Red Star Burning (19 page)

“It’s his wife and child whose extraction we’re working to achieve: our entire, focused objective. Or at least what I believed it to be, until now,” Monsford said.

“Is it?” demanded Smith, shortly.

There was a moment of silence disturbed only by more discomfited chair fidgeting before Monsford, the belligerence fading, said: “I don’t understand that remark.”

“And I can’t expand it beyond saying that I’m curious at some … what…? Inconsistencies, I suppose.”

“The inconsistency is that of your officer with whom I mistakenly agreed to a combined operation.”

“My recollection, which will be confirmed by earlier records, is that the urging came more from you than me, which is one of the inconsistencies I’ve mentioned.”

“What are you suggesting?” demanded Monsford, the belligerence flaring.

“I’m not suggesting anything,” again deflated Smith.

“I’m becoming confused at the purpose of this conference,” Rebecca Street protested with strained impatience. “Are we supposed to be discussing the future of the operation in which Charlie Muffin was involved or talking in riddles?”

At Smith’s gesture, John Passmore said: “It’s a limited disappearance, which isn’t a riddle. We’ve established a potential sighting of Charlie returning to Heathrow airport on a KLM flight, four hours after he got off the Moscow plane in Amsterdam: by ‘potential’ I mean it wasn’t positive facial recognition. We’re making the surmise by forensically making the comparison from weight, height, and general stature in the CCTV image. Those physical statistics and a slightly better photographic image, although again facially insufficient, matched a differently dressed man caught on CCTV entering Manchester airport late yesterday evening. Compared against the registered timing of that Manchester CCTV photograph, there was one direct Manchester flight to Moscow and three staged at Heathrow en route to other destinations, from which connecting flights from London to Moscow could have been possible—”

“What about a confirming manifest name?” broke in James Straughan.

“I’m sure you’ve monitored the Dutch publicity about Charlie’s disappearance,” replied Passmore, his voice as calm as Smith’s. “We’d risk a publicity leak if we made a formal approach to an airline other than British. We didn’t get our checks in place in time to flag up an alert on Charlie’s legend name before the departure of the direct Manchester flight or any of the possible transit links. We’ve checked the manifests that are safe for us to access. The name Malcolm Stoat doesn’t appear, although there’s a glitch with a block visa on which a tourist group traveled from Manchester.”

“Are you reasoning that he staged the whole thing to get back to London to pick up a stashed alternative identity?” seized Straughan, professionally.

“That’s the most obvious interpretation,” agreed the other operations director.

“And a confirmation that he’s a double agent,” came in Monsford.

“Or that he didn’t trust going into Moscow by our route,” Smith argued back.

“Doesn’t that amount to the same thing?” challenged Monsford.

“No,” refused the other Director. “It could equally mean he had a facility to change the pseudonym and decided on a different route for better self-protection. Which doesn’t deviate from the agreed plan that to get Natalia and Sasha out he still has at some stage to make contact with everyone and everything we’ve established at the embassy.”

“Are you proposing we just sit back and wait for the bloody man to reappear as and when he chooses?” demanded Monsford, incredulously.

“Do you have a better suggestion?” prompted Smith.

It was Straughan, professional again, who answered. “Travel companies take block tourist bookings at hotels, as well as block group visas. It should be easy to locate the hotel in which the Manchester party are staying. Charlie might—”

“It was easy,” interrupted Passmore. “It’s the Rossiya, on the Ulitza Razina, and a man made a last-minute telephone booking so late that there wasn’t time to copy his name onto the master log that the Manchester firm holds: that’s the glitch I referred to.”

“Was there any real point in stringing everything out to get to this point!” broke in Rebecca Street, her exasperation even more obvious than before.

“None whatsoever, apart from my commitment to liaise fully and openly with you,” replied Smith, easily. “And we’d have got to it far sooner if our immediate discussion hadn’t begun the way it did. So let’s drop empty recriminations and move on. I’ve done nothing to fill in the blank on the tourist-group visa but I don’t think we should consider it as any more than a blank we’ve got to fill from surveillance on the hotel.”

“And if he’s there, ask him what the hell he’s playing at,” insisted Monsford.

“We know what the hell he’s playing at.” Smith sighed, heavily. “And if Charlie’s there it should reassure you about his loyalties: he wouldn’t be there if he’d gone over to the FSB, would he?”

“It’s also our thinking that we shouldn’t do anything more than establishing
if
he’s at the Rossiya,” said Passmore. “It was always the intention that Charlie remain entirely independent, our not making contact with him or his not making contact with the embassy until the very last moment he’s satisfied we can lift Natalia and the child.”

“Tell us more about your thinking,” encouraged Monsford, the belligerence easing once more. “Of course the Amsterdam episode doesn’t rank as a diplomatic incident: it’ll stay an unexplained mystery and be forgotten. But it’s made headlines. Wouldn’t that have been best avoided by Muffin protesting his entry arrangements at the briefing here?”

“The FSB
know
he’s coming to Russia,” reminded Smith, frowning at the question. “My interpretation about Amsterdam is that it’s a self-devised diversion, with an accompanying message that he knows what he’s confronting
by
openly returning”

“So he’s issuing a challenge?” persisted Monsford.

“We were doing that by responding to the Moscow calls,” Passmore pointed out.

“According to Charlie, Natalia Fedova could provide incalculable information about Russian intelligence, past and present, and much of it’s up-to-date, Putin-initiated thinking,” listed Monsford. “I am now wondering whether, in my determination to have access to such information, I didn’t overcommit my service to a joint operation.”

The movement among those around the table was different this time, more surprise than discomfort at the man’s attitude swings.

“What’s the point you’re now making?” demanded Smith, fearing a shift in his domination.

“We’re at the mercy an unpredictable officer. If he is at the Rossiya Hotel he should be confronted: told that unless he accepts superior authority everything’s off.”

“Which is what I proposed in Buckinghamshire,” recalled Smith, believing he understood Monsford’s posturing from the outset and no longer dismissing it as overriding pomposity. “We’ve moved on from that position now: my personal assessment is that it’s a ninety percent certainty that Charlie Muffin is in Moscow. We also accepted his unpredictability in Buckinghamshire. But what he’d do if we told him the extraction was canceled is entirely predictable. He’d simply continue to try to get them out, irrespective of no longer having any embassy backup or of causing diplomatic embarrassment. There’s only one way physically to eradicate that risk and that would create much greater publicity than Amsterdam, particularly as there would be the named association with Malcolm Stoat.” Smith paused, taking in a much needed breath. “Are you recommending that guaranteed prevention, with all its repercussions?”

Fury had begun to flood the MI6 Director’s face before Smith finished talking, coloring a look of near hatred. Monsford said: “No, I am certainly not recommending that guaranteed prevention.”

“I’m relieved,” remarked Smith. “Are we agreed, then, that at this stage we limit ourselves to confirming Charlie Muffin’s presence, if indeed he is at the Rossiya Hotel?”

It was several moments before Monsford managed a reply and when he did it was only a throat-blocked, “Yes.”

*   *   *

“It didn’t work,” judged Jane Ambersom, emerging from her silence in the directly following aftermath inquest. “Monsford overplayed the buck passing at the beginning.”

“He came close to recovering at the end,” qualified Aubrey Smith.

“But you got the ultimate resolution and its rejection out into the open,” Passmore added, endorsing the qualification.

The woman frowned between the two men. Having seen the disconnection of the MI5 recording apparatus, she asked: “Was assassination ever considered an option?”

“I believe it might have progressed to that,” allowed the Director-General.

Jane considered the reply, again looking between the two men. “You didn’t expand on what you called ‘inconsistencies’?”

“The possibility of assassination was one, an accusation I couldn’t openly make,” said Smith, showing no discomfort at the clear deception in front of Passmore, who in turn gave no reaction to the Director’s unrecorded agreement during his Buckinghamshire return with Gerald Monsford.

“Am I right in inferring, then, that there are limits to our future cooperation?” asked Jane, openly again and encouraged at the prospect of more directly opposing the man responsible for ending her MI6 career.

“Everything is to be decided on an item-by-item basis,” ruled the Director-General.

“Then there is a decision to be made,” disclosed Jane, who took less than five minutes to recount her lunchtime conversation with Barry Elliott.

“Coincidence?” questioned Passmore, the moment she finished.

“Coincidences occur,” conceded Smith. “I’ve never personally made a decision based upon one. What did you tell Elliott?”

“That I’d think about it.”

“Drip-feed it,” ordered Smith. “I want to know his each and every reaction to each and every release. I don’t see how, but if there is a CIA involvement in this—which we’ve already, briefly, touched upon—everything changes.”

“And we’re not sharing Elliott’s approach with MI6?” pressed the woman.

“Surely not until we’re confident MI6 aren’t already aware of Elliott’s approach: maybe even initiated it through their contacts with Langley,” said Passmore.

“Irena Yakulova Novikov was ours, whom we only handed over to the CIA because the White House was the Russian target. Everything Charlie did, including his debriefing that broke her, is still ours, unseen by Langley or Monsford,” said Smith.

“I don’t follow that!” protested Jane.

“I judge what Elliott said as a totally unexpected pebble thrown into an already murky pool,” said Smith. “I want to see how far the ripples spread. And, Jane…?”

“What?”

“I want you to stay very close to Barry Elliott.”

“I will,” promised the woman, the smile at her own amused satisfaction.

*   *   *

In his penthouse office atop the Vauxhall Cross building, Gerald Monsford settled expansively back into his chair and said: “I think I handled that exceptionally well. The onus now is entirely on MI5 and we’re on provable record proposing we back off.”

“Also on provable record is an unequivocal reference to assassination,” pointed out Rebecca, aware that Monsford had not turned on his recording machine and irritated at losing the silver bullet to blow Monsford out of the chair in which he now lolled. She also judged his earlier performance more amateur dramatic than exceptional.

Monsford snorted a laugh. “You’ve missed the whole point! I said no to assassination. When Charlie Muffin, an MI5 officer, is put away with a bang, at whom will the accusing finger point!”

They both looked up as James Straughan hurried into the office from his check of the operations-room traffic to announce: “We’ve got a problem.”

*   *   *

Harry Jacobson’s call was patched through from the Moscow embassy’s sterilized communications room to Gerald Monsford’s equally security-protected office, enabling the exchange to be put on speakerphone for a simultaneous relay to Rebecca Street and James Straughan. Bizarrely for a man of his size, Monsford was once more hunched in his enclosing chair in something close to a fetal ball.

“Radtsic can’t pull a switch like this, not this late!” protested Monsford. “It would mean an entirely different extraction from Paris!”

“Radtsic says if Elana talks to the boy, explains what’s happening, there won’t be any problem,” repeated Jacobson. “If it doesn’t come from her, Andrei or his girlfriend or both will scream abduction and it’ll all go wrong.”

“And Radtsic wants to move at once?”

“He says he could make all the necessary arrangements for Elana by tomorrow. He wants his extraction coordinated with Elana and Andrei’s from Paris. If Andrei comes willingly, we could have them in London at virtually the same time.”

“I personally formulated how we’re getting the kid out,” reminded Monsford.

“I’m telling you what Radtsic told me,” retorted Jacobson. “That with Andrei agreeing, all we need to do is drive them to Orly—I didn’t tell him we were using Orly—and bring them out on the passports that are ready. I did tell him the passports were ready.”

Monsford looked inquiringly at the two others in the room. Straughan shrugged his shoulders. Rebecca said, softly: “We need to talk, not make any quick decisions.”

Into the telephone, Monsford said: “Tell Radtsic we have to talk about it: that it’s an unexpected change that we’ve got properly to consider, not rush into. That he’s got to accept what we’re saying: that it’s the safety of him and his family we’re thinking about.”

“I already have,” said Jacobson. “I’ll tell him again.”

“I haven’t finished,” warned Monsford, irritably. “We might possibly know where Charlie is.”

Jacobson listened without interruption but when the Director finished said: “If he’s there I go on as planned, right?”

“Wrong,” corrected Monsford. “I don’t want us losing the bastard again. Go separately from those Aubrey Smith is putting in place. I want our independent confirmation that we know where Charlie is: no slipups this time. I’m not sure I can any longer trust Smith to keep us fully in the loop.”