Red Star Burning (42 page)

“I’m going to have to cooperate to get Andrei back. I don’t understand how you came to be intercepted or how—or why—the kidnap claim came to be made.”

Elana stared at her husband for several minutes. At last she said: “Maxim Mikhailovich, you’re not making sense! You were always going to have to cooperate, tell them everything for us to be accepted: protected as we’ll have to be protected for the rest of our lives. And we can never get Andrei back. He’s gone: we’ve lost him forever.”

“I won’t lose him. I’ll do a deal.”

“What deal? With whom? You ran away from Russia because you were going to be purged: what do you imagine would happen to you if you changed your mind now and we went back? You’ve got nothing with which to negotiate with the British. To keep us safe you’ve got to tell them everything. Andrei won’t come. Stop fantasizing, accept reality. And that reality is that you’ve made a terrible mistake and wrecked the family.”

“What if Andrei accepts reality and recognizes he’s made a terrible mistake: changes his mind?”

“What do you imagine the reaction would be to his going up to the commandant of whatever Siberian gulag he’ll be sent to and saying he doesn’t like it there and wants to come to England after all!” derided Elana.

“He won’t be sent to a Siberian gulag: things aren’t like they were, in the old days. There’s law and Andrei hasn’t broken any law.”

There was another long silence before Elana said: “If there’s law that’s got to be followed, how could you have been purged? You didn’t break any law.”

“What I’ve done, all my life, isn’t governed by any law,” said Radtsic, in subdued reflection. “There has been a terrible mistake. But I didn’t make it: wouldn’t have made it because I knew everything, devised it all, and could still have prevented it being turned into the disaster it became if I’d been brought in when I should have been. But I wasn’t. Others with ambition intervened. But there’s no proof, no paper trail, of their intervention: that was the first, internal purge I didn’t suspect. Which left me the architect who didn’t react quickly enough. I should have left the service honorably, an internally recognized and acknowledged legend. Instead I leave it not just as a failure and a traitor but as a failure and a traitor to you and to Andrei.…” Radtsic stopped, brought out of his reverie by the awareness of Elana silently weeping, hands cupped to her face to hold back any sound. “I’ll make it better: try to stop you hating and despising me.”

Elana stayed with her hands covering her face, still weeping.

*   *   *

“My deputy director is handling the situation,” declared Monsford. “I’ve no specific details, other than the indications that Straughan killed his mother before killing himself. Nothing will ever become public: a complete blackout has been imposed.”

“What security implications are there?” demanded Sir Archibald Bland.

Monsford’s eyes flickered toward Aubrey Smith. “Absolutely none.”

“What about letters, an explanation?” intruded Smith, savoring the other director’s discomfort.

“I haven’t had the chance to talk to my deputy,” said Monsford, his voice uneven. “I’ll provide all the details as soon as I have them myself.”

“Which brings us back to the original point of this gathering,” said Aubrey Smith, turning away from the now-dead screen on which they’d watched the encounter between Radtsic and his wife. “What happened after she recovered?”

“They walked outside in the grounds,” said Gerald Monsford, inwardly squirming at being questioned by the other director. “Neither wanted to eat when they got back to the house. Elana insisted upon sleeping in a separate room.”

“What did they talk about walking in the grounds?” Smith continued to press.

“Surely you don’t imagine—” started Geoffrey Palmer.

“Nothing that added to what they’d talked about inside,” hurried in Monsford, eager to save Palmer’s embarrassment. “They hardly spoke, as far as we could detect.”

“So they were heads down?” persisted Smith.

“Could someone help us here?” demanded Palmer, irritably.

“They were filmed throughout their walk,” explained the MI6 Director. “The cameras have special enhancing lenses enabling what’s said out of microphone range to be recorded and then lip-read.”

“Lip-reading that can be defeated by a person walking with their head lowered, avoiding the camera,” added Smith. Directly addressing his counterpart, Smith said: “You didn’t answer my question?”

“Yes,” confirmed Monsford, tightly.

“So we don’t have recordings of everything they said to each other?”

“No,” Monsford was forced to admit.

“What’s your point?” protested Sir Archibald Bland.

“What’s your assessment of the confrontation inside the house, where we did hear every word?” demanded Smith, answering a question with a question.

Bland hesitated, unaccustomed to the reversal. “Very emotional, which was understandable considering every circumstance: Radtsic defecting after being at the top of his profession for so long, being reunited with his wife after what she’s been through, neither knowing if they would ever be together again, all of it topped by their being reviled by a son who’s abandoned them.”

“And I’m intrigued by whatever it is Radtsic was talking about at the very end,” added Palmer.

“All of which you were supposed to be,” warned Smith.

“What the hell are you suggesting!” demanded Monsford.

Again Smith confronted question with question: “Do you normally allow encounters like that to be completely unsupervised?”

“I don’t have a precedent,” Monsford quickly came back. “Neither my service nor yours has had someone from such an echelon of Russian intelligence cross over to us. Nor, after managing such a defection, succeeding in getting released from at least nominal Russian detention a wife with whom to be reunited.”

“Indeed, neither of us has,” agreed Smith, smiling in return. “You’ve very definitely established the precedent. But how did that unsupervised reunion come about? Did you offer it? Or did Radtsic insist upon meeting his wife alone?”

Monsford hesitated. “He didn’t insist: he asked. And it was hardly an unsupervised encounter. We’ve just watched and listened to everything that took place.”

“With no debriefing intermediary to direct or guide it,” Smith pointed out.

“In the intrusive absence of whom, caught up in their emotion, we’ve already got a lead to something Radtsic expected to be the culmination of a thirty-year intelligence career but instead, because of an internal power struggle…” Monsford stopped, his mouth physically distorting to avoid the intended singular boast, “we’ve got the coup.”

“Let’s not keep credit from where credit is due,” enthused Smith, layering the condescension. “The coup is yours and yours alone. Which was how it was initiated and carried out, without the participation of anyone else. Just you, alone.”

“We’re becoming increasingly irritated at this perpetual antipathy,” declared Bland. “As well as becoming increasingly concerned that it’s endangering the matter at hand. True, we’ve got our coup. But externally it’s greatly mitigated by a number of unresolved issues. We want—as others more important want—this constant bickering to stop for the concentration to instead be upon tidying up those issues.”

“I reiterate that to resolve those issues I am offering every assistance asked of me and my service to help the Director-General, whose officer created them,” said Monsford.

“That offer would best be achieved by the immediate withdrawing from Moscow the three MI6 officers seconded to the original extraction for which I am responsible but for whom there is no further need,” responded Aubrey Smith, at once. “MI6 has succeeded with their extraction and achieved its coup, but upon which there would appear to be a need for much more work.”

The only sound in the room for several minutes was that of differing seat and chair shifting prompted by differing reasons. The first-to-speak concentration settled upon Bland, the nominal chairman, who avoided the conflict with a matador’s deftness by inviting Monsford’s contribution.

“Unfortunate and public embarrassments aside, I am not aware of any changes in circumstance—in which, of course, I do not include the reemergence of Charlie Muffin—justifying the Director-General’s astonishing demand.”

“Are there any changes of circumstances?” Palmer asked Aubrey Smith.

“I believe there are considerable changes, none of which I intend discussing here,” said the MI5 Director-General. “I shall, of course, discuss them in full and complete detail when the extraction of Natalia Fedova becomes a wholly independent MI5 matter.”

“Not only is it outrageous to impugn my service, as I believe the Director-General is doing, it is arrogant for him to imagine that the separation of our two services is for him to decide,” said Monsford.

“It is for the Director to make whatever interpretation he chooses,” dismissed Smith. “In making your decision, which I was in no way taking from you, it’s important I make totally clear that I am not prepared to continue the extraction of Natalia Fedova in partnership with MI6.”

“And I must make it equally clear, as I have already done, that I am prepared completely to take over the extraction as an MI6 operation,” declared Monsford.

*   *   *

“You took it over the edge,” accused Jane Ambersom, objectively. “You didn’t have a fallback if the ruling had gone against you.”

“I’d have done what I know Monsford’s going to do, ignore it,” said Aubrey Smith, unoffended at her directness. “The whole intention was to get Monsford and MI6
officially
out of our operation. Which is what I’m determined to do: get Monsford out, not just from this extraction but out of Vauxhall Cross. He’s the paranoid megalomaniac to MI6 that J. Edgar Hoover was to the FBI. Monsford’s dangerous: out of control.”

“After today he’ll be even more determined to destroy you,” cautioned the woman. “And now he’s excluded we’ve no way of second-guessing what he’ll do.”

“We know what Monsford’s going to do: or try to do,” repeated the MI5 Director. “What we’ve got to do is wrap up Moscow, get everyone safely back here.” He turned to Passmore. “So when’s that going to be?”

“As of fifteen minutes ago Charlie hadn’t contacted Wilkinson,” said the operations director. “I’ve authorized the money Charlie wants, as well as the Russian passports for Natalia and the child. As soon as we’ve finished, I’ll add the decision officially to cut MI6 adrift and tell Wilkinson to make that clear to Monsford’s people—”

“Do that,” broke in Smith. “Once Wilkinson’s completed the handover, he and the other two are out, too. Their only function from now on is to take Monsford’s people all over Moscow on wild goose chases. Wilkinson is to tell Charlie we’re sending in independent backup. Who’ll head the new group?”

“Ian Flood,” responded Passmore, without hesitation. “He’s one of four on standby, all with valid visas,”

“Charlie likes the Savoy, near Red Square,” remembered Smith. “That’s where he lived during the Lvov investigation. Flood’s to book in there and Charlie’s to be told that’s where his contact is. But don’t tell Wilkinson the hotel name. I don’t want any more mistakes. Charlie will identify it by being told it’s his favorite.” Smith looked between the other two. “What else do we need to do?”

“Once Charlie’s got his travel money and the passports there’s no reason why he can’t move at once,” picked up Passmore. “I can get our second team in today, with Flood going in first. All we’d need from Charlie is routes and arrival day.”

“I wasn’t exaggerating Monsford’s paranoia,” said Smith. “I also believe he’s capable of paranoid orders, dressed up with whatever justification. Tell Flood’s team, upon my authority, to confront like with like if necessary.”

“You’re surely not imagining a gunfight at the O.K. Corral?” asked Passmore.

“Those are the orders, in my name,” said Smith.

“I’ve got an idea,” announced Jane. “First I need to know if anything was said this morning about Straughan?”

Smith shook his head. “It was mentioned. Monsford denied knowing any details, apart from it not being a security problem and that Rebecca was handling it.”

“Ducking and weaving again,” Jane recognized. “How’d it be if there was an alert that MI6 has been penetrated, particularly after the suicide of its operations director? A security purge might even find Rebecca Street’s copy of what Straughan made.”

“I think it might cause Monsford a very big problem.” Smith smiled.

“Not if the internal search is controlled by Monsford,” Passmore pointed out.

“It can’t be,” insisted Jane. “The regulations are that it would have to be independent of currently serving officers.”

*   *   *

Gerald Monsford’s purple-faced fury, accompanied by seemingly uncontrollable facial twitching, was greater than Rebecca had witnessed before, although the irrational pacing was familiar. For a long time after his stormed entry it was impossible for the man to speak comprehensibly: even attempted words burst out incomplete or slurred.

“Bastards … fucking bastards … imagine!” Then came what appeared another indecipherable splutter. “Sided with him, with Smith … against me! Me … gave them their fucking coup. All Smith’s fault … all the mistakes. Incredible. Unbelievable…”

Rebecca remained silent, letting the diatribe burn itself out, beginning to interpret and still listening but giving over most of her concentration to review all that she’d personally done or put into practice since James Straughan’s suicide. She’d left nothing undone or unchecked, nothing that Monsford could pick up and challenge: she was sure she hadn’t. Apart, of course, from the involvement of Jane Ambersom, which was causing the unease to churn through her. She was convinced Straughan had kept his own copy of the incriminating material. There was still a chance, a lot of chances, of its being uncovered and it was to her that each and every discovery had to be handed, unopened, unheard, or unread. But she’d wanted to recover it by now: needed to know she had the protection of the only one in existence.

Rebecca’s concentration refocused at Monsford’s sighed collapse behind the expansive desk, ignoring the folder in readiness before him. Risking a renewed eruption, she said: “We need to redefine a few things. Are you going to handle Moscow or shall I do what needs to be done there?”