Red Star Rising

9

It was virtually instinctive for Charlie to check for unwelcome company, particularly when he was on foreign assignment, and after that morning’s confrontation with Mikhail Guzov, Charlie ratcheted up the concentration, not going directly to the Pekin but taking the taxi by a roundabout route to the Arbat shopping area and holding it while he briefly toured the stalls and outlets, ready actually to buy something for Natalia or Sasha if anything caught his eye. Nothing did, but a small BMW he’d isolated close to the mortuary continued three cars behind when the taxi moved off again. The detour and the traffic buildup on the freeway delayed his arrival and Bundy was at their table, mineral water already poured, by the time Charlie got there.

“Bad traffic,” apologized Charlie.

“Just got here myself,” said the American, which Charlie doubted, guessing someone as old school as Bundy would have given himself at least an hour to clear his trail.

Although not a hair-of-the-dog advocate, Charlie decided the success of his morning-and the gradual settling of his stomach-justified a preprandial vodka. Raising it to the other man in a toast, Charlie said, “To the death of all our enemies.”

“Difficult to pick them all out these days, don’t you think, Charlie?”

“I guess white hats against black hats or vice versa was easier,” encouraged Charlie, relaxing back in his chair like a confident boxer before the first round.

“I think it’s more interesting now in many ways.”

“How’s that?”

“Take your reason for being here. You’ve got to admit we never had anything like this, right in our own front garden, in the old days.”

“You’re talking about the murder at the embassy, right?” asked Charlie, unable to find a connection to what Bundy appeared to consider logic.

“What the hell else do you think I’m talking about?”

“I don’t recall telling you that’s what I’m here for,” fenced Charlie.

The American spread his hands in front of him, as if he were pleading. “Charlie! It’s me, Bill Bundy, remember? We’ve been here since the beginning: know all the tricks.”

“Difficult to remember them all sometimes,” said Charlie, refusing to contribute to whatever the other man was trying to establish.

“It’s true,” insisted Bundy. “But if you tell me you’re here for something else then I’ll take it you’ve got another agenda you can’t tell me about.”

“Bill!” exclaimed Charlie. “We’re not running a joint operation here!”

“Maybe I could provide some input.”

“And maybe get burned in the effort.”

“I’ve always thought myself pretty fireproof.”

“I’m not,” refused Charlie. He found this entire exchange absolutely bewildering except for one thought: Bundy could be a convenient sacrificial escape if the need arose.

“There’s a nostalgia about the murder, don’t you think?” persisted the American. “Guy gets whacked at the moment of his defection.”

“Is that how you think it happened?” queried Charlie, remembering some of the newspaper conjecture.

“I’d give the idea some room to run. How do you see it?”

The waitress’s arrival spared Charlie’s need for an instant reply, although he didn’t need time to consider one. He was enjoying the verbal ping-pong, the vaguest idea of its purpose forming in his mind but in no hurry to confirm it. In deference to the abuse he’d inflicted upon himself the previous night, Charlie restricted himself to pancake-wrapped duck, crispy beef, and spicy noodles, with boiled rice and a bottle of rice wine, despite Bundy’s protests that he wouldn’t share the alcohol.

“So how do you see it?” repeated Bundy, when the girl left.

“I’m keeping an open mind. Everything’s at a very early stage. Still a lot of technical and scientific stuff to be analyzed and assessed.”

“So you are here for the murder?” openly demanded the American.

“It’s not carved in stone,” avoided Charlie. “There seems to be a lot else happening.”

“Things good with the local homicide guys?”

“There’s some diplomatic protocol to work through; you know what it’s like.”

“Not helped by your guys finding a big bunch of bugs nesting right there in the ambassador’s phone system.”

“Not helped one little bit,” agreed Charlie, without pausing at the alarm bells that rang in his mind.

“Surprised you don’t have help,” pressed Bundy. “Something as serious as this, with the bugging on top, strikes me as a heavy workload.”

“I’m just about keeping a handle on it,” claimed Charlie, hoping his voice conveyed the conviction he didn’t feel at that moment.

“I’ve still got a few open lines here. You wanna bounce anything off me, feel free.”

Charlie needed his control to hold back his surprise at that remark. “That’s very good of you.”

“Maybe it’s jealousy at everything happening on your patch and nothing on mine.”

Charlie recognized the perfect opening. “I got the impression that you guys were very much caught up with the new presidential elections here?”

“I guess your political section was, too, until last week,” said Bundy.

“You keeping out of it?” asked Charlie, risking directness himself.

“Tex has been keeping a tight watching brief.”

“You would have been on station here the first time, when Lvov was with the KGB, right?” demanded Charlie, direct again.

“Right, I was here in Moscow,” agreed Bundy. “Stepan Grigorevich Lvov was in charge of St. Petersburg. It’s a long way away. And I got moved to Cairo after about six months, so I didn’t do much but add him to the list of known KGB personnel.”

“You run a file on him?”

“We knew who he was, basic biog stuff. Wish we had managed more, now that he’s emerged to be the rising star and promised friend of the West.” The American shrugged, expansively. “But there it is, all down to the political analysts now!”

Their food arrived. Charlie couldn’t remember the last time he’d ever knowingly helped another foreign country intelligence agent he trusted as little as he trusted Bundy. Predictably for someone who never drank anything but mineral water, Bundy had ordered the blandest possible food, steam-cooked vegetables, scallops, and bean curd.

“You want to try anything of mine, go ahead,” invited Charlie, wondering why someone who ate like an invalid suggested such a restaurant in the first place.

“I’m okay but thanks,” refused the man, measuring out his water.

“You keep in touch like this with Paula-Jane and Halliday?”

“Not on a regular basis. P-J’s a cute kid.”

“Tex seems to think so,” risked Charlie.

“The guy’s thought very highly of back at Langley,” said Bundy, cleverly choosing an alternative gossip from that offered by Charlie. “I knew P-J’s daddy. Davy Venables was a very formidable operator. You ever come across him in London?”

Charlie shook his head, tipping the last of his wine into his glass, eager to get back to the embassy to set up everything he now knew he needed London to arrange. “It’s been a good meal. Let’s do it again. My treat next time.”

“I’ll keep you up to that,” said Bundy. “It’s good to talk to someone who’s been around the block a few times.”

“I’ve got your number,” said Charlie, enjoying his own double entendre, confident he’d got more from the encounter than the other man.

Charlie didn’t detect the already identified BMW until just before his taxi turned onto the embankment. It continued straight on over the Kalininskaya Bridge, sure of his destination. Which wasn’t good or proper tradecraft, Charlie recognized, curiously. But there was so much else that had been unexpected during the meeting with the American; so much that it was going to take time to interpret whatever its purpose had been.

“It’s taken long enough for you to talk to me!” complained Jack Smethwick, the director of the agency’s technical and scientific division in London, the moment they were connected.

“Wanted to make sure I had as much as possible before bothering you,” said Charlie, soothingly. He’d forgotten the man’s almost perpetual irritation.

“I hope you have.”

“So do I,” said Charlie, from the secure, strut-supported compartment in the communications room. “And I want to get some things clear in my mind.”

“That might make a change.”

“Let’s talk about the loop, which is most important,” said Charlie, refusing an argument. “Can’t the fact that it’s computer-simulated be scientifically detected by the Russians?”

“If it could be, I wouldn’t have done it this way,” said Smethwick. “The loop will be clearly marked as a copy of the supposed original which we’ve enhanced here. It’s perfect.”

So precise was the technical clarity of the line that Charlie could hear the noise of other people working in the MI5 laboratory on the northern outskirts of London: It was another affectation of the scientific director to take phone calls standing up at a laboratory bench rather than in his separate, more confidential office. “Three men looking to be close around a fourth, head bowed as if he’s being forced along?”

“That’s what you asked for,” reminded the scientist, curtly. “We’ve put a woolen ski cap on the shortest of the three representing the assassins. Another seems to be wearing an anorak, with the hood up. It opens with a lot of broken, zigzagging film, the figures scarcely identifiable through the interrupting tearing. That tearing briefly stops but it’s very hazy. And, of course, the light’s very bad. It looks as if they were picked up after they’ve come into the grounds off the embankment. From the photographs of the official opening we’ve superimposed, with sufficient clarity for it to be positively identified, the ornamental hedge by the exhibition hall. None of the figures is fully framed, leaving the height to be estimated, although the dead man is close to being accurate from the calculations we’ve been able to make from the Russian mortuary photographs. . ” The man stopped. “Have you shipped me the new set of photographs you picked up today?”

“In tonight’s diplomatic bag, along with the updated medical report,” promised Charlie. “The AB blood grouping is listed there, too. And the note about the barbitumiv traces.”

“I’m not comfortable about that,” complained Smethwick. “Sure we can mix some AB blood with the soil samples you’ve already sent us from the flower-bed area. But what if they do a DNA typing? It won’t match what they’ve got and your great big scam will be blown sky-high.”

Charlie hadn’t needed the reminder of the weakest part of what he was trying to set up. “They wouldn’t give me the clothes, for me to give you a match. But there’s nothing in their medical reports of their having taken DNA.”

“Which doesn’t mean they haven’t typed it,” dismissed the scientist. “DNA is the first of any blood tests these days. It would certainly be for me in these particular circumstances.”

“It’s a gamble I’ve got to take,” admitted Charlie. “You won’t forget to mix in some of the soil fertilizer I sent back with the soil?”

Smethwick’s pained sigh was audible. “Of course, I won’t forget to mix it in: we’ve already tested some of what you provided and found a previous residue but the fertilizer won’t affect DNA.”

“I’m taking the gamble,” repeated Charlie. “What about the Makarov 9mm shell?”

“It will test to be Russian if Moscow runs a metal comparison,” assured the man. “We put a cross in the tip, as they did with the bullet that killed your man, and took most of the slow down wadding out of the butt before backing a steel sheet against which we split it with Kevlar, all traces of which we’ve taken off the fragment you’re going to claim came from your hole in the ground.”

“I think we’ve got enough to convince them,” said Charlie, forcing the confidence he didn’t fully feel.

“I don’t,” disputed Smethwick. “I think it’ll be exposed for the nonsense it is and actually create what could escalate into an official diplomatic incident in an embassy that has got too many already. And because I think that I’m filing to the Director-General my officially recorded written objection to what he ordered me to do for you.”

“Thanks for doing it, despite how you feel.”

“Everything you’ve asked for will be back to you in a couple of days,” guaranteed Smethwick. “And comes with the best of luck. You’re going to need it.”

Charlie already knew that, but Smethwick’s dismissal deflated Charlie’s usual optimism. His hope lay in his belief that he had sufficiently convinced the Russians-Pavel perhaps more than Guzov. But if that hope was misplaced, Smethwick’s doomsday prediction could become a reality, and with it his exposure and immediate recall-even expulsion-back to England before any possible conclusion between himself and Natalia.

There were no voice-mail messages on the rabbit hutch telephone but on the card table there was a two-word note from Paula-Jane: DROP BY.

“I’ve been censured,” she announced at once, not smiling up at his entry. “I’m not sure yet if it’s going to become official, from London, or stop here. I was two hours in front of Paul-fucking-Robertson and his inquiry team this afternoon, like a child who’d done something wrong.”

A role for which Charlie strongly suspected she might qualify. “Censured for what?”

“Not going over everybody’s head here in Moscow to alert London about the security chaos. Appears that Halliday’s been doing so for months.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“I’m just past my first year on my first foreign station. Sotley’s fifty-five years old, a senior ambassador. Dawkins served in Rome, Canberra, and Berlin before coming here. Do you think I was going to risk a career that hasn’t even started by taking them on, even if I’d recognized how bad things were? Which I didn’t, not properly, until all the shit happened at once.”

There was a catch in her voice that Charlie feared might be a prelude to tears.

“You heard the other news?”

“What?”

“Sotley and Dawkins have been recalled today, as quietly as possible. The public announcement isn’t going to be made from London until tomorrow, by which time they’ll be under wraps. Peter Maidment, the chef du protocole, is going to stand in until there is a proper replacement.”

Was there proof against either man of being the inside source? wondered Charlie. Paula-Jane was very definitely the wrong person to ask. Instead, he said: “What’s Maidment like?”

“Bit of a dreamer,” assessed the woman. “Passed over too many times for promotion until now and this isn’t permanent. I feel sorry for him. He tries but can’t sustain the momentum.”

“Was he involved with the discovery of the body?” asked Charlie, hopefully.

“Never saw him there,” dismissed Paula-Jane.

Timing the announcement, Charlie said: “I had lunch with Bill Bundy today.”

“I remember him suggesting it,” said Paula-Jane.

“He knew a bug had been found in the ambassador’s personal telephone, which hasn’t been publicly disclosed.”

Paula-Jane remained looking up at Charlie but said nothing.

“And he knew my temporarily assigned direct number, here at the embassy. That’s how he got in touch, by leaving a call-back message.”

“I told him,” she blurted. “He called me the night after we all had dinner together. I didn’t think I was doing anything wrong, as you two appeared to go back a long time. But I didn’t tell him anything about a bug being in the ambassador’s telephone because until you just told me, I didn’t know exactly where it had been found. You do believe me, don’t you?”

“I’m trying very hard,” said Charlie.