Red Star Falling: A Thriller (36 page)

‘What about your health?’ The Russian spokesman twitched, looking inexplicably in both directions to his companions.

‘Today I underwent the strictest of medical examinations. As far as I know I do not need any medical treatment. Neither does my wife.’

‘This encounter is to make it clear to you that we are making every effort to secure your freedom and your return to Russia, where you will be welcomed as a hero. Once back in Moscow you will undergo medical treatment to recover from whatever drugs are being administered to confuse you.’

‘This is all nonsense! I want to speak to my son.’

‘You will see your son when you get back to Moscow.’

‘This is improper and totally unacceptable,’ finally interrupted the head of the British delegation, visibly flushed. ‘I shall recommend an official complaint be lodged at your embassy. Maxim Mikhailovich Radtsic was not kidnapped. He is not being ill treated in any way. No drugs are being administered to enforce his presence here. He is in this country at his own request and volition, having strongly expressed the wish to remain here permanently.’

‘Let us see our son, talk to him!’ Elena’s wailed intervention was so unexpected that the Russian negotiator visibly jumped. She’d come forward over the bench, hands out imploringly over it. Radtsic reached out, gripping her arm, but Elena shook him off. ‘Don’t torture us like this!’

‘We will do everything to help you return to Moscow,’ said the obese man.

‘Let him talk to us on television, a linkup. Or let him reply to my letter. I meant what I said, in my letter. I will tell the British everything I know unless I am allowed to speak to my son. Elena is right. This is torture.’

‘We are trying to help your colleagues: see them as we are seeing you. Are you allowed to see them?’

‘I’m not interested in seeing anyone but Andrei.’

Elena was back in her chair now, a clenched hand to her face, her other hand still on the table.

The Russian head of mission said, ‘Write again. I guarantee a letter will get to him.’

‘I can’t stand any more of this,’ protested Elena.

‘Nor can I,’ said Radtsic. ‘You are the torturers, not the British.’

*   *   *

The warning of the impending return from the prison, where Elena and Radtsic were briefly recovering from the confrontation, came far sooner than Rebecca Street had expected and would have created a problem if Sir Archibald Bland had taken her call. But he hadn’t, strengthening Rebecca’s conviction that she was being sidelined by those who could have halted Jane Ambersom’s manoeuvring. Bland’s unnamed executive aide had rejected her request for an immediate meeting with the Cabinet Secretary without bothering to consult the man. With the same peremptory refusal he’d told her that Geoffrey Palmer was also unavailable, both involved in a prior commitment that could not be interrupted. Rebecca didn’t completely believe the aide’s promise to advise both men of her approach.

And there was no-one else to whom she could directly appeal, Rebecca realized, the returning frustrating impotence tight, like a physically contracting band, around her chest. She’d gain her meeting, eventually, but with a much different approach than she’d intended in the heat of her anger. As her approach to Jane Ambersom would be totally different: her immediate reaction at learning the lesbian cow had taken over Vauxhall Cross had been quite wrong, a mistake from which she had to recover. She’d let Jane Ambersom imagine she’d won, show no irritation or animosity and concentrate upon her one advantage, Maxim Radtsic. And dutifully obey—or appear to obey—exactly what the other woman had ordered, drain everything possible from the Russian and in doing so establish a reputation that would make her indispensable, someone whom those in authority couldn’t ignore but automatically thought of instead of Jane Ambersom. And from the very moment she got back to Vauxhall Cross after achieving that, become the cuckoo in Jane Ambersom’s nest. All the mistakes and miscalculations—and there were always mistakes and miscalculations in what they attempted to do—would be those of Jane Ambersom, never Rebecca Street, the acknowledged legend who set Russian intelligence back an entire generation.

There was a stir at the arrival of the Russians and their British diplomatic delegation and Rebecca moved quickly to separate the elder of the two MI6 officers.

‘How’d it go?’

‘Total waste of time,’ said the man. ‘I’ve been with two previous access delegations but never seen anything like this. The Russian negotiator was a total nut. Radtsic held his temper but practically collapsed afterwards.’

‘I want a complete CCTV printout at the safe house by the time I get back.’

The man nodded towards his partner. ‘We’re sure we isolated two FSB. Didn’t recognize either from our known embassy list, so at least that’s a result.’

Rebecca caught the gesture from the delegation head, moving at once across to the two Russians. ‘I’m sorry it wasn’t better.’

Radtsic shook his head, visibly bowed. ‘Let’s get back to the house. There’s a lot we’ve got to talk about.’

*   *   *

‘Why didn’t Bland or Palmer tell Rebecca, as they promised!’ demanded Jane Ambersom, swivelling her new chair to look out over the river towards Thames House and Aubrey Smith’s unseen but familiar suite. She’d initiated the first of their end-of-day updating contacts, wishing she could have been there in person instead of talking by telephone.

‘We confronted them into making a positive decision: senior civil servants like Bland and Palmer don’t like exposing themselves to a responsibility that can be directly attributed to them,’ said Smith. ‘I should have thought more about it.’

‘Are you seriously telling me it was intentional, not an oversight?’

‘That’s what I’m seriously suggesting, which of course they’d strenuously deny,’ said Smith. ‘Do you think you mollified Rebecca?’

‘I tried, without prostrating myself. We’ve had enough competing nonsense, haven’t we?’ On balance the office she was now occupying was far superior to Smith’s, she decided, swinging her chair back into the room. But she couldn’t imagine sleeping in the king-size apartment bed, despite Matthew Timpson’s sterile eradication of any trace of Gerald Monsford. ‘I haven’t heard anything from her yet about Radtsic’s meeting with the Russian delegation but one of our escorts described it as a complete disaster.’

‘It was predictable, I suppose, remembering what happened during the French linkup,’ remarked Smith. ‘I heard from Bland about France just before you called. Everyone’s been repatriated, which leaves us just with those still held in Russia.’

‘I’m copying you Natalia’s full analysis. She’s unhappy with what she’s seen as well as heard of Irena Novikov’s American interrogation. But can’t say why. And she’s picked up on something else. She says it’s wrong that Moscow agreed with Radtsic’s meeting being in a prison. She can’t understand their agreeing.’

‘The uncertainty about Irena chimes with Joe Goody. He says there’s something wrong, too: that she’s not uncertain or frightened in the way she should be but he can’t put his finger on it.’ He laughed, in advance. ‘And your boyfriend and his boss think Joe’s something from another planet who should be preserved in formaldehyde.’

Jane laughed in return. ‘I can’t wait to hear Barry’s version.’

‘I can’t wait to see the Belmarsh CCTV footage,’ said Smith, serious again. ‘I’d like to know why Natalia’s uncertain about Radtsic’s prison meeting.’

He didn’t have long to wait.

23

Russia brilliantly utilized the British time of 7:00
A.M.
to maximize the worldwide media pickup that was to follow throughout the next two days. The claimed television exposé was preceded an hour earlier, Moscow time, by an alerting trailer proclaiming the kidnapping of a Russian hero, which was the emblazoned title across a wide-angle, professionally filmed shot of Belmarsh Prison. That was correctly described as Britain’s highest security institution and superimposed over it was a clip-by-clip display of the most infamous international terrorists—with the concentration upon Al Qaeda, child-murdering paedophiles, and killers who had been held there. The photographs were pulled together into a composite montage but with one square empty, apart from a question mark against the changed background of prison vans arriving and leaving, for the actual programme’s opening sequence. That began with a voice-over repetition of Moscow’s accusation that Maxim Radtsic had been kidnapped and his wife tricked into joining him by British intelligence.

The professionally filmed outside footage abruptly changed to an unsteady, grainy film immediately explained to have been shot on a concealed camera by one of a Russian humanitarian group finally allowed access to Radtsic after Moscow threats to raise the seizure before the United Nations. The concentration was upon unsmiling prison officers brusquely checking credentials and constantly locked and unlocked doors in unremittingly barred surroundings, the beehive prisoner hum amplified into a raucous babble. The break was jerky, the film resuming as the unseen Russian group entered the Belmarsh interview room in which the first shot of the waiting British delegation was indistinguishably blurred. It was only slightly clearer when it resumed after the break, the reflected daylight glare from the intervening glass making it difficult to identify individual features. Radtsic and Elena were identified by the commentary to be the two circled in the middle. The commentary described the figures on either side of the couple to be their “inquisitors, drug-inducing psychiatrists, and torturers.”

‘The incontrovertible proof of which the British never intended to be known,’ declared the commentator.

The recorded Belmarsh dialogue did not start until the obese Russian’s insistence of being sent from Moscow to secure Radtsic’s release, promising the man full consular and diplomatic support.

Radtsic’s response was edited to:
‘I want the support of the Russian Federation.’

The Russian negotiator’s question—
‘How badly have you been treated?
—again remained untouched, but Radtsic’s reply was now:
‘I have been subjected to torture,’
and Elena’s wailed intervention had been heavily rearranged as well as edited to be:
‘Don’t let us be tortured like this.’

That was followed by Radtsic saying,
‘Elena is right. This is torture,’
and immediately after by Elena’s final remark,
‘I can’t stand any more of this,’
with Radtsic’s rearranged and edited,
‘The British are torturers’
directly followed by
‘I need treatment.’

The film broke, to resume with further grained footage of the Russians leaving through the barred jungle, again with an amplified prisoner cacophony. That switched at once to the concluding commentary against a professionally filmed background of a disappearing Belmarsh through the rear window of a departing vehicle and the voice-over insistence that a protest note was that day being presented to the British government.

Attorney-General Sir Peter Pickering, who was the only one not to have seen the original morning broadcast, looked around the others assembled in the Foreign Office annexe and said, ‘How in the name of God was that allowed to happen?’

‘People didn’t plan sufficiently ahead,’ said Geoffrey Palmer, leading the co-chairmen’s immediate search for a scapegoat.

*   *   *

‘We can refute it: show the Russians to be manipulating liars!’ declared Pickering, smiling in anticipation. ‘We’ve surely got the originals, CCTV and full digital voice recordings. We simply release the true version to show how it’s been twisted.’

‘We can’t,’ at once deflated Aubrey Smith, halting the stir that had begun to move among the reduced committee. Nodding to Passmore, positioned in readiness next to the secretariat, Smith went on, ‘I’ve waited until we’re all together to show this. Please pay particular attention to what the Russians do the moment they arrange themselves at the table to confront our people with Radtsic.’

The film was better than the usual CCTV recording, although still short of professional-photographic clarity, but the accompanying soundtrack was corrupted predominantly into whined, screeching sounds. No verbal segment ran longer than four consecutive words: mostly the rest was a hotchpotch of single utterances, none of it possible to translate into anything comprehensible.

‘How the hell—?’ the permanently bewildered attorney-general began another protest.

‘I asked you to watch the Russians settling themselves opposite our people at the beginning,’ interrupted Smith, gesturing to Passmore for a replay to impose his own commentary over the Russian compilation. ‘Note that each of them unload things from briefcases onto the table in front of the separating screen … and there, there and there,’ he itemized, ‘you can see what appear to be disk recorders or electronic equipment. I went through it, frame by frame, with our electronic technicians last night. Their judgement is that it was quite easy for the Russians to do what they did: those supposed recorders are something like the white-noise listening protection you can buy over the counter in electronic security shops all over London but in this instance reversed to distort or interrupt microphone reception or transmission—’

‘No!’ broke in Pickering, in turn. ‘That won’t work! If that’s how they did it, they couldn’t have got a complete transcript to edit into the lying film we’ve just seen.’

‘Watch again,’ urged Smith, nodding for a third repeat, almost at once stopping the transmission to get a freeze-frame of the matronly woman arranging her recording equipment. ‘It’s quite a conjuring trick, occupying everyone’s attention while the others are setting out their stalls. But see how she raises what looks like an aerial next to the microphone directly in front of the fat negotiator next to her, who led the delegation: according to our technicians, she was isolating that particular microphone outlet specifically for their use.’