Red Star Falling

7

Charlie was discomfited at his swaying unsteadiness, standing without a supporting hand for the first time in almost five days, and after such inactivity his normally awkward feet began to hurt, too.

‘You need help?’ asked Guzov, from the far side of the room. He didn’t move to provide it. Neither did the two ward guards beside the man.

‘I’m fine,’ refused Charlie, wedging his thigh against the bed edge to keep himself upright.

‘Hope you like your new clothes.’ Guzov grimaced. ‘Your old ones were only good enough to get your size. We managed to salvage your shoes, though.’ The Russian held the Hush Puppies aloft like battlefield trophies: fittingly, they were blood spotted.

‘I’m sure they’ll be fine,’ said Charlie. Laid out beside the bed were a rough work shirt, thick-cord trousers, and a traditional kulak-style smock rarely seen outside isolated farm communities on the Steppes. Charlie turned, grateful for the additional stability when he perched on the bed, but almost toppled forward struggling into his fortunately original although stiffly laundered underwear.

‘You sure you’re okay?’ goaded the Russian, still not moving.

‘Quite sure.’ Charlie got into the trousers more easily, leaning backwards over the bed. The apparent clumsiness of putting on the shirt was intentional, scrubbing it back and forth in a back-drying motion to scratch the persistent irritation from his healing shoulder. The Hush Puppies were sufficiently stretched for Charlie to slip his feet into without bending. The smock was too large, like the belt to go around it, and he saw the two guards were smiling along with Guzov.

‘We got the size wrong after all,’ said the Russian, in mock apology.

‘I’m not going anywhere special.’

‘You’d be surprised where you’re going, Charlie,’ promised Guzov.

Sure that he’d fall, stumble at least, Charlie refused the pace Guzov set along the deserted corridor, forcing Guzov to wait at the elevator. In the foyer they were totally ignored by three blue-uniformed receptionists at a central desk beyond which, through a glass screen, an open-plan office was visible. There were no ringing telephones or flickering computer screens: the silence was practically sepulchral.

Outside it was raining, that persistent, cloud-leaking drizzle that Charlie remembered sometimes fell day after day, painting Moscow a monochrome, suicide-tempting grey. There was as little evidence outside the building — no ambulances or canopied emergency bays or bustling, white-coated doctors or nurses — as there had been inside, of it being a medical facility. None of the entering or leaving staff wore hospital uniforms that would identify them outside the building. From the second storey upwards, all the windows were barred. From the elevator descent, Charlie knew he’d been on the fourth level.

There was a plainclothes guard beside the driver, also in a suit, of the waiting, dark-windowed BMW. Guzov left Charlie to get unaided into the car. The ward escorts stood back under the overhanging building to keep out of the rain. No-one spoke when Charlie finally, awkwardly, got into the vehicle or helped him secure his seat belt. There were no identifying hospital signs at the end of the drive and Charlie finally concluded it was the sort of psychiatric institution he’d initially suspected. As the car swept out into unfamiliar streets Charlie wondered if they actually were in Moscow: he’d been unconscious from the time he was shot until he’d awakened in the restraint-strapped bed, after the operation to remove the bullet. It was at least five minutes before Charlie recognized the ring-road approach and calculated he’d been held in the northwest, an area of Moscow with which he was unfamiliar. From the directional indicators on the slip road to the multi-lane highway, Charlie knew they were continuing north.

At last Guzov turned to him. ‘You realize by now where we’re going, of course?’

‘I know the direction in which we’re going,’ qualified Charlie, not willing to volunteer his familiarity with the city.

‘I promised you’d be surprised.’

He had to step back from positive confrontation, Charlie knew: the attitude he’d adopted since his seizure wasn’t returning anything he could utilize. ‘What puzzles me is our leaving Moscow before there’s been consular access.’

‘We’re not leaving Moscow,’ threw back Guzov, ignoring Charlie’s response. ‘We’re going to the hills.’

That did surprise Charlie, although he didn’t show it. Should he acknowledge his awareness of the cliché, showing his familiarity with the city after all, or fall back upon supposed ignorance? Every savvy Muscovite knew ‘the hills’ referred to a particular area of the high ground overlooking the city. In its exclusiveness, since the time of Stalin, lay the weekend and holiday retreats of the nation’s ruling elite, up to and including the premier and the president. ‘I’ve heard of the dachas but not of the prison facility. The gulags are surely a long way further east?’

Guzov smiled his gargoyle smile across the car. ‘It’ll be a very long time before you end up in a gulag.’ The facial expression widened. ‘If you’re sensible, which I hope eventually you’ll be, you could avoid going to one altogether.’

In his new mindset against confrontation, Charlie decided against the ritual challenge of legality and criminal charges. They were out of the city now, in the scrublands before the gentle upwards climb. The drizzle was heavier, scudding down in bursts: it had driven people and vehicles off the highway and everything looked as forbiddingly desolate as the psychiatric building he’d just left. The tree line was abrupt, almost barbered, empty no man’s land one moment, straight-edged forest, mostly firs, the next. So densely cultivated and maintained was the forest for the favoured few that it almost at once became half-light, occasionally interspersed by the sudden brightness of an opening into an unmarked road to a hidden property.

The spur road was on a bend, which the driver would have known. He braked hard instead of gradually, throwing Charlie forward against his seat belt. The pain seared through Charlie’s still-healing shoulder but he managed to bite back the groan. Everyone else had expectantly braced themselves, he saw. Just beyond what would have been visible from the main road was a gatehouse-operated barrier that wasn’t lifted until the driver’s documentation was cleared from within the checkpoint.

Although narrower, the new road was properly metalled and maintained, built in Roman-style straightness as far as Charlie could see, but the offshoot lanes were less frequently obvious, with few warning tree breaks. Which meant Charlie was again totally unprepared when, after the briefest of braking, the BMW slewed to the right. The abrupt jar from hitting an uneven rough track again burst agonizingly through Charlie, the pain this time so bad he couldn’t stop crying out.

‘Slower,’ Guzov ordered the driver. To Charlie he said, ‘You all right?’

‘That was fucking stupid,’ complained Charlie. And intentional, he knew. The turning off the public highway into the barrier-controlled road was roughly two kilometres from the beginning of the tree line and the third break to the left in those trees. The distance of this turn-off from the Roman-straight road was far less, hardly a kilometre and the fourth on its left, counting from the barrier.

‘You’re right: it was stupid,’ agreed the Russian.

Charlie tensed his dressing-shielded shoulder to detect the first warm sensation of the wound reopening. All he could feel was the heartbeat-timed throb that replaced the initial excruciating pain.

Less than a kilometre, finally estimated Charlie, as the track ballooned into a clearing in the middle of which stood, as if on display, a picture-postcard image of a Russian dacha. It was wood-built, even to its steeped, snow-discarding shingle root, and completely encircled by an open, balustraded veranda, the entire construction lifted high off the ground on stilts, again to defeat the winter snows.

Once more unaided, Charlie got from the car, relieved the unsteadiness was lessening although his shoulder still throbbed. The driver and guard remained by the car as he followed Guzov. Inside the cottage, most of the furniture was rough, country-carved wood. Guzov took one chair, waving Charlie to another fronting it.

‘You can look around later,’ Guzov decreed. ‘What we’re going to do now is understand how we’re going to work.…’ He gave an almost uncaring gesture around the dacha. ‘Well?’

Go with the flow, Charlie reminded himself; he still had to find his rewarding level of response. ‘I am surprised. Confused, in fact.’ Which was, Charlie accepted, the entire purpose of this bizarre exercise.

‘Did you expect a rat-nested Lubyanka cell, with water running down its walls?’

‘It crossed my mind.’

‘It still could be. Or a return to where you’ve just come from for a different type of specialized treatment…’ There was another wave around the room. ‘Or there’s this, where you and I can talk.…’ There was another pause, for the face-dividing smile. ‘And before we start discussing that, let’s really understand each other. I know you are going to lie: that’s what we professionals are trained to do in the event of a seizure. I’m going to take a lot of time sifting through all your deceit to get to the eventual truth. You’ll also try to escape. Which you can’t possibly do, so don’t try. You’ll have a rotating staff, male and female, to cook and clean.…’ The arm waving went beyond the cottage. ‘This is a special complex—’

‘In which live more specially trained men whose job it is to protect the even more special people who relax and holiday around here,’ anticipated Charlie.

The grimace came and went. ‘An elite spetsnaz company, a kind of imperial guard. Where we are now — where you’re going to be — is where they’re permanently barracked: those they protect aren’t actually all around but they’re not that far away.’

‘An imperial guard for the rulers of a country that destroyed its imperial royal family,’ remarked Charlie. He still wasn’t getting his attitude right, he criticized himself.

‘Imagine that!’ persisted Guzov. ‘You, a British intelligence agent, so close to the relaxation hideaways of Russia’s hierarchy! You might as well be on the moon, trying to hurt them with a catapult for all the harm you can do. This is the most closely guarded, impregnable few square kilometres in the entire Russian Federation: in the world, maybe.’

He was being positively invited — challenged — to try, Charlie accepted. ‘I’m surprised you feel able to take the chance.’

‘What risk, Charlie? The only harm you can ever cause again is to yourself. Those special men you talk about have orders not to physically to harm you. But trained as the spetsnaz are, they might welcome a change from the norm to go bear hunting — with you as the bear.’

‘I don’t think I’d like that,’ acknowledged Charlie. Better response, he decided.

‘The choice is yours to make. And inevitably regret if it’s the wrong one.’

Certainly not a challenge he felt like taking up at that moment. But he had to try something, he supposed. His jarred shoulder still ached, matched by that from his re-incarcerated feet. Neither of which distracted his thinking. Why was Guzov going through this performance? He didn’t need a lecture like this, a performance like this, to convince him of the inevitable humiliation of an escape attempt, disguised as a kulak.

Time to re-introduce a little reality, Charlie decided. ‘You surely don’t intend the consular encounter to be here?’

There was a shrug of disinterest. ‘You’ve been out of circulation for days: you’re a long way behind developments.’

Apprehension moved through Charlie. ‘What developments?’

‘We’ve got so many of your people in custody now, although none with such accommodation as this. We scarcely know what to do with them all.’

Your people, picked out Charlie: but still no reference to Natalia, not even Guzov’s earlier remark about their knowing of “the woman.” Charlie said, ‘In custody for what?’

‘So many different offences,’ dismissed the Russian.

‘None of which affects my right to consular access that will be applied for.’

‘As it has for all the others. That’s the point I was making: the difficulty of finding time and space to fit everybody in. You’re on the list.’

‘I have the right of consular access,’ insisted Charlie.

There was the familiar grimace. ‘I’m the person who decides what rights you do or do not have, Charlie. No-one else. We’ll eat, meet the first of your housekeepers. And after that we’ll start work.’

‘I was looking for you.’

‘And you found me.’

‘I learned five English words today,’ boasted Sasha. ‘There were pictures to help me.’

‘What were they?’ invited Ethel.

‘Cow, dog, goat, horse…’ The recital faltered. ‘I’ve forgotten the last one.’

‘Four out of five is very good,’ praised Ethel.

‘I can almost say the name of my teacher, too.’

‘Mrs Elphick,’ came Natalia’s voice, from farther along the corridor. ‘She wants you back in class.…’ As she came into view, Natalia continued, ‘And she’s very pleased at how hard you’re working now.’

‘Can we have cake outside again today?’

‘As a reward for working hard,’ agreed Ethel.

‘I wouldn’t have believed the transformation if I hadn’t seen it for myself,’ said Natalia, watching her daughter go back along the corridor. Turning to the other woman, she said, ‘Is there anything from Moscow?’

Ethel shook her head. ‘Jane’s staying in London to be on the spot. But we’ve spoken. She wants me to talk to you about some other developments.’ Without waiting for a response, the protection supervisor started towards the lounge, where coffee was already set out.

As she handed Natalia her cup, Ethel said, ‘The leader of your extraction team has given a detailed account of a meeting with Charlie the night before you came out.’

Natalia put her coffee untouched on a side table, waiting.

‘There are things Charlie told him that you might be able to help us understand better: by themselves they’re incomplete.’

‘What things?’

‘Did Charlie tell you about abandoning the plane bringing him to Moscow?’

Natalia finally sipped her coffee, considering her answer. ‘It was really what I told him.’

Another chink of light through a gradually opening door? wondered Ethel, who wanted to justify Jane Ambersom’s decision to let her continue the gentle questioning of Natalia. ‘What was that?’

Natalia breathed in, preparing herself. ‘I don’t know anything of what happened with Stepan Lvov, just what I inferred from what followed. I knew Charlie was involved, of course: he appeared on Russian television.’ She sipped more coffee. ‘When Charlie and I got together, personally I mean, I cleansed the records to make it look as if Charlie’s debriefing was passed on up the line to others. But my link with Charlie, sanitized though it was, had to remain in the records. I was called in for interrogation the day Lvov was assassinated. I told the questioning officer the story that Charlie and I had rehearsed and from the initial reaction I believed it had been accepted. But I was called back the following day. The first interrogation had been one-to-one. This time there was a panel of three and the questioning was far more aggressive, although more general. I kept rigidly to my initial account, without the slightest deviation. I was, after all, on my own ground: knew all the interrogation ploys and traps. The more general stuff wasn’t a problem. The interrogation, which I considered hostile, continued the following day and when it ended I was warned I might be recalled.’

Natalia drained her cup and accepted a refill from the other woman. ‘Charlie and I were very careful about our relationship, particularly after we got married. One insistence, when he came back to England, hoping I would join him, was that I always called him from public telephones, never from my home line, which could be tapped. After the third interrogation and the warning of possibly more, I guessed I hadn’t cleansed the records as thoroughly as I’d imagined: that there was something that could trap me. I called Charlie from the public phones as he insisted. He never picked up but I left messages, pleading with him to help Sasha and me. That was always my fear, having Sasha taken away from me. But then it all changed.…’ Natalia straggled to a halt, breathing heavily.

‘What changed?’ prompted Ethel, cautiously, when Natalia didn’t continue.

‘I made a terrible mistake … it’s all my fault.…’

‘Natalia, I need to understand what you’re telling me.’

‘They didn’t suspect me, not after the first interview. Those that followed, the aggressive ones, were to satisfy them I was sufficiently loyal for the job I was being transferred to do. After I started I learned that everyone else had been tested as I had.’

‘What job were you being tested for?’ coaxed Ethel.

Natalia remained silent for several moments.

‘Natalia?’ pressed Ethel, keeping the impatience from her voice.

‘I said, when I got here, that I wouldn’t co-operate until you got Charlie back, but I’ve got to, haven’t I: tell you everything that might make that possible?’

‘Yes, you have,’ said Ethel, forceful for the first time.

‘The loss of Radtsic was cataclysmic within the FSB. They started the investigation within hours of getting the confirmation from airport CCTV of his boarding the plane. By the second day they began creating the committees. That’s where I was transferred, to one of the first-level groups tooth-combing Radtsic’s complete professional background from the day he joining the KGB. They’re convinced there’s been a long-term cell operating throughout Radtsic’s entire professional career.’

‘How many committees?’ asked Ethel, sure she was concealing her excitement.

‘I don’t know, not precisely. I gave Charlie an estimate of ten at my level, the lowest. Each group was separate from the others: that’s why I can only estimate the total. Each member of each committee worked on a batch of material at a time. If we believed we’d found something deserving further examination, we had to alert the rest of the group, in case others came across the same name or discrepancy. After being annotated, to avoid whatever it was being permanently misplaced, it was forwarded up to the next examination level, where the search is, apparently, being speeded up by computer analysis.’

Now it was Ethel who lapsed into a brief silence, mentally assembling what Natalia was telling her. ‘So your mistake was telephoning Charlie?’

‘The mistake was telephoning him in the panic that I did,’ elaborated Natalia. ‘I told him at the end of his Lvov investigation that I’d finally decided to leave Russia for good, bringing Sasha here. If I’d simply told him I was coming he wouldn’t have needed to come to get us. All that business of changing planes and joining a tourist party wrecked everything.’

‘What did Charlie say?’

‘That it wasn’t wrecked: that he’d get us out. Which he did, didn’t he, by sacrificing himself?’

‘Did he say anything about your extraction being endangered by anything other than his detection by the Russian authorities?’

‘Not specifically. He made several references to there being things, situations, that he didn’t understand. It was my impression that he felt threatened but that he didn’t want to make me more nervous than I already was.’

‘What about the extraction itself? How did he prepare you for that?’

Once more there was a moment of consideration. ‘He simply told me to take Sasha to the airport and go through the formalities with the tickets and passports he’d given me the previous day. There would be escorts who’d be with me throughout the flight, first to Helsinki and then on to here. I wouldn’t know them but they’d know Sasha and me.’

‘Where did Charlie say he’d be?’

‘The FSB knew he was in Moscow, so it was obvious there’d be an airport alert for him. The arrangement was to show himself to me outside the terminal, which he did. He told me that after that I wouldn’t see him again until we were all safely on the plane.…’ There was a gulped pause. ‘He also told me that if I became aware of any commotion I wasn’t to stop but keep going. But I wasn’t aware of anything. I expected him to get on the plane but he never did.’

‘How long did you work with your committee, going through Radtsic’s personal archive?’ asked Ethel, tensed against the question off-balancing the other woman.

‘Five days.’ Natalia straightened in her chair, recognizing the changed direction.

‘How much did you read?’ Ethel pressed.

‘I’m not sure.’

She was looking for an escape, Ethel knew. ‘You said you worked in batches: how many batches did you clear in a day?’

‘Maybe ten.’

‘A day?’ repeated Ethel, determined upon as much accuracy as possible.

‘Yes.’

‘How big was each batch?’

Natalia created a measurement between her outstretched hands, saying nothing.

‘Multiply that estimated size by fifty, ten batches over five days, you must have gone through roughly six kilos of material?’

Natalia hesitated. ‘I suppose so.’

‘We’ll need to talk about it, Natalia. We’ll want it all,’ reminded Ethel.

‘When we know what’s happened to Charlie.’

The door burst open, interrupting them. ‘I got a star!’ announced Sasha, proudly.

Aubrey Smith led the reaction, but not in the way expected by the others who’d watched the simultaneous transmission from the police-college safe house in Hampshire. Looking to Jane Ambersom, he said, ‘Not many people — certainly not anyone I’ve encountered since becoming Director-General — would have officially acknowledged, as you did, that Ethel would achieve more than you could in the time available. That’s not just a verbal commendation: it’ll be on your personnel file by the end of the day.’

Jane hesitated, seeking more than a platitude but couldn’t. ‘Thank you very much.’

‘From her success so far, maybe Ethel should get a commendation, too,’ suggested Passmore.

‘She’s well on her way,’ promised the Director-General. ‘It’s essential we learn everything Natalia got from Radtsic’s file.’

‘We’re having one success with the woman-to-woman situation,’ Passmore pointed out. ‘Why don’t we try another?’

‘Agreed.’ Smith smiled, understanding. He turned to Jane. ‘From the chair shifting and body language, despite rumours to the contrary, I don’t think rapacious Rebecca is enjoying the sidelines,’ said the Director-General. ‘I believe the dissatisfaction I’m seeing in Rebecca could be encouraged by comparison with the authority and responsibility accorded to Jane.’

‘You surely don’t imagine she’d ally herself with us!’ questioned Jane.

‘Depends how overlooked or even threatened Rebecca feels herself to be,’ shrugged Smith. ‘All you’ve got to do is present the Natalia disclosure.’

Passmore’s pager beeped, directly followed by a call on the internal link to the communications room. The operations director smiled, turning to the two others. ‘Patrick Wilkinson’s made coded contact, on an open line. His message is that it was an exciting trip but that it’s good to be home.’

‘At least that’s one officer spared from the diplomatic-access machinery,’ remarked Jane.

‘I’ve got people on standby for all the others when the Russians eventually agree: Charlie’s at the top of the list,’ said Passmore.

‘Let’s hope Charlie’s man gets the chance to perform the function if the Russians ever offer it,’ said Smith, doubtfully.

It was virtually automatic for Charlie to identify the dacha as a brilliantly positioned safe house, as impossible to get into as it was to escape from, the myriad nooks and crannies of its rough timber construction tailored for the inner observation equipment in addition to the specialized guarding army outside. The easily smiling middle-aged woman who served the excellent stroganoff was attractive enough to have been a swallow in the Cold War days of diplomat-targeting sexual entrapment, the male minder sufficiently handsome to have been a raven offering the same temptations to lonely female embassy staff. Charlie noted that the offered wine was his Georgian favourite and that the rack was fully stocked. Mikhail Guzov maintained the exchanges throughout the meal with stories of two undetected years as a KGB officer in the London embassy, which Charlie dismissed as complete invention from the word-perfect tourist-guide recitation of the places and sights Guzov claimed to have visited. Charlie’s disbelief was confirmed by Guzov’s account of a weekend at a Shakespeare festival at Stratford-on-Avon when the movements of Russian diplomats were officially restricted to a twenty-mile radius of London.

‘And now we talk,’ announced Guzov, as their plates were cleared.

‘About what?’ asked Charlie, pleased at the gravy spot besmirching the Russian’s lapel.

‘Irena Yakulova,’ announced the Russian.

Charlie was relieved there was no longer any unsteadiness when he stood: he wasn’t surprised in the circumstances that his feet hurt.

‘It’s huge,’ declared Mort Bering. As a concession — and because the essential point had been made — the FBI deputy director had travelled out to the CIA headquarters in Virginia.

‘What!’ demanded Larry Stern. At Bering’s request, today’s encounter was in the FBI man’s car, driving without direction through Rock Creek Park.

‘Everything’s tied up with the Lvov thing but the steer Elliott’s getting is that it’s moved on a long way from how you guys got screwed.’

‘What about our getting involved: try to salvage something from the fucking disaster?’ suggested Stern. ‘We need something to impress the Intelligence Committee on the Hill to prevent their discovering what a total fuck-up we made and how many top-echelon guys it’s cost us.’

‘We’re a long way from there yet,’ cautioned Bering. ‘What about the Novikov woman?’

‘We finally got her in the chair: got our best guy on it but she’s still stonewalling. Claims she was kidnapped, demanding access to her embassy.’

‘What’s she being told?’

‘That as far as anyone knows she doesn’t exist anymore; that unless she gives us every last detail of the Lvov emplacement, she’ll stay here until she’s old and grey.’

‘You think she’ll buckle?’

‘There are a lot of mirrors in the safe house, so she can watch that pretty new face of hers wither along with the grey hair if she doesn’t.’