Red Star Rising

11

While Charlie didn’t go as far as conceding it to be a Pyrrhic victory, he didn’t expect a Christmas card from anyone on Paul Robertson’s investigation team. And even less from the Director-General. Aubrey Smith’s acceptance of Charlie’s defense had been begrudging in the extreme, tempered with accusations of arrogance, insubordination, and camera posturing, with a repeated warning that Charlie’s future employment depended on results that had been too long in coming. Apart from all of which, Charlie consoled himself, he’d survived.

Charlie encountered David Halliday on his way from Smith’s tirade to check his voice mail, his mind equally split between doing something as quickly as possible to impress the distinctly unimpressed Director-General and making the promised contact with Natalia.

“You looked outside?” greeted the MI6 officer.

“I’ve been so long underground I’m not sure if it’s day or night,” said Charlie.

“Then you’re in need of a reviver, even though it’s not yet midday,” said the man, jerking his head back toward his own quarters. “I duplicated your Islay single malt order and I’m glad I did.”

Charlie gratefully followed, welcoming the drink and the familiar “death to our enemies” toast.

Halliday said, “We’re virtually under siege since the London announcement of Sotley and Dawkins’s recall. Reg Stout says his outside guards estimate the media mob at more than fifty.”

“Stout’s still on duty?” queried Charlie, surprised.

“Apparently he took the Nazi defense of strictly obeying orders.”

“That’s neither a defense nor an excuse.”

“Which I’ve been telling London for months.”

“Was it you that finally got things moving?” asked Charlie, openly.

“I’d like to think so but for anyone in London finally to admit it would be to concede that they’d been hibernating, wouldn’t it?”

“You going to argue against Stout remaining on station?” pressed Charlie, accepting a top up from the offered bottle.

“Specifying names could risk a libel or slander accusation,” said Halliday.

Charlie didn’t believe it could but he was more interested in pursuing the conversation than in challenging it. “You been before Robertson’s inquisition?”

“P-J got a mauling, apparently. Seems to be pissed off with me for not telling her I was ringing alarm bells.”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

Halliday smiled at Charlie’s persistence. “Underwent the whole yes or no shebang, survived without losing a single fingernail or crushed testicle.”

“So who’s whispering all the secrets?”

Halliday shrugged. “How do I know? All I do know is that this embassy has been wide open to any sort of infiltration for months. Against which, how about the finding of the listening devices where they were being a complete coincidence? The FSB gets a chance they can’t believe and are doubly lucky when their guys hit all the right places entirely by accident?”

“You believe in that sort of coincidence?”

“No,” admitted Halliday. “I’m just pointing out that lucky coincidences sometimes happen, like miracles.”

“What about Paula-Jane?” said Charlie, consciously ignoring every London edict.

“What about her?”

“She have any bother?”

Halliday smiled, knowingly. “What have you heard?”

“I haven’t heard anything,” denied Charlie. “You told me you came out smelling of roses but she was pissed off. Just wondered if things went badly for her. This is her first posting, after all.”

Halliday shrugged again. “She didn’t go back on the same plane as Sotley and Dawkins, so I guess she’s okay. She didn’t tell me anything specific apart from getting a bollocking about lack of earlier warning but let’s face it, that’s not her function here.” The man offered the bottle again.

Charlie, who disagreed with that assessment, shook his head in refusal. “Still got things to do.”

“How’s it going?”

“Slowly.”

“My offer still stands. I’m not exactly overstretched and you know my director is more than willing to get me involved.”

Which was what Bundy had said, remembered Charlie: he could set up a sideline business selling tickets. “London’s orders are to keep everything strictly compartmented, certainly until Robertson’s inquiry is resolved.”

“The bastards in London expect too much from ground soldiers like you and me,” sympathized Halliday, the slightest of slurs to his words. “Things go right, they get the glory; things go wrong, we get the shit.”

Why was it, Charlie asked himself as he made his way along the corridor, that he still didn’t like Halliday, even though he was now serving Islay single malt?

Charlie wasn’t surprised to find his roughly packed suitcases tossed carelessly into his office, nor to be told when he called the Savoy Hotel that no new reservation had been made for him. Charlie took the offered suite, all that was available, when he was told his original room was no longer vacant. His initial amusement at wondering what innocent conversations the FSB was going to hear from its new occupant became serious at the realization that until Guzov learned of the change he’d probably have an untapped telephone line. There was one call on his voice-mail register but when he accessed it there was no message, just the click of a telephone being replaced. It wouldn’t, he knew, be Natalia. He called Sergei Pavel’s personal number at Petrovka but got no reply and matched his unknown caller by deciding not to leave a message.

Knowing that no local taxis were permitted within the embassy grounds and with no intention of making himself the focus of the waiting photographers by leaving the embassy like a refugee carrying his possessions on his back, Charlie called the transport office for an embassy car and wasted an additional twenty minutes arguing with Harold Barrett to get one.

Charlie’s telephone rang the moment he replaced it after the transport dispute. Sergei Pavel said, “What’s going on? The hotel told me you’d checked out.”

“It’s a misunderstanding,” said Charlie.

“I want to stop another one from happening,” said the Russian.

Charlie became aware of traffic noise in the background of Pavel’s call and realized the man was telephoning from the street.

Charlie was confident he could juggle the newly added ball without dropping any of those he was so far managing to keep in the air. There was still an explosion of camera lights when the car left the embassy, but Charlie was sure that while not making the evasion suspiciously obvious, he’d sufficiently obscured his face to avoid any identification on the FSB cameras. The media horde actually helped in that, overflowing on to the embankment road to slow the traffic and give Charlie more than sufficient time to check for pursuit. Nothing was obvious so Charlie ordered the English driver off the river road as quickly as it was possible, using his knowledge of the city to twist and double back until he was sure they weren’t being followed.

Charlie hurried his reregistration at the hotel although taking his usual care reestablishing his room traps, and was back on the hopefully watcher-free street within half an hour. He kept to the outskirts of Red Square, using the tourist groups for cover but holding back from getting too immersed, not wanting too many faces from which to pick out the one more interested in him than in St. Basil’s cathedral, the Kremlin, or Lenin’s tomb. Satisfied after half an hour that he was not under surveillance, Charlie moved in the direction of Ulitsa Varvarka and the side-alley rendezvous chosen by Pavel, although not immediately searching for either. He found the street telephone just off the main Varvarka highway, ideally wedged into a corner formed by two side roads that gave him a vantage point from which to continue searching all around him after dialing Natalia’s number.

“I thought you’d call before now?” she challenged, at once.

“We agreed two days. Is there a problem?”

“No.”

“Is Sasha back?”

“Yes.”

“Have you told her I’m here?”

“Not yet. I wanted us to talk some more, before I did.”

“Talk about what?”

“I’m not sure I can do it. Leave everything. Not sure I want to do it.”

Charlie wished there wasn’t so much traffic noise. “It’s the only way it can work for us.”

“Sasha’s happy at her school. I’m frightened it would be too much of an upheaval for her.”

“Children are resilient, adjustable, aren’t they?”

“Not like this. This would be like taking her to the moon.”

“We can’t make decisions like this, on the telephone. We need to meet again.” Charlie waited and when she didn’t respond, said, “Natalia?”

“We have a routine,” said Natalia. “If she’s done well, which she did with the summer school project, I take Sasha to the central park of culture to let her enjoy herself on the rides and amusements. We’re going there tomorrow afternoon.”

Everything was arriving from London tomorrow, Charlie remembered. And he still didn’t know why Pavel had approached him as he had, insisting upon the Varvarka rendezvous. “You want us to meet there?”

“No,” said Natalia, sharply. “I thought you wanted to see her. I don’t want you suddenly to appear, like a ghost. I want to prepare her, before any meeting.”

“There might be a problem with tomorrow. Some things might be happening.”

“It won’t matter if you can’t make it,” said Natalia, realistically. “We’re going anyway, around three o’clock. Be by the Ferris wheel if you can: Sasha always likes to ride it. If I don’t see you, I’ll know you’re held up and I’ll wait for another call, like this.”

“I’ll be there,” promised Charlie, unsettled by the arm’s length dismissal.

“If you’re not, call.”

It hadn’t been the sort of conversation he’d expected or wanted, Charlie thought, as he continued on toward Varvarka, sure from watching everything around him that he remained quite alone. Natalia had obviously acknowledged their only chance of being together permanently was for her and Sasha to resettle in England. So why wasn’t he feeling encouraged? Because, he supposed, of the reservations in almost everything she’d said, capped by her idea of his seeing Sasha from afar but not meeting her. But Natalia was right about preparing the child. Perhaps, even, it was a good idea that he be prepared, too. He hadn’t done anything about a present, for either of them. Plenty of opportunity for that. Better, probably, not to go bearing gifts the first time they got together as a family.

Charlie had no difficulty locating the workers’ cafe in the side street off the main road. In these casual, inexpensive bar/cafes, there was normally a scattering of places to sit but the preferred way of eating and drinking appeared to be standing up at small, mushroom-style tables. Pavel was already at one, a salami sandwich before him. There was no recognition. Charlie bought himself a coffee at the counter, intent upon any warning gesture of refusal from the waiting detective as he went toward the rear of the smoke-fogged cafe, finally going to Pavel’s stand.

“This might have all been overdramatic,” apologized Pavel, at once.

“What, exactly, are we doing?” opened Charlie, cautiously.

“Meeting properly by ourselves, as we should be doing, not having everything monitored and orchestrated by Mikhail Aleksandrovivh Guzov.”

Pissed-off policeman or poorly prepared provocateur? wondered Charlie. Whatever, he had to go along to see where it led but watch his back even more closely and carefully than he was already doing, if that were possible. “You got a professional problem?”

“You know he’s FSB, don’t you?”

“It wasn’t too difficult to guess,” tiptoed Charlie, waiting for the question about his own genuine profession. Which, surprisingly, didn’t come.

Instead Pavel said, “The way things are going-or rather not going-this will end with me being the take-all-blame victim of a failed investigation Guzov is doing his best to sabotage, with whatever shit that doesn’t get dumped on me poured all over you.”

Which in general terms was what he’d already worked out for himself, decided Charlie, becoming increasingly bewildered by the conversation. “Why does he want to sabotage everything?”

“I don’t know, not completely,” admitted Pavel. “But there’s one thing that I think might be an indicator. Guzov is absolutely insistent that the listening devices weren’t planted by the FSB. Or by the Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki, because the foreign service doesn’t have internal authority or remit.”

“How else could listening devices get into the embassy unless FSB officers put them there!”

Pavel shrugged. “I don’t have an explanation for that, either, but if the murder investigation ends in a mess then so, too, do allegations of planting bugs and spying. Leaving you and me, the two failed investigators, taking the blame for each and every failure. I don’t want that-couldn’t professionally survive that-and I don’t imagine you want to fail, either.”

Certainly not after the litany of complaints and criticisms he’d endured from London over the last few days, acknowledged Charlie, that thought colliding with another, that no provocateur could be as inept as Pavel was showing himself to be. “What do you want me to do?”

“Start making things happen, the way they should be happening. Despite Guzov’s interference and obstruction, I’ve done all the routine stuff: missing persons, gang feud rumors, informer whispers. I’ve gone through forensics until I can recite every finding practically from memory. And got nowhere: we’re looking at the perfect murder. There’s got to be something innovative to break it open and I don’t know what it is. Or could be. And even if I did, Guzov would overrule whatever I suggested. . ” The Russian paused, smiling tentatively. “But he couldn’t do anything to stop you, which is why he wants to be at your shoulder every time we meet.”

Charlie found a lot-most-of Pavel’s reasoning convoluted and obviously unsubstantiated, leaving him with only one point of total clarity: he couldn’t for a moment professionally risk everything collapsing as the Russian was predicting. But could he remotely consider exposing himself in the way Pavel was suggesting? There was a way, he supposed, although it would expose him to public recognition, which he’d never done before and had argued against so very recently. But did that matter if he were going to resign the service to make possible what he wanted with Natalia and Sasha?

“If I do something to exclude Guzov, he’ll exclude me from anything you’re going to do.”

“He’s doing that anyway. But I wouldn’t exclude you: we could go on like this.”

“Why are you taking such risks?”

“I stand to lose either way,” Pavel pointed out.

“I need to think things through,” said Charlie, consciously avoiding the commitment.

“If Guzov knows we’ve met like this he’ll get me off the case, which he’s already tried to do,” disclosed Pavel. “He wants to replace me with his own tame militia man.”

“How can we stop him from doing that?”

Pavel shrugged. “Lose me and you lose any possible cooperation.”

In how many different ways could he lose? Charlie asked himself. And didn’t bother to start counting.