Red Star Rising Read online

  “It’s already a disaster,” said Sir Thomas Sotley, more to himself than to others in the room.

  “Yes, sir,” agreed Fish, unsympathetically. “It is a complete and absolute disaster.”

  The only totally guaranteed bug-free apparatus was now in the embassy’s basement communications room, and Charlie stopped Harry Fish as he was about to enter the descending elevator.

  “I’m on my way down there, too,” announced Charlie, unsure if their long association, which had never developed into a friendship, would be sufficient for what he was going to ask. “But first I need a favor.”

  “We do very different jobs,” said the man, cautiously, letting the elevator doors close against him.

  “The Russians are trying to push me aside from the investigation,” declared Charlie. “I’ve got to prevent that happening, particularly after what you’ve just discovered.”

  “How?” asked Fish, holding back from any additional questions as he listened to what Charlie told him, shaking his head at the finish. “It’ll never work.”

  “I can make it work.”

  “I won’t swear any formal statements . . . let my name be used.”

  “Just be there, with me,” urged Charlie. “You won’t be identified.”

  “Twenty minutes,” insisted Fish. “I’ve already given London a contact schedule.”

  “Twenty minutes,” agreed Charlie. Nodding to the camera still slung around the other man’s neck, Charlie said, “Can I have the images of what I want?”

  “I hope to Christ I’m not going to regret this.”

  “You won’t,” promised Charlie, wishing he could be sure.

  It took them five minutes of Fish’s stipulated schedule to collect buckets, a spade, trowels, and plastic sheeting from the gardeners’ shed Reg Stout had earlier identified to Charlie, which ensured they got the necessary attention of the Russian grounds staff. Three stood watching when they got to where the body had been found, the newly turned soil filling the Russian-dug hole visibly different from that which surrounded it. Charlie demanded from one of them that their overseer be summoned and ordered the man to keep all the Russians not just away but out of sight of what he and Fish were about to do. Charlie, reluctantly, did the digging, gouging a mark in the conference-hall wall with the spade edge, grateful for the effort Fish put into the apparent selection of dirt heaped onto the plastic sheeting.

  “You get into any shit over this, you’re on your own,” warned the man, as they walked back to the embassy, their soil samples on the plastic sheet slung between them.

  “I owe you,” thanked Charlie, accepting the offered digital camera images from Fish’s camera.

  Fish waited while Charlie transferred all the soil onto a fresh piece of sheeting, locked his cubbyhole office, and returned the tools to the gardeners’ shed. In the elevator finally taking them to the communications room, Charlie said, “How bad is this?”

  “For a lot of people here, up to and including the ambassador, I’d guess it will be terminal. As it deserves to be.”

  “How were the CCTV cameras sabotaged to make them work intermittently as they did?”

  “With what’s called breakers, cutting the power on and off, to give the impression of a power interruption. The bugs work on a time system, so that the power goes off completely at whatever specific moment you want the screens to go blank.”

  “Does the power actually go off? Or is it their operation that’s interrupted?”

  Fish stopped as they emerged into the basement facility. “What’s your point?”

  “Stuff that’s wiped off computer screens can be recovered from a hard drive by specialists, can’t it?”

  “With CCTV, you’re talking continuous film that revolves for a certain period and then reverses to record again: that’s why it’s called a loop. Computers are electric: even if something is saved and then erased, it’s possible to recover the ghost from a hard drive.”

  “The old loops that were affected? What’s going to happen to them?”

  “They get destroyed. We’ve installed new ones.”

  “Can I have the old ones?”

  “I’m glad I do what I do, not what you do,” said Fish.

  “Most of the time I don’t like it much myself,” said Charlie.

  It took Charlie almost as long to pack up for dispatch to London the discarded loops, what he considered sufficient soil samples, and to list the significance of Fish’s digital camera images already transmitted to London as it did to send his requests to London. After what he considered a usefully spent day, he was disappointed that his feet still throbbed in tandem at the continuing feeling that he was missing something.

  5

  The postal system of Moscow is as haphazard as its swirling winter blizzards, even in the topsy-turvy summer in which the city was now embalmed. In little more than a twenty-four-hour period it would have been impossible for Natalia to have given a written response to Charlie’s note. Despite which, in the unlikely event of her having received it and decided instead to telephone the Savoy, Charlie still waited until long after any delivery before at last calling the number Sergei Pavel had given him for the organized crime bureau at Ulitsa Petrovka. Charlie had forgotten the Russian system of individually assigned numbers, expecting a general switchboard, and was momentarily surprised when the militia colonel personally answered.

  “I’d expected contact before now,” said the man, when Charlie identified himself. The voice was bland, practically monotone, without any criticism at the delay.

  “There’ve been some unforeseen developments at the embassy.”

  There was the hesitation that Charlie hoped to engender and the tone of Pavel’s voice changed. “What unforeseen developments?”

  “Things we need to talk about,” generalized Charlie. “Thought I’d give a couple of days, too, for all the other things we discussed at the mortuary to come together . . . fuller pathology details, photographs of the scene, further forensic findings, stuff like that.”

  “There are a few things, not all,” begrudged the Russian, cautiously.

  “I’d hoped we could get together some time today, take it all forward?”

  “We’re certain that the murder wasn’t committed anywhere near where the body was found, which makes it a Russian investigation,” declared Pavel, as if he were reading from a prompt card.

  Altogether too soon, too quick, judged Charlie: he could afford to bluff more. “That’s intriguing.”

  “Why?’ demanded Pavel, the curiosity very evident in the no longer neutral voice.

  “It’s not quite either the indication or the impression I’ve been getting from those who’ve come across from London to go through everything at the embassy,” lured Charlie, knowing the arrival of Harry Fish and his team—and their digging expedition the previous afternoon—would have been recorded by the diligent FSB gardener informers, even if Pavel himself was at the moment unaware. “We really do need to meet. Exactly how many of the reports have you managed to assemble?”

  “Some photographs . . . the preliminary medical report,” stumbled the other man, confronted with something different from what he’d expected.

  Charlie doubted that whatever Pavel was minimally offering was actually assembled yet. To give the Russian time to go through the pretense of collation—and doubtless speak to others about the unexpected approach—he said, “Why don’t I come around this afternoon, for us to get started? Three o’clock’s good for me.”

  There was another hesitation. “I should have everything together by then, although I can’t guarantee it.”

  If the Russian wasn’t sure he could get his own bullshit together in five hours, nothing at all had yet been assembled. Not believing that possible, Charlie said, “It’ll be a start.”

  Which wasn’t any way the object of Charlie’s exercise. It was to bluff Pavel, and through him the inevitable monitoring FSB and Foreign Ministry, that there was a lot they’d missed in their com
paratively short forensic examination at the scene inside the British embassy grounds. The FSB bugging of the embassy electronics worked more to his benefit than theirs in taking advantage of the security stupidity presented to them on a shiny silver platter. They’d believe him because he would be telling them what they already knew. Or imagined they knew. He was going to have a dream hand for his poker game. The expertise was going to come in his not overplaying it.

  The scurrying activity at the embassy reminded Charlie of an anthill. There were at least a dozen photographers and journalists grouped outside the firmly closed gates and there was uniformed security forming an admission cordon around the pedestrian entrance adjoining the gatehouse. Inside the gatehouse, the now properly working CCTV cameras displayed in sharp panoramic detail the entire front of the building. Charlie endured the ritual of ID checks and descended into the communications room. Waiting there for him was a warning from the head of the technical and scientific services division that, until the arrival of the discarded CCTV loops, they could not guarantee his detailed overnight request was possible—their more normal function was to detect counterfeit and deceiving enhancement, not create it—but that what Charlie wanted was certainly scientifically and technically feasible: It might help, after they’d received the recording material, for Charlie to talk directly by telephone, as well as in more detailed messages answering their specific questions. Charlie detected a note of tetchy irritation in the assurance that they had samples of 9mm Makarov ammunition. There was also a personal acknowledgement from Director-General Aubrey Smith, insisting that Charlie continue working not just totally independently from everyone at the embassy—especially those most likely to have been compromised—but also from the incoming internal inquiry team. All communication had to be personal, between the two of them, which left Charlie undecided between the advantages compared to the disadvantages of such close contact with the man who for several months had appeared the loser in the power struggle with his deputy. Smith was a university professor of Middle Eastern studies and an acknowledged expert on the revolutionary movements of the region, who had been pitchforked from academia into intelligence in a knee-jerk reaction to Islamic fanaticism. Smith’s way was ingrained from that academic background to consider and judge events from every perspective. It had seemed to chime with Charlie’s independent way of working and he enjoyed having Smith’s confidence, which in matching measure had alienated him from Jeffrey Smale. And, survival savvy as he was, Charlie was well aware that his job security depended upon Smith emerging the victor in the current department power struggle.

  For once Paula-Jane Venables and David Halliday were in their offices, both doors closed with NOT TO BE DISTURBED signs in their occupancy slots, which Charlie ignored, still with time to fill before his appointment with the embassy lawyer. The woman jerked up irritably at his unannounced entry, relaxing when she saw who it was.

  “This is proving to be an absolute fucking nightmare!” she announced, unasked.

  “How bad could it be, bottom line?” asked Charlie. His being forbidden to share anything upon which he was engaged was no obstacle to his learning as much as he could about everything else in the embassy.

  “God only knows. I’m going to have to admit gaps in the telephone log I’m supposed to have kept but haven’t.”

  “Don’t admit anything,” advised Charlie, the survival expert. “Wait until you’re asked, answer one question at a time, and don’t volunteer anything.”

  “At the moment, I’m guessing the bastards could have listened to something in the region of a hundred, maybe a hundred and fifty, incoming and outgoing calls.”

  “What about written stuff?”

  “Luckier there. I do have a full log of the sensitive e-mail material and it’s all gone through the communications room, which your friend Harry Fish tells me isn’t compromised.”

  “You’re not supposed to rely upon luck,” reminded Charlie.

  “You’ve been seconded to the internal inquiry team as well!” she challenged.

  “No,” said Charlie, mildly. “But if I were, that would have been the wrong response. You didn’t open the doors to let the bad guys in. As far as I am aware, it was Reg Stout, under Dawkins’s authority, condoned by an ineffectual ambassador. You haven’t got any reason to be defensive. All you’ve got to do is warn the guys who are coming from London of anything the FSB might have learned.”

  “I just told you, my telephone logs—the logs they are going to want to examine and question me about—aren’t complete.”

  “How much—how many—can you remember of what you haven’t logged?”

  “Most of it, I’m pretty sure.”

  “So verbally include from memory whatever’s missing from the log when you’re questioned in detail about your telephone records.”

  “Considering the way I greeted you when you arrived, you’re being very kind,” said Paula-Jane, smiling.

  “Who told you I was anything otherwise?”

  “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” said the woman, her initial uptightness easing. “I want to make amends!”

  “I’m not sure you’ve got any amends to make,” coaxed Charlie, curious to know who’d been digging the mantraps ahead of him.

  “I am,” she insisted. “I’ve been invited to a dinner party tonight by the current CIA guy at the American embassy. And I don’t have a partner. Would you have a problem filling the vacancy?”

  Charlie found an immediate response difficult, the uncertainty of Natalia’s reaction to his letter in the forefront of his mind. If she missed him on her first call, she’d phone again, came the quick reassurance. It was unlikely there’d be any professional benefit socializing with the Americans, but there was always the possibility of the unexpected. Which was all Charlie ever asked for, a simple possibility. “That could be fun.”

  “Let’s try to make sure it is.”

  “Don’t tell me it’s a nightmare: I’ve been told that already.”

  Halliday gestured Charlie farther into the unexpectedly littered MI6 rezidentura, files, dossiers, and newspapers—English language as well as Russian—overflowing from benches and side desks onto a floor shadowed by unclosed cabinets and open desk drawers. Halliday said, “Not as bad as it looks.”

  “Which looks bad enough,” commiserated Charlie, needing to move some of the records to take the offered seat. The headline in that day’s unfiled Moscow News on top of the heap read: MYSTERY DEEPENS IN BRITISH EMBASSY MURDER.

  Halliday shook his head, smiling. “On open, possibly intercepted transmission, little more than embarrassment. A lot of analyses about Stepan Lvov’s presidential chances, which is occupying every Western embassy in Moscow and shouldn’t surprise anyone in the FSB. My judgement is that Lvov’s a shoo-in, so if I’m right, it’s not even embarrassing that we’ve been monitoring him. If he loses, I’m a bad analyst they don’t have to worry about keeping too close an eye on.”

  “Very pragmatic,” complimented Charlie. “I’ve never seen so many worried people running around so many corridors. Or quite so many journalists, cameramen, and TV crews outside this embassy.”

  “The inquisitors are due any time, thumbscrews and all.

  There’s bound to be a lot of other transgressions swept up in the spring cleaning. And Reg Stout, who’s rightly shitting himself, says he’s called the militia to clear the media away.”

  “He told me he hardly speaks Russian.”

  Halliday shrugged. “He’s always talking through the hole in his ass.”

  “How worried are you about the internal inquiry?”

  Halliday smiled again. “I certainly didn’t let the FSB bug-masters in.”

  “You must have recognized how fucked up the security was here, before the shit hit the fan?”

  Halliday patted the closest folder to him on his desk. “I did, long before the shit hit any fan. And here’s the log, with attached copies of every warning message I’ve sent to London over th
e last six months. London’s going to have a lot of self-explaining to do, as well as the idiots here . . .” The man patted his special folder again. “With this already on my record, I’m going to come out of this inquiry smelling like a rose.”

  “Always better than smelling of shit,” agreed Charlie.

  “I told Monsford, my director, you’d declined my offer of help, by the way. He said he might take it up with your boss. Thought you should know in advance.”

  “I appreciate your telling me that,” said Charlie, deciding at that moment that although admiring Halliday’s apparent professionalism, he didn’t personally like the man. But then, Charlie asked himself, when had liking someone have anything to do with anything?

  Charlie had wondered if in five years the official interior design preponderance of desk and countertop Bakelite with matching linoleum floor covering would have disappeared but, of course, it hadn’t—it just became more scratched and scuffed. The insolent, blank-faced disinterest of the counter clerk at Ulitsa Petrovka was the same as Charlie remembered, too: Charlie’s guess at four minutes before the man would bother to look up from the curled-edged, unturned page of what he was reading was short by an additional full minute.

  “Important to keep up to date with all the regulations,” sympathized Charlie, sure the man was looking at the latest office-circulating porn magazine: the clerk was two pages short of the photographic offerings.

  There was grunted surprise at Charlie’s mockery being in Russian. “You the Englishman to see Sergei Romanovich Pavel?”