Red Star Falling

15

The drinks tray was at hand but untouched, and Maxim Radtsic greeted Rebecca smiling broadly, an expression she couldn’t recall from any previous film relay involving Monsford or Jacobson. Elena had moved her chair closer to her husband’s accustomed place in the conservatory. She was smiling, too, and as always immaculate: today’s dress was a Paris-purchased blue cashmere.

‘The letter’s on its way?’ demanded the man.

‘I personally took it to London last night,’ assured Rebecca. ‘By now it should be on its way to Moscow, if indeed it’s not already there. It will be delivered to your Foreign Ministry by a senior diplomat from our embassy.’

‘Why not by the ambassador himself?’ Radtsic frowned. The aggression had gone but the arrogance was still there.

‘He’s on standby for whatever negotiation might arise from your letter,’ replied Rebecca, smoothly. ‘It’s all being very carefully, properly, handled.’

‘That’s good,’ accepted Radtsic, nodding an invitation for Elena to agree. He looked towards the drinks but didn’t reach out towards then.

‘Very good,’ echoed the woman, dutifully.

‘I’m pleased you’re satisfied we’ve kept our side of our agreement,’ prompted Rebecca.

‘So today we properly begin,’ accepted the Russian. ‘It’s going to take a very long time.’

Conscious of the preceding night’s insistence upon maximizing Radtsic’s disclosures in anticipation of Moscow obstruction, Rebecca risked the directness: ‘You were telling me how you evolved the Lvov scheme: let’s go on talking about that.’

In what Rebecca inferred to be the man’s final awareness of his professional betrayal, Radtsic looked very obviously towards where he’d located a camera, holding the gaze for several moments. Elena broke her husband’s concentration, tentatively half reaching out towards him: Radtsic shifted the look towards the hand still too far away for him to touch, physically shaking himself like a water-soaked animal discarding its burden.

‘It was so good, so brilliant in every way. Oriental in its concept and execution: none of the do-this-day hurry of you or the CIA. It was cultivated, allowed to grow at its own pace.’

This wasn’t boastfulness, an exaggerated beginning to enhance his value, Rebecca determined. Radtsic was stating a fact beyond challenge or qualification. But more to himself than to her or to unknowns beyond the watchful camera lens. Radtsic had lapsed into a reverie, in retreat maybe from his betrayal: she shouldn’t try to bring him out from it, not unless the reminiscence stalled altogether. She feared it had when he didn’t resume but instead remained, slumped now, seeming oblivious to his surroundings, and this time there was no outstretched hand from Elena, who stayed motionless. Rebecca did, too, deciding it was too soon to intervene. Moments stretched to positive, countable minutes. Way beyond the conservatory, at the edge of one of the far-away coppices, she got the impression of the movement of outside guards, although not a definite sighting. Rebecca hoped, anxiously, that Harry Jacobson, with whom there had been no contact since the day before, wouldn’t be tempted by the frozen scene relayed on the monitor to intrude, ruining the mood. She’d give it a little longer: a minute or two.

‘It was to have made me a legend.’ Radtsic’s oddly cracked voice suddenly came into the conservatory, close to startling the two women despite their expectation. ‘There would have been medals: a commemorative plaque in the Lubyanka close to Feliks Djerzhinsky, our founder.’

She’d done the right thing remaining silent, Rebecca congratulated herself. That had to be her strategy, letting the man talk: the omissions could be memorized or picked up from the transcript to be queried later.

The coming to power of Gorbachev and Yeltsin had been a genuine revolution that no-one within the KGB had anticipated, Radtsic disclosed, head sunk in memory. The entrenched politburo waged its internecine wars and musical-chair coups, which occasionally brought about one of the familiar cosmetic name changes to the intelligence structures but in reality the government within a government apparatus had been the Soviet Union, the fabric holding it together: it was unimaginable that a political change could result in anything more unsettling than another renaming, which within the Lubyanka scarcely amounted to more than reprinting official stationery.

Ironically, it was the shattering reality of the Gorbachov upheaval that saved the Lvov scheme: that and its already having been sanctioned, protecting it from review because of its low-profile planning as a long-term, slow-maturing operation. And the carefully selected participants required the training that had brought them so close to such outstanding success.

Stepan Lvov had been Radtsic’s personal choice, as he’d personally selected Irena Yakulova Novikov to be Lvov’s permanent Control and case officer. He’d identified the potential of both from the moment of their KGB induction: he’d been the regional KGB chairman in St Petersburg, able to groom them from the beginning and bring both with him to Moscow within a month of his own executive-directorship promotion.

Rebecca was relaxed now, intent on every word but able at the same time to study Radtsic: Elena, too. Radtsic wasn’t any longer worrying about the camera, seemingly still unaware of anyone else in the room. He needed frequent pauses, sometimes groping for a word and other times correcting his choice. Elena was actually leaning forward in her seat, listening so intently that Rebecca guessed that this was probably the first time in their married life that the woman had heard any details of her husband’s work.

He’d considered the Lvov proposal constantly endangered throughout Gorbachev’s era, continued Radtsic, particularly when the dismantling of the Soviet Union began. From the beginning, he’d shielded his operation and his protégés from postings to republics in which the KGB and later the FSB were disbanded and their officers reassigned or dismissed altogether. He’d further protected them by assigning them away from Moscow’s immediate political focus or interest.

Abruptly, unexpectedly, Radtsic openly laughed but still to himself and remained smiling when he talked again of the irony that his idea had never required Lvov to emerge a star within the KGB or the FSB. It was America’s CIA that Lvov had to convince that he was the most valuable intelligence asset they had ever turned into a double agent.

‘It really was the greatest irony of all,’ insisted the still-smiling Radtsic. ‘Imagine it if you can. The Russian intelligence service, literally trawling the world through all its rezidentura for the suitable CIA victim gradually to be convinced that in Stepan Lvov he had the career opportunity of a lifetime. And you wouldn’t believe how long it took us finally to settle upon Ed Bundy.’

Their first potential candidate was Steve Brogan, who was the CIA bureau chief in Santiago but who became more useful as a sacrifice when Brogan began trading in Chilean cocaine. His exposure seriously destabilized the Chilean government of the time through Brogan’s trafficking links with two ministers as well as deeply embarrassing Washington when it became public. There were encouraging meetings and the bait of at least two genuine intelligence leaks to Luke Morpeth, the CIA deputy at Canberra, before he was medevaced back to Washington after a heart attack. A permanent assignment at Langley after his recovery ruled him out of Lvov involvement, although obviously contact had been maintained. It had been ridiculously easy sexually entrapping Josh Atkins soon after his secondment to the U.S. embassy in Helsinki and just as easy to tempt the man, again with genuine although low-level intelligence, but he was too eager to boast of CIA as well as FSB connections to his Russian seductress: his premature detection would have been inevitable. Atkins, too, had been kept on an FSB leash. There’d been more money and effort — and hope — expended on Harvey Flaxman than on any of his predecessors after the Harvard graduate’s appointment as CIA station head at the London embassy and what was judged to be his perfect suitability for the role the FSB sought: Lvov was on the point of being transferred from his wait-until-called post at Russia’s Rome embassy to coincide with Flaxman’s arrival in London.

‘And then I made a mistake,’ admitted Radtsic, the smile apologetic now. ‘Finding our CIA dupe was taking too long and I was frustrated by the failures. I allowed the leaking of an FSB-manipulated political change in the French government, the repercussions of which hadn’t fully been analyzed. The government fell as the result of Russian intelligence infiltration and Flaxman was moved to Brussels specifically to head the CIA’s intelligence apparatus within the European Union, with no other function or purpose.’

Radtsic coughed, clearing his throat with difficulty, and Elena crossed to the drinks tray to pour mineral water, which the man took with smiled thanks.

‘And at last we found Ed Bundy,’ resumed Radtsic, out of his reverie now, occasionally glancing towards the identified camera. ‘He had been suggested as a possibility when he was serving at the Ankara embassy but left to one side because the profile was that of a man of almost robot-like, unmotivated predictability. But after so many false starts — and a lot of fresh profile analysis — it came to me that an automaton was precisely the sort of man we were looking for. Bundy doesn’t drink. He doesn’t smoke. In all the years he’s been virtually under our control and manipulation — which he’s never once suspected — he’s never so much as once looked at a woman: to test him we even put the temptation in front of him and he didn’t appear to recognize what he was being offered. He’s a notebook keeper, a clock watcher and timekeeper. One of the freely available jokes on the intelligence circuit in Ankara was that he consulted the CIA manual before taking a shit, to ensure he wiped his ass the correct way. The search that finally ended with Bundy took exactly eleven months, from the time it began. At one time, after we moved in on him, I thought it was going to take twice as long to make him ours, so regulations-constipated was the man.’

Radtsic cleared his throat again and for several moments remained frowning as if he’d forgotten the point he’d reached. Abruptly, with another animal-like shake, Radtsic went on that by the time it was decided to target Bundy, the American had been moved to Cairo. Stepan Lvov was posted there within three months of Bundy’s arrival. Irena Novikov followed a month after that.

‘It really was a slow process. And I was too slow recognizing another mistake,’ confessed Radtsic.

‘What?’ questioned Rebecca, after several silent minutes.

‘Lvov and Irena,’ picked up Radtsic, simply. ‘It was obvious, upon reflection, so closely together were they always going to be, but an affair was a complication I didn’t foresee.…’ The Russian held up a forefinger narrowed against his thumb. ‘It came that close to wrecking everything I’d worked so long to achieve. I actually…’

An opening door to Rebecca’s left halted whatever Radtsic had intended to say. Harry Jacobson said, ‘It’s almost one forty-five. I thought you’d like to break for lunch?’

‘A break would be good,’ accepted Radtsic, at once. ‘In fact I think I’ve talked enough for today. I’m tired. I need to think to make sure I’m not forgetting anything.’

‘Of course,’ accepted Rebecca, tight with anger at the interruption. ‘That’s quite enough for today.’

Radtsic poured his first vodka. ‘It’s been nostalgic, talking of the past. How is she?’

Rebecca came within a hair’s breadth of a stumbled response. ‘Irena’s good. Settling in well.’

‘She had nothing to keep her in Moscow, the operation destroyed as Stepan was destroyed by the moronic CIA.’

‘I have no personal contact with her,’ said Rebecca, cautiously. The CIA remark needed later analysis.

‘Of course you wouldn’t,’ accepted the Russian. ‘Would she know that I was here, in England?’

Rebecca hesitated. ‘There’s been no official announcement.’

‘I’d like her to know that she wasn’t alone: that we both got away from our own people as well as the Americans.’

Rebecca said nothing.

‘But I don’t suppose that’s possible, is it? Letting her know, I mean.’

‘No, it’s not.’

‘Pity.’

All the intrusion traps that Rebecca had set in her room remained in place and the white-noise transmitter to defeat telephone monitoring appeared untouched. Rebecca became the immediate focus of the five — three women and two men — still remaining in the security-quarters canteen. She responded to the tentative smiles and nods but chose a separate table at which to eat the Caesar salad she didn’t really want, although she was surprised at how good it was. The burgundy was better than she’d expected, too. She was pouring her second glass when Jacobson entered. He chose a salad, too, but no wine and came directly to her table. ‘Do you mind if I join you?’

Rebecca shook her head, anticipating the intended exchange more than she imagined Jacobson would by the time it finished.

The man said, ‘There’s no executive dining room. I expected you’d eat with the Radtsics. We could probably set something up.’

‘This is okay.’ Rebecca was determined not to let her anger show too early.

‘Are the lights in your room okay? There were some odd readings on the control circuits last night.’

‘The lights are fine. I did a security sweep when I got back from London.’

Jacobson stopped with his knife and fork suspended over his plate, and Rebecca wished he’d wipe away a spot of salad dressing on his overflowing moustache. ‘You did what?’

‘Electronically swept my room.’ She decided against disclosing the white-noise protection. She intended to repeat the sweeps and intrusion traps every day to guard against his believing she’d imagine herself to be safe after just one security check. It would be a relief to take Straughan’s protective recording from its present concealment for another safe hiding place, she thought in passing.

‘You checked for unofficial bugs in an official MI6 safe house!’ Jacobson ignored the waved farewell from one of the five diners as they left.

The man’s disbelief was genuine, Rebecca judged. ‘Isn’t MI6 under a security investigation?’

Jacobson pushed his plate aside. ‘This place is tighter than a drum. You don’t need to worry.’

‘Don’t I, Harry?’ pressed Rebecca, wanting to direct the conversation. ‘There’s too much uncertainty within MI6 at the moment, wouldn’t you say?’

Jacobson hesitated. ‘There’s a lot I don’t understand.’

‘What do you understand, Harry?’ seized Rebecca.

‘Not enough,’ avoided the man, awkwardly.

‘You got written confirmation of your Paris posting yet?’

Jacobson faced her with apparent difficulty. ‘I don’t imagine the director’s got time for that, with everything else that’s going on.’

‘It would have come from the personnel director, after Monsford’s authorization. It’s an automatic process.’

‘I only had the conversation with him a day or two ago.’

‘You spent some time together before you appeared before the committee.’

‘Nothing was said,’ admitted the man.

‘You tried calling him?’

‘No.’

‘What about the lip-reading footage you sent for forensic examination?’ Rebecca was intent on keeping him on edge.

There was another hesitation. ‘I haven’t heard back yet.’

‘And you haven’t called to check that, either?’

‘They’ve only had it a little over twenty-four hours!’

Rebecca poured herself more wine, ignoring an empty spare glass on the table close to the man. ‘I’m resuming Radtsic’s debriefing at ten tomorrow. Before then, giving me time to read and assess it all, I want a complete written fact sheet setting out everything that’s been transcribed, even if it’s just isolated, apparently meaningless words. Because it might not be a meaningless word. It might be something absolutely essential to put to Radtsic.’

Jacobson was avoiding looking directly at her once more. ‘I thought today was very good: a lot more productive than I imagined it would be.’

It was the best opening she was likely to get, Rebecca supposed. And she’d grown impatient with the man. ‘I think it was going very well and could have got a great deal better if you hadn’t blundered in as you did. Which is the only mistake, if mistake it genuinely was, that I’m going to allow you. Don’t you dare do anything like that again as long as I am here, doing the job I’m trying to do. You step out of line just once more and you’re out of here, which I’m sure the Director would be most unhappy about, but which I have the authority and certainly the official backing to make happen. And that official backing is something for you to keep very much in mind from now on. Do you hear and understand what I’m telling you, Harry?’

‘I think I do.’

‘I very much hope you do.’

By now both men fully realized — and had actually agreed — that the professional advantages to them both far outweighed the traditional antipathy between their two agencies, and Larry Stern didn’t resent the short drive into Georgetown from the socially impractical woodland surroundings of Langley. Mort Bering was already in the French restaurant on M Street, their table carefully isolated from others. As he lowered himself into his seat the CIA deputy director nodded his acceptance of a martini to match that already before his FBI counterpart and said, ‘From what you told me on the phone, we’ve got reason enough to celebrate.’

‘Elliott can’t help much yet with a positive time frame but Radtsic’s debriefing is definitely under way.’ Bering smiled. ‘The big unknown is how much the Brits will keep back for themselves.’

‘But there’s definitely going to be an exchange?’ demanded Stern.

‘Nothing written down, of course. But Elliott says it’s one hundred percent guaranteed.’

Stern smiled back at last, touching his arriving martini against the other man’s glass. ‘You know what we’ve got! We’re got a check and cross-reference on what Radtsic says against what Irena tells us. And vice versa.’

Bering shook his head, in correction. ‘Far more, far better, than that. We’re going to get the account of a defecting FSB deputy chairman to put against the story of the case officer of probably the FSB’s almost perfect penetration of our country. This is better than we ever imagined.’

Stern ordered more drinks and to avoid further interruption they disinterestedly both chose steak and a side salad while the waiter was at their table.

‘What about Irena’s claim that the Lvov project was all her idea?’ queried Bering.

Stern shrugged. ‘We’re going to drain her dry before we start asking who had the key to the executive washroom. You know what it’s like, everyone claiming the credit for initiating the big one. We get enough from the Brits, we’ll be able to judge for ourselves who thought it up in the first place.’

Bering gestured beneath the table to where he knew the unseen briefcase was tightly held between the other man’s legs. ‘How much have you taken out from what I’m sending to London?’

‘Not a lot,’ said Stern. ‘Just the actual names she’s given us. The less we keep back, the less, hopefully, the Brits will hold from us. But this gal is giving us a lot of worries.’

‘How?’

‘She fingered a guy in Yemen, a member of the Arab League we’ve been using and trusting for years, as an FSB plant.’

‘Bad?’

‘It’s going to take us a long time to be sure but we’ve already isolated one wrong steer the son of a bitch gave us.’

Their steaks arrived and Bering hesitated for the waiter to leave before he said, ‘You’re right about the potential of what we’ve got, in total. It’s important we keep it that way, tight to ourselves.’

‘That’s what I thought we were doing: it’s certainly what I’m doing. I’m not sharing a piece of this pie with anyone.’

‘I had breakfast with the Director yesterday. He started talking about a minimal task force.’

‘Fuck!’

‘I told him it wasn’t necessary. That we had it all boxed and wrapped between us.’

‘What can you do to block it if it comes up again?’ queried Stern.

‘Convince him we’re getting everything possible, as we are, but I’ve warned Elliott against an approach from anyone but me.’

‘I’ll monitor it from my side. Nothing’s going to happen without my knowing about it.’

‘Something else,’ said Bering, as the thought came to him. ‘If Irena comes up with anything internal, here in the U.S., you won’t forget jurisdiction, will you? We can’t risk giving either director an excuse to move in.’

Briefly, almost imperceptibly, Stern’s face clouded. ‘We’re doing this straight, okay? Mutual co-operation, mutual benefit, both of us happy.’

‘That’s the deal, both of us happy,’ agreed Bering, belatedly aware he’d come close to impugning the other man’s integrity. ‘I’m not likely to forget it.’

‘That’s good to hear,’ said Stern, limiting the rebuke. ‘Let’s neither of us forget it.’

‘I’ve attached a specific note to the internal case files that the decision to exchange debriefings with America is entirely mine, reached without any consultation with either of you,’ announced Aubrey Smith. ‘If there is any subsequent enquiry — if anything backfires — you’re totally uninvolved.’

‘That wasn’t necessary. I agree with what we’re doing,’ said Passmore.

‘I agree, too,’ said Jane Ambersom, disconcerted at the man’s self-doubt at this late stage. There’d been suggestions when she’d still been at MI6 that Smith wasn’t ruthless enough totally to destroy Monsford.

‘It’s technically a decision I’ve the authority to take: I’m ultimately responsible for the American liaison,’ Smith pointed out. ‘I’m exceeding that authority by not telling Bland or Palmer: keeping it from the enquiry committee. There’s no reason for either of you to be part of it.’

‘I’ve already alerted Natalia, through Ethel,’ said Jane. ‘The first of Irena’s transcripts is due from Washington in tonight’s diplomatic bag.’

‘What about Radtsic’s debriefing?’ queried Passmore. Today’s had been the shortest committee gathering yet, limited to an assessment of Rebecca’s morning encounter with the Russian.

‘Let’s establish — have Natalia establish if she can — how much the Americans have edited from Irena’s text,’ said Smith. ‘We’ve got more to offer than they have. I don’t want to give away too much: not give away anything without getting something in return.’ He turned to his deputy. ‘What about Rebecca?’

‘Too soon to hear,’ said Jane. ‘Realistically we’ve got to give her a couple of days.’

She stopped, waiting like Aubrey Smith while Passmore responded to his pager. ‘You’ve got a reason for making it quicker,’ said the operations direction, looking up. ‘Moscow’s just officially requested diplomatic access to Maxim Radtsic—’

‘We can bargain for access to Charlie and all the others,’ seized Jane, at once.

‘I haven’t finished,’ warned Passmore. ‘They’ve also asked for access to Natalia Fedova and Irena Yakulova Novikov. We know Natalia’s answer already. But what are we going to do about Irena? How the hell are we going to handle that?’