Red Star Rising

10

In addition to Paul Robertson and Harry Fish, there were two other men and a matronly, gray-haired woman-to none of whom there was any formal introduction-when Charlie gained entry into the inquiry room by insisting his need to speak to them was urgent. There were also two technicians to one side of the room, clearly supervising an equipment bank including a polygraph machine and its adjoining, cable-festooned chair.

“This is surprisingly unexpected,” greeted Robertson. “Particularly as I personally understood from the Director-General that we were absolutely forbidden any further contact.”

From the tone of the other man’s voice, Charlie guessed that Robertson had been equally rebuked for their earlier encounter. He looked sideways to the equipment setup and said, “Is this being recorded?”

“Of course, visually as well as audibly,” confirmed Robertson. “Has your coming here been authorized by London?”

“No,” said Charlie, further reassured by the man’s obvious concern.

“Then I don’t intend allowing it to continue,” refused Robertson.

“And I don’t want to be part of it, either,” insisted Harry Fish.

“Please leave the room,” said Robertson.

Nodding to the recording equipment, Charlie said, “It’s my ass in the air! Everything’s being doubly recorded, so none of you are endangered. You’re here to expose and arrest an inside source, and I think I know who that source is. You still want me to leave, I will. Your choice, being visually and audibly recorded, as you make it.”

The unknown man to Robertson’s right came quickly sideways for a whispered exchange, which concluded with a nod of permission for the man to leave the room. Coming back to Charlie, Robertson said, “We’ll hear what you have to tell us.”

“But not with me participating,” refused Fish, rising to follow the other departing man.

The hurriedly leaving investigator was on his way to speak to London, Charlie knew: Fish probably intended to cover his ass, too. Deciding that he needed, belatedly, as much professional protection as possible, Charlie said, “My instructions from London, personally from the Director-General, were not to discuss with you anything concerning the investigation in which I am involved. Nothing I intend to tell you reflects in any way whatsoever upon that. Is that understood and accepted?”

“We’re waiting to hear what you have to tell us,” said Robertson.

“And I’m waiting to hear the answer to my question,” returned Charlie, hoping he wasn’t coloring as obviously as the equally furious Robertson. Robertson shifted in his chair but didn’t speak and Charlie stood, shrugging.

“Your choice and you blew it. I’ll tell the Director-General and he can tell you, and we’ll all keep our fingers crossed that nothing else goes wrong while you piss about.”

“Wait!” called Robertson, when Charlie was almost at the door. “We understand what you’ve said, that nothing you’re going to tell us will compromise your purpose here.”

Charlie took his time walking to the seat and settling himself. Robertson’s face remained puce. The anonymous woman had colored, too. Charlie said, “A few nights ago I went out socially with people from the American embassy, accompanying Paula-Jane Venables. One of the Americans was William Bundy, an acknowledged CIA expert on Russian affairs, who has been reassigned here for a third tour of duty, after running the Agency’s Russian desk for a number of years. I was on station here during one of his earlier assignments. During that period we knew each other but were never friends. Nor did we liaise, operationally, in any way whatsoever. The most recent evening ended with Bundy suggesting that he and I get together while I was here. No arrangements were made. The following day a voice-mail message from Bundy was left upon the temporary telephone number allocated to me, here at the embassy. I had not given Bundy that number. I responded to Bundy’s call. We lunched, yesterday. During that lunch, Bundy made a remark about listening devices having been installed within the telephone systems of the ambassador. To my understanding no mention has been made in the media coverage, either in English, American, or Russian newspapers, of the precise location of any of the devices that were discovered by Harry and his team. . ”

Charlie paused at the reentry into the room of the man who’d left after his earlier whispered conversation with Robertson, and didn’t continue until after another hand-shielded exchange between the two men.

“When I returned from that lunch, I confronted Paula-Jane Venables about the disclosure of my telephone number and of the undisclosed location of the bugs. She admitted providing my number but categorically denied passing on anything about the listening devices, insisting she didn’t know where they were placed. I know she has already appeared before you. I consider that from the conversation I have just recounted there is sufficient cause for her recall and reexamination before you.”

An echoing silence descended upon the room. It lasted several full minutes before Robertson said; “You believe Paula-Jane Venables to be the traitorous source within this embassy?”

“I believe the indiscretion that I have personally experienced justifies her being questioned further,” replied Charlie.

“Apart from Harry and me and a very limited number, you were one of the few to know about the devices,” reminded the other man.

The threat churned through Charlie. He said: “Perhaps you should take that remark further.”

“We intend to,” said the same panel member. “You are to go at once to the communications room to speak personally to the Director-General.” The man indicated the recording assembly at the side of the room. “He will instruct you, leaving no doubt of the authority, to return here to undergo a polygraph test to establish the truth of what you have just told this committee and to eliminate you from the investigation in which we are currently engaged-”

“A polygraph test that your colleague, Paula-Jane Venables, underwent yesterday and passed to the complete satisfaction of the technical examiners and the members of this panel,” completed Robertson.

“How the hell can I be involved in things that happened before I even arrived here?” demanded Charlie. So angry was he that Charlie failed to detect the approach of the outside office guardian until the man was behind him.

“Shall we go, sir?”

Charlie Muffin was the foremost exponent of the credo never to panic but he found rational thinking difficult as he was humiliatingly escorted along linking corridors to the basement descent. He managed it-just-precisely because of his need to keep the secret that no one could learn. Charlie knew all about lie detector tests; he hoped that he could remember how to defeat the supposedly undefeatable machine that distinguishes lie from truth by measuring breathing rate, pulse, and perspiration flow.

Robertson’s investigation was restricted solely to uncovering a traitor within the embassy. Which should keep the questioning well away from anything risking Natalia. But would it? Couldn’t he, by the strictest interpretation of the word, be regarded a traitor, secretly married as he was to a senior analyst in the Russian Federation’s internal counterintelligence organization? Not if he were able to argue semantics. But he wouldn’t be, restricted to yes or no. What the fuck were the rules, the protection from being exposed by the machine? Remain calm, allow no anger or agitation, he remembered. Easy enough advice-easily followed advice-in a simulated situation where there was no anger or agitation, the total opposite from how he felt now. Keep what is not to be disclosed firmly out of mind, Charlie further recalled. He’d thought that particular mantra a complete load of bollocks at the long-ago training school and hadn’t changed his mind since.

The unsympathetic Ross Perrit was waiting expectantly among all his electronic paraphernalia, the door to the first cubicle in the supported box already open. “The DG’s waiting on the line.”

“What the hell’s going on?” demanded Smith, the moment Charlie identified himself.

“I tried to report things I believed relevant to Robertson’s inquiry, things that had no bearing upon what I’m doing here.” From the tone of the Director-General’s unusually harsh voice, Charlie decided that the prevailing political wind was blowing slap into his face.

“What things?” The man listened without interruption to what Charlie had earlier told the inquiry panel and did not speak for several moments after Charlie finished. Then Smith said: “Venables underwent a polygraph examination. There were no difficulties.”

“I know. But at the time the panel was unaware of Bundy’s knowledge of where the listening devices were found. The examiner wouldn’t have been prompted to ask her.”

“She was specifically asked about her associations with the Americans,” disclosed Smith. “A liaison was suspected with a married CIA officer, John Probert.”

Charlie felt the first stirrings of unease. “And?”

“I told you,” said the man, irritably. “She passed the polygraph without any doubts arising.”

“Who suspected the liaison with Probert?”

“You’ve interfered in something from which I categorically barred you,” refused Smith. “All I’ve got so far as the result of your being in Moscow are official complaints from the forensics and technical divisions being asked to manufacture evidence that can be exposed as fake with a schoolboy science kit.”

“We’ve discussed the need for what I want,” reminded Charlie.

“You cause any more public embarrassment by what you’re doing, this will be your last assignment. You hear what I’m saying?”

“I hear,” said Charlie. “I also hear that I have got to undergo a polygraph myself?”

“It’s been requested.”

“I wasn’t even in Moscow when the listening devices were installed and the electrical system was sabotaged!”

“Everyone attached to the embassy has to undergo a polygraph test until the apparent inside source is found; even you, pointless though it will be.”

Another indication that Smith was accepting defeat in his battle to retain the directorship of MI5 from the internal maneuverings of Jeffrey Smale. “If I don’t answer a question honestly-which I might not be able to do if I think it impinges upon my function, which you’ve ordered me not to discuss with anyone, there will be a reading indicating that I am lying,” Charlie resisted, desperately.

“That will be taken into consideration, of course,” assured the other man. “And Robertson’s people have been told that no questions should be phrased that might lead to that particular conflict of interest.”

He had a possible escape, Charlie recognized. But the uncertainties were too many and too great. This was probably going to be the biggest test ever to discover if he were as smart as the smart-ass he’d always prided himself upon being. “I’ll get back to you.”

“Hopefully with something worthwhile from what you’re there to do, for which I seem to be asking every time we talk.”

“Let me explain the procedure-” managed a polygraph technician before Charlie broke in, “I know the procedure. Arm cuff, chest strap and hand-palm sensors, only yes or no answers and the first question is usually whether I masturbate to which everyone says they don’t and gets a lie reading that proves the machine is working properly, so my answer is I did a lot once, when I was younger, but not so much now.”

The technician didn’t look up from attaching the band around Charlie’s chest. “That comfortable?”

“Fine.”

“It’s better if you relax and don’t let yourself get uptight.”

“I know.” The inquiry panel had all left the room by the time Charlie returned, leaving him alone with the two technicians. The one whom Charlie guessed to be the questioner was sitting facing him, going through a list of questions on a clipboard while his colleague hooked Charlie up to the machine, which was between him and the questioner, positioned so that it would be impossible for Charlie to see any movement or to register from the attached computer-screen tracing its peaks and troughs. Charlie wondered where the film and audio apparatus was, among everything else.

“You ready?” asked the questioner, looking up from his clipboard. He wore a woolen sweater beneath a tightly buttoned jacket and had a spare pen in a special holder on his clipboard.

“When you are.” He had to find a way out, an explanation for the inevitable spike that would show up a lie.

“Is your name Charles Edward Muffin?”

“Yes.”

“Are you an operative of an organization known as MI5, Britain’s internal counterintelligence agency?”

He had reason for the wrong answer, Charlie realized. “No.”

There was a pause from the questioner. “Do you tell lies?”

“Yes.” How would that be recorded? wondered Charlie, the wisp of an idea threading its way into his mind.

“Was your previous answer a lie?”

“No.”

There was another hesitation. “Do you lie to your superiors?”

“Yes.” Charlie believed he could see an escape, actually available to him by the one-word answer restrictions.

“Are you an honest man?”

“No.” That had to show as a truthful response.

“Are you proud of what you do?”

“Yes.” Charlie decided he was confusing the questioner, which was precisely what he wanted to do.

“Have you ever come into contact with or had dealings with members of a foreign intelligence service?”

“Yes.” He wasn’t endangered by the question that could have encompassed Natalia.

“Have you ever cooperated with a member of a foreign intelligence service?”

“Yes.”

The technician shifted awkwardly in his facing chair. “Have you cooperated with a member of a foreign intelligence agency within the last month?”

“Yes.” He hoped to Christ it worked.

“Have you ever betrayed your country to a foreign intelligence service or agent?”

“No.”

“Have you ever accepted money, financial rewards, or any benefit in kind from a member of a foreign intelligence agency?”

“Yes.”

“Are you aware of listening devices, bugs, being installed within this embassy?” There was impatience in the man’s voice now.

“Yes.”

“Did you have any prior knowledge of those devices being installed in this embassy before they were discovered?”

“No.”

“Have you any knowledge of how those devices were installed in this embassy?”

“Yes.”

“Have you kept that knowledge from your superiors?”

“No.” The questioner was visibly flushed, suspecting he was being mocked: Charlie was surprised it had been so easy.

“Do you believe there to be an informant to a foreign intelligence agency within this embassy?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know who that informant is?”

“No.”

“Have you ever served a term of imprisonment?”

“Yes.”

“Were you guilty of the crime for which you served that term of imprisonment?”

“No.”

“Were you subsequently pardoned?”

“No.” The other man’s exasperation was palpable.

“Do you regard this polygraph examination as a joke?”

“No!” What about remaining relaxed and not getting upright? reflected Charlie, noting the frown toward the questioner from the man who’d attached him to the sensors.

“Has every answer you have given been an honest one?” insisted the questioner, close to a repeat of an earlier demand.

He was rattled to buggery, which would show on the tracing replay of the computer tracing, Charlie knew. “Yes.”

“Enough!” decided the questioner, abruptly snapping off the machine, nodding to the other technician to disconnect Charlie from the sensors. “That was ridiculous!”

“What are you talking about?” asked Charlie, in feigned surprise.

“You know damned well what I’m talking about. You were taking the piss, from start to finish.”

“I was doing nothing of the sort!” denied Charlie.

“I can’t wait to hear the reaction of the panel.”

“Neither can I,” said Charlie, which was another honest response.

He only had to wait thirty minutes for his escorted recall-two men this time, the first indication of what was to come-from his tiny office, knowing the reception to expect the moment he crossed the threshold of the inquiry room. The panel sat with what had to be individual printouts of the polygraph before them. There were separate sheets of paper with what Charlie hoped to be copies of the questions to which he’d responded. There were matching sets of paper before the questioner and his associate. The escort who had accompanied him to the communications room actually took Charlie by the arm to put him very firmly into the waiting chair. He and his companion stationed themselves directly behind Charlie, one on either side.

Charlie turned to them, smiling, and said, “Don’t worry, guys. I can’t do a runner, with the flat feet I suffer from.” He wasn’t suffering any discomfort at that moment, which was a good omen.

“So the cabaret continues!” commented Robertson.

“I’m sorry?” questioned Charlie.

“Have you the slightest idea what you’re doing, behaving like this? The slightest idea what’s going to happen to you?”

“I’d appreciate your telling me.”

“You are being taken, under escort, immediately back to London,” announced Robertson. “Disciplinary proceedings are already being formulated, upon the basis of your ridiculous polygraph performance, each and every aspect of which has already been communicated personally to the Director-General, together with my recommendation that it be treated with the utmost severity. Recorded on that recommendation is my personal assessment that you can no longer be considered for any employment within the service, from which you should be dismissed after the most intensive investigation to discover the damage you have caused in the past. You are a disgrace to be treated as such!”

“Gosh!” said Charlie, not believing it possible for the furious man’s face to get any redder, which it did.

“That completely absurd, contemptuous remark confirms every assessment this panel and the polygraph team has already arrived at: that you are suffering some mental illness making it necessary for you to be put into protective care,” declared Robertson.

“Have you sent that assessment to the Director-General, along with everything else?” asked Charlie, coming forward in his chair, conscious as he did so of the two guards behind him coming restrainingly forward.

“This examination is over,” said Robertson. “There is no need or purpose for any further conversation. Someone has already gone to the Savoy Hotel to pay your bill and collect your belongings. You are booked, together with the two escorts who will accompany you, on a plane leaving for London in three hours. We would like you now to leave for the transport that has already been arranged for you.”

He was a whisker too close to leaving it too late, Charlie recognized. “Wait-and listen-for a moment longer! If I am taken back to London today, the careers of each and every one of you”-he turned, to include the polygraph duo-“will be over. I am astonished at your collective ineptitude, which might still end your careers, which it should”-he included the polygraph operators again-“the most inept of which has been your analysis of my examination.’

“This is madness!” said Robertson.

“Yours is the madness if you don’t hear me out,” retorted Charlie, relieved at the shifts and sideways exchanges among some of the panel confronting him, culminating in another whispered conversation between Robertson and the messenger next to him.

Robertson said: “All of this is being recorded.”

“Which saves me asking the question to ensure that it is,” said Charlie. “And guarantees that I have a complete, untouched copy of every word that has so far been spoken and everything that follows, upon which I am insisting.”

“What do you want to say?” demanded Robertson.

“You each have the question-by-question analysis of the polygraph examination together, I hope, with the transcript of the voice recording. I do not, because I don’t believe I shall need it but if I omit anything, please question me about it when I finish saying what I have to say, okay?”

Robertson nodded, refusing a spoken acknowledgment.

Charlie inhaled a deep breath, knowing he was going to need it. “I denied being a serving officer in MI5 because denial is the inviolable rule, never to be broken under the severest pressure, even torture. I do tell lies. It is an essential necessity in my professional life, as it is now if I am to succeed in remaining part of the investigation with which I am entrusted. And which I did, in answer to the question of whether I lie to my superiors. You, Paul Robertson, are my superior, both by seniority and grade. I am under the strictest orders from our Director-General not to discuss anything involving my separate investigation. If there was not this ridiculous insistence upon yes or no answers, I would not have replied yes to that question. I would have replied that I lie to my superiors when necessary. If I lie I am not, by definition, an honest man. But my answer to that specific question was honest if you examine it properly. And yes, I am proud of what I do, lying and deceitful and deceptive though it is and how I have to be, because I believe that ultimately-although perhaps not always-it is for the common good, not bad. . ”

Charlie had to stop, both breathless and dry mouthed, wishing he’d asked for water before he’d started to talk. There was no offer of any from anyone in the room. “Have I come into contact with foreign intelligence agents? Of course I have. I had dinner with American CIA personnel this week. I believe one of the Russians with whom I am now in contact belongs to the Russian FSB. By a strict definition of a yes or no answer I am cooperating with him and have cooperated with others many times in the past, but always dishonestly on my part, to achieve whatever my objective has been in doing so. Yes, if I have to answer yes or no, I received money and accommodation and rewards from the former KGB. I was a supposed defector who escaped from Wormwood Scrubs with a known and legally convicted British traitor, to discover his secrets. Which I did. But because the sentence that got me into prison was phony, I never got pardoned. I was aware of listening devices being planted in this embassy because you, Mr. Robertson, told me when we agreed it indicated an inside source. I do not know who that source is: I thought I did, which was why I appeared before all of you earlier today. But when I spoke to the Director-General, he assured me that Paula-Jane Venables has been exonerated from any culpability. . ” Drawing to the end of his uninterrupted diatribe, Charlie once again turned to the now tight-faced technicians. “And no, I do not regard a polygraph examination as a joke, although I might wonder about today’s particular operation of it and the complete misconception that has been drawn from it. The yes or no restrictions allow grossly misleading readings to be drawn, as they were in this case.”

No one spoke when Charlie fell silent but there was a lot of head-turning looks back and forth among the panel as each sought someone who would spare Robertson’s very obvious discomfort. When no one else volunteered, Robertson said: “I think we need time to consider our responses so I must ask you to withdraw again.”

“Before I do leave the room I need to have my own copy of everything that has been said during this session, to submit in its entirety to the Director-General in London while you reconsider.”

“We resent the inference of that demand,” said Robertson.

“As I resent, much more deeply, what I have been subjected to,” said Charlie. “And while you’re discussing things, it might be an idea to have my things returned to the hotel and for another room to be reserved for me.” That had been too smart-ass, acknowledged Charlie, in immediate regret.