Red Star Burning: A Thriller (Charlie Muffin Thrillers) Page 6

  “And I want personal, manual control. We mustn’t overlook the Official Secrets Act and necessary security clearances.”

  “No,” agreed Straughan. “We shouldn’t overlook that.”

  * * *

  Charlie Muffin for the first time felt engulfed in paralyzing, impotent helplessness. He’d faced seemingly impossible, about-to-die crises before but always been able to escape, sometimes badly bruised, sometimes badly burned—often physically, too often metaphysically—always survived. Because every time it had only ever been he who’d had to survive, no one else to worry about or to consider. Now it wasn’t only he. It was Natalia—probably bewildered, doubtless confused, with only the vaguest indication of what had happened—and innocent, vulnerable Sasha, whom he’d always pledged to care for and protect.

  He wouldn’t fail them, Charlie determined. He was enduring this animal-farm charade because the finance and facilities of the combined agencies were his best chance of rescuing Natalia and Sasha. None of which, from Jane Ambersom’s almost sadistic dismissal earlier that day, were going to be made available to him. So it had to be just he, alone. Better, far better. He’d never liked—never trusted—other people with him or acting on his behalf: not so much from doubts of their loyalty but from doing things differently, less effectively, than he could.

  Doing it by himself wasn’t going to be easy, Charlie realistically acknowledged. Although he’d always insisted on working alone, there’d usually been an embassy upon which he could call for falsely named passports and air or road escape and cyberspace communications, if the ultimate shit hit the ever-spinning fan. And money: unlimited operational finance, safe openingly available whenever he needed it, which he always had, the more so since his marriage to Natalia. He’d date-staged the transfers from Jersey, so there’d still be some left there, once he’d got away from here. That wouldn’t be as easy as slipping his leash the first time. But this was different. This, quite literally, was life or death: Natalia and Sasha’s life or death. Nothing was going to prevent his keeping them alive: alive and eventually with him. At last.

  * * *

  James Straughan, who was an asexual bachelor, lived in Berkhamsted, almost sixty miles south of Charlie’s Buckinghamshire interrogation lodge, with an almost totally disoriented mother whose evening meal he had just finished feeding her when his telephone rang.

  “We’ve got a match,” declared the duty officer at the Vauxhall headquarters of MI6.

  “No doubt?” demanded Straughan, continuing with generalities because his was an insecure line, although the London call was being patched through a router.

  “None. What do you want me to do?”

  “Keep everything until I get there tomorrow.” If he told Gerald Monsford tonight, the awkward bastard would probably have him immediately return to London personally to courier the stuff to the man’s Cheyne Walk flat. Straughan considered cleaning, bathing, and getting his mother ready for bed a far more important duty.

  * * *

  Maxim Mikhailovich Radtsic patiently stood on the other side of the bed, watching Elana set aside her assortment of things, knowing from every neatly stacked item, predominantly photographs, that it was a selection she’d made and unmade several times before and hated her having to do it yet again.

  “That’s everything,” she said triumphantly, looking up.

  “No,” he refused, bluntly. Watched by Elana, it had taken Radtsic two hours of fruitless searching for listening devices but he still insisted on loud radio music to defeat any monitoring installation.

  “I’ve kept everything to the absolute minimum!” she protested, her voice wavering. “That’s all our memories.”

  “I haven’t been told yet how they’re going to get us out but it’ll almost certainly be by air. Luggage, even luggage going into the hold, is photographed. This amount—and these pictures—would be opened and trap us.”

  “I can’t go with nothing!”

  “You have to go with nothing. Everything is going to be new: our lives, our names, house, everything. All new. No history.” It was madness talking, even softly, like this!

  “I can’t,” she pleaded. “That’ll be … that’ll be dying.”

  “Staying here will be dying. Literally.” This was asking too much of her.

  “I don’t care! I don’t want to go. Won’t go!”

  “It wouldn’t just be us. It would be Andrei, too.”

  “That’s not fair.”

  “That’s reality.”

  “Help me, Maxim! Please do something to help me!”

  “I will. I promise I’ll do something.” What? he wondered, scrubbing the perspiration from his face with the back of his hand. Until this moment he’d never considered—had no conception—what field agents had to endure.

  7

  Straughan did compromise by leaving a note for his mother’s caregiver instead of waiting for the woman’s arrival, which he normally did. He set off on the seven A.M. train and was at Vauxhall Cross by eight thirty and had personally reconfirmed the identification, determined from previous experience of Monsford’s irrational impatience against any oversight reassuring himself that he topped the man’s morning appointment book.

  As he wasn’t summoned until past eleven, Straughan knew Monsford had seen someone else before him and was doubly glad he hadn’t bothered with an instant alert the night before. Playing out the melodrama to test the Director’s reaction, Straughan unspeakingly placed the three enhanced infrared photographs on Monsford’s desk and stood back, waiting.

  “Who is he?” asked Monsford, not looking up from the prints.

  “Boris Kuibyshev,” identified Straughan. “Third secretary in the finance division of the Russian embassy here. These were taken last night outside Charlie Muffin’s flat.”

  Monsford smiled up. “So my idea of leaking Charlie Muffin’s address worked!”

  You self-serving fuckpig, Straughan thought. He said: “Yes.”

  “Is he on the known list?”

  Straughan shook his head. “We’ve had the flat under twenty-four-hour watch for the last two days, comparing every photograph against every print of the entire Russian legation and Russian trade and bank organizations. Kuibyshev wasn’t flagged until now.”

  “So Smith’s people won’t have picked him up?”

  “Not unless they’ve mounted the same watch and done the same face-by-face comparison,” said Straughan. “And my team haven’t seen anyone they recognize or suspect to be from across the river.” He hesitated, intent upon squeezing a recorded accolade from the Director, who’d very positively activated his newly installed audio system. “This gives you unarguable proof that we’re better qualified than MI5 to run things, doesn’t it?”

  Monsford grimaced rather than smiled. “Precisely what I wanted to achieve!”

  “And there’s something else: something that could be connected although there’s no peg to hang it on at the moment,” continued Straughan. “There was an overnight cable from David Halliday of rumors of something happening within the FSB.”

  “I don’t trust Halliday,” declared Monsford. “He was close to Muffin in Moscow during the Lvov business but didn’t give us any indication to get us involved.”

  “He told us Charlie didn’t confide in him,” reminded Straughan, defensively.

  “He must have known something. What’s Halliday’s source?”

  “Cocktail-party gossip from a German embassy reception.”

  “Tell him to harden it up, beyond gossip. But tell Jacobson to stay away from Halliday. I don’t want him involved in anything to do with Radtsic.”

  “And I’ll maintain the watch on the flat: see if we can pick up any more new faces.”

  “Let’s have what Shakespeare called the observed of all observers,” quoted Monsford.

  Straughan exaggerated his sigh. “Did Smith’s people sanitize the flat?”

  Monsford’s face clouded at a question to which he didn’t have an answe
r. “Why?”

  “If I were controlling the Russian surveillance, I’d tell them to break in if the place continues to appear empty. By continuing to doorstep it, they must believe he’s coming back.”

  “Good point,” allowed Monsford. “I’ll try to get an indication. Smith needs all the help and advice he can get.”

  “What do you think about Charlie Muffin?” persisted the operations director. “From the personnel and assignment files, do you think he’s clean?”

  Monsford’s facial contortion really was a grimace this time. “I’d come down in his favor. The only thing that doesn’t make sense is his marrying a woman in the FSB and before that the KGB.”

  “Don’t the personnel assessments make a point of his not abiding by any rules?” asked Straughan, who believed he’d read everything more thoroughly than had the Director.

  “That’s not just breaking rules: that’s the suicide wish Smith had the man examined for. He would have known he could never survive if it ever became known.”

  “So would she, but she still married him,” argued Straughan.

  “If you’re making a point I’m missing it,” complained Monsford.

  “If he felt enough about her to go through a marriage ceremony—and she for him—he’ll do anything and everything to get back to Russia to help her, whether Smith agrees or not.”

  Monsford frowned, disconcerted by another argument he hadn’t understood. “Isn’t that our whole objective?”

  “I thought it was a factor worthwhile stressing to Smith.”

  “I’ve already got it flagged,” lied Monsford.

  “I don’t want to keep Radtsic on hold. We’re ready, apart from the security on a safe house.”

  “I’m seeing Smith at five to confront him with all the rest we’ve got.”

  “Do you want me to wait until you get back?” asked Straughan, warily. His mother’s caregiver left at six.

  “Yes,” decided the Director. “By then I expect to hear something even more helpful from Moscow.”

  Awkward bastard, Straughan thought. He was sorry now that he’d asked instead of risking the wrath the following morning.

  * * *

  Before he’d completed his exercise-period reconnaissance of the outside security and failed on his return to his upstairs cell, as he had on his exit from it, to identify all the interior precautions, Charlie finally acknowledged that escape from his hunting-lodge prison was impossible.

  Charlie slumped into a leather-creaking easy chair, head bowed to his chest again to continue the appearance of cowed acceptance, letting another half-formed idea harden. What could he do—what could he say or imply—to convince Aubrey Smith and Jane Ambersom that it was essential to their interests that Natalia and Sasha be brought out of Russia? And not just them. Gerald Monsford was involved, too. Why? Charlie abruptly asked himself, calling to mind his surprise at the MI6 Director’s presence at his initial interrogation. Strict interpretation of the internal and external divisions between the two intelligence services would normally have decreed the Lvov affair to be that of MI6, except that it had begun with the finding in the Moscow grounds of the British embassy—internationally and diplomatically designated UK territory—of a man who had been tortured before being murdered. And even though his investigation later crossed MI6 boundaries, Aubrey Smith held off the participation demands of Gerald Monsford. So what had changed to bring Monsford in now? Could there still be an internal power problem, even though Jeffrey Smale’s overthrow had failed? Or had Monsford been invited in by a still apprehensive Director-General in the hope of providing sideways-shifting blame for an as-yet-unknown disaster? For which his being married to a serving FSB officer would unquestionably qualify.

  He’d traveled too far down rough-track side roads leading nowhere, Charlie accepted: properly understanding the reason for Monsford’s presence had to remain a work in progress in a situation in which he appeared to be making very little progress. What lure could he find sufficient to convince the Director-General that getting Natalia and Sasha out was in the national interest instead of solely his? The only conceivable—and necessarily official—argument was that if left in Moscow, Natalia represented a national security problem for Britain. And he’d already double-locked the door from both sides—and bolted it top and bottom—against that contention. His entirely truthful and personal defense against Official Secrets prosecution was that they’d never exchanged the secrets of either side. To vary that now could lead to charges being proffered while at the same time further nullifying any possibility of gaining their freedom.

  And then, physically blinking at its total clarity, the unarguable resolution came to him. He doubted that Natalia would cooperate by disclosing the secrets of a twenty-year-long Russian intelligence career, but Smith and Monsford wouldn’t know that until she and Sasha were safe. And it didn’t matter, either, that her refusal would expose his deception, making it impossible for him to remain in the service: he was already in a protection program anyway.

  He could make it work! Charlie told himself. He had to make it work!

  * * *

  The sphinxlike Aubrey Smith glanced fleetingly at Monsford’s offered photographs before putting them to one side and said: “Yes. Boris Kuibyshev.” The Director-General took other, different prints from a side drawer and handed them in return to the other man. “This is Igor Bukharin, who’s also listed in the embassy’s finance section. Did you miss him?”

  Monsford didn’t hurry taking the easy chair to which Smith gestured, inwardly furious at the mockery. “We only began the check last night. We wouldn’t have bothered if you’d told me you were already monitoring the place.”

  “It was such an obvious precaution I didn’t think it necessary.”

  “You considered the possibility that they might burgle it, as well?” demanded the MI6 Director, struggling to keep up.

  Smith smiled, wanly. “I’ve been expecting them to, ever since we identified the surveillance. It was swept clean the day we put Charlie into the protection program. There’s nothing for them to find. Except the surprise I’ve got in place.”

  “What about the answering machine, with Natalia’s voice on it?” Monsford retaliated.

  The condescending smile remained. “From inside the flat, the receiver appears disconnected. The line’s on divert, to our technical people who pick up every incoming call as well as the slightest audible sound of forced entry. They’d also hear if there were an attempted outgoing call if the Russians do go in and try to report back to their embassy Control.”

  Monsford hoped the fury, which was making him physically hot, wasn’t registering on his face. “What’s the surprise you’ve got waiting for them?”

  The MI6 Director listened with his head bowed, more to conceal any facial redness than in concentration. When Smith finished, Monsford said: “I’d have appreciated hearing all this earlier.”

  “It’s a contingency plan that might never be activated,” reminded Smith. “Of course you would have been told in advance. If it became necessary.”

  At least he had more time to decide if there could be any benefit to him, Monsford realized. “It’s the PM’s personal decision we cooperate, so it’s right I should tell you that we’re getting indications from Moscow of something happening within the FSB.”

  Smith gave no response to the implied rebuke. “What?”

  “I’ve ordered a specific inquiry,” said Monsford, inadequately.

  “You suggesting there’s a connection?”

  “I’m suggesting it’s a possibility that shouldn’t be overlooked.” He needed more, much more, agonized Monsford.

  “Let’s not overlook it then,” patronized the Director-General.

  “What’s your feeling about Charlie Muffin’s interrogation?” asked Monsford, unsettled by the other man’s superiority.

  “I think they’re using Natalia as bait.”

  It wasn’t just dismissiveness, decided Monsford. The bloody man
was positively excluding him. “What’s Ambersom’s opinion?”

  “She thinks he went over a long time ago: that while our intention was for Charlie’s defection to be phoney, Natalia turned him and he was sent back as a double. And now it’s all gone badly wrong for them, this is a clumsy way of trying to get him safely to Moscow.”

  “The facts don’t fit her argument,” rejected Monsford.

  “What’s your take?”

  Monsford was annoyed at continuing to be the respondent instead of the questioner. “I don’t believe Charlie Muffin is a traitor. Every analysis of every assignment going back an entire year before the fake defection shows a lot of improvisation but not a single loyalty-questioning inconsistency.”

  “Right,” agreed Smith.

  “Against which I can’t reconcile his marrying a serving officer in an opposition service—” Monsford held up his hand against interruption. “And don’t give me any love-is-blind, there’s-always-an-exception-to-the-rule nonsense. He’s a professional—a very professional—operative whom I’d have welcomed with open arms crossing the river to my side.”

  “What do you think we should do?”

  “I was waiting for you to tell me,” evaded Monsford.

  “Charlie Muffin is a complete professional,” agreed Smith. “As such, he knew exactly what he was doing when he married Natalia Fedova and the consequences if it became known. He’s now got to face those consequences. He’ll be kept safe in the protection program and the woman will have to suffer whatever fate the Russians choose for her when they realize we’re not taking their bait. I sympathize with them both, but they each knew the inevitable outcome if they got caught out.”

  His entire fucking alternative operation was going down the drain, thought Monsford, desperately. “We both of us know Charlie won’t accept that, just as we both acknowledge how good he is. He’d abandon the protection and give you the slip, as he did a few days ago. Except this time he’ll go to Russia instead.”