Red Star Falling: A Thriller

by Brian Freemantle

  ‘I am aware of this history,’ Jane risked again. ‘What’s its relevance here?’

  ‘The relevance is the subject matter to which you’ve already referred and which, as you’ve so correctly told us, would have been recorded,’ said Timpson, taking a single piece of paper from his file. ‘It reads: CM location. The entry has been subjected to graphology analysis: the handwriting is unquestionably that of James Straughan.’

  Monsford said, ‘The off-duty residence of an agent is one of the most sacrosanct of all security precautions. On November twentieth, three Russians, later identified as FSB officers, were arrested breaking into Charlie Muffin’s London flat: it had been fitted with intrusion detectors after the man’s entry into a witness protection programme following his destruction of the Lvov penetration.’

  The victory is twice itself when the achiever brings home full numbers, mentally recited Monsford, looking across the separating table at the MI5 group: Shakespeare had an appropriate expression for every situation.

  * * *

  ‘It wasn’t a debriefing—it wasn’t intended as a debriefing,’ declared Natalia Fedova. The television upon which, over and over, stopping and starting the Freeze button, she’d studied Charlie’s confrontation with Irena Novikov, was blank now, although the DVD was still in its slot. Her separately provided transcript of the encounter, now heavily annotated and symbol marked, lay on the table separating her from Ethel Jackson.

  ‘Is that significant?’ asked Ethel, cautiously

  Natalia smiled, apologetic in advance. ‘To a certain degree, yes. To another degree, not at all. From the background you’ve given me, Charlie needed confirmation, a confession, from Irena that her shrine to the man found in the British-embassy grounds was a fake, even though he’d scientifically proved that the photographs of her and Ivan Oskin were superimposed.…’

  ‘Based solely on that evidence, he’d had a Moscow TV anchorwoman, later assassinated, claim on air that Lvov was a CIA spy,’ agreed Ethel. ‘The Agency actually had a plane on standby at an RAF base here to take Charlie on a rendition-interrogation flight to God knows where! He was in the biggest hurry you can imagine!’

  ‘Charlie was frightened he wasn’t going to get that admission.’ assessed Natalia, bluntly. ‘From her demeanour, her responses, I don’t believe Irena picked it up, which was fortunate for Charlie.…’ She paused. ‘But I’m not totally convinced about that.’

  ‘You’re still losing me,’ complained Ethel.

  ‘I don’t believe Irena was frightened,’ declared Natalia. ‘Not as frightened as she should have been, threatened with return to Russia after failing to salvage the biggest operation in Russian-intelligence history.’

  Ethel jerked her head towards the dead TV. ‘I sat through all your replays! Irena was terrified of being returned!’

  ‘My job’s fear: recognizing it, using it. Irena Novikov was nervous, maybe frightened to a point but just that, only up to a point, no further.…’ One by one, in front of the security supervisor, Natalia laid out copies of the still photographs from Irena’s shrine. ‘What’s odd, strikes you as unusual, about any of these phoney, superimposed prints?’

  Ethel studied the display with the concentration with which Natalia had earlier watched the video, twice rearranging the pictures in different sequences before finally looking up, shrugging. ‘Nothing. I know they’re superimposed but I can’t see anything odd or unusual apart from that in any of them.’

  ‘According to what Irena originally told Charlie, she was on station in Cairo with both Oskin and Lvov, although it was Lvov who was her lover and with whom she was totally involved, setting up her White House infiltration. Why aren’t there photographs—okay, superimposed photographs—of her and Oskin in those days: the obligatory camel pose with a pyramid in the background; on the Nile in a felucca? Certainly one of her before her face was marked? That’s not a pictorial record stretching over more than eighteen years. I don’t think any of those pictures span more than a four-year period.’

  ‘You’ve answered your own doubts,’ argued Ethel, forcefully. ‘She wasn’t ever with Oskin: couldn’t have given a damn about him until he tried to sell what he believed he knew and she didn’t know that until he was found dead in the embassy grounds. They had what, a month, five weeks, to put all the phoney stuff together from what was available from Oskin’s belongings to match as best they could with what Irena could produce to create a half-credible story. And don’t forget that’s all they wanted, a passable match: it was never intended the shrine should be brought to England, risking exposure. It was theatre, for a one-shot performance when Charlie was taken to a flat he believed to be the one she’d shared with Oskin. It was your soft-hearted, romantic husband who scooped it all up and shipped it here in the diplomatic bag for her to have the memorabilia. That’s the only reason Irena came here, to destroy the one thing that could expose her as a phoney and with that exposure wreck the whole Lvov concept.’

  ‘That’s an impressive rebuttal,’ conceded Natalia.

  ‘Which you’re not buying?’ anticipated Ethel.

  ‘I need to watch the video again, in addition to a lot more analysis,’ insisted Natalia. ‘I’ve got a vested and very special reason not to get anything wrong, remember? I’m trying to get my husband back.’

  * * *

  ‘You think we failed—that I failed—because it didn’t work at the end?’

  Edward Birkitt smiled at the scorn, refusing any other reaction to the apparent reversal of the woman’s previous resistance: he’d very early discerned her underlying irritation at his remaining unresponsive to every effort Irena Novikov made to surprise or shock him. Persisting that way, he said, ‘Hasn’t it?’

  ‘I’m disappointed, Ed. I’d had you down as being more intelligent than that.’

  ‘Than what?’

  ‘Than what your response indicates.’ Irena Yakulova Navikov was nervous although sure it wasn’t showing: rather that the disparagement was now the right way for her to go.

  ‘What does it indicate?’ asked Birkitt, determined to surrender the questioning role only on his terms, not hers.

  ‘A total misunderstanding, misconception, of the incredible success we’ve achieved.’

  ‘I’m looking forward to your telling me all about that.’

  ‘You want to know something?’

  ‘I want to know everything.’

  ‘Twenty years, longer even, nearer thirty, that’s how long we had your CIA sitting up on their hindquarters, begging for every little scrap we chose to toss their way. Who was in the White House then? Carter, wasn’t it? Maybe it was Reagan: you work it out, he was your president. Remember what a mess you guys made trying to get your hostages from the Tehran embassy?’

  ‘You claiming credit for screwing that up?’

  ‘That’s my problem—your problem—my remembering with any accuracy everything we did do. There was so much, so very much and in so many different ways in which we sent you guys running every which way. But the Tehran debacle has a familiarity about it and it was a disaster, wasn’t it?’

  ‘You want me to admit a CIA failing?’ invited Birkitt, following apparent interrogator openness when nothing was compromised. ‘Okay, the CIA screwed up the advice we offered the outgoing president.’

  Irena spread her hands in a gesture of helplessness. ‘And who do you think spread the information that led to the Company screwing up, Ed? And did the same to screw George Bush in the first Gulf War?’

  ‘You telling me you introduced Stepan Lvov to the CIA with something about that?’

  ‘I told you, it’s hard to remember.’

  ‘Do that, try real hard,’ urged Birkitt. He had to shift his approach, to match hers.

  ‘Why don’t you work it out?’ suggested Irena, knowing now she could make it all sound credible. ‘America’s leading the cavalry charge, as always. So why did the invasion stop short of Baghdad with the chance then of unseating Saddam Hussein and getting the
oil-crazed Bush family’s eager little fingers on all that black gold? You think it was because the United Nations mandate didn’t technically authorize it? There wasn’t a UN mandate in 2003 but that didn’t stop jackass Bush Junior going in, did it? Look at it another way. How about the first invasion being stopped because intelligence guidance at that time was that Saddam really did have weapons of mass destruction and would have used them? That was the intelligence we made sure George Senior was getting, that Saddam had biological weapons and would use them. That was the story we changed—telling the truth, would you believe!—that sent George W scuttling in. And that didn’t have anything to do with 9/11 and Saddam’s supposed support for Al Qaeda but everything to do with that precious oil and which politically connected construction company was going to get the exclusive rights physically to rebuild a country that was going to be flattened.’

  ‘For someone with a memory problem, that was pretty comprehensive, if contrary to a lot of the known facts?’ coaxed Birkitt, relieved that at last the dam had been breached.

  Irena shrugged. ‘I was talking in broad outline but you can check it out, can’t you? Your State Department will have all the records from 1990, 1991. And your CIA archives will provide the cross-reference, showing the intelligence that was coming in.’

  ‘I’m following your scenario and I’ve got my own idea of why Moscow would want to get involved like this, but why don’t you give me your take, to avoid my disappointing you a second time about my intelligence?’ invited Birkitt.

  ‘It’s surely a long way short of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity,’ sneered Irena, confident enough to risk sarcasm. ‘Saddam was only ever a danger to his own people but we didn’t want America in general and the Bush family in particular getting their hands on Iraqi oil: we’ve got a lot of our own to sell at a premium to the West. And we didn’t want America and the West gaining influence by overthrowing a man universally despised by every other Arab nation. So look what we achieved, by manipulating the intelligence as we did. By stopping the first invasion at the gates of Baghdad, we made the United States look weak and ineffectual in the eyes of every other Arab country and sold billions of dollars more of our own oil to the West at the same time as increasing our own influence throughout the region. As well as getting a lot more assets in place when we wanted to use them. Which we did, after 9/11. All we had to do then was tell the truth, let the CIA know that Saddam had dismantled his weapons programme and wait for little George Junior to go in like a Wild West robber baron and get that oil so long denied the family.’

  ‘You claiming you achieved all that?’

  ‘I’m suggesting you establish your own proof. It’s there for you to find and check how close what I’ve told you tallies with what you’ve already got on record.’

  ‘Why the change, Irena Yakulova?’ demanded Birkitt, sharply. ‘A few days ago all you did was tell me to go to hell. Today you’re giving me an overview I’d never imagined ever getting.’

  ‘A few days ago you threatened me with a lifetime in solitary confinement. Maybe I believed you,’ said Irena, the answer prepared.

  ‘I like the change.’ said Birkitt.

  She’d done it, decided Irena. No, she at once corrected herself. She hadn’t got away with anything. She’d prepared herself with a game plan and from the American’s reaction she hadn’t simply hooked him, she’d pulled him in, gaffed him, and hung him out to dry. By insisting that over twenty years there had been too many such Russian intelligence coups for her ever to recall in specific detail, she avoided the risk of being trapped by any factual challenge. A near masterstroke had been the 1990s fear of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, which had been widely known and about which there would inevitably be references in the CIA’s Middle East traffic of the time, supported in State Department papers.

  All of which would convince them from the outset she was finally co-operating as they expected. Which just might, she calculated, get her the so-far-refused diplomatic access and the guidance she so desperately needed when she couldn’t carry on the charade any longer.

  * * *

  ‘Where’s Monsford?’ belligerently demanded Maxim Radtsic, before Rebecca even seated herself.

  ‘There are things keeping him in London.’ She’d have to be very cautious insinuating doubts about Gerald Monsford without it being obvious on the recording apparatus.

  ‘Things like an enquiry into the insanity of our last meeting!’

  Maybe she wouldn’t need to insinuate after all, thought Rebecca; but she’d still try, when she considered it safe. ‘You’ve got television. You know there’s a lot going on.’

  ‘Does that mean getting Andrei here with us is being put to one side?’ demanded Elena. As always, the couple sat some distance apart on separate conservatory seats.

  ‘Not at all. Director Monsford hopes to have something to tell you very soon,’ assured Rebecca. It wasn’t much but it was something the irascible Russian might remember to throw at Monsford later.

  ‘I’d like to believe that,’ said Elena. ‘We both would.’

  ‘You know you have Director Monsford’s personal promise on this,’ said Rebecca, seizing the better opportunity. Glad of the care with which she’d planned the encounter, she heaved her briefcase onto her lap, pulling out the two thick books that had given it its weight, and offering them one by one to the woman. ‘They’re in English, I’m afraid. But I know you weren’t able to bring anything out with you and I thought you might like something of our research discipline.…’ She smiled. ‘And I apologize if I’ve chosen badly.’

  Elena smiled back. ‘English isn’t a problem, and I haven’t read them: it’s very thoughtful.’

  ‘And I know Jacobson offered you the chance to meet some other professionals you might find interesting.’ She was disappointed that it was Jacobson’s rest day: she’d been curious at his attitude towards her after the committee-room session.

  ‘No!’ refused Radtsic, at once. ‘I’ve told Monsford we’re not co-operating with anyone until we get Andrei here.’

  ‘Haven’t you thought how that refusal might actually be preventing—obstructing—your getting Andrei back?’

  Radtsic hesitated at the point of adding more vodka to his glass. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You’ve seen the television: got an idea at least of how bad things are between us,’ said Rebecca, tentatively, setting out the idea that had occurred to her on the journey to Hertfordshire. ‘We scarcely have any proper functioning communication with Moscow: we’ve made three separate approaches for just such a channel to pass messages between yourselves and Andrei. There hasn’t yet been any response. If you began to co-operate, gave us something genuine with which we might indicate you were talking openly to us, at the same time as telling Andrei in a letter—a letter your FSB would logically open and read—that you were going to tell us everything we want to know because you were being denied access to him, you could very easily open the closed door.’

  ‘Do it, Maxim Mikhailovich!’ implored Elena. ‘You must do it! You know you can’t go on refusing forever. And now you know a possible way of getting through to Andrei!’

  ‘Why didn’t that bullying idiot Monsford tell me all this from the beginning?’ demanded Radtsic, reluctant to capitulate.

  Why had she agonized over insinuation! ‘We’ve already talked about how much is going on: he expected to get here today.’

  ‘But decided it wasn’t important enough,’ picked up Radtsic, exactly as Rebecca had hoped.

  ‘I’ve told you why he couldn’t.’

  ‘I’ll think about it,’ begrudged Radtsic. ‘But if I change my mind I don’t want to talk to Monsford.’

  It couldn’t have gone better if she’d scripted the entire exchange, thought Rebecca as she entered her car. Now she had to hope that however she worked out her approach to Jane Ambersom on the return journey, it would be half as successful.

  * * *

  Without the white coat and the
sniggering entourage, there was a second’s delay in Charlie’s recognition of the doctor from the psychiatric institution who followed Mikhail Guzov into the dacha. In a three-piece business suit the man appeared fatter than he had at the hospital. He was carrying a bellows-expanding medical case.

  ‘See how concerned we are about your well-being!’ greeted Guzov.

  ‘It’s comforting,’ said Charlie, matching the mockery.

  The surgeon was ignoring both of them, busying himself with the case, which expanded open to create a flat ledge for the compartmented instruments. The layout completed, the man said, ‘Let’s look at the shoulder, shall we?’

  Charlie shrugged the peasant’s smock over his head, the difficulty its awkwardness, not actual pain from his shoulder. There was no pain, either, at the removal of the dressing but an irritation persisted.

  ‘Enjoy your walk in the woods?’ asked Guzov, from a corner chair.

  ‘The mosquitoes were a problem.’ He felt the surgeon behind him prodding with various pressures around what he assumed to be the bullet exit point. There was still yellow-and-black bruising around what had to have been the bullet’s entry.

  ‘You should have stuck to the road,’ said Guzov.