Red Star Burning (18 page)

Jacobson reluctantly acknowledged that his alternative, walking away and lying that Radtsic hadn’t turned up, wasn’t feasible. The chances of the FSB executive director approaching another Western intelligence agency, the CIA the most likely, were too great and if the man did and there was eventual publicity, his career in MI6—already hanging by a thread, according to Monsford’s most recent diatribe—would be over. But he didn’t need to lie, he realized, finally identifying the Stalin look-alike barging his way through the shifting melee below.

Jacobson observed the postsailing-surveillance precautions, minimally encouraged at isolating no one showing undue interest in either of them, eventually following the Russian into a windowed observation lounge that provided a panoramic view of the red-walled, star-towered Kremlin as the ferry made its slow way parallel along the river. The view kept everyone on the fortress side, leaving the farthest section of the observation room free for Jacobson and Radtsic.

“You had time to settle everything with Elana?” opened Jacobson, choosing a gradual lead-up in the hope of limiting Radtsic’s reaction to Andrei’s romance.

“I think so,” said the older man, although uncertainly.

“Has she really changed her mind back again: agreed to come?”

“Yes.” The uncertainty was still there.

Contrary to which the nervousness wasn’t as visible today, Jacobson saw, as they were constantly intent upon their surroundings: even the chain-smoking seemed less. “What about you? You happier with everything than you were?”

“I still don’t understand the delay,” protested the Russian. “Why can’t we go right now? Tomorrow? Why can’t we make it tomorrow?”

“Tell me about Andrei,” avoided Jacobson, taking the obvious opening.

“Why are you bringing him into the conversation?” The Russian frowned.

“How do you think he’ll react at suddenly learning what’s happening?”

“I want to talk to you about that: make sure there’s a proper, safe proposal.”

“That’s the sort of care I’m trying to convince you we’re taking.”

“Maybe I overreacted earlier.”

They were drifting away from what needed to be talked about, Jacobson recognized. “You didn’t tell me how you thought Andrei might react.”

“It’ll be all right, when he settles down. Understands.”

The Kremlin was disappearing as the boat took the first bend in the river and people began spreading themselves more evenly around the enclosed lounge, lessening their isolation. “It’s the very beginning, the moment it happens, that I want to discuss.”

“What’s the problem?” demanded Radtsic at once, stopping with an unlit cigarette suspended before him.

“We’re making plans to get Andrei out but we’ve discovered he’s in a relationship.”

“What are you talking about? What relationship?” The cigarette remained unlighted.

“A girl, a fellow student. French.”

Radtsic finally fired the cigarette, smiling slightly. “He’s a full-blooded Russian.”

“You knew then?”

“No. What’s there to know?”

“She doesn’t appear to be a casual girlfriend. They’re living together.”

“What!”

The Russian’s surprise was genuine, gauged Jacobson. “Everything’s got to be very quick, once the extraction starts: no unexpected complications. What’s most important is avoiding any interference from the French authorities.”

“I told you Andrei needed to be warned,” reminded Radtsic.

“How often are you in contact: exchange letters or talk on the phone?”

“I’m sure all my telephones are monitored: that my mail is being intercepted. I’ve told you that. I also told you Andrei wouldn’t accept messages through an intermediary.”

“I’ve brought a pocket tape recorder,” said Jacobson. “He knows your voice. Make a recording, telling him to trust the person who brings it to him: that he must do what that person tells him.”

Radtsic shook his head, his inhalations now coming with chain-smoking regularity. “You’re not listening to me! He’ll think it’s a trick. Or something made under duress.”

“How, then, Maxim?” asked Jacobson, desperately. “Tell me how!”

“Elana,” announced the Russian. “She’ll have to be got out first, ahead of me, through Paris. You’ll have to coordinate their extraction, together with mine here.”

“Will she be allowed to travel?”

“I have the authority to approve it.”

“You’ve told me you’re being watched: that your telephone’s tapped and your mail opened,” argued Jacobson. “Your approving Elana’s travel would trigger every alarm.”

“It’s me they’re monitoring, not Elana. There’d be a period, a few days, before the connection was made.”

Jacobson suspected that Radtsic was trying to force the pace and didn’t blame the man: it actually improved the Russian’s control of events, and if Elana was already out of the country it greatly reduced the chances of her suddenly changing her mind. Once in France, she’d be committed, with no way back. And so would Radtsic. “I’ll put it to London: see if they’ll accept it as an alternative to what they’re putting in place now.”

“I can put everything in motion within two days,” promised the Russian, eagerly.

“Don’t!” ordered Jacobson, just as urgently. “You’ve got to wait for London’s approval. Prepare whatever preliminaries are necessary. But don’t positively initiate anything, not until we meet again. And, Maxim…”

“What?”

“Not here. Never again here, at the terminal.”

“Where, instead?”

Insurance time, Jacobson thought at once. “You’ve got my private number. Call tomorrow, at noon, from a public phone. I’ll give you the location then.”

“Will you have spoken to London by noon tomorrow?”

“About a lot of things,” confirmed Jacobson.

*   *   *

Jane Ambersom was an intelligent woman who acknowledged her instinctive aggression to be a failing, just as she recognized its underlying psychological cause to be an ingrained resentment at her androgenic confusion. And she was further annoyed at her inability sufficiently to curb it. Her sexuality, in fact, was entirely and eagerly female, which added frustration to the resentment. She’d endured relationships at university that never went beyond a one-night stand and been hopeful of an affair when she’d first joined MI6, until, too demandingly again, she’d maneuvered her lover into a choice, which he’d made by returning to his wife. As she’d ascended the intelligence-service ladder and come under increased internal-security scrutiny, she’d subjugated sexuality for professional advancement, which she’d quite correctly doubted would have resulted from her submitting to Gerald Monsford’s clumsy, experimental pawing in his conveniently constructed bedroom suite adjoining his office.

Since her transfer to MI5 and her foreign-liaison appointment, she had become extremely hopeful of Barry Elliott, even seeing in her rarely allowed fantasies a somewhat strained parallel with Charlie Muffin and Natalia Fedova. So far their encounters, although social, had remained strictly although not quite formally professional. He’d volunteered that he was neither married nor in a relationship and twice instead of restaurant encounters had suggested art-gallery meetings—the National and Tate Modern—where she’d discovered he enjoyed the same artists. It was upon his recommendation that in less than two weeks and three novels she’d become a committed Elmore Leonard fan.

Lunch that day was at Joe Allen’s, which she’d initially feared she’d have to cancel because of Charlie Muffin’s disappearance, until the Director-General told her there was no practical reason to remain at Thames House.

Elliott, as usual, was considerately there ahead of her, and stood to help her into her chair, with her preferred Rioja already uncorked. He didn’t immediately embark upon a shared-interest discussion, which was something else that Jane preferred, but talked of a planned weekend Shakespeare festival in Stratford, having enjoyed his first visit to the rebuilt Globe Theatre in London. It wasn’t until they were well into their main course that Elliott came to the official reason for the encounter and afterward Jane was quite sure she’d not overreacted to his unexpected return to their earlier discussion.

“Those transcript excerpts of Irena Novikov’s debriefing have given us more problems than answers.”

“I don’t understand,” hedged Jane.

“There’s a lot of disparities between what she appears to have told you and what she’s telling us. We think she’s stalling. She’s appearing to cooperate, which is the deal for her remaining in our protection program, but Langley suspects she’s giving us the run-around. And there’s a lot of access pressure from the Russian embassy in Washington.”

“I’ve given you all I was allowed.”

“We want fuller versions, to check in more detail against what she told your guy, Charlie Muffin. He spent a lot of time with her in Moscow, didn’t he?”

“I don’t think it was a
lot
of time,” qualified Jane. “My understanding was that she persistently lied to him, trying to save the Russian operation, right up to the moment he caught her out.”

“There’s nothing of how he caught her out in what you’ve given me.”

“I’ll raise it,” promised Jane, an idea growing in her mind.

“We’d appreciate that. Maybe I could get an idea from Langley about what she’s telling them to offer in return.”

“I like Stratford,” risked Jane, in a complete change of direction. “Know it quite well.”

Elliott looked at her across the table, half smiling. “Why don’t you show me around there?”

“Why don’t I?” Jane smiled back.

“You won’t forget the comparison debriefings, will you?”

“Of course I won’t.”

15

Despite the board-hard Rossiya bed Charlie managed a further two hours’ sleep, deciding initially to continue with the tourist-group concealment, gambling that this soon there wouldn’t be an FSB connection between an inadvertent airport CCTV picture and the Malcolm Stoat name in the hotel register and the Amsterdam flight passenger list.

The broken day began with a breakfast-room getting-to-know-you gathering and a short and vaguely embarrassing promise of an experience of a lifetime from Muriel Simpson, complete with the distribution of the group’s intended itinerary and an overflow of brochures, maps, and information sheets, all of which Charlie collected for later use.

Charlie’s discomfort came within minutes of taking his designated place on the coach with the seat-lifting arrival beside him of the towering man behind whom he’d hopefully hidden for the earlier airport arrival.

“Wilfred Todd,” introduced the man, in an echoing voice matching his size and a knuckle-crunching handshake. “Looking forward to our getting together, your being an architect and all.”

“That your line of business?” probed Charlie, his stomach dipping at the possibility of his ignorance being exposed.

“My lad, John. Qualifies next June. He’ll be looking for a better position then. Could be there’s some openings with your firm.”

Becoming the focus of an overly ambitious father was an encumbrance he didn’t need but about which he could do little except, perhaps, store whatever transpired for later, as yet unknown, use. Strictly adhering to the story he’d invented for Muriel, Charlie toned down his fiction of billionaire Russian oligarchs while stressing that his was a particularly refined architectural expertise unsuited to a newly qualified entrant.

An English-speaking Russian guide took over from Muriel for the exploration of St. Basil’s Cathedral in Red Square and Charlie retreated to the back of the Russian’s brusquely assembled group where Muriel put herself.

“I thought what we spoke about, my slipping away, was between the two of us.”

“It was. And is,” replied the woman. “All I said was that you had a particular architectural interest that wouldn’t interest the rest of them, to account in advance to the rest of the group for your slopping off. And I did that to protect myself, my job, and the company for which I want to go on working, okay!”

“Okay. And I’m sorry if I sounded tetchy.”

“Sorry is something I hope not to be by your being on the tour,” said the girl.

“I’m going now,” warned Charlie, refusing a response. “I’ll catch up later.”

Charlie used the camouflage of other milling tourists to get off Red Square, despite the impracticality of CCTV over such a vast area, his mind sifting the unresolved uncertainties, Natalia’s approach being the biggest of them all. And, startlingly, came up with the answer. Of course he knew why Natalia had made the calls to his flat in the manner and way she had: the way she’d expected him to comprehend. It gave him his all-important, just-short-of-perfect start. He hoped it would all continue that way.

*   *   *

Recognizing that the slightest changing breeze was psychologically important in the survival battle in which he believed himself embroiled, Aubrey Smith gained the first advantage not just by insisting the MI6 contingent cross the river to Thames House but by doing so reversed Gerald Monsford’s de facto takeover. To reinforce that reversal, Smith staged the conference in a corner room of MI5’s headquarters, with the fullest view of the MI6 building opposite, and warned in advance that John Passmore and Jane Ambersom would attend, knowing Monsford would match them with Rebecca Street and James Straughan. They arrived fifteen minutes early, reflecting their subordination, from which Monsford at once attempted to recover.

“Charles Muffin has very positively shown his allegiance to the Russians by what he’s done. I want confirmation that this meeting is being fully recorded, for production in any future official inquiry into the cooperation between our two services.”

“Of course a record is being kept,” assured the MI5 Director-General, pricking the bombast. “I’ll be interested to hear your proof that Muffin’s allegiance
is
to Russia.”

“What other interpretation is possible?” demanded the MI6 counterpart.

There were shifts of uncertainty from Rebecca Street and the MI6 operations director.

“How about something as mundane as his not trusting that he’d arrive safely in Moscow?” suggested Smith, satisfied how well Monsford’s attitude suited his intentions.