Red Star Burning

by Brian Freemantle

  “I didn’t ask for a lecture on tradecraft!”

  “I’m not lecturing on tradecraft,” refuted Straughan, his nerves inwardly in turmoil. “I’m setting out the logistical practicalities. And before they’ve even been put in motion Elana and Andrei have to be told to be ready at a precise time for their pickup. In Moscow a ticket has to be bought for Radtsic and bookings made for his escorts on a direct commercial flight to London, with no intermediary stopovers like Amsterdam to prevent an FSB interception if there’s an airport identification of Radtsic but insufficient time to stop him, which is a possibility we can’t overlook. Because you’ve only just given me the instructions we don’t yet know if there are available seats on that first convenient direct flight, the lack of which is another possibility we can’t overlook. And if there aren’t available seats, all the other timings have to be resynchronized. And—”

  “All right!” stopped Monsford, tight voiced. “How long?”

  “Twenty-four hours at the very earliest to guarantee that synchronization,” promised Straughan. “Allowing for inevitable setbacks, we should get all three to London the day after tomorrow. Where a safe house is also set up, fully staffed and protected.”

  “You’d better start at once, to minimize those setbacks, hadn’t you?”

  “What about the other business?”

  “There is no other business except that which we’ve just discussed, that and that alone. Nothing more,” said Monsford

  Straughan hesitated. “Jacobson might need clarification of that.”

  “Isn’t it your remit to clarify operational details?” demanded Monsford.

  * * *

  “Over the last few days I’ve not felt that I’ve got your full support,” said Monsford, as the door closed behind Straughan.

  The recorder was still on, Rebecca thought. “I can’t imagine what’s given you that impression.”

  “Your opinion’s too often contrary to mine.”

  “Constructively and objectively expressed, surely?” His risk was greater than hers, Rebecca decided: he wasn’t going to fuck her any other way than he was already and he was finding even that difficult to manage.

  “You sided with Straughan against me.”

  How could he be so stupid, with the apparatus running! “Only objectively, discussing whether or not to kill Charlie Muffin to create a distraction for Radtsic’s defection, which just a moment ago you decided against. Which puts us all in agreement, doesn’t it?”

  Monsford smiled at her. “Nothing’s being recorded: I didn’t turn it on.”

  The motherfucker was setting her up if things went wrong, just as he’d set up Straughan and before that the Ambersom woman to save his own repulsively fat ass! “I don’t understand the connection between that remark and what we’re talking about.”

  “Don’t you?”

  “No,” she insisted, her mind already ahead of her recovery.

  “I want your loyalty.”

  “You’ve got that, as well as my objectivity. Which is what I have always tried to contribute. And what I want to continue contributing. On the subject of which I think it would have been wise to disclose Radtsic’s extraction at today’s meeting.”

  “Today’s meeting was about MI5’s mess. Bland and Palmer would have panicked and aborted the Radtsic objective if I’d announced it and we’d have lost him. As it is, we’ll have Radtsic and a huge coup and those across the river will have to clear up the shit Charlie Muffin’s left behind. Whose side would you rather be on?”

  “The winning side,” answered Rebecca, honestly. But not, she decided, that which included Gerald Monsford.

  He smiled again. “That’s what I wanted to hear and go on hearing. Shall we go home?”

  “Not tonight,” refused Rebecca. “My period’s started early and I’m not at all comfortable.”

  “We could still eat together.”

  “Tomorrow. Let’s have dinner tomorrow.” She had more-important things to occupy her mind than boring crap about Helen of Troy and gods in loincloths fighting bulls in underground caves.

  * * *

  It was dark by the time Charlie got to the botanical gardens, which he approached as cautiously as always, stretching his outside checks on those entering or leaving for at least twenty minutes before finally going through the gate, lingering even further on separate benches to satisfy himself it was safe and even then feigning interest in shrubbery and trees while making his way casually to the specific telephone. The time switch had activated the interior light and before he reached it Charlie saw the hoped-for marker and had to stop himself hurrying.

  Charlie had his own Pravda partially rolled by the time he got into the cubicle, and was leaning back to keep the door open while he completed his answering signal when the phone rang, the jarring unexpectedness startling him. For a moment he stared at it, undecided, letting it ring twice more before picking it up, keeping an unfolded page of the newspaper against the mouthpiece to muffle voice recognition when he said: “Da?”

  “I know it’s you, Charlie: I can see you,” said the voice he wanted to hear.

  * * *

  Rebecca Street said: “I’m glad I’ve caught you.”

  “I was just leaving,” said Straughan.

  “It won’t take long,” promised the woman.

  19

  Charlie didn’t move, halting the instinctive swing to look into the gardens. “The open pod by the first hothouse?” It was obvious: too obvious! He should have checked every approach, not just that from the main entrance.

  “I hoped you’d come: prayed you’d come. I kept checking, hoping you’d remember.”

  “I told you I was coming.”

  “You didn’t call Pecatniko!” she demanded, the alarm flaring.

  “Of course I didn’t call your apartment!” Fortunately, he thought, discerning her fear.

  “How did you expect me to know then?”

  This was verging upon the surreal, decided Charlie. “I called the numbers from which you phoned.”

  “Street kiosks?”

  “Each of those you used: we traced them.”

  “I don’t understand,” she protested.

  “I don’t understand either. Are there people with you?”

  There was a pause. “I’m alone. I really don’t understand.”

  There was none of the tension that there’d been in her voice on the Vauxhall answering machine. “You can move around?”

  Another pause. “So far.”

  Her voice was calmer, Charlie judged. “What about surveillance?”

  “You taught me how to clear my trail, remember?”

  Charlie felt a stir of unease: it had been little more than early relationship game playing, not proper dedicated training, although she’d undergone that at KGB academies. “Where’s Sasha?”

  “Summer school.”

  He’d forgotten the school semester dates and the additional privileges to which Sasha was entitled as the daughter of a senior state intelligence officer. “I’m at the Mira hotel.”

  There was something like a laugh but it was muffled. “You did remember it all, didn’t you?”

  “We need to talk.”

  “Yes.”

  “Leave first, now. Walk past me and through the main gate. Wait on the first bench outside, about twenty meters down on the left side of the road in the direction of the hotel. And I mean wait. I won’t approach you until I’m absolutely sure you’re clear.”

  “I told you I’ve guaranteed that.”

  “Wait.”

  “You’ve seen something: someone!” flared the demand again.

  “I need to be absolutely sure. Go now.”

  “What if I’m not clear!”

  The fear was definitely there. “I’m in room forty-six. Call it tomorrow morning: ten thirty from another street kiosk.”

  “I should have agreed to come before, shouldn’t I? Not been so stupid, until it was too late.” There was the slightest cat
ch in Natalia’s voice.

  “Move now! We’ve been talking too long.” Charlie kept the dead phone to his ear, seemingly still talking, turning at last to see Natalia go by. She did so without looking toward his kiosk, walking steadily but not hurrying. She was wearing a headscarf, which she rarely did, prompting Charlie’s recollection of their discussing the use of a head covering for a change of appearance, wondering if the now-belted raincoat had a different-color reversible lining. He was concerned at a couple, the man visibly older than the woman, who appeared to follow closely behind Natalia until they settled on a bench and began fumbling each other under the imagined cover of the inadequate half-light. There was no other even vaguely suspicious pursuit and Charlie replaced the receiver, taking both newspapers with him as he moved in the opposite direction from the main entrance, against what would have been any professionally recognizable surveillance upon Natalia, separately dropping each newspaper into a different refuse bin. He studiously ignored the open pod from which Natalia had spoken but hesitated, as if seeking a direction, to study everywhere around it, relieved again at detecting nothing. He continued until he reached a bisecting junction, taking the right-hand path to a side exit from which he looped along the outside road to the main highway.

  Charlie picked Natalia out long before he reached her, the raincoat already reversed, and was sure she saw him, although she gave no indication.

  When he reached her she said: “I’ve caused a lot of trouble, haven’t I?”

  “Nothing I can’t sort out,” he said, wishing he believed it.

  * * *

  Natalia finally backed away from the embrace in which they’d held each other, neither speaking, each satisfied by the feel and touch of the other. She grimaced around the hotel room as they parted and said: “This isn’t what I’ve got special memories of.”

  “Try to keep them as they were. Sit on the chair, not the bed. There are things that bite.”

  Natalia did as she was told, frowning as Charlie perched himself cautiously on the very edge of the bed. She said: “The FSB have been in turmoil ever since Lvov’s killing, not just at the Lubyanka but in a lot of outstations, too. I’ve inferred a lot but there’ll be a lot more I haven’t got right. It’ll help to fill in the missing parts if you go first.”

  Charlie started awkwardly, unprepared, needing initially to go back and elaborate until he got the chronology in order, realizing that for the very first time he was actually sharing espionage intelligence with her. At first Natalia gazed directly at him, intent on everything he said, but gradually dropped her head in what Charlie guessed to be either contemplation or disbelief or a combination of both. Charlie began imagining it would be a long explanation and was surprised how quickly he finished. For what seemed a long time, almost as long as they’d clung to each other, Natalia remained with her head bowed until he finally said: “Natalia?”

  It was still several moments before she brought her face up, her hands, too, as if wanting to shield the frowned, shadowed expression that Charlie couldn’t read until, uneven-voiced, she stumbled: “I got so much wrong … didn’t understand so much. Dear God, I’m so sorry,” and he realized she was genuinely, deeply, frightened.

  “I said I could sort things out.”

  Natalia shook her head. “Not this time, Charlie. And it’s me who’s trapped you so because you won’t be able to get away again. God only knows what they’ll do to you.”

  “Now I need to understand,” encouraged Charlie, who from the beginning had found a dichotomy between Natalia’s piety and her profession, in which he’d never recognized any religion or any creed.

  “I got so much wrong … made so many mistakes,” she said again.

  “I have to understand what you’re talking about, Natalia. Tell me all of it.”

  She didn’t begin at once and groped for the words when she finally started, needing twice to stop and start again. “It was the body at the embassy … I knew that’s what you were here for the last time … you made that much clear when we met and then there was television. I did what I promised then, made all the plans to follow you back to England … realized how stupid I’d been for so long, not to have come with you when you asked me … sorry for that … sorry for so much … I didn’t know what happened, of course. Not when you left so quickly. Didn’t understand your last call, that I couldn’t come after all … and then there was the Lvov killing and the others that followed. I guessed there had to be a connection, although I couldn’t understand what it was because you were back in England when it happened. I didn’t guess a connection until I was called in—”

  “Called in!” interrupted Charlie, following her so far but wanting absolute clarity. “You were interrogated?”

  “A formal interrogation, recorded and transcribed for me to sign.”

  “About us? How much about us?” She was recovering, becoming more coherent.

  “About your defection. How you tricked me.”

  “Nothing more?”

  Natalia shook her head. “Just your faked defection and my debriefing, all that time ago. I’d sanitized everything I could retrieve from those old KGB files after we got together. You knew I had, to keep us safe. I obviously had to leave some details though, in case there was a cross-reference. Which there must have been: I don’t know about that. But it can only have been picked up after you left this last time. The first session didn’t start out as hostile. It took your idea to change the original file to indicate you’d been passed on to another more-senior interrogator after me, which I’d done to prevent myself being held responsible for your going back to England then. I was able to say I’d doubted your defection, which was why you had been transferred up the line—”

  “You said the first session wasn’t hostile? Did things change?” broke in Charlie again, to keep Natalia on track.

  She nodded once more. “I thought it was all over, after that first interview: that I’d satisfied them. The tone changed when I was recalled a week later. They wanted to know why I hadn’t recognized you from the publicity on the embassy killing and flagged it up.”

  “What did you say?”

  “That I simply hadn’t recognized you from television or newspaper photographs.”

  “But they didn’t believe you?”

  “The third interrogation came after another week. I had to identify what newspapers and television I’d seen and was ordered to identify you from a collation of photographs and freeze-frames. You weren’t in four sections of the collation: obviously testing me for a reaction, which I didn’t give. It wasn’t actually difficult. I’ve been on the other side, catching people out in debriefings for almost twenty years, after all.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Replied as I knew I had to reply: stuck to my denial. I insisted there’d only been three debriefings before you were transferred, that it had all been ten years ago, and that I genuinely didn’t remember or recognize you.”

  “You think they believe you?”

  “I don’t know. There’ve been three occasions when I thought I was under surveillance and I am not sure about my telephone: that’s why I made the calls I did from public booths, as you always told me to.”

  “I told you I called back.”

  “I still don’t understand that.”

  “Our technical people checked. The supposition was that you’d been forced to make the calls under duress. That any replies would be recorded.”

  “I chose the phones myself, at random. No one was with me, forcing me to do or say anything.”

  The feeling was one of numbness, an unreal sensation he’d never before experienced of being suspended without any control over himself. Too much surmise and supposition, he thought: situations virtually invented where nothing at all needed invention. He could so easily have come back alone, needing only false passports to be available from the embassy, and simply flown back to London with them. There’d been no need for the Amsterdam switch or the tourist diversion: no
need for sixteen terrified people to be arrested. “It wasn’t just you who made mistakes. I made far too many.”

  “But I’ve trapped you: trapped you and all the others you came in with.”

  “They’ll be released, eventually.”

  “Eventually, not immediately,” qualified Natalia. “The FSB know you’re here now: those poor people will be used. And when they’re released you won’t be among them. Every way out is going to be locked down against you.”

  This far they’d been looking backward, Charlie acknowledged, hearing—but not accepting—Natalia’s defeat. Now they had to look in the opposite direction. No, not yet, Charlie stopped himself at a sudden, still-backward thought. “There’s something else. From what you’ve just told me there’s no way the FSB could have learned my London telephone number?”

  “No, they couldn’t.” Natalia frowned.

  “What about my address in London?” pressed Charlie.

  Natalia’s frown deepened. “How could they? I don’t know it. Why’s this important?”

  It would increase her nervousness if he told her of the FSB burglary. “It’s something that happened in London: nothing to do with us here.” He hesitated, needing to ask her about what had appeared an assignation between Natalia and Sasha’s schoolteacher during his previous return. “Igor Karakov?”

  “I didn’t know he was going to be at Gorky Park for you to see Sasha. I told you that. Until that last time I never knew if you were ever coming back: if I was ever going to change my mind about coming to you. Igor and I were only ever friends. Never lovers. I told you my decision. It was you who told me I couldn’t come. Then there were the interrogations. And now it’s too late. Now it’s all over.”