Red Star Burning

12

“What!”

There was close to physical pain as well as disbelief in Gerald Monsford’s voice, and Straughan hoped the Director had been engaged in a difficult athletic performance with Rebecca to cause it. “Charlie slipped Jacobson in Amsterdam. Simply walked off the plane.”

“That’s not possible!”

“That’s what happened.”

“Why didn’t you patch Jacobson through to me from Moscow!”

“The Moscow embassy is secure but we don’t transfer calls to your home.” Straughan paused, savoring the exchange. “Your specific instructions.”

“Tell me exactly what happened,” demanded Monsford, the loudness lessening.

“Charlie was as unpredictable as ever,” began Straughan, stringing out the pleasure although acknowledging there was an endangering hole in his own protection. “Charlie specified a seat, and Jacobson managed to get just a couple of rows behind: from there he had the perfect physical identification. Charlie stowed his suit carrier, and appeared to settle for the flight to Moscow. He didn’t make a move until after the Amsterdam passengers got off and only then appeared to go to the toilet. Jacobson lost sight for just a few seconds, as new passengers got on. The toilet light stayed on. In the confusion of people getting on-and there’s a separating curtain between business and economy-Jacobson missed Charlie leaving the toilet and someone else going in.…”

“Jacobson stayed in his fucking seat: didn’t get out to walk up and down the aisle, exercising, like everyone does?”

So far, so good, judged Straughan, hopefully. “Charlie left his luggage in an overhead locker!”

“And you didn’t have a backstop established in Amsterdam airport precisely to ensure that something like this didn’t happen!”

“No,” admitted Straughan, the paper-thin defense ready.

“Why not?”

“You and Jacobson watched and heard me warn him against doing anything like this, trying to show how clever he is,” struggled the operations director. “That’s all he’s doing, trying to prove his streetwise independence. But he can’t. He’s got to get to Moscow, which means using the cover-name passport we’ve provided. And he’s got to contact the embassy, sooner or later, to get the phoney passports for Natalia and the child. He’s just getting his rocks off, like a schoolboy masturbating for the first time.”

“Why didn’t the cabin crew realize they were a passenger short?”

“I don’t know and can’t ask,” said Straughan. “Charlie gambled and won.”

After the briefest silence Monsford, his voice loud again, said: “You haven’t finished the story!”

“I don’t follow,” protested Straughan, glad his own voice didn’t waver.

“What did Jacobson do, when he realized he’d lost Charlie?”

“There was nothing he could do: the aircraft doors had closed,” tried Straughan, weakly.

“What about the suit carrier?”

Now the silence was Straughan’s, as he sought an escape. Not finding one, he said: “Raising an alarm would have compromised Jacobson’s connection with Charlie.”

“The suit carrier will have been found upon arrival at Moscow, which will alert the airline and the Russian authorities that the plane arrived short of a passenger,” set out Monsford, his voice rising even further. “The obvious backwards check will be at Amsterdam, who’ll cooperate with the Russians because they’ve no reason not to and with whom we can’t intercede. The flight will have had a named-passenger manifest and the boarding pass will have recorded a seat number, from which the Russians will learn the cover name we allocated the stupid motherfucker. Which, additionally, will be publicly disclosed in the inevitable publicity of a disappearing passenger from a Moscow-bound flight.…” Monsford paused, a torturer practicing his art. “You spotted anything I’ve missed out so far?”

“He’s attracting attention to himself, which is madness!” argued Straughan. “It makes no sense the way you’re analyzing it.”

“It makes each and every sense,” rejected Monsford. “The FSB are expecting him to come: he’s actually told them, for Christ’s sake, with the telephone calls!”

“Which he’s supposed to be, a distraction,” broke in Straughan.

“I hadn’t finished,” threatened Monsford. “By creating his own diversion he’s making it quite clear that he doesn’t trust anything we’ve put in place as backup. At the moment he’s not working against the Russians! He’s working against us!”

As we’re working against him, thought Straughan, amazed at the other man’s total hypocrisy. “He can’t get his wife and daughter out without us.”

“And we don’t have our diversion to get Radtsic and his wife out! Tell Jacobson to call me at noon our time tomorrow.”

“He’s got a meeting with Radtsic at noon tomorrow.”

“As soon as possible afterwards,” allowed Monsford. “I won’t have this fall apart.”

“Monsford says Charlie’s telling us our planning is crap,” said Aubrey Smith.

“He caught me by myself after yesterday’s meeting,” said Passmore. “Asked me to prepare Russian passports for Natalia and Sasha, with Russian exit visas as well as British entry documentation covering the next month. He wants them sent covertly to Wilkinson at the embassy, cutting out MI6. I briefed Wilkinson to expect the package.”

“Charlie doesn’t trust his own shadow.”

“He tries hard not even to cast one,” guessed Passmore.

“I’ve read your memo complaining at not being included in the early planning,” said Aubrey Smith.

“Why wasn’t I?”

“It’s a stuck-together operation. I opposed our ever going into Moscow, until I couldn’t prevent it becoming exclusively MI6, with Charlie seconded to them.”

“So you agreed to it being joint?”

Smith hesitated. “I couldn’t let it go to Monsford, could I?”

“I’ve never controlled Charlie on an operation,” said Passmore, an objective rather than a responsibility-avoiding remark. “What do you expect him to do?”

Smith shrugged. “God only knows. He’ll go, of course. But the cover name will be blown to the Russians from the flight information, even if it doesn’t become public through the media.”

“I’ve already checked the news wires, as well as the Amsterdam and Moscow newspapers,” said Passmore. “It’s not public so far.”

“It’s too early. There’ll be something by tonight.”

“So he’s got another passport,” accepted Passmore.

“Probably connected with the trip to Jersey,” agreed Smith. “The bit he didn’t tell us about.”

“He was taken straight to the Buckinghamshire lodge the morning he reappeared after Jersey?”

“Yes.” Smith frowned, questioningly.

“Was he searched?”

“As the first safe house in Chelsea was searched,” confirmed Smith, understanding the question. “He didn’t have a passport with him. Nor was there one in Buckinghamshire.…”

“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.”