Red Star Rising Read online

  RED STAR RISING

  ALSO IN BRIAN FREEMANTLE’S CHARLIE MUFFIN SERIES

  Kings of Many Castles

  Dead Men Living

  Bomb Grade

  Charlie’s Apprentice

  Comrade Charlie

  The Run Around

  See Charlie Run

  The Blind Run

  Madrigal for Charlie Muffin

  Charlie Muffin’s Uncle Sam

  The Inscrutable Charlie Muffin

  Here Comes Charlie M

  Charlie M

  BRIAN FREEMANTLE

  RED STAR RISING

  THOMAS DUNNE BOOKS

  ST. MARTIN’S PRESS NEW YORK

  Table of Contents

  Title

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  THOMAS DUNNE BOOKS.

  An imprint of St. Martin’s Press.

  RED STAR RISING. Copyright © 2010 by Innslodged Publications Ltd. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

  www.thomasdunnebooks.com

  www.stmartins.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Freemantle, Brian.

  Red star rising / Brian Freemantle.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 978-0-312-31553-5 (alk. paper)

  1. Muffin, Charlie (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Intelligence service—Fiction. 3. British—Russia—Fiction. 4. Moscow (Russia)—Fiction. I. Title.

  PR6056.R43R43 2010

  823'.914—dc22

  2009047573

  First Edition: August 2010

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  For the real Paula-Jane.

  And for DV, for whom there was no named part but in thanks for his generosity to Naomi House Children’s Hospice.

  You cannot have people assassinated on British soil and then discover that we wish to arrest someone who is in another country and not be in a position to do so.

  —British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, commenting on July 23, 2007, upon the refusal of then Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin to extradite former KGB agent, Andrei Lugovoy, for trial for the murder in London by radioactive polonium-210 poisoning of former KGB colleague, Alexander Litvinenko, November 23, 2006

  They [Britain] are making proposals to change our constitution that are insulting for our nation and our people. It’s their brains, not our constitution, which needs to be changed . . . they forget that Britain is no longer a colonial power and that Russia was never their colony.

  —Then Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin’s rejection of the British extradition request for Andrei Lugovoy, July 25, 2007

  The cynical murder of my son was a calculated act of intimidation. I have no doubt that he was killed by the FSB [successor to the KGB] and that the orders came from the former KGB spy, President Vladimir Putin. He was the only person who could have given that order. I haven’t a shadow of doubt that this was done by Putin’s men.

  —Walter Litvinenko, December 16, 2006

  I will not rest until justice has been done.

  —Marina Litvinenko, widow of Alexander Litvinenko, May 23, 2007

  RED STAR RISING

  1

  Charlie Muffin decided it was a toss-up between the British embassy’s third secretary or the Russian Foreign Ministry official who’d be the first to throw up or simply faint. Or messily do both, not necessarily in any order. Charlie didn’t feel that good himself. It had been a busy, largely sleepless forty-eight hours since his emergency London assigning, and he’d never liked mortuaries anyway. The unease wasn’t helped by a mortuary assistant four autopsy tables away, munching a meat-overflowing sandwich. The grayness of the sandwich filling matched the color of the surrounding corpses, including that of the man around whom they were grouped.

  From the size of the entry wound in the base of the skull, Charlie calculated the bullet was from a Russian-manufactured 9mm Makarov, its tip cut into a dum-dum cross to flatten on initial impact in order to take away on exit the entire face, including both jawbones. The fingertips on the right hand had individually been burned away, either by acid or heat. The pathologist, a fat, dough-faced man who hadn’t been introduced by name, declared the amputation of the left arm to have been a surgical operation, carried out several years earlier. “But not particularly well,” he added, professionally critical. “A hurried job.”

  “It’s obviously a gangland execution,” announced the only Russian whose name Charlie knew so far. Sergei Romanovich Pavel had been identified as a senior investigator from Moscow’s Organized Crime Bureau.

  Charlie looked around the group, waiting for the question. When no one asked he said, “Why’s it obvious?”

  “It’s a trademark killing, the way they always do it. Bullet in the back of the head, after the torture punishment for whatever he did wrong,” lectured Pavel. “You are. . . . ?”

  “London-based embassy security,” said Charlie, wondering which of the men facing him across the metal slab was from the Federal’naya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti, or FSB, which replaced the internal directorate of the former KGB. The presence of the internal intelligence agency was inevitable after the finding of a murdered man in the garden of the British embassy; Charlie guessed it to be the thin, balding man holding back from any part in the stilted discussion.

  The bespectacled, sparse-haired Pavel smiled, patronizingly. “There is, regrettably, a lot of organized crime in the city. We’ve come to recognize their methodology.”

  “He was very obviously tortured,” endorsed the pudgy pathologist, pointing toward the murdered man’s clothes bundled into a see-through plastic sack. “The jacket and shirt are clotted with blood. The bullet would have smashed most of the teeth, making an identification difficult from dental records. But I’d guess most of the teeth were pulled out while he was still alive, to cause that degree of blood loss. Probably a lot more was done to him, as well. They usually take the eyes out . . .” He went back to the body. “See the ligature bruising on the wrist, as well as his ankles and across the chest? That’s where he would have thrashed in agony against whatever they restrained him with . . .”

  It was the Russian Foreign Ministry man whose stomach erupted. The man managed to reach a deep-basined sink before being violently and repeatedly sick, groaning as he retched. Jeremy Dawkins, the embassy diplomat, looked determinedly away, his lips tightly clamped.

  Charlie said: “Didn’t you tell us at the beginning that all the labels and makers’ marks have been removed from the clothes?”

  “That’s why they’re
bagged up. They’re clearly Russian and I thought they’d be needed for forensic examination.”

  Turning back to Pavel, Charlie said, “Is that another gangland trademark? Removing all manufacturers’ details from the clothing, as well as taking away the face and burning off the finger ends to prevent any identification?”

  “They don’t usually do that,” conceded the Russian detective.

  Going back to the medical examiner, Charlie said, “How do you think the fingertips were destroyed?”

  “Forced over a flame or a hot plate,” suggested the man. “Acid, possibly.”

  “Are any of the fingers broken?” persisted Charlie.

  The pathologist frowned, needing to go back to his notes. “No, they weren’t.”

  “So, we’ve got a body bruised by his binding from the thrashing agony of what was being done to him, but without the fingers being broken where he tried to keep his hand away from a flame or hot plate?” said Charlie. “Which would, by the way, have burned the torturers trying to hold the fingers over the heat.”

  “Yes,” allowed the doctor.

  “I don’t think his fingers were held over anything hot,” argued Charlie. “I think the tips were burned off by an acidlike agent; that’s why the wrist is so marked, more deeply than anywhere else.”

  “Are you going to tell us the point of this cross-examination?” demanded Pavel.

  “Looks to me as if a very determined effort was made to conceal who the man was,” said Charlie.

  “Which we will do our utmost to discover,” promised the man whom Charlie guessed to be from the FSB.

  “The body was found in the grounds of the British embassy,” reminded Charlie. “Technically, the embassy and the grounds in which it is built is British, not Russian territory. This is a murder committed on British soil.”

  “I don’t think we need to become distracted by diplomatic technicalities,” broke in Dawkins.

  “But if we are being technical, I am not entirely satisfied that the murder was committed on British soil,” challenged the pathologist. “From my preliminary examination at the murder scene, I’d say the body was dumped in the grounds after the man was shot: there wasn’t sufficient blood or physical debris around him. And if he were killed elsewhere it is a Russian investigation.”

  “Surely, until it actually becomes an investigation, it should be a joint operation?” pressed Charlie.

  The ashen-faced ministry official came back into the group. He said, “I’m sorry . . . I’ve never been in a place like this before.” To Charlie he said, “Every cooperation will be extended. It’s a very unpleasant business. Your country’s need to be involved is most regrettable.”

  Not regretted by me, thought Charlie. He smiled at the Russian detective. “I look forward to our working together. I presume you’re based at Ulitsa Petrovka?”

  Pavel frowned. “You know Moscow that well?”

  Charlie felt a spurt of annoyance at his smart-assed mention of the location of the organized crime bureau headquarters. It gave them a pointer they didn’t need to have and which he hadn’t intended to give them. But if the thin-faced, balding man was FSB, then a background intelligence check was automatic. With no alternative, Charlie said, “I’ve served a posting here before.”

  “Which explains your excellent Russian,” said the man, smilingly, whom Charlie suspected was FSB.

  It didn’t necessarily, but Charlie was anxious not to stray any further. “And why I was seconded here specifically to inquire into this murder,” he said. He looked between Pavel and the medical examiner. “I’d welcome a full copy of your pathology report, including a skin residue analysis to establish if the fingers were burned by acid. And any forensic findings from the examination of the clothes. There’ll be toxicology and stomach contents analyses, too, won’t there?”

  “Of course,” said Pavel, tightly.

  The pathologist nodded, but didn’t speak.

  “I don’t think you handled that very well back there,” complained Dawkins, in the car ride back to the embassy. He was a very tall, angularly featured man who found it difficult to keep his fair hair from flopping forward over his forehead. The public school accent was sharp enough to cut glass.

  “How’s that?” Charlie sighed. How was it he always seemed to get under people’s noses, like a bad smell?

  “Our government doesn’t want the bodies of murdered Russians strewn around its embassy grounds.”

  “I didn’t leave it there.”

  “Don’t be fatuous!” protested the man, whom Charlie estimated to be at least twenty years his junior. “What I mean is that it would have been better to have gone along with what the man Pavel suggested: that it’s a Russian murder of a Russian national and better left to their people to handle, distancing ourselves as quickly as possible.”

  “No it wouldn’t,” rejected Charlie, curtly. “I’ve been specifically seconded here to ensure the British government isn’t sucked into an as-yet-unknown embarrassment or difficulty. And I’m not going to succeed in doing that by sitting on my ass, waiting for other people to tell me only what they want me to hear.”

  “What sort of difficulty could there possibly be, apart from his being found where he was?” demanded the younger man.

  “You’re assuming he’s Russian because the clothes are Russian. What if he turns out to be British?”

  “What!” Dawkins turned across the car in his alarm, swerving it out of the lane.

  “Easy!” said Charlie, calmly. “I’m just floating a ‘what if.’ Trying to suggest why we’ve got to be involved from the inside, not kept outside.”

  “You certainly worked hard to ensure that,” criticized the diplomat.

  “How the hell could I talk to people without knowing their names and where, hopefully, to get hold of them?” asked Charlie, impatiently. He’d ended the mortuary encounter by insisting upon the identity and contact number of every Russian in the room, even the Foreign Ministry official. “You don’t ask, you don’t get—one of the truisms of life.”

  “I need to be kept fully informed of everything you do, everyone with whom you get involved,” demanded Dawkins. “I want to be told everything you have in mind, well before you take any action. Those are the ambassador’s orders: I’m your channel to him, at all times.”

  Bollocks, thought Charlie. “I know the rules.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me you’d served here before?”

  “I’ve scarcely had time to tell anyone anything. It was a long time ago.” Five years wasn’t that long, Charlie mentally corrected himself. Sasha would be eight now. Upon reflection he didn’t have too much to worry about whatever checks Mikhail Guzov, the correctly guessed FSB officer, made about him through their internal intelligence records. He knew Natalia had sanitized both their files. It was even possible that his records wouldn’t have been kept by the FSB. Hers would still exist because Natalia had been retained after the KGB changeover and was still a serving officer, although he didn’t know in what division. They’d never talked about their separate intelligence functions, apart from their initial, professional encounter.

  “How long were you here?”

  “About four years,” said Charlie, intentionally vague.

  “A difficult time?”

  “You know I can’t give you any indication of my work. But I can tell you we certainly didn’t find any dead bodies in the grounds.”

  “Sorry. I shouldn’t have asked you.” Dawkins retreated, embarrassed at showing his inexperience. “The current contingent, MI6 as well as MI5, want to meet you. I think they were surprised you didn’t come to the embassy before going to the mortuary.”

  “My coming here specifically for this investigation was to distance them and the embassy,” reminded Charlie. Which had been his accustomed and all-too-frequent role in a very varied espionage career, sparing others with more delicate hands the distaste of getting them dirtied.

  “I don’t think they appreciated that,
any more than I did,” said the diplomat. “And the housing officer also wants to see you.”

  “I’m sure he does,” accepted Charlie, who had anticipated the confrontation. Dawkins had taken the long way round to reach the British embassy, driving now parallel to the Moskva River along Smolenskaya Naberezhnaya. Charlie gazed nostalgically out at the familiar, once happy surroundings. Before the building of the new embassy, he and Natalia had pushed Sasha along this bordering river embankment, after he’d managed the Moscow posting to return to marry her. They’d talked—perhaps fantasized was a better word—during those walks about their future together. Need it to have been such a fantasy? Not really, not even in those newly thawed days at the supposed end of the Cold War. All it would have needed was Natalia’s acceptance that she’d have to leave Moscow and her beloved Russia, a compromise she’d never been able to make. Nor could he make the matching compromise himself. He’d believed his inevitable discovery as a British intelligence officer—even a former intelligence officer if he’d resigned, which he had been prepared to do—would have made his remaining there impossible. Certainly, Natalia would not have been allowed to continue in the KGB or its succeeding FSB.

  “I don’t think he’s happy.”

  The louder-voiced repetition broke into Charlie’s reverie. They were talking about the housing officer, he remembered. “I’ll talk to him,” he promised, welcoming the appearance of the four-towered embassy, although not the inevitable irritating confrontations. Bollocks to those, too.

  “You’ve got all my numbers, including my home and mobile,” said Dawkins, as they entered the building with its modern-art etchings dominating the reception area. “Don’t forget what I told you about wanting to know everything you do before you do it.”

  “Indelibly engraved in my mind,” assured Charlie, emptily.