Brian Freemantle - Red Star Rising

“It’s already a disaster,” said Sir Thomas Sotley, more to himself than to others in the room.

“Yes, sir,” agreed Fish, unsympathetically. “It is a complete and absolute disaster.”

The only totally guaranteed bug-free apparatus was now in the embassy’s basement communications room, and Charlie stopped Harry Fish as he was about to enter the descending elevator.

“I’m on my way down there, too,” announced Charlie, unsure if their long association, which had never developed into a friendship, would be sufficient for what he was going to ask. “But first I need a favor.”

“We do very different jobs,” said the man, cautiously, letting the elevator doors close against him.

“The Russians are trying to push me aside from the investigation,” declared Charlie. “I’ve got to prevent that happening, particularly after what you’ve just discovered.”

“How?” asked Fish, holding back from any additional questions as he listened to what Charlie told him, shaking his head at the finish. “It’ll never work.”

“I can make it work.”

“I won’t swear any formal statements. . let my name be used.”

“Just be there, with me,” urged Charlie. “You won’t be identified.”

“Twenty minutes,” insisted Fish. “I’ve already given London a contact schedule.”

“Twenty minutes,” agreed Charlie. Nodding to the camera still slung around the other man’s neck, Charlie said, “Can I have the images of what I want?”

“I hope to Christ I’m not going to regret this.”

“You won’t,” promised Charlie, wishing he could be sure.

It took them five minutes of Fish’s stipulated schedule to collect buckets, a spade, trowels, and plastic sheeting from the gardeners’ shed Reg Stout had earlier identified to Charlie, which ensured they got the necessary attention of the Russian grounds staff. Three stood watching when they got to where the body had been found, the newly turned soil filling the Russian-dug hole visibly different from that which surrounded it. Charlie demanded from one of them that their overseer be summoned and ordered the man to keep all the Russians not just away but out of sight of what he and Fish were about to do. Charlie, reluctantly, did the digging, gouging a mark in the conference-hall wall with the spade edge, grateful for the effort Fish put into the apparent selection of dirt heaped onto the plastic sheeting.

“You get into any shit over this, you’re on your own,” warned the man, as they walked back to the embassy, their soil samples on the plastic sheet slung between them.

“I owe you,” thanked Charlie, accepting the offered digital camera images from Fish’s camera.

Fish waited while Charlie transferred all the soil onto a fresh piece of sheeting, locked his cubbyhole office, and returned the tools to the gardeners’ shed. In the elevator finally taking them to the communications room, Charlie said, “How bad is this?”

“For a lot of people here, up to and including the ambassador, I’d guess it will be terminal. As it deserves to be.”

“How were the CCTV cameras sabotaged to make them work intermittently as they did?”

“With what’s called breakers, cutting the power on and off, to give the impression of a power interruption. The bugs work on a time system, so that the power goes off completely at whatever specific moment you want the screens to go blank.”

“Does the power actually go off ? Or is it their operation that’s interrupted?”

Fish stopped as they emerged into the basement facility. “What’s your point?”

“Stuff that’s wiped off computer screens can be recovered from a hard drive by specialists, can’t it?”

“With CCTV, you’re talking continuous film that revolves for a certain period and then reverses to record again: that’s why it’s called a loop. Computers are electric: even if something is saved and then erased, it’s possible to recover the ghost from a hard drive.”

“The old loops that were affected? What’s going to happen to them?”

“They get destroyed. We’ve installed new ones.”

“Can I have the old ones?”

“I’m glad I do what I do, not what you do,” said Fish.

“Most of the time I don’t like it much myself,” said Charlie.

It took Charlie almost as long to pack up for dispatch to London the discarded loops, what he considered sufficient soil samples, and to list the significance of Fish’s digital camera images already transmitted to London as it did to send his requests to London. After what he considered a usefully spent day, he was disappointed that his feet still throbbed in tandem at the continuing feeling that he was missing something.

The postal system of Moscow is as haphazard as its swirling winter blizzards, even in the topsy-turvy summer in which the city was now embalmed. In little more than a twenty-four-hour period it would have been impossible for Natalia to have given a written response to Charlie’s note. Despite which, in the unlikely event of her having received it and decided instead to telephone the Savoy, Charlie still waited until long after any delivery before at last calling the number Sergei Pavel had given him for the organized crime bureau at Ulitsa Petrovka. Charlie had forgotten the Russian system of individually assigned numbers, expecting a general switchboard, and was momentarily surprised when the militia colonel personally answered.

“I’d expected contact before now,” said the man, when Charlie identified himself. The voice was bland, practically monotone, without any criticism at the delay.

“There’ve been some unforeseen developments at the embassy.”

There was the hesitation that Charlie hoped to engender and the tone of Pavel’s voice changed. “What unforeseen developments?”

“Things we need to talk about,” generalized Charlie. “Thought I’d give a couple of days, too, for all the other things we discussed at the mortuary to come together. . fuller pathology details, photographs of the scene, further forensic findings, stuff like that.”

“There are a few things, not all,” begrudged the Russian, cautiously.

“I’d hoped we could get together some time today, take it all forward?”

“We’re certain that the murder wasn’t committed anywhere near where the body was found, which makes it a Russian investigation,” declared Pavel, as if he were reading from a prompt card.

Altogether too soon, too quick, judged Charlie: he could afford to bluff more. “That’s intriguing.”

“Why?’ demanded Pavel, the curiosity very evident in the no longer neutral voice.

“It’s not quite either the indication or the impression I’ve been getting from those who’ve come across from London to go through everything at the embassy,” lured Charlie, knowing the arrival of Harry Fish and his team-and their digging expedition the previous afternoon-would have been recorded by the diligent FSB gardener informers, even if Pavel himself was at the moment unaware. “We really do need to meet. Exactly how many of the reports have you managed to assemble?”

“Some photographs. . the preliminary medical report,” stumbled the other man, confronted with something different from what he’d expected.

Charlie doubted that whatever Pavel was minimally offering was actually assembled yet. To give the Russian time to go through the pretense of collation-and doubtless speak to others about the unexpected approach-he said, “Why don’t I come around this afternoon, for us to get started? Three o’clock’s good for me.”

There was another hesitation. “I should have everything together by then, although I can’t guarantee it.”

If the Russian wasn’t sure he could get his own bullshit together in five hours, nothing at all had yet been assembled. Not believing that possible, Charlie said, “It’ll be a start.”