Red Star Falling: A Thriller (44 page)

The man turned to him and said, ‘You’re to go with them. Goodbye.’

‘Where?’ asked Charlie again.

‘Just go.’ shrugged the man.

A long, small-windowed prison-type van was pulled up directly outside the dacha, its rear doors already open. One of the soldiers pushed Charlie in first, leaving him to choose his own seat on one of the side-mounted benches. The Russian escort filed in behind him. A soldier heavily settled on either side of him.

‘Where am I being taken?’ demanded Charlie.

‘Back to the city,’ said the blue-suited man.

‘What for? Where to?’

‘Moscow,’ repeated the man, dully.

Charlie was tensed for the uneven track but there was still sharp, jabbing pain in his shoulder as the van jarred and bumped over the ruts. Conscious of the concentration of the two civilians, Charlie didn’t give any indication of discomfort.

As the van reached the smoother blacktop, the one in blue said, ‘Are you all right?’

‘No,’ said Charlie, turning the question. ‘I don’t know where we’re going. Or what for.’

‘It won’t be long,’ avoided the man.

It wasn’t. Charlie guessed it took only twenty minutes before the van was slowed by Moscow traffic, the sounds of which became increasingly loud. From the briefness with which they obviously travelled upon the ring road, Charlie guessed the destination was neither the Lubyanka nor the Lefortovo, which was confirmed when the rear doors opened in the yard of the psychiatric institute. Charlie hesitated at the point of getting out of the vehicle, gazing up at the window-barred building. Would he leave it sane, he wondered: if he left at all.

The blue-uniform man led Charlie into the institute, the two unspeaking civilians escorting from behind. The soldiers remained by the van. They went past the reception desk without stopping for the waiting elevator but went up only two floors. The bearded surgeon was waiting, smiling, in an office large enough to accommodate at least six of his usual entourage.

‘This time you come to me,’ announced the man, whom Charlie had last seen with Guzov at the dacha in the hills.

*   *   *

Again all Charlie’s questions were ignored. He was escorted, by medical staff now, to a radiology department where his shoulder was X-rayed from both front and back and then to an adjoining operating theatre where he remained stripped to the waist but was allowed to sit, not lie, on the table for the surgeon to examine the healed wound. An assistant took his blood pressure and a blood test, the result of which the surgeon brought with him when he entered the office in which Charlie, dressed now, had been told to wait.

‘You’re surprisingly fit for a man who’s obviously neglected himself so much in the past,’ announced the surgeon. ‘And your injury is completely healed.’

‘You’ve already told me that,’ said Charlie, who’d been surprised at the smallness of the entry and exit wounds they’d held mirrors for him to see for the first time.

‘It’ll never cause you any trouble in the future.’

‘That’s reassuring,’ said Charlie. ‘So what happens now?’

The man shrugged. ‘You’re completely out of my hands now.’

A saloon car was where the van had earlier been when Charlie left the building. The two civilian escorts positioned themselves on either side of him in the rear. There was a third man in the passenger seat, beside the driver.

‘Are any of you going to tell me where I’m going?’ tried Charlie.

‘No,’ refused the man in the front seat. ‘Be quiet.’

It was a short journey, the ring road ignored to get into the old part of the city, where there were still pre-revolutionary buildings. But it was into a modern high-rise that they abruptly turned, anonymous until they got through an arched entrance into an inner courtyard in which some of the parked vehicles were official government ZiLs.

Not the time for any questions, Charlie realized, bewildered but hopeful. He got out as instructed, walked unresisting between his backseat escorts into a foyer, and obediently stood aside while the third man went through document signing and exchanges at a reception desk, from behind which a man immediately came to gesture Charlie farther along a corridor. Almost at the end the man opened a door and said, ‘Wait in there.’

Almost at once the door opened again, as if the newcomer had been waiting conveniently close, in the next room, even. The man was tall, as impeccably dressed as Mikhail Guzov had always been, but unusually for a Russian wore a crested ring on the little finger of his left hand.

The man frowned disbelievingly, examining Charlie’s kulak-smocked figure from top to bottom and in cut-crystal English said, ‘Are you
really
Charlie Muffin?’

‘Yes,’ said Charlie. ‘Who are you?’

‘Chambers, second secretary at the embassy. I’ve come to get you home.’

29

It was difficult for Charlie to adjust quickly enough to take control but he did, just. He refused any small talk and determinedly avoided the most personally vital question, for which he doubted the diplomat would have the answer. Unable to accept what was happening and unwilling to risk another, different entrapment, Charlie went as far as warning the embassy driver against speeding or ignoring any other traffic regulation and actually held back from taking off the demeaning kulak smock until they’d passed unimpeded through the embassy gates to an unsuspected reception.

Peter Warren was the only person Charlie recognized. The ambassador was much younger than the predecessor who’d so disastrously failed to supervise the embassy six months earlier, at once assuring Charlie that every assistance was available and suggesting a personal meeting when Charlie had settled. By similar contrast, the new, grey-haired, Mancunian-accented third secretary was an older man than the preceding, incompetent incumbent who’d done nothing to correct his superior’s failings. The frustration burning through him at the enforced delay, Charlie assured the instantly attentive embassy doctor that he was fit enough to travel and that he’d undergo the medical examination when he reached London, which it was important he do as quickly as possible. His only request was for clothes to replace those in which the FSB had humiliated him as part of their mentally disorientating captivity.

As they entered the MI5
rezidentura,
Warren got as far as, ‘So you don’t—?’ before Charlie cut him off.

‘Natalia! What happened to Natalia and Sasha!’

‘Both safe, in England. There wasn’t a hitch. Your shooting ensured that.’

There was no single emotion. It was a colliding combination of relief, continuing confusion, uncertainty, and satisfaction that finally merged into impatience. ‘I’ve been totally isolated, don’t know anything of what’s happened from the moment I was shot. Tell me from that moment.’

‘The Director-General wants to talk to you at once.’

‘He can wait until I’ve got some idea what he’ll be talking about.’

‘I got a bottle of Islay single malt from your commissary records when you were here.’

‘That’s thoughtful,’ accepted Charlie, who managed two whiskies in the time it took Warren to set out everything that had followed the Vnukovo ambush.

‘And I don’t know it all, just the basic outlines,’ concluded Warren. ‘There’s a lot that’s gone on in London that I obviously haven’t been told about.’

‘I’m the only one released: the others from the original back-up team, apart from you, are still being held?’

‘Wilkinson got out under another identity through Poland after Preston was picked up at the airport on a test run. We’ve no idea where MI6’s Denning and Beckindale are.’

‘Any access granted?’

‘No.’

‘How much notice was there of my release?’

Warren poured himself an Islay malt, head curiously to one side. ‘An hour. And for someone who’s been totally isolated, you’re talking as if you know something that no-one else does?’

Charlie shook his head, refusing the question. ‘What about embassy surveillance?’

‘Substantially increased,’ confirmed Warren. ‘And after what happened to Preston I’m a prisoner here as much as the Russians who saw Radtsic in Belmarsh are trapped in their London embassy. Aubrey Smith’s thought is that I’ll be okay coming out as your escort: that they’ll expect someone to travel with you.’

‘Which is precisely why you’re not coming with me.’

‘Charlie! What the hell’s going on!’

‘I won’t know, not until I get back to London. Which I want to do today.’

‘There’s two tickets booked on the six o’clock plane, Moscow time: one of them was for me,’ said Warren, miserably.

‘Here you’re safe. Outside you won’t be,’ said Charlie. ‘It’s time I talked to the Director.’

‘How much do you know?’ was Aubrey Smith’s opening demand when the connection was established from the suspended, totally secure communications pod in the embassy’s communications room.

‘I don’t at the moment need to know any more of what happened after I was shot. There’s something more immediately important. My release isn’t right. I think I know what it is but I can’t get proof until I get back tonight. And I’m doing that alone. I don’t want to give the FSB any excuse—’

‘We’ve already arranged your arrival at Heathrow,’ broke in Smith.

‘Scrap it,’ insisted Charlie. ‘What’s the nearest hospital to London airport?’

There was a pause. ‘I don’t know. Hammersmith, maybe.’

‘Make it Hammersmith,’ said Charlie. ‘Warn the hospital director—but no-one else—that I’ll be arriving. No preparations in advance. I’ll make my own way there from the airport.’

‘What’s the problem?’

Charlie took a deep breath, knowing yet again that he was nakedly splaying himself out for self-offered sacrifice if he were wrong and that if he were he would never again be accorded trust or loyalty from a man who’d already shown him an abundance of both. ‘I’m not sure there is one. Trust me until tonight.’

There was a pause from London. ‘I’ll have people at the hospital.’

‘I’ll be followed from the airport: keep everything at a distance.’

‘Are you in physical danger?’

‘Not yet. The defectors are, totally.’

‘Including Natalia?’

‘Very much including Natalia. We shouldn’t take risks with any of them.’

‘We’re not,’ guaranteed Smith. ‘They’re all under complete shutdown.’

‘They need to be: absolute, total shutdown.’

‘Trust, as always,’ isolated Aubrey Smith, allowing the criticism at last.

‘Trust is all I’ve got to offer at the moment.’

‘Your cover name at the hospital will be Simpkins,’ supplied Smith.

‘That’s one I’ve never had before,’ accepted Charlie.

‘It’s the name of my cat,’ said Smith.

*   *   *

None of the jackets offered to Charlie after his brief, noncommittal courtesy encounter with the ambassador fitted him any better than the enveloping smock. Charlie accepted Warren’s raincoat—along with an already prepared replacement passport—to cover the Russian-supplied work shirt and trousers. Thinking not as himself but as those who would be watching the embassy, Charlie abandoned his original intention to get to Sheremetyevo by airport bus because it was unthinkable he would have travelled that way, but once more cautioned the embassy driver against motoring risks. He arrived an hour ahead of the required schedule, was among the first through the check-in line, and, for the benefit of the surveillance he wasn’t bothering to identify, allowed himself one vodka before embarking, curious at how many FSB were inevitably following him onto the flight. He believed he identified two, one actually sitting in the opposite aisle seat, but was sure there would be more. He considered the in-flight meal, having refused anything at the embassy, but decided against it and made the one unwanted whisky last until the co-pilot’s announcement of the London landing.

Charlie had expected to feel relief—a minimal sensation at least—but there was nothing. His troublesome feet, more extensively exercised in less than one day than they had been over the previous fortnight, prevented his hurrying to the passport check-in queue for which he waited patiently, conscious of the two suspected FSB watchers on the plane unprofessionally anxious to keep level in the non-EU-passenger queue. Charlie switched his search for MI5 protectors he knew would be in the passenger hall and was encouraged at failing to isolate any. He had to walk in front of the foreign-passport checks as he made his way down to the baggage hall, aware as he passed of his aisle-seat companion in a gesticulating dispute with an immigration officer.

Without luggage to claim, Charlie passed straight through to the arrivals concourse and was relieved at the shortness of the taxi queue, although there were at least six intervening customers and only three available vehicles between him and his followers when he got his cab. As it picked up the M4 into London, Charlie had the first sensation he supposed to be relief but it was too fleeting for him to be sure. He wished he were surer of a lot of other beliefs and emotions.

Charlie didn’t bother to check for pursuit as he went into the hospital, glad there was an unoccupied receptionist at the desk. ‘I have an appointment with the director. My name is Simpkins.’

The bespectacled woman frowned, shuffling through paper from a cubby hole in front of her. ‘There’s no note here.’

‘Please check his office.’

‘There’s always a note.’

‘Please check,’ repeated Charlie.

The woman hesitated but then with obvious reluctance dialed on an internal line, the frown deepening as she replaced the receiver. ‘You’re to go to level F, administration. There should have been a note.’

‘I’ll tell them when I get there,’ promised Charlie.

*   *   *

‘He’s landed safely,’ announced Jane, as she returned from the control room.

‘Definitely free?’ pressed Natalia.

‘Definitely,’ confirmed Jane, smiling between the two other women in the sitting room of the safe house.

‘How badly was he hurt?’

‘He’ll have an immediate medical check. He was well enough to travel alone.’