Red Star Rising

21

“I’m here, to talk to you: the Englishman you saw on television. Read about in newspapers. You can talk to me. Just to me.” Charlie spoke in Russian, very consciously keeping any urgency from his voice, anxious that she didn’t detect the other emotion surging through him, even after the hour there’d been for him to rationalize the only possible interpretation from the car ramming. The reception volume was tuned to its highest without risking an ear-splitting playback and Charlie could clearly hear heavy breathing: quick, jerky, gulping snatches. Magnified as the receiver was he could very definitely detect traffic noise, the sticky tire sound against the street, an occasional impatient horn burst. “Don’t be frightened. You mustn’t be frightened. I promise nothing bad will happen. I’ll look after you.” Better that time: proper, comprehensible sentences. Her breathing sounded heavier, positively panting. “Talk to me. Tell me you understand what I’m telling you.”

From his equipment bank, Harry Fish hand signaled that the connection had been kept for two minutes.

“Not safe. .” The words hissed out, scarcely above a whisper. It was a hoarse voice, a smoker’s voice.

“I’ll make it safe. Keep you safe.”

“Can’t.”

“I can. And I will.”

“Ivan said. .” she began, before stumbling into a coughing fit. It was definitely a smoker’s cough, a discernible wheezing.

“What did Ivan say. .? Tell me what Ivan said.” He’d spoken too loudly, too demanding, Stop thinking about the car crash!

“. . safe. .”

“That he’d be safe?” groped Charlie, hopefully. Concentrate on one thing; only one thing, he told himself.

“. . killed him. .”

“Help me catch who killed him. .”

“Can’t.”

“I can!” insisted Charlie, wanting the forcefulness in his voice now. “If you help me I can catch them.”

“No!” refused the voice just as forcefully, and the line went dead.

“Hello? Hello?” repeated Charlie.

“She’s gone,” announced Fish, unnecessarily. “You did well, holding her as long as you did.”

“Did you get a number?” demanded Charlie. “We know the time she’s going to phone, if she phones again. If we could find the kiosk we could stake it out; identify her!”

“I told you that was what I was going to try to do!”

“Did you do it?”

Fish shook his head. “I think the Russians are trying to monitor the line.”

“Can they?” asked Charlie, even more demanding.

There was another head shake. “I’ve ‘washed’ all the lines, to stop them being able to do that. But their device blocks me in return. Electronically it’s a standoff.”

After a pause, Charlie said: “I think she was genuine. . not a crank.”

“I’ll need a translation of the actual words,” said Fish, guardedly. “The tone-the fear-certainly sounded genuine. Unless. .”

“Unless what?”

“While you were talking, it suddenly occurred to me that it could be an FSB trick, testing you out.”

“You just told me they can’t monitor the line, hear what’s said.” It was a reasonable suggestion from the other man. From the accident report on Hopkins they’d know they’d failed. If it was a ploy, they could plan it better the next time.

“They’d know the call was made,” Fish pointed out. “They can count them, quite easily, now that the calls are trailing off. And just as easily know how long they last.” So far that day there’d only been eight incoming contacts-four from journalists, two cranks, and two seeking money in advance of imparting promised information-in addition to that which Charlie had just finished.

Now Charlie shook his head. “If Guzov challenges me I’ll dismiss it as a crank: a hysterical woman I didn’t believe. But I think she’s our most likely. .” He hesitated. “Our only possibility, in fact, apart from the silent ones who didn’t call back.”

“Twenty-eight who didn’t call back,” itemized Fish, pedantically.

“Will this one?” asked Charlie, in self-reflection.

“I think so. You kept her on far longer than I expected: that’s what made me wonder if she might be a plant. If she isn’t, she’s someone who wants to talk but is too frightened.”

“And our one-armed man was named Ivan,” Charlie remembered. Would he ever know the name of his attempted murderer? At once, irritation overwhelmed the thought. He wouldn’t be able to protect himself-survive even-if he allowed himself to think nonsense like that.

“What about her voice? You’ve got the language, I haven’t. Well educated, high born, low born, what?”

“Difficult, from what little she actually said, the hoarseness with which she said it. My impression is well educated.”

“You intend telling anyone?”

“There’s nothing to tell.” Which wouldn’t stop Harry Fish navigating his back channels to London, Charlie accepted. And probably Halliday, who’d fortunately left the apartment before the call, would have already told his MI6 case officer in London of the car crash, just as Charlie was sure that Fish would already have done.

“All we can do now is sit and wait, hopefully no longer than just after noon tomorrow.”

Maybe all you’ve got to do, thought Charlie. He had a hell of a lot more than that to do and at that moment wasn’t at all sure where to start.

Paul Robertson’s returning inquiry team arrived during the course of the afternoon, each traveling separately, routing themselves through Paris, Amsterdam, and Frankfurt. Only Robertson came direct from London, getting to the embassy ahead of the rest.

“It was the Director-General’s idea, hoping to avoid the sort of identification debacle we had going out,” explained Robertson. “That was an absolute bloody nightmare.”

“I’m surprised he didn’t send a different team,” said Charlie. Harry Fish had already been with the other man when Charlie arrived in the retained inquiry room and he was curious if the man had already told Robertson of that morning’s telephone call. Or of the embankment crash.

“You all right?” Robertson asked Charlie, answering Charlie’s uncertainty.

“They failed,” said Charlie.

“This time,” said Robertson. “What’s the Director-General say?”

“We haven’t talked about it yet.”

“You’ll be going back to London, of course.”

“No,” said Charlie.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” said the man.

“What’s ridiculous?” demanded Charlie. “I’m reading it that I am close to something or someone: they’re frightened that I’m too close. This isn’t the time to run: that’s what they’ll be hoping, having missed with the crash.”

“You think the Director-General will risk another killing?”

“We’ll see,” said Charlie.

“He’s under a lot of pressure in London,” said Robertson. “He considered sending in an entirely new inquiry team to find this inside leak. I argued against risking different people. My group and I are already blown.”

Robertson was desperate to recover from his mistake, recognized Charlie. “And you’ve limited the number of people who’ve been told in advance, so if the rest of your people get in unspotted and your return leaks, you’ve got your list of suspects?”

Robertson smiled, humorlessly. “And I know he only told you he was thinking of sending us back.”

“Where’s this new indication of an inside whistleblower leave Reg Stout? And all the others, for that matter?” asked Fish, entering the conversation.

“They’re all bound by the Official Secrets Act, under which we use different rules before we actually get into court; until then, they’re all guilty until proven innocent.”

“But Stout can’t be your man, even though I found those bugs,” Fish pointed out. “He was incommunicado, from that moment on.”

“That’s the defense he’s trying, ahead of even seeing a lawyer,” offered Robertson.

“ ‘I’m safe’ calls,” dismissed Charlie.

“Exactly,” agreed Robertson.

“What?” questioned Fish.

“The embassy was known to be under investigation,” reminded Robertson. “If Stout didn’t make a call, any sort of contact, at or on a rigidly fixed time schedule-miss one, it could be circumstance, miss two, it’s alarm bells, miss three, he’s in the bag-his Control knows he’s lost him. He didn’t make his ‘I’m safe’ call.”

“It’s a basic tradecraft routine,” added Charlie. “You’ve never heard of it before?”

“I’m not operational,” indignantly protested Fish, flushed at the reaction from the other two men. “This is the closest I’ve ever got. Or ever want to be again.”

“I wish we were closer,” picked up Robertson. “None of us is winning accolades at the moment back at Thames House.”

“It’s a common concern,” said Charlie. There’d be a concerted effort to get him withdrawn, he accepted. Which, perhaps absurdly, strengthened his determination to stay. To rebase would obviously be the safest thing to do but despite his apprehension he didn’t want to run, which was probably pride and common sense gone mad. And, came the ever-looming awareness, selfishly unfair on Natalia and Sasha. Fish, who was nearer, answered the telephone but handed it immediately to the spy-catcher. Robertson smiled, said “good,” and smiled more broadly as he replaced the receiver. “All in, undetected, including the guards and the polygraph technicians.”

“Let’s hope our luck holds,” said Harry Fish.

It didn’t.

That night Svetlana Modin once more led the ORT main evening news bulletin with the disclosure of London’s rejection of CIA assistance, predicting that it would result in a deterioration now of relationships with Washington, because of the refusal, and with Moscow, who had been unaware of any possible collusion between the two Western governments. Her report concluded with the announcement of the inquiry team’s return to Moscow, which included footage of Robertson’s earlier airport departure melee.

“Fuck!” said Charlie, aloud, in the solitude of his hotel suite. And hesitated, undecided, when the telephone rang five minutes later, finally snatching for it.