Red Star Burning

6

It was two days before Charlie was summoned for further questioning. In that interim he was held in the barred and locked first-floor room of the hunting lodge with only the gazelle heads for company, apart from morning and afternoon exercise periods in the grounds with two male escorts who refused any conversation and during which there were intentionally staged sightings of other guards. None was visibly armed.

The second session was in the same menagerie-festooned room as before but with a smaller inquiry panel, just Smith, Jane Ambersom, and the overpoweringly large man from the initial interrogation. There was no replay machine on the side table, which had been moved away to the corner of the room.

Once again there was no preamble, although it was the woman who opened the questioning. She took photographs from a case file in front of her and said: “Who is this woman?”

Bitch, thought Charlie, at the same time recognizing the disparagement was intentional, to rile him, which he dismissed as stupid as well as clumsy. There was still the stomach jump of recognition when he took the offered photograph. It was a remarkably sharp image. Natalia was wearing the tightly belted light summer coat he remembered from their most recent Moscow reunion in the Botanical Gardens. She was looking sideways, almost over her shoulder, as if something had suddenly caught her attention. “Natalia Fedova, my wife.”

“And this?”

“Our daughter, Alexandra, which shortens to Sasha,” replied Charlie, looking down at the second print. The child was wearing her school uniform and hat, smiling up at someone who had been cropped from the picture. “When were these taken?”

Jane Ambersom moved to speak, but before she could Monsford replied: “The day before yesterday.”

Aubrey Smith formally introduced Monsford for the first time and said: “SIS are cooperating with us.”

The woman was looking tight faced between the two directors, clearly irritated at both responding to questioning.

“They’re still free then?” pressed Charlie, momentarily off-balanced by MI6’s involvement. It was logical, he conceded, that there would have been linked operations in the past, although he’d never actively participated in one. Charlie remembered the name. During his earlier Moscow assignment the gossip in the MI6 rezidentura had tagged Monsford as a reincarnation of Genghis Khan suffering a bad attack of toothache. There’d also been a rumor the man had tried to muscle in to the Lvov affair.

“Let’s get some order back into this debriefing, shall we?” said Jane Ambersom. “There’s a lot more answers we need to get from you.”

“I have not committed any criminal offense!” Charlie said, embarking on one of the several half-formed strategies he’d considered over the preceding forty-eight hours. “Nor have I contravened the Official Secrets Act, to which I am a signatory. My being in the protection program does not require my being held under detention.”

Jane Ambersom’s snort of derision was too obviously forced. “Doesn’t one of the most essential clauses in the Official Secrets Act cover consorting with an enemy!”

“It is an entire section, not a clause,” formally corrected Charlie, both to further her irritation and for the benefit of the bureaucratic recordings. “And that question is both a distortion and a misphrasing of its wording. I have never contravened any section of any act involving, covering, or forbidding the passing of intelligence secrets or information to a foreign power or intelligence service.…” He gestured with the prints he still held. “I provided the specific time and date of my marriage to Natalia Fedova, which I know you will have by now confirmed from Moscow’s Hall of Weddings records. I also know that in the intervening two days since I appeared before you, my operational files will have been scrutinized for the slightest indication of failure being attributed to my…” Charlie paused again, directly addressing the woman: “to use what appears to be a favored phrase, consorting with the enemy. No indication whatsoever of which will have been found, because none exists. I want … if you like, I plead for … help to get my wife and daughter out of a situation in which, if our relationship is positively established by the FSB, they could be physically harmed, as it was believed I would be physically harmed for Russia’s failure of the Lvov affair, to prevent which I have been put under protection … protection, not house arrest.”

Once more Jane Ambersom’s face was on fire, either from her confusion or her expectation that Charlie would continue, but again Monsford spoke ahead of her. The MI6 Director, hands clasped over his expansive stomach, said: “That was a very spirited and well-argued defense of a charge not yet alleged. But do you believe that buried in all the legislation to which you’ve referred-the Official Secrets Act the most obvious-there isn’t a legal accusation that one of our specialized lawyers could formulate against you?”

Charlie didn’t think he’d left any gaping pitfalls: certainly Monsford’s response was encouraging, even if the man’s inclusion was unsettling and needed separate, intense examination. Don’t falter, he told himself. “I’m quite sure there are several charges that could be laid. But I’m even surer that they’d be thrown out of court, although perhaps with an admonishment which I’d expect, after it was proven there has never been any breach of security.”

“Haven’t we wandered too far from the purpose of this meeting!” protested Jane Ambersom, finally reentering the exchanges.

“Just one thing!” said Charlie, hurriedly, pleased at the woman’s exclusion and talking directly to the MI6 chief. “Were both those photographs taken two days ago?”

“Yes,” confirmed Monsford.

“So they were both still free: not under detention?”

“Yes, both still free.”

Charlie looked back at the print of Natalia, closely studying the background for the first time. “And she was outside the apartment I identified?”

“When is this session going to be formalized!” again protested Jane.

“Was there any indication of surveillance?” persisted Charlie, snatching at every opportunity.

“None,” confirmed Monsford. For some must watch, while some must sleep. So runs the world away, he thought: why was it that Shakespeare had a comment for every situation? Hamlet, he remembered. This would have a happier ending, he was sure.

Natalia and Sasha were still safe! But how professional had the MI6 photographer been? agonized Charlie, who’d never trusted dawn to follow night. If the photographer had failed to detect Russian observation but been identified himself, he would have hastened an FSB move.

“I really do think we’ve answered enough of your questions,” said Aubrey Smith. “Now answer more of ours.”

“From the date of your wedding, which we have indeed confirmed, against the date you provided for Sasha’s birth, Natalia Fedova was pregnant before you married?” established Jane Ambersom, taking up the questioning again. Her tone made it sound like an accusation.

No longer “this woman,” Charlie recognized. “Yes.”

“How long had the affair been going on, before the marriage?”

“About eighteen months.” Everything totally honest, Charlie reminded himself. He needed their help, not their antagonism.

The woman shuffled hurriedly between several sheets of paper from her dossier before looking up. “We know the precise dates of your fake defection, of course: it was a recorded operation-”

“And a successful one, discrediting a genuine defector with whom I broke out of Wormwood Scrubs after he’d been jailed for forty years as a Soviet spy at the height of the Cold War,” broke in Charlie, anxiously establishing what he considered the first of several important facts in his favor.

“I’m familiar with the records.…” Jane paused, to counter Charlie’s defense with another point. “The official records, I mean. So, once more calculated against the known dates and those you have provided, your affair began about six months after the Russian acceptance that your defection was genuine?”

“Yes,” confirmed Charlie, cautiously. He shouldn’t have interjected: she was obviously building up to what she considered an undermining question.

“Tell us about those six months.”

“What about them?” hedged Charlie, reluctant to answer such a generality.

“The Russians had accepted you: believed you had joined their little band of traitors. Did you ever meet, socialize, with those other defectors? With Philby or Blake, for instance?”

“No.”

“Never?”

“Never.”

“Are you sure?”

Charlie hesitated, seeking the trap. Unable to find it, he smiled, condescendingly shaking his head. “It’s hardly likely that I would forget meeting such people, is it?”

“Unless you’re lying!” she said.

Not undermining at all, if that was her best attempt. “I am not lying!”

“What job did the Russians give you, having accepted you as genuine?”

He could use this question, Charlie recognized. “I was assigned to a training school.”

“What sort of training school?” There was a note of triumph in the woman’s voice.

“A training school for intended KGB intelligence officers,” answered Charlie, comfortably.

“Intended to operate in which countries?” The triumph was growing.

“The English-speaking West: the United Kingdom, America, Canada.”

Jane Ambersom again staged her preparing pause, and when she did speak she spaced her words to heighten her supposed incredulity. “You-taught-KGB-agents-selected-to-operate-against-the-United-Kingdom?”

“No,” Charlie denied, seizing his chance. “My function was to assess during one-to-one sessions-one spy was never allowed to encounter another-whether their training was sufficient for them to assimilate successfully into a Western culture without arousing suspicion. I handled a total of eight. In each case I dismissed their training as inadequate. By doing so I gained limited access but comprehensive insight into Russian espionage-training methods and systems, about which I created a manual on my return to this country. I believe that manual was later used as a textbook at our training academies. I also, of course, learned the identities of the eight with whom I worked, although the names were obviously not those they were assigned in the West. Over the course of the four years after my return to this country, in addition to active field assignments, I regularly examined photographs of Russians posted under diplomatic cover to the Russian embassies in London, Washington, D.C., and Ottawa. I managed to identify five, none of whom were expelled but allowed to remain, observing the principle that the spy you know is better than the one you don’t. All, I believe, were fed disinformation by us and the counterespionage organizations of America and Canada.” Charlie paused, dry throated, and gestured toward Jane Ambersom’s dossier. “Everything I’ve told you is set out in greater detail in my file, even the names of the eight Russians. You should be able to confirm it all very easily.”

Jane Ambersom was puce faced yet again. Monsford actually had his hands cupped over his face to conceal his reaction to the put-down. Smith’s head was lowered intently toward the floor. And Charlie burned with self-fury. The bloody woman had got under his skin. But what the fuck was he doing fighting her, humiliating her, like this! He couldn’t afford to fight or humiliate anyone upon whom he now depended. He desperately needed each and every possible assistance to get Natalia and Sasha out of Moscow, as desperately as he needed to convince them that he’d never, ever, acted against the service to which he’d dedicated his life. And he wasn’t going to achieve any of that in confronting this supercilious, mannish woman: this woman! echoed mockingly in his mind. Every single time he antagonized any of them he pushed further away the possibility of rescuing from God knew what the only two people of importance in his life: the only two people in his life.

“You were able to cultivate your relationship with Natalia Fedova as well as working at the spy school?” uncertainly resumed Jane.

“Easily,” said Charlie, determined against further confrontation. “Natalia officially comes within the jurisdiction of the analysis division but her predominant function is debriefing, for which she has the Russian equivalent of a master’s degree in psychology and a track record of marathon proportions. The Russians attach great importance to the psychology of their field agents, as we do. Which creates another function, that of maintaining and monitoring the continuing psychological capability of about-to-graduate intelligence officers facing, for the first time, the reality of being uprooted from the life they know and transposed into an entirely different, alien culture. That brought her frequently to the training school to which I was assigned on the outskirts of Moscow, about five miles beyond Prazskaja.”

“What was the purpose of your false defection?”

He’d already covered that, although not in detail: she was running out of impetus. “In 1988 a Russian agent only ever identified by the name Edwin Sampson was jailed for forty years. He was considered one of the most damaging spies ever to be uncovered in this country but we didn’t know the full extent of what he’d done, apart from the barest evidence we’d managed to get together to convict him: he never confessed or admitted anything. I was put in Wormwood Scrubs, supposedly jailed for fourteen years, also for spying. It was fixed that we’d share the same cell, in which over the course of time I’d gain his trust and get some indication of what else he’d done. It wasn’t anticipated the KGB would try to free him, as they did with George Blake and which indicated the importance they attached to him. But when it emerged that they intended to do just that, it was decided I should appear to defect with him in the hope of learning what made him so important. Which I did. The idea-”

“Was that after a period of time, with the help of our people in the British embassy, you’d pretend to be disillusioned with Russia and flee back to this country,” broke in Jane.

“Yes,” agreed Charlie. “With the added benefit of all I’d learned at the spy school.”

“With such a history no one was going to doubt your loyalty, were they?” persisted Jane.

“No one has, until now. And you’re wrong.”

“But there’s good reason to doubt you now, suddenly presented as we are with a wife who’s a serving officer in Russia’s external intelligence,” challenged Jane. “Is that all she is, your wife? Or could she also be your Control through whom you’re supposed to liaise with Moscow after she joins you here, which you’ve told us has consistently been the plan?”

“What I told you is that it’s consistently been my hope that she would join me here, but that she has always refused, held as she is by that near-mystical bond Russians have for their country,” corrected Charlie, maintaining control but letting his argument come out in a rush. “If I’d been turned and married Natalia for the reason you’ve suggested, she would have been ordered to return with me in the first place, wouldn’t she? And I wouldn’t have told you that she was a member of the FSB. There’d be an unbreakable cover legend, giving her a background as far as possible from any connection with espionage. And would I, as a KGB-cum-FSB double, have destroyed a KGB/FSB operation eighteen years in creation to put Moscow literally in the Oval Office?”

Before Jane Ambersom could respond, the Director-General said: “There is an alternative way to judge this. You could be telling the truth. The FSB could have discovered your relationship with Natalia Fedova and be forcing her to make the approaches to trap you into going back to Russia. Where you, as the person who wrecked that eighteen-year-long operation, would face punishment it’s hard to conceive, judged against the ways they’ve killed the people they’ve eliminated so far…”

“… Unless they made you watch whatever they wanted to do to Natalia and the child before killing you as bestially as possible,” completed Monsford.

“That’s what I believe they want to do,” admitted Charlie, almost inaudibly.

“You think we’re going to let you go back to Russia to stop it happening, don’t you?” taunted the woman.

“Irrespective of whether it’s agreed I go back, they’ll do whatever they want to them both,” pleaded Charlie. “That can’t be allowed to happen. They’ve got to be got out!”

“There’s no way they can be,” said Jane.

“All I had to do was sit and listen to Jane Ambersom stumble about like a bull in a china shop,” gloated the MI6 director. “Christ, we’re lucky being rid of her.”

“Cow,” corrected James Straughan, who always sought to lighten his encounters with someone as unpredictable as Gerald Monsford, particularly when they were alone, which they were now. “It would be a cow in a china shop, not a bull.”

“Cow is certainly more apposite,” agreed Monsford, who’d enjoyed his manipulation of that day’s meeting as he had those that preceded it. “Charlie’s on his knees, pleading for his wife and child to be rescued. Jane came close to orgasm telling him it couldn’t be done.”

“You broached our idea with Smith yet?”

The other man shook his head. “I need exactly the right moment. Smith believes it’s his option to make and his operation to initiate, so that’s how I’ve got to make it seem.”

“Everything’s virtually in place,” assured Straughan, although cautiously. He knew better than to make promises that weren’t guaranteed.

“No more calls from Moscow?”

“Smith hasn’t mentioned any more and I’m sure he would if there’d been more. I don’t think he feels very secure. What about Jacobson?”

“Anxious to get the stuff I’m assembling. The passports for Radtsic and his wife are in the diplomatic pouch tonight.”

“That should reassure Radtsic.”

“Something’s got to, according to Jacobson. He thinks Radtsic is getting critical.”

“Tell Jacobson to give Radtsic whatever assurances the man needs. I don’t want the frightened old bastard collapsing on us,” ordered Monsford. “What about Paris?”

“All in hand.”

“I want something else,” announced the Director.

“What?”

“My own recording system, here in this office. Getting Radtsic safely here is going to be the coup of our lives. I don’t want any foul-ups through faulty memories, which came close with the Lvov business.”

The only memory at fault with the Lvov business is yours, thought Straughan: and if there’d been a proper record you wouldn’t be overflowing the chair you’re sitting in. Aloud he said: “I’ll organize it.”

“And I want personal, manual control. We mustn’t overlook the Official Secrets Act and necessary security clearances.”

“No,” agreed Straughan. “We shouldn’t overlook that.”

Charlie Muffin for the first time felt engulfed in paralyzing, impotent helplessness. He’d faced seemingly impossible, about-to-die crises before but always been able to escape, sometimes badly bruised, sometimes badly burned-often physically, too often metaphysically-always survived. Because every time it had only ever been he who’d had to survive, no one else to worry about or to consider. Now it wasn’t only he. It was Natalia-probably bewildered, doubtless confused, with only the vaguest indication of what had happened-and innocent, vulnerable Sasha, whom he’d always pledged to care for and protect.

He wouldn’t fail them, Charlie determined. He was enduring this animal-farm charade because the finance and facilities of the combined agencies were his best chance of rescuing Natalia and Sasha. None of which, from Jane Ambersom’s almost sadistic dismissal earlier that day, were going to be made available to him. So it had to be just he, alone. Better, far better. He’d never liked-never trusted-other people with him or acting on his behalf: not so much from doubts of their loyalty but from doing things differently, less effectively, than he could.

Doing it by himself wasn’t going to be easy, Charlie realistically acknowledged. Although he’d always insisted on working alone, there’d usually been an embassy upon which he could call for falsely named passports and air or road escape and cyberspace communications, if the ultimate shit hit the ever-spinning fan. And money: unlimited operational finance, safe openingly available whenever he needed it, which he always had, the more so since his marriage to Natalia. He’d date-staged the transfers from Jersey, so there’d still be some left there, once he’d got away from here. That wouldn’t be as easy as slipping his leash the first time. But this was different. This, quite literally, was life or death: Natalia and Sasha’s life or death. Nothing was going to prevent his keeping them alive: alive and eventually with him. At last.

James Straughan, who was an asexual bachelor, lived in Berkhamsted, almost sixty miles south of Charlie’s Buckinghamshire interrogation lodge, with an almost totally disoriented mother whose evening meal he had just finished feeding her when his telephone rang.

“We’ve got a match,” declared the duty officer at the Vauxhall headquarters of MI6.

“No doubt?” demanded Straughan, continuing with generalities because his was an insecure line, although the London call was being patched through a router.

“None. What do you want me to do?”

“Keep everything until I get there tomorrow.” If he told Gerald Monsford tonight, the awkward bastard would probably have him immediately return to London personally to courier the stuff to the man’s Cheyne Walk flat. Straughan considered cleaning, bathing, and getting his mother ready for bed a far more important duty.

Maxim Mikhailovich Radtsic patiently stood on the other side of the bed, watching Elana set aside her assortment of things, knowing from every neatly stacked item, predominantly photographs, that it was a selection she’d made and unmade several times before and hated her having to do it yet again.

“That’s everything,” she said triumphantly, looking up.

“No,” he refused, bluntly. Watched by Elana, it had taken Radtsic two hours of fruitless searching for listening devices but he still insisted on loud radio music to defeat any monitoring installation.

“I’ve kept everything to the absolute minimum!” she protested, her voice wavering. “That’s all our memories.”

“I haven’t been told yet how they’re going to get us out but it’ll almost certainly be by air. Luggage, even luggage going into the hold, is photographed. This amount-and these pictures-would be opened and trap us.”

“I can’t go with nothing!”

“You have to go with nothing. Everything is going to be new: our lives, our names, house, everything. All new. No history.” It was madness talking, even softly, like this!

“I can’t,” she pleaded. “That’ll be … that’ll be dying.”

“Staying here will be dying. Literally.” This was asking too much of her.

“I don’t care! I don’t want to go. Won’t go!”

“It wouldn’t just be us. It would be Andrei, too.”

“That’s not fair.”

“That’s reality.”

“Help me, Maxim! Please do something to help me!”

“I will. I promise I’ll do something.” What? he wondered, scrubbing the perspiration from his face with the back of his hand. Until this moment he’d never considered-had no conception-what field agents had to endure.