Red Star Burning

30

They’d kissed but perfunctorily, acquaintances rather than husband and wife, and afterward remained standing although not together, Radtsic staying close to where he’d greeted Elana just inside the door, Elana, still wearing the vivid red dress, wandering aimlessly around the conservatory like a disappointed prospective buyer.

“This isn’t how it was supposed to be,” said Radtsic, breaking the awkwardness.

“It was my duty to come but I didn’t want to,” said the woman. She stopped close to a corner of the windowed room, frowning up at a roof joint. “They’ll be listening to everything, I suppose?”

“And filming,” confirmed Radtsic. “What’s happened to Andrei?”

“There were always three Russians in the room. After Andrei’s outburst they asked him to go with them, so they could protect him. They asked me, too. I refused. The French officials there asked Andrei if he wanted to go with them. He said yes, at once, and left with them. They would have been your people, wouldn’t they: FSB?”

“Yes,” Radtsic confirmed again. “What did Andrei say to you before he went?”

“Just repeated that he never wanted to see or hear from us again. That we were dead to him, both of us.”

“He’s my son: supposed to respect me and do what I tell him!” It was a plea, not an angry demand.

“He’s a man: a young one but still a man,” corrected Elana, finally slumping into a overpadded, solitary positioned easy chair making it impossible for Radtsic to sit close to her. “He doesn’t respect you anymore, Maxim Mikhailovich. He hates and despises you. And now me, for coming here to you.”

“Do you hate and despise me?”

“I’m not sure, not yet,” admitted Elana, with brutal honesty. “I do know I don’t want to be part of any of this. But I know even more than I’ve ever known anything in my life that I never wanted to lose my son, which is what you’ve made happen.”

“You don’t understand what-”

“Don’t you dare tell me that I don’t understand!” stopped Elana, giving way to shouted anger. “I understand every fucking thing you’ve made me do and with which I went along because I am your wife! And while I don’t know yet if I despise and hate you, I do know that I despise and hate myself for doing it, for allowing it to happen.…”

Radtsic began to move toward her but Elana started up, moving away from him. “I don’t want you near me. What will happen to Andrei?”

“I don’t know.”

“Don’t lie to me!” she erupted into almost screaming frustration. “He’ll be punished for what we’ve done, won’t he? Become a nonperson at the age of nineteen. How do you feel about that, Maxim Mikhailovich? You proud about destroying your only son?”

“Stop it, Elana!” demanded Radtsic, matching her anger. “You know why I had to do this. How everything would have worked if Andrei had done what he was told instead of babbling about kidnap, giving the French the legal excuse to hold you-”

“He didn’t say we’d been kidnapped!” halted Elana.

“You?” questioned Radtsic, uncertainty lessening his anger. “But you knew…?”

“I didn’t say it either. Neither of us said we’d been kidnapped.”

“Stop wandering about!” ordered Radtsic, loudly. “I need to know what happened: how it happened … if there’s a way of getting him back.”

Elana hesitated, seemingly unsure, but went back to the overstuffed armchair. “I can’t answer your question: don’t have any answers.”

“Tell me from the beginning, from the time you arrived in Paris.”

Elana frowned in recollection. “I did everything you told me. I went to Andrei’s apartment direct from the airport. Yvette wasn’t there. Andrei and I ate dinner at a cafe quite close. Everyone knew him: I was very proud at how popular he was. I didn’t meet Yvette until the second night. I like her. That first night he kept asking why I’d come so unexpectedly, almost without warning. I decided against telling him outright: I wasn’t sure how he’d react. I told him my coming was part of a surprise: that together we were going London to meet you and that you had something very important to tell him.”

“You didn’t say anything, hint even at a defection?”

“I’ve just told you I didn’t,” said Elana, irritably. “He seemed so happy, so confident. Even a hint would have been a mistake. I wanted to get Andrei here first.” She smiled, wanly. “I was the one guilty of kidnap. I expected him to be more excited at my arriving and of our coming on here. I thought it might have been to do with Yvette: not wanting to leave her, I mean.”

“But he agreed to come?” said Radtsic.

Elana nodded. “But without much enthusiasm.”

“How did you explain being escorted, by English people?”

“He only ever met two English people, Jonathan Miller and his partner, whom I only ever knew as Albert. Remember, Andrei never knew precisely what you did: the position you held. Just that it was something important and very high in the government. I told him you were in London with a Russian delegation for an internal conference and that you’d arranged for us to get to London on a plane taking some people from the British embassy. I told Miller and his partner, so they wouldn’t make any mistakes on our way to the airport. Andrei didn’t like either of them. He was rude when he met them.”

“You think he suspected who they were?”

Elana shook her head. “Although he didn’t know exactly what you did, he did know how powerful you are.” She hesitated. “How powerful you were. And he was used to your going away, without any explanation.”

“He didn’t questioning it?”

“After the awkward restaurant meeting with the British he said he couldn’t understand why we couldn’t travel on a normal flight.”

“What did you say?”

“That it was how you wanted it. He never challenges you, does he?”

“Not until now,” corrected Radtsic.

Elana looked up to the conservatory corner she’d examined earlier. “I don’t like being listened to.”

“I’m going to have to cooperate to get Andrei back. I don’t understand how you came to be intercepted or how-or why-the kidnap claim came to be made.”

Elana stared at her husband for several minutes. At last she said: “Maxim Mikhailovich, you’re not making sense! You were always going to have to cooperate, tell them everything for us to be accepted: protected as we’ll have to be protected for the rest of our lives. And we can never get Andrei back. He’s gone: we’ve lost him forever.”

“I won’t lose him. I’ll do a deal.”

“What deal? With whom? You ran away from Russia because you were going to be purged: what do you imagine would happen to you if you changed your mind now and we went back? You’ve got nothing with which to negotiate with the British. To keep us safe you’ve got to tell them everything. Andrei won’t come. Stop fantasizing, accept reality. And that reality is that you’ve made a terrible mistake and wrecked the family.”

“What if Andrei accepts reality and recognizes he’s made a terrible mistake: changes his mind?”

“What do you imagine the reaction would be to his going up to the commandant of whatever Siberian gulag he’ll be sent to and saying he doesn’t like it there and wants to come to England after all!” derided Elana.

“He won’t be sent to a Siberian gulag: things aren’t like they were, in the old days. There’s law and Andrei hasn’t broken any law.”

There was another long silence before Elana said: “If there’s law that’s got to be followed, how could you have been purged? You didn’t break any law.”

“What I’ve done, all my life, isn’t governed by any law,” said Radtsic, in subdued reflection. “There has been a terrible mistake. But I didn’t make it: wouldn’t have made it because I knew everything, devised it all, and could still have prevented it being turned into the disaster it became if I’d been brought in when I should have been. But I wasn’t. Others with ambition intervened. But there’s no proof, no paper trail, of their intervention: that was the first, internal purge I didn’t suspect. Which left me the architect who didn’t react quickly enough. I should have left the service honorably, an internally recognized and acknowledged legend. Instead I leave it not just as a failure and a traitor but as a failure and a traitor to you and to Andrei.…” Radtsic stopped, brought out of his reverie by the awareness of Elana silently weeping, hands cupped to her face to hold back any sound. “I’ll make it better: try to stop you hating and despising me.”

Elana stayed with her hands covering her face, still weeping.

“My deputy director is handling the situation,” declared Monsford. “I’ve no specific details, other than the indications that Straughan killed his mother before killing himself. Nothing will ever become public: a complete blackout has been imposed.”

“What security implications are there?” demanded Sir Archibald Bland.

Monsford’s eyes flickered toward Aubrey Smith. “Absolutely none.”

“What about letters, an explanation?” intruded Smith, savoring the other director’s discomfort.

“I haven’t had the chance to talk to my deputy,” said Monsford, his voice uneven. “I’ll provide all the details as soon as I have them myself.”

“Which brings us back to the original point of this gathering,” said Aubrey Smith, turning away from the now-dead screen on which they’d watched the encounter between Radtsic and his wife. “What happened after she recovered?”

“They walked outside in the grounds,” said Gerald Monsford, inwardly squirming at being questioned by the other director. “Neither wanted to eat when they got back to the house. Elana insisted upon sleeping in a separate room.”

“What did they talk about walking in the grounds?” Smith continued to press.

“Surely you don’t imagine-” started Geoffrey Palmer.

“Nothing that added to what they’d talked about inside,” hurried in Monsford, eager to save Palmer’s embarrassment. “They hardly spoke, as far as we could detect.”

“So they were heads down?” persisted Smith.

“Could someone help us here?” demanded Palmer, irritably.

“They were filmed throughout their walk,” explained the MI6 Director. “The cameras have special enhancing lenses enabling what’s said out of microphone range to be recorded and then lip-read.”

“Lip-reading that can be defeated by a person walking with their head lowered, avoiding the camera,” added Smith. Directly addressing his counterpart, Smith said: “You didn’t answer my question?”

“Yes,” confirmed Monsford, tightly.

“So we don’t have recordings of everything they said to each other?”

“No,” Monsford was forced to admit.

“What’s your point?” protested Sir Archibald Bland.

“What’s your assessment of the confrontation inside the house, where we did hear every word?” demanded Smith, answering a question with a question.

Bland hesitated, unaccustomed to the reversal. “Very emotional, which was understandable considering every circumstance: Radtsic defecting after being at the top of his profession for so long, being reunited with his wife after what she’s been through, neither knowing if they would ever be together again, all of it topped by their being reviled by a son who’s abandoned them.”

“And I’m intrigued by whatever it is Radtsic was talking about at the very end,” added Palmer.

“All of which you were supposed to be,” warned Smith.

“What the hell are you suggesting!” demanded Monsford.

Again Smith confronted question with question: “Do you normally allow encounters like that to be completely unsupervised?”

“I don’t have a precedent,” Monsford quickly came back. “Neither my service nor yours has had someone from such an echelon of Russian intelligence cross over to us. Nor, after managing such a defection, succeeding in getting released from at least nominal Russian detention a wife with whom to be reunited.”

“Indeed, neither of us has,” agreed Smith, smiling in return. “You’ve very definitely established the precedent. But how did that unsupervised reunion come about? Did you offer it? Or did Radtsic insist upon meeting his wife alone?”

Monsford hesitated. “He didn’t insist: he asked. And it was hardly an unsupervised encounter. We’ve just watched and listened to everything that took place.”

“With no debriefing intermediary to direct or guide it,” Smith pointed out.

“In the intrusive absence of whom, caught up in their emotion, we’ve already got a lead to something Radtsic expected to be the culmination of a thirty-year intelligence career but instead, because of an internal power struggle…” Monsford stopped, his mouth physically distorting to avoid the intended singular boast, “we’ve got the coup.”

“Let’s not keep credit from where credit is due,” enthused Smith, layering the condescension. “The coup is yours and yours alone. Which was how it was initiated and carried out, without the participation of anyone else. Just you, alone.”

“We’re becoming increasingly irritated at this perpetual antipathy,” declared Bland. “As well as becoming increasingly concerned that it’s endangering the matter at hand. True, we’ve got our coup. But externally it’s greatly mitigated by a number of unresolved issues. We want-as others more important want-this constant bickering to stop for the concentration to instead be upon tidying up those issues.”

“I reiterate that to resolve those issues I am offering every assistance asked of me and my service to help the Director-General, whose officer created them,” said Monsford.

“That offer would best be achieved by the immediate withdrawing from Moscow the three MI6 officers seconded to the original extraction for which I am responsible but for whom there is no further need,” responded Aubrey Smith, at once. “MI6 has succeeded with their extraction and achieved its coup, but upon which there would appear to be a need for much more work.”

The only sound in the room for several minutes was that of differing seat and chair shifting prompted by differing reasons. The first-to-speak concentration settled upon Bland, the nominal chairman, who avoided the conflict with a matador’s deftness by inviting Monsford’s contribution.

“Unfortunate and public embarrassments aside, I am not aware of any changes in circumstance-in which, of course, I do not include the reemergence of Charlie Muffin-justifying the Director-General’s astonishing demand.”

“Are there any changes of circumstances?” Palmer asked Aubrey Smith.

“I believe there are considerable changes, none of which I intend discussing here,” said the MI5 Director-General. “I shall, of course, discuss them in full and complete detail when the extraction of Natalia Fedova becomes a wholly independent MI5 matter.”

“Not only is it outrageous to impugn my service, as I believe the Director-General is doing, it is arrogant for him to imagine that the separation of our two services is for him to decide,” said Monsford.

“It is for the Director to make whatever interpretation he chooses,” dismissed Smith. “In making your decision, which I was in no way taking from you, it’s important I make totally clear that I am not prepared to continue the extraction of Natalia Fedova in partnership with MI6.”

“And I must make it equally clear, as I have already done, that I am prepared completely to take over the extraction as an MI6 operation,” declared Monsford.

“You took it over the edge,” accused Jane Ambersom, objectively. “You didn’t have a fallback if the ruling had gone against you.”

“I’d have done what I know Monsford’s going to do, ignore it,” said Aubrey Smith, unoffended at her directness. “The whole intention was to get Monsford and MI6 officially out of our operation. Which is what I’m determined to do: get Monsford out, not just from this extraction but out of Vauxhall Cross. He’s the paranoid megalomaniac to MI6 that J. Edgar Hoover was to the FBI. Monsford’s dangerous: out of control.”

“After today he’ll be even more determined to destroy you,” cautioned the woman. “And now he’s excluded we’ve no way of second-guessing what he’ll do.”

“We know what Monsford’s going to do: or try to do,” repeated the MI5 Director. “What we’ve got to do is wrap up Moscow, get everyone safely back here.” He turned to Passmore. “So when’s that going to be?”

“As of fifteen minutes ago Charlie hadn’t contacted Wilkinson,” said the operations director. “I’ve authorized the money Charlie wants, as well as the Russian passports for Natalia and the child. As soon as we’ve finished, I’ll add the decision officially to cut MI6 adrift and tell Wilkinson to make that clear to Monsford’s people-”

“Do that,” broke in Smith. “Once Wilkinson’s completed the handover, he and the other two are out, too. Their only function from now on is to take Monsford’s people all over Moscow on wild goose chases. Wilkinson is to tell Charlie we’re sending in independent backup. Who’ll head the new group?”

“Ian Flood,” responded Passmore, without hesitation. “He’s one of four on standby, all with valid visas,”

“Charlie likes the Savoy, near Red Square,” remembered Smith. “That’s where he lived during the Lvov investigation. Flood’s to book in there and Charlie’s to be told that’s where his contact is. But don’t tell Wilkinson the hotel name. I don’t want any more mistakes. Charlie will identify it by being told it’s his favorite.” Smith looked between the other two. “What else do we need to do?”

“Once Charlie’s got his travel money and the passports there’s no reason why he can’t move at once,” picked up Passmore. “I can get our second team in today, with Flood going in first. All we’d need from Charlie is routes and arrival day.”

“I wasn’t exaggerating Monsford’s paranoia,” said Smith. “I also believe he’s capable of paranoid orders, dressed up with whatever justification. Tell Flood’s team, upon my authority, to confront like with like if necessary.”

“You’re surely not imagining a gunfight at the O.K. Corral?” asked Passmore.

“Those are the orders, in my name,” said Smith.

“I’ve got an idea,” announced Jane. “First I need to know if anything was said this morning about Straughan?”

Smith shook his head. “It was mentioned. Monsford denied knowing any details, apart from it not being a security problem and that Rebecca was handling it.”

“Ducking and weaving again,” Jane recognized. “How’d it be if there was an alert that MI6 has been penetrated, particularly after the suicide of its operations director? A security purge might even find Rebecca Street’s copy of what Straughan made.”

“I think it might cause Monsford a very big problem.” Smith smiled.

“Not if the internal search is controlled by Monsford,” Passmore pointed out.

“It can’t be,” insisted Jane. “The regulations are that it would have to be independent of currently serving officers.”

Gerald Monsford’s purple-faced fury, accompanied by seemingly uncontrollable facial twitching, was greater than Rebecca had witnessed before, although the irrational pacing was familiar. For a long time after his stormed entry it was impossible for the man to speak comprehensibly: even attempted words burst out incomplete or slurred.

“Bastards … fucking bastards … imagine!” Then came what appeared another indecipherable splutter. “Sided with him, with Smith … against me! Me … gave them their fucking coup. All Smith’s fault … all the mistakes. Incredible. Unbelievable…”

Rebecca remained silent, letting the diatribe burn itself out, beginning to interpret and still listening but giving over most of her concentration to review all that she’d personally done or put into practice since James Straughan’s suicide. She’d left nothing undone or unchecked, nothing that Monsford could pick up and challenge: she was sure she hadn’t. Apart, of course, from the involvement of Jane Ambersom, which was causing the unease to churn through her. She was convinced Straughan had kept his own copy of the incriminating material. There was still a chance, a lot of chances, of its being uncovered and it was to her that each and every discovery had to be handed, unopened, unheard, or unread. But she’d wanted to recover it by now: needed to know she had the protection of the only one in existence.

Rebecca’s concentration refocused at Monsford’s sighed collapse behind the expansive desk, ignoring the folder in readiness before him. Risking a renewed eruption, she said: “We need to redefine a few things. Are you going to handle Moscow or shall I do what needs to be done there?”

“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.