Red Star Rising

by Brian Freemantle

  “What made you go back to her?” demanded the Director-General. For the first time ever, Charlie detected a quaver in Aubrey Smith’s voice at what had taken him three hours the following morning to copy to London.

  “A hunch,” said Charlie, who wished another one would come as quickly. “It occurred to me when we were speaking yesterday.”

  “Why didn’t you mention it then?”

  “I could have been wrong about what she’d kept back.”

  “Let’s hope you’re not wrong and the deciphering experts confirm your analysis.”

  “I am and they will,” predicted Charlie.

  “If you are right, there won’t be any more internal problems at this end.”

  “What about external? What will we do with it?”

  “Not my decision. Our function begins and ends with us advising and protecting the government. Which this certainly does.”

  “Irena’s desperate to get out.”

  “I’m hardly surprised. You think you’ve got everything?”

  “For our immediate needs,” qualified Charlie, deciding not to tell the man why he had to go back to Irena one more time. “A usable passport picture the most difficult. She always stands to hide the burn scars when she’s being photographed. Will there be a problem with the copy of a Russian passport?”

  “It won’t be a copy: it’s a genuine, forensically provable document. Which our visa entry and exit stamps will obviously be, as well.”

  “No problems there then?”

  “You sure you don’t want to copy everything to me electronically rather than use tonight’s diplomatic bag?”

  “The bag’s safer in the porous circumstances here inside the embassy. And there might be other things I want to include.”

  “That’s how it will come back to you, in the diplomatic bag. You sure she’s capable of going through with it?”

  “Her training was a long time ago,” warned Charlie. “And she’s very close to falling apart. The brush contact, to give her the passport, will be the most difficult part.”

  “You any idea how much surveillance you’ll be under, leaving the country?”

  “A hell of a lot,” accepted Charlie. “And then some. I’ve tried to cover that.”

  “What are you going to tell the Russians?”

  “That I’m being recalled for consultations. It would help if you could get that officially communicated through their ambassador to their Interior Ministry here.”

  “No problem,” promised the Director-General. “Our forensic science people have picked up some discrepancies, particularly in the medical evidence. But I don’t think there’s enough for us to mount a serious objection: certainly not enough to get Oskin’s body back here.”

  “I didn’t imagine there would be.”

  “Does she suspect that?”

  “No,” said Charlie, bluntly.

  “You’re not to have any contact with her on the aircraft from Sheremetyevo,” ordered the Director-General. “Or at Heathrow. You’ll probably be under hostile surveillance on the plane and there’ll almost certainly be more from the Russian embassy when you arrive here. We’ll know her from the photograph you’re sending. Warn her she’ll be received by a man and two women, as if they’re relatives or close friends. She’ll be taken at once to a safe house. When it’s judged she’s really safe, she’ll get a house of her own, wherever in England she chooses to live.”

  “Make sure that none of the three meeting her has any association, past or present, with anyone here at the embassy. Or with me. I don’t want any recognition to link me with them and by association with Irena.”

  “Already ensured.”

  “What if Irena asks about money?”

  “She’ll have a tax-free income from an index-linked £500,000. Her eventual house or apartment will be paid for, as will all its services and utilities for the rest of her life. Plastic surgery—to alter her appearance, not essentially for the burn scarring, but that can be corrected if it’s medically possible—will be available if she wants it. As well, obviously, as a new, untraceable identity.”

  “Apart from not having Ivan and his grave to grieve over, Irena should be happy enough with all that,” acknowledged Charlie.

  “You’ve done well, Charlie. Bloody well. And not just there. Here.”

  “There’s still a lot—too much—that could go wrong,” cautioned Charlie.

  “Let’s hope it doesn’t.”

  “Let’s,” agreed Charlie, meaning it.

  During the waking moments of a fitful night Charlie had mentally arranged his priorities, paramount among them successfully smuggling Irena out of the country but with other uncertainties still to resolve.

  Paula-Jane Venables was already in her section of the intelligence rezidentura, designer demure in blue, smiling up as if in expectation of his arrival.

  “You certainly like early mornings,” she greeted, gesturing in invitation to the quietly hissing percolator.

  “Coffee would be good,” accepted Charlie. “I needed to speak to London early.”

  “Something come up?” she asked at once.

  “I’m going back to London.”

  “When?”

  “A day or two.”

  “Is it all over?”

  “I’m not sure. I’m closing down the compound apartment: its use is over.” He smiled up as she brought him the coffee.

  “Did anything ever come out of it?”

  “It was worth a try.”

  “What about the postponed Russian press briefing?”

  “I’ve got to speak to the Russians about that. London doesn’t seem to think I need to be here for it, even if they reschedule it.”

  “Doesn’t seem to have worked out very well for you?”

  “No.”

  “I’m sorry. Sorry that things weren’t easier between us and sorry that it didn’t go better for you. You going to have time for me to reciprocate that lunch?”

  “There’s rarely such a thing as a total success in what we do. And I’m not sure at this moment about the lunch. There might be a few more things to close down.”

  “It would have helped to have got this one right, though, in the current London climate, wouldn’t it?”

  “Would have helped a lot.”

  “You didn’t bring your other stuff, to put in the safe?” said the woman, looking pointedly around Charlie as if she might have missed seeing the folder.

  “Not quite finished with it all yet,” avoided Charlie. “When I was stationed here permanently the diplomatic bag went around four thirty: is that still the departure time?”

  “Four thirty on the button: you can set your watch by it.” Paula-Jane made a vague gesture to the safe in the corner of her office. “What about your briefcase?”

  “I’ll pick it up later,” said Charlie. “I’ll let you know about the lunch.”

  There was an engaged sign displayed in the occupancy slot of Robertson’s inquiry room door so Charlie continued on to the compound apartment. There were only four logged calls, three from Svetlana Modin and one from Mikhail Guzov. Charlie told the two monitoring technicians that he was closing the operation down but hadn’t yet told Robertson.

  “Everything wrapped up then?” suggested one of the men.

  “Something like that,” replied Charlie.

  Charlie chose a public telephone kiosk at random on Deneznyj pereulok, ensuring he had sufficient coin before finally going into the box. The FSB general answered at once, the condescension very evident until Charlie announced he was being recalled to discuss what London considered a combination of anomalies and discrepancies in the Russian material.

  “What anomalies and discrepancies?” demanded Guzov.

  “I don’t know—won’t know—until I get back.”

  “I don’t . . .” Guzov started, before correcting himself. “Neither my ministry nor the government expect this to become an unnecessary, possibly embarrassing dispute. As I am sure neither
you nor your government wants, either.”

  “I won’t know what my government wants or expects until I return to London,” Charlie parried. “I thought it courteous—part of our continuing cooperation—to advise you. It would be unfortunate, for instance, if any more public statements—certainly a reconvened conference during my absence in London—were prematurely made.”

  “I had hoped you would have understood that there is not going to be a reconvened conference: that everything was going to be left to the court hearing.”

  “I also hope that will not prove to be a premature decision,” matched Charlie.

  “When can we speak again?”

  “When I get back from London.”

  “When will that be?”

  “I’ll call from London, on this number, to tell you.”

  “Do that,” demanded the Russian. “I fear there is a risk of some serious, even politically embarrassing, misunderstandings arising between us. Our forensic medical examiners found some inexplicable anomalies and discrepancies in some of your submitted material.”

  He couldn’t have hoped for a better advantage, Charlie recognized. “Then it’s fortunate that all the assembled evidence, particularly the embassy victim, remains for further examination.”

  Next he called Svetlana Modin, who also responded at once and with similar initial aggression. “We had a deal!”

  “There was nothing for us to talk about.”

  “How did you know? Because I couldn’t reach you we couldn’t broadcast what I wanted.”

  Guzov couldn’t possibly have reached her, to prompt the questions, Charlie knew. “What was it you were going to say?”

  “You’re not going to like it.”

  “Try me.”

  “That the combined murder dossier is complete, without any English input. And that the spy in your embassy has beaten you. What’s your comment on that?”

  “I don’t have one.”

  “That’s what I’m saying tonight!”

  “What about the covert U.S. and British operation?”

  “That it hasn’t yet been stood down.”

  “It sounds like you have other, better, sources than me.”

  “We had a deal, remember?” Svetlana said for the second time.

  “The embassy incident room has been closed down.”

  “Thank you,” said the woman, in the belief that she was getting the confirmation she wanted.

  “I can always reach you at this number?”

  “I want you to.”

  “It might be difficult over the next couple of days. I’ll call when I can.”

  Charlie’s luck held for the third time with Natalia’s immediate reply to his call. “I’m going back to London but only briefly. I want to see you, talk to you, before I go.” Sure now that the car crash had only been a warning, Charlie was equally sure he hadn’t put Natalia in any danger keeping their McDonald’s rendezvous, any more than he would be doing now.

  “I can’t today.”

  She hadn’t refused outright, he thought at once. “Tomorrow, the Botanical Gardens? One o’clock?”

  “Not the Botanical Gardens,” Natalia refused. “I don’t like old memories.”

  Charlie frowned at the rejection. “Where?”

  “The restaurant near the gardens.”

  “How’s Sasha?”

  “She’s made you another picture. It’s a tiger but it doesn’t have any stripes. And it’s blue.”

  “Can I buy her a present?”

  “No!” refused Natalia. Seeming to realize her sharpness, she added more softly, “We’ll talk about it tomorrow.”

  Irena was already in the apartment when Charlie got there promptly at twelve fifteen, opening the door at once to his knock. “It’s all there,” she said, nodding to the folder he’d left the previous night.

  “I’ll take that, too,” said Charlie, nodding to the shrine. The Russians would never release Ivan’s body but at least he could ensure she had her visible memories.

  “Why?” she asked, frowning.

  “You’ll want it with you in England, won’t you?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to try to carry it out, do you?”

  “I hadn’t thought . . .” she groped, uncertainly.

  “My way’s guaranteed. We don’t want anything to go wrong, do we?”

  “What could go wrong? I don’t really want to part with it.”

  “Luggage gets X-rayed as an antiterrorist precaution. Yours could be opened if the medals showed. Get removed. Trust me, Irena. Nothing will happen to any of it.”

  Charlie got back to the embassy just after three, with ample time to examine the briefcase retrieved from Paula-Jane’s safe, together with what he’d collected from Irena, and pack it into his specifically assigned and wax-sealed and stamped container inside that night’s untouchable diplomatic shipment to London.

  “You’re taking a lot of care,” commented Paula-Jane.

  “I always do, just like your godfather, remember?”

  When he’d examined it earlier in his rabbit-hutch room, the combination numerals on the briefcase were set as he’d arranged them before it had gone into Paula-Jane’s safe but the pages of the Russian murder file were in a different order from how he’d assembled them and two sheets he’d intentionally inserted back to front from their sequential order had been corrected. And the Savoy suite appeared to be untouched from how he’d left it but every intrusion trap he’d set had been disturbed by intruders who had conducted an otherwise very professional search.

  Charlie poured himself the generous Islay single malt he thought he might need and settled himself before his television in good time for Svetlana’s evening broadcast.

  32

  “It won’t work now!”

  “It will work.”

  Irena was teetering on the very edge of hysteria, Charlie recognized. As he’d recognized, in his fury, how Svetlana had spun the broadcast totally to defeat his attempt to discover, from his carefully planted information, who was leaking from the British embassy. Guzov could have been the only source for Svetlana, actually using the words anomalies and inconsistencies in the official British Note to the Russian Interior Ministry, but Svetlana had talked of his being “recalled” to prove her insistence of further deteriorating relations between London and Moscow. She’d also used library film footage of him in a segment, suggesting that Charlie was taking new information back to London.

  Charlie said, “It’s all going to be as I promised.”

  “There’s a permanent FSB watch at the airport. They’ll just increase it: get the manifest naming everyone on board.”

  “I’m the only person they’ll be interested in.”

  “We’ll be associated—too close—when you pass me the passport and the ticket.”

  “The concentration will be inside the terminal,” argued Charlie, the exchange that was necessary between them already formulated in his mind. “I will give you a precise time when I’ll be arriving outside, to within minutes. You get there earlier so that as we go toward the entrance separately we get closer, bunching nearer the door; that’s when I’ll do the drop. You hesitate, as if you’ve forgotten something, so that you’re nowhere near me when we get into the terminal. I’ll do nothing to avoid attention if there is any—attract it, in fact—and you won’t even be noticed: we’ll use the attention, not suffer from it.”

  “None of this was how you promised it would be,” complained Irena, although slightly less anxiously.

  “Listen to the promises you are already guaranteed,” insisted Charlie, taking his time to list the arrangements in place for Irena’s arrival in London.

  “You didn’t say anything about Ivan’s body,” she isolated, the moment Charlie stopped talking.

  “I didn’t mention it because it hasn’t been arranged yet.”

  “I want Ivan with me, in England. I want him buried there, properly; know the place
where he’ll be.”

  “He will be buried in England,” stressed Charlie, hoping he sounded sincere.

  “I won’t go, leave here, until I know he’s already there.”

  “It’s got to be this way—you first, then Ivan.”

  “It doesn’t have to be this way!”

  “You know it does.” He didn’t need Irena anymore, Charlie thought, brutally. He’d got everything he wanted from her and there was no way the FSB could find her if she stayed in Moscow, so why was he bothering? Because she deserved better than the way in which she existed: because he wanted to. He’d abandoned too many innocent people in the past, but this time he’d do his best to at least get her somewhere better than where—and how—she was now. She’d hate him, he accepted, when she realized Ivan’s body couldn’t be brought to England—which he didn’t think it could—but at least she’d get most of what she wanted. When there was no response from her end Charlie said, “Irena?”

  “I don’t think I can do it,” she declared, sobs snatching at her words.

  “You can. You must,” insisted Charlie, knowing he had to force her. “Do everything I’ve told you. The moment you get to London there’ll be people waiting at the airport, to look after you, as I’ve explained. From that moment you’ll be safe, forever. It’s got to be now, Irena. With me. No one will come back for you if you don’t come now. There’ll be no second chance.”

  “I know,” she mumbled.

  “So be there.”

  “I’ll try.”

  “Be there.”

  Charlie was too early for his meeting with Natalia so he filled the time by going nostalgically into the Botanical Gardens that featured so much in their relationship. But wouldn’t any longer. There was little more he could say or do to persuade her, all the promises and assurances used up. Could he quit the service, as he’d told her he could? He believed so, even if Natalia didn’t. And he would resign. As well as keeping the personal vow never to lie to her again.

  There’d be a lot he’d miss but a lot more than he wouldn’t, assignments like this in particular. Not that he could genuinely recall any that were as similarly cluttered by what he now recognized clearly to be meticulously planned chaos, the reason for which he at last knew and now understood. What he still didn’t know was precisely who those planners were and most important of all, what London would do with the sensation with which he’d presented them.