Red Star Burning

24

As it was, Charlie didn’t have to wait that long at all.

He checked out of the Mira hotel, moving south to the student transient anonymity of the Moscow university district with the Komsomolskaya Metro and its pursuit-evading convenience of two major subway routes. The Galaxy Hotel was a considerable improvement upon the Mira, due chiefly to the bedroom television with a CNN channel upon which, within half an hour, he saw the breaking-news flash of the French autoroute arrests and Orly plane impoundment. Charlie sat unmoving through two repeats, the last update of which confirmed that the alleged kidnap victims were Russian and that documentation upon the two detained Britons indicated diplomatic connections.

Charlie’s immediate speculation was the extent to which he could stretch what little there was to gain more from David Halliday. Not much, was the objective conclusion: scarcely anything at all, under the closest examination. His best, maybe only, hope was to lure Halliday into conjuring more ghosts from his fear-clouded mind. Charlie was encouraged by the audible uncertainty in Halliday’s voice as the man grabbed up the rezidentura phone. To increase it, Charlie said: “Not such a clean job after all, was it, David?”

“I’m not responsible for any of it! How could I be!” gabbled Halliday.

The satisfaction moved through Charlie. “You tell me.”

“I didn’t have anything to do with the French end,” Halliday continued to protest.

“That’s how it is when things fuck up. Don’t forget scapegoats and fall guys.”

“Not this time,” insisted the other man, in weak defiance. “They try to stitch me into this, I’m going to demand an internal inquiry to prove I can’t be held responsible.”

So far, so good, judged Charlie: not just good, 100 percent better than he’d expected. But it would take only one misplaced word. “How can they stitch you into it, if you didn’t know about France?”

“That’s the question I asked Straughan.”

“What was his answer it?”

“He couldn’t answer it, not properly. Said he wasn’t accusing me of anything: that he just wanted to know how much Jacobson told me about Radtsic.”

Who the fuck was Radtsic? Wrong question, Charlie instantly corrected himself. It was obvious who Radtsic was. And even more obvious, from Natalia’s telephone reaction, was the man’s occupation if not his actual rank within it until the departure of British Airways 9:30 flight that morning to London. And Halliday had lied, insisting he didn’t know the defector’s identity. What more was there to squeeze out of the man? “How much did Jacobson tell you about Radtsic?”

There was an abrupt silence. After what Charlie estimated was minutes, Halliday said: “You’re part of the stitch-up, now it’s all gone wrong. You just referred to Radtsic by name! Earlier you told me you didn’t know who we were getting out!”

“I didn’t know until you mentioned it less than five minutes ago.”

“I didn’t mention a name,” rejected Halliday.

“‘He just wanted to know how much Jacobson told me about Radtsic,’” quoted Charlie. “That’s what you said, wasn’t it?”

Once more Halliday didn’t reply. Charlie didn’t prompt.

“I don’t trust you,” eventually declared the MI6 man, close to his usual petulance.

“I never asked nor expected you to trust me,” reminded Charlie. “You proved that, not telling me until now that Radtsic was the extraction.”

“I didn’t know the name, not until London began the inquest,” implored Halliday.

Professionally the man was a disaster, Charlie decided once more. If Halliday had ever undergone hostile interrogation he would within minutes have disclosed the identities of every agent and every secret he’d ever known, up to and including the color of his grandfather’s underwear. “Tell me about Radtsic,” Charlie demanded.

“All I now know is that the extraction from here worked perfectly and that he’s already arrived in London. I don’t know if he’s been told about his wife and son.”

Halliday probably didn’t realize the amount of information he imparted every time he opened his mouth, for which, Charlie supposed, he should be grateful. “What is Radtsic within the FSB?”

“The number two.”

Charlie said: “You know, don’t you, that the seizure’s public: been officially announced by the French.”

“How could I know, chained here in the rezidentura! It makes it easier to understand London’s panic.”

Don’t lose him, Charlie warned himself. “And should make it easier for you to understand the scapegoat hunt.”

“I told you they can’t blame me!”

“Chained to a desk in the rezidentura,” echoed Charlie. “Where Straughan didn’t even bother to tell you everything’s unraveling. What chance do you think you’ve got to prevent your balls being turned into a necklace?”

“I’ll insist on an official internal investigation if they try that!” repeated Halliday,

“Which they can refuse if they choose,” dismissed Charlie. “Don’t forget I was brought in as Radtsic’s diversion, which I refused to be and beat them. I’m still your best chance of beating them again if they try to set you up.”

“I won’t forget,” promised Halliday, dutifully. “And I’m sorry what I said about not trusting you.”

“Don’t be,” refused Charlie. “Just remember who’s your best guide out of this shit.”

“There’s so much I still don’t understand,” protested Halliday.

“There’s still a lot I don’t understand,” admitted Charlie. Chief among them being how, after his anonymous Malcolm Stoat tip that should have put the FSB on the highest alert, its defecting chief deputy passed unimpeded through Sheremetyevo airport while the MI6’s extraction of the man’s wife and son was intercepted by French intelligence.

“I’ve been trying to update you, but was told you couldn’t be reached,” said Straughan, as Monsford settled himself at his desk.

“My phone’s broken. You got everything ready for me, as I ordered,” said Monsford, leaning sideways to the Record button.

“All there in front of you,” indicated the operations director. “You want to read it or hear the bullet points?”

“Before you decide, there’s been seven more calls between Bland, Palmer, and Smith,” broke in Rebecca Street. “I told them you’d be back at four, which gives you thirty minutes to get updated. You’re to call Bland the moment you arrive here.”

Monsford hadn’t looked at his deputy as she talked but Straughan had and picked up the head shake that told him the Director hadn’t activated the apparatus. Impatiently, ignoring what Rebecca told him, Monsford said: “Give me the bullet points!”

“The French haven’t named Elana or Andrei, just described them as mother and son,” Straughan set out. “They’ve leaked a diplomatic connection for Miller and Abrahams. According to Bland there’s been a French demand for an explanation. The pilot and crew have been taken to Paris. It’s the lead item on every television and radio channel here and in France, as well as the Evening Standard here and every Paris evening newspaper. It’s also included in every television and radio newscast and print media, time differences allowing, throughout the European Union, and across America and Canada.”

“What about Russia?” demanded Monsford, hunched over the unread file.

“Nothing terrestrial or local-print yet: satellite will of course be available, most definitely our BBC World Service and CNN.”

“Bastards!” hissed Monsford, almost incoherently. “Bastards, bastards, bastards.”

At Monsford’s gesture for her to deny his presence, Rebecca picked up the demanding telephone, insisted Monsford still hadn’t returned, and promised the call would be returned the moment he did.

“Geoffrey Palmer,” she identified. “They’ve been told your cell phone is unreachable.”

“The circuit board’s buckled,” dismissed Monsford. “How did it leak to the French?”

“I haven’t been able to find out yet,” admitted the operations director. “Halliday denies Jacobson told him anything. It was a limited conversation with Jacobson, but he’s adamant he didn’t discuss anything with Halliday either. Jacobson thinks Radtsic made the phone call he’d forbidden the man to make to Elana, in Paris. That’s the line he’s going to take with Radtsic, when Radtsic discovers Elana and Andrei aren’t at the safe house. I obviously haven’t been able to talk to anyone in France, apart from Painter, but Andrei’s another potential source. We know the kid didn’t want to be part of it.…” Straughan indicated the ignored Rebecca. “We’ve talked about that possibility. There are several problems with it. It would have been far more likely for Andrei to have gone to his own people at the Russian embassy than to the French, wouldn’t it? It would have been more natural for the girl, Yvette, to do that, if Andrei told her what was going to happen. But that falls down, too. Neither Elana nor Andrei knew precisely where we were flying from: the ambush was in place on the Orly autoroute and there was a squad already at the airport itself, simultaneously, to impound the plane.”

“What about Charlie Muffin?”

Straughan frowned. “He was always the diversion. He didn’t know anything.”

“He’s a double: tricked us all. He’s gone over to the Russians!” Monsford insisted.

“Whether he has or hasn’t doesn’t affect this,” refused Straughan, ignoring Rebecca’s look. “Charlie Muffin didn’t know anything about Radtsic: if he had-and has gone over-the first thing he’d surely have done was stop Radtsic’s defection?”

“Charlie Muffin has to have had something to do with this!” persisted Monsford, his voice rising against their opposition.

“You’re going to be asked for a lot of explanations,” cautioned Rebecca.”They’ll need logical answers. It not logical to include Charlie Muffin in whatever’s gone wrong.”

“Whose side are you on!”

“That question isn’t logical, either,” rejected the woman. “We’re confronting a disaster from which we’re not going to escape with illogical accusations.”

Monsford looked between the two. “Other people knew.”

Rebecca broke the silence that followed. “I don’t understand that remark.”

“Who, outside this room, have either of you discussed Radtsic’s extraction with?”

“I have discussed the Radtsic extraction with no one outside this room and every discussion I have had within this room has been recorded on your personal system specifically installed for that purpose,” replied Rebecca, with stilted formality.

“Every discussion about the Radtsic extraction in which I have been involved within this room is on the same system,” matched Straughan. “Every discussion I have had outside this room, either from my own office or from the communication supervisor’s office, is similarly held on the equipment specifically installed for such purposes.”

“I hope I can believe you,” said Monsford.

“I hope you can believe me, too,” said Rebecca.

“As I also hope you can believe me,” said Straughan.

The jarring telephone broke this next silence and for several moments Monsfsord looked at it, once starting to look toward the woman. He finally lifted it, briefly listened, and said: “I have just this minute come into the building. I’ll be with you on time.”

“Do you want us to come with you?” asked Rebecca, as Monsford rose.

“No,” said the man.

“You’ve forgotten your briefing papers,” said Straughan.

“I don’t need them.”

Rebecca waited for several minutes after the door closed before saying: “He forgot his recording machine, too. But then he’d already done that by not turning it on.”

Maxim Mikhailovich Radtsic physically rose from his chair as Jacobson talked. He remained standing, hunched forward as if worried at missing a single word, shaking his lowered head in disbelief.

“How…? You told me it was all arranged…? Foolproof…”

“That’s what we’ve got to speak about. Sit down, Maxim Mikhailovich.”

Radtsic slumped down and looking questioningly from Jacobson to the three other escorts in the room. “A drink. I need a drink. Vodka.”

One of the unnamed men left the room. Radtsic pulled himself forward in his chair, making a physical effort to recover. “Tell me everything that happened.”

“You’ve heard all I know,” insisted Jacobson. “Now you’ve got to help us.”

“What can I tell you?” demanded the Russian, reaching out for the escort-offered vodka from a tray laden with ice and the remaining bottle. “You know it all: you’re supposed to be looking after me; after Elana and Andrei as well. That was our agreement.”

“In Moscow you told me you wanted to telephone Elana: tell her it was all finalized,” Jacobson spelled out, cautiously, his mind functioning on two levels. “And I-”

“Warned me against doing so,” interrupted Radtsic, holding out his empty glass.

“But did you?” demanded Jacobson, hoping for a startled admission.

Instead, Radtsic stretched out unseeingly for the new drink, but with his concentration entirely upon Jacobson. “Of course I didn’t!” he said, his voice no longer uncertain. “What you told me made obvious sense. The risk was too great.”

Unspeaking, Jacobson in turn held his concentration on the man, trying to prevent his mental focus going sideways to the nagging concern at his personal expectations.

“You don’t believe me!” accused Radtsic when Jacobson didn’t speak, his normal peremptory tone completely restored. “I did everything as you wanted: never allowed the slightest risk, not taking any chances. You’re the one, you and your people, who fucked up … who’ve got to sort it out … make it work as you assured me you would.”

“I told you Andrei didn’t want to come,” Jacobson reminded, flatly. Why had the arrogant bastard so clearly identified him on the automatic recording system!

“And I told you however reluctant Andrei was, after hearing his mother explain, he’d cross with her. Andrei isn’t the cause of this: none of it.”

Another personal identification, Jacobson recognized. “That’s not the impression of the people who made contact with Elana and Andrei in Paris.”

“The impression of the people who made contact in Paris!” sneeringly echoed the Russian, holding his glass sideways for more vodka without bothering to look at the man serving it. “Are you talking about those people who allowed themselves to be captured with my wife and son and ruined their escape!”

“Your escape’s not ruined!” refused Jacobson, desperately.

Radtsic, his face clearing, came farther forward in his chair, ignoring the man with the third drink. “At last, some sense! When are they arriving?”

“I didn’t say they’re coming,” squirmed Jacobson. “We’re trying to sort it out and to sort it out we need to know how and why they were intercepted.”

“Answer your own questions!” loudly insisted Radtsic. “Find out and sort it out! It’s the French: your allies, your European partners who are holding them! Tell Paris to release them and bring them here, to me.”

“That’s what we’re trying to do: why we’re talking like this.”

“I was promised I’d be personally meeting your director. Where is he?”

“Working on what we’re all trying to achieve, a way of resolving this.”

“I want to see your director, which you told me was his personal wish. I want him and everyone else, all of you, to understand something. My being here, my coming here, was entirely dependent upon Elana and Andrei being here with me. I will not stay, cooperate in any way whatsoever, unless we are together.”

“I will tell them what you’ve said.”

“Speak to your director and tell him what I’m telling you. Undertakings were given and agreed. You are not keeping your part in those undertakings.”

“I will speak to my director,” promised Jacobson. Everything had gone, vanished. Straughan had been right: it was a total, unmitigated disaster.

Gerald Monsford tried to match the blankness of the expressionless men confronting him around the table, his uncertainty worsened by one of them being Aubrey Smith, in whom, despite the facial emptiness, Monsford believed he saw triumph.

“Throughout the formulation of a joint operation approved at the highest level of government to extract an officer of the FSB, the absolute and clearly understood imperative was that there should be no diplomatic risk. Contrary to every order and instruction, you independently organized a parallel extraction of another FSB official, without any consultation or reference to us, your direct liaison to that highest level,” said Sir Archibald Bland, pedantically setting out the accusation, made that much more ominous by the calm, measured delivery.

“Yes, I did,” immediately admitted Monsford, at once encouraged by the frowned break in Smith’s composure.

“Why?” demanded Geoffrey Palmer.

“Precisely because the extraction of Natalia and her daughter was a joint operation,” declared Monsford, embarking upon what he’d concluded his best and least challengeable rebuttal. “That our two organizations were brought together was, according to my recollection, acknowledged to be an extremely rare and unusual decision. There’s been no precedent during my tenure as Director of MI6, nor, as far as I’m aware, during that of at least two of my predecessors. MI6 and MI5 are in every normal circumstance entirely separate and autonomous. It was my decision that the extraction of Maxim Mikhailovich Radtsic, the FSB’s executive deputy, was completely within the customary autonomy of my organization and did not conflict or impinge in any way with that of the woman and her child. To have conjoined the two would have created confusion and endangered both, the first of which has been destroyed anyway by the antics of the MI5 operative Charlie Muffin.…”

“You were categorically ordered against anything that could potentially exacerbate the difficulties already existing between us and the Russian Federation,” persisted Palmer. “Orders you just as categorically ignored. What you-”

“Indeed I was,” interrupted Monsford, his earlier uncertainty diminishing. “Close examination of the transcript of the meeting at which those orders were given will show my intimating the possibility of our nullifying Moscow’s actions by confronting the Russian Federation with a far greater embarrassment, which it’s my contention we’ve achieved by facilitating the defection of Maxim Mikhailovich Radtsic.”

“At the cost of at least six of your operatives, an executive jet, and Radtsic’s wife and son, who to my understanding are accusing us of attempted kidnap,” qualified Aubrey Smith. “It’s inconceivable you expect us to accept you’ve put us ahead in any tit-for-tat exchange, which was something else absolutely forbidden.”

“Nonsense,” rejected Monsford, welcoming the challenge. “We’ve still got their diplomats to exchange for the Manchester travel group, a swap Moscow will fall over themselves to agree when we make Radtsic’s defection public. And following that announcement, our having established Radtsic’s presence in England, it will be little more than a formality negotiating the French release of my officers, along with that of Elana and Andrei to continue their journey here.”

“The indications so far are that it will be anything but a simple formality,” contradicted Palmer. “The French are furious at our mounting an intelligence operation on their soil without prior consultation and agreement with their Service de Documentation Exterieure et de Contre Espionnage.”

“Of course they’re furious,” dismissed Monsford, almost contemptuous in his now totally restored confidence. “We’d be just as furious if they did something similar here. There’ll be a lot of backroom sniping and threats of broken understandings, which don’t matter a damn. What matters is that we’ve got Radtsic, who’s been at the pinnacle of Russian intelligence and espionage activities for almost three decades. Wrecking Russia’s Lvov operation was a coup without much practical benefit to us. Getting Radtsic in the bag is the espionage prize of the century.”

“As you’ve presented it, and if the French difficulty with the wife and son can be resolved, it would appear to be so,” conceded Bland.

“Then all that’s necessary,” seized Monsford, “are some discreet diplomatic negotiations with Paris-along, perhaps, with an equally discreet apology to the SDECE, which I am quite ready personally to make-for this to be recognized exactly as I’ve described it.”

Having destroyed his cell phone, Monsford had to use a pay kiosk within the Foreign Office to reach Rebecca. “‘Dogs, easily won to fawn on any man,’” he quoted the moment Rebecca lifted her receiver. “Which is what I made them do, eat out of my hand, like the well-trained pets they are. Book Scott’s for dinner: we’re going to celebrate.”

“Shall I tell Straughan you don’t want him to wait here?”

“I don’t want Straughan much more for anything. Tell him what you like.”

Which is what Rebecca did, verbally repeating to the operations director Monsford’s every word. In London it was 5:15 P.M., in Paris it was 7:15 P.M.; and in Moscow it was 8:15 P.M. when Charlie rose at Natalia’s entry to the restaurant.