Red Star Rising

by Brian Freemantle

  The opening lit up like a beacon. “Didn’t get the impression she did so well with my one-armed man.”

  Halliday gestured hopefully to the bartender, grateful at the response that kept him level with Charlie. “Difficult one for her. If you want to climb the slippery pole, you go by the book and don’t get involved in anything attracting the publicity that this episode is getting.”

  “What book do you go by?” asked Charlie.

  “Self-preservation,” replied the other man, at once. “I’ve got ten years to go and certainly don’t intend fucking up an unblemished, pension-assured record by getting caught up in the sort of shit you’ve got to wade through. You’re welcome, old boy, with my deepest sympathy.”

  “Did you see the body?”

  “For as long as it took me to decide I didn’t want to know what was happening. I suddenly remembered an important meeting with a contact that took precedence.”

  Seizing the opportunity, Charlie encapsulated Paula-Jane’s recollections, which Halliday considered before saying, “That’s about it.”

  Marking Halliday as a useful insider to cultivate while not forgetting the man was in turn doing his best to cultivate him, Charlie said, “What’s the problem with the gate security?”

  “Reg Stout’s the problem. All mouth and trousers, and Dawkins let’s himself be bullied. The CCTV has been playing up for days, weeks even, and hasn’t been fixed properly.”

  His priorities for the following day began to arrange themselves in Charlie’s mind. “I won’t involve you, of course, but I’d appreciate a sounding board to bounce things off, as they come up.”

  “I know a few quiet bars,” accepted Halliday.

  “It’s quite a while since I was here,” further enticed Charlie. “I’d also appreciate a steer if you think I might be going in the wrong direction.”

  “Guaranteed,” assured the other man. “And that’s official. You heard of our director, Gerald Monsford?”

  “Not a lot.”

  “Wants to rule the world, which is fine if you’re one of his soldiers. He’s told me to offer you all the help you might need. If your dead man hadn’t been found inside the embassy grounds, British territory, it would be an MI6 case.”

  “I’ll remember that,” promised Charlie, politely. “At the moment it’ll stay MI5.”

  Unexpectedly, Halliday said, “Aha! Here’s your first steer!” and gestured toward the mute television picture in the corner behind the bar.

  The sequence, which Charlie guessed to be the lead item on the main evening news, showed a smiling, immaculately dressed man of about forty-five. A stunningly attractive, couture-clad woman was at his side, both arms aloft in acceptance of an obviously rapturous reception from a rally audience.

  “Stepan Grigorevich Lvov, with his totem wife, Marina,” identified Halliday. “The next president of Russia, the only subject of conversation at the embassy before your body was found. And one they’re anxious to get back to as soon as possible.”

  “Already getting newspaper space back in England,” recognized Charlie. “With a woman like that beside him I’m surprised there haven’t been pictures as well.”

  “There’ll be a lot when he gets elected,” predicted Halliday. “Interesting similarities between him and Vladimir Putin, but without the baggage Putin’s accumulated. Former KGB, like Putin, until he quit, once attached to the same divisional headquarters as Putin in St. Petersburg.”

  “Caused you some work, I guess?” anticipated Charlie, happy for the conversation to drift after gaining as much as he had.

  “Haven’t managed much of a file, for all the obvious reasons,” admitted Halliday. “But there’s a contrast between the two. Putin’s taking Russia back into the dark ages, with KGB-style assassinations and using the gas and oil supply as a weapon against Europe. Lvov’s promising to free everything up again, which makes him flavor-of-the-month in the EU as well as in the U.S. of A.”

  “There was also a lot of speculation that Putin got the presidency with dirty money and heavy criminal, as well as ex-KGB personnel, support. How’s that match with Lvov?”

  Halliday shook his head. “The word is that our new boy is squeaky clean. . . .” He smiled. “Or as squeaky clean as a politician can be.”

  Reg Stout’s office overlooked the river and was about three times the size of the temporary accommodation allocated to Charlie. Stout wasn’t wearing the ribbon-bedecked uniform that Charlie had half expected but the tie was that of the Royal Engineers; the office was virtually wallpapered with military photographs of parades and regimental dinners and reunions—all of which prominently featured Stout, usually in the front befitting his rank of major. He was a loud-voiced, florid-faced, burly man who frowned in dismay at Charlie’s haystack dishevelment. It was obviously difficult for the man, whose pinstriped suit was razor creased, to address Charlie as “sir,” but he did.

  “I’m looking to you for a lot of help,” opened Charlie. Which so far he very definitely wasn’t getting and about which he was thoroughly pissed off. The rabbit hutch that had been allocated to him that morning was obviously the housing officer’s idea of revenge, compounded by the waiting message from Jeremy Dawkins on the card-table desk to make contact before attempting any meetings with embassy staff.

  “Sir!” barked the man.

  “I’d like, firstly, the full report you’ll have obviously prepared.”

  “It’s with Mr. Dawkins, sir.”

  “You don’t have a copy?” Charlie sighed.

  “It’s my understanding it has to come through Mr. Dawkins, sir.”

  “Reg,” set out Charlie. “I’ve been sent, specially, all the way from London to investigate a murder that is probably the biggest security situation you’re ever going to become involved in. I know embassies are governed by rules and that you’ve got to conform to them. But I just told you I need your help, and I’m sure you don’t want my having to complain to the third secretary or to London that I’m being obstructed in what I’ve come here to sort out. So here’s what we’ll do. I’ll tell you what I want, and you decide whether we’re going to communicate like adults or whether you’ve got to communicate all the time through Dawkins. I want your report. I want to see the photographs I’m confident you took, before the Russians arrived. I want to know why you summoned the Russians as quickly as you did. I want you to tell me why you let your people trample all over the scene, probably destroying forensic evidence, and why you let whoever did it fill in the hole that was left after the Russians apparently dug out all the earth into which the blood and facial debris soaked, from where the body lay. I want to talk to you in the minutest possible detail, irrespective of whatever’s in your report, about everything that you did before the arrival of the Russian investigators. I want to know the name of the Russian groundsman who found the body and, in the most specific detail, hear everything—and I really mean everything—that he told you, before I talk to him myself. I want to know what went so consistently wrong with the CCTV security cameras—and why it continued going wrong—up to and including the night the body got where it was found. And why and how a man, with his intended killers, got into embassy grounds that you and your staff are supposed to keep clear of any unauthorized intrusion. And when I’ve got all that, I’ll probably want to do it all over again because the first time I won’t get half, even a quarter, of what I want. And in passing, it’s not necessary for you to call me sir. Charlie’s fine. You keeping up with me so far, Reg . . .”

  There was no immediate reply and Charlie thought he could almost see reflected in the transfixed eyes the slow-moving cogs in the man’s brain. Finally Stout managed, “I thought Mr. Dawkins was handling it all?”

  “He isn’t,” corrected Charlie. “I am.”

  “I think I should talk to Mr. Dawkins.”

  “We’ll both talk to Mr. Dawkins,” insisted the exasperated Charlie. And it was still only just after ten thirty.

  3

  Charlie d
idn’t believe that rainbows always followed rain or that every cloud that brought the downpour had a silver lining, so his satisfaction at London’s insistence on unfettered, unimpeded assistance within the embassy was muted. Appealing both to Aubrey Smith and the Foreign Office had been the very last resort he’d had no alternative but to take against Dawkins’s obdurate determination to be the hands-on controller of every move Charlie made. Sure that the housing officer would have already complained as well, his demand for a liaison ruling racked up two petty but officially recorded disputes in the space of twenty-four hours and Charlie feared Smith’s irritable reaction—“What about the real problem you’re there to sort out?”—was a reaction to the internal pressure in London and not a belief that he needed a bigger boy’s hand to hold, which was the very last impression Charlie either needed or wanted. There was something else he didn’t need or want, either: the foot-aching twinge Charlie never ignored as a warning, that even at this early stage there was something he’d missed or hadn’t realized, which for once he hoped was not its usual talisman but merely the tightness of new Hush Puppies.

  “Having wasted the entire morning, are we finally ready to begin?” Charlie asked the head of security.

  “Sir!” replied Stout, the parade-ground loudness less belligerent than before. From a desk drawer, the man extracted a file and said, “My report, sir!”

  As he accepted the dossier Charlie said, “For Christ’s sake, cut out the ‘sir’ crap, will you? What time were you told about the body?”

  “Eight thirty-three exactly, as I say in my report. . . .” He just stopped himself.

  “I want to hear your account, as well as read it. Who told you?”

  “The man in charge of the gardening detail. He called me, here in the office.”

  “A Russian?”

  “Yes. He told me one of his workers had found a body; that it didn’t have a face.”

  “What’s the name of the man who actually found it?”

  “Maksimov. Boris Maksimov.”

  Charlie nodded to the telephone on Stout’s desk. “Can you arrange for me to speak to Maksimov, as well as the Russian in charge?”

  “I’m afraid you can’t. Not speak to either of them, I mean.”

  “What’s the problem now?” demanded Charlie, the exasperation returning.

  “Neither is here, at the embassy. One of the Russians who came when I raised the alarm told me to put both of them on extended leave, to help the organized crime bureau.”

  “Colonel Pavel told you to do that?”

  “I don’t know his name.”

  Charlie had to swallow hard before he could continue. “You’ve got their home addresses?”

  “The Russian staffs are supplied by the Foreign Ministry.”

  To which they were supplied by the FSB, as they had been before the renaming of the KGB and before that by the MVD-MGB and before that by the NKGB-NKVD, Charlie knew. Nothing had changed except the titles. And everyone in the West imagining that espionage had been swept away in the flood of the Cold War thaw, worried instead about Islamic terrorism. “You spoke to Maksimov?”

  “Briefly. He spoke hardly any English, I speak hardly any Russian.”

  Charlie knew—every intelligence professional knew—that local Russian support staff spoke more than adequate English, which was why they were there, to listen and read everything they could. “Don’t leave out a single word, tell me everything you saw and talked about and heard.”

  “It really was very brief. He’d started work at eight that morning, he told me. His job was to weed the flower beds around the conference hall. He said he saw the body the moment he finished the first bed and came around the corner to continue on the next section. He thought it was someone asleep or drunk until he got close enough to see what it really was, that it was a dead man. He ran to get his supervisor. He said he hadn’t done it.”

  “He said what?”

  “ ‘I didn’t do it. He was like that when I found him.’ That was the last thing Maksimov said to me.”

  “Who was there ahead of you at the scene?”

  “Demin, the Russian team leader, and Maksimov.”

  “None of your security people?”

  “No.”

  “Had the two Russians touched anything?”

  “They told me they hadn’t; that they were too scared.”

  From the hesitation before the reply, Charlie guessed Stout hadn’t asked either Russian about touching the body. “Tell me, in every detail, what you found.”

  The hesitation now was for recall, and the account was punctuated by pauses when the man finally began to speak. Charlie, who was well aware of the psychological peculiarity that few witnesses to dramatic events had the same recollection, was caught by the similarity in Stout’s account to that of Paula-Jane Venables.

  “Did you touch the body?” picked up Charlie.

  “No!” insisted the man, at once. “I didn’t go through any of his pockets.”

  “That wasn’t the question,” persisted Charlie. “Did you touch it? If the clothes were wet, it would give us an indication of how long it had been there, before or after dew might have fallen.”

  “I didn’t touch it,” repeated the man. “His jacket looked as if it might be damp.”

  “How much blood was there?”

  “A lot, from what I could see.”

  “Soaked into the ground?”

  “Yes.”

  Charlie thought that Stout was telling him what the man imagined he wanted to hear. “After the body was removed, the Russians—a forensic examiner—dug up the soil where what remained of the head had been, didn’t he?”

  “Yes.”

  “How big, wide as well as deep, was the hole?”

  “I don’t know.” Stout frowned. “Why’s that important?”

  “The size might have given an indication of how much blood there was, which in turn might have told us whether he was shot there or somewhere else. How deep it was might have suggested whether the bullet was found.”

  “There was no sign of a bullet being found. It was a deep hole, maybe two foot round.”

  Again what the man thought he wanted to hear, decided Charlie. “The forensic people took photographs?”

  “I think so,” said Stout, immediately correcting himself. “Yes, yes, of course they did.”

  “Didn’t you take photographs?”

  “By then Mr. Dawkins had arrived. He told me it was a Russian investigation and that we should leave everything to them.”

  Now it was Charlie who hesitated, unsure if there was anything to be gained from questioning any further. He wouldn’t know unless he tried, he reminded himself. “Tell me about nighttime security.”

  “The gatehouse is staffed. Two men.”

  “What about ground patrols?”

  Stout shifted, uncomfortably. “No.”

  “There used to be,” Charlie remembered.

  “There hasn’t been, not for a long time.”

  “London’s decision? Or local?”

  “I was told by Mr. Dawkins.” As if in sudden recollection, Stout added, “There are ground sensors now! And CCTV.”

  “Which, according to what I’ve heard, don’t work?”

  Stout’s face clouded at Charlie’s awareness. “There have been some technical problems recently.”

  “Like what?”

  “Some of the cameras have blanked out.”

  Could it possibly be? wondered Charlie. It should have been inconceivable. “These cameras that blanked out? Would they have covered the area where the body was found?”

  There was a pause before Stout’s reply. “Not all of them.”

  “Reg! Stop fucking about and answer the question!”

  The man swallowed, a sheen of perspiration pricking out on his face. “Two of them do.”

  “The two covering where the body was found? And the area between there and the gatehouse?” easily predicted Charlie.

  The man
nodded but didn’t speak.

  “Were they out the night the body got to where it was found?”

  “Yes. But it was happening for several days before the body was found.”

  Of course it was, thought Charlie, although with the mentality here it hadn’t really been necessary to make it appear accidental. “Why weren’t they fixed?”

  “They were. Electricians were called in and the cameras were okay for a day. Then they crashed again.”

  “Technical electricians from London?”

  “They’re due in the next day or two,” said the man.

  Charlie’s pause this time was one of total, incredulous disbelief. Spacing his words when he did speak, he said: “Who was brought in to do the repairs that failed?”

  “It wasn’t considered a difficult job, technically.”

  “Answer the question,” insisted Charlie, his voice still hollowed in despair.

  “A Russian contractor, recommended by the Foreign Ministry,” finally admitted the security manager.

  “Were there two men on duty in the gatehouse the night the body got into the grounds?”

  “Yes.”

  “British?” The answer should have been obvious but Charlie had given up on anything being as it should have been.

  “Yes. Hoskins and Jameson.”

  Charlie nodded toward the desk telephone again. “I want to see them”—he looked at his watch—“in half an hour’s time. You got a spare room?” There wasn’t space for more than one other person in his contemptuously allocated office.

  “No.”

  “Here then.”

  While Stout telephoned around the embassy to locate the two men, who were that week on day duty, Charlie sat, head bowed, anger burning through him. This was an out-and-out, all-time fucking nightmare of incompetence and ineptitude on an unimaginable scale demanding an internal investigation quite separate from that to which he had been assigned. But not yet, came the immediate halt, for several reasons, the least of which was escalating any hand-holding impressions in London. Feeling again the warning twinge in his left foot, Charlie reminded himself that nothing that had already occurred could be undone or rectified. Better to leave everything as it was but use it to his benefit.