Brian Freemantle - Red Star Rising

“I didn’t mean to sound as I just did.”

“Don’t you think you’re treading a fine line, doing whatever it is you are with Svetlana Modin?” she demanded.

“Every end justifies its means.”

“If that end’s successful,” she qualified. “You think it is being successful?”

“I’m still not yet sure what the end is going to be.”

She came forward across the table, her glass cupped between both hands. “Don’t you believe your dead man was a gangster, as the Russians are saying he was?”

“I’m still trying to work through their evidence.”

“But you’re not going back to London yet?”

“I haven’t been recalled yet.”

“You think you are a decoy-me, too, I guess-for a covert operation between the Americas and people we don’t know about?”

“What’s your godfather say about that?”

“I told you, we don’t talk shop.”

“You want me to believe you haven’t asked him?”

“I mean he reminded me we don’t talk shop when I did ask him. He’s as ornery a bastard as you are.”

“I’ve been used as a decoy before,” accepted Charlie. “I didn’t know it then, any more than I know if it’s happening now.”

“Maybe I should be thanking you after all, for keeping me at arm’s length.”

“I thought you already have,” said Charlie.

“So now I’m thanking you again.”

“Which makes us equally grateful, one to the other.”

“What are you going to do about Robertson?”

“Watch my back, which as you know I always do,” shrugged Charlie, gesturing for the bill.

Paula-Jane grimaced rather than smiled. “I can’t tell you how much you remind me of Bill! And lunch was exceptional.”

“I thought so, too,” said Charlie, wondering if Paula-Jane meant it for the same reasons as he did.

The fuller smile came when Charlie picked up the briefcase as he straightened from the table. “Now that’s one way you didn’t remind me of Bill, until now. I never had you pegged as a briefcase man.”

“It’s the militia material I told you I was working through. I need to keep it secure and I don’t have a proper office or an available safe.”

“We’ve got an office safe that’s as secure as Fort Knox, for Christ’s sake!”

“Maybe I could use it when I’ve finished what I have to do,” said Charlie.

“It’s not looking hopeful,” announced Aubrey Smith. “The Americans seem to be using at least three different ciphers, with no obvious linking connection even when they switch between them. Some code-breakers even likened it to ENIGMA, unbreakable without the key.”

“I’d hoped we’d moved forward a long way since the Second World War!” criticized Charlie, disappointed.

“It was the best example they could think of to illustrate their difficulty without possessing the key,” dismissed the Director-General. “The one advance is that we think AJAX is the CIA director.”

“Which would explain the involvement of the KGB chairman,” suggested Charlie, thinking back to his earlier uncertainty. “Like for like.”

“Exactly, if we’re right,” agreed Smith. “Anything more from your end?”

Charlie shifted in the claustrophobic cubicle, unsure how far he could stretch his response. He still hadn’t properly thought through the conversation with Paula-Jane, nor had he completely read Mikhail Guzov’s invented murder case file. He said, “I’ve got to finish what the Russians claim to be their murder solution-the medical stuff particularly-to see if there’s anything I can use to get Ivan’s body.”

“Copy it all to me here,” ordered Smith. “You really think they’ll surrender Oskin’s body, even if you find enough to challenge them? And agree to it coming back here, for whatever supposed reason?”

“No,” admitted Charlie, flatly. “Neither do I think Irena will cooperate anymore if we don’t have some hope to offer her.”

“She’s already given us what Ivan stole from the archive.”

“But that. .” started Charlie, but was stopped by a sudden thought.

“What?” demanded the Director-General, when Charlie didn’t continue.

“I wasn’t thinking properly. . it wasn’t going to make sense,” hurriedly improvised Charlie. “There doesn’t seem to be much progress in the mole hunt here?”

“That’s not your priority. Or your remit.”

“Nor’s it Robertson’s to question how and with whom I’m trying to fulfil my function here,” said Charlie. It wouldn’t be an easy contention to defend if push came to shove. Quickly, to implant the innuendo in Aubrey Smith’s mind, he added, “Unless Robertson was acting to your instructions.”

“He certainly isn’t following my instructions.”

Which meant they were from Jeffrey Smale. Charlie decided he’d got everything he wanted out of the exchange and was anxious now to pursue the thought that had belatedly occurred to him. He made an additional copy of the Russian dossier on the murder he scanned in full to London and spent the rest of the afternoon toothcombing through it himself, impressed by how well the Russians had fictitiously woven the murder and dumping of Ivan Oskin’s body into the drug-trafficking gang’s arrest and claimed retribution killing of Sergei Pavel. Charlie believed he found four discrepancies in the Oskin medical evidence, but judged none sufficient to mount an effective, body-disposing challenge, particularly keeping in mind his conviction that the Russians could-and undoubtedly would-confront him in return with the blood fabrication.

He divided his growing bulk of material between his briefcase and the fortunately concertina-sided folder in which the murder files had been delivered, and after filling the briefcase, carefully rearranged its combination lock numerals, getting to Paula-Jane Venables’s office just after five.

“I decided to use your safe for my briefcase,” he told her.

“Cleared an entire shelf for you,” said the woman, her back to him as she opened it. Over her shoulder, she said: “The combination is 61617E.”

“I won’t open it without your being present,” promised Charlie.

“What about the folder?” she asked, nodding to what Charlie still had under his arm.

“Stuff I’ve still got to go through,” said Charlie.

Irena answered on the second ring, the uncertainty obvious despite her usual hoarseness. He said, “I need to see you.”

“I’ve just got in from work. Where are you?”

“In a call box. I’ve just left the embassy.” He hadn’t anticipated a Metro madrigal today, he remembered.

“Is everything arranged?”

“No.”

“What is it then?”

“I have to see you,” he repeated. A means justifying an end, Charlie thought again, reminded of his need to talk to Svetlana Modin.

“Where?”

“Your apartment.”

“What if. .”

“I’ll be clear.”

“I’m frightened.”

“I’ll be there in an hour,” said Charlie, knowing that wasn’t the reassurance she’d wanted. Knowing, too, that he should feel a shit, which he didn’t.

Irena Novikov perched on the very edge of the window-fronting couch like a frightened bird about to burst into flight, both hands gripped tightly in her lap but unable to stop the fear twitching through her, a nervous tic pulling at the corner of her mouth on the unmarked side of her face. Her eyes were fixed on the folder that Charlie left very visibly on his lap. “There is a problem?”

“A big one.” Charlie was wedged on the straight-backed chair, its discomfort matching the ache from his protesting feet at the pursuit-dodging underground train ritual. He was sure he’d identified two people-a man and a woman, working separately-who’d kept up with him for four route switches before he’d managed to lose them, convincing him that the surveillance manpower had been at least doubled to defeat his evasion.