Brian Freemantle - Red Star Burning

“What I told you is that it’s consistently been my hope that she would join me here, but that she has always refused, held as she is by that near-mystical bond Russians have for their country,” corrected Charlie, maintaining control but letting his argument come out in a rush. “If I’d been turned and married Natalia for the reason you’ve suggested, she would have been ordered to return with me in the first place, wouldn’t she? And I wouldn’t have told you that she was a member of the FSB. There’d be an unbreakable cover legend, giving her a background as far as possible from any connection with espionage. And would I, as a KGB-cum-FSB double, have destroyed a KGB/FSB operation eighteen years in creation to put Moscow literally in the Oval Office?”

Before Jane Ambersom could respond, the Director-General said: “There is an alternative way to judge this. You could be telling the truth. The FSB could have discovered your relationship with Natalia Fedova and be forcing her to make the approaches to trap you into going back to Russia. Where you, as the person who wrecked that eighteen-year-long operation, would face punishment it’s hard to conceive, judged against the ways they’ve killed the people they’ve eliminated so far…”

“… Unless they made you watch whatever they wanted to do to Natalia and the child before killing you as bestially as possible,” completed Monsford.

“That’s what I believe they want to do,” admitted Charlie, almost inaudibly.

“You think we’re going to let you go back to Russia to stop it happening, don’t you?” taunted the woman.

“Irrespective of whether it’s agreed I go back, they’ll do whatever they want to them both,” pleaded Charlie. “That can’t be allowed to happen. They’ve got to be got out!”

“There’s no way they can be,” said Jane.

“All I had to do was sit and listen to Jane Ambersom stumble about like a bull in a china shop,” gloated the MI6 director. “Christ, we’re lucky being rid of her.”

“Cow,” corrected James Straughan, who always sought to lighten his encounters with someone as unpredictable as Gerald Monsford, particularly when they were alone, which they were now. “It would be a cow in a china shop, not a bull.”

“Cow is certainly more apposite,” agreed Monsford, who’d enjoyed his manipulation of that day’s meeting as he had those that preceded it. “Charlie’s on his knees, pleading for his wife and child to be rescued. Jane came close to orgasm telling him it couldn’t be done.”

“You broached our idea with Smith yet?”

The other man shook his head. “I need exactly the right moment. Smith believes it’s his option to make and his operation to initiate, so that’s how I’ve got to make it seem.”

“Everything’s virtually in place,” assured Straughan, although cautiously. He knew better than to make promises that weren’t guaranteed.

“No more calls from Moscow?”

“Smith hasn’t mentioned any more and I’m sure he would if there’d been more. I don’t think he feels very secure. What about Jacobson?”

“Anxious to get the stuff I’m assembling. The passports for Radtsic and his wife are in the diplomatic pouch tonight.”

“That should reassure Radtsic.”

“Something’s got to, according to Jacobson. He thinks Radtsic is getting critical.”

“Tell Jacobson to give Radtsic whatever assurances the man needs. I don’t want the frightened old bastard collapsing on us,” ordered Monsford. “What about Paris?”

“All in hand.”

“I want something else,” announced the Director.

“What?”

“My own recording system, here in this office. Getting Radtsic safely here is going to be the coup of our lives. I don’t want any foul-ups through faulty memories, which came close with the Lvov business.”

The only memory at fault with the Lvov business is yours, thought Straughan: and if there’d been a proper record you wouldn’t be overflowing the chair you’re sitting in. Aloud he said: “I’ll organize it.”

“And I want personal, manual control. We mustn’t overlook the Official Secrets Act and necessary security clearances.”

“No,” agreed Straughan. “We shouldn’t overlook that.”

Charlie Muffin for the first time felt engulfed in paralyzing, impotent helplessness. He’d faced seemingly impossible, about-to-die crises before but always been able to escape, sometimes badly bruised, sometimes badly burned-often physically, too often metaphysically-always survived. Because every time it had only ever been he who’d had to survive, no one else to worry about or to consider. Now it wasn’t only he. It was Natalia-probably bewildered, doubtless confused, with only the vaguest indication of what had happened-and innocent, vulnerable Sasha, whom he’d always pledged to care for and protect.

He wouldn’t fail them, Charlie determined. He was enduring this animal-farm charade because the finance and facilities of the combined agencies were his best chance of rescuing Natalia and Sasha. None of which, from Jane Ambersom’s almost sadistic dismissal earlier that day, were going to be made available to him. So it had to be just he, alone. Better, far better. He’d never liked-never trusted-other people with him or acting on his behalf: not so much from doubts of their loyalty but from doing things differently, less effectively, than he could.

Doing it by himself wasn’t going to be easy, Charlie realistically acknowledged. Although he’d always insisted on working alone, there’d usually been an embassy upon which he could call for falsely named passports and air or road escape and cyberspace communications, if the ultimate shit hit the ever-spinning fan. And money: unlimited operational finance, safe openingly available whenever he needed it, which he always had, the more so since his marriage to Natalia. He’d date-staged the transfers from Jersey, so there’d still be some left there, once he’d got away from here. That wouldn’t be as easy as slipping his leash the first time. But this was different. This, quite literally, was life or death: Natalia and Sasha’s life or death. Nothing was going to prevent his keeping them alive: alive and eventually with him. At last.

James Straughan, who was an asexual bachelor, lived in Berkhamsted, almost sixty miles south of Charlie’s Buckinghamshire interrogation lodge, with an almost totally disoriented mother whose evening meal he had just finished feeding her when his telephone rang.

“We’ve got a match,” declared the duty officer at the Vauxhall headquarters of MI6.

“No doubt?” demanded Straughan, continuing with generalities because his was an insecure line, although the London call was being patched through a router.

“None. What do you want me to do?”

“Keep everything until I get there tomorrow.” If he told Gerald Monsford tonight, the awkward bastard would probably have him immediately return to London personally to courier the stuff to the man’s Cheyne Walk flat. Straughan considered cleaning, bathing, and getting his mother ready for bed a far more important duty.

Maxim Mikhailovich Radtsic patiently stood on the other side of the bed, watching Elana set aside her assortment of things, knowing from every neatly stacked item, predominantly photographs, that it was a selection she’d made and unmade several times before and hated her having to do it yet again.

“That’s everything,” she said triumphantly, looking up.

“No,” he refused, bluntly. Watched by Elana, it had taken Radtsic two hours of fruitless searching for listening devices but he still insisted on loud radio music to defeat any monitoring installation.

“I’ve kept everything to the absolute minimum!” she protested, her voice wavering. “That’s all our memories.”