Red Star Falling: A Thriller (11 page)

‘He didn’t give me any details of the Lvov assignment, but he said he’d appeared publicly on Russian television during it and that there’d been a security alert out for him: that he risked being picked up on official CCTV.…’ Flood hesitated, shaking his head.

‘What is it?’ pressed Jane, curious at the man’s gesture.

‘Something I’d forgotten, until this moment. I don’t know if it contributes anything—’

‘Everything and anything contributes,’ persisted the woman.

‘That night, in the hotel bar, when he was talking of being identified, he said it would have been all right if he hadn’t made the Amsterdam switch and got the Manchester people arrested. That none of it had been necessary.’

‘What does that mean?’ questioned Passmore.

‘He didn’t explain. The inference was that it would have been all right if he’d stayed on the original flight. That he’d created his own risk of identification.’

‘He said that! That he staged that diversion because he thought he was going to be picked up the moment he arrived!’ came in Smith.

Flood looked uncertainly at Jane before saying, ‘His exact words were, “I fucked it up all by myself but it was fucked up before it ever started to get where we are now. Which has got to be done right.”’

There was a digesting silence.

‘Okay,’ resumed Jane, cautiously. ‘He’d created his own identification problem but the operation was fucked up before it started out from here. Did he explain that?’

‘He said it had never been to extract Natalia, which everyone here thought. He’d suspected it wasn’t right but couldn’t work out why until he learned that Radtsic had defected. But that it was ongoing—’

‘What was ongoing?’ said Smith.

‘MI6’s determination to screw Natalia’s extraction, even though they’d got Radtsic safely away. I said that didn’t make sense. Charlie said he thought it went right back to the Lvov investigation but he didn’t understand how or why.’

‘We’ve gotten away from the movement pattern,’ complained the Director-General. ‘How were Halliday and Briddle moving towards Charlie—quietly, calmly, together or separately?’

Flood toyed with his long-empty coffee cup. ‘Moving quickly, but they
weren’t
together. Again, it’s an impression but at first I didn’t think Briddle was aware of Halliday behind him, trying to catch up.’

‘That’s what you believe Halliday was trying to do, catch up with Briddle?’ asked Passmore.

‘I’m not sure,’ replied the man, awkwardly. ‘That was my initial thought. I saw Halliday shout, although he was too far away for me to hear what he said. I thought it was to attract Briddle’s attention but Charlie turned as well.’

‘Distances,’ demanded Jane. ‘How far apart were they at this stage: Charlie’s in the queue, then comes Briddle and after him Halliday. How far apart were they?’

Again Flood paused, considering. ‘Charlie just stood there. At Halliday’s shout, Briddle was about eighteen metres away. Halliday was about two metres behind him. It was then that Briddle turned and saw Halliday.’

‘What did Briddle do, after looking around?’ seized Passmore.

‘Started to run towards Charlie,’ replied Flood, again understanding the significance of the question. ‘It was at this point that I heard the first shot. No-one else reacted. Both Briddle and Halliday were running by now—’

‘Was it Briddle’s shot?’ demanded Smith.

There was no hesitation this time. ‘I don’t know. I didn’t see a gun. Briddle was running peculiarly, arms around himself, hugging his jacket around his body. At last people became aware two men were running across the concourse … moved to let them through. Then I did see Briddle with a gun in his hand, a Makarov … saw him fire—’

‘Stop!’ insisted Smith. ‘This is pivotal: at whom did Briddle shoot?’

‘At Charlie,’ replied Flood, again without hesitation. ‘Charlie Muffin was unquestionably Briddle’s target. Everything erupted then: it was pandemonium, gunfire, screaming, people running everywhere. I saw Charlie go down and decided it was time to get out.’

‘And I think it’s time for us to stop and analyze what we’ve got,’ decided the Director-General.

*   *   *

Gerald Monsford strode determinedly through the safe house, more confident than he’d been for days, actually bemused at how perfectly the pieces were fitting together, knowing before he started how perfectly he could slot Maxim Radtsic into his survival frame. Both Radtsic and Elena were in the favoured conservatory, the television turned to the permanent BBC news channel as Jacobson had predicted. The vodka bottle was still a quarter full.

‘At last!’ greeted the Russian, rising at Monsford’s entry. ‘What news of Andrei?’

Monsford pulled a seat closer to the two Russians and said, ‘We’ve got other things to talk about today, Maxim Mikhailovich: important things.’

‘There’s only one thing of importance for us to discuss,’ persisted Radtsic, frowning.

‘Tell me about your penetration of MI6, my organization,’ demanded Monsford.
The lie circumstantial … the lie direct,
came appropriately to Monsford’s mind: he’d always liked Shakespeare’s
Comedy of Errors,
although this confrontation was hardly likely to be a comedy.

Radtsic stared blankly across the intervening space, saying nothing.

‘We know we’ve been penetrated: found the evidence,’ bulldozed Monsford, shifting minimally towards the ever-running camera. ‘I’ve also seen the film of you and Elena watching what happened at Vnukovo: heard you wondering at the connection with your defection. So let’s stop all this posturing about refusing to cooperate until Andrei gets here. I’ve told you what we’re doing to achieve that and now I want—I insist—on your telling me everything about the cell you created within MI6. It’s over now, finished. Straughan’s dead: you actually saw Halliday gunned down in the airport shooting.’

Radtsic remained blank faced, shaking his head. ‘What are you talking about…? I don’t understand a word you’re saying.…’

‘I can’t play games with you, Maxim Mikhailovich:
won’t
play games,’ hectored Monsford. ‘Discovering your penetration of my organization changes things between us. I want it all: every name, precisely—to the actual date—how long you’ve run it, for us to calculate how much you’ve received, all the embassy Controls here in London, contact details, dead letter drops, codes you used. Everything! You understand that, Maxim Mikhailovich: everything!’

Radtsic partially reached out towards Elena, as if for physical support, then dropped his outstretched hand. ‘This is a riddle: madness. I have not penetrated your organization. There is no cell. Stop it: you must stop this. It’s nonsense.’

‘I want an answer and I want it now!’ persisted Monsford. ‘If I don’t get an answer, we’re going to have completely to reconsider our situation. You’re going to co-operate.’

Which was precisely what Charlie Muffin was being told, almost two thousand miles away in Moscow.

*   *   *

‘We had a guy once, long time ago now, who was a legend within the CIA,’ reminisced Edwin Birkitt. ‘His name was James Jesus Angleton, head of CIA internal security. His legend, getting people to tell him things they wouldn’t even tell their own mothers, was the problem: no-one realized he was going mad because he’d always been so eccentric no-one ever questioned him.…’

Irena sighed, slumped back in her chair, fingering the edge of her skirt, wondering how many cameras in total were focused upon her.

‘We had this Russian defector, genuine guy with lots of stuff to tell us, but Angleton thought we were being jerked about. You wouldn’t guess what Angleton did.’

‘I know what he did.’ Irena sighed again. ‘He kept him in solitary confinement for six or seven years and no-one had the balls to challenge his authority for doing it. And if I’m supposed to be frightened by that as an analogy, I’m not. Langley put safeguards into the system after that, didn’t they?’

‘That’s the point,’ stressed Birkitt. ‘You’ve been here a long time now, long enough to have that facial correction we promised, and you’re not showing the gratitude Langley expects. There’s still a lot of people in the Company who think Angleton got a rough deal in the end and wouldn’t think it wrong to go back to the old days to find out what they want to know.’

‘Am I supposed to be frightened?’ repeated Irena.

‘I think you should be.’ Birkitt smiled.

7

Charlie was discomfited at his swaying unsteadiness, standing without a supporting hand for the first time in almost five days, and after such inactivity his normally awkward feet began to hurt, too.

‘You need help?’ asked Guzov, from the far side of the room. He didn’t move to provide it. Neither did the two ward guards beside the man.

‘I’m fine,’ refused Charlie, wedging his thigh against the bed edge to keep himself upright.

‘Hope you like your new clothes.’ Guzov grimaced. ‘Your old ones were only good enough to get your size. We managed to salvage your shoes, though.’ The Russian held the Hush Puppies aloft like battlefield trophies: fittingly, they were blood spotted.

‘I’m sure they’ll be fine,’ said Charlie. Laid out beside the bed were a rough work shirt, thick-cord trousers, and a traditional kulak-style smock rarely seen outside isolated farm communities on the Steppes. Charlie turned, grateful for the additional stability when he perched on the bed, but almost toppled forward struggling into his fortunately original although stiffly laundered underwear.

‘You sure you’re okay?’ goaded the Russian, still not moving.

‘Quite sure.’ Charlie got into the trousers more easily, leaning backwards over the bed. The apparent clumsiness of putting on the shirt was intentional, scrubbing it back and forth in a back-drying motion to scratch the persistent irritation from his healing shoulder. The Hush Puppies were sufficiently stretched for Charlie to slip his feet into without bending. The smock was too large, like the belt to go around it, and he saw the two guards were smiling along with Guzov.

‘We got the size wrong after all,’ said the Russian, in mock apology.

‘I’m not going anywhere special.’

‘You’d be surprised where you’re going, Charlie,’ promised Guzov.

Sure that he’d fall, stumble at least, Charlie refused the pace Guzov set along the deserted corridor, forcing Guzov to wait at the elevator. In the foyer they were totally ignored by three blue-uniformed receptionists at a central desk beyond which, through a glass screen, an open-plan office was visible. There were no ringing telephones or flickering computer screens: the silence was practically sepulchral.

Outside it was raining, that persistent, cloud-leaking drizzle that Charlie remembered sometimes fell day after day, painting Moscow a monochrome, suicide-tempting grey. There was as little evidence outside the building—no ambulances or canopied emergency bays or bustling, white-coated doctors or nurses—as there had been inside, of it being a medical facility. None of the entering or leaving staff wore hospital uniforms that would identify them outside the building. From the second storey upwards, all the windows were barred. From the elevator descent, Charlie knew he’d been on the fourth level.

There was a plainclothes guard beside the driver, also in a suit, of the waiting, dark-windowed BMW. Guzov left Charlie to get unaided into the car. The ward escorts stood back under the overhanging building to keep out of the rain. No-one spoke when Charlie finally, awkwardly, got into the vehicle or helped him secure his seat belt. There were no identifying hospital signs at the end of the drive and Charlie finally concluded it was the sort of psychiatric institution he’d initially suspected. As the car swept out into unfamiliar streets Charlie wondered if they actually were in Moscow: he’d been unconscious from the time he was shot until he’d awakened in the restraint-strapped bed, after the operation to remove the bullet. It was at least five minutes before Charlie recognized the ring-road approach and calculated he’d been held in the northwest, an area of Moscow with which he was unfamiliar. From the directional indicators on the slip road to the multi-lane highway, Charlie knew they were continuing north.

At last Guzov turned to him. ‘You realize by now where we’re going, of course?’

‘I know the
direction
in which we’re going,’ qualified Charlie, not willing to volunteer his familiarity with the city.

‘I promised you’d be surprised.’

He had to step back from positive confrontation, Charlie knew: the attitude he’d adopted since his seizure wasn’t returning anything he could utilize. ‘What puzzles me is our leaving Moscow before there’s been consular access.’

‘We’re not leaving Moscow,’ threw back Guzov, ignoring Charlie’s response. ‘We’re going to the hills.’

That
did
surprise Charlie, although he didn’t show it. Should he acknowledge his awareness of the cliché, showing his familiarity with the city after all, or fall back upon supposed ignorance? Every savvy Muscovite knew ‘the hills’ referred to a particular area of the high ground overlooking the city. In its exclusiveness, since the time of Stalin, lay the weekend and holiday retreats of the nation’s ruling elite, up to and including the premier and the president. ‘I’ve heard of the dachas but not of the prison facility. The gulags are surely a long way further east?’

Guzov smiled his gargoyle smile across the car. ‘It’ll be a very long time before you end up in a gulag.’ The facial expression widened. ‘If you’re sensible, which I hope eventually you’ll be, you could avoid going to one altogether.’

In his new mindset against confrontation, Charlie decided against the ritual challenge of legality and criminal charges. They were out of the city now, in the scrublands before the gentle upwards climb. The drizzle was heavier, scudding down in bursts: it had driven people and vehicles off the highway and everything looked as forbiddingly desolate as the psychiatric building he’d just left. The tree line was abrupt, almost barbered, empty no man’s land one moment, straight-edged forest, mostly firs, the next. So densely cultivated and maintained was the forest for the favoured few that it almost at once became half-light, occasionally interspersed by the sudden brightness of an opening into an unmarked road to a hidden property.