Red Star Burning (27 page)

“Ready at last!” greeted the Russian, sardonically.

“Everything’s fixed, yes.”

“When?”

“The nine
A.M.
British Airways flight the day after tomorrow.”

“Why not tomorrow!” Radtsic instantly demanded.

Jacobson maneuvered his back to the pillar, as much to mark Radtsic for the three unknown watching escorts, who, according to Straughan, knew his identity from photographs, as for his own protective view of the chandeliered room. “This is the first completely suitable, available flight upon which you can be fully escorted.”

“It’s an unnecessary delay.”

“It ensures your greatest security,” insisted Jacobson.

“How?” persisted Radtsic.

“It’s a direct flight, removing stopover interception. Our people will be onboard.”

“Who?”

“I don’t even know their identities. And go through Sheremetyevo more quietly.”

“What are you talking about!” questioned the other man, coloring.

“The way you walk, your whole attitude, attracts attention.”

Radtsic’s face reddened. “I don’t expect or want to be addressed like this.”

“And I don’t want all that’s been arranged for your benefit to collapse, with your wife and son already out of the country, by your focusing attention on yourself as you’ve done at every meeting we’ve had.” He shouldn’t have given way to the annoyance, Jacobson warned himself: in less than forty-eight hours he’d be rid of the arrogant bastard.

It took Radtsic several moments to compose himself. “What are the arrangements?”

“We have to meet one more time, tomorrow night. I’ll tell you the place and the time by cell phone. At tomorrow’s meeting I’ll give you your ticket—a return, obviously, although you’re not coming back—and your passport. Both are in the name of Ivan Petrovich Umnov. The passport is authentically Russian, so it can’t be challenged. Neither can the exit visa from here nor the entry documentation into Britain, to which will be attached all the British accreditation for an international engineering conference genuinely being held in Birmingham. That’s your cover: you’re an engineer specializing in mineral-drilling machinery. I’ll also give you one hundred pounds in sterling, with the currency-exchange receipts and all the Birmingham contact information, including an apparently confirmed appointment with Yuri Panin, the current deputy trade minister at the Russian embassy in London.” Jacobson drank heavily from his champagne glass, needing it.

Radtsic, the color gone, said: “Your service is very efficient.”

“As yours is,” acknowledged Jacobson. “Is there anything we’ve omitted or that isn’t clear to you?”

“Where is this place, Birmingham?”

“In the middle of the country.”

“What about you?” asked Radtsic. “Are you accompanying me?”

“That hasn’t been positively decided,” lied Jacobson, self-protectively. “My job is to ensure your unhindered passage onto the plane. At Heathrow you’ll be taken from the plane ahead of other passengers. You’ll be taken direct to a waiting car.”

“Tell me about Elana and Andrei.”

“Everything is governed by your departure. That schedule has Elana and Andrei arriving in England ahead of you, because of the time difference between Russia and France. They will be waiting at the safe house already prepared.”

Radtsic smiled. “I would like to tell them tonight how close everything is.”

“No!” ordered Jacobson, in quiet-voiced urgency. “It’ll be madness to attempt contact now!”

The resumption bell echoed throughout the salon. Radtsic said nothing but his face had colored again.

“Give me your solemn undertaking you won’t try to make contact!”

“I won’t make contact,” said the Russian.

*   *   *

“Where have you been: the arrangement was six. It’s almost eight!”

From the subdued noise in the background Charlie guessed David Halliday was in a bar: the underlying jazz was modern, the occasional snatched lyric in English. “Where are you?”

“The Savoy. When you didn’t call I came looking for you here.”

Charlie had lived at the Savoy, close to Red Square, during the embassy-killing investigation. “I’d hardly be likely to stay there, with everyone and his dog looking for me!”

“I told you this morning that I need to know where to find you!”

“And I told you the diplomatic debacle there’d be—as well as the end of your career and pension with it—if the FSB picked up our association by electronically scanning your mobile phone, which they probably do automatically to all embassy personnel. I’m calling you from a public telephone, the number of which you’ll find when you access the last-number display on your phone, which I know you’ll do, just as I know you tried to follow me on the Metro.”

Charlie listened to the background of Ella Fitzgerald’s “Summertime,” which had been the bartender’s favorite CD when he’d stayed there. He had to buy more Russian cell phones, he reminded himself, still refusing to trust the one issued to him in London. It was several moments before the MI6 man said: “I thought we were working together.”

“We are, right now. And if we’ve got anything to talk about I don’t want you doing so from a bar stool where you can be overheard.”

“You think I’m that stupid!”

Yes, if you’re already topping up the lunchtime vodka, thought Charlie. “You’ve got this number on your phone. Call me back on an outside line in five minutes: if I don’t hear by six minutes, I’ll leave this kiosk.”

Charlie’s phone rang in three. Halliday said: “I didn’t want to keep you waiting, shit though you are.”

“That’s considerate of you,” said Charlie, allowing the other man the weak retaliation. “Where are you now?”

“Looking at Lenin’s tomb. There’s no one within fifty meters of me.”

“Did you get into Jacobson’s safe?”

“I couldn’t take the risk. He was around all afternoon. Except that he wasn’t.”

“That doesn’t make sense.”

“He spent almost two hours in the communications room. I couldn’t risk going into his office, not knowing when he’d come back. When he did he time-locked the door and left early.”

“What are you reading into that?”

“Something’s about to happen. It’s being finalized. Or already
has
been finalized.”

Too sweeping an assessment? wondered Charlie. “In an ongoing situation or assignment, officers have to log their whereabouts or provide a contact procedure.”

“Any contact with Jacobson has to be patched through London.”

A better indicator of something imminent, judged Charlie. “How often has he done that, before today?”

“Today’s the first time. And just after he left there was an internal call from the embassy travel officer. They wouldn’t tell me what it was about: leave a message even.”

More leaves swirled by differently blowing winds to go with those already disturbed by my meeting with Natalia, thought Charlie. “Is that all?”

“You’re being judged shit of this or any other year.”

“By who else, apart from you?”

“The team that was sent in.”

“Actually naming me?”

“All they need to name is the Rossiya. They’re sitting around in the embassy bar, complaining their being here is a waste of time now.”

“Are they being recalled?” urgently demanded Charlie.

“I haven’t heard about a recall but I’m being kept on the outside. I can’t ask.”

It was difficult to gauge the furor in London from newspapers and TV here, but cancellation of Natalia’s extraction had to be a danger. Losing the manpower wasn’t his concern: losing Natalia and Sasha’s exit passports were. And he guessed the documentation would be sent back in the diplomatic bag if the extraction team was recalled. “It’s important I know if the order comes from London.”

“You haven’t told me why you didn’t call at six, as we arranged? In fact, you haven’t told me anything: so far it’s a one-way street, everything from me, nothing from you in return.”

“So far,” echoed Charlie, knowing he had to limit his response fractionally short of an outright threat, an explanation easily ready. “You know how
so far
extends? It extends to just short of eight hours, from the time we met. Within minutes of that meeting, both of us watching the Rossiya, I told you to stop feeling sorry for yourself, which I’m telling you again now. We’re both outside whatever the hell’s going on, which I also told you. Neither of us is going to survive, which I’m determined to do with or without you, sharing out who tells whom what, like children counting chocolate buttons to ensure they’ve all got the same. I’m the one the FSB is looking for, the fall guy, remember? And I did remember: thought back to how we met and how quickly we had to get out, so quickly I didn’t check for CCTV cameras that might have picked us up together as we ran. That’s why I was late calling tonight. I went back to check the possibility of you being at the same risk as me by such a photograph. Which you weren’t, so that precious ass and that precious pension of yours isn’t on any line. There aren’t any cameras that could have caught us.” Which Charlie had known from scouring the area when he’d first discovered the hotel wasn’t under FSB surveillance.

“I’m sorry. And thank you.”

“You going back to the embassy?”

“I wasn’t planning to.”

“There’ll be no point in a ten o’clock call tomorrow. I’ll postpone it until later.”

“I’ll be waiting.”

So will I, thought Charlie: his problem was not knowing what he was waiting for.

*   *   *

Jane Ambersom was in that delicious after-sex suspension between scream-aloud exhilaration, which she’d had, and velvet-soft contentment, wanting to drift that way forever, which she couldn’t but intended recapturing as often and as long as she could.

“You okay?”

“Perfect,” she mumbled into Barry Elliott’s shoulder, looping one leg wetly over both of his. “Everything’s wonderful. I don’t want it ever to end.”

“Neither do I.”

That had been a ridiculous thing to say: why had she let herself be lulled like that! “Let’s not talk about it.”

Elliott loosened the arm he’d had around her, holding her to him. “I didn’t start it.”

Stop! She had to stop this. “There might be something else to talk about.”

“What?” he asked, no longer softly, moving farther away.

“Something big.”

“How big?”

“Major.”

“As big as Lvov?”

“It could be bigger.”

“You’ll keep me ahead of the curve, won’t you?”

“You know I will,” she promised, smiling into his shoulder as he pulled her back.

*   *   *

The discreet restaurant, close to the Pont d’Italie, was a rendezvous for illicit assignations. Its cubicle-recessed, candlelit tables did not fully compete with the wall-mirrored, chaise-longue-provided
salon particulaire
of the Belle Epoch but some had entrance curtains to pull across for assured privacy. Jonathan Miller hadn’t chosen a curtained alcove for the introductory meeting with Elana and Andrei Radtsic but he had made the reservation in person, under the pseudonym Bissette, to ensure it suited their nonsexual seclusion. He and Abrahams arrived an hour early, although separately, and did not enter until both were independently satisfied there was no hostile surveillance. As an additional precaution a third MI6 officer, Paul Painter, remained in Albert Abrahams’s car to maintain protective, alarm-raising observation throughout their meal.

As they were shown to their banquette, Miller said: “From how he greeted us the maître ’d’s frightened we’re part of a gay gathering.”

“He’d probably prefer that to knowing who we really are and why we’re here.”

“
If
Elana and Andrei show up,” qualified Miller.

They didn’t. Elana arrived precisely on time but alone and as both men rose to meet her, Miller said: “I wish I hadn’t said that.”

The station chief ordered Chablis for Elana and as the waiter left said: “Why isn’t Andrei with you?”

“He’s coming later,” said Elana. She was the epitome of Parisian chic in a fitted black suit that heightened the blondness of her tightly coiled chignon.

“Is there a problem?” asked Abrahams.

“He said he has a late class and would join us when it finished.”

“So there is a problem?” said Abrahams, instinctively checking his watch, which read 7:35.

Elana sipped her wine, not looking directly at either man. “He doesn’t want to do it. Neither do I.”

“But you’re here, to meet us?” said Miller.

“We don’t have a choice, do we?”

“Is that what Andrei thinks?” pressed Abrahams.

“It’s what I’ve tried to convince him. I’m not sure that I have.”

“What about you?”

“I’ve accepted I have to run, leave everything.”

“Andrei can’t stay,” insisted Miller, shaking his head against the waiter’s approach for their order.

“I know.”

“You can’t have more time to persuade him. Maxim Mikhailovich’s flight has been booked,” urged Miller. “Everything is arranged to a schedule.”

“I know that, too. That’s why I’m here.”

“Will you come with us without Andrei?”

“I don’t want to face that choice.”

“Is it the girl, Yvette?” suggested Abrahams.

Elana shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t think so, although they seem very close. She’s very pretty. I like her.”

“If he doesn’t come tonight we’ll have to meet tomorrow,” said Abrahams.

“I really don’t think you’ll have more success than me trying to persuade him,” cautioned Elana.

“We’ll guarantee him a place at another university in England, reading the same subject,” promised Miller.

“Pretending to be someone he isn’t: reborn at the age of twenty,” said Elana, nodding to more wine.

“It’s preferable to the alternative,” risked Abrahams.

“Is it?” she demanded, pointedly.

They ordered at eight o’clock, Elana dismissively asking for a plain omelet, both men choosing steak just as disinterestedly. At Elana’s hinting look at the diminishing bottle, Miller reluctantly ordered a second Chablis. Andrei arrived as their food was served, refusing to eat but gulping the offered wine. Elana and the two MI6 officers only bothered with token gestures of eating.