Red Star Falling

11

‘How did it go?’ They didn’t eat out as much since Jane had virtually moved in, and Barry Elliott was particularly glad they weren’t that night, after the Washington exchanges throughout the afternoon.

Jane sipped her wine reflectively. ‘Not good. We could only challenge the total illogicality of Straughan leaving provable records of his dealing with an FSB double, and Monsford threw that right back at us, demanding a reasonable alternative for what his evidence showed, which we didn’t have. Straughan did provably make a call to a known FSB operative — it doesn’t matter that he’s a double — and within days Charlie’s flat was burgled by the FSB.’

Elliott spread his hands out towards her. ‘You must have some argument against Straughan going bad!’

‘We can’t find one,’ admitted Jane, reluctantly. ‘You in a hurry to eat? Your T-bones are too big for one person: I thought we’d split one between us.’

‘No hurry,’ dismissed Elliott, quickly. Which there wasn’t: he wanted to get around to things gradually, as part of the normal end-of-the-day conversation, hoping she’d fully recognize what — but more important, why — he’d done. ‘What’s tomorrow’s schedule?’

‘Wilkinson, the only one of the original support group to meet Charlie face-to-face. And Flood, who was briefly with him and actually witnessed the shooting.’

‘Neither is going to be able to knock Monsford’s story of an MI6 penetration, are they?’ That was important to implant in her mind for later.

Jane nodded in agreement. ‘But we can show up all the inconsistencies of the attack on Charlie. But from our near-total failure today, tomorrow might not be worth a row of beans either. Monsford can just shrug his great fat shoulders again and say he can’t explain anything with Briddle and Halliday dead.’

‘Have you thought yet that Monsford could be right about the penetration: that Straughan wasn’t ever your friend, just trying to con you about Monsford working to wreck everything?’ asked Elliott, hopefully starting to move the conversation in the direction he wanted.

‘He wasn’t conning me!’ refused Jane, the defensive belligerence immediate.

‘Just setting out the chessboard,’ quickly retreated the American. ‘It seems from where I’m sitting that Monsford is a long way ahead and that you’re an even longer way behind.’

Jane poured more wine, saying nothing.

This wasn’t going the way he wanted, Elliott recognized. ‘What about Rebecca being your way in?’

‘Got an inconsistency there, too,’ offered Jane. ‘She wasn’t at today’s hearing.’

His second chance, hoped Elliott. ‘Any reason given?’

Jane hunched her shoulders, lapsing into silence again. Then she said, ‘I’ll start dinner.’

‘You haven’t asked about my day,’ stopped Elliott.

Jane smiled up, apologetically. ‘Sorry. How was your day?’

‘Irena’s dynamited the logjam, quite literally.’

Jane came anxiously forward in her chair. ‘With something to help us with Charlie?’

‘Not yet,’ said the American, to Jane’s visible disappointment. ‘But I’m setting up a deal that keeps you right inside the loop.…’ He hesitated. ‘And I’ve put myself on the line doing it.’

‘How?’

‘It’s a CIA bag, so logically the co-operation should be with Monsford and MI6. But I’ve argued Irena was your case first: that Charlie broke her and that the Bureau, me, maintained the liaison with you because the CIA wanted to distance itself from more fallout.’

‘And?’ pressed Jane, hoping she was correctly following what he was saying.

‘The Agency wants everything, and I mean everything, that happened between Charlie and Irena. Their psychological profilers, those guys, want a comparison from which to judge her now. She’s started off claiming that through Lvov in the very beginning the FSB manipulated America in both Iraq wars.’

Jane snorted a laugh. ‘You’ve got to be joking!’

‘That’s what I said when Washington first told me. Irena challenged her interrogator to check CIA and State Department intelligence in 1990 against 2003. There’s a fit, a good enough fit to make it believable. The CIA certainly believe it.’

‘Jesus!’

‘I said that, too. Here’s the deal I want to set up: you give me everything and I’ll get you back as much as I can persuade them to give me in return. The better — the fuller — your stuff, the more I can negotiate to get back.’

‘Cutting out Monsford?’

‘I’ve warned my guys about the MI6 penetration: said involving MI6 could blow it all away. After what happened with Lvov in the beginning, nobody’s going to risk another CIA earthquake. The aftershocks haven’t subsided yet.’

‘It’s not going to help us with Charlie, is it?’ said Jane, reflective again.

‘No,’ admitted Elliott, at once. ‘But it’ll sure as hell help you and me. Which is what I’m trying to do, help us.’

She wasn’t as excited, as grateful, as he’d expected, decided Elliott, disappointed.

He’d destroy her, Gerald Monsford determined: destroy her far more effectively, more completely, than he’d destroyed Jane Ambersom, because that bitch hadn’t directly challenged him like this one with yesterday’s filmed performance from Hertfordshire, which most of the people in the enquiry would have seen by now or at least heard about from those who had. The retribution had to be what Shakespeare had Othello call a ‘capable and wide revenge.’ And he was sure as hell going to achieve that. He was going to ensure that Rebecca Street was helplessly entwined in the tangling labyrinth he was creating, eventually to be exposed as James Straughan would be exposed, the joint architects of all that had gone wrong. Which Monsford knew he could do, as painstakingly as he was enmeshing everyone else, layered strand of culpability after layered strand of culpability. But this wasn’t the time: not even the moment to think any further about it. This was the day MI5 was introducing its initial witnesses, people who’d actually been there, seen what happened, and he couldn’t risk the slightest distraction.

It was enough, then, that Rebecca be alongside him, after Jacobson’s overnight advice that Radtsic was refusing to see anyone, talk to anyone, until he and Elena had sufficiently considered Rebecca’s proposal. Having her with him — supported as well by some of the comments she’d made in Hertfordshire — was enough to imply that Radtsic’s suggestion might even have come from him and that her function had been merely to relay it.

The entry of the co-chairmen and the opening formality had by now become so ritualized that those participating came close to ignoring it, rearranging themselves and their belongings and whispering asides. There were no huddled exchanges between the MI5 group, though. Unlike the preceding day, provision had been made in advance for Patrick Wilkinson and Ian Flood. The five entered together and took their seats without any conversation. Jane Ambersom stared intently but blank faced across at Rebecca, who returned the look just as expressionlessly. Rebecca’s impression was that the opposing group looked confidently well rehearsed.

Beside her, Monsford came forward over his prepared notepad, his concentration absolute.

Patrick Wilkinson, a vaguely distracted, clearly nervous man, identified himself as the field supervisor of the MI5 support team for an extraction of which Charlie Muffin was overall Control. Initially there had been some confusion among the group at Charlie’s apparent disappearance in Amsterdam. Wilkinson had expected the central, co-ordinated supervision to be from MI5’s Thames House headquarters after Charlie’s disappearance but realized by the second day that the three MI6 officers were communicating independently with London. The two groups were physically thrown together within the embassy but the socializing was limited, even awkward. The three MI6 officers spent most of their day within their closed-off rezidentura: with nothing to do but await orders, Wilkinson and his two colleagues had spent a lot of time in the embassy gymnasium and indoor swimming pool. The MI6 men had never joined them. Wilkinson said that on the third day he’d openly challenged Stephan Briddle about the separate contact with London, concerned that two command structures could lead to confusion and endanger the extraction.

‘Briddle replied that his orders to deal direct with London came personally from the Director,’ declared Wilkinson; and Aubrey Smith, who was leading the testimony, paused, looking expectantly across the table for an intervention, but Monsford made no attempt to speak.

‘What was your reaction to that?’ resumed Smith.

‘I said I’d talk to London about it. My thought, to prevent confusion, was that control might be concentrated through MI6. Briddle told me not to bother. Which is what I was told when I spoke to my own operational director. I was told that there were concerns about the joint operation and that I was appointed field supervisor of my two MI5 colleagues and we, too, were to work separately. That order was reiterated after the Russian arrest of the tourist group Charlie had used.’

‘What was the response of the MI6 officers to that arrest and the awareness that Charlie Muffin was in Moscow?’

‘They virtually put us under observation, which was initially ridiculous, restricted as we all were to the embassy. Neil Preston, one of my colleagues now under Russian arrest, lost his temper and asked what the hell was going on. Robert Denning, one of the MI6 officers also now under arrest, replied that they didn’t know: that they were getting orders, without explanation, from day to day. Stephan Briddle overheard and there was an argument between them.’

‘What about the two resident MI6 officers?’ switched Smith.

They scarcely ever saw Harry Jacobson, the head of station, insisted Wilkinson. The man actually appeared to have distanced himself from his own people. There was not a single occasion during their time in Moscow when Jacobson had mixed socially. In contrast, David Halliday, the other resident, had tried very hard to mix but was ostracized by his MI6 colleagues, which Wilkinson and the other two MI5 men didn’t understand. Halliday had eaten with them twice in the embassy canteen, wanting to know about Charlie, whom he’d known from Charlie’s earlier posting. Halliday had called Charlie the most unpredictable but best intelligence officer he’d ever known.

‘What did Halliday say about his relationship with his own people?’ asked Aubrey Smith.

‘That his face didn’t fit and that he feared he was on his way out. And that it wasn’t fair,’ replied Wilkinson, at once.

The stiffening expectation across the table was almost too fleeting for Rebecca to isolate before Smith added, ‘Was that all Halliday said?’

‘No,’ replied Wilkinson. ‘He told us he thought he was being set up to be a fall guy, like Charlie.’

‘He thought he was being set up, just like Charlie?’ echoed Aubrey Smith.

‘Those were his exact words.’

Monsford scribbled furiously.

The ladies’ toilets were the most obvious contact place apart from the refreshment annexe but Rebecca hesitated for Jane’s confirmation from the direction she took leaving the enquiry room. By the time Rebecca entered, it seemed most of the other attending women were ahead of her in the Victorian-era mausoleum of floor-to-ceiling white tiles and echoing, constantly throbbing pipe work. Both Jane and Rebecca initially ignored each other. Both let others beat them to cubicles to clear the sprawling room. Between them they reduced the remaining occupancy to three, in addition to themselves, when they finally emerged from stalls neither had needed anyway, managing adjoining washbasins and mirrors. Their original interest gone, the three remaining women ignored them, engrossed in their own conversation.

Talking directly into her own reflection, Rebecca said, ‘I tried to reach you last night, to thank you for what you tried to do questioning Jacobson.’

‘I was staying with friends,’ comfortably avoided Jane, rearranging already arranged hair. ‘I wondered where you were yesterday until I caught up with the safe-house transmission.’

The three other women trailed out. Still using her reflection, Rebecca smiled at them. Only one smiled back.

Jane said, ‘You thought any more about our coffee-break chat?’

‘A lot.’

‘And?’

‘I’m still thinking.’

‘What Monsford’s trying is bullshit: it’ll be exposed as such.’

Rebecca didn’t respond.

Deciding the risk was justified, Jane said, ‘I met Jamie the week before it happened,’ and admired the other woman’s tight-faced control.

Rebecca finally said, ‘He was very frightened at the end.’

‘Aren’t you?’ When Rebecca again didn’t respond, Jane said, ‘With Jamie gone, you need support from the sort of people you most certainly haven’t got where you are now.’

Rebecca finally turned directly to the other woman. ‘What is it for you, personal or professional?’

Jane considered the question. ‘Mostly personal at the beginning, I suppose, when the opportunity was suddenly there. I don’t think it is anymore. It’s gone way beyond that now: now it’s very much professional. Monsford’s the danger to himself — and to you — but not any longer to me. You sure you can win all by yourself?’

‘I didn’t have the slightest doubt before Jamie died.’

‘You don’t have Jamie anymore. You’re by yourself.’

Rebecca shook her head, a gesture of uncertainty.

Time for further risk, Jane determined. ‘Do you have it, Rebecca? Have what Jamie made.’

‘I didn’t know — don’t know — about Rome,’ unexpectedly declared Rebecca.

Jane was too surprised immediately to respond. ‘You surely don’t believe … can’t believe…!’

‘How do you explain it?’

‘I don’t explain it. But don’t forget Vasili Okulov is a known double MI6 used a lot in the past.’

‘The log entry unquestionably referring to Charlie Muffin was in Straughan’s handwriting,’ persisted Rebecca.

‘However incontestable the supposed proof, it’s just not possible for Jamie to have gone over: to have betrayed anyone or anything,’ rejected Jane, loudly.

‘I need to be surer,’ protested Rebecca, her uncertainties seeping through.

‘Maybe it’s in what Jamie set up before he died,’ chanced Jane.

‘It’s…’ started Rebecca, the denial half formed, but stopped.

‘What, Rebecca?’ demanded Jane, guessing the nearness of finally learning just what Straughan had achieved.

‘I need to be sure,’ repeated Rebecca, lamely.

‘Whenever are we one-hundred-percent, no-doubt-whatsoever-sure about what we do?’ pressed Jane, maintaining the pressure. ‘You’ve got a simple choice. The way it’s turned out for me, I actually beat the bastard. That’s all you’ve got to be sure about: where it’s safer — survivable — for you to be.’

The reassembly summons sounded distantly through the heavy Victorian door.

‘My mobile’s there,’ said Jane, offering her card. ‘I don’t want any more missed calls. But I do want calls: the quicker and the sooner the better.’

The resonance of Wilkinson’s session-closing remark still hung sufficiently in the enquiry room for Aubrey Smith to refocus it simply by a third repetition. ‘David Halliday, one of the two MI6 resident officers in Moscow, told you he believed he was being set up to be a fall guy?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘For what?’

‘He didn’t know. His answer, when I very directly asked him, was a fall guy for everything that was going on but from which he was being kept out. Charlie said practically the same when we finally met.’

Aubrey Smith allowed the second echo to reverberate throughout the room. ‘When, precisely again, was that?’

‘When he made his first call to the embassy Charlie told me at once that nothing he said, no arrangements we made, were to be shared with MI6,’ recounted Wilkinson. ‘On the second call, he said he believed MI6 were working on something different from what we thought to be the operation we were there for, something that was being kept from us: that his involvement with any of us was going to be limited to an absolute minimum.’

‘Did you have, or get, any indication of MI6 working upon something quite separate from what you understood to be the MI5 extraction?’

‘London lifted the restriction upon our leaving the embassy after Charlie surfaced, which very clearly activated MI6. Whenever we left, they attempted to follow. On the day I finally met Charlie there was a near-farcical situation, but for its unknown, underlying seriousness. I realized later that Charlie was setting his own safety test. He had us move around the Moscow Metro, to his direction, before he and I met. And he monitored it all. From the moment of our going underground, we were followed by MI6. Charlie was communicating on one of the cell phones issued from here. From wherever it was he concealed himself, Charlie had my two officers lead MI6 in the wrong direction all over the underground system.’

There was a shift of irritation from Gerald Monsford and another scribbled note. Caught by the movement, Smith paused again, looking to the other director. Unmoving again, Monsford gazed back, saying nothing.

‘Your two colleagues led MI6 all over Moscow,’ picked up Smith. ‘What were you doing?’

‘What they were doing was for my benefit: for me to meet Charlie undetected as he demanded. It was to exchange passports, to enable Natalia Fedova and her daughter to fly out.’

‘Which you succeeded in doing?’

‘Which I thought I’d succeeded in doing,’ qualified Wilkinson. ‘Charlie didn’t trust anyone, even his own colleagues. I didn’t know where he was living, what he was doing. He knew I’d try to follow him when we finished: my instructions from London were to bring him back into the extraction as it had been planned. To prevent my following he personally escorted me back into the underground — we’d actually gone up to street level, to a park, to talk — and remained on the platform to ensure I left. The following day he told me he’d seen Stephan Briddle two carriages behind the one in which I was sitting. Charlie believed Briddle had been with us all the time, apart from in the park, and had boarded the train ahead of us, expecting Charlie to be with me.’

‘To do what?’

‘Charlie believed he was in physical danger that might even go as far as an attempt upon his life.’

He’d missed something, Charlie acknowledged. Probably missed several things, because nothing was ever totally understood in the wilderness of intelligence, but there’d been one all-important, pivotal mistake and because of it he’d been thinking wrongly, assessing and judging wrongly, ever since.

What was it? How far back had it occurred? Could he recover: do anything to reverse or correct it? Most important of all, did it endanger Natalia and Sasha, whose escape from Moscow still wasn’t positively confirmed? And could he really be so confident that there was no risk of his being shuttled off to oblivion in a Siberian gulag?

His first demand, inextricably linked to the second, was the core to everything, and the answers to that weren’t going to come, if they came at all, like divine guidance on the road to Damascus. He had to go back, to the very beginning, to the moment he’d stood at the side of an autopsy slab in a Moscow mortuary looking down at the faceless, tortured body of a man who’d imagined himself capable of walking away from the CIA and the FSB with a bagful of money for keeping the secret of the Lvov penetration.

What about recovery, reversing any potential damage? He was hardly in a physical position to recover or reverse anything. But he didn’t need to be, came another, quick contradiction. His physical situation wasn’t relevant. What he needed was to know. Knowing, or believing he knew, where he’d gone wrong could provide the guide he so desperately needed to so much else.

Which brought him to Natalia and Sasha. He had to be right about their getting to England! It was inconceivable that Mikhail Guzov, who believed bullying to be an interrogation technique, would not have used their interception as a weapon, a mentally crushing club with which to beat him, if they’d been seized at Vnukovo airport. It remained unconfirmed but with so much else to resolve it had to stay an outstanding uncertainty, not a forefront concern.

As did, Charlie objectively conceded, his growing conviction that whatever transpired in the coming weeks, maybe even months, it was no longer an automatic outcome that he’d be transferred to some distant gulag.

He’d have to continue with his own experiments, Charlie reluctantly concluded, even if they did threaten an encounter with the spetsnaz, which he very much wanted to avoid.

‘I don’t understand why there had to be a suspension,’ complained John Passmore, as they settled back into the Director-General’s Thames House suite. ‘No statement the Russians issue this afternoon can affect what we were producing.…’ He extended a cupped right hand. ‘We had the room like that! Monsford was squirming.’

Aubrey Smith smiled at the ex-soldier’s military exasperation. ‘For all their esoteric titles and pretensions to understand intelligence workings, we’re dealing with very senior Whitehall civil servants, the ruling mandarins, dealing in turn with Westminster politicians each and both of whom prefer their lives to run in straight lines, unhindered or derailed by the unexpected. To them, Moscow’s advance announcement is a worrying uncertainty, a diversion from the straight line. Until they’ve heard what Moscow’s going to say or do, Bland and Palmer — and all their little backroom dwarfs — are disconnected, slowed if not actually paralyzed by the uncertainty of the unknown.’ The man smiled again. ‘Which, I agree — and hope — could be close to how Gerald Monsford feels despite our losing our momentum. But we really have done well with Wilkinson and I believe this adjournment is to our advantage: it gives time for what Wilkinson said to be properly absorbed. There’s less chance now of it being confused by whatever challenges Monsford makes or by Flood’s account of the actual shooting.’

‘I couldn’t be happier at the interruption,’ declared Jane, impatiently. ‘I’ve got a lot to tell you about Irena Novikov in America and of the conversation I had with Rebecca Street during this morning’s break.’

She recounted both in sequence, taking a full half hour to ensure she omitted nothing, conscious of the growing reaction from both men towards the end.

‘America will cheat: keep a lot back for themselves,’ assessed Passmore, at once.

‘Of course they will: so will we,’ accepted Smith, pragmatically. ‘But again I think whatever we get will be to our benefit. It sounds as if Irena is opening up far more than she did to Charlie—’

‘And let’s not forget Natalia’s feeling about that,’ reminded Jane.

‘You think we should pick up Washington’s offer?’ questioned Passmore.

‘Absolutely,’ enthused the Director-General. ‘We’ve got everything to gain and at this moment I can’t see what we’ve got to lose.’ Looking to Jane, he said, ‘What’s Elliott think they’re going to get through us?’

‘Everything there was between Charlie and Irena: not just the confrontation but everything that happened between them in Moscow, before he brought her here,’ set out the woman. ‘And what Radtsic gives us.’

‘So you’ve told him about Radtsic?’ seized Smith, sharply.

‘I wanted to reciprocate the offer of getting everything from Irena Novikov,’ replied Jane, twisting the truth against the criticism. ‘As you said, we stand to get more from them than they can get from us.’

‘Particularly as Radtsic isn’t telling us anything,’ Passmore pointed out.

‘He won’t be telling us anything anyway, will he?’ said Smith. ‘Monsford’s got Radtsic, when he eventually starts to talk. It’s the enquiry decision we have to assess at the moment, but that doesn’t extend to our sharing with America.’

‘And the CIA have Irena,’ added Passmore. ‘The logic’s surely that they’ll go direct to Monsford.’

She shouldn’t have expected they’d accept the American offer without considering the potential difficulties, acknowledged Jane. ‘The liaison was established through the FBI because so many in the CIA hierarchy got burned in the aftermath of the Lvov exposure,’ reminded Jane. ‘I’ve worked hard maintaining that conduit, which has come good with Elliott’s offer. As far as he’s concerned, the co-operation with both FBI and CIA continues through us.’

‘So what are you proposing?’ pressed Smith.

‘What I thought you’d already decided,’ hurried Jane, anxious to avoid further difficult questioning. ‘We take the offer, reciprocate the exchange as much and as best we can.…’ She hesitated, momentarily undecided. ‘In the circumstances in which we’re currently embroiled with MI6—and already having told you about this morning, with Rebecca Street — I didn’t think we were considering the finer niceties of inter-agency behaviour?’

Aubrey Smith looked up quickly at the remark, went as if to speak but by not doing so created an awkward silence that Passmore hurried to fill. ‘You really believe Rebecca’s got what Straughan bugged?’

‘Without the slightest doubt, after this morning,’ said Jane, relieved to move on. ‘It’s Straughan’s provable contact with Vasili Okulov that’s spooked her.’

‘You think Wilkinson’s evidence, with Flood’s to follow, might persuade her?’ asked Smith.

Jane shook her head, uncertainly. ‘I don’t think it’s Monsford’s manoeuvring she’s worried about. And I don’t think she seriously doubts Jamie’s loyalty for a moment, either. I think she’s using Rome as an excuse, an escape, from making the final commitment.’

‘Where does that leave us?’ asked Passmore.

‘Where we’ve always been with Rebecca, knowing — knowing without doubt now — that she’s got what we need to bring Monsford down but having to wait until she comes to us,’ said Jane. ‘Which she will, eventually.’

John Passmore responded at once to his pager, looking up as he read it. ‘Moscow is milking every last drop from this. Their statement’s being released in an hour, our time, according to TASS.’

‘Time enough for me to have a moment, alone, with Jane,’ said Aubrey Smith.

‘I’m sorry,’ Jane apologized at once. ‘I shouldn’t have spoken as I did.’

‘That’s not what I want to talk to you about, although it fits in with what you had to tell us,’ said Aubrey Smith. ‘I’ve had a lengthy internal security report, telling me about you and Barry Elliott.’ He raised a hand against an interruption. ‘It was nothing targeted: just routine.’

‘It’s a private, personal situation.’

‘It can’t be, from what you told John and me minutes ago.’

‘There’s a separation between what I told you minutes ago and what’s happening between Barry and me,’ insisted Jane.

‘Did he tell you that’s how it is for him?’

‘He’s not using me: wouldn’t use me.’ She couldn’t be more positive of anything, thought Jane.

‘Aren’t you using him?’

‘I don’t think I am.’

‘I think it’s indivisible, for both of you. And I think it’s a hell of a weapon for Monsford to use against you, both personally and professionally, if he ever learned what’s going on.’

‘I do not want to stop it personally. And I don’t believe I can stop it professionally, either,’ said Jane.

‘Which, very succinctly, encompasses the problem.’

‘I’m not conceding that at the moment there is a problem, although I admit Monsford could turn it into one.’

‘Be very careful, far more careful than you’ve been so far,’ urged Smith.

‘Do I have your support?’ Jane asked directly.

Smith hesitated. ‘I will professionally support you for as long as I can if things go wrong.’

‘Thank you,’ said Jane. It was, she accepted, the most she could expect: maybe more than she could have expected. Having freed herself of him, it was unsettling to confront the thought that she was providing a weapon that Monsford would use, given the slightest chance.