Red Star Burning

8

Charlie slept intermittently, aware of the infrared monitoring, and feigned sleep when he’d been awake, his concentration entirely upon how to reverse some of the impressions he’d conveyed during his original questioning in the desperate hope of gaining some personal involvement in the rescue of Natalia and Sasha. He’d stupidly confronted them, outargued the ridiculously mind-seized deputy director-general, for Christ’s sake! He could probably deceive a woman as obdurate as Jane Ambersom but realistically it wouldn’t be as easy with either Aubrey Smith or Gerald Monsford. And not just them. The recordings would be reexamined and soberly reanalyzed, every pause and nuance tested for the slightest suspicion-prompting, overeager ambiguity. Ambersom had been more than overeager. Desperate: as desperate as Natalia had increasingly sounded during the pleading calls that had been torturously played back to him.

Charlie wished he could listen to those recordings again. The words had registered and he’d known it was Natalia’s voice and not an impersonation, but in that brief, totally startled awareness he hadn’t properly heard them. Not the intonations or hesitations or an emphasis she might have imposed for him to gauge how exposed she and Sasha were. No, he didn’t need to hear the recording, Charlie corrected himself, once more refusing the self-deception. He knew exactly how exposed Natalia and Sasha were, just as he knew the pressure under which she’d been put to make the calls. He couldn’t-wouldn’t-fail her this time. Had she failed him? Charlie frowned at the unthinking jealousy, straining for recall. Igor Karakov, he remembered: a teacher at Sasha’s school. Just as quickly as the doubt came, Charlie rejected it. A friend, Natalia had said when he’d been in Moscow the last time: only a friend. She wouldn’t lie.

As he had earlier, escaping from Chelsea, Charlie fought against the impatience to get up earlier than usual, to be ready. If Smith or Monsford didn’t isolate his eagerness, the visually watching, voiceprinting analysts might. He actually remained in bed longer than normal but, as he had for the Jersey expedition, caught up during his showering and shaving, noting the outside rain.

“You got umbrellas?” he asked the guard, when his breakfast rolls and coffee arrived: if the debriefing was to be before noon, there wouldn’t be morning exercise.

Predictably there was no response. Charlie ate half a roll he didn’t want and crumbled the remainder to disguise how much he’d left and took his customary second cup of coffee, which that morning he didn’t want either. He didn’t try to read beyond the headlines of The Times that had come with his food, but did it twice to prevent the cursoriness being obvious. There was no newspaper connection with the Lvov episode, but to double check-as well as to fill time-Charlie scrolled through the Sky and BBC news channels and drew another blank. Charlie’s hopes rose when there was no exercise escort accompanying the breakfast retrieval and they grew when the exercise delay extended to twenty minutes. It reached a full thirty before the two men arrived. Neither wore a waterproof.

Charlie said: “We’re going to get wet.”

The man in charge said: “The rain will have stopped by this afternoon,” and Charlie’s surprise at getting a response collided with the satisfaction of knowing there was going to be another interrogation.

He had to proceed slower than a snail with hammer-toed flat feet as painful as his own, Charlie reminded himself, entering the familiar animal-murder room.

The three faced him in the same order as before but with the addition today of the replay machine, from which at once Charlie knew there’d been further Moscow contact. It was important for him to hear the new recording before making his intended pitch. The delay would enable him to detect attitude changes among those sitting in judgement upon him: to detect the slightest nuance to help what he wanted to achieve. Gerald Monsford sat Buddha-like with his hands familiarly cupping his expansive stomach, as if it required support. Charlie thought Jane Ambersom’s buttoned-to-the-neck Mao suit the perfect if outdated uniform for an indeterminately sexed torturer and at once stifled his wandering reflections. There had to be only one undivided concentration today and it didn’t include antagonism toward the deputy director-general, of whose personal dislike he’d already had too much evidence. It was Aubrey Smith who opened the session, which momentarily surprised Charlie.

The man said: “There’ve been some developments.”

Some developments, isolated Charlie. “What?”

“Three Russians accredited to their embassy here burgled your flat last night.”

Was there something here that he could twist to his advantage? wondered Charlie, hopefully. “Were they caught?”

“They’re currently in custody,” said the Director-General. “They’ll claim diplomatic immunity, of course. But it’s a criminal offense and we’re going to use it to the maximum.”

“What’s that mean?” pressed Charlie, curious at the unexpected leniency of the exchange.

“You’re dead,” announced Monsford, hurrying to appear more visibly and audibly participating than he’d so far been. “The death certificate is dated six weeks ago.” He looked theatrically at his watch. “By now there’ll be a named headstone on an old grave in Moss Side, Manchester-where your false identity legend has you being christened-and the church burial records will have been registered accordingly.…”

“That cover legend, unmarried bachelor clerk in a government pensions office, is fully in place-as you know it has been for years-and will easily satisfy the sort of media inquiries that’ll follow the Russians being named,” picked up Smith, seeing the other Director’s intrusion as confirmation of the man’s glory-seeking determination. With pointed clarification, he went on: “I’ve got the mystery already prepared-why should three accredited Russian diplomats burgle the no-longer-rented apartment of a very minor, now dead civil servant who has no surviving family and no known friends?”

Charlie didn’t let his mild impatience at the double act cloud his recognition of danger. “I was identified-pictured on Moscow television-during the Lvov investigation.”

“Not under the name in which your flat was rented and it won’t be your photograph we’ll leak to the media,” refused Smith.

Charlie saw an opening but hesitated, deciding to wait. “Moscow-the FSB-won’t accept any of it.”

“Of course they won’t,” agreed Monsford, choosing his intervening moment. “What they will accept is that you are in a protection program in which they don’t stand a chance of ever finding you and that the Vauxhall flat was nothing more than a major embarrassment trap that’s cost them three agents, two of them unidentified until today. To lose that many is bad enough and what they won’t know but which will terrify them is that we’ll expose their failed Lvov operation. We burned them with Lvov and now we’ve rubbed salt into very painfully sore wounds.”

And the FSB had Natalia and Sasha, balanced Charlie. The fragile opening hadn’t widened, as he’d hoped. He’d wanted a lot more. There was still the unheard recording. Indicating the side table, he said: “There’s been contact from Natalia, hasn’t there?”

“It’ll be the last, after the arrests,” predicted Jane Ambersom, finally entering the discussion.

“Can I hear it?”

In the time it took the woman to activate the machine, Charlie prepared himself, determined against the slightest reaction to Natalia’s voice. The initial seconds of traffic sounds were louder than before: an open street pod, not an enclosed kiosk, he guessed. When it finally came-to a stomach jump, despite Charlie’s expectation-Natalia’s voice was unexpectedly even, as if she’d prepared herself. “They’re examining my debriefing records. I don’t know how much they suspect. Remember, Charlie…” The cutoff was abrupt, either Natalia hurriedly putting down the receiver or having it snatched away and slammed back by someone else.

Charlie had let his head drop, not forgetting his earlier determination against reaction but cultivating it now, although undecided whether seeming to seize this late some significance from what Natalia had said would appear too obviously staged. But could he realistically hope for anything more? Jane had rejoined the two directors and all three were staring expectantly at him as Charlie looked up. The moment he did, the overly aggressive woman said: “What’s the matter with you?” and despite her uncertain sexuality, Charlie would have willingly kissed her. Instead he shook his head, as if confused, continuing to string out a response.

“What’s wrong?” repeated the woman.

It had to look as if the realization was starting out half formed and needed to be coaxed from him. “She’s very frightened: more frightened than she ever was when we had to be careful in Moscow. But she believes they know about us. And if they do, she’s realized she’s caught up in the biggest espionage coup Russia has ever attempted: the total failure of the biggest espionage coup Russia ever attempted. They’ll be convinced-any intelligence organization would-that she knew I was going to wreck it.”

Jane Ambersom turned and said something inaudible to the Director-General but to which Smith shook his head, not turning to her. The man said: “Is there something important in what you’ve just heard?”

They weren’t dismissing him out of hand! Charlie said: “What she hopes I’ve understood from what I’ve just heard. She’s made an offer, her bargain, for her and Sasha to be got out.”

Histrionically, Jane pushed herself back into her chair, snorting in customary derision. “Do you possibly imagine, in whatever dream world you’re living, that you’ll convince us that we’ve got to get your supposed wife and daughter out of Russia?”

The totally fixated deputy director could have chosen what other part of her androgynous body she wanted kissed or otherwise caressed, decided Charlie, in further gratitude. “You’ve established Natalia is not my supposed wife but my legally married wife?”

“Yes,” confirmed Monsford, before either of the others.

Concentrating upon the MI6 Director, Charlie went on: “And you’ve also established, from studying my assignment record, that I have never sabotaged anything involving this organization during my marriage or association with Natalia?”

“Yes,” agreed Monsford, again.

Continuing to address the MI6 chief, Charlie chanced the slightest of exaggerations: “And you know, from her length of service not just with the current FSB but the previous KGB that she’s not just a but the senior debriefer for Russian external intelligence. You’re intelligence experts, all three of you. But not even you can begin to imagine the number of defectors and spy offers and doubles and dissidents she’s interrogated: the answers she could provide to the mysteries and uncertainties over the past twenty years.”

“Are you trying to persuade us that’s what she’s offering by her reference to your debriefing records?” asked the quiet-voiced Aubrey Smith, even more softly than usual.

“I’m not trying to convince you,” said Charlie. “That’s what I’m telling you, as honestly as I’ve told you everything else.”

“If she had all that to offer, why didn’t she come with you in the first place?” clumsily challenged Jane.

I could have done a ventriloquist’s act with this woman, thought Charlie. “Because until now she hasn’t confronted the reality of a firing squad after undergoing interrogation that she knows would extend beyond her sort of debriefing into the KGB-perfected horror of psychiatric hospitals. While all the time knowing-because they’d remind her every day, as the most horrific part of that torture-that Sasha would be committed to the worst of Russian state orphanages.”

“The psychiatrist was right. The man’s mad,” declared Jane Ambersom. They’d once more moved from the formality of the interview after Charlie’s departure but she was unable to sit, instead pacing up and down in front of the dead fireplace around which the easy chairs were set.

“The psychological assessment wasn’t that he was mentally ill,” corrected the Director-General. “It was that Charlie Muffin would recognize more quickly than anyone else the limitations of a new life in a protection program-which indicated the highest analytical intelligence that Cowley had known-as a result of which Charlie was suffering an understandable depression but which he doubted would ever become suicidal. The suicide watch was a shock warning to Charlie, not a necessary precaution.”

“I don’t believe there can be a single opposing argument against our getting Natalia and the child out of Moscow,” declared Monsford, who’d gone through the charade of calling MI6’s Vauxhall Cross building-on his cell phone from Charlie’s exercise patch-before returning for the review.

“Which has to mean there’s an update from your call?” sardonically questioned the fidgeting deputy director.

“There’s already open speculation on Izvestia and in Pravda of retaliatory rebuttals to our arrests.”

“Why should I be surprised about that?” challenged the woman.

“Moscow News is going further,” continued Monsford, who’d added to what he considered his success in getting the address of Charlie’s London flat leaked to the Russians by swallowing his antipathy to David Halliday and authorizing the suggestion being offered by Halliday to the man’s contact in the English-language publication. “They’re hardening the rumor into a reciprocal intelligence sensation. It’s being picked up and repeated on Western wire services.”

“There’s not the slightest indication that what’s going on in Moscow has any connection whatsoever with what we’re discussing here, beyond some obviously enforced telephone contact from a woman stupid enough to trust Charlie Muffin,” rejected Jane. “Our stupidly responding to it is the intended reciprocal intelligence sensation.”

“If Natalia’s got as much as half of what Charlie sketched out, it’s a gold lode we could mine for years,” judged Aubrey Smith, reflectively. “There’s no obvious connection, but it would be on a par with the Lvov business. We could tie in knots not just Russian intelligence but every other service of any importance, up to and including the CIA, who’ve double-crossed and used us, both of us, for the past two decades.”

“There can’t be an argument against getting her and the child out,” repeated Monsford, anxious to stoke the other man’s belief.

“Except the obvious one that it’s a trap, a match-maybe even more than a match-for what the Russians fell into by burgling Charlie’s flat,” Jane persisted.

“I’d like us to continue our cooperation by actively considering a joint rescue operation,” declared Monsford, dismissing the woman’s opposition.

“Why joint?” demanded Jane, instantly seeing the possibility of personal revenge. “You want her and the child, why don’t you get them out by yourself.”

“Willingly, despite their being the wife and daughter of one of your officers,” accepted Monsford, confronting the expected question. “You couldn’t, of course, expect us to share whatever she told us of all those famous defectors you didn’t know were spying against this country until they gave their press conferences in Moscow.”

He had no alternative but to go along with Monsford, decided Aubrey Smith, although not for the reasons the MI6 Director was advocating. He’d only too recently survived an internecine war: he wasn’t going to risk walking away from this one until he knew far more than was immediately obvious. “Let’s start the planning tomorrow.”

“I want put on written record my total opposition to any of this,” insisted Jane Ambersom.

There was an echoing silence, each man hoping the other would respond to give him a follow-up advantage. Monsford, believing himself to have the most to gain, broke first. “I’m confused. First you demand to be included in whatever we do. Now you demand your complete opposition placed on provable record. Have I missed something in what we’ve been discussing?”

“My matching confusion also,” quickly came in Aubrey Smith, denying the SIS director whatever he’d set out to achieve.

Surprisingly, there was no renewed flush from the woman at this new confrontation. She said: “I don’t see any dichotomy. You intend a reaction that risks both our organizations being exposed to international ridicule and derision. While opposing whatever you do-and wanting that opposition recognized-I believe my continued involvement as devil’s advocate to be absolutely essential to maintain a balancing voice.”

The immediate impression of Aubrey Smith, who was fundamentally as honest and subjective as possible in the professional position he occupied, was that his recently imposed deputy had established a necessarily important safeguard. Gerald Monsford’s equally quick thought was that Jane Ambersom had put herself forward as a further-and an additional-sacrificial offering if his real objective went wrong, which even the best laid espionage plans so frequently did.

Responding first, the MI6 Director said: “You bring to mind Tennyson’s line of Janus-faces looking diverse ways.”

“I defer to your superior knowledge not just of classics but the art of the two-faced,” Jane shot back. “Didn’t Tennyson also remark that men may come and men may go but others lasting longer?”

“Has anyone got anything further to offer?” demanded Aubrey Smith, impatiently.

“I suspect Jane believes herself outnumbered,” Monsford said, flushed. “Why don’t we achieve a better balance by adding Rebecca to our panel.”

It would give her the opportunity to oppose the whore, Jane Ambersom realized. “I think that’s an excellent suggestion.”

It would probably put him at a three-to-one disadvantage, but at any disaster inquest Monsford’s manipulative hand would be more obvious, rationalized Smith. “If it’s the decision of the prime minister for this to be a joint operation, it establishes complete equality,” he appeared to concede.

“I look forward to tomorrow,” said Monsford, believing himself the victor.

“So do I,” said the woman, believing the same for herself.

Which was the more murderous place to be, Moscow or here in London? wondered Aubrey Smith. He’d have to be very careful that having survived once, none of his own blood was spilled, either literally or figuratively.

An hour later the London Evening Standard broke the story of the Russian burglary of Charlie Muffin’s flat.

An essential attribute for an intelligence officer is the ability to become a wallpaper person, someone able to merge indistinguishably into any background or surrounding. Harry Jacobson practiced the art more assiduously than most, as he was practicing it now, doubly invisible deep within the shadows of a buttressed, prerevolutionary wall opposite Natalia Fedova’s Moscow apartment on Pecatnikov Pereulok. The determination to perfect a chameleon camouflage developed early in his MI6 career, spurred by the fear that his noticeably cleft lip, a birth defect, would preclude his becoming a field operative, to overcome which he’d consciously adopted the appearance of a shoe-polished, department-store-suited bank clerk, complete with wire-framed spectacles and closely cropped hair. To conceal the harelip he cultivated an unclipped, walrus-style mustache that matched his hair’s natural blondeness, the disguise now so accustomed that it was not until this reflective moment that the facial similarity between himself and Radtsic’s heavy Stalin-like growth occurred to him. It could, decided Jacobson, be his escape from this additional surveillance assignment upon Natalia Fedova, which he resented as an extra and unnecessary burden. It was very definitely an objection to be put to James Straughan, maybe even as early as tonight.

Natalia Fedova arrived, on foot, at precisely the same time as she had the previous two evenings, wearing the same light summer coat and carrying the same briefcase, as always in her left hand with the entry key in her right. And, again as worrying as the previous two evenings, unaccompanied by the child who had until now always been with her.

London weren’t going to like the absence, Jacobson decided: they weren’t going to like or understand it at all.