Red Star Falling: A Thriller (6 page)

‘You’ve betrayed Russia!’ agreed Elena. ‘What do you expect them to do?’

‘I need you,’ abruptly declared Radtsic, ignoring the television now, his entire concentration upon Elena. ‘I
do
know what they’ll do, what they’ll make me out to be. I don’t expect things to be the same between us now—know they can’t be, just as I know all that you’ve sacrificed by coming with me. But you’re not with me, are you? You’re locking me out: I don’t mean from the bedroom, from sex. I don’t want sex. I just want you, with me. I need a friend, that’s all. Just a friend.’

Elena didn’t respond for a long time, looking neither at Radtsic nor at the repetitive television but seemingly unfocussed upon a checkmate-displayed chess set on a game table against a far wall.

Finally she said, ‘I’d like to know that Andrei isn’t suffering because of all this. He shouldn’t be, should he? It really isn’t like the old days, is it? He proved his loyalty by not defecting.’

‘I want to know what’s happened to Andrei, too.’

‘If I knew he was all right, wasn’t being punished, I wouldn’t want him to come here to join us: for him to have to live as we’re going to have to live. I’d want him to stay in Russia, with Russians.’

Now it was Radtsic who didn’t quickly respond. At last, quiet-voiced, he said, ‘That would be best. And it’s not automatic that he’ll be punished. Some things have changed.’

‘I’ll try to adjust: not lock you out.’

‘Thank you.’

‘I said I’ll try. That’s all I can promise, that I’ll try.’

*   *   *

‘That’s all you can tell me?’ anticipated Natalia, professionally.

‘You know a lot more anyway,’ confirmed Jane, who’d edited her account strictly to MI5’s immediate needs.

‘Internecine warfare between same-country intelligence agencies isn’t unusual,’ offered Natalia. ‘It’s happened between my service—both KGB and FSB—and the Glavnoye Razvedyatelnoye Upravlenlye, our military intelligence.’

‘Extending as far as attempted sabotage of supposedly joint operations and murder, which is what this was—or attempted to be?’

‘I don’t know of a situation that’s gone to that extreme,’ conceded Natalia.

‘We lost Charlie for a week—eight days to be precise—before he made contact with his support group at the embassy,’ said Jane. ‘The first thing he told our officer was that MI6 was to be totally cut out: that he was refusing any contact whatsoever.’

‘You told me you were having doubts in London that MI6 weren’t being straight with you,’ reminded Natalia.

‘Which we weren’t able to pass on to Charlie during that lost week,’ reminded Jane, in turn. ‘And it was Charlie who told his embassy linkman first, not the other way round. We know, from the tourist flight, that he actually got to Moscow on the Monday. When did he first contact you?’

‘Tuesday,’ said Natalia, covering her caution with the quickness with which she replied. Charlie was injured but alive and she had to do everything conceivably possible to get him out of Russia. She didn’t know in sufficient detail what Charlie had told them to justify the extraction of herself and Sasha.

‘Tuesday morning or Tuesday evening?’

‘Tuesday evening,’ said Natalia, promptly again: there was no danger in that answer. ‘When we were first together, before we lived together, we had a contact procedure, dead letter drops. Charlie used it and I picked up.’

‘It was a very early arrival, on the Monday: four
A.M.
He must have filled the drop sometime during that first day,’ calculated Jane. ‘So he’d been able to move about in Moscow roughly thirty-six hours. That first time you met, did he tell you what he’d been doing?’

The safety of complete honesty seized Natalia. ‘Nothing at all.’

‘It’s Charlie we’re working to help,’ prompted Jane, solemnly. ‘Wasn’t there the slightest indication?’

Natalia shook her head, maintaining the honesty. ‘He was very careful about the actual meeting: wanted to guarantee I’d cleared my trail before he approached me. The drop was at Moscow’s original Botanical Gardens. In those very first days of our originally getting together we’d used a hotel very close, the Mira. That’s where Charlie was living at the beginning of what you’re calling his lost week. It’s virtually a rent-by-the-hour whorehouse now. We went there to hide, nothing more. And talk. But only about what was going to happen. There was all the publicity about the tourist arrests by then. I said we’d never get out: that I’d trapped him. He told me he’d make it work.’

‘Charlie was ultra-cautious,’ picked up Jane, searching for crumbs. ‘Didn’t you think there was some significance in that?’

Natalia shook her head again, still sure she was on safe ground. ‘I have never known a more instinctive, more intuitive espionage professional than Charlie. He finishes other people’s thoughts before they know how to finish them for themselves; knows what they’re going to do or say before they do.…’ She hesitated, weighing her words. ‘The point I’m making is that I didn’t see any significance in the precautions Charlie took. I saw Charlie Muffin being Charlie Muffin.’

Now it was Jane who hesitated, unsure how to continue. ‘There’s an interpretation that could be made from what you’ve just said.’

‘What?’ demanded Natalia, uneasy at not isolating the direction of the remark.

‘Was that eulogy of Charlie Muffin the true character assessment? Or was he, in truth, the one you actually managed to turn into a double?’ challenged Jane. ‘There have been other assessments, assessments easily reached from your actually being married to him, that Charlie has for a long time been a double.’

Natalia remained blank faced, as she had throughout, constantly aware of the cameras and just as expertly now refusing the anger at the accusation, turning the irritation upon herself for allowing even the vaguest twitch of annoyance. For the benefit of the permanently attentive lenses she actually smiled. ‘We began trying to find something that might help get Charlie out of whatever situation he’s in, a situation in itself that makes ridiculous the accusation you’ve just made. I’m as much your captive here as Charlie is in Moscow, which compounds the ridiculousness. As difficult as it obviously is for you to believe, which I accept because our being married is even more difficult to believe, Charlie and I never, ever, exchanged a single operational detail until what you refer to as the lost week—’

‘Which you haven’t told me about,’ instantly seized Jane.

‘Because your questions haven’t allowed me to.’

‘Tell me now.’

‘You have to tell me something first,’ demanded Natalia. ‘Did MI5 know Maxim Mikhailovich Radtsic was being extracted
before
he arrived in Britain?’

Jane hesitated. Throughout she’d felt comfortable with the other woman, not suspecting professional manipulation and believing that she was being told the truth: this was a reversal of roles she hadn’t anticipated. But by being aware of it, she was forewarned, she reassured herself. ‘No,’ she said, intentionally short.

‘Charlie knew,’ Natalia announced.

‘How?’

‘I don’t know,’ conceded Natalia. ‘But he definitely knew about Radtsic crossing over before I told him I had been appointed to the investigation into Radtsic’s background. The only possible source can be MI6, who, according to what you’ve told me, staged the Vnukovo ambush in which they tried to kill Charlie. Nothing of which makes the slightest sense.’

‘That’s our problem,’ agreed Jane. ‘Nothing’s made sense since the beginning of this mess.’

*   *   *

Gerald Monsford decided that he’d come out of it far better than he’d imagined possible, right up to the very moment he’d responded to the committee’s demand. Unquestionably better, too, that it was he who’d provided the explanation in the way he had, instead of fielding Rebecca to provide his opening. But that hadn’t been her ploy. The bitch had meant to leave him stranded, hanging back as she had. He regretted now stranding her in return, rejecting any conversation during their silent ride back to their Vauxhall Cross building. But she definitely had to believe she was safe, not coming forward as he’d instructed and before that physically pulling away from him in front of everyone. It was obvious that he had to get rid of her but he couldn’t risk any move to achieve that until he discovered what she imagined to be her protection. So it remained a concern but not his most pressing one. That was building upon that morning’s success by very precisely pointing the head of the security investigation to substantiate the doubts he’d already sown about James Straughan.

Matthew Timpson arrived with bank manager’s punctuality befitting his black-suited, portly self-important demeanour. With him, unexpectedly, was the unnamed, crimp-haired, matronly woman, also in black, who’d been among the initial investigative hierarchy.

She wasn’t introduced now, either. Instead Timpson said, ‘Interviews are always formally witnessed.’

‘I didn’t see this as a formal interview.’ Monsford frowned, having hoped for an unrecorded exchange.

‘This is a formal investigation: every encounter is formally witnessed and recorded,’ lectured Timpson. ‘You’ll be provided with a verbatim transcript in addition to a copied recording.’

While they’d talked, the woman had installed a slightly larger than pocket-size recorder on Monsford’s desk, a bell-shaped receiver arm extended directly towards him.

Indicating his own system, Monsford said, ‘I’ll make my own copy, of course.’

‘Of course.’

The sanctimonious bastard was patronizing him, Monsford decided. He’d take his time choosing the deflating moment.

‘You’ve got something important to contribute to our enquiry?’ invited Timpson. He’d chosen his own chair and was sitting with his hands comfortably joined across a plump, waistcoated stomach. His face, like his voice, was expressionless and oddly shone, as if he’d polished rather than washed it.

‘Your investigation will encompass the apparent suicide of my former operations director, James Straughan?’ embarked Monsford.

‘It’s of particular interest
because
it is inexplicable,’ said Timpson, pedantically.

Timpson would have been a very difficult bank manager from whom to coax an overdraft, thought Monsford. ‘Straughan was very closely involved, the architect in many ways, of much of what has become the very complicated and far-too-public difficulties in which both MI5 and my service currently find themselves.’

‘Are you suggesting his suicide is directly connected?’ asked the flat-voiced man.

Slightly better,
judged Monsford. ‘Your security classification enables you total access to all the operational details of both extractions?’

‘All the appropriate documentation and authority has been provided to you,’ insisted Timpson, pedantic again.

None of which gave this jumped-up clerk the right to sit as if in judgement, thought Monsford. Maybe it was deflation time. ‘As you’ve been provided with all the case documentations and authorities of both extractions, what, in your opinion, is the outstanding indication that there is a security leak within MI6?’

‘I’m here at your invitation, to hear what you have to tell me,’ Timpson avoided, the self-satisfaction slipping slightly.

‘From that reply it’s obvious you haven’t isolated it yet, which certainly makes this a necessary meeting,’ said Monsford, aggressively. ‘There is no conceivable way the FSB could have burgled Muffin’s London flat unless its address came from one of our two agencies. I believe MI6 to be the source.’

‘Straughan?’ demanded the security head, at once.

Monsford had expected greater surprise. ‘That’s the indication.’

‘What indication?’ asked Timpson, a finger-snap question.

‘One of my dead officers, Stephan Briddle, was the MI6 supervisor within Charlie Muffin’s original support team,’ set out Monsford, his concentration now entirely upon every word he uttered and the recordings being made of them. ‘Just after midnight—I was asleep, didn’t check the exact time—in the morning of the Vnukovo shooting I received a call at my apartment at Cheyne Walk. It was Briddle, in Moscow. He’d discovered a cell, he told me. It was a fragmented story. The gist was that David Halliday, my other dead officer, was part of that cell, together with Straughan, who was running it. Briddle believed Muffin knew more about it: had proof, even, which was why Muffin refused any MI6 association, fearing he’d be compromised—’

‘You have a transcript of this conversation?’ intruded Timpson, finally energized.

Monsford shook his head, carefully avoiding the denial being audibly recorded. ‘Briddle broke operational security. My home telephone is technically an insecure line, not equipped for automatic recording. The conversation was too brief for me manually to switch my normal answering machine to record.’

‘There’ll be an automatic listing on your telephone record of the call being made, though?’

‘Of course there will be. I’ve just told you mine is an ordinary public line.’ Monsford’s antipathy towards the other man vanished at the hoped-for question. Stephan Briddle
had
broken every operational security by making the panicked call on an open line just after midnight, but only to confirm by an ambiguous exchange the order to assassinate Charlie Muffin, whom David Halliday had chanced upon at the Savoy Hotel bar they’d used together during Charlie’s embassy-murder assignment. But that all-important incoming-telephone record existed, to validate the story no-one could prove to be a lie.

Timpson hesitated, reflectively. ‘I’m not clear of the connection with James Straughan. How does this have anything to do with the FSB learning of Muffin’s London address?’

‘I hadn’t finished,’ bullied Monsford. ‘Briddle also told me that Halliday, maudlin drunk, had talked of arguing with Straughan about an FSB double agent in Rome. Briddle said it hadn’t made sense because Halliday was so drunk but that it involved finding Charlie in London: that Charlie had been his friend and he didn’t want Charlie physically harmed or betrayed, as Straughan had persuaded him to betray everything and everyone else.’