Brian Freemantle - Red Star Burning

“I haven’t been told yet how they’re going to get us out but it’ll almost certainly be by air. Luggage, even luggage going into the hold, is photographed. This amount-and these pictures-would be opened and trap us.”

“I can’t go with nothing!”

“You have to go with nothing. Everything is going to be new: our lives, our names, house, everything. All new. No history.” It was madness talking, even softly, like this!

“I can’t,” she pleaded. “That’ll be … that’ll be dying.”

“Staying here will be dying. Literally.” This was asking too much of her.

“I don’t care! I don’t want to go. Won’t go!”

“It wouldn’t just be us. It would be Andrei, too.”

“That’s not fair.”

“That’s reality.”

“Help me, Maxim! Please do something to help me!”

“I will. I promise I’ll do something.” What? he wondered, scrubbing the perspiration from his face with the back of his hand. Until this moment he’d never considered-had no conception-what field agents had to endure.

Straughan did compromise by leaving a note for his mother’s caregiver instead of waiting for the woman’s arrival, which he normally did. He set off on the seven A.M. train and was at Vauxhall Cross by eight thirty and had personally reconfirmed the identification, determined from previous experience of Monsford’s irrational impatience against any oversight reassuring himself that he topped the man’s morning appointment book.

As he wasn’t summoned until past eleven, Straughan knew Monsford had seen someone else before him and was doubly glad he hadn’t bothered with an instant alert the night before. Playing out the melodrama to test the Director’s reaction, Straughan unspeakingly placed the three enhanced infrared photographs on Monsford’s desk and stood back, waiting.

“Who is he?” asked Monsford, not looking up from the prints.

“Boris Kuibyshev,” identified Straughan. “Third secretary in the finance division of the Russian embassy here. These were taken last night outside Charlie Muffin’s flat.”

Monsford smiled up. “So my idea of leaking Charlie Muffin’s address worked!”

You self-serving fuckpig, Straughan thought. He said: “Yes.”

“Is he on the known list?”

Straughan shook his head. “We’ve had the flat under twenty-four-hour watch for the last two days, comparing every photograph against every print of the entire Russian legation and Russian trade and bank organizations. Kuibyshev wasn’t flagged until now.”

“So Smith’s people won’t have picked him up?”

“Not unless they’ve mounted the same watch and done the same face-by-face comparison,” said Straughan. “And my team haven’t seen anyone they recognize or suspect to be from across the river.” He hesitated, intent upon squeezing a recorded accolade from the Director, who’d very positively activated his newly installed audio system. “This gives you unarguable proof that we’re better qualified than MI5 to run things, doesn’t it?”

Monsford grimaced rather than smiled. “Precisely what I wanted to achieve!”

“And there’s something else: something that could be connected although there’s no peg to hang it on at the moment,” continued Straughan. “There was an overnight cable from David Halliday of rumors of something happening within the FSB.”

“I don’t trust Halliday,” declared Monsford. “He was close to Muffin in Moscow during the Lvov business but didn’t give us any indication to get us involved.”

“He told us Charlie didn’t confide in him,” reminded Straughan, defensively.

“He must have known something. What’s Halliday’s source?”

“Cocktail-party gossip from a German embassy reception.”

“Tell him to harden it up, beyond gossip. But tell Jacobson to stay away from Halliday. I don’t want him involved in anything to do with Radtsic.”

“And I’ll maintain the watch on the flat: see if we can pick up any more new faces.”

“Let’s have what Shakespeare called the observed of all observers,” quoted Monsford.

Straughan exaggerated his sigh. “Did Smith’s people sanitize the flat?”

Monsford’s face clouded at a question to which he didn’t have an answer. “Why?”

“If I were controlling the Russian surveillance, I’d tell them to break in if the place continues to appear empty. By continuing to doorstep it, they must believe he’s coming back.”

“Good point,” allowed Monsford. “I’ll try to get an indication. Smith needs all the help and advice he can get.”

“What do you think about Charlie Muffin?” persisted the operations director. “From the personnel and assignment files, do you think he’s clean?”

Monsford’s facial contortion really was a grimace this time. “I’d come down in his favor. The only thing that doesn’t make sense is his marrying a woman in the FSB and before that the KGB.”

“Don’t the personnel assessments make a point of his not abiding by any rules?” asked Straughan, who believed he’d read everything more thoroughly than had the Director.

“That’s not just breaking rules: that’s the suicide wish Smith had the man examined for. He would have known he could never survive if it ever became known.”

“So would she, but she still married him,” argued Straughan.

“If you’re making a point I’m missing it,” complained Monsford.

“If he felt enough about her to go through a marriage ceremony-and she for him-he’ll do anything and everything to get back to Russia to help her, whether Smith agrees or not.”

Monsford frowned, disconcerted by another argument he hadn’t understood. “Isn’t that our whole objective?”

“I thought it was a factor worthwhile stressing to Smith.”

“I’ve already got it flagged,” lied Monsford.

“I don’t want to keep Radtsic on hold. We’re ready, apart from the security on a safe house.”

“I’m seeing Smith at five to confront him with all the rest we’ve got.”

“Do you want me to wait until you get back?” asked Straughan, warily. His mother’s caregiver left at six.

“Yes,” decided the Director. “By then I expect to hear something even more helpful from Moscow.”

Awkward bastard, Straughan thought. He was sorry now that he’d asked instead of risking the wrath the following morning.

Before he’d completed his exercise-period reconnaissance of the outside security and failed on his return to his upstairs cell, as he had on his exit from it, to identify all the interior precautions, Charlie finally acknowledged that escape from his hunting-lodge prison was impossible.

Charlie slumped into a leather-creaking easy chair, head bowed to his chest again to continue the appearance of cowed acceptance, letting another half-formed idea harden. What could he do-what could he say or imply-to convince Aubrey Smith and Jane Ambersom that it was essential to their interests that Natalia and Sasha be brought out of Russia? And not just them. Gerald Monsford was involved, too. Why? Charlie abruptly asked himself, calling to mind his surprise at the MI6 Director’s presence at his initial interrogation. Strict interpretation of the internal and external divisions between the two intelligence services would normally have decreed the Lvov affair to be that of MI6, except that it had begun with the finding in the Moscow grounds of the British embassy-internationally and diplomatically designated UK territory-of a man who had been tortured before being murdered. And even though his investigation later crossed MI6 boundaries, Aubrey Smith held off the participation demands of Gerald Monsford. So what had changed to bring Monsford in now? Could there still be an internal power problem, even though Jeffrey Smale’s overthrow had failed? Or had Monsford been invited in by a still apprehensive Director-General in the hope of providing sideways-shifting blame for an as-yet-unknown disaster? For which his being married to a serving FSB officer would unquestionably qualify.