Red Star Burning (6 page)

“It’s very necessary if we’re to keep safe,” insisted Radtsic.

“Why don’t I go to Paris, for a holiday with Andrei, and go to London with him from there. It would be easier for you to get out alone, wouldn’t it?”

She was more frightened than he, realized Radtsic, sympathetically. “It would alert them: make them suspicious.”

“Andrei should be given more warning.”

“It’s got to be the way the British want it.”

“Let’s not take the Metro back to the apartment. I want to walk.”

“It’s a long way to walk from Kurskaya,” Radtsic pointed out, identifying where they were from the route map above the seats.

“I know.”

She knew she wouldn’t very much longer be able to walk the streets of the city, accepted Radtsic, sadly. Would she ever properly understand what he was having to do when it was all over?

*   *   *

“Good-looking kid,” remarked Albert Abrahams, looking down at the selection of photographs he’d taken two hours earlier outside Andrei Radtsic’s Sorbonne college.

“I prefer the girl,” said Jonathan Miller, MI5’s station chief at the Paris embassy. “Can you imagine those legs wrapped around your neck?”

“Name’s Yvette Paruch,” identified Abrahams. “And I have already imagined it. Our Andrei’s not just good-looking, he’s a lucky bastard as well. So what do we do now?”

“London’s orders are to find out everything we can without going anywhere near him. The possibility is that he’s being babysat by the FSB.”

“If he is, there’s a risk they’ll pick up on our sniffing around,” warned Abrahams.

“That’s why Straughan told me to be careful,” reminded Miller.

“Comforting, isn’t it, to get advice we wouldn’t have thought of ourselves from an operations director safe and warm in London?” mocked Abrahams.

6

It was two days before Charlie was summoned for further questioning. In that interim he was held in the barred and locked first-floor room of the hunting lodge with only the gazelle heads for company, apart from morning and afternoon exercise periods in the grounds with two male escorts who refused any conversation and during which there were intentionally staged sightings of other guards. None was visibly armed.

The second session was in the same menagerie-festooned room as before but with a smaller inquiry panel, just Smith, Jane Ambersom, and the overpoweringly large man from the initial interrogation. There was no replay machine on the side table, which had been moved away to the corner of the room.

Once again there was no preamble, although it was the woman who opened the questioning. She took photographs from a case file in front of her and said: “Who is this woman?”

Bitch, thought Charlie, at the same time recognizing the disparagement was intentional, to rile him, which he dismissed as stupid as well as clumsy. There was still the stomach jump of recognition when he took the offered photograph. It was a remarkably sharp image. Natalia was wearing the tightly belted light summer coat he remembered from their most recent Moscow reunion in the Botanical Gardens. She was looking sideways, almost over her shoulder, as if something had suddenly caught her attention. “Natalia Fedova, my wife.”

“And this?”

“Our daughter, Alexandra, which shortens to Sasha,” replied Charlie, looking down at the second print. The child was wearing her school uniform and hat, smiling up at someone who had been cropped from the picture. “When were these taken?”

Jane Ambersom moved to speak, but before she could Monsford replied: “The day before yesterday.”

Aubrey Smith formally introduced Monsford for the first time and said: “SIS are cooperating with us.”

The woman was looking tight faced between the two directors, clearly irritated at both responding to questioning.

“They’re still free then?” pressed Charlie, momentarily off-balanced by MI6’s involvement. It was logical, he conceded, that there would have been linked operations in the past, although he’d never actively participated in one. Charlie remembered the name. During his earlier Moscow assignment the gossip in the MI6
rezidentura
had tagged Monsford as a reincarnation of Genghis Khan suffering a bad attack of toothache. There’d also been a rumor the man had tried to muscle in to the Lvov affair.

“Let’s get some order back into this debriefing, shall we?” said Jane Ambersom. “There’s a lot more answers we need to get from you.”

“I have not committed any criminal offense!” Charlie said, embarking on one of the several half-formed strategies he’d considered over the preceding forty-eight hours. “Nor have I contravened the Official Secrets Act, to which I am a signatory. My being in the protection program does not require my being held under detention.”

Jane Ambersom’s snort of derision was too obviously forced. “Doesn’t one of the most essential clauses in the Official Secrets Act cover consorting with an enemy!”

“It is an entire section, not a clause,” formally corrected Charlie, both to further her irritation and for the benefit of the bureaucratic recordings. “And that question is both a distortion and a misphrasing of its wording. I have never contravened any section of any act involving, covering, or forbidding the passing of intelligence secrets or information to a foreign power or intelligence service.…” He gestured with the prints he still held. “I provided the specific time and date of my marriage to Natalia Fedova, which I know you will have by now confirmed from Moscow’s Hall of Weddings records. I also know that in the intervening two days since I appeared before you, my operational files will have been scrutinized for the slightest indication of failure being attributed to my…” Charlie paused again, directly addressing the woman: “to use what appears to be a favored phrase, consorting with the enemy. No indication whatsoever of which will have been found, because none exists. I want … if you like, I plead for … help to get my wife and daughter out of a situation in which, if our relationship is positively established by the FSB, they could be physically harmed, as it was believed I would be physically harmed for Russia’s failure of the Lvov affair, to prevent which I have been put under protection … protection, not house arrest.”

Once more Jane Ambersom’s face was on fire, either from her confusion or her expectation that Charlie would continue, but again Monsford spoke ahead of her. The MI6 Director, hands clasped over his expansive stomach, said: “That was a very spirited and well-argued defense of a charge not yet alleged. But do you believe that buried in all the legislation to which you’ve referred—the Official Secrets Act the most obvious—there isn’t a legal accusation that one of our specialized lawyers could formulate against you?”

Charlie didn’t think he’d left any gaping pitfalls: certainly Monsford’s response was encouraging, even if the man’s inclusion was unsettling and needed separate, intense examination. Don’t falter, he told himself. “I’m quite sure there are several charges that could be laid. But I’m even surer that they’d be thrown out of court, although perhaps with an admonishment which I’d expect, after it was proven there has never been any breach of security.”

“Haven’t we wandered too far from the purpose of this meeting!” protested Jane Ambersom, finally reentering the exchanges.

“Just one thing!” said Charlie, hurriedly, pleased at the woman’s exclusion and talking directly to the MI6 chief. “Were
both
those photographs taken two days ago?”

“Yes,” confirmed Monsford.

“So they were both still free: not under detention?”

“Yes, both still free.”

Charlie looked back at the print of Natalia, closely studying the background for the first time. “And she was outside the apartment I identified?”

“When is this session going to be formalized!” again protested Jane.

“Was there any indication of surveillance?” persisted Charlie, snatching at every opportunity.

“None,” confirmed Monsford. For some must watch, while some must sleep. So runs the world away, he thought: why was it that Shakespeare had a comment for every situation?
Hamlet,
he remembered. This would have a happier ending, he was sure.

Natalia and Sasha were still safe! But how professional had the MI6 photographer been? agonized Charlie, who’d never trusted dawn to follow night. If the photographer had failed to detect Russian observation but been identified himself, he would have hastened an FSB move.

“I really do think we’ve answered enough of your questions,” said Aubrey Smith. “Now answer more of ours.”

*   *   *

“From the date of your wedding, which we have indeed confirmed, against the date you provided for Sasha’s birth, Natalia Fedova was pregnant before you married?” established Jane Ambersom, taking up the questioning again. Her tone made it sound like an accusation.

No longer “this woman,” Charlie recognized. “Yes.”

“How long had the affair been going on, before the marriage?”

“About eighteen months.” Everything totally honest, Charlie reminded himself. He needed their help, not their antagonism.

The woman shuffled hurriedly between several sheets of paper from her dossier before looking up. “We know the precise dates of your fake defection, of course: it was a recorded operation—”

“And a successful one, discrediting a genuine defector with whom I broke out of Wormwood Scrubs after he’d been jailed for forty years as a Soviet spy at the height of the Cold War,” broke in Charlie, anxiously establishing what he considered the first of several important facts in his favor.

“I’m familiar with the records.…” Jane paused, to counter Charlie’s defense with another point. “The
official
records, I mean. So, once more calculated against the known dates and those you have provided, your affair began about six months
after
the Russian acceptance that your defection was genuine?”

“Yes,” confirmed Charlie, cautiously. He shouldn’t have interjected: she was obviously building up to what she considered an undermining question.

“Tell us about those six months.”

“What about them?” hedged Charlie, reluctant to answer such a generality.

“The Russians had accepted you: believed you had joined their little band of traitors. Did you ever meet, socialize, with those other defectors? With Philby or Blake, for instance?”

“No.”

“Never?”

“Never.”

“Are you sure?”

Charlie hesitated, seeking the trap. Unable to find it, he smiled, condescendingly shaking his head. “It’s hardly likely that I would forget meeting such people, is it?”

“Unless you’re lying!” she said.

Not undermining at all, if that was her best attempt. “I am not lying!”

“What job did the Russians give you, having accepted you as genuine?”

He could use this question, Charlie recognized. “I was assigned to a training school.”

“What sort of training school?” There was a note of triumph in the woman’s voice.

“A training school for intended KGB intelligence officers,” answered Charlie, comfortably.

“Intended to operate in which countries?” The triumph was growing.

“The English-speaking West: the United Kingdom, America, Canada.”

Jane Ambersom again staged her preparing pause, and when she did speak she spaced her words to heighten her supposed incredulity. “You—taught—KGB—agents—selected—to—operate—against—the—United—Kingdom?”

“No,” Charlie denied, seizing his chance. “My function was to assess during one-to-one sessions—one spy was never allowed to encounter another—whether their training was sufficient for them to assimilate successfully into a Western culture without arousing suspicion. I handled a total of eight. In each case I dismissed their training as inadequate. By doing so I gained limited access but comprehensive insight into Russian espionage-training methods and systems, about which I created a manual on my return to this country. I believe that manual was later used as a textbook at
our
training academies. I also, of course, learned the identities of the eight with whom I worked, although the names were obviously not those they were assigned in the West. Over the course of the four years after my return to this country, in addition to active field assignments, I regularly examined photographs of Russians posted under diplomatic cover to the Russian embassies in London, Washington, D.C., and Ottawa. I managed to identify five, none of whom were expelled but allowed to remain, observing the principle that the spy you know is better than the one you don’t. All, I believe, were fed disinformation by us and the counterespionage organizations of America and Canada.” Charlie paused, dry throated, and gestured toward Jane Ambersom’s dossier. “Everything I’ve told you is set out in greater detail in my file, even the names of the eight Russians. You should be able to confirm it all very easily.”

Jane Ambersom was puce faced yet again. Monsford actually had his hands cupped over his face to conceal his reaction to the put-down. Smith’s head was lowered intently toward the floor. And Charlie burned with self-fury. The bloody woman
had
got under his skin. But what the fuck was he doing fighting her, humiliating her, like this! He couldn’t afford to fight or humiliate anyone upon whom he now depended. He desperately needed each and every possible assistance to get Natalia and Sasha out of Moscow, as desperately as he needed to convince them that he’d never, ever, acted against the service to which he’d dedicated his life. And he wasn’t going to achieve any of that in confronting this supercilious, mannish woman:
this woman!
echoed mockingly in his mind. Every single time he antagonized any of them he pushed further away the possibility of rescuing from God knew what the only two people of importance in his life: the
only
two people in his life.

“You were able to cultivate your relationship with Natalia Fedova as well as working at the spy school?” uncertainly resumed Jane.

“Easily,” said Charlie, determined against further confrontation. “Natalia officially comes within the jurisdiction of the analysis division but her predominant function is debriefing, for which she has the Russian equivalent of a master’s degree in psychology and a track record of marathon proportions. The Russians attach great importance to the psychology of their field agents, as we do. Which creates another function, that of maintaining and monitoring the continuing psychological capability of about-to-graduate intelligence officers facing, for the first time, the reality of being uprooted from the life they know and transposed into an entirely different, alien culture. That brought her frequently to the training school to which I was assigned on the outskirts of Moscow, about five miles beyond Prazskaja.”