Red Star Rising

by Brian Freemantle

  Lvov’s exit was as triumphal and swift as his entry, trailed by the majority of people in the hall, all attempts at a formal press conference abandoned. Charlie allowed himself to be carried along, unresisting, in the exodus. He did not detach himself until he was well outside, isolating David Halliday on the periphery of the watching crowd and then, nearby, saw first Paula-Jane Venables and just beyond her, Bill Bundy: none gave any sign of recognition but Halliday said, “You know what the stupid bastards of a government did! They were taken so completely by surprise they didn’t jam the already set-up television satellite feeds, worldwide. The next, absolutely guaranteed leader of the Russian Federation has just delivered his winning presidential address to a global audience of five billion people.” The man smiled directly at Charlie. “And at the same time, you, Charlie, got let completely off the hook.”

  Charlie thought a further comment of Halliday’s—that Lvov’s protest matched that of Boris Yeltsin in 1991 being carried to presidential victory after boarding a government tank threatening the Russian White House—to be an exaggeration until he learned that the seat of the elected Russian parliament was the destination of the continuing peoples-power protest. And it didn’t stop there but meshed together with the stage managed continuity of a Hollywood blockbuster. From the White House, order-imposing stewards now quite clearly in evidence, the march proceeded in perfect coordination to Vagankov Cemetery at which Pavel’s wife, three daughters, and a small group of officers—not one in militia uniform—were gathered for the funeral of Sergei Romanovich Pavel. The crowd control was absolute, Lvov and his wife and just four others—with Charlie tagging himself on until he separated to join a suddenly emerged Mikhail Guzov. None of the huge, no longer banner-waving crowd attempted to enter the cemetery, instead completely encircling it in silent, respectful solemnity, creating for the banked cameras a burial tableau at the center of which stood Lvov, now as silent as his followers, his wife with one supporting arm around the sobbing widow, the other stretched out in comfort to the children.

  The politician’s total hijack of the day—and the government’s equally total ineptitude—was completed with the release of Svetlana Modin just two hours before ORT’s main evening broadcast. Stepan Lvov and the attentive wife, not a hair misplaced or an ugly crease marking the virginal white suit, were waiting with their inevitable crowd outside the finally identified militia detention center to receive her. Svetlana, carefully crumpled, disheveled, and dirt-smeared as befitted someone presumed to have been incarcerated in a dank and filthy cell, disdainfully and on camera waved away an approaching makeup girl to remain as she was for a live broadcast, which completely filled the transmission slot. She used an impromptu interview with Lvov to hint heavily—but not positively to claim—interrogation under physical and sexually threatened torture and picked up like the accomplished performer she was on Lvov’s repeated diatribe against official media censorship, intimidation, violence, and murder.

  To approving roars and applause from the crowd threatening to drown out her words, Svetlana concluded, “I resisted it all, refused it all, and did not break. They learned nothing from me, nor will they, apart from the truth.”

  There were matching shouts and applause in the packed Savoy bar, in which Charlie and Halliday watched her release. Halliday said, “You ain’t seen nuthin’ like that before in your entire life and you never will again.”

  “You’re probably very right,” accepted Charlie.

  “It certainly took the focus—and any threat—off you,” remarked Halliday.

  For how long? wondered Charlie.

  25

  Charlie began his day tensed against the immediate setback of Mikhail Guzov personally responding to his Petrovka phone when he called from the bug-monitored Savoy suite, relieved there was no reply. He told the duty officer who answered that Guzov could reach him at the embassy about the rearranged conference, and quit the suite at once. He used the stairs instead of the elevator and took the side corridor to the baroque dining room and its conveniently separate entrance and exit without needing to go through the central lobby and its main door. As he knew from his previous three days’ reconnaissance, there were no cars in the outside slip road and only a few disinterested people. He got a taxi at the corner and gave the driver a destination that took them through side streets until the Precistenka turn to go south in the opposite direction from the Arbat, to follow the gradual loop north again. Charlie divided his attention between his deadline and the following vehicles: upon such a crowded, multilaned highway it was impossible ever to be absolutely certain but Charlie remained reasonably confident there was no pursuit. He waited until they climbed as far as the Kurskaya Okalovskaja Metro sign. At the last moment, double fare ready and the door ajar, he ordered the stop for his hurried dash to the Metro escalator. He was fortunate with an Arbat-bound train coming into the platform as he reached it, but traveled only one stop on the fifth line to switch south as far as Kitay-Gorod, where he disembarked to return northwest on the sixth line as far as Tverskaya Puskinskaya for the final line change and the Arbat. It was exactly five minutes to ten.

  Charlie had preferred the Arbat as the flea market it had been when he’d first known it, not the hybrid now of doubtful antique galleries, Western designer shops, Russian bric-a-brac and icon stalls, artist-attended—and eagerly selling—exhibitions and tourist-trap outlets. And most definitely not the soccer-crowd volume of people from which to stage the perfect assassination. As he stepped out into the throng his apprehension began to tighten like a spring, his skin reacting into something like an itch at the jostling, inevitable physical contact, the irritation so immediate and intense he had to feel out, to scratch his arms and shoulders.

  He moved as instructed, the wandering pick-up-and-put-down loiterer, unsure after so much and so many public interferences—and not one single confirming telephone approach since the rendezvous was arranged—if his was not an entirely pointless performance to a nonexistent audience. He guessed the crowd at this particular midpoint was as dense as that at Lvov’s demonstration and even more difficult to be part of: the previous day, those demonstrators had all moved in one direction but now there was a constant ebb and flow of people struggling every which way. To get himself out of the crush Charlie frequently detached himself from the main, outside stream and went off the stall-cluttered road into some of the more established and permanent shops and boutiques, constantly checking the time either from his own watch or available clocks.

  At 10:35, he finally allowed himself the thought of his other rendezvous. Natalia had said it would take her an hour to get from her flat to McDonald’s. Which only gave him thirty-five minutes to be at one of the two public telephones he’d already isolated to warn her of his inability to keep their meeting if there hadn’t been a personal approach from the hoarse-voiced woman. But Natalia had told him she’d be going to the fast-food restaurant anyway. And it would only take him thirty minutes, less even, to get there from the Arbat.

  He was being stupid, unprofessional, Charlie accused himself. What if the woman in whom he’d put every hope of survival did make contact? He had no way of judging what she had to say or would want to do: whether she’d be a crank. Or a would-be killer. If she were neither and he for a moment believed she were genuine it could—inevitably would—take hours, days, to gain her confidence and trust.

  Natalia and Sasha had to be a secondary consideration. No! Charlie refused at once. Not relegated to second place: put in their rightful place, that of being of absolute personal importance to him but separate from what was professionally essential. Separate, too, from the potential danger at that moment burning through him.

  Their meeting had to be postponed. Maybe only put off for a day: freed from the noon deadline he could remain in the Arbat for the rest of the day and if there was no approach he’d know the episode had been a hoax or a crank or that the woman had been frightened away.

  He reached the closer of his two chosen tel
ephone phone booths at 10:45, to find it occupied by a woman with a notepad and a heap of replenishing coin on the ledge in front of her and an increasingly fidgeting man waiting ahead of him. The milling crowd in which he’d so recently immersed himself for its concealing protection now became an obstructive, delaying interference.

  When it came it wasn’t the tight-together pressure of people jamming him between them for a quick, agonizing knife thrust or the hard jab of a silenced pistol. It was a tug, a dip into his jacket pocket. He started to snatch toward whatever had been planted and he only just managed to turn it into the jerk of someone colliding into him, the hoarse-voiced telephone warning—don’t look or act surprised—echoing in his head as if he were hearing it at that moment. He didn’t stare about him, either, but forced himself on, leaking perspiration but not touching his pocket until just before he reached the intended telephone. The interior of Charlie’s pockets invariably resembled a schoolboy’s treasure pouch, which like so much else about the man was intentionally misleading. He was aware of everything in every space and immediately detected the folded piece of paper, taking it out as if it were a reminder, which it could easily have been, a telephone number which Charlie instantly recognized to be another street kiosk, that day’s date and a time: 1700. The numerals were written in a Russian hand.

  It was five minutes before eleven, Charlie saw. He could get with time to spare to where he knew Natalia and Sasha would be. He needed time to calm himself, as well as a drink, to help. Probably two, to help even more.

  And because he had that much time, Charlie chose again to fill it line-hopping across the Metro’s central-city spider’s web, the tradecraft dance subconsciously prompted by what he’d recognized during the preceding hour and now wanted more reassurance, fully confronting what he was contemplating. He’d lied to Natalia—again—and was about to lie further after promising he never would again: that, instead, he would always put her safety and Sasha’s safety before anything or anyone else. It was ridiculous for him never to accept the possibility of failure or to delude himself into thinking the car crash might have been a coincidence. Ridiculous, too, to believe he’d always be able to lose a surveillance tail and the possibility of another assassination attempt, an assassination attempt in which Natalia and Sasha might all too easily be caught up, and even die, with him. So why was he going on as he was, thinking more of himself—only of himself—and what he wanted instead of how he should be thinking, of what he should do if he loved them both as much as he insisted that he did? He didn’t have an answer. Not one that came even half close to justifying anything.

  There was one thing he did know, from the Arbat experience. The hoarse-voiced woman’s apparent nervousness during the arranging telephone conversation might have been genuine but her claim not to be sure of a rendezvous definitely hadn’t been. She’d planned the Arbat as she’d planned everything else—the concealing crowd on the busiest day of the week, the protective watch for which she would have been in place long before ten to ensure she wasn’t risking a snatch squad, and the brush contact drop within a yard or two of the escaping Arbat Metro.

  She was, Charlie recognized, a professional intelligence operative with the knowledge and ability of operational field-level tradecraft. And could so easily have been a killer, he reminded himself, refusing to push aside the self-accusation of cheating Natalia and their child. Everything was planned, he further reminded himself. He knew he was clean, that he wouldn’t be endangering them today. Just this one more time then, maybe the last—his only chance—to be with Sasha. He’d see them today, judge how the encounter went and then find the answer eluding him.

  He scuffed on aching feet up the slightly inclined Kreschatik Square upon which he saw the line stretched at least twenty-five yards from the entrance of the McDonald’s, out into the square, and which didn’t appear to be moving. And then he saw Natalia close to its front, Sasha’s hand obediently in hers. He knew Natalia’d seen him virtually at the same moment, although she gave no indication of doing so. Neither did he, happy that the delay would give her all the time she needed to satisfy herself he had not been followed. If he had been, he would have been hit by now.

  Natalia had secured a corner table, her large briefcase-sized valise securing a third seat, which would put Sasha between them. She’d already finished whatever she’d eaten and had her coffee cup before her. Sasha was still eating a hamburger, but her attention was upon one of the restaurant-supplied coloring books. Natalia gave him the briefest welcoming smile, moving her valise from the third chair, and said something to Sasha. At the counter he ordered the obvious. His McMuffin was soggy and the coffee was a gray color.

  When Charlie reached the table Natalia said, “I told Sasha we might be meeting a friend.”

  “Hello,” said the child. “I’m Sasha. What’s your name?”

  Charlie looked inquiringly at Natalia, who shook her head. Charlie couldn’t think of an appropriate Russian transliteration and said, “Ivan,” sure it wasn’t a pseudonym he’d forget after the morning’s still hopeful expedition.

  Natalia’s forehead creased as she raised her eyebrows at the name, smiling down at his choice of meal. “I guessed that’s what you’d order.”

  “What else could it have been?” Charlie smiled back.

  Sasha made an attention-gaining slurp, sucking at the straw in her cherry milkshake, and said, “Would you like me to color you a picture?”

  “I’d like that very much,” said Charlie. How could it be like this? Small talk, easy words that ordinary people said in ordinary situations: he didn’t have to sift and scrape every word for a second or third or fourth meaning.

  “You choose,” Sasha insisted. “An elephant or a giraffe or a lion? It will have to be one of those because they’re all I’ve got.”

  “A giraffe, please,” said Charlie.

  “You wouldn’t like a lion, instead?”

  “All right, a lion.”

  Sasha smiled. “The giraffe is for Mama and the elephant is for Igor. He’s my teacher at school and our friend.”

  “I . . .” started Charlie, stopping himself from saying he knew. “. . . He’ll like that,” he finished. He’d seen Natalia’s wincing frown.

  “How are things?” she asked, as Sasha began scribbling with her crayons.

  “Confused.”

  “You look terrible. Drained. Are you all right?”

  “There’s a lot happening.” He was glad there was a wall behind him.

  Natalia frowned again. “From what I’ve read and seen on television I believed it to be all over: I thought you’d be going back very soon?”

  “Not yet.” Innocuous though the words sounded, they marked a change from neither ever discussing work with the other.

  “It seems bad, for you?”

  “It could be. I could be recalled.” Not instantly forgotten small talk after all. But she would have surely mentioned the embankment ambush if she’d known about it: rejected his even approaching them. Now he was lying by omission, he recognized.

  “How would you feel about that?”

  Natalia didn’t want small talk, either, Charlie accepted. “It could make a lot of things easier.”

  “Could it? Really, I mean?”

  “I think so. And I have thought about it, very seriously thought about it.” He’d done the right thing by keeping the meeting, despite all the deceit and soul-searching.

  “So have I. Although not to the extent of your quitting.”

  “It might not even be an option of my choosing.”

  “You wouldn’t like that.”

  “Perhaps I wouldn’t,” Charlie agreed. “The circumstances, I mean. Not the result.”

  “What are you talking about?” unexpectedly demanded the child.

  “Something a long way away,” said Natalia.

  “Not here, you mean? Not in Moscow?”

  “No, not in Moscow,” said Charlie.

  “Don’t you live here?”


  “No,” said Charlie. “I live somewhere else.”

  “My papa lives somewhere else, a long way away. I don’t see him but Mama says she might take me there one day.”

  Charlie was conscious of Natalia flushing, very slightly. To his daughter Charlie said, “Would you like that?”

  “I’m not sure,” said Sasha, with the serious-faced sagacity of a child, returning to her coloring.

  “I wish that hadn’t been said.”

  “I don’t have a problem with it,” said Charlie. “The opposite, in fact.”

  “It doesn’t mean anything . . . that I’ve decided anything. Now I’m even more unsure.”

  “Don’t be,” urged Charlie. “It really could be so much easier now.”

  “You couldn’t live without the job. You know you couldn’t and I know you couldn’t.”

  “I could,” insisted Charlie. “And will. By choice or otherwise.”

  “Finished!” announced Sasha, triumphantly, offering Charlie the crayoned image. The lion’s mane and feet were colored green, its body yellow. She’d strayed over most of the guiding outlines in her eagerness to complete it.

  “It’s the best picture of a lion I’ve ever seen,” enthused Charlie. “May I keep it?”

  “I want you to,” insisted the child. “Are we going to see you again?”