Brian Freemantle - Red Star Burning

Radtsic covered his hesitation by lighting a fresh cigarette from the stub of the old. “I told you I would cooperate.”

“Very full cooperation.”

“We can decide all that when I get there.”

“No, sir,” refused Jacobson. “There must be complete understanding between us now.”

“You are recording this conversation!” demanded the Russian, looking sideways for the first time.

“Yes. I could, of course, have lied and said no, but I want everything to be honest and clear between us.”

“I respect and appreciate that.”

“And I would appreciate an answer.”

Radtsic hesitated further. Then he said: “Of course I will cooperate. That’s the deal, isn’t it?”

“Yes, sir,” confirmed Jacobson. “That’s the deal.”

The warning of an official visit was always made by a recorded voice quoting Charlie’s four-digit protection designation, 1716. He had to acknowledge it with a binary response, the first sequence by using his telephone keypad to provide a separate five-digit identification, 10063. That had to be verified by his verbally reciting, for voiceprint recognition, a different number-1316-to separate recording equipment. His failure to provide both in sequential order or wrongly numbering either was his alarm signal that he believed himself to be compromised.

Charlie’s telephone rang at eight thirty on the morning of his return, slightly earlier than he’d expected although he was already shaved and showered, waiting. By the time he completed the answering ritual he had the impression of the walls closing claustrophobically around him, coupled with a flicker of nostalgia for the brief freedom of his Jersey escape. He sloughed off the memory by looking at continuous TV news programs, particularly for any coverage of the impending Russian presidential elections, about which there had been intense international speculation in the assassination’s aftermath, of which his incarceration was a living-death outcome. There was nothing, as it had been for weeks now.

There were security CCTV monitors relaying into three rooms of the safe house. Charlie watched the arrival of his case officer from the one in the kitchen. Brian Cooper was a balding, rotund testimony to the more flamboyant style of Savile Row tailoring, to which Charlie took as much attention-attracting exception as Cooper did of his shambling, trouser-shone charity-shop preference.

Charlie opened the door at the first ring, matching the other man’s critical head-to-toe appraisal. Standing aside for Cooper to enter, Charlie said: “I wasn’t sure if it would be you who’d come.”

“You ready?” Cooper demanded, not moving. The voice was brittle-toned public school.

“Ready for what?”

“It’s not going to be here.” The suit was a muted gray and Charlie guessed he could have achieved a closer shave from the sharpness of the trouser crease than he’d got earlier from his razor.

“What isn’t?”

“What do you think? I asked if you were ready.”

“We going far?” asked Charlie, stumbling awkwardly into step behind the other man, vaguely disconcerted that he hadn’t anticipated the inevitable inquest being elsewhere. It indicated greater irritation than he’d imagined.

Cooper didn’t reply, jerking his head toward the back of the anonymous, unwashed Ford. All the glass was smoked, even the fully raised screen between the driver and his rear-seat passengers.

“I asked if we were going far,” Charlie repeated.

“I don’t know,” said the man, not bothering to look across the car.

It was possible Cooper didn’t, Charlie accepted. The Ford made a full, pursuit-testing circle around Sloane Square and two sharp, unsignaled diversions before resuming a gradually emerging northern route.

“Maybe I should have packed an overnight bag?” Charlie tried again.

“I’m not interested in small-talk shit,” announced Cooper, abruptly. “You’re one great big pain in the ass. You want to go on being stupid enough to do what you’re doing, whatever the fuck that is, that’s fine by me. You want to commit suicide, for Christ’s sake hurry up and do it so we can start looking after people who deserve to be looked after!”

“I’m sorry if I’ve made your life difficult,” apologized Charlie, meaning it. They were clearing London but veering westward: Buckinghamshire, perhaps, maybe even farther, guessed Charlie. Aubrey Smith lived in Buckinghamshire. Whatever the irritation, it surely wouldn’t have got to Director-General level!

Cooper was looking fixedly out his side window, his body partially, oddly, turned to show his back, which Charlie thought childish. Taking operational difficulties personally would explain why the man was limited to adult baby-minding. From a briefly glimpsed signpost Charlie saw that they were definitely in Buckinghamshire, although well off any major roads. He could see sufficiently through the separating glass to gauge the driver’s divided concentration between the road and the dashboard-mounted GPS, from which Charlie guessed they were nearing their destination. Beside him, the back-turned case officer was showing no recognition, from which Charlie assumed that the man genuinely didn’t know where they were going, which was confirmed when Cooper had to snatch for an armrest support when the driver unexpectedly turned into an unmarked driveway. The gate was set at least twenty meters back from its original supporting pillars, the centerpiece of a secondary, razor-wire-topped wall. The wire hedge was broken close to the gate head to accommodate the camera that swiveled at their approach to record the car’s registration, to which the driver added by manually directing an electronic fob to a sensor that Charlie couldn’t detect. The admission precautions were completed by the man lowering the driver’s window to announce their presence into a door-level entry phone.

Almost directly beyond the gate, the Ford turned off the main driveway and onto a smaller but still paved road that ran between totally concealing, close-together trees and low shrubbery that unexpectedly ballooned out into a clearing in the center of which was a half-timbered building Charlie guessed originally to have been a hunting lodge. There were four cars, all anonymous Fords, regimented to the left of its heavy oak door. Charlie’s driver went to its right. A dark-suited woman emerged before the car stopped. She came to Cooper’s door, gesturing.

“Stay where you are,” ordered the case officer, as he got out.

Charlie was uneasy. His disappearing required a reprimand but this was at a far higher level. Why? The only logical answer was that he hadn’t been as professional as he’d imagined: that they’d followed him every shuffling step of the way to Jersey, knew about the bank arrangements to fund Natalia, and were about to strap him onto the rack and start twirling the bone-cracking wheel until he confessed all.

When he was told to get out, Charlie followed the woman to the lodge, but unhurriedly, hesitating at the sudden darkness beyond the heavy oak door. Predictably there was a display of antlered heads along both wood-paneled walls. The woman stood at the end of the hall, shifting impatiently. When he reached her, Charlie said: “You were too fast for me.”

“I imagine most people are,” she came back, thrusting open a side door for him to enter.

A quick shot or confirmation that they had been with him in Jersey? wondered Charlie, as he saw the assembled group behind a long table at the end of another paneled room lined with a wildlife massacre of glass-eyed trophies, here interspersed with the heads of a tiger and two bears. Aubrey Smith was at the center of four men, with Deputy Director Jane Ambersom to his left. The Director-General was dwarfed by the man next to him, appearing almost a foot taller, even though he was sitting, and with his jacket spread to release a bulging belly couching a bull-like chest. The other two were on Smith’s right. There would, Charlie knew, be audio- and visual-recording equipment, which made him curious about the small, unmanned replay machine on a separate table.