Brian Freemantle: Red Star Rising

Not regretted by me, thought Charlie. He smiled at the Russian detective. “I look forward to our working together. I presume you’re based at Ulitsa Petrovka?”

Pavel frowned. “You know Moscow that well?”

Charlie felt a spurt of annoyance at his smart-assed mention of the location of the organized crime bureau headquarters. It gave them a pointer they didn’t need to have and which he hadn’t intended to give them. But if the thin-faced, balding man was FSB, then a background intelligence check was automatic. With no alternative, Charlie said, “I’ve served a posting here before.”

“Which explains your excellent Russian,” said the man, smilingly, whom Charlie suspected was FSB.

It didn’t necessarily, but Charlie was anxious not to stray any further. “And why I was seconded here specifically to inquire into this murder,” he said. He looked between Pavel and the medical examiner. “I’d welcome a full copy of your pathology report, including a skin residue analysis to establish if the fingers were burned by acid. And any forensic findings from the examination of the clothes. There’ll be toxicology and stomach contents analyses, too, won’t there?”

“Of course,” said Pavel, tightly.

The pathologist nodded, but didn’t speak.

“I don’t think you handled that very well back there,” complained Dawkins, in the car ride back to the embassy. He was a very tall, angularly featured man who found it difficult to keep his fair hair from flopping forward over his forehead. The public school accent was sharp enough to cut glass.

“How’s that?” Charlie sighed. How was it he always seemed to get under people’s noses, like a bad smell?

“Our government doesn’t want the bodies of murdered Russians strewn around its embassy grounds.”

“I didn’t leave it there.”

“Don’t be fatuous!” protested the man, whom Charlie estimated to be at least twenty years his junior. “What I mean is that it would have been better to have gone along with what the man Pavel suggested: that it’s a Russian murder of a Russian national and better left to their people to handle, distancing ourselves as quickly as possible.”

“No it wouldn’t,” rejected Charlie, curtly. “I’ve been specifically seconded here to ensure the British government isn’t sucked into an as-yet-unknown embarrassment or difficulty. And I’m not going to succeed in doing that by sitting on my ass, waiting for other people to tell me only what they want me to hear.”

“What sort of difficulty could there possibly be, apart from his being found where he was?” demanded the younger man.

“You’re assuming he’s Russian because the clothes are Russian. What if he turns out to be British?”

“What!” Dawkins turned across the car in his alarm, swerving it out of the lane.

“Easy!” said Charlie, calmly. “I’m just floating a ‘what if.’ Trying to suggest why we’ve got to be involved from the inside, not kept outside.”

“You certainly worked hard to ensure that,” criticized the diplomat.

“How the hell could I talk to people without knowing their names and where, hopefully, to get hold of them?” asked Charlie, impatiently. He’d ended the mortuary encounter by insisting upon the identity and contact number of every Russian in the room, even the Foreign Ministry official. “You don’t ask, you don’t get-one of the truisms of life.”

“I need to be kept fully informed of everything you do, everyone with whom you get involved,” demanded Dawkins. “I want to be told everything you have in mind, well before you take any action. Those are the ambassador’s orders: I’m your channel to him, at all times.”

Bollocks, thought Charlie. “I know the rules.”

“Why didn’t you tell me you’d served here before?”

“I’ve scarcely had time to tell anyone anything. It was a long time ago.” Five years wasn’t that long, Charlie mentally corrected himself. Sasha would be eight now. Upon reflection he didn’t have too much to worry about whatever checks Mikhail Guzov, the correctly guessed FSB officer, made about him through their internal intelligence records. He knew Natalia had sanitized both their files. It was even possible that his records wouldn’t have been kept by the FSB. Hers would still exist because Natalia had been retained after the KGB changeover and was still a serving officer, although he didn’t know in what division. They’d never talked about their separate intelligence functions, apart from their initial, professional encounter.

“How long were you here?”

“About four years,” said Charlie, intentionally vague.

“A difficult time?”

“You know I can’t give you any indication of my work. But I can tell you we certainly didn’t find any dead bodies in the grounds.”

“Sorry. I shouldn’t have asked you.” Dawkins retreated, embarrassed at showing his inexperience. “The current contingent, MI6 as well as MI5, want to meet you. I think they were surprised you didn’t come to the embassy before going to the mortuary.”

“My coming here specifically for this investigation was to distance them and the embassy,” reminded Charlie. Which had been his accustomed and all-too-frequent role in a very varied espionage career, sparing others with more delicate hands the distaste of getting them dirtied.

“I don’t think they appreciated that, any more than I did,” said the diplomat. “And the housing officer also wants to see you.”

“I’m sure he does,” accepted Charlie, who had anticipated the confrontation. Dawkins had taken the long way round to reach the British embassy, driving now parallel to the Moskva River along Smolenskaya Naberezhnaya. Charlie gazed nostalgically out at the familiar, once happy surroundings. Before the building of the new embassy, he and Natalia had pushed Sasha along this bordering river embankment, after he’d managed the Moscow posting to return to marry her. They’d talked-perhaps fantasized was a better word-during those walks about their future together. Need it to have been such a fantasy? Not really, not even in those newly thawed days at the supposed end of the Cold War. All it would have needed was Natalia’s acceptance that she’d have to leave Moscow and her beloved Russia, a compromise she’d never been able to make. Nor could he make the matching compromise himself. He’d believed his inevitable discovery as a British intelligence officer-even a former intelligence officer if he’d resigned, which he had been prepared to do-would have made his remaining there impossible. Certainly, Natalia would not have been allowed to continue in the KGB or its succeeding FSB.

“I don’t think he’s happy.”

The louder-voiced repetition broke into Charlie’s reverie. They were talking about the housing officer, he remembered. “I’ll talk to him,” he promised, welcoming the appearance of the four-towered embassy, although not the inevitable irritating confrontations. Bollocks to those, too.

“You’ve got all my numbers, including my home and mobile,” said Dawkins, as they entered the building with its modern-art etchings dominating the reception area. “Don’t forget what I told you about wanting to know everything you do before you do it.”

“Indelibly engraved in my mind,” assured Charlie, emptily.

The reception-desk security officer closely examined Charlie’s ID, up to and including camera confirmation of his facial and eye characteristics, and insisted upon accompanying Charlie to the embassy intelligence section offices, despite Charlie’s assurance that he knew the way.

“Everything’s been tightened up,” explained the guard.

“Bit late now, isn’t it?” remarked Charlie.