Brian Freemantle - Red Star Burning

“About eighteen months.” Everything totally honest, Charlie reminded himself. He needed their help, not their antagonism.

The woman shuffled hurriedly between several sheets of paper from her dossier before looking up. “We know the precise dates of your fake defection, of course: it was a recorded operation-”

“And a successful one, discrediting a genuine defector with whom I broke out of Wormwood Scrubs after he’d been jailed for forty years as a Soviet spy at the height of the Cold War,” broke in Charlie, anxiously establishing what he considered the first of several important facts in his favor.

“I’m familiar with the records.…” Jane paused, to counter Charlie’s defense with another point. “The official records, I mean. So, once more calculated against the known dates and those you have provided, your affair began about six months after the Russian acceptance that your defection was genuine?”

“Yes,” confirmed Charlie, cautiously. He shouldn’t have interjected: she was obviously building up to what she considered an undermining question.

“Tell us about those six months.”

“What about them?” hedged Charlie, reluctant to answer such a generality.

“The Russians had accepted you: believed you had joined their little band of traitors. Did you ever meet, socialize, with those other defectors? With Philby or Blake, for instance?”

“No.”

“Never?”

“Never.”

“Are you sure?”

Charlie hesitated, seeking the trap. Unable to find it, he smiled, condescendingly shaking his head. “It’s hardly likely that I would forget meeting such people, is it?”

“Unless you’re lying!” she said.

Not undermining at all, if that was her best attempt. “I am not lying!”

“What job did the Russians give you, having accepted you as genuine?”

He could use this question, Charlie recognized. “I was assigned to a training school.”

“What sort of training school?” There was a note of triumph in the woman’s voice.

“A training school for intended KGB intelligence officers,” answered Charlie, comfortably.

“Intended to operate in which countries?” The triumph was growing.

“The English-speaking West: the United Kingdom, America, Canada.”

Jane Ambersom again staged her preparing pause, and when she did speak she spaced her words to heighten her supposed incredulity. “You-taught-KGB-agents-selected-to-operate-against-the-United-Kingdom?”

“No,” Charlie denied, seizing his chance. “My function was to assess during one-to-one sessions-one spy was never allowed to encounter another-whether their training was sufficient for them to assimilate successfully into a Western culture without arousing suspicion. I handled a total of eight. In each case I dismissed their training as inadequate. By doing so I gained limited access but comprehensive insight into Russian espionage-training methods and systems, about which I created a manual on my return to this country. I believe that manual was later used as a textbook at our training academies. I also, of course, learned the identities of the eight with whom I worked, although the names were obviously not those they were assigned in the West. Over the course of the four years after my return to this country, in addition to active field assignments, I regularly examined photographs of Russians posted under diplomatic cover to the Russian embassies in London, Washington, D.C., and Ottawa. I managed to identify five, none of whom were expelled but allowed to remain, observing the principle that the spy you know is better than the one you don’t. All, I believe, were fed disinformation by us and the counterespionage organizations of America and Canada.” Charlie paused, dry throated, and gestured toward Jane Ambersom’s dossier. “Everything I’ve told you is set out in greater detail in my file, even the names of the eight Russians. You should be able to confirm it all very easily.”

Jane Ambersom was puce faced yet again. Monsford actually had his hands cupped over his face to conceal his reaction to the put-down. Smith’s head was lowered intently toward the floor. And Charlie burned with self-fury. The bloody woman had got under his skin. But what the fuck was he doing fighting her, humiliating her, like this! He couldn’t afford to fight or humiliate anyone upon whom he now depended. He desperately needed each and every possible assistance to get Natalia and Sasha out of Moscow, as desperately as he needed to convince them that he’d never, ever, acted against the service to which he’d dedicated his life. And he wasn’t going to achieve any of that in confronting this supercilious, mannish woman: this woman! echoed mockingly in his mind. Every single time he antagonized any of them he pushed further away the possibility of rescuing from God knew what the only two people of importance in his life: the only two people in his life.

“You were able to cultivate your relationship with Natalia Fedova as well as working at the spy school?” uncertainly resumed Jane.

“Easily,” said Charlie, determined against further confrontation. “Natalia officially comes within the jurisdiction of the analysis division but her predominant function is debriefing, for which she has the Russian equivalent of a master’s degree in psychology and a track record of marathon proportions. The Russians attach great importance to the psychology of their field agents, as we do. Which creates another function, that of maintaining and monitoring the continuing psychological capability of about-to-graduate intelligence officers facing, for the first time, the reality of being uprooted from the life they know and transposed into an entirely different, alien culture. That brought her frequently to the training school to which I was assigned on the outskirts of Moscow, about five miles beyond Prazskaja.”

“What was the purpose of your false defection?”

He’d already covered that, although not in detail: she was running out of impetus. “In 1988 a Russian agent only ever identified by the name Edwin Sampson was jailed for forty years. He was considered one of the most damaging spies ever to be uncovered in this country but we didn’t know the full extent of what he’d done, apart from the barest evidence we’d managed to get together to convict him: he never confessed or admitted anything. I was put in Wormwood Scrubs, supposedly jailed for fourteen years, also for spying. It was fixed that we’d share the same cell, in which over the course of time I’d gain his trust and get some indication of what else he’d done. It wasn’t anticipated the KGB would try to free him, as they did with George Blake and which indicated the importance they attached to him. But when it emerged that they intended to do just that, it was decided I should appear to defect with him in the hope of learning what made him so important. Which I did. The idea-”

“Was that after a period of time, with the help of our people in the British embassy, you’d pretend to be disillusioned with Russia and flee back to this country,” broke in Jane.

“Yes,” agreed Charlie. “With the added benefit of all I’d learned at the spy school.”

“With such a history no one was going to doubt your loyalty, were they?” persisted Jane.

“No one has, until now. And you’re wrong.”

“But there’s good reason to doubt you now, suddenly presented as we are with a wife who’s a serving officer in Russia’s external intelligence,” challenged Jane. “Is that all she is, your wife? Or could she also be your Control through whom you’re supposed to liaise with Moscow after she joins you here, which you’ve told us has consistently been the plan?”