Red Star Falling: A Thriller (33 page)

‘Missed me?’ greeted the Russian, carefully straightening the trouser crease of his grey flannel suit as he seated himself.

‘Desperately,’ Charlie mocked back. ‘No letters, no flowers, no chocolates.’

‘But you had the peace and tranquillity of your surroundings,’ Guzov came back.

The man was operating with some psychological guidance, Charlie accepted. ‘Just the sort of convalescence I needed.’

‘With the guarantee of so much more to come.’

That wasn’t true, Charlie knew. So why had he let himself mentally sink as low as he had? The refused conclusion about the mistakes he’d made? No reason to give up, to allow the self-erosion as he had. The quickness and comparative ease with which he’d been manipulated was worrying. No it wasn’t, refused Charlie at once, with his usual self-honesty. It would be worrying if it were his professionalism at fault, which it had been but only minimally. What he was really suffering was hurt pride at allowing it to happen at all, so confident—perhaps
arrogant
was a better word—had he always been that he could resist capture and incarceration for months, years even.

‘There’s a lot happening in the world of which you’re no longer a part,’ continued Guzov.

The man was hurrying whatever psychological guidance he’d been getting, judged Charlie. ‘Which I’m sure you want to tell me.’

‘Your people are making fools of themselves again, publicly boasting about defections, which we don’t believe are legal.’

‘That’s what Irena Yakulova did,’ insisted Charlie, curious where the lead would take them. ‘I actually witnessed her request for protection: watched as she signed it.’

‘To what sort of duress was she subjected?’

‘There was no duress. I’ve told you that already, several times.’

‘And expected us to believe it!’

Us,
isolated Charlie: this was a conversation for a much wider audience. But for what purpose? ‘You’d be making a mistake not to believe it. It’s you who’d look foolish if London produced Irena Yakulova’s signed application, together with the film of her making it. My recollection is of her laughing and joking, which certainly isn’t the behaviour of someone under pressure or threat.’

‘We’ll see what she’s got to say about that,’ said Guzov.

Diplomatic access, Charlie realized: and he was helping them prepare for it! Or was he? A more logical interpretation was that Guzov had been trying out the duress accusation, which he’d denied them by disclosing that Irena Yakulova had been filmed smiling and relaxed as she signed the officially required documentation. And if he had succeeded in doing that, the Russians would have to evolve a new strategy. Testing in return, Charlie said, ‘Ask whoever gets to see Irena to give her my love, will you?’ and knew from the quick stiffening of Guzov’s face that he’d scored.

‘You’re never again going to be in a position to send your love to anyone,’ said Guzov, petulantly, and Charlie decided he’d won the entire exchange, as well. It was a better feeling than the others that had been eroding his reasoning over the past few days.

20

There were, of course, the inevitable and increasingly hysterical diatribes of denial, but apart from that Gerald Monsford’s professional as well as final mental demise seemed to those most directly responsible for it to be a disappointing anticlimax. Aubrey Smith and Jane Ambersom were summoned, with unintended symbolism, to the Whitehall building from which King Charles I had been publicly beheaded in 1649. The verdict upon Monsford was returned much less publicly in an anonymously furnished but uncomfortably large, ground-floor room that Smith thought similar to Sir Archibald Bland’s office earlier that day, with the marked exception that all the books were neatly ordered behind their glassed, floor-to-ceiling cases, none of the furniture, although genuinely old, scuffed, and with a dividing, although not raised, judicial-style bench at one end. Behind it sat Sir Archibald Bland and Geoffrey Palmer, both now jacketed, Attorney-General Sir Peter Pickering, and two unnamed although identifiable Supreme Court judges. The persistently objecting Monsford was flanked by two Supreme Court lawyers. Two stenographers were supported by two sound technicians supervising a back-up recording system and there were four separate electronic and sound technicians to operate the complete record of Monsford’s audio systems produced earlier by Smith from James Straughan’s copies. Smith unhesitatingly testified under oath to their anonymous discovery. Harry Jacobson predictably crumbled at the moment of his detention by Matthew Timpson’s officers and babbled in unprompted detail Monsford’s specific orders to assassinate Charlie Muffin and remained unshakable under questioning from Monsford’s counsel, both of whom were constantly hampered and interrupted by Monsford. One of the electronic experts produced technical proof of Monsford’s voice on Jacobson’s mobile-phone recording of his Hertfordshire safe-house instructions to spy upon Rebecca Street. The television image of Stephan Briddle clearly carrying a Russian Makarov pistol as he ran towards Charlie Muffin at Vnukovo Airport was shown prior to the production of the Foreign Office copy, with Monsford’s signature authorizing the diplomatic shipment of the weapon.

Monsford’s hysteria mounted with the tangible evidence against him. He repeatedly denounced the judicial hearing as a Star Chamber, which Aubrey Smith considered justified, and with increasing, rambling desperation rejected the undeniable evidence of his lying, murderous manipulation as, instead, further proof of James Straughan’s double-agent spying.

Monsford’s degeneration into complete breakdown came when he was invited to address the tribunal, which he did for the first time no longer hysterically but in a mannered, calm voice. He reiterated the Star Chamber denunciation with the additional insistence that Bland and Palmer were part of the MI6 infiltrating conspiracy attempting to conceal Straughan’s espionage, in which all his other accusers were involved.

‘Controlled not by Straughan—that was always the cover only I saw through from the beginning—but by
him,
’ Monsford insisted, pointing a wavering finger at Aubrey Smith. ‘I tried to prevent it, replace him with Jeffrey Smale, through whom I could have ensured both services remained safe, but it was too late: they were too well entrenched. But Smith hasn’t won. I’ll still bring all you traitors down, when this nonsense is over, and all the rest of you will go down with him. Straughan knew that: knew I’d discovered what was happening and was going to smash your entire cell. That’s why he killed himself, knowing I was onto him, like I was onto Charlie Muffin and stopped him, too—’

‘I think it is all over,’ interrupted Sir Archibald Bland, completing his gesture to the already moving Matthew Timpson. ‘This examination is over.…’ To Timpson, he said, ‘Help him to where he has to go.’

‘A car,’ said Monsford, unresistingly accepting Timpson’s hand cupping his arm. ‘I need a car right away. It’s very important.’ He stopped abruptly at the door, turning back into the room. ‘Shakespeare talked of people like you—“O villains, vipers, damn’d without redemption.” And I’ll see that you are. You’re finished, all of you.”

*   *   *

‘You know what frightens me?’ asked Jane Ambersom, rhetorically. ‘Apart from the ranting, to anyone who didn’t know, he would have looked and sounded totally sane.’ As had become their custom, they were walking back to Thames House.

‘I hadn’t realized how bad he really was,’ said Aubrey Smith, somberly. ‘I didn’t expect him to be led away as docilely as he was, either.’

‘He actually did want to run both services, didn’t he? And probably would have managed it if he’d manoeuvred Smale into your job.’ Which was prevented only by Charlie Muffin’s entrapment of Irena Novikov, Jane remembered.

‘It wouldn’t have been the first time a man got into power without a lot of supposedly sane people recognizing he was mad.’

‘What are we left with now?’ wondered Jane.

‘God knows,’ said Smith, with an uncertainty that wasn’t to last long that day.

*   *   *

It actually took ninety minutes.

Moscow’s response to the public announcement of Maxim Radtsic’s defection was timed precisely for that evening’s main television and radio news bulletins to dwarf the worldwide sensation of London’s disclosure, which it did over the following twenty-four hours. The officially issued news-agency statement was preceded by simultaneous declarations of its importance on all Moscow’s main TV and radio channels. Interspersed with carefully selected and edited segments from the television link-up between Radtsic in England and Elena and Andrei in France, every anchorperson announced that General Maxim Mikhailovich Radtsic, a senior member of Russian state security, had not defected, as the United Kingdom claimed, but been criminally kidnapped by its intelligence agencies. Moscow had until now refrained from public disclosure while unsuccessful attempts were made for an explanation and to achieve a resolution. Radtsic’s wife had involved herself in those efforts, continuing on to England to plead for her husband’s freedom despite her attempted seizure by British agents being prevented by French authorities. She was now being held with her husband.

In perfect unison, the Moscow television screens switched to a picture of a haggard and dishevelled Andrei Radtsic, with identical voice-over introductions of a personal plea to the British government. His father’s seizure and his mother’s detention were illegal, insisted Andrei, his nervously shaking hands washing one over the other as he spoke. Their release was being argued politically: his appeal was personal. At this point, the wavering voice cracked and Andrei visibly began to cry, his voice still clear behind the handkerchief he hurriedly scrubbed across his face. His father was a sick man, suffering hypertension and high cholesterol. His inexplicable seizure was potentially life threatening; if he died, the British government would be responsible. The picture faded to the studios and anchor presenters who concluded that urgent demands had been made for diplomatic access to Radtsic and his wife.

Within an hour of the duplicated news-agency release, the Russian ambassador to London delivered to the Foreign Office a formal acceptance of all the conditions insisted upon by Radtsic for such an encounter.

*   *   *

‘Bastards!’ exploded the Russian the moment Rebecca Street entered the conservatory. ‘Did you see what they did? Parading Andrei. Total fucking bastards!’

‘They’ve got him in custody: not treating him well,’ said Elena, more controlled. ‘I knew that’s what they’d do, make him suffer because of what we’ve done.’

‘They’ve agreed to every access demand,’ disclosed Rebecca. ‘I’ve just had the call from London.’ Where she should have been, witnessing Monsford’s destruction. She had to get to London as soon as possible to see Bland or Palmer: certainly not try to arrange a meeting through Jane Ambersom.

‘When?’

‘That’s what we’ve got to discuss.’

‘I already told you,’ said the Russian, his voice over-loud, ‘As soon as possible. Tomorrow. I can’t wait to get to the bastards!’

‘Don’t let everything collapse, as it did during the television linkup,’ warned Rebecca.

‘They’re never going to let Andrei go, are they?’ said Elena, more to herself than to the two others. ‘We’ve lost him.’

‘I’ll not give way to temper, not this time,’ insisted Radtsic, calming. ‘And I will get Andrei back. I’ve got too much, know too much. And I’ll let them know what I’m going to do with it if they don’t give me back Andrei.’

‘It’s too late now to arrange anything for tomorrow,’ said Rebecca. ‘But I’ll have it set up as soon as possible: certainly this week.’

‘It
must
be this week!’

‘It will be,’ assured Rebecca, wondering how someone with the obvious intellectual composure of Elena came to be married to such a boorish bully. Which led her mind obviously back to Gerald Monsford. God, how much she would like to have been there, watching him fall apart! ‘There’s something else from the broadcast. You didn’t tell us about hypertension or cholesterol.’

Radtsic waved a dismissive hand. ‘It’s nothing.’

‘What about medication?’

‘I told you it’s nothing.’

‘We’d like to bring forward the scheduled medical examination.’

‘After the meeting with the embassy people,’ insisted Radtsic.

‘The medical examination can be tomorrow. The diplomatic meeting can’t. Everything will be brought here for eleven tomorrow. And after that we could resume our talks.’

Radtsic’s face hardened but just as quickly softened into a surprising smile. ‘I would have enjoyed having you work for me.’

Which she wouldn’t have enjoyed for a moment, Rebecca knew, remembering at once Radtsic’s ambiguous reaction the last time the question had been put and deciding to risk it again. ‘Did any of my colleagues ever work for you?’

The smile faded. ‘Your past traitors are well documented, aren’t they?’

‘I’m asking about those who aren’t yet documented.’

‘That’s an indication I’m holding back for the bastards treating Andrei as they are.’

*   *   *

‘Moscow’s beaten us again, sucked us up and blown us out in bubbles,’ admitted Jane Ambersom. ‘Everyone’s running around in circles accusing everyone else of wrong decisions and judgements without the slightest idea how to make one that doesn’t blow up in our faces.’

‘I’m sorry it’s got to be rushed like this,’ apologized Barry Elliott. They were eating early, in their Mount Street favourite: he needed to be back in the embassy in conveniently close Grovesnor Square by eight to co-ordinate the arrival of Irena Novikov. ‘And for all the shit you guys appear to be getting, too.’

‘At the moment we’re missing most of it, but it’s overwhelmed our success in nailing Monsford and his infiltration nonsense. But it’s made us the focus for all answers now that the emergency committee has been disbanded and Monsford isn’t involved any longer.’