Red Star Burning (43 page)

“Leave it!” snapped Monsford. “I’m handling Moscow personally. What the fuck’s happened with Straughan? How did Smith know?”

She had to get it out of the way, Rebecca knew. “Jane Ambersom’s name and number was on a call-in-emergency list at Straughan’s house.”

This time Monsford was rendered completely speechless, and there was a change when he did recover, quiet-voiced fear instead of irrational fury. “They were friends … sometimes ate together in the canteen. What’s he left with her: told her!”

“Nothing,” insisted Rebecca, hoping her precautions proved her right. “We were also on the list, obviously. According to the police, I was contacted within fifteen minutes of Ambersom. I called her, told her it was an overhang from her time here, and that I was taking over. Which I did. It’s all contained, under our control.”

“I don’t like it: didn’t like him.”

“Trust me. It’s all contained.”

“Tell me how,” demanded Monsford, his voice still hushed.

“There was no other family, apart from him and his mother,” set out Rebecca. “The Home Office has confirmed to the local chief constable my instructions for no public inquest. I personally supervised the total clearance of the Berkhamsted house: everything movable has already been brought here, to be reexamined. There’s a second, deep-search team taking the house apart: after they’ve done that they’ll excavate the garden. We’re separately going through all the local banks to locate what deposits he had.” She gestured toward the studiously ignored folder. “That contains what’s immediately relevant: his suicide note, all the medication he used to kill his mother and himself—samples have been taken of all of them to confirm our autopsy that’s being conducted now that what killed him came from those sources and every piece of documentation of his and his mother’s existence—”

“What’s the suicide note say?” Monsford interrupted.

“It’s there for you to read yourself,” persisted the woman. “Nothing that’s a problem. He considers his work has been undermined by the strain of constantly caring for his mother, he’s made mistakes, none of which he lists.”

“The bastard wanted to bring me down,” insisted Monsford.

So do I, thought Rebecca.

31

It usually came at the live-or-die part of an assignment, without warning and irrespective of place or time. Charlie Muffin didn’t think of it as fear, although that’s what it was: instead, as he always did, he considered it the essential senses-sharpening adrenaline boost to react faster and think quicker. And win. But this time the fear was different: more hair-triggered, the keep-ahead intensity stronger.

Charlie knew why. Winning, emerging the victor, had never been enough by itself. To win totally meant surviving, which he’d always done, disregarding the cost to friend or foe alike. But not this time. This time he had far more—everything—to win by getting Natalia and Sasha safely out of Russia but far more still—everything—to lose if he failed. Which made the predictable adrenaline-spurred fear the wrong sort, the dangerously overcompensating, overreactive sort of fear that risked skewing his subjectivity to cause the forbidden, inconceivable failure. The possibility of which, from the moment of his Amsterdam sidestep, had been compounded almost daily by inconsistencies and uncertainties. Which, subjectively again, was par for the course of professional espionage but from which he’d hoped to be spared in this particular instance.

It was twelve ten, later than he’d intended, when Charlie literally pushed his way into the tourist-packed Arbat, sure he was alone but after the Metro debacle of the day before with no confidence in Patrick Wilkinson’s ability to detect surveillance. Charlie let himself be carried, unresisting, along the stall-cluttered thoroughfare, seeking the remembered centrally placed, brick-built emporium, disappointed from the outside at the limited escape options if Wilkinson once more guided MI6 pursuit to him. After two further top-to-bottom street reconnoiters Charlie failed to locate a better alternative.

Charlie correctly guessed Wilkinson would arrive at the Arbat Metro, despite the man’s vow never again to use the underground system. Wilkinson emerged, manila package tightly clutched beneath his right arm, precisely ten minutes ahead of their appointed time. Charlie remained in the station-bordering café, his
Pravda
spread before him but concentrating upon recognizable faces, needing a second vodka to justify his staying where he was during the forty-five minutes it took Wilkinson to get through the tourist crush in both directions. He let Wilkinson get twenty meters ahead on the man’s third promenade before following. He caught up at the emporium and said: “To your left, with the green-painted shutters,” sure the man would visibly jump, which he did.

Wilkinson moved without turning. Charlie went with him, but didn’t enter, lingering at the outside displays to satisfy himself the man was alone. Wilkinson was in the back of the incense-perfumed arcade, examining icon reproductions, when Charlie finally entered. It took a full meandering five minutes for Charlie to reach him.

Charlie reached out for Wilkinson’s package, slipping it between the pages of his newspaper before turning to keep the main door in view. “What did London say?”

“You’ve got new backup,” announced Wilkinson, copying Charlie’s icon interest. “No connection to the embassy, no connection with us. Your contact is an Ian Flood. He’s at your favorite hotel: you’re supposed to understand that. We’re to decoy the others.”

“Try to get it right this time,” said Charlie, unforgiving.

“I’m glad to be out of it,” blurted Wilkinson. “All three of us are.”

“So am I,” said Charlie. “Did you also tell London MI6 did more than just
try
to get to me: that Briddle was with you and through you was with me right up to Dmitrouskaya? From where he obviously watched us in the park and afterwards rode the train with you: the train upon which he imagined I’d be, a sitting target.”

“How do you know that?” said Wilkinson, disbelievingly.

“Because watching you leave I saw him in the carriage behind you.”

“I … I mean I should…” stumbled the man.

“Don’t bother,” stopped Charlie. “Is there anything more to tell me?”

“MI6 have been officially taken off, their guys withdrawn.”

“Have they gone?”

“We only got the cable this morning, just before all three of us left the embassy to give us—me—time to lose surveillance. But I told him last night I knew about London’s order: that they were out of it.”

“What did he say?”

“To go fuck myself: that he took his orders from London. That’s why the three of us are staying as decoys.”

Another uncertainty in the lucky dip tub, thought Charlie.

*   *   *

In an afterthought Gerald Monsford stopped to buy roses for Elana. The fumble-fingered florist took almost half an hour to gift wrap them, complete with red ribbon to match the flowers, and he was practically an hour late getting to the Hertfordshire safe house. Radtsic was alone in the conservatory.

“I’m late because I stopped to get these for Elana,” said Monsford, offering the bouquet as if for approval. “Where is she?” He already knew from his arrival meeting with Harry Jacobson.

“Resting,” said the Russian, ignoring the flowers. He was in the chair Elana had chosen the day before, preventing Monsford’s sitting close to him.

“Perhaps she’ll join us later for me to give them to her?”

“She doesn’t want to see you: be part of anything.”

“I’m sorry about that,” said Monsford, putting the flowers on a side table.

“You already knew,” accused Radtsic, looking up to the ceiling joist Elana had identified.

Monsford instinctively followed the look and wished he hadn’t, uncomfortable that it would have been filmed. “It’ll get better.”

“Not without Andrei,” refused the man.

“You’ve got to be realistic, Maxim Mikhailovitch,” cautioned Monsford. “We’re trying, you know we’re trying, but it’s going to take a lot of time.”

“Then it’ll have to take a lot of time,” said Radtsic, flatly. “Our deal was that we’d all be together, a complete family. There’s no deal if we’re not a complete family.”

Not anticipating its weight, Monsford had to struggle to get another chair opposite the Russian and knew the film would show his overweight awkwardness. “What happened in France wasn’t our fault. We don’t yet know how or why it happened. We’ll find a way to get Andrei back. But our deal can’t be put on hold indefinitely.”

“I can’t accept anything without Andrei being here. Neither can Elana.”

“Andrei
will
be here! But during the time it’ll take we’ve got to start work. There are people you’re going to meet: people you’ll regard as friends as you work together.”

“I know what debriefing is,” snapped Radtsic, in a small spark of his old arrogance. “Just as I know what you want and which you’ll get. But that’s got to be met with what I want. And that’s not empty words and talk of indeterminate time. It’s got to be a balanced exchange: what I have to tell you equated against getting Andrei back.”

“That’s not a balanced exchange,” protested Monsford, tensed against his anger at the other man’s belief that he had a bargaining position. “It’s tilted entirely in your favor.”

“Which creates the incentive to get Andrei here.”

The bastard was playing with him, cat to mouse, realized Monsford, hating his own analogy and hating even more that others would witness Radtsic’s derision. “I won’t be coming down every day. Tomorrow I’ll introduce you to the people you’ll be dealing with all the time. And to a liaison officer, a woman, to ensure Elana’s got all she wants.”

“The only thing Elana wants is Andrei, like me,” repeated Radtsic. “I hope that tomorrow you’ll have something to tell us about that.”

*   *   *

“The confounded man’s refusing to cooperate,” complained Bland.

“It’s early days, as Monsford said,” reminded Palmer. “It’ll settle down when Radtsic realizes he hasn’t any real option.”

“Why did Monsford tell him we can get the boy back?” Bland demanded. “We don’t stand a chance of doing that.”

“It would have made Radtsic even more difficult if he hadn’t,” said Palmer.

“Every day I tell myself it can’t get any worse and every day it does get worse,” bemoaned the other man. “I’m fearing the time when we’re no longer able to shift all the responsibility on these two bloody directors and start getting it apportioned onto us.”

“I don’t want that to happen,” said Palmer, unsettled.

“I’m not going to
allow
it to happen,” determined the cabinet secretary. “Mine isn’t going to be the head that rolls.”

“Nor mine,” said Palmer, even more determinedly.

*   *   *

It took Charlie a long time to move between individual booking outlets to make, one from each, paid and confirmed reservations on separately available flights on his intended, hedge-hopping escape route the following day. And then to duplicate the entire process from different booking facilities to ensure there were two situation-dictated alternatives for himself, Natalia, and Sasha. In addition, improvising upon their changed roles as decoys against both his M16 pursuers and the FSB, who by now would have identified their presence from embassy surveillance, Charlie confirmed booking on LOT Polish Airlines to Warsaw, with a direct transfer connection to London from Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport—from which none of his other escape flights was departing—for Patrick Wilkinson, Neil Preston, and Peter Warren. Throughout the second ticket buying Charlie also booked tickets for his new protection squad, for only one of whom he had a name. At the end he had only three thousand pounds left from the twenty-five thousand earlier provided by Wilkinson in the Arbat.

The delay made Charlie much later getting to Moscow’s permanent state circus for his premeeting security check, restricted anyway by the Saturday-afternoon throng of arriving and departing audiences. Natalia responded at once to his precisely timed call, as she had to be told their rendezvous, and said she was twenty minutes away. Charlie bought admission tickets before becoming a crowd person among the outside refreshment and souvenir kiosks. The area was slightly higher than the main approach and from its elevation Charlie picked out Natalia when she was still some way away. She showed no recognition at seeing him, halting at a souvenir seller five booths away. As he reached her, she said: “It’s definitely tomorrow?”

“We need to go through it,” confirmed Charlie, disappointed at her nervousness. “I’ve got tickets for the circus. We’ll be less obvious inside.”

“No,” she refused. “Let’s walk: maybe find somewhere to sit.”

Charlie took her firmly by the arm, leading her back against the incoming crowd. “You have to get what I’m going to tell you totally clear in your mind. Your actual extraction depends on your getting this right.”

“I’m frightened I’ll make a silly mistake and—”

“You won’t make stupid mistakes,” stopped Charlie, as they reached the main road. “If you do what I tell you, you
can’t
make a mistake. All you’ve got to do is take Sasha to the airport, go through the normal formalities, make one change en route, and you’ll be safely in England by this time tomorrow.”

“You’re saying me, me and Sasha. Where are you going to be?”

“With you, all the way. With others to protect you both.”

“There’s a bench.” She pointed. “I want to sit, to concentrate.”

Charlie was concerned at the indecision he’d never seen in Natalia when they’d lived together at greater risk of discovery. “These are new Russian passports. They’ve got all the necessary exit and entry visas and documentation. Everything is valid. You and Sasha are booked on Finnair flight 362, leaving at noon from Vnukovo Airport to Helsinki. There’s a transfer connection within two hours on Finnair flight 028 to London. I won’t acknowledge you: keep as far away as possible. Sasha won’t remember me. There’ll be three other people on the plane you won’t know: I’ll only know one. We’ll be taken off before other passengers at Heathrow.”