Red Star Falling

31

Aware of the renewed apprehension it would cause Natalia, whose fear he’d been assured by Ethel Jackson had begun to diminish, Charlie argued against a protective escort, disappointed at Aubrey Smith’s final insistence, but he persuaded them to let him disembark alone from the helicopter and keep several yards behind to approach the Hampshire safe house. It would have helped if Natalia’s ground security hadn’t so obviously emerged from the surrounding woodland to make their additional presence so obvious.

Charlie was still some way from the house when Natalia hesitantly emerged from the veranda doors, paused, and then more determinedly pressed on to meet him. Charlie stopped, wanting to distance their initial encounter as far away as possible from the perpetually watching cameras. Keeping to their agreed arrangements, Charlie’s personal escorts stopped, too, to keep their distance. It took at least five minutes for Natalia to reach him, so far from the house had the helicopter considerately landed to avoid the disruption of its downdraft. Natalia was serious-faced, looking beyond Charlie to his bodyguards.

‘So you are at maximum protection level?’ she recognized, stopping more than an arm’s length away.

‘It’s an over-reaction,’ dismissed Charlie. ‘You know how everything’s been escalated. You look wonderful.’ She didn’t. Her hair was perfectly prepared — although shorter than he remembered from their last Moscow meeting — and the off-white dress was uncreased but she was visibly thinner, her face lined with strain.

She said, ‘For someone who lies a lot for a living, you’re not very good at it personally. But you’ve certainly dressed for the occasion. Blue suits you.’

‘Jane Ambersom’s choice. The shoes are new, too. They hurt.’ But weren’t entirely responsible for his discomfort, he thought.

‘Do you want to come inside? Sasha will be at her lessons for another hour.’

‘No,’ refused Charlie, positively. ‘Let’s walk around here for a while.’

Natalia looked away to the escorts and then back to Charlie. ‘They’ll have the house cameras on us, lip reading what they can of our conversation, won’t they?’

‘It’s all part of the routine,’ reminded Charlie.

‘I know. But I hate it.’

‘I’m not enjoying it, either.’

She fell in step beside him, walking parallel to the house, but still not putting herself close to him. ‘And you’ve got a permanent bodyguard?’

‘It won’t be forever.’

‘It’ll have to be, for a very long time,’ refused Natalia. ‘Moscow will work out the full extent of the damage we caused.’

‘They’ve caused a lot of damage to us — and to America — in return,’ argued Charlie. ‘It comes out about even.’

Natalia shook her head in continued refusal. ‘It won’t be even for them until they find us: punish us in the only way they know.’ Her voice clogged at the end.

‘They’ll never do that.’

Natalia didn’t reply but followed as he turned away from the tree line to put their backs to the house.

Natalia said, ‘I didn’t know you were shot, not when I was at the airport.’

‘It wouldn’t have made any difference if you had, would it? I told you to go on, whatever happened. That’s what you would have done, isn’t it?’

Natalia didn’t reply at once. ‘I don’t know,’ she said, doubtfully.

‘That was the arrangement.’

‘I still don’t know.’

‘You had Sasha with you!’

‘Yes.’

They walked on in silence for several moments, still apart, their heads lowered against the cameras.

Natalia said suddenly, ‘I’m very frightened.’

‘Yes,’ said Charlie, unhelpfully.

‘You know, don’t you? You’ve worked it out.’

‘Yes.’

‘Does anyone else know?’

‘No.’

‘Sasha will be safe, with you.’

Charlie ignored the remark. ‘How did they find out about us?’

‘I hadn’t sanitized the records as well as I thought I had.’

‘And that led them to the marriage records?’

Natalia nodded. ‘I did what I could to warn you: give you signs. Told you the FSB didn’t suspect me anymore and that I’d seen false documentation about Radtsic’s background on an investigation committee to which I would never have been appointed.’

‘You got me there with telephone calls that you were suspected by the FSB. Why didn’t you include an earlier indication?’

Instead of replying, Natalia said, ‘We always had a pact, didn’t we, Charlie? That Sasha was the most important thing to both of us — more important than either of us to the other.’

‘What was the FSB deal?’ demanded Charlie, avoiding the question.

‘If I got you back to Moscow, to be punished for destroying their Lvov scheme, I’d be allowed out with Sasha. If I didn’t, it would be what we’d always agreed could never happen — Sasha would be put into a state orphanage after I’d been put into a camp.’

‘It wasn’t a choice,’ accepted Charlie.

‘It was and I made it,’ contradicted Natalia. ‘I was told to agree to consular access: that was to be my signal that if I were asked I’d do everything to confirm what Irena Novikov and Radtsic were telling their debriefers: as your wife with every reason to defect I would have been believed without question. I refused the access request, once I got here: they would have known I’d reneged. Instead I agreed to do everything I could to get you out. I didn’t expect to be so totally included in the verification of Irena and the Radtsics. Or to be able to identify the code.’

‘If you hadn’t done that, I’d never have been released,’ acknowledged Charlie.

‘It was the best, the only, thing I could do. And I knew you’d withstand whatever the interrogation was. Which you did, didn’t you?’

‘Yes,’ lied Charlie.

‘Will you forgive me?’

‘You know I will.’ I hope, thought Charlie.

‘Sasha will be waiting,’ said Natalia, finally extending her hand.

Charlie’s hesitation at reaching out to take it was only mental so he knew Natalia wouldn’t have detected it.