Red Star Falling: A Thriller

by Brian Freemantle

  The man shrugged again. ‘The 211 to Waterloo, right over to the other side of London.’

  ‘Get someone to take the tracker, catch the 211, and stash it down the back of a seat,’ Charlie told Passmore. ‘Maybe have him get off after a couple of stops. You’ll have enough time to get an arrest squad in place at Waterloo station to pick up everyone in the car that will be following, as well as whoever’s still on the bus.’

  ‘To charge them with what?’ demanded Passmore.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Charlie, simply. ‘I want them delivered back to the embassy to go with the others who are trapped inside. I want Moscow to know that in the end I beat them, the bastards.’

  30

  Extra ambulances were the following morning drafted to Hammersmith hospital to create the diversion and as they departed en masse, some sounding their alarm bells, Charlie walked quietly and unaccompanied to the unwashed Ford waiting in the car park. The driver took a surveillance-checking route down Fulham Palace Road and crossed Putney Bridge before the surrounding escort vehicles declared them to be undetected. They recrossed the river at Wandsworth but stayed parallel with it into Chelsea to the safe house originally allocated to Charlie after his initial Moscow investigation into the death of the one-armed man. The MI5 triumvirate was already inside, waiting.

  ‘How’s the shoulder?’ greeted Aubrey Smith.

  ‘Stiff, which is a lot better than the constant irritation.’

  ‘Have you seen any television or newspapers?’ asked Jane.

  ‘No.’

  She pressed the Start button on the already set up recorder and at once the TV screen was filled by a melee of television and still cameramen and journalists jostling around a closed van from which six men, all trying to cover their faces with their coats or hands, were abruptly released outside the Russian embassy. Its outer gates were closed, trapping the scrambling men against the railings: their intercom pleas to be admitted, in Russian and clearly identifying themselves by name, were distinctly audible and obviously enabled the still photographs from routine intelligence surveillance to have been provided for the collage strip across the top of the screen. The live footage below continued with the gates finally swinging back for the frantic men to scramble towards the tentatively opened embassy door; halfway there, two of the Russians stumbled into each other and fell, one punching the other in the face in frustrated fury. The voice-over commentary described the six as spies seized during part of the already exposed Russian espionage debacle who were to be declared persona non grata by the British government, who were summoning the Russian ambassador to receive yet another official protest note against Moscow’s unacceptable spying activities.

  ‘We tweaked your idea.’ Smith smiled. ‘And we kept that pinhead bug they put in your shoulder. It’s much more advanced than anything our technical division has got. We’re going to reverse engineer it to produce our own version.’

  ‘Any movement on the rest of our people held in Moscow?’ asked Charlie, anxious to reach his own conclusions about possible FSB reactions.

  ‘It’s too soon,’ judged the Director-General. ‘But as well as today’s new protest the ambassador’s going to be given new demands for access and their immediate release. We’re also giving Moscow a court-appearance date for the three who burgled your flat.’

  ‘Prichard and Blackwater,’ abruptly announced Charlie, realizing the tit-for-tat potential from his naming the two MI5 officers from the photographs Mikhail Guzov had produced at the dacha. ‘I had to identify them from eight photographs of our people to convince them I was co-operating and for them to believe all the misinformation I was sowing.’

  ‘Prichard got back from Rome last week: his rotation was up,’ said Passmore, already moving towards the telephone. ‘Blackwater’s in Canberra.’ From where he stood, telephone in hand, he called to Charlie, ‘You got the names of the other six?’

  Charlie crossed to the operations director to avoid shouting the identifications. As Charlie returned to where he’d been sitting, Aubrey Smith said, ‘We should have been told that last night.’

  ‘Last night I didn’t know about the Russian-embassy siege,’ apologized Charlie. ‘Or what you were going to do with those who followed me from the airport.’

  ‘That’s got nothing to do with it,’ refused the Director-General.

  ‘I know,’ Charlie conceded. ‘I made a mistake.’ He didn’t make professional mistakes like that, thought Charlie, anguished.

  ‘Is there any more identification—anything at all sensitive—to which we’ve got to react?’ demanded Jane.

  ‘No,’ assured Charlie, tightly.

  Passmore had remained by the telephone and answered it on its first ring. ‘We’re lucky that it’s eleven at night in Australia,’ he announced, replacing the receiver. ‘Blackwater’s in bed, in the compound. Nothing’s so far happened to the others, all of whom are being recalled to their embassies.’

  ‘Definitely lucky all around,’ agreed Smith, the continued criticism of Charlie unmistakable. ‘I think we should begin your debriefing right away.’

  ‘So do I,’ agreed Charlie. There was surely nothing else about which he could be caught out!

  ‘Ahead of which, why do you believe they implanted that tracker in your back?’ questioned Passmore, finally returning to his seat.

  ‘Improvisation,’ said Charlie. ‘And opportunity, utilized by some brilliant FSB forward thinking. I couldn’t have been more completely trapped, bandaged up like a mummy in a psychiatric hospital, for my brain and everything it held about British intelligence to be taken apart. But here in England they had three active agents who could be uncovered at any minute. Which they were, far more quickly than Moscow expected, because of the help you got from the genuine defector, Natalia. The tracker was their insurance against that discovery, if they’d had more time to spread the intended confusion. Losing whatever I would have been drugged into disclosing was a more acceptable sacrifice than losing what they hoped to achieve through Irena and Radtsic’s doppelganger: let’s not forget the damage they’ve already inflicted on the CIA for believing Lvov was genuine. They calculated I would inevitably be reunited with Natalia: the tracker, which we know they were following from my arrival at Heathrow, would have led them to her. As it would have led them to Irena: it was more than an even possibility that I’d see Irena, whom we all thought I’d trapped when I exposed Lvov, an operation they’d already abandoned for the lesser success of planting Irena and Radtsic on us. Both Irena and Natalia—perhaps even Sasha—would have been taken out by an assassination squad. So would I. And when he learned they’d been killed, there would have been very little chance of Radtsic disclosing any real intelligence, would there?’

  ‘But you found the tracker?’ said Passmore, admiringly.

  ‘Suspected the tracker,’ qualified Charlie. It was a relief to have rid himself of its irritation but there was still the pulsating foot discomfort Charlie always felt when he was treading, figuratively, on dangerous ground.

  * * *

  ‘His identifying Prichard and Blackwater should have been the first thing Charlie Muffin told you at the hospital,’ declared Aubrey Smith, who’d insisted upon an instant analysis of the safe-house encounter when they got back to Thames House.

  ‘I checked with Warren,’ said Passmore, who’d detoured to the control room before joining the other two in the Director-General’s suite. ‘He didn’t tell Charlie about our blockading the Russian embassy and Charlie certainly didn’t know what we were going to do with those who followed the bus: when I left him we hadn’t decided to do it ourselves!’

  ‘And when he wasn’t in a Moscow mental institute having bugs planted in his back he was being held in virtual isolation,’ supported Jane.

  ‘He identified two fellow agents whom he should have done everything to protect at the first opportunity,’ persisted the Director-General. ‘Charlie’s the total professional: it should have been an automatic reaction.’

/>   ‘He’s insisting on being completely debriefed and seeing the recordings of the Radtsic and Irena interviews ahead of seeing his wife!’ Jane pointed out. ‘That’s pretty damned professional.’

  ‘And no harm’s been done,’ reminded Passmore. ‘He’s acknowledged his mistake. And we don’t yet have a complete picture of what he went through in Moscow. I think we should make allowances.’

  ‘Two field agents have got to be withdrawn for their own safety and protection. It’ll be a long time, if ever, before we can reassign them,’ argued Smith.

  ‘It was always accepted when I was across the river that it was inevitable an officer would break under duress,’ remembered Jane. ‘I thought there would be the same acceptance here.’

  ‘Under duress,’ qualified Smith, heavily. ‘Did he appear to you to have been someone subjected to extreme duress?’

  Jane broke the brief silence that followed. ‘I wouldn’t go as far as “extreme duress.” He’s certainly more subdued than I expected.’

  ‘That’s my impression, too,’ agreed Passmore. ‘And I ascribe that to his not knowing until a few hours before I met him last night what had happened to his wife and child: whether, even, he’d make it to the hospital knowing there was a Russian assassination squad right behind him. Charlie is a complete professional. Okay, he made a mistake about the two he named, for which I believe there’s a mitigating excuse. What he won’t have made any mistake about is knowing, having screwed the Russians for a second time, exactly how big the target is that he’s pinned on himself, Natalia, and even their daughter. I think Charlie’s got more than enough to be subdued about.’

  ‘Points taken,’ said Aubrey Smith.

  But not accepted, guessed Jane.

  * * *

  Charlie’s debriefing was conducted by two anonymous interrogators and a psychologist, also unnamed, each of whose specific function was the verbal and mental examination of agents subjected to hostile interrogation. It took an unbroken six hours, which included an as-accurate-as-possible identification from a greatly enlarged aerial photograph of the dacha area in which he’d been held as well as estimates of spetsnaz barracks and possible weekend-dacha locations of government hierarchy. An additional hour was taken up by a point-by-point review of everything he’d volunteered and every answer he’d given to every detailed question. Charlie remained absolutely truthful throughout, openly admitting his professional failure in not instantly warning of his naming fellow agents, but held back from telling the psychologist of his mental deterioration in his bizarre forest isolation. The three left anticipating a further session after more-detailed analysis.

  It was approaching nine o’clock when Charlie, his second Islay malt already poured, dialed the Hampshire number. He used the identification code supplied by Jane Ambersom to authorize the transfer from the control building to the safe house on a secure line and had a further five minutes to prepare himself with a brief reunion conversation with Ethel Jackson. Natalia didn’t immediately speak when the connection was finally made, although he knew she’d picked up the receiver.

  ‘Natalia?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Yes. You were hurt?’

  ‘Not seriously. I’m all right now.’

  ‘I was worried.’ Her voice caught, at the end.

  ‘So was I. I didn’t know if you’d got out or not.’

  ‘This is being recorded, isn’t it?’ she asked, professionally.

  ‘Of course. It’s automatic.’

  ‘Was it bad for you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘That’s a lie!’

  For the first time there was emotion in her voice. ‘It’s over now. I’ll be seeing you and Sasha very soon. But not immediately. A day or two.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘How is she?’

  ‘Fine. Getting the language well. Ethel’s been very good to us. You know her.’

  ‘We worked together a long time ago.’

  ‘Don’t take any risks, getting here.’

  ‘Don’t you want to see me?’ He tried to make it light but it didn’t work.

  ‘Why did you say that!’

  ‘It was a joke.’

  ‘A bad one.’

  ‘Answer it as a serious question then.’

  ‘You know how much I want to see you.’

  ‘I want very much to see you, too. Just a day or two.’

  ‘Promise you’ll be careful.’

  ‘I promise. And don’t forget we’ve got people being careful for us.’ It had ended better than it had begun, Charlie decided. But only minimally. There was a long way to go.

  * * *

  Charlie missed his self-imposed deadline to view the filmed interrogations of the three Russians, despite working an eighteen-hour day, eating what little food he bothered with as he watched, and limiting the Islay malt intake. He was slowed, though, by itemized reruns, which he logged for separate, independent assessment, and the care with which he watched the several-times-replayed Belmarsh prison encounter. Forcing objectivity, Charlie challenged himself to isolate the finger code and awarded himself a 60 percent success score at the same time as conceding it was far behind Natalia. He was relieved his three debriefers dismissed the need for a follow-up session but uncomfortable at having three protection officers assigned to get him to the Foreign Office on the fourth day.

  That discomfort remained at Charlie’s discovery that he was appearing before what was left of the original emergency committee, with the addition of FBI officers. It grew at the stage-strutting-by-association of Sir Archibald Bland’s reference to the implanting of the tracker as if it had been life-threatening and Geoffrey Palmer’s account, from his debriefing report, of the spetsnaz ambush as another reflected-glory waste of time. There was no proper direction of the encounter until Sir Peter Pickering disclosed that the international humiliation of dumping the FSB assassination squad on the doorstep of the Russian embassy had finally forced a reaction from Moscow and asked for further pressuring ideas, the need for which heightened with Joe Goody’s admission that Radtsic, Elena, and Irena were refusing any further disclosures. Rebecca proposed separating Radtsic from the woman pretending to be his wife, and Mort Bering suggested taking Irena back to America (‘in a transporter, not telling her where the hell she’s going, which wouldn’t be a comfortable safe house when she got there’). Pickering dismissed another of Bering’s proposals by insisted that putting Radtsic on a genuine CIA rendition flight wasn’t acceptable after the Guantanamo outcry and Bland finally, impatiently, intervened with a waving-down, calming hand gesture.

  ‘I’m going to propose we go with what we’ve got, the three diplomats on the burglary charge,’ said the Cabinet Secretary, reverting to the government eagerness to conclude the episode. ‘We’ve given Moscow a court date. Let’s appoint prosecuting counsel: offer the embassy a list of British counsel to represent their diplomats and let it be known we’ll proceed with a hearing in open court. We know they’ll cave in and that we’ll get our people back. Which will be the end of the whole business. There’s no need to bother with any more re-interrogation of the Radtsic fellow and his supposed wife. Or the other woman. We know everything they’ve told us is lies, disinformation. We just ignore it all.’

  Charlie looked around the table, waiting, conscious of the nodded agreement of the co-chairman and the shrug of acceptance from Mort Bering.

  ‘So it’s agreed then?’ invited Palmer.

  ‘No!’ Charlie at last protested, although too loudly.

  ‘What!’ demanded Bland, in affronted surprise.

  ‘You can’t ignore anything—not as much as one word—of what Radtsic and Elena and Irena have said!’ pleaded Charlie. ‘Every single claim, every single episode, has to be gone through word-for-word and then gone through all over again. Every single person they’ve named has got to be investigated and re-investigated, along with everyone close to them, because it might not be the person the
y’ve identified but a wife or a lover—’

  ‘Who!’ demanded Bland, the outrage positive now.

  ‘The spy or source or minister being blackmailed, whom we don’t know about,’ listed Charlie. ‘And there’ll be an episode or a case we’ve misinterpreted or misunderstood and which we’ve got to know about to correct. There will be people genuinely and knowingly sacrificed—as they’ve sacrificed Andrei, who was clearly intended to be an embedded sleeper until a more necessary need arose for him—to ensure we check everything as we’ve got to scrutinize everything.’

  ‘But that will take—’ Bland began to protest.

  ‘Years and years,’ agreed Charlie. ‘And we can’t afford not to do it and America can’t afford not to do it. The FSB’s already caused incalculable damage to the CIA with Lvov, even though they didn’t install him as President of the Russian Federation. And now they’ve done it all over again, with Irena, Radtsic, and Elena. They’ve won not once, but twice.…’ Charlie paused, looking directly at Rebecca. ‘And it doesn’t matter that Monsford’s been identified: he’s not important, not involved, anymore. But Radtsic, who’ll eventually be repatriated, will take to Moscow a very full and detailed description of you, whom I understand to be the new MI6 Director.’

  * * *

  ‘How long would you have given Charlie before intervening yourself?’ questioned Jane, glad Passmore had accompanied Charlie back to Chelsea to go through the annotated DVDs, leaving her to walk back to Thames House alone with Aubrey Smith.

  ‘Not long,’ admitted the Director-General. ‘It was a simple test. Charlie either spoke up to stop the nonsense or he didn’t.’

  ‘And he did, spoiling Rebecca’s chances of promotion in the process. Are you satisfied now that all Charlie’s suffering from is the effects of solitary Russian confinement? How about remorse at changing sides?’

  ‘We’re going to have to watch him carefully, make sure it’s a complete recovery,’ avoided the man. ‘I never imagined Charlie the sort of agent to be as badly affected so quickly as he clearly has been.’