Red Star Falling

16

‘Is this a loyalty test?’ unexpectedly demanded Natalia, looking down at the helicopter-delivered dossier Ethel Jackson had put on the breakfast-room table between them. Natalia didn’t attempt to pick it up.

Ethel half smiled, quizzically. ‘A what?’

‘All that you’re asking me to do, to assess. Is it all genuine, something on which you need a judgement? Or am I being set a defector test?’

Ethel’s smile broadened. ‘You arrived here with pretty positive credentials as the wife of Charlie Muffin.’

‘That’s not an answer to my question.’

‘No, Natalia,’ agreed Ethel, patiently. ‘Nor is this a loyalty test. What I’m asking you to look at is the transcript of an early CIA debriefing of Irena Yakulova Novikov, which we’re asking you to give your professional opinion upon the extent of her co-operation. In what we’re asking you to examine she’s made some claims. We want you to judge those claims, if you can: tell us whether you believe they’re genuine or whether she’s trying to inflate her importance to negotiate a better resettlement deal—’

‘With the Americans?’ interrupted Natalia.

‘We’re liaising with the CIA.’

‘How’s that going to help free Charlie? That’s our understanding: what I’m trying to do is find anything that’ll help get Charlie out of Russia. I’m not here as a defector, needing to prove my worth. I’m here as Charlie’s wife, with his child.’

‘Which I already told you is how you’re being treated. But there is something you should know: something I was going to tell you if we hadn’t got into a loyalty discussion. Moscow has officially asked for diplomatic access to Maxim and Elena Radtsic. And to Irena Novikov, whom they believe still to be in this country.’ The woman paused. ‘And access to you.’

Natalia lapsed into silence, her forgotten coffee mug cupped in both hands. Finally looking up, she said, ‘You know my answer.’

Ethel shook her head. ‘I have to advise you of the approach.’

‘You know my answer,’ Natalia repeated.

‘Then Moscow will be told you absolutely refuse,’ said Ethel.

Gesturing to the blank-eyed television in the corner of the room, Natalia said, ‘I haven’t seen any official Moscow announcement of any defections.’

‘There hasn’t been any,’ confirmed Ethel.

‘That’s not normal.’

‘Neither is the defection of the executive deputy of the FSB. The guess is that they intend using his son to pressure Radtsic to go back.’

Natalia shook her head. ‘There should have been an official announcement.’

‘What’s the decision going to be on the others?’

‘The requests were only lodged last night, our time. I doubt they’ve been told: certainly not Irena, with the American time difference.’

Natalia once more looked to the American package on the separating table. ‘Is Radtsic co-operating as she is?’

‘I believe he is.’

‘Believe?’ queried Natalia. ‘Don’t you know?’

‘No, I don’t know,’ replied Ethel sharply, letting her irritation finally show at the other woman’s attitude. ‘And I’m not seeking your help about Maxim Radtsic, not yet at least. I’m looking for your professional guidance to use to Charlie’s benefit, particularly now there’s likely to be diplomatic contact to learn what’s physically happened to him. Which I thought you were as anxious to learn as a lot of other people who know, respect, and want to do everything they can to help him.’

Natalia became silent again, staring this time at the diplomatic package. At last, all belligerency gone, she said, ‘I’m sorry. That wasn’t right … how I’ve been behaving wasn’t right.’

Now Ethel remained silent, not giving Natalia an easy escape, needing the pause anyway to recover from her near mistake of talking not of people who knew Charlie but of those who loved him, which Natalia might have misconstrued. Finally she said, ‘Sylvia Elphick, Sasha’s teacher, talked to me last night: wanted to clear something before mentioning it to you.’

‘Clear what?’ said Natalia, instantly attentive. Sasha had left with the woman fifteen minutes earlier. Ethel had waited until they’d left before producing the American material.

‘She’s seconded here because of her obvious clearance: normally she teaches children of our diplomats about to be posted overseas,’ explained Ethel. ‘None of the children are there for long: everything’s transitory, no binding friendships, no exchange of family details. She’s thought, as we both have, about Sasha being here by herself and wondered if she wouldn’t benefit from going there. She thinks—’

‘No!’ rejected Natalia, positively. ‘It’s an obvious place for the Sluzhba to look: find her and trace her back here. Or just take Sasha, by herself, knowing that would be worse than killing me outright.’

‘My people wouldn’t consider it without carrying out every check.’

‘No,’ refused Natalia again, just as positively. ‘It’s too dangerous, whatever checks were carried out. It’s not a decision that needs to be made this soon. I need Charlie here, to talk it through with him.’

‘I won’t mention it to London, take it forward at all,’ soothed Ethel.

‘What about Sylvia Elphick?’ demanded Natalia. ‘Has she mentioned it to anyone at the school?’

‘She’s got the highest security clearance. She knows better than that. And she’s not at the school, is she? She’s here, tutoring Sasha.’

‘I want it independently screened: Sylvia Elphick screened,’ insisted Natalia. ‘It’s the sort of simple mistake that could lead them here to Sasha and me.’

‘I’ll see it’s done,’ promised Ethel. ‘And I’ll talk to Sylvia myself.’

‘I should do it.’

‘I should,’ contradicted Ethel. ‘I’m the officer with the authority here.’

Natalia finally picked up the package, hefting it in her hand. ‘I’m not being paranoid. This is how careful I’m always going to have to be.’

She was verging on paranoia, thought Ethel. She’d seen it before but this was the first time that a child had been involved. She’d have very carefully to monitor it: Natalia and the Sasha were her responsibility in every definition of that word. Had she loved Charlie? Ethel asked herself, giving way to the nagging reflection. Very much, she answered herself. Was it, in everyone’s wildest dreams, conceivably possible to get him out of whatever he was going through now? No, she accepted, in another immediate answer. Which wasn’t any reason at all to stop trying.

After a largely sleepless night of brief hope, quickly dashed by unusually objective examination, Gerald Monsford reluctantly acknowledged that the Russian approach wasn’t his desperately sought chance to re-establish some lost presence before a tribunal he gauged clearly to be siding against him. And with it, even more hopefully, the chance to puncture Rebecca Street’s over-inflated conviction that she had the authority to handle the Russian approach to Maxim Radtsic without him, which had been the dismissive message relayed through Harry Jacobson when he’d telephoned Hertfordshire. Jacobson hadn’t shown the proper respect, either, trying to talk about his Paris posting instead of admitting he’d failed to establish the demanded monitoring of the woman. As always, Monsford timed his close-to-last entry into the committee room to avoid any impression of uncertain nervousness and didn’t try, either, to be the first to speak after Sir Archibald Bland’s formal repetition of the Russian’s overnight diplomatic note. Neither, to Monsford’s irritation, did Aubrey Smith. Which resulted in Bland’s invitation, which Monsford momentarily didn’t understand, for Jane Ambersom to respond.

‘I agreed with Ms Street last night that she should immediately tell Radtsic and his wife: we know how closely Radtsic watches television news and we both decided it would have been a mistake for them to have heard of Moscow’s request through an official announcement from anyone but us,’ took up Jane, at once. ‘She told me during our second conversation, less than an hour later, that Radtsic was subdued by the news, which didn’t particularly surprise either of us although he would obviously have expected the request. Radtsic said he wanted to think about it overnight. Ms Street’s delayed her meeting with them today until after our session here. She expects Radtsic to agree. It’ll be his opportunity to raise the situation of Andrei with Russian officials.’

The anger boiled through Monsford at the arrogant impudence of the two women, cutting him out of it all, as if he didn’t exist! He was sure, too, they would have spoken to Bland or Palmer or maybe both, further isolating him.

‘Telling Radtsic at once was the right thing for her to have done,’ Palmer was saying, the praise increasing Monsford’s fury. ‘Diplomatically we can’t oppose or obstruct any meeting. It’s entirely a decision for Radtsic and his wife.’

‘What about Irena Novikov?’ asked Monsford, hoping to generate some criticism with which to get into the discussion. ‘Aren’t we diplomatically in a difficult position, my MI5 colleagues having handed her over to the Americans without informing Moscow?’

‘No,’ deflated Palmer, at once. ‘She officially sought sanctuary in the West and having been given the choice, chose America. The decision to tell Moscow is Washington’s and only then if she requested it; whether she did or not I don’t know.’

‘We’ve obviously told Washington about Moscow’s request, through their FBI liaison here,’ came in Aubrey Smith. ‘We don’t expect to hear back until tomorrow.’

‘I was thinking more of how Moscow might react at learning where she is,’ struggled Monsford.

‘Whatever they might do or say, it would be an empty gesture,’ dismissed Smith. ‘And they’d be risking our disclosing their failed CIA penetration, wouldn’t they?’

He was losing again, Monsford recognized, the impression of being in a contracting box returning. ‘I believe this is the opportunity and the time for us again to consider the public disclosure of Radtsic’s defection. It might have been sensible to tell Radtsic ahead of a Russian announcement but at the moment of my coming here today there still hadn’t been any disclosure from Moscow. But inevitably there will be: it could even be that they’re planning to cause us some fresh embarrassment. I believe we should pre-empt whatever they do with our own media release that we’ve got the executive deputy of the Russian FSB here in Britain.…’ He looked directly at Aubrey Smith. ‘It’s not now going to affect the outcome of what happens to our people they’re holding. And for the first time we’d be ahead, not behind this situation. We could link it to the French episode and gain a lot of publicity advantages there, too.’

‘I think there’s more reason than ever for us to hold back,’ disputed Smith. ‘God knows what it is, but I agree Moscow’s probably saying nothing at the moment for a reason. I think we should wait to discover what that reason is.’

‘Leaving us again to follow, not lead.’ Monsford sneered, judging himself on safe ground at last.

‘I think there’s an argument in favour of our getting ahead of the Russians,’ said Attorney-General Sir Peter Pickering, making a rare nonlegal contribution. ‘After five days we’ve not come up with anything to counter Moscow’s accusations or in any way deflect or minimize the media attacks, which is, let’s not forget, the reason we’ve been brought together like this.’

‘I know something proactive would be welcome within my section of the government,’ said the unnamed head of the anonymous Foreign Office group.

‘That’s certainly more generally true,’ supported the Cabinet Secretary. ‘So much so that it’s a decision that could be reached here and now, without the need for Sir Archibald and myself to consult elsewhere.’

At last! thought Monsford: he was carrying the meeting with him, overwhelming the no-longer-smirking bastards opposite. With that thought came another, how he might further restore his image, but he needed to think it fully through, ensure he’d considered all the potential pitfalls. He had only himself to depend upon now: had to think of everything, do everything, without anyone else’s input. He said, ‘The decision appears practically unanimous.’

‘I’d like my dissent recorded,’ said Smith, looking in the direction of the secretariat. ‘I also want, to the point of insisting, to ensure that no reference whatsoever is made of Natalia Fedova or of her refusal to meet anyone from the Russian embassy.’

‘Agreed, of course,’ accepted Bland, at once.

Perfect, thought Monsford. Should he press for the Russian declaration to be announced through MI6? Leave it while he was ahead, he decided. His next move had to be with the CIA, in what Shakespeare so aptly called in terms of friendship with thine enemies.

Maxim Radtsic exchanged looks with his wife at Rebecca’s announcement. Neither spoke. Recalling her earlier strategy, Rebecca remained silent, too.

Finally Radtsic said, ‘Announcing my defection at this moment makes it a challenge to their demand for access.’

‘There hasn’t yet been a public demand,’ qualified Rebecca, ready for the reaction. ‘London felt when it comes there might be something derogatory towards you: something that might affect what you’re hoping to achieve with Andrei.’

There was another unspoken exchange between husband and wife. Radtsic said, ‘So now the people of Russia will know I am a traitor: the world will know.’

‘It’s your decision whether to tell the world why you chose our protection against what was going to happen to you if you remained in Russia,’ countered Rebecca.

‘That’s what they’ll call me, if I meet the diplomats: a traitor, betraying his country!’ declared Radtsic, familiarly talking more to himself than to the two women.

‘It’s also your decision whether or not to meet them,’ reminded Rebecca.

‘It would have to be safe,’ insisted the Russian. ‘We would have to be safe, Elena and I.’

‘You will be, I can guarantee that,’ assured Rebecca. She was annoyed at the Russian request coming now. It was a distraction, an entire day’s interruption into what was going so well.

‘Where will it be?’ asked Elena.

‘London. A government building,’ said Rebecca, glad of Jane’s briefing thirty minutes earlier.

‘When could it be?’ asked Radtsic.

‘As soon as possible.’

‘Will you be there?’ pressed Radtsic.

‘No. There will be two Russian-speaking lawyers.’

‘That’s no guarantee of safety!’ dismissed Radtsic.

‘Every member of the Russian contingent has to be diplomat accredited to the Russian embassy, someone known and approved by the British government.’

‘There will be FSB officers among them.’

‘There is a routine: an understanding,’ set out Rebecca. ‘Their contingent is limited to six diplomats. Is it conceivable that Moscow would risk the automatic arrest of six accredited diplomats by making any physical move against you in a room fitted with an alarm that would bring protection into the room within seconds?’

‘To kill me, prevent my telling you all that I’ve learned and know from twenty-two years as executive director of both the KGB and the FSB, it’s entirely conceivable that Moscow would sacrifice six diplomats, a dozen diplomats, whatever the repercussions.’

‘Then I take it you’re refusing a diplomatic meeting?’ said Rebecca, hopefully. There was still time to resume yesterday’s debriefing.

‘No!’ denied Radtsic, hurriedly. ‘This can’t be as the result of my letter, can it?’

‘No,’ agreed Rebecca, well aware the letter was still in London.

‘This will be my opportunity to talk about Andrei: arrange his coming here.’

Rebecca decided there was nothing to be achieved by arguing against the man’s deluded conviction that getting his son to England would be as simple as that. Elena looked quickly sideways at her husband, as if she were about to make the point, but looked away just as quickly. Rebecca spread her hands in a gesture of helplessness and said, ‘Then how can a meeting be held?’

‘Your prison facilities? Are the visits conducted through protective glass screens?’

‘I’m not sure,’ admitted Rebecca, wishing she knew the answer.

‘Find out,’ ordered Radtsic, peremptorily. ‘I’ll meet them but only inside a prison where Elena and I are on one side of a bulletproofed screen, with them on the other. There must be no way they can get to us.’

‘What if your embassy won’t agree to their diplomats conducting the meeting under those conditions?’ anticipated Rebecca.

‘I’m the executive deputy of the FSB they want to get back to Moscow,’ recited Radtsic, like a mantra. ‘To achieve that they’ll meet me anywhere I dictate. Tell them it’s a prison or no meeting. It’s not negotiable.’

Maxim Radtsic must have been a bigger bastard to work for than Gerald Monsford, although for entirely different reasons, thought Rebecca. ‘I’ll make it very clear.’

‘Soon,’ insisted Radtsic. ‘I want it as soon as possible: tomorrow, the day after at the latest.’

‘We’ll try to arrange it as soon as we can,’ promised Rebecca.

‘Until I’ve had the meeting we won’t talk as we have been talking. Understood?’ said Monsford.

Fuck! thought Rebecca. ‘Understood,’ she said.

‘You watched?’ anticipated Rebecca. The Hertfordshire facilities were designed for an outwardly impenetrable, inwardly electronically monitored safe house which did not require a totally isolating telephone pod within the control room. Rebecca still decided it was preferable to talk from there than from her room, where she would have had to disassemble the white-noise protection to make an audible call.

‘All of it,’ confirmed Jane. ‘A prison’s easy enough, Belmarsh is obvious, but you’re right about Russian objection. The most obvious is that the visitor facilities have CCTV, to which they’re sure to object.’

‘Is the volume okay at your end? I’m in the control room as I was for our earlier call,’ warned Rebecca. The conversations would be recorded, she knew.

‘I can hear fine,’ acknowledged Jane.

‘His refusal to continue talking to me is a setback.’

‘The Foreign Office is going to push for the day after tomorrow.’

‘I don’t believe in quick Russian decisions like I don’t believe magic wands bringing rabbits out of a top hat, particularly after what you told me earlier about our going public with Radtsic’s defection.’

‘We lost our argument against doing so.’

‘He isn’t happy about it.’

‘You think he might use that as a reason for stopping the debrief?’

‘Maxim Radtsic’s not someone you can second-guess about anything.’

‘Until we get a decision from Moscow you’re going to have some time on your hands, aren’t you?’ pressed Jane.

‘I’ve got a lot of lip-reading transcription to go through.’ From what she’d briefly scanned so far, Harry Jacobson had been right: what little there had been to transcribe contributed nothing.

‘Won’t you be coming back to London at all?’

It would be another commitment, acknowledged Rebecca: one that could totally jeopardize her succeeding Monsford if the overstuffed pig was successfully driven out of office. Or would it? Couldn’t it, conducted with the finesse of the Machiavelli that Monsford boasted of being — recorded for later disclosure even, which would be truly Machiavellian — represent completely the opposite, not the action of a betrayer but that of a loyal, guidance-seeking executive concerned at the behaviour and mental fitness of a superior? Rebecca said, ‘I would certainly expect to, if only briefly. I need to be here the moment there’s a positive response from Moscow.’

‘Of course you have,’ agreed Jane, following the other woman’s lead. ‘And it’s my function, as your officially appointed liaison, to make sure you are. I have all your numbers.’

‘I look forward to hearing from you,’ said Rebecca.

‘There’s a recording of it all?’ demanded Monsford, glad now that he’d broken away from preparing his approach to the CIA to take Harry Jacobson’s call, which he’d initially refused.

‘It’s automatic and instant, like the film: it will already be with you,’ reminded Jacobson, cautiously. He put himself at that part of the control-room tree shield where he knew there were no sound sensors to pick up his cell phone conversation.

‘I meant one for me, for the proof that she’s conspiring against us with the bastards across the river!’ said Monsford, in an irritable mood swing.

‘Jane Ambersom’s her officially appointed liaison with the committee,’ said Jacobson, carefully.

‘For Christ’s sake, stop reciting like a parrot and tell me what I want to know! Was there any indication in anything they said that they’re working together against me?’

‘Nothing that I can remember but I wasn’t listening for anything like that!’ said Jacobson, pushing the anxiety into his voice. ‘Is that what you suspect?’

‘It’s what I damned well know to be happening. I’ll listen to it here but I want you to get me my own copy. There might be something I can use.’

‘Shouldn’t you report what you suspect to the security investigation: it’s surely relevant?’

‘Leave me to decide what’s relevant. I just want you to get me a copy,’ said Monsford, slamming down the telephone and turning back to the Eyes Only e-mail with which he intended to open his personal communication with the CIA director in Langley, Virginia.

What I’ve copied isn’t what you want to hear, mused Harry Jacobson back in Hertfordshire, disconnecting the digital system from his cell phone. His uncertainty now was what to do with it to guarantee his best personal advantage.

‘Enough!’ declared Mikhail Guzov, slapping his hands against his knees. ‘We’ve talked sufficiently for today.’

Charlie was glad to end the final session supposedly detailing his unrecorded conversations with the assassinated militia detective Sergei Pavel, knowing he’d unsettled Guzov with the misinformation he’d introduced. ‘I’ll be able to exercise earlier than I expected.’

‘It is a wonderful day,’ unexpectedly enthused the Russian. ‘Let’s walk together.’

‘Aren’t you frightened of being ambushed by special forces with monster dogs?’

‘Today you’re known to be with me, so we’ll be quite safe from over-sensitive dogs,’ assured Guzov, giving his impression of a smile.

‘If it’s safe, I’d like very much to get beyond the immediate surroundings of the house,’ hurried Charlie, rising to bring the Russian up with him, not wanting the man to realize the revelation. Charlie’s spetsnaz remark had been a throwaway line, with no intended substance, certainly not to get an unnecessary confirmation of the deception the Russians had never imagined his isolating.

Having hurried the man outside, Charlie held back for Guzov to pick the route, falling into uncomfortable parallel step to a path through the trees.

‘You appear to have had far longer conversations with Pavel than I’d imagined,’ said Guzov.

The interrogation hadn’t ended, Charlie acknowledged: Guzov was obviously equipped for the conversation to be recorded as they walked. Charlie was unconcerned at the al fresco resumption, confident his carefully limited lies and misinformation were beyond challenge, despite the constant distraction of believing he was fingertip close finally to realizing his own personal misdirection. ‘A lot can be said in a short time if the conversations were detailed, as ours were.’

Guzov swatted ineffectually at the inevitable mosquito attack. ‘It all fits, makes sense, but at the same time I feel something is wrong.’

That had been Natalia’s remark, about the Radtsic dossiers she’d been given to analyze, remembered Charlie, in his split-minded concentration: wrong but easily explained then by the dossier material being freshly copied, not duplicated from old files. ‘Wrong in what way?’

‘I can’t pinpoint it,’ admitted Guzov. ‘The dates, maybe. How could that much conversation have been fitted into so little time. That’s what has to be wrong, how much it’s possible to fit in the time you had available.’

‘You must believe me it was more than sufficient,’ insisted Charlie, only just managing to finish the easy answer as the long-sought awareness engulfed him. No, Charlie refused. It had to be a mistake, another ridiculous misdirection.

‘We’ve reached the road,’ announced Guzov, beside him. ‘Have you come far enough?

‘More than far enough,’ said Charlie, for the first time in his life regretting his elephantine mental recall.