Brian Freemantle: Red Star Rising

“Which authorities?” broke in Charlie.

“I wasn’t told. You’ll have to ask Reg Stout. He’s in charge of both internal and external security. There were a lot of people around-”

“How close to the body?”

“Stout’s people were very close, like right next to it. Stout told the rest of us to stay back. When the Russians arrived, they told Stout and his men to move back. A man I assumed to be the forensic pathologist spent about twenty minutes examining the body before it was put into a body bag and then into an ambulance. The police-I assumed they were police, although not all of them wore uniforms-looked around, spoke to Dawkins, and then left.”

“Why Dawkins?” asked Charlie. And why hadn’t the bloody man told him about being at the scene on their way back from the mortuary?

“He’s responsible for embassy administration.”

“What about the ambassador? Wasn’t he in any way involved?”

“He came out when the Russians first arrived and spoke to Dawkins. He left as the body was being removed.”

“Did he talk to any of the Russians?”

“Not that I saw. And I’m sure I was there all the time that the ambassador was.”

“Did the Russians take soil samples from where the head and shoulders lay?”

There was another hesitation. “I’m not sure. I think so.”

Shit, thought Charlie, concerned about the amount of blood residue. “What about photographs?”

“They certainly took photographs. A lot, it seemed to me. I. .” she started, but stopped as the phone rang. She answered it. “He’s here with me,” she said, offering the receiver to Charlie. “It’s Howard Barrett, the housing and facilities officer.”

“I’ve been waiting since you came back from the mortuary to arrange your accommodation.” It was another glass-cutting accent.

“I’m staying at the Savoy.”

“I am responsible for the housing of embassy personnel. Which makes me also responsible for the applicable budget. The Savoy is not on the permitted list of outside accommodation. If you insist on living outside, we must consult that list and rehouse you.”

“Howard, you will not be required to pay whatever bills I incur at the Savoy so your budget is not endangered. We’re not going to consult any list or have any sort of discussion about anything.”

“I have not received any authorization from London, which is necessary under the regulations.”

Just as there was a regulation forbidding the questioning of the man who found the body of a murder victim, thought Charlie. “You want London’s approval, you go ahead and ask for it.”

“You go out of your way to upset people?” asked Paula-Jane, when Charlie put down the receiver.

“Always seems to happen, no matter how hard I try to avoid it.” He’d been out of the field for too long and had forgotten the bureaucratic madrigal of embassy existence, Charlie recognized. It wasn’t going to help him.

Charlie Muffin had taken his time, as he always did, checking the intruder trap in his hotel room-ensuring that the drawers he’d left slightly protruding hadn’t been pushed closed after a search and that their specially arranged contents were as he’d left them and that flaps pushed into pockets hadn’t been correctly replaced outside-satisfied after almost an hour that no one had entered. Now he sat hunched at the corner stool of the bar, his back instinctively protected by its abutting wall, wishing that the vodka glass into which he was gazing was a crystal ball to tell him the last time an assignment had begun as badly as this one. He certainly couldn’t remember. Which made it a wise move to have concluded the encounter with Paula-Jane with so many initial questions unanswered and leave the embassy, needing to clear his head and to calculate just how many mistakes had already been made. Or had been allowed to be made. He really had forgotten the head-in-the-sand mentality of embassy life.

Had too much already been avoided or ignored for him to pick up all the dropped pieces? Charlie wondered. He couldn’t allow there to be, came the immediate determination. The poor faceless, one-armed bastard hadn’t survived but Charlie had to, as he’d always survived. But this time could be difficult. He’d never known the department so positively divided as it had been by Aubrey Smith’s promotion over Jeffrey Smale, nor for that division to be so marked by Smith’s consistent operational failures against the litany of successes controlled by his deputy. What Charlie did know was that on this assignment he was very definitely between two warring men, with Aubrey Smith seeing it as his positive last chance and Jeffrey Smale regarding it as the potential coup de grace in the fight to the promotional death. Which was why, with bizarre irony, both men had for the first time ever been in perfect accord that he got the Moscow assignment. Which, even more bizarrely, Charlie welcomed despite its close-to-overwhelming risks. Now that he didn’t have Natalia or Sasha any longer, the job was all he had left and to keep it, he’d do anything just short of dipping someone else’s fingers into any available acid bath.

How did that crush-anyone-in-any-way determination square with the placid acceptance that he didn’t have Natalia and Sasha anymore? Charlie asked himself. They weren’t together anymore, as a family anymore, because he hadn’t sufficiently persuaded Natalia. And hadn’t been in Moscow to be able to. But now he was in Moscow. Could he contemplate that distraction from a job so professionally vital and try to convince Natalia that they could still have a life together? Of course he could. It would be ridiculous, his being in the same city as her and their daughter, for him not to make contact and for him to try, yet again, to convince her how perfect everything could be if only she’d come to live in London.

The simple way to do it was to prioritize, Charlie reasoned. The job first then. Which meant going back to the mortuary and pathologist Vladimir Ivanov, to resolve the uncertainties that had occurred to him since this morning. And to the embassy, to finish the conversation with Paula-Jane Venables and get from Jeremy Dawkins his comparable account of the murder scene. Reg Stout’s, too, to find out the problem with the embassy gates’ CCTV, as well as the identity of-and hopefully to interview-the so-far unnamed Russian groundsman who’d discovered the body. Which Charlie supposed would now have to be in the restrictive presence of the diplomatically required Russian Foreign Ministry official. And then there was Sergei Romanovich Pavel. It wasn’t going to be easy to establish a working relationship with the organized crime detective who’d worn the resentment of Charlie’s involvement like a lapel badge. He had to do his best to build bridges there, because Pavel represented either the pathway or the barrier between him and any official forensic findings. Which left Mikhail Guzov, the watchful FSB observer, about whom Charlie had the greatest uncertainty.

A lot of people, none of whom appeared either friendly or helpful. He’d left off his priorities list the most important participant of all so far, Charlie abruptly reminded himself: a faceless, one-armed man. How difficult was it going to be to learn the story he wasn’t able to tell?

“I’d hoped I’d find you here,” said a voice, in English.

David Halliday was an overweight, soft-bodied man whose gray-flecked hair was greased so tightly to his head it appeared to have been painted on rather than combed. The tie was vaguely regimental and didn’t really go with the sort of single-breasted blue suit mass-produced for door-to-door salesmen the world over. He even carried an order-taking pen in his breast pocket. Charlie admired the determined anonymity, and wondered what else the man might do to establish his professionalism.