jacobson’s relief was tempered by the thought of the other, still unresolved danger. Jacobson continued to observe the Russian’s precautions, delaying an approach for fifteen minutes after departure for the Russian to complete the same check on him as he moved around the boat and even then not until Radtsic gave the signal that he was satisfied they were both clear.

Today’s sign was again to discard an empty cigarette packet into the Moskva river, a gesture fitting the chain-smoking habit that had developed since the Russian’s first approach.

“What the hell happened?” greeted Jacobson, as he got alongside the other man.

“There was a personal problem,” said Radstic, not looking sideways. The hand holding the cigarette was shaking, creating an almost constant avalanche of ash.

“What problem?”

“Elana.”

“What about her?”

“She’s losing her nerve: doesn’t want to come.”

“Are you coming without her?”

Radtsic gave Jacobson a frowned, sideways look. “Of course not.”

“What then?”

“I’ve persuaded her. But it’s got to be soon now.”

“We’re setting up a diversion: want you to be involved at the very end. You can be the person who makes sure it works by concentrating attention away from you and Elana.”

“How?”

“We’re sending someone in, as a decoy for your people to follow,” lured Jacobson. Radtsic surely had to know about the attempted FSB entrapment of Charlie Muffin, even if the man was elevated way above operational activity.

“How?” repeated the other man.

“It’ll involve your service, when it happens,” Jacobson hedged further.

“What’s my involvement?”

“You have operational oversight, don’t you?”

“Not in a planning stage. There are progress submission and reviews.”

“There hasn’t been anything about a potential English situation?”

Radtsic properly looked at Jacobson for the first time. “Are you trying to trick me?”

“No!” denied Jacobson, meeting the look. “I’ve told you it’s all going to work just as you want.”

“It doesn’t sound right!”

“I’m not tricking you, Maxim Mikhailovich. I’m
guaranteeing
everything and more than you’ve asked for.” Why was it all going wrong, despaired Jacobson: in less than twenty-four hours he’d been made to look an amateur by a down-at-heel dinosaur and now he was a hairsbreadth from losing the biggest catch in MI6 history!

“I need to think!”

“You need to trust me: trust that I’m telling you the truth.”

“I need to think,” the Russian repeated, doggedly.

“Let’s meet tomorrow,” urged Jacobson, anxiously. “Check your ongoing operational planning involving the British.” With so much going wrong—being misunderstood—he daren’t risk actually mentioning Charlie Muffin and Natalia Fedova until he talked to London and learned whether they’d found the bastard.

“Here, again at noon.”

“Maxim, it should be somewhere else.”

“Here,” insisted the older man.

“Here,” capitulated Jacobson.

*   *   *

“It could be a one-night stand,” said Jonathan Miller, staring down at the photographs Albert Abrahams had laid out before him.

“I established the surveillance the day we got the assignment. If you look more closely, she’s wearing three different outfits, leaving and entering the apartment over three different days. I ran a check at the Sorbonne. She’s registered at the same address with the same telephone number as Andrei. They’re on the same course.”

“Perhaps this will put a finger up Straughan’s ass: get him to answer all our other questions to all our other uncertainties.”

“This is the one that could really fuck everything up.”

“I’d never have worked that out if you hadn’t told me.”

13

There seemed to be no part of Charlie Muffin’s body that didn’t ache. His feet, of course, caused the worst agony. By the time he got back to London he was hobbling so badly that an airport driver returning from taking a disabled passenger to a flight offered Charlie a lift on his empty cart, which Charlie gratefully accepted, deciding that the privilege attracted far less attention than the way he was walking. Despite all of which, Charlie was happy. So far—a long way in opportunity, if not necessarily in miles—reversing the terms of engagement to his personal control was working.

He’d been lucky, Charlie accepted: bloody lucky. But there again, he’d made most of that luck himself. The biggest gamble had been the moment he’d fled the plane. He’d built in most of the contingency protection he could anticipate, pausing in the Amsterdam arrival hall to take the battery from the Russian phone to prevent his being traced by any tracker device installed in London but still leaving open his expectation of unknown escorts on the plane. That there hadn’t been added to his suspicion of a separate agenda of which he was unaware, further supported by there having been no passport questioning upon his reentry into Heathrow triggered by watchers having alerted the aircraft crew of his disappearance. Charlie estimated that had given him at least two, maybe as much as four, hours’ runaway time. He’d used some of it buying toiletries and a hold-all in which to carry them before purchasing a closing gate ticket on the last-of-the-day Dutch airline flight back to London, which he’d established to be half empty while selecting his escape seat at Heathrow three hours earlier. The hold-all provided just enough luggage for him to be accepted without question at a fifty-pound-a-night, thin-walled room in a Waterloo station hotel.

He’d still ached, although not as badly, when he woke. He no longer shuffled, just walked slowly, to get to a conveniently close internet café by nine fifteen. It took less than another thirty minutes of concentrated Google surfing to assemble a selection of holiday companies offering short Russian tours and even less to find one in Manchester eager enough to retain its newly acquired franchise—and full payment in cash, to which he agreed—to allocate him one of their three remaining vacancies on an eight-day block-visa trip to the Russian capital.

By eleven Charlie had emptied the Harrods safe deposit box of his David Merryweather passport and international driving license and used the accompanying American Express card in the same name to buy a suit, trousers, shirts, and underwear, as well as a suitcase additional to the hold-all to carry it all. From experience, he held back from risking new shoes, to which his awkward feet would have needed to adapt.

Charlie’s train arrived precisely on time in Manchester, enabling him to be one of the first of the tour group independently to reach the airport. Muriel, the Russian-speaking tour guide, said she was sorry the cost dictated that it had to be a basic economy night flight. “I took a chance, accepting you as I did, but we need to maintain our booking numbers.”

“What chance was that?” queried Charlie, apprehensively.

“Adding you to the block visa. We’re supposed to supply the names a week before: the embassy requires master copies.”

The apprehension lifted like mist in the sun, which Charlie, prepared to sacrifice his Merryweather identity, decided to be shining down upon him. “Here it is.”

“Malcolm Stoat?” the girl queried. “That wasn’t the name I thought you gave me on the telephone?”

“It was a very bad line. I had difficulty hearing a lot of what you said to me.”

“And you’ve already got a visa?” she said, opening the passport.

“I didn’t know anything about block visas,” lied Charlie. “I thought I had to arrange my own. It does mean you’re not taking any chances, doesn’t it?”

“I suppose I should add your name to my list?”

“Perhaps you should.”

“And I’m really sorry it’s a night flight.”

“I’ll try to sleep,” said Charlie. Which he did, dreamlessly.

By comparison, Gerald Monsford’s day had been a continuous waking nightmare.

*   *   *

“Your future’s hanging by a thread,” threatened the MI6 Director, the moment his demanded connection was made to Moscow. “Because of you, the entire operation’s in jeopardy. You realized that!”

If only you knew how jeopardized it really had been, thought Jacobson. “With respect, sir, you were present throughout my entire London briefing. At which it was specified that the sole purpose of my recall was thoroughly to study and memorize Charlie Muffin’s appearance, nothing more. It was also specified at that briefing that every conceivable aspect of the operation was being supervised and handled by others, from whom I was separated and with whom I under no circumstance would or should have any knowledge or contact, because of the particular function I have to perform to create the diversion at the moment of Radtsic’s extraction. From which I understood there were to be others of whom I had no knowledge carrying out in-flight surveillance and that there would be protective surveillance in place at the known stopover at Schipol.”

The meticulously prepared defense momentarily silenced Monsford, increasing the man’s fury but in turn fogging his reasoning. “You could have alerted the crew!”

Jacobson hoped he timed his answering silence to the millisecond. “I was traveling as an ordinary economy-class passenger. Why—or how—should I have been monitoring another supposedly ordinary economy-class passenger who might only have been booked to Amsterdam closely enough to spot his disappearance? Had I raised an alarm the departure would have been stopped, because security would have insisted the aircraft be searched and all hold baggage unloaded. And I, as the person who raised the alert, would have been publicly identified and even, worse, put before a televised news conference. If my diplomatic cover withstood investigation, the exposure would have been prevented by continuing with the diversion mission.”

Monsford knew his continuing frustration was suffusing his face and was glad he’d taken the call entirely alone, with neither Rebecca nor Straughan as witnesses. With determination, Monsford accepted defeat. “Tell me about Radtsic.”

“He’s falling apart,” said Jacobson, enjoying the screw-turning. “Elana changed her mind about defecting. He claims he’s persuaded her to change it back again but I’m worried.”

“What are you suggesting?” asked Monsford, anxiously.

Monsford couldn’t handle the pressure! Jacobson suddenly realized. “I’m not
suggesting
anything. I’m simply keeping you informed of a dangerously uncertain situation.”

“You must have formed some ideas?”

“I’m not sure if we’re not trying to achieve too much, guaranteeing the extraction of Radtsic and his family by making a distraction out of that of Charlie Muffin and his family.…” Again Jacobson tried perfectly to time the pause. “Particularly as we appear to have lost Charlie Muffin.”