Red Star Rising

32

“It won’t work now!”

“It will work.”

Irena was teetering on the very edge of hysteria, Charlie recognized. As he’d recognized, in his fury, how Svetlana had spun the broadcast totally to defeat his attempt to discover, from his carefully planted information, who was leaking from the British embassy. Guzov could have been the only source for Svetlana, actually using the words anomalies and inconsistencies in the official British Note to the Russian Interior Ministry, but Svetlana had talked of his being “recalled” to prove her insistence of further deteriorating relations between London and Moscow. She’d also used library film footage of him in a segment, suggesting that Charlie was taking new information back to London.

Charlie said, “It’s all going to be as I promised.”

“There’s a permanent FSB watch at the airport. They’ll just increase it: get the manifest naming everyone on board.”

“I’m the only person they’ll be interested in.”

“We’ll be associated-too close-when you pass me the passport and the ticket.”

“The concentration will be inside the terminal,” argued Charlie, the exchange that was necessary between them already formulated in his mind. “I will give you a precise time when I’ll be arriving outside, to within minutes. You get there earlier so that as we go toward the entrance separately we get closer, bunching nearer the door; that’s when I’ll do the drop. You hesitate, as if you’ve forgotten something, so that you’re nowhere near me when we get into the terminal. I’ll do nothing to avoid attention if there is any-attract it, in fact-and you won’t even be noticed: we’ll use the attention, not suffer from it.”

“None of this was how you promised it would be,” complained Irena, although slightly less anxiously.

“Listen to the promises you are already guaranteed,” insisted Charlie, taking his time to list the arrangements in place for Irena’s arrival in London.

“You didn’t say anything about Ivan’s body,” she isolated, the moment Charlie stopped talking.

“I didn’t mention it because it hasn’t been arranged yet.”

“I want Ivan with me, in England. I want him buried there, properly; know the place where he’ll be.”

“He will be buried in England,” stressed Charlie, hoping he sounded sincere.

“I won’t go, leave here, until I know he’s already there.”

“It’s got to be this way-you first, then Ivan.”

“It doesn’t have to be this way!”

“You know it does.” He didn’t need Irena anymore, Charlie thought, brutally. He’d got everything he wanted from her and there was no way the FSB could find her if she stayed in Moscow, so why was he bothering? Because she deserved better than the way in which she existed: because he wanted to. He’d abandoned too many innocent people in the past, but this time he’d do his best to at least get her somewhere better than where-and how-she was now. She’d hate him, he accepted, when she realized Ivan’s body couldn’t be brought to England-which he didn’t think it could-but at least she’d get most of what she wanted. When there was no response from her end Charlie said, “Irena?”

“I don’t think I can do it,” she declared, sobs snatching at her words.

“You can. You must,” insisted Charlie, knowing he had to force her. “Do everything I’ve told you. The moment you get to London there’ll be people waiting at the airport, to look after you, as I’ve explained. From that moment you’ll be safe, forever. It’s got to be now, Irena. With me. No one will come back for you if you don’t come now. There’ll be no second chance.”

“I know,” she mumbled.

“So be there.”

“I’ll try.”

“Be there.”

Charlie was too early for his meeting with Natalia so he filled the time by going nostalgically into the Botanical Gardens that featured so much in their relationship. But wouldn’t any longer. There was little more he could say or do to persuade her, all the promises and assurances used up. Could he quit the service, as he’d told her he could? He believed so, even if Natalia didn’t. And he would resign. As well as keeping the personal vow never to lie to her again.

There’d be a lot he’d miss but a lot more than he wouldn’t, assignments like this in particular. Not that he could genuinely recall any that were as similarly cluttered by what he now recognized clearly to be meticulously planned chaos, the reason for which he at last knew and now understood. What he still didn’t know was precisely who those planners were and most important of all, what London would do with the sensation with which he’d presented them.

Charlie was already inside the restaurant, his chosen table so secluded in the corner farthest from the entrance that Natalia didn’t immediately see him when she entered, fifteen minutes late.

“I was beginning to think you weren’t coming,” said Charlie, as she sat.

“I stopped at the gardens, for old times’ sake.”

“So did I.”

She shook her head against an aperitif but Charlie held the waitress to get the ordering out of the way. Natalia appeared as disinterested in the food as Charlie, saying she’d have the same as him.

When the waitress left Natalia took a folded sheet of paper from her handbag and said, “Here’s Sasha’s tiger.”

“You didn’t tell me it had red ears.” Sasha had strayed over the body outline again.

“They were an afterthought.”

“Did you tell her we were meeting today?”

Natalia shook her head. “She wanted to give it to you herself if we bumped into you again.”

Charlie held Natalia’s eyes. “Does that mean we’re not going to?”

“No, it doesn’t mean that.”

“What then?”

“A compromise.”

“What compromise?”

“It said on television last night that you’re being recalled. The inference was that you were in some kind of trouble.” She raised her hand, a halting gesture, as Charlie moved to speak. “I don’t want any details!”

The same fear as Irena of danger by association, thought Charlie. “I’m not in trouble. I expect to be back here in a few days.”

“I’m glad. . that you’re okay.”

They stopped talking at the arrival of borsch and the red wine.

Charlie said, “It’s complicated, though.”

“Things that we do always seem to be.”

“You still haven’t told me what you mean by compromise.”

“How long’s it going to be, before everything you’re here for to be wrapped up?”

“I don’t know. A few weeks, say three. A month at the most.”

“There’s not the difficulty there used to be, moving in and out of Russia,” said Natalia. “I’m due leave and Sasha’s school is breaking up for their summer recess. It would work perfectly if you’d completed everything in a month. Sasha and I could come to London for a vacation.”

“Only for a vacation?”

“I’m not going to rush anything, Charlie. I want to see how I feel when I get there and I want to see how Sasha feels. We won’t stay with you but we’ll see you a lot and I want to be absolutely sure that it’ll work before I make the final decision. If you don’t think that’s a good idea. . that I’m not being fair and that it’s not going to give me or you enough time, then I’ll understand.”

“I think-” tried Charlie, but Natalia cut him off.

“I’ve always been honest with you, but you haven’t always been honest with me. So here’s my honesty. I do love you, despite all the things that have happened in the past. But we’re not starry-eyed teenagers. Love isn’t enough. I’m thinking mostly about Sasha, the adjustments she’s going to have to make. And we would have to make a lot of adjustments, too, both of us. That’s my compromise: how I want us to go forward. As I hope we can.”

“That’s how I want us to go forward, too,” accepted Charlie, at once.

Natalia sipped her wine, at last. “I’m glad that’s over.”

“So am I,” said Charlie, meaning it.

“You’re really not in trouble, are you, Charlie? That’s what I’m really worried about: something happening that would ruin it all.” She hesitated. “This is our last chance.”

“It’s complicated, as I told you.” There wasn’t a complication he couldn’t overcome after this: literally everything was falling into place exactly as he wanted.

Which it continued to do, with minor exceptions, throughout the rest of the day.

Charlie was anxious to limit the time he spent that afternoon at the embassy. He sent a courtesy memo to Peter Maidment advising the acting ambassador of his return to London, carefully omitting departure and return dates and was glad that Paula-Jane Venables’s absence from the rezidentura spared her assuming he was leaving the following day from his vagueness about her outstanding luncheon invitation. David Halliday wasn’t in his section, either, but the newspapers were: Svetlana Modin’s broadcast the previous night was yet again the basis for most of the print media coverage. His return to London-all using the word “recall”-confirmed an increasingly deepening disagreement between London and Moscow over the murder investigation. All reported the refusal of the Russian Interior Ministry to make any comment. Charlie didn’t encounter Paul Robertson, either, and didn’t try to locate the man.

Irena Novikov’s passport arrived as promised in the diplomatic bag but separately from the preliminary forensic report Charlie had asked to be conducted on the briefcase and the Russian murder dossier it had contained. On both the dossier and the briefcase there were five different and fresh sets of fingerprints. There was also sufficient surviving residual finger sweat hopefully to provide DNA traces. One of the five sets was identified as Charlie’s, from their being recorded on his personnel records. The other provable prints were Paula-Jane’s.

On his way back to the Savoy, Charlie weighed the potential advantages against disadvantages of making contact with Svetlana Modin, and decided not to bother. There wasn’t anything, either half true or totally invented, that might benefit him and he was determined not to risk anything that might further disorientate or unsettle Irena Novikov.

Would it take a month to conclude it all, as he’d told Natalia? Not everything, he accepted. To conclude everything, he’d have to identify Ivan Oskin’s killers and he’d already acknowledged he’d never be able to do that. So it could even be as little as two weeks. He’d take leave directly afterward. He wanted to be free of any distraction or intrusion when Natalia and Sasha were in London. He’d have to get the right hotel: a suite, not a room, but not overwhelm them, as Natalia so often complained he did. Maybe not an hotel at all. Perhaps she’d prefer a short-term sublet apartment in which they could live more as they did in Moscow, and Natalia could get a better experience of what living in London would be like. They didn’t necessarily have to live in London, not if Natalia didn’t want to. That was another possible idea! Rent a car and drive around England, showing them the countryside and the beaches as well as the London tourist sites. They most certainly would never see the graffiti-daubed Vauxhall council isolation flat in which he lived during assignments.

David Halliday was already in the bar when Charlie entered, on the stool next to Charlie’s accustomed corner seat, turning in greeting when he saw Charlie approaching in the bar’s back-plate mirror.

“I was going to give you another ten minutes before calling up,” said the MI6 officer, nodding to the waiting vodka. “Ordered for you when they told me at reception that you were here.”

“Appreciate the forethought,” thanked Charlie, as he sat.

“Thought I’d come to say good-bye. We didn’t actually get together very much, did we? Pity. Moscow really has changed a lot since the last time you were here.”

“There hasn’t actually been much time for socializing,” said Charlie. “Maybe when I get back.”

“When will that be?”

“Nothing’s fixed.”

“I might not be here, which is why I came tonight,” said Halliday. “Lvov’s off on a triumphal tour before the inevitable: St. Petersburg, Odessa, south as far as the Black Sea. London’s told me to tag along.”

“Isn’t that getting a little too close?” Charlie frowned.

“That’s what I thought-and said-when I got the brief. Theory is that the media entourage will be so large we’ll all be lost in the crowd. There’s a rumor that the FSB have tried to bug the Lvov campaign headquarters after the conference hijack and that funeral business, and that they might try to derail the tour with staged agitators everywhere Lvov goes.”

“We’ll?” questioned Charlie.

“P-J’s coming along as well and for the same reason. I’m to tell you good-bye and sorry about the lunch: maybe some other time and place.”

“How’d she know I called by? I didn’t go into her outer office to get picked up on her CCTV.”

Halliday shrugged, unknowing. “You sure you’re coming back?”

“That’s the intention. Why shouldn’t I be coming back?”

“You must have something a damned sight better than anomalies and discrepancies to face down Guzov!” insisted Halliday.

“We’ll see,” evaded Charlie.

“I’d hate to be in the wrong place at the wrong time,” said the MI6 officer.

“Are you asking me something?” queried Charlie.

“Just a nod in the right direction,” suggested Halliday. “Russia’s a hell of a big place: takes days to get from one part to another. You think there’s any reason for me to stay in Moscow instead of traipsing all over the country on a political ego trip?”

“No reason whatsoever,” said Charlie.

“I appreciate the guidance,” said Halliday. “And here’s my offering, in return. I’m grateful for what you did but Gerald Monsford’s as mad as hell you guys kept us out. He’s making little wax effigies of you: you ever end up in the same room together, get out as fast as you can. He’s a bastard.”

“I’ll remember that.”

Halliday checked his watch. “I need to go; got a six A.M. start tomorrow. If we do overlap when we get back I’ll definitely say thank you in a more tangible way. And Charlie. .”

“What?”

“I’m sure as hell glad the embankment business was a coincidence, although I’m obviously sorry about Jack Hopkins.”

“Thanks.”

Svetlana made no mention whatsoever of the embassy murder on that night’s program, which was entirely devoted to the possibility of staged FSB disruptions to the countrywide tour of the Federation by Stepan Lvov, indicating the present government’s panic at Lvov’s inevitable election.

The following morning Charlie walked the short distance from the hotel to use the telephone kiosk in Red Square.

“Ten o’clock,” he told Irena, when she answered.

“I’ll be there. I’m all right.”

Charlie didn’t think she was, from the tone of her voice.