Red Star Burning: A Thriller (Charlie Muffin Thrillers)

by Brian Freemantle

  “I’m telling you what Radtsic told me,” retorted Jacobson. “That with Andrei agreeing, all we need to do is drive them to Orly—I didn’t tell him we were using Orly—and bring them out on the passports that are ready. I did tell him the passports were ready.”

  Monsford looked inquiringly at the two others in the room. Straughan shrugged his shoulders. Rebecca said, softly: “We need to talk, not make any quick decisions.”

  Into the telephone, Monsford said: “Tell Radtsic we have to talk about it: that it’s an unexpected change that we’ve got properly to consider, not rush into. That he’s got to accept what we’re saying: that it’s the safety of him and his family we’re thinking about.”

  “I already have,” said Jacobson. “I’ll tell him again.”

  “I haven’t finished,” warned Monsford, irritably. “We might possibly know where Charlie is.”

  Jacobson listened without interruption but when the Director finished said: “If he’s there I go on as planned, right?”

  “Wrong,” corrected Monsford. “I don’t want us losing the bastard again. Go separately from those Aubrey Smith is putting in place. I want our independent confirmation that we know where Charlie is: no slipups this time. I’m not sure I can any longer trust Smith to keep us fully in the loop.”

  “But you still want the diversion?”

  “More than ever, after the way that bastard has jerked us around,” insisted Monsford, vehemently. “As Shakespeare said, ‘let’s make us medicines of our great revenge.’”

  * * *

  “Mummy going to Paris to hold little Andrei’s hand solves most of our difficulty but gives us another one,” said Albert Abrahams.

  Jonathan Miller shook his head. “We’ve only got to look after one extra for a few hours. It’s the best we could have hoped for.”

  “I’d be happier with more direct contact,” said Abrahams. “I’m not comfortable getting things relayed from Moscow via London.”

  “Neither am I,” said the Paris station chief. “Straughan’s promised to set a meeting up just before the extraction.”

  “More relayed arrangements,” Abrahams pointed out.

  16

  From the tantrum anecdotes of his sadly too-often-abandoned single mother, Charlie Muffin guessed he’d been born a cynic, suspicious that his bottle milk might be polonium-poisoned or his diaper pin an offensive weapon, but he’d never sneered at the apparent childlike elements of espionage tradecraft. There was nothing derisory at spy liaisons signaled by chalk marks on designated trees or walls, or particularly arranged curtains or plant pots and empty Coke cans or drainpipes or rocks. Some fakes—like others hiding miniature cameras or listening devices—made perfect dead-letter drops because they were so easily dismissed as childlike.

  Natalia had never dismissed them, either, not from the very first, uncertain moments of their professionally insane affair. She’d actually encouraged their discussion, most specifically rendezvous locations, which, as cynically wary as ever, Charlie had at first imagined as another debriefing trap. To test which he’d chosen as a site the most historic of Moscow’s botanical gardens, on Ulitsa Mira—created in 1706 by Peter the Great to cultivate medicinally beneficial plants for apothecary potions—to position his tradecraft marker, a tightly rolled copy of Pravda thrust as if discarded into the struts of the third bench from the main entrance. He’d returned at precisely the same time the following day to find a Pravda pincered in the same position but folded, not rolled. He’d responded with his rolled-up signal but concealed himself among the easily available deciduous arboretum from which he’d emerged as Natalia, not an expected then-KGB tracker, arrived to acknowledge it.

  They’d kept the oldest of the city’s botanical showpiece as their initial meeting place, advancing the protective tradecraft even after the physical affair had begun by adding calls between its several public, Pravda-discarded telephone kiosks as a double-checking confirmation that it was safe for him to continue on to her apartment.

  Charlie had remembered their protective routine leaving Red Square that morning, which Natalia had expected, as she’d expected him to recognize the significance of how she’d made contact with his Vauxhall flat. Charlie didn’t, though, change his already planned day, deciding the primary essential remained his continuing to be free of London, who’d now had close to thirty-six hours and the resources of both British intelligence organizations to locate him. He risked an entire hour watching the Rossiya Hotel for the slightest indication of professional observation, not entering until he was thoroughly satisfied that it wasn’t, and even then limiting himself to minutes, remaining in his room just long enough minimally to pack what he could at the bottom of the hold-all but leaving sufficient belongings, including a toothbrush and shaving kit, for it to appear still occupied. He left the hold-all open to display all the tourist material accumulated that morning and pointedly told the concierge on his way out that he’d forgotten to take it with him for that day’s tours.

  He descended into the labyrinthine, Gothic-stationed Moscow Metro system, buying that day’s Pravda on his way, only now slotting his Red Square realization into his itinerary. There was no cause for tradecraft evasion, enabling him to stay on the circle line to the familiar Ulitsa Mira station, unsure if the sentimentally remembered Mira hotel in which he and Natalia had become lovers would still be there. It was, although shabbier and more decayed than it had been then. It ensured, at least, that there was no questioning at his scarcely adequate luggage, which was further explained by the hooker and her work-overalled client leaving as he checked in, paying in advance, as demanded, for a four-night reservation. Charlie remained in the mirror-stained, gray-sheeted room only long enough to confirm that the dirt-rimed shower worked, although intermittently, and pocketing from the hold-all he didn’t expect to be there upon his return the spare David Merryweather passport, driving license, and American Express card.

  It was only a short walk to the botanical gardens and Charlie made it cautiously, twice sitting on convenient benches behind the protection of his newspaper—in which there was no reference to his Amsterdam disappearance—to search for surveillance. If he was right, Natalia wouldn’t have given her telephone signal if she’d suspected the gardens to be compromised, but she was working single-handedly against the full resources of the FSB. As he objectively acknowledged that his observation was strictly limited: a guaranteed ambush would be inside, where there was sufficient tree, bush, and hothouse concealment to hide an FSB army.

  It wasn’t until he’d scoured the other marker spots and found nothing that he needed briefly to sit and reconsider. If he’d mistaken the significance of the public-phone approach, he hadn’t any idea how, unidentifiably, to trace or reach her. Acknowledging his last resort, Charlie lingered at two outside floral displays to get close to the first of the telephone boxes, which had become their second marker precaution, disconcerted that since their special use it had been converted from an enclosed, convenient-to-emplace shelter into a wall-mounted, hooded pod without useful nooks or crannies. So had the second, closest to the first tubular-roofed hothouse.

  But, inexplicably, the third remained as he remembered, still graffiti-daubed and urine-stinking. And the foul floor wetness had soaked darkly upward through the three-day-old copy of Pravda, which, although having been partially dislodged from its under-tray support, had been folded precisely in the way he instantly recognized. Charlie refused the distracting euphoria, disentangling what remained dry to dump in a nearby bin before replacing it with his tightly rolled copy of that day’s issue.

  Natalia wouldn’t risk a daylight visit, Charlie knew. Would she check that night? He had the afternoon and early evening to fill before finding out, and the tourist-group itinerary scheduled their return to the Rossiya at six. He checked his hotel room on his way, surprised to find the hold-all still there, and bought a pay-as-you-go Russian cell phone to replace his still-disabled London-issue before descending again into the Me
tro system. Charlie was in place in a panoramically windowed bar with a view of both front and side entrances by five thirty. And that day’s luck stayed with him. Charlie isolated his suspect within fifteen minutes, well concealed within the covered entrance of an empty office block so dark that his initial impression was of occasional movement rather than a positive physical identification. It remained that way until the arrival and disembarkation of the tourist coach, when the shifting impression emerged for Charlie to identify as Patrick Wilkinson, the only man on his supposed support team whom he’d previously known.

  And then there was another movement, closer to the front of the hotel but emerging from an equally professionally chosen concealing porch. Charlie at once dismissed the man as being another of his memorized backup group. Just as quickly Charlie discounted the obvious surveillance to be FSB, not solely because of the Western tailoring of the gray-checked suit but far more tantalizingly because of his immediate conviction that he’d somehow, somewhere, previously known—or encountered—the watching man.

  But how? Where? It wasn’t possible. Yes it was, came the quick contradiction, as Charlie made the positive identification. He’d isolated the man as he’d intently studied those around him on the Amsterdam flight from which he’d fled. The same suited, bespectacled person whose closely barbered neatness was marred by a bushed walrus mustache had been two rows behind but on the opposite side of the aisle.

  It had been an even more successful day than Charlie could have hoped for and he was already curious at what was to follow. So, too, but independently were Aubrey Smith and Gerald Monsford, eighteen hundred miles away in London.

  * * *

  Both intelligence chiefs recognized the symbolism of the breakfast conference in the Foreign Office room overlooking 10 Downing Street and each made a gesture of his own by pointedly arriving separately and without prior consultation for the examination of their supposedly joint venture. Aubrey Smith entered last, although not late, behind both Geoffrey Palmer, who was to chair the session as the Foreign Office liaison to the Joint Intelligence and Security Committee, and Cabinet Secretary Sir Archibald Bland.

  It was Bland, though, who quickly established the agenda. “The arrest of Russian diplomats has greatly embarrassed Moscow. Aware as we are of what else is going on, we’re anxious to know how much longer—and further—you intend stretching out the situation.”

  “What have the Russians said?” asked the MI5 Director-General.

  “They’ve refused anything beyond demanded diplomatic immunity and access to embassy lawyers. We’ve delivered two official Notes and publicly summoned the ambassador here to the Foreign Office for an explanation. Which, of course, we haven’t got and didn’t expect. They’re offering a guilty plea, with a mitigating submission of extreme and inexcusable drunkenness. They accept without protest or threatened retaliation our declaring all three persona non grata and expelling them.”

  “The media will ridicule that,” insisted Monsford, his own agenda prepared. “And it’s naïve to imagine they won’t make a tit-for-tat retaliation: they always do. With hindsight it was a mistake to stage the arrest in the first place. Had I been consulted in advance, I would have opposed it as a completely unnecessary side issue.”

  “I have already offered Director Monsford the opportunity to withdraw his participation,” said Smith, to frowned looks between the two government officers. “That offer remains. His officers can easily be recalled from Moscow.”

  “If there’s disagreement between you both, this discussion is even more essential,” said Bland. “We accept Moscow will reciprocate. But we can’t—and won’t—make that reciprocation easy for them by mounting an operation about which you’re uncertain. I thought we’d already made that abundantly clear. Is there a problem?”

  “Not as far as I am concerned.” Smith wasn’t worried at Monsford’s outburst.

  “Director?” invited the cabinet secretary.

  Monsford hesitated, off-balanced by Smith’s unanticipated assertion, unsure how to reverse it. “I am surprised by the Director-General’s response.”

  “Why?” demanded the increasingly frowning Bland.

  “Yes, why?” echoed Smith.

  “You will have read the newspaper furor at the mystery disappearance in Amsterdam from a Moscow-bound flight?” questioned Monsford.

  “No,” refused Bland. “I don’t read the popular press.”

  “I know what you’re talking about,” said Palmer, more helpfully. “What about it?”

  “There’s no mystery: the vanishing man is Charlie Muffin,” announced Monsford, who’d had Harry Jacobson’s surveillance relayed by Straughan, but been prevented from speaking directly to his Moscow station head because of Jacobson’s time-clashing meeting with Maxim Radtsic.

  “What the…?” stumbled Palmer.

  “Why weren’t we told?” finished Bland.

  “Charlie switched his arrival, going in on a tourist flight instead of how we’d arranged,” elaborated Smith, in a calm monotone. “It was, as you’re aware, always the understanding that Charlie would work independently. That’s what he chose to do.”

  “Without any approval, aware as he was of the publicity his disappearance would create, as well as blowing his false-name cover before he even got into Russia!” interrupted Monsford, emphasizing strained indignation. “It was crassly irresponsible, threatening the entire operation. And in the context of this meeting provides Moscow with a basis for retaliation as embarrassing as that they’re suffering.”

  “It provides nothing of the sort: neither was it crassly irresponsible,” rejected Aubrey Smith, contemptuously. “It was an action that, allowed to act independently, Charlie was authorized to make. We know he has arrived undetected in Moscow, as well as the hotel in which he was booked although I don’t expect him to remain there.”

  “This is a totally unnecessary, attention-attracting charade,” repeated Monsford. “I do not wish to withdraw my participation. What I do seek, at this moment, is my appointment as official, recognized supervisor of this operation, the failure to confirm which will, I believe, result in the debacle the majority of us are determined to avoid.”

  “In response to which, I in turn invite you to consider the available records of every shared meeting between our two services,” said Smith, the flat-voiced outer calmness giving no hint of the gamble upon which he was knowingly embarking. “From those records I would suggest there are overwhelming indications of such inconsistency and prevarication on the part of my counterpart at MI6 that to agree to a single Control management would do more to guarantee than prevent a debacle. Charlie Muffin’s independence was, rightly or wrongly in hindsight, agreed by us all. Your study of the records I’m offering include my belief that Muffin would disregard any cancellation and continue whatever he considered necessary to save his wife and child. Those records also contain my colleague’s rejection of the one guaranteed way of removing the threat of Charlie Muffin acting alone, as I wholly reject it. If you find against me, on either continuing the extraction as a shared operation or in the only assured way of preventing my officer continuing, unsupported, then I must tender my immediate resignation.”

  A silence iced the room. Through the triple-glazed windows an equally silent tableau unfolded, featuring the prime minister emerging from his official residence, responding to questions after a brief statement to waiting journalists, and returning inside.

  Geoffrey Palmer said: “This has turned out to be a very different discussion from what I imagined it would be.”

  Sir Archibald Bland said: “I think it would be advantageous for us and perhaps others to study the offered transcripts before continuing this discussion any further.”

  * * *

  Harry Jacobson decreed their pickup should be at the obelisk commemoration to Yuri Gagarin, complete with its minuscule, actual-size orb in which the man contorted himself for the world’s first manned space flight, Jacobson’s alarm flaring the moment he be
gan his ahead-of-time reconnaissance at the sight of the militia road check, two vans and at least five officers, although Jacobson’s was not one of the cars pulled over. He had, though, to go slowly, which he did more than was necessary to identify the uniforms of the GIA highway police. The openly corrupt shakedown of motorists given the option of paying an on-the-spot “fine” or accepting an eventually more expensive official, invented traffic violation was not unusual, which made it perfect cover for the seizure Jacobson constantly feared. Would Maxim Radtsic be frightened for the same reason, if the Russian wasn’t orchestrating the entire episode?

  It was thirty minutes too early for him to find out and Jacobson let his mind return to the previous night’s resented, secondary assignment at the Rossiya Hotel. It was totally unreasonable, as well as dangerously impractical, for him to juggle three balls in the air at the same time. And Jacobson hadn’t been impressed with the surveillance ability of Patrick Wilkinson, whom he was sure he would have picked up even if Wilkinson hadn’t been identified to him in London. But Wilkinson’s lack of professionalism was MI5’s problem, not his. He didn’t see why the hell James Straughan had insisted he duplicate the hunt for Charlie Muffin when there were six others—three of them MI6—sitting around on their fat asses at the embassy. Or why, having insisted he make the independent check, Straughan banned a direct approach to a Rossiya receptionist with a twenty-dollar bill folded inside a friendly handshake for a ten-second look at the register. What was the point of confirming the bloody man’s presence anyway? Until the actual moment the diversion had literally to be triggered, Radtsic remained his foremost priority.

  Jacobson negotiated the difficult double roundabout system to prevent being automatically routed onto the ring road, to return with growing discomfort along Leninskaya. The maneuver put the highway-robbing militia on the opposite side of the multilane road, but there were uniformed, radio-equipped militia spotters on the memorial side Jacobson had isolated as Radtsic’s pickup point: their presence heightened the possibility of an ambush as well as risked curiosity at the return of a car so recently passing in the opposite direction.