Red Star Burning: A Thriller (Charlie Muffin Thrillers) Read online

  “How he lived before was by his own choice,” the psychiatrist pointed out. “And before, he had the job. Which I acknowledge from everything I’ve read he did by his own rules and upset a lot of people in the process. But he was doing something: he had a reason to live. He doesn’t have that reason now: any reason whatsoever to go on living now.”

  “What are you suggesting?” asked Smith, whose deceptive, quietly spoken demeanor hinted to his post-Oxford career as professor of Middle East studies, one of the core credos of which was that once-suffered harm had always to be avenged, a philosophy he’d quickly recognized in Charlie Muffin.

  “I’m not employed here to suggest,” refused Cowley. “I’m here to assess his mental health and that’s what I’ve done.”

  “Are you saying he’s mentally ill?” demanded the sharply suited, precisely spoken Ambersom, who’d bitterly opposed and still resented her manipulated transfer to MI5 from the external Secret Intelligence Service, MI6.

  “Not yet,” qualified Cowley, forcefully. “I think in time, a comparatively short period of time, he could begin to develop a psychosis. I also think that he would be intelligent enough to realize himself what was happening to him and that with the emptiness of his existence, an emptiness that’s never going to be filled, he’d prefer to kill himself than gradually, knowingly, degenerate into mental decline.” The psychiatrist shifted his own copy of Charlie’s personnel file. “It might be difficult for most people to decipher from all that’s in here, but from what I’ve read and from the sessions I’ve had with him, I’ve got Charlie Muffin marked as an extremely proud, even arrogant man. He’d rather kill himself than end up mentally confused, wearing an incontinence pad.”

  “Charlie Muffin has been an active intelligence officer for twenty years,” reminded Ambersom. “Quite irrespective of his most recent operation, we cannot risk the slightest mental uncertainty in someone who knows as much as he does about British intelligence activities over such a period. A lame workhorse that can no longer serve its purpose is put out of its misery, as an act of kindness.”

  “I don’t want this conversation taken in that direction,” said Smith, who resented the woman’s appointment even more than she did, believing it the most positive indication that his attempted overthrow by Jeffrey Smale had only been postponed.

  “If we accept the opinion of Dr. Cowley, which I certainly do, I don’t believe there is any alternative for us to consider,” argued the deputy director, eager to establish herself.

  “There will be no discussion or consideration of physically disposing of anyone while I am Director-General,” declared Smith.

  “The Americans have formally asked to debrief Charlie themselves,” disclosed Ambersom, one of whose new responsibilities was to liaise with U.S intelligence.

  “Are you proposing they do your dirty work for us?” demanded Smith.

  “I am bringing to your attention a formal request from Washington,” qualified Ambersom. “Their request comes with a number of questions not answered in our official debriefing of Charlie Muffin, an abbreviated version of which was made available to them.”

  “Tell both the FBI and CIA to provide a full list of what more they want from the debriefing, with the understanding that we’ll answer what we can,” ordered Smith. “And in doing so remind them how many of their executive staff, including the CIA’s deputy director of operations, were present here in England, with every opportunity to debrief him, at the moment he exposed their naïveté in believing that Stepan Lvov was their double-agent coup of the century when he was elected president of the Russian Federation.”

  “The request was specifically for personal access to Charlie.”

  “Which I’m not allowing.”

  “They won’t consider that the sort of cooperation that’s supposed to exist between our services.”

  “I don’t give a damn how they’ll consider it,” rejected the Director-General. “The last time Charlie Muffin was in a room with CIA and FBI people—which was the occasion he saved them all from making the biggest mistake in their combined histories—there was a U.S. plane at Northolt air base fueled and ready to take him God knows where on a rendition flight from which he would not have returned after whatever interrogation techniques they’d perfected at Guantanamo. You have any problem with CIA or FBI, pass it on to me to resolve.”

  “Which leaves unanswered the question of what to do with a mentally declining Charlie Muffin,” Ambersom said, trying to fight back, flushed at the man’s rejection.

  “Not quite. We’ve decided against letting him be put down like a workhorse for which there’s no further use, haven’t we?” said Aubrey Smith, very aware that there was no answering agreement from the woman.

  * * *

  “It could too easily be a trap, after the way we so recently humiliated them.” Gerald Monsford knew he’d come perilously close to being the highest-ranking victim of the Lvov debacle, surviving only by switching onto Jane Ambersom the responsibility for his own ill-timed and insufficiently considered attempts at self-promoting involvement, which he’d further concealed by decimating MI6’s Moscow embassy staffing. He was terrified now of another near disaster so soon afterward.

  “Maxim Radtsic, whose identity has been confirmed by photographs in our own files, is the specifically designated executive deputy to the FSB,” replied Harry Jacobson, MI6’s newly replaced station chief. “He personally approached me at a diplomatic reception at the French embassy. Unless he was as desperate as he certainly appeared, he would not have identified his son as a potential kidnap victim by volunteering that Andrei was studying at the Sorbonne, would he?”

  “You talked to Straughan about this?” Monsford protectively demanded. James Straughan was the service’s operational field director.

  “It was Straughan who provided the photographic confirmation from the files, as well as establishing through our Paris rezidentura that Andrei definitely is a student at the Sorbonne.”

  “Why didn’t Radtsic approach the French?”

  Jacobson sighed in frustration at the Director’s unanswerable questions, despite the warning from Straughan before the Moscow call had been transferred that Monsford was a worryingly unpredictable, frequently erratic man. “I don’t know why he didn’t! It didn’t occur to me to ask. What occurred to me was that it was the opportunity of a lifetime.”

  “It could be a trap,” repeated the other man, nervously.

  “Radtsic couldn’t have acted out the nervousness. He was practically breaking apart. No attempted entrapment would be personally baited by the FSB’s deputy director!”

  “What’s he offering to prove it’s genuine?”

  “Himself! What more could we expect? Or hope for?”

  “Something to prove himself, first.”

  “Isn’t the fact that he isn’t, which could be fabricated any way the FSB chose, further and better proof that this is kosher?”

  “He’ll give us everything we want when we get him and his wife—and the boy—here?”

  “He told me that once he was here, safe, he’d cooperate in whatever way we asked.”

  After the near disaster with Lvov, this coup could secure his MI6 directorship for life and conceivably secure him the directorship-in-chief of MI5, calculated Monsford. “Be very, very careful. Tell him yes. We’ll set everything up, get them all out, new identity, house, pension, everything. And keep it tight. Don’t tell anyone in the rezidentura: certainly not anyone attached to MI5. Put nothing on the general traffic channels. Everything under Eyes Only, limited to you, me, and Straughan.”

  “Radtsic wants to get out right away.”

  “Tell him we’ll get him out as soon as we can set it all up. And stress he’s not to tell his son until we tell him it’s okay to do so. A nineteen-year-old might not like the idea of being born again, which is what’s going to happen when we give them their new life.”

  3

  The self-admission wasn’t easy for Charlie Muf
fin but he acknowledged that his mistake had been reverting to tradecraft. Establishing a predictable daily routine and unexpectedly breaking it was an operational ploy Charlie had frequently used to lose lulled-into-complacency observers. And precisely what he’d set out to achieve to continue his financial support for Natalia and Sasha.

  Now there wouldn’t be any lulled complacency. Now, because of a Middle Earth hobbit psychiatrist’s belief that he was suicidal, his observers would be on a higher than normal alert. With their number increased, which was a compounding setback because Charlie was sure he’d identified his five regular walkabout watchers. Which was scarcely surprising. Under strict supervision—and budgetary restraints—it was standard practice to train surveillance teams in protection situations like this, where those within a program were expected to cooperate by protecting themselves in the first place. But George Cowley’s ridiculous diagnosis would change all standard practice.

  If the concern were as great as Cowley intimated, the improved surveillance would be fully qualified professionals, conceivably some who guarded defectors and at-risk foreign royalty and dignitaries.

  But not yet, not today. Today the changeover wouldn’t be complete.

  The one ever-present weakness in Charlie’s determination to conceal his relationship with Natalia was their unavoidable link to the money he provided. It hadn’t been a problem when he was operational, with unfettered freedom of movement between assignments. But even then he’d been ultracareful, personally carrying the money—in cash, practically all amassed from expense-account banditry—to a lawyer-nominee-controlled Credit Suisse fiduciary holding in the bank secrecy haven of Jersey, in the Channel Islands off the coast of northern France. From where it was electronically transferred to Natalia in Moscow in tranches kept below any legally enforced Russian reporting requirement.

  There was nine thousand pounds in expense-account profits still in the Harrods safe deposit box that Charlie, who distrusted his own service almost as much as those of his supposed enemies, had rented under an assumed name years before ever meeting Natalia. That now had to be moved to Jersey, as much to reassure Natalia of his survival as to continue her financial support, alone as she was with Sasha, and for which, after three too-closely-watched months, there remained insufficient funds in the Credit Suisse account. And if her allowance stopped she might believe he’d been killed, like the others about whom there’d been so much publicity.

  Charlie was eager to gain as much advantage as possible from the morning rush-hour crush but at the same time was concerned at alerting his CCTV monitors that today’s outing was different from those previously. He was ready an hour earlier than usual, although he maintained the cultivated aimlessness as he meandered from room to room up to the moment when he made as if to return to his upstairs bedroom but instead snatched his jacket from the closet in which he’d stored it in readiness the night before.

  The Chelsea safe house was expertly chosen, a solitary building lost among a coppice of one- and two-story utility blocks and garages, additionally dwarfed by anonymous high-rise mansion apartments—in one if not more of which his observers would be housed—on all four sides. The layout created a choice of four escape runs intersected by a spider’s web of walkways connecting each of the four overshadowing buildings. Charlie followed the regular route his watchers would expect to the traffic-clogged King’s Road and used its gridlocked congestion to pick his way through the unmoving traffic to the far side to isolate his followers. Which, worryingly, he didn’t. He let people board the bus ahead of him until he was sure he could recognize the few who followed. The most immediate was a harassed woman with an uncontrollably screaming child in a buggy from which it was desperate to escape and a scarlet-coated, medal-decorated Chelsea Hospital pensioner.

  Neither disembarked after him at Sloane Square, and all those who did hurried away while he lingered at reflecting store windows. Charlie bought a newspaper from the underground station seller, grateful that this early the pavement café on the corner with the Eaton Square approach was already open. It was from this spot, over the preceding three months, that he’d identified two of his regular watchers. Neither was evident today. As his coffee and croissants were served, Charlie was aware of a raincoated man seating himself on a bench on the pedestrianized central square behind a half-raised newspaper. Charlie felt a blip of relief at the identification, curious where the backup team was. It was ten minutes before three vacant-lighted taxis emerged in convoy from Sloane Street, the first two turning for their cab stand, the last continuing toward Eaton Square. Charlie hailed it at the controlled crossing, aware of the newspaper-reading follower in Sloane Square jerking up from his bench.

  No hurriedly mobilized vehicle joined those directly behind before Charlie’s taxi turned into Pimlico’s grid system, by which time Charlie was talking to the driver of his, being late for a cross channel ferry, introducing the Belgian town of Bruges as his destination as he urged the man to hurry for his Victoria Station train. Charlie had his fare ready when the taxi pulled up, threading his way through the last of the rush-hour commuters not to the overland-departure gates serving Channel ports but down into the underground system. He went one stop to Green Park and took another cab as far as Trafalgar Square, reluctantly walking on already protesting feet to Covent Garden to ensure he’d cleared his trail, despite which he still boarded another underground train to Oxford Circus. From there he took a third taxi to the huge Park Lane subterranean parking lot, scuffing his burning feet its full length to Marble Arch and ground level.

  Charlie got to the Harrods bank by one thirty, hesitating after removing the nine thousand pounds from his safe deposit and the long-held and always meticulously renewed passport, international driving license, and American Express card in the assumed name of David Merryweather, in which the facility was rented. After fifteen undecided minutes, Charlie firmly closed and relocked the box. Knowing from already having established the train-connecting times of trains to and from Poole, in Dorset, to Jersey, he allowed himself a leisurely lunch in the store’s premier restaurant, complete with a bottle of celebratory Aloxe Corton.

  * * *

  The small conference room adjoining the Director-General’s office suite was totally silent, everyone waiting for someone else to risk the first contribution.

  Relentlessly, Aubrey Smith demanded: “How was it allowed to happen?”

  Simon Harding, the head of the surveillance bureau, managed, “Things weren’t fully in place.”

  “Why weren’t things fully in place?” echoed Smith.

  “The upgrading designation wasn’t issued until the evening of the psychiatric interview,” said Harding, an exercise-toned, Lycra-wearing health fitness exponent whose discomfort at wearing a suit was heightened by his being the focus of the inquest.

  “Between which and the time Charlie Muffin disappeared there was a period of more than twenty-four hours,” said the ever aggressive Jane Ambersom.

  “Personnel had to be reassigned from other duties,” tried Harding.

  “Tell me from the beginning,” demanded Smith.

  “The watch personnel were doubled, to be in place today,” said Harding, defensively. “But it wasn’t in place, not that early: the rota hadn’t been finalized and we’re stretched pretty thin. The only thing different from how he’s acted over the preceding three months was his leaving early, which was instantly picked up. We had people with him all the way up the King’s Road and again at his usual café. I was moving a pursuit car into Sedding Street, which would have kept him fully in sight at all times—”

  “But it wasn’t in place either,” anticipated Ambersom, too eagerly.

  “No,” admitted the surveillance supervisor. “We found Muffin’s taxi at Victoria Station, his most obvious destination. He’d talked to the driver of cross-channel ferries, actually mentioned Bruges. I got people on all but one Channel port trains leaving Victoria. He wasn’t on any of them.”

  “He didn’
t go across the Channel,” dismissed the exasperated Director-General. “He just left you a stinking red herring.”

  “So your guess is that he’s still somewhere in England?” said Harding.

  “I don’t have any idea where the hell he is or what the hell he’s going to do,” complained Smith. “He could by now have flown from a dozen airports into Europe, where he wouldn’t have had to show his passport, and from any airport in Europe flown on to anywhere in the world.”

  “You still determined against bringing in America’s help?” asked Ambersom, hopefully.

  “I won’t even acknowledge that stupidity with an answer,” snapped Aubrey Smith.

  “From what I’ve heard of Charlie Muffin’s background, I wouldn’t think he’s on a suicide mission,” offered Harding.

  “Neither do I and I know him far better than you,” agreed Smith, holding the attention of the discomforted surveillance chief. “I think he’d done this to frighten the shit out of us at the same time as proving how good he still is.”

  “We can’t afford to assume that,” cautioned the deputy director.

  “We can’t afford to assume anything,” accepted Smith. “Or do anything.”

  “What, proactively, can we do?” asked Harding.

  “I’ve already told you,” said the Director-General, testily. “Nothing but sit and wait.” He paused. “And hope.”

  * * *

  Which was what Charlie Muffin was doing—although lying, not sitting—on a sun lounger by the pool at Longueville House Hotel, conveniently close to the Jersey capital of St. Helier, his hammertoed feet freed from the captivity of socks and Hush Puppies, trousers rolled up to just below his knees, the nine thousand pounds set up in undiscoverable transfers to Moscow.

  He was glad he’d stayed an extra day and was tempted to extend further, enjoying the almost light-headed feeling of no longer being under goldfish-bowl observation: fantasizing, even, of continuing to run, sure he’d escaped and that he could always keep ahead. He didn’t have any doubts—or fears—of keeping himself alive: that’s what he’d been doing for virtually the whole of his operational career. Assessed against the current success of those supposed to be protecting him, he’d probably be safer on his own.