Red Star Rising

18

By the time Charlie reached the embassy the following morning, just after seven, the message capacity on one of his dedicated telephones was blocked by the overflow of incoming calls, and the register on the second showed there was less than two minutes recording space left. There were just three minutes remaining on his personally assigned line. It only took seconds for two of Fish’s technicians to download the messages from all three instruments, each of which was switched to speaker reception. Practically every call they reviewed was a media demand-worldwide approaches almost equaling those from within Russia-for comment or more information on the previous night’s ORT disclosure. So were all but seven on the overnight tapes. Three of the outstanding seven were cranks, one again from the singing communist zealot. Charlie ordered all but four of these calls-each duplicates from ORT-to be wiped, with no intention of responding. Of the four that remained, three were from men, the other from a woman. Two of the men insisted the murder of the one-armed man to be a gang killing, offering an identity for money-one for?5,000, the other for?1,000-which had to be left in advance at designated places before they’d call back with the name. The third man, who didn’t leave a return number, said he personally knew the victim and would make contact again. The woman, who sounded old, thought the one-armed man was her husband who hadn’t returned from the siege of Leningrad during the Great Patriotic War.

One exception, on Charlie’s personally allocated line, was from Bill Bundy. The CIA man said: “You feel in need of a sympathetic ear, you’ve got my number, Charlie.”

“Robertson was as pissed off as hell at being called back to London,” said Fish, who’d remained in the room with his technicians listening to every playback. “He’ll be even more upset about the TV disclosure.”

“I’m sure he will be,” agreed Charlie, philosophically.

Fish indicated the tape still containing the television station approaches. “You going to return those?”

“I need to know who’s still leaking from inside this embassy.”

“You think the station’s going to tell you!”

“I won’t know unless I ask, will I?” said Charlie.

A woman answered the ORT number, her voice lifting the moment Charlie identified himself. “We very much appreciate your calling back, Mr. Muffin.”

“You are?”

Harry Fish turned from the apparatus he was now operating alone, nodding confirmation that the sound levels were providing a perfect recording.

“I am Svetlana Modin, ORT’s main news anchor. Your information at yesterday’s conference was extremely useful.”

Fish gave a thumbs-up, nodding approvingly at the identification and mouthing that they had her image on film.

“You called me?” invited Charlie, his feet beginning to throb in warning.

There was just the slightest uncertainty in the laugh. “We certainly have a lot to discuss.”

“About what?”

The laugh was stronger this time. “About your security chief, Reginald Stout, the man close to you on the platform yesterday.”

“Are you recording this conversation?” demanded Charlie.

“I can assure you that we at ORT are jealous of our integrity and consider accuracy the cornerstone of our journalism.”

“That’s not an answer to my question.”

“Do you want me to stop the recording?”

“Your integrity didn’t extend sufficiently to your telling me what you were doing.”

“I’ve stopped doing it now.”

“Why don’t you come to speak to me here, at the embassy?”

“With a film crew?” the woman asked, urgently.

“No, definitely not with a film crew,” refused Charlie. “I will see you here in one hour. I have also recorded this conversation. You will not be allowed to bring any recording equipment into the embassy. Don’t attempt any hidden devices, after openly surrendering an obvious machine at the gatehouse: the room in which we meet will be electronically protected against any attempted recording.”

“I can’t accept those restrictions,” the woman tried to argue, hurriedly.

“Then there is no purpose in continuing this conversation or in your coming here. Good-bye-”

“No!” blurted Svetlana, anxiously. “Okay! I accept the conditions.”

“That sounded pretty good to me,” suggested Fish, as Charlie replaced the telephone. “But I still don’t imagine she’ll give you her source.”

Reflectively Charlie said, “I think Svetlana Modin’s a very, very clever lady. And that she thinks I am a very, very stupid man, which is hardly surprising after my performance. Can you get me a written transcript of that conversation?”

“Did I miss something?” Fish frowned.

“I think the definite intention was that I should,” judged Charlie. “We still got yesterday’s cameras on the gatehouse.”

“Yes.”

“And they’re still operational in Robertson’s inquiry room, with all the recording gear there?”

“Yes,” said Fish.

“Can you record whatever conversation I have with her there while at the same time preventing her using a concealed device?”

“It won’t be perfect,” said the electronics expert, cautiously.

“But still audible?”

“I can enhance it, later. Why don’t you tell me what’s going on, Charlie?”

“I will when I’m sure myself.”

Charlie watched Fish hurry from the room, adding another uncertainty to all his others: Why hadn’t Pavel made contact by now? It was irrefutable logic that the Russian would-should-have done so, after the television revelation, quite irrespective of all the Petrovka lines being tapped by Guzov’s FSB.

When Charlie got the answering machines on two of Pavel’s numbers and an unavailable signal from the third-which Charlie assumed to be jammed to overflowing-he rang the main Petrovka switchboard. The operator insisted that no one in the headquarters building knew the militia colonel’s whereabouts. There was no reply from the personal line Charlie had for Mikhail Guzov and although there was a listed number for the Federal’naya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti, Charlie held back from ringing it, reminding himself that he was not officially supposed to know that the man was a serving officer.

Charlie’s frustration was broken by Harry Fish’s return, two closely typed foolscap pages in his hand. “Now I’ve read what she said as well as hearing it. I’d say Svetlana Modin is one hard-assed bitch.”

Charlie didn’t speak until he’d read the transcript through himself, twice. On his third reading he worked on the typed pages, deleting and rearranging the context. Finally looking up at the other man, Charlie said, “I’d say she’s a hard-assed professional and that she’s going to think she’s got me by the balls even before she gets here.” He handed the marked pages back to Fish and said, “You think you can keep our master copy but make another record, still in our respective voices, what I’ve written there?”

Fish looked quizzically up from what Charlie had created. “They surely wouldn’t do this! You told her yourself that we were making our own copy: We could refute it.”

“Remember the golden rule of propaganda,” urged Charlie. “Tell a lie enough times to a big enough audience and it’ll become the truth.”

Both men looked toward the suddenly ringing telephone, at once recognizing Halliday’s voice on the speaker phone. “For Christ’s sake, turn on your television!”

The picture that flickered on to the screen was a virtual replay of the media scrum outside the embassy gates the previous day, the frenzy greater now because of Reg Stout and his two escorts being the focus in its very center. Robertson and his two panelists were separately surrounded by more jostling, yelling journalists and cameramen. There were two uniformed British Airways stewards attempting as ineffectually as three uniformed Russian militia officers, to force a path along the airport concourse to the waiting London flight. As Charlie and Fish watched, the TV camera abruptly zoomed in upon the embassy security officer tight enough to show his escorts were gripping Stout by either arm to force him on and that the man was struggling against them, his head thrown back as he shouted inaudibly. The Russian voice-over commentary was of Stout demanding protection by the Russian authorities and for the militia officers to intercede to prevent his kidnap, back to England. “He is saying,” reported the commentator, “that in London he will be put on trial for his life. The charge will be treason, the maximum penalty for which is the death sentence, despite the United Kingdom supposedly no longer having capital punishment on its statute books. . ”

“Jesus Christ!” exclaimed Fish.

“I’d like what I wrote back on the recording and ready for replay before Svetlana Modin gets here,” said Charlie. “She’s due in fifteen minutes and I don’t expect her to be late.”

She wasn’t.

From the concealment of the gatehouse Charlie decided that if Svetlana Modin was indeed as hard-assed a professional as she was attractive, he was confronting a formidable adversary. The jacket of her full-skirted, dark brown business suit was cut wide to make the brown-trimmed yellow shirt a part of the ensemble, one too many buttons unfastened to hint at the deep cleavage beneath. The blond hair, meticulously fashioned by an attendant hairdresser, brushed her shoulders, and on the second by second countdown to a live transmission a makeup girl applied last-minute touches to an eyebrow that arched questioningly on cue as the woman began her piece to camera. Enclosed as he was, Charlie was unable to hear what she was saying but saw almost overexpansive gestures toward the embassy and from the reaction of other journalists and cameramen closest to her guessed the woman was announcing her impending, exclusive entry into the embassy. He was proved right when, with her camera still running, Svetlana Modin handed her microphone to an expectant sound recordist before walking to the gatehouse door where she stopped and posed before pushing into the entry control area. Once over the threshold, she relaxed the tightly fixed presentation smile, twitching the cramp from her face, and began, “I have an appointment. .” before she saw Charlie at the far side of the shadowed cubicle.

She said: “Thank you, Mr. Muffin, for inviting me here to talk at length about the murder and everything else that has happened in and around the embassy.”

“There was an agreement about recording,” reminded Charlie.

“Because of which I have not brought a machine with me.”

“You have no recording equipment whatsoever?”

Smiling, Svetlana held her arms away from her body, stretching the shirt further over the impressive breasts and said, “Search me, if you wish.”

“Let’s go into the complex,” invited Charlie. He remained silent as they crossed the forecourt. At the main building he said, “No unauthorized electronic equipment works now.”

“I told you I don’t have any electronic equipment.”

“I heard what you told me,” assured Charlie, ushering her into Robertson’s interrogation room.

Svetlana said at once, “This looks like a torture chamber.”

“Nothing electronic works in here, either.”

“You really don’t believe I’m clean, do you?”

“Did you really expect me to?”

“Not if you’re the intelligence agent I believe you to be. That’s what you are, aren’t you? An agent?”

To Svetlana’s obvious bewilderment, Charlie said, “We’re ready.”

Her frown cleared at the entry of Harry Fish, a flashlightlike device in his hand. “A club to beat me with?”

“Are you still willing to be searched?”

Now her face hardened. “Why shouldn’t I be?”

“Are you still willing to be searched for electronic recording equipment?” repeated Charlie, formally.

Svetlana smiled, once more extending her arms in an expansive invitation. “Enjoy.”

Harry Fish was professionally, painstakingly thorough, standing behind her to sweep every inch of Svetlana’s back and sides, even going over the curtain of hair beneath which something might have been concealed, reversing from the heels of her shoes to their toes to start ascending from her front. A bleep accompanied the sharp flash on Fish’s sensor when he got to the top of the woman’s thighs. “There it is,” said the man, unnecessarily.

“You’ll be escorted to a cloakroom to take off whatever recording apparatus you’ve got under your clothes,” announced Charlie.

Slowly, provocatively, Svetlana lifted her skirt above her waist. She wasn’t wearing any underwear. The brown stockings were supported by a black lace suspender belt, framing her natural blondness. The device was strapped around her right thigh, tight against her crotch.

Not looking at the woman exposing herself, Harry Fish said, “It’s a microphone.”

Ignoring her, too, Charlie said, “Would it have transmitted from the gatehouse and coming across the courtyard?”

“Yes,” confirmed Fish, at once.

Eventually looking back to Svetlana, who was letting her skirt gradually drop, Charlie recited, “Thank you, Mr. Muffin, for inviting me here to talk at length about the murder and everything else that’s happened in and around the embassy. That really was too scripted, although I didn’t expect the pubic demonstration as well. Take the microphone off.”

The skirt rose again. “Why don’t you help me?”

“Both of us or do you have a preference?” asked Charlie.

She shrugged. “I’m a fun person.”

Charlie jerked his head backward. “Your vagina’s been on camera now for close to five full minutes, maybe longer. You look closely you can see the fish-eye lens just above the light switch on the wall opposite you. And my sound system isn’t affected by what will have destroyed yours, once you got inside the embassy. I can’t imagine that you thought you’d get away with it. I even warned you!”

The microphone came away from her groin with a crackle of torn-apart Velcro with the second descent of the skirt. “Motherfucker!”

“Listen,” said Charlie, smiling, and nodding to Harry Fish. At Fish’s press of the replay button the room was filled with the sound of Charlie’s edited version of his earlier telephone conversation with Svetlana Modin, dominated by her voice.

Svetlana Modin: We very much appreciate your calling, Mr. Muffin. I am Svetlana Modin, ORT’s news anchor. We certainly have a lot to discuss about your security chief, Reginald Stout. I can assure you that we at ORT are jealous of our integrity and consider it the cornerstone of our journalism.

Charlie: Why don’t you come to speak to me here, at the embassy? I will see you here in one hour.

Svetlana: Okay! I agree and accept the conditions you set out earlier.

“I’m not suggesting that is precisely how you planned the edit, but it’s pretty close, isn’t it? Screened with the scenes at Sheremyetevo Airport this morning you’d have had another world exclusive, wouldn’t you?”

“You really are a motherfucker, aren’t you?”

“We’ll complete the check, shall we, Harry?”

The second microphone was between the fulsome cups of her bra, black lace to match the suspender belt. Charlie said, “Let’s not fuck about with helping you disconnect it. Just take it off.”

As she did so, quickly buttoning her blouse afterward, Svetlana Modin slumped into the interrogation chair, legs splayed but covered. “What do you want?”

“The name of your informant.”

“You know I won’t do that. I’ve got a much better idea. You give me something, I’ll give you something. If you’re as clever as you’re making yourself out to be, you’ll have the name and I’ll have the exclusive I hope to get. How’s that sound?”

“You were too obvious with the way your framed your questions, from the word go, on the telephone. But I never expected the pussy-peek.”

“You’d be surprised how often it’s worked before.”

Charlie turned to Harry Fish. “You think you could run that part of the film on which Svetlana’s proving herself to be naturally blond?”

Fish made the connection within minutes, beckoning the Russian to the small viewing screen, from which she very quickly looked up. “Very enticing, even if I say so myself. What’s your point?”

“Your international as well as national fame. If I released that footage to all your rival Moscow TV stations, as well as those throughout Europe, America, and Asia, your vagina-even with the necessarily discreet editing-would have phenomenal viewing figures, alongside the edited and unedited tape of our telephone conversation. We’d describe it as evidence of how far-up to and including blackmail and sex, with your invitation to Harry and me to take the first microphone off-you’re prepared to go to get what you want.”

“I’ve got enough to face you down, you bastard!”

“And I’ve got film of your openly offered and freely displayed crotch. Whose face is going to be redder, yours or mine?”

“It was an anonymous caller,” said the woman, tightly.

“Male or female?”

“It sounded male but it was difficult to be sure.”

“Why?”

“It was distorted through a synthesizer.”

“In Russian or in English?”

“Russian.”

“A genuine Russian speaker or with an accent?”

“There was an accent.”

“What sort of accent?”

“The synthesizer made it impossible to guess.”

“Try.”

“I can’t.”

“How soon after the press conference here?”

“An hour; maybe an hour and a half. I’d just gotten back to the studio. I’d told the switchboard to put any calls that referred to the press conference directly through to me. We’d made an appeal for callers, throughout the morning.”

“Tell me-the actual words the caller used.”

Svetlana gave another of her familiar, open-armed gestures. “I can’t remember the exact words!”

“Try,” Charlie said.

“It was something like, ‘I have information about the conference at the British embassy. The man on the far right of the platform, the one who didn’t say anything. He’s been arrested for spying. It’s to do with the listening devices that were found earlier.’ That’s as much as I can remember.”

“You’re lying,” accused Charlie. “That sort of conversation couldn’t have been within a ninety-minute time frame. Stout was still being questioned an hour and a half after the end of the conference.”

“Maybe it was longer than an hour and a half.”

“Doesn’t your recorder have a time counter?”

Svetlana’s face twitched. “I don’t remember the precise timing! There was sufficient time for me to catch the main news bulletin.”

“You went to a lot of trouble when I first called you today, telling me how important integrity and accuracy is to your station. So, set out the sequence in more detail for me. You get an anonymous call from someone whose gender you can’t even identify, because they’re using a synthesizer?”

“I asked him questions.”

“So tell me the first thing he said.”

“It was something like ‘I have information about the murder at the embassy.’ ”

Charlie made as if to speak but didn’t, not immediately. Then he said, “Let’s go back to integrity and accuracy. What did you do to substantiate the information you got from your anonymous caller, before going on air?”

Svetlana looked steadily across the space separating them, her mouth a tight line only broken when she said, “I’m getting very pissed off with this.”

“Don’t, for a single mistaken moment, imagine that I won’t do what I warned you I would if you tried to fuck me about. . as I think you’ve tried to fuck me about ever since we began talking. So you know what we’re going to do, to achieve a lot more a lot quicker. We’re going to stop now. You’re going to go back to the station and you are going to get me the tape you recorded-the original, not a copy. .”-Charlie gestured to the silent Harry Fish-“I know you’ll take a copy, but he’ll know if you’ve doctored it in any way and if you do, I’ll expose you more effectively than you’ve ever exposed yourself before. And you’re going to tell me who you called here at the embassy to confirm Reginald Stout’s detention. Is there anything I’ve said that you don’t understand or need me to explain in more detail?”

Svetlana’s face had been reddening as Charlie talked and now it was blazing. “You shouldn’t talk to me like this. . imagine you can talk to me like this!’

“Noon!” stipulated Charlie. “I’ll be waiting.”

Charlie was halfway back across the courtyard after escorting Svetlana Modin to the gatehouse, having enjoyed her furious gestures to her crew to stop filming her emergence outside, when Harry Fish came hurriedly out of the embassy, waving him back into the building.

“What is it?” demanded Charlie.

“Hear for yourself,” said the electronics expert, bustling Charlie into the elevator to the apartment where the dedicated telephones were recording incoming calls. One of Fish’s technicians was by Charlie’s personal line, and as they entered the room the man depressed the replay button.

The voice, in Russian began: “Charlie! I’ve got. .” before the room reverberated with a deafening roar.

Charlie said: “That was Pavel’s voice.”

Fish said: “And that was a gunshot.”