Brian Freemantle - Red Star Burning

“Aubrey Smith still won’t sanction it,” warned Wilkinson.

“He wouldn’t have liked people from whom he believes I’m in physical danger being led to me this morning,” said Charlie.

“How will I get the passports and money to you, if London approves?”

“I’ll call you, personally, at the rezidentura. ”

“I might not get a quick response from London, with so much going on elsewhere.”

“Nine o’clock tomorrow morning, as it’s striking,” said Charlie. “And I know you’ll try to follow me when we split up and my feet hurt too much to fuck about losing you, so I’ll come with you back to the Metro to know where you are.…” He took the London-issued cell phone from his pocket. “Did you pick up the tracker signal?”

“After your first call,” admitted Wilkinson.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” asked Charlie, glad he’d followed his instinct.

“Our orders are to look after you, now we’ve linked up,” reminded Wilkinson. “You don’t have to worry about cell-phone trackers anymore.”

There’d been an element of luck, Stephen Briddle congratulated himself as he saw the two get up from the park bench, but he’d worked most of it out himself after learning from Denning and Beckindale’s calls that Wilkinson wasn’t moving from the circle line’s 986 service, positioning them on clockwise platforms to confirm it and already onboard, waiting, when Charlie finally joined it two stations later. He’d managed to keep up with all the line switches, allowing them the longest possible lead. Because of that intentional distancing and the ski-lift height of the escalators, Briddle had still been inside the Dmitrouskaya station when Charlie and Wilkinson found their park bench. The Metro provided complete concealment throughout their encounter and as they came toward him, Briddle recognized he couldn’t be in a better place not just to continue his surveillance but even to stage Monsford’s demanded fatal accident, aware despite his newness to Moscow that there were at least 150 suicides a year on the underground system and that one extra statistic would not arouse any official suspicion.

Briddle was invisibly within the shadows of the platform food stall by the time the two men rode the escalator down for the simultaneous arrival of a train to board and Wilkinson didn’t pause. Neither did Briddle, joining a noisy group of departing food-stall customers to sit two carriages behind his quarry. Briddle had an unbroken view of the outside platform, which was where, as the train lurched into motion, he saw Charlie not on the train, as he’d imagined, but still standing there. And although there was no obvious recognition, Briddle knew Charlie had seen him, too.

An expectant, serious Jane Ambersom was waiting in the anteroom to Smith’s suite with an equally grave-faced John Passmore when the Director-General flurried in from the Foreign Office, gesturing them to follow him.

“You could call it a Solomon resolution, I suppose,” announced Aubrey Smith. “Elana and Andrei withdrew their kidnap claims and the French are releasing Elana into the custody of our Paris embassy, along with all our people. Andrei’s refused to go with them. He was released into Russian protection. Monsford’s hailing it as a victory.”

“Monsford can’t have heard yet,” said Jane.

“Heard what?” Smith frowned.

“Why I haven’t been able to reach Straughan,” said the woman. “Security didn’t immediately react when he didn’t arrive at Vauxhall Cross this morning: he was sometimes delayed because of his mother. Her caregiver found them but Straughan’s protective cover legend caused a delay in Vauxhall being told. The mother could have been dead since last night, overdosed. Straughan’s death is apparently more recent, delayed probably because of what he did after killing her. I don’t know precisely what was found: we probably never will. There were some letters, I believe. I’ve no idea what else.”

“Could they have been killed?”

“If Monsford wanted them to be,” judged Passmore. “The mother’s dementia left her catatonic. She would have swallowed whatever she was given without knowing who gave it to her. MI6 will have taken over everything by now. There won’t be a public inquest or any pathology details released. James Straughan and his sad mother will simply have ceased ever to have existed.”

“How did we find out?” asked Smith.

“Straughan had listed my private number to be contacted in an emergency. It was the police who called me, when the caregiver gave it to them.”

“He’ll have made some arrangement for you to get whatever he had.”

“We can only hope,” said Jane. “I was just leaving for Berkhamsted when Rebecca called, saying there’d been a mistake: that she was taking over.”

“Damn!” exclaimed Smith.

“Maybe it’ll protect Charlie,” suggested Passmore.

“Maybe,” said the other man. “What’s come from Moscow?”

“Nothing yet from Wilkinson, but we know from the others Charlie was using the Moscow Metro,” said Passmore. “Somehow he found out Preston and Warren were support for Wilkinson. He made cell-phone contact, warning that Denning and Beckindale were following. Warren thinks they decoyed them off, but he’s not sure.”

“If Charlie used our phone the tracker would have been activated.”

“It was,” confirmed Passmore. “Both here and in Moscow. MI6 would have got his location.”

“And we haven’t heard from Wilkinson,” repeated Passmore.

“When the hell am I going to get ahead of this, start calling the shots instead of trailing behind in somebody else’s dirt?” demanded Smith, unusually venting his anger.

Charlie Muffin was thinking something similar as he replaced the kiosk telephone after being told by Natalia that it was impossible to meet that night. His call before that, to David Halliday, hadn’t been answered, either. And there’d been more luck than tradecraft expertise in his evading Stephan Briddle, one of possibly three men he’d been warned were trying to kill him.

They’d kissed but perfunctorily, acquaintances rather than husband and wife, and afterward remained standing although not together, Radtsic staying close to where he’d greeted Elana just inside the door, Elana, still wearing the vivid red dress, wandering aimlessly around the conservatory like a disappointed prospective buyer.

“This isn’t how it was supposed to be,” said Radtsic, breaking the awkwardness.

“It was my duty to come but I didn’t want to,” said the woman. She stopped close to a corner of the windowed room, frowning up at a roof joint. “They’ll be listening to everything, I suppose?”

“And filming,” confirmed Radtsic. “What’s happened to Andrei?”

“There were always three Russians in the room. After Andrei’s outburst they asked him to go with them, so they could protect him. They asked me, too. I refused. The French officials there asked Andrei if he wanted to go with them. He said yes, at once, and left with them. They would have been your people, wouldn’t they: FSB?”

“Yes,” Radtsic confirmed again. “What did Andrei say to you before he went?”

“Just repeated that he never wanted to see or hear from us again. That we were dead to him, both of us.”

“He’s my son: supposed to respect me and do what I tell him!” It was a plea, not an angry demand.

“He’s a man: a young one but still a man,” corrected Elana, finally slumping into a overpadded, solitary positioned easy chair making it impossible for Radtsic to sit close to her. “He doesn’t respect you anymore, Maxim Mikhailovich. He hates and despises you. And now me, for coming here to you.”