Red Star Rising

by Brian Freemantle

  “I thought you’d call before now?” she challenged, at once.

  “We agreed two days. Is there a problem?”

  “No.”

  “Is Sasha back?”

  “Yes.”

  “Have you told her I’m here?”

  “Not yet. I wanted us to talk some more, before I did.”

  “Talk about what?”

  “I’m not sure I can do it. Leave everything. Not sure I want to do it.”

  Charlie wished there wasn’t so much traffic noise. “It’s the only way it can work for us.”

  “Sasha’s happy at her school. I’m frightened it would be too much of an upheaval for her.”

  “Children are resilient, adjustable, aren’t they?”

  “Not like this. This would be like taking her to the moon.”

  “We can’t make decisions like this, on the telephone. We need to meet again.” Charlie waited and when she didn’t respond, said, “Natalia?”

  “We have a routine,” said Natalia. “If she’s done well, which she did with the summer school project, I take Sasha to the central park of culture to let her enjoy herself on the rides and amusements. We’re going there tomorrow afternoon.”

  Everything was arriving from London tomorrow, Charlie remembered. And he still didn’t know why Pavel had approached him as he had, insisting upon the Varvarka rendezvous. “You want us to meet there?”

  “No,” said Natalia, sharply. “I thought you wanted to see her. I don’t want you suddenly to appear, like a ghost. I want to prepare her, before any meeting.”

  “There might be a problem with tomorrow. Some things might be happening.”

  “It won’t matter if you can’t make it,” said Natalia, realistically. “We’re going anyway, around three o’clock. Be by the Ferris wheel if you can: Sasha always likes to ride it. If I don’t see you, I’ll know you’re held up and I’ll wait for another call, like this.”

  “I’ll be there,” promised Charlie, unsettled by the arm’s length dismissal.

  “If you’re not, call.”

  It hadn’t been the sort of conversation he’d expected or wanted, Charlie thought, as he continued on toward Varvarka, sure from watching everything around him that he remained quite alone. Natalia had obviously acknowledged their only chance of being together permanently was for her and Sasha to resettle in England. So why wasn’t he feeling encouraged? Because, he supposed, of the reservations in almost everything she’d said, capped by her idea of his seeing Sasha from afar but not meeting her. But Natalia was right about preparing the child. Perhaps, even, it was a good idea that he be prepared, too. He hadn’t done anything about a present, for either of them. Plenty of opportunity for that. Better, probably, not to go bearing gifts the first time they got together as a family.

  Charlie had no difficulty locating the workers’ café in the side street off the main road. In these casual, inexpensive bar/cafés, there was normally a scattering of places to sit but the preferred way of eating and drinking appeared to be standing up at small, mushroom-style tables. Pavel was already at one, a salami sandwich before him. There was no recognition. Charlie bought himself a coffee at the counter, intent upon any warning gesture of refusal from the waiting detective as he went toward the rear of the smoke-fogged café, finally going to Pavel’s stand.

  “This might have all been overdramatic,” apologized Pavel, at once.

  “What, exactly, are we doing?” opened Charlie, cautiously.

  “Meeting properly by ourselves, as we should be doing, not having everything monitored and orchestrated by Mikhail Aleksandrovivh Guzov.”

  Pissed-off policeman or poorly prepared provocateur? wondered Charlie. Whatever, he had to go along to see where it led but watch his back even more closely and carefully than he was already doing, if that were possible. “You got a professional problem?”

  “You know he’s FSB, don’t you?”

  “It wasn’t too difficult to guess,” tiptoed Charlie, waiting for the question about his own genuine profession. Which, surprisingly, didn’t come.

  Instead Pavel said, “The way things are going—or rather not going—this will end with me being the take-all-blame victim of a failed investigation Guzov is doing his best to sabotage, with whatever shit that doesn’t get dumped on me poured all over you.”

  Which in general terms was what he’d already worked out for himself, decided Charlie, becoming increasingly bewildered by the conversation. “Why does he want to sabotage everything?”

  “I don’t know, not completely,” admitted Pavel. “But there’s one thing that I think might be an indicator. Guzov is absolutely insistent that the listening devices weren’t planted by the FSB. Or by the Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki, because the foreign service doesn’t have internal authority or remit.”

  “How else could listening devices get into the embassy unless FSB officers put them there!”

  Pavel shrugged. “I don’t have an explanation for that, either, but if the murder investigation ends in a mess then so, too, do allegations of planting bugs and spying. Leaving you and me, the two failed investigators, taking the blame for each and every failure. I don’t want that—couldn’t professionally survive that—and I don’t imagine you want to fail, either.”

  Certainly not after the litany of complaints and criticisms he’d endured from London over the last few days, acknowledged Charlie, that thought colliding with another, that no provocateur could be as inept as Pavel was showing himself to be. “What do you want me to do?”

  “Start making things happen, the way they should be happening. Despite Guzov’s interference and obstruction, I’ve done all the routine stuff: missing persons, gang feud rumors, informer whispers. I’ve gone through forensics until I can recite every finding practically from memory. And got nowhere: we’re looking at the perfect murder. There’s got to be something innovative to break it open and I don’t know what it is. Or could be. And even if I did, Guzov would overrule whatever I suggested. . . .” The Russian paused, smiling tentatively. “But he couldn’t do anything to stop you, which is why he wants to be at your shoulder every time we meet.”

  Charlie found a lot—most—of Pavel’s reasoning convoluted and obviously unsubstantiated, leaving him with only one point of total clarity: he couldn’t for a moment professionally risk everything collapsing as the Russian was predicting. But could he remotely consider exposing himself in the way Pavel was suggesting? There was a way, he supposed, although it would expose him to public recognition, which he’d never done before and had argued against so very recently. But did that matter if he were going to resign the service to make possible what he wanted with Natalia and Sasha?

  “If I do something to exclude Guzov, he’ll exclude me from anything you’re going to do.”

  “He’s doing that anyway. But I wouldn’t exclude you: we could go on like this.”

  “Why are you taking such risks?”

  “I stand to lose either way,” Pavel pointed out.

  “I need to think things through,” said Charlie, consciously avoiding the commitment.

  “If Guzov knows we’ve met like this he’ll get me off the case, which he’s already tried to do,” disclosed Pavel. “He wants to replace me with his own tame militia man.”

  “How can we stop him from doing that?”

  Pavel shrugged. “Lose me and you lose any possible cooperation.”

  In how many different ways could he lose? Charlie asked himself. And didn’t bother to start counting.

  12

  For something upon which Charlie’s future, if not his actual existence, still depended, the supposed forensic evidence of assassination appeared remarkably inconsequential, apart from the totally manufactured CCTV record and its freeze frames showing the entry into the embassy grounds of the victim and his killers. The only other tangible evidence was a comparatively small vial of provable embassy soil, into which AB blood had been introduced and a sliver of provable Russian metal from a
provable 9mm Makarov bullet. There were also photographs of the supposed score mark caused by that ricocheting exiting bullet. There were also duplicated stacks of technically phrased forensic tests and findings, in Russian, to accompany and support every exhibit.

  Charlie ran the loop through the replay machine several times before going just as exhaustively and individually through every exhibit and report, finally convinced, despite the reservations of technical director Jack Smethwick, that with the exception of DNA testing it was all unchallengeable.

  Positively separating the professional and personal dilemmas with which he was confronted, Charlie concentrated first upon the bizarre café confrontation with Sergei Pavel. And always arrived back at the conclusion he’d reached walking with aching feet back along Varvarka the previous evening: that Pavel’s approach and reasoning was so open to question and doubt that it had to be genuine, not a layered deception devised to eliminate him from an investigation the Russians were determined to keep to themselves.

  Which was how he put it to the Director-General from the familiar communications room, reluctantly making the approach not so much from the need for a general sounding board but very specifically to relay Guzov’s disclosure to a fellow Russian that the FSB was not responsible for bugging the embassy.

  “The devices are provably Russian!” exclaimed Aubrey Smith, impatiently. “Who else but the FSB put them there?”

  “I’m not inviting a debate because I think the denial is as absurd as you do,” said Charlie, matching the impatience. “You’ve ordered me not to talk to Robertson so I’m passing it on for you to tell him. Guzov is technically Pavel’s superior. He’s got no reason to try to persuade Pavel.”

  “It’s part of the same patchwork,” dismissed Smith. “Nikita Kashev has summoned the acting ambassador twice to the Foreign Ministry to make the same denial. The Russian ambassador here has sought two meetings at our Foreign Office, with the same message. Now Guzov joins the chorus, for Pavel to tell you, hoping that you’ll tell me—London at least, because I hope there’s no way they know you and I are liaising directly—for it to be spread as fully and as thickly as possible.”

  “Isn’t that unusual?” asked Charlie.

  “I don’t understand the question.”

  “Every Western embassy has had listening devices installed by the Russians. And we’ve done our fair share in return,” Charlie pointed out. “The embassy protests, Moscow denies it—as we do when we’re caught—and in a few months it’s all forgotten until the next time. Why the continued, persistent denials this time?”

  “Because everything is supposed to have changed since the demise of communism, which we all know it hasn’t,” said Smith, still dismissive.

  “I felt I should pass it on,” said Charlie, reminding himself it was not his investigation and that his day had to run on a strict timetable.

  “You’ve got all you wanted,” said Smith. “Now I want results—some significant developments—pretty damned quick.”

  “I’ve got some things in mind,” said Charlie, disliking the vagueness but not wanting to risk the Director-General countermanding what he was considering.

  Charlie phoned ahead and by the time he arrived at Petrovka, a replay machine was already set up in Pavel’s office, cramped by the two rows of chairs arranged in a viewing semicircle. Charlie accepted without protest his relegation to the second row, leaving those closest to the screen to Mikhail Guzov and the assembled but unidentified forensic specialists and technicians. Pavel positioned himself behind them, alongside Charlie but gave no indication of any prior contact. They all watched the two-and-a-half minute tape without comment but immediately after it faded a heavily bearded forensic officer demanded a replay, coming intently forward to watch it for the second time: once he leaned sideways to mutter to the man next to him something that Charlie strained to hear but missed. He didn’t hear the conversation between the man and Guzov when the second viewing ended, either.

  Turning to Charlie, Guzov said, “The CCTV copy isn’t of much practical use.”

  Charlie had spent both replays intently studying the FSB officer for the slightest facial indication that the café encounter had been a setup and detected nothing. Charlie said, “Together with what London identified as part of a Makarov bullet, it proves the victim was alive when he was brought into the embassy grounds by at least three men and that the murder was committed there, positively establishing that the crime was committed on British territory, which further establishes that it is primarily a British investigation.”

  “I meant, of practical use in identifying the victim or the men who killed him,” corrected Guzov.

  They’d accepted the phony CCTV film as genuine! realized Charlie. “They won’t know that, though, will they?”

  “What? Who?” Guzov frowned.

  “I intend to hold a press conference at the embassy,” announced Charlie. “I consider the CCTV to be a breakthrough in the investigation, showing the murder in the process of it being committed.”

  “You’ll be asked if you can identify the victim and his killers,” said Pavel, nodding to the freeze frames stacked on a side table, together with all the other London material. “There will also be demands for those photographs to be released.”

  “Of course I’m going to be asked,” agreed Charlie. “And I am going to describe what we’ve got as vital evidence that cannot be released for fear of affecting the outcome of any trial.”

  “In the vain hope that the killers, frightened of being identified, will make the mistake that’ll do just that?” queried Guzov, the sneer very obvious.

  “That would be a little too much to expect, but not totally beyond the realms of possibility,” said Charlie. “What we do have is a reasonably good physical description of the dead man, and what’s definitely not beyond the realms of possibility is that it will be recognized by someone who will come forward to identify who he is. And that would very definitely be a breakthrough, wouldn’t it?”

  Guzov’s face hardened at the awareness of how easily he was being outmaneuvered. Trying to make it sound more like an already agreed decision rather then the question it really was, the Russian said, “The press conference panel will need particular and careful planning.”

  “Very particular indeed,” picked up Charlie. “The film very positively establishes the United Kingdom’s primary legal jurisdiction, which requires that any public discussion has to be conducted on British territory . . .” He hesitated, the affect timed to the ticking second. “Which presents a difficulty of your participating in view of the current diplomatic problem between our two governments.”

  “Are you trying to tell me that no Russian participation will be allowed?”

  “I’m just pointing out that the degree of participation has to be diplomatically agreed.”

  “I shall need to discuss the legality of the situation with lawyers at our own ministry,” said Guzov, trying to make it sound like a challenge.

  “Of course you must,” agreed Charlie. “As I will with my embassy.” How much of an obstacle were temporary ambassador Peter Maidment and his own Foreign Office going to be to the media proposal, wondered Charlie.

  Guzov swept his arm to encompass the CCTV tape and everything else that Charlie had brought to Petrovka. “And there may be further need to discuss everything you have provided, after closer study by our scientists.”

  Shit, thought Charlie.

  Charlie accepted he could not have expected it to have gone better—although being a pushy, foot-in-the-door optimist he’d hoped that it would—but Mikhail Guzov’s implied threat nagged at him, despite Charlie’s balancing belief that Pavel’s café approach had been professionally genuine.

  And he was thirty minutes behind schedule getting back to the embassy, with only time to check his telephone messages before his courtesy appointment with the acting ambassador. Again, the one call routed to his voice mail disconnected without identification.

  When Cha
rlie was ushered into the ambassador’s suite, Peter Maidment was at the window overlooking the river and didn’t immediately turn. There was a weariness about the man when he finally did so, waving Charlie to the waiting chair. “Your Director-General sent me a message that you wanted to see me?”

  And he was taking his biggest risk yet, not clearing his intention first with Aubrey Smith, conceded Charlie. “I want to conduct a press conference for the media camped outside the gates.”

  There was no outrage or theatricality at the idea from the lank-haired man. “To tell them what?”

  “I need to identify the victim,” said Charlie, encouraged. “There are some physical characteristics I hope might be recognized by a wife or a girlfriend or a work colleague.”

  “There’ll be Russians among the media? Journalism is a very common front for the sort of people who installed the most recent listening devices.”

  “The conference could be very strictly controlled,” pressed Charlie. “They could be escorted to the conference hall quite separate from the embassy building itself. And escorted directly out again at the end. All the accreditation could be thoroughly vetted. And the local Russian staff is still being allowed in and out.”

  “What’s wrong with simply issuing a statement, listing what you want someone to recognize?”