Red Star Burning (3 page)

The one ever-present weakness in Charlie’s determination to conceal his relationship with Natalia was their unavoidable link to the money he provided. It hadn’t been a problem when he was operational, with unfettered freedom of movement between assignments. But even then he’d been ultracareful, personally carrying the money—in cash, practically all amassed from expense-account banditry—to a lawyer-nominee-controlled Credit Suisse fiduciary holding in the bank secrecy haven of Jersey, in the Channel Islands off the coast of northern France. From where it was electronically transferred to Natalia in Moscow in tranches kept below any legally enforced Russian reporting requirement.

There was nine thousand pounds in expense-account profits still in the Harrods safe deposit box that Charlie, who distrusted his own service almost as much as those of his supposed enemies, had rented under an assumed name years before ever meeting Natalia. That now had to be moved to Jersey, as much to reassure Natalia of his survival as to continue her financial support, alone as she was with Sasha, and for which, after three too-closely-watched months, there remained insufficient funds in the Credit Suisse account. And if her allowance stopped she might believe he’d been killed, like the others about whom there’d been so much publicity.

Charlie was eager to gain as much advantage as possible from the morning rush-hour crush but at the same time was concerned at alerting his CCTV monitors that today’s outing was different from those previously. He was ready an hour earlier than usual, although he maintained the cultivated aimlessness as he meandered from room to room up to the moment when he made as if to return to his upstairs bedroom but instead snatched his jacket from the closet in which he’d stored it in readiness the night before.

The Chelsea safe house was expertly chosen, a solitary building lost among a coppice of one- and two-story utility blocks and garages, additionally dwarfed by anonymous high-rise mansion apartments—in one if not more of which his observers would be housed—on all four sides. The layout created a choice of four escape runs intersected by a spider’s web of walkways connecting each of the four overshadowing buildings. Charlie followed the regular route his watchers would expect to the traffic-clogged King’s Road and used its gridlocked congestion to pick his way through the unmoving traffic to the far side to isolate his followers. Which, worryingly, he didn’t. He let people board the bus ahead of him until he was sure he could recognize the few who followed. The most immediate was a harassed woman with an uncontrollably screaming child in a buggy from which it was desperate to escape and a scarlet-coated, medal-decorated Chelsea Hospital pensioner.

Neither disembarked after him at Sloane Square, and all those who did hurried away while he lingered at reflecting store windows. Charlie bought a newspaper from the underground station seller, grateful that this early the pavement café on the corner with the Eaton Square approach was already open. It was from this spot, over the preceding three months, that he’d identified two of his regular watchers. Neither was evident today. As his coffee and croissants were served, Charlie was aware of a raincoated man seating himself on a bench on the pedestrianized central square behind a half-raised newspaper. Charlie felt a blip of relief at the identification, curious where the backup team was. It was ten minutes before three vacant-lighted taxis emerged in convoy from Sloane Street, the first two turning for their cab stand, the last continuing toward Eaton Square. Charlie hailed it at the controlled crossing, aware of the newspaper-reading follower in Sloane Square jerking up from his bench.

No hurriedly mobilized vehicle joined those directly behind before Charlie’s taxi turned into Pimlico’s grid system, by which time Charlie was talking to the driver of his, being late for a cross channel ferry, introducing the Belgian town of Bruges as his destination as he urged the man to hurry for his Victoria Station train. Charlie had his fare ready when the taxi pulled up, threading his way through the last of the rush-hour commuters not to the overland-departure gates serving Channel ports but down into the underground system. He went one stop to Green Park and took another cab as far as Trafalgar Square, reluctantly walking on already protesting feet to Covent Garden to ensure he’d cleared his trail, despite which he still boarded another underground train to Oxford Circus. From there he took a third taxi to the huge Park Lane subterranean parking lot, scuffing his burning feet its full length to Marble Arch and ground level.

Charlie got to the Harrods bank by one thirty, hesitating after removing the nine thousand pounds from his safe deposit and the long-held and always meticulously renewed passport, international driving license, and American Express card in the assumed name of David Merryweather, in which the facility was rented. After fifteen undecided minutes, Charlie firmly closed and relocked the box. Knowing from already having established the train-connecting times of trains to and from Poole, in Dorset, to Jersey, he allowed himself a leisurely lunch in the store’s premier restaurant, complete with a bottle of celebratory Aloxe Corton.

*   *   *

The small conference room adjoining the Director-General’s office suite was totally silent, everyone waiting for someone else to risk the first contribution.

Relentlessly, Aubrey Smith demanded: “How was it allowed to happen?”

Simon Harding, the head of the surveillance bureau, managed, “Things weren’t fully in place.”

“Why weren’t things fully in place?” echoed Smith.

“The upgrading designation wasn’t issued until the evening of the psychiatric interview,” said Harding, an exercise-toned, Lycra-wearing health fitness exponent whose discomfort at wearing a suit was heightened by his being the focus of the inquest.

“Between which and the time Charlie Muffin disappeared there was a period of more than twenty-four hours,” said the ever aggressive Jane Ambersom.

“Personnel had to be reassigned from other duties,” tried Harding.

“Tell me from the beginning,” demanded Smith.

“The watch personnel were doubled, to be in place today,” said Harding, defensively. “But it wasn’t
in
place, not that early: the rota hadn’t been finalized and we’re stretched pretty thin. The only thing different from how he’s acted over the preceding three months was his leaving early, which was instantly picked up. We had people with him all the way up the King’s Road and again at his usual café. I was moving a pursuit car into Sedding Street, which would have kept him fully in sight at all times—”

“But it wasn’t in place either,” anticipated Ambersom, too eagerly.

“No,” admitted the surveillance supervisor. “We found Muffin’s taxi at Victoria Station, his most obvious destination. He’d talked to the driver of cross-channel ferries, actually mentioned Bruges. I got people on all but one Channel port trains leaving Victoria. He wasn’t on any of them.”

“He didn’t go across the Channel,” dismissed the exasperated Director-General. “He just left you a stinking red herring.”

“So your guess is that he’s still somewhere in England?” said Harding.

“I don’t have any idea where the hell he is or what the hell he’s going to do,” complained Smith. “He could by now have flown from a dozen airports into Europe, where he wouldn’t have had to show his passport, and from any airport in Europe flown on to anywhere in the world.”

“You still determined against bringing in America’s help?” asked Ambersom, hopefully.

“I won’t even acknowledge that stupidity with an answer,” snapped Aubrey Smith.

“From what I’ve heard of Charlie Muffin’s background, I wouldn’t think he’s on a suicide mission,” offered Harding.

“Neither do I and I know him far better than you,” agreed Smith, holding the attention of the discomforted surveillance chief. “I think he’d done this to frighten the shit out of us at the same time as proving how good he still is.”

“We can’t afford to assume that,” cautioned the deputy director.

“We can’t afford to assume anything,” accepted Smith. “Or do anything.”

“What, proactively, can we do?” asked Harding.

“I’ve already told you,” said the Director-General, testily. “Nothing but sit and wait.” He paused. “And hope.”

*   *   *

Which was what Charlie Muffin was doing—although lying, not sitting—on a sun lounger by the pool at Longueville House Hotel, conveniently close to the Jersey capital of St. Helier, his hammertoed feet freed from the captivity of socks and Hush Puppies, trousers rolled up to just below his knees, the nine thousand pounds set up in undiscoverable transfers to Moscow.

He was glad he’d stayed an extra day and was tempted to extend further, enjoying the almost light-headed feeling of no longer being under goldfish-bowl observation: fantasizing, even, of continuing to run, sure he’d escaped and that he could always keep ahead. He didn’t have any doubts—or fears—of keeping himself alive: that’s what he’d been doing for virtually the whole of his operational career. Assessed against the current success of those supposed to be protecting him, he’d probably be safer on his own.

But practicality—the practicality of no longer officially existing—was against him. The only income he now had was the more-than-generous allowance deposited into the bank account of the officially christened—complete with birth certificate—new name of Malcolm Stoat, the identity in which was registered the credit cards automatically paid from that account, his ownership of the Chelsea safe house and its utility services, local council and national election voting eligibility, along with a driving license and National Insurance number, National Health card and hospital registration card, and Christ knows what else he’d forgotten and couldn’t, lying there in the sunshine, be bothered to remember. More red-taped than goldfish-bowled, reflected Charlie, reluctantly pulling himself up from the lounger.

They were going to be very pissed off when he reappeared, Charlie accepted. But that was scarcely going to be a new or different experience: certainly not as new or as difficult as adjusting to the totally regimented future he’d spent the past two and a half days fully considering in all its stultifying detail. Before concluding, as he just had concluded, that he never would be able to adjust. Which was, as always, a subjective, not a suicidal, decision, although he could well imagine anyone stuck with a name like Malcolm Stoat would seriously contemplate suicide.

*   *   *

“He’s back,” announced Simon Harding. “Three o’clock this morning. He was clean. He was so quick disabling the entry alarm we didn’t actually know he was in there until the house lights went on and we saw him up on CCTV.”

“I’m not going to have him make fools of us like this,” declared Aubrey Smith. “And he’s going to hear it from me!”

“There’s something else,” said the protection-service controller.

The two men spent fifteen minutes unspeaking, huddled together over the disk that Harding had produced before summoning Jane Ambersom to replay it several more times.

The deputy director finally said: “What the hell is it?”

“I don’t know,” admitted Smith. “But we’ve got to find out.”

*   *   *

Maxim Mikhailovich Radtsic’s insistence had been that he choose their rendezvous, and Jacobson was moderately impressed. The riverboat-tour pier was close to the long distance steamer terminal on Klenovy Boulevard, which ensured a perpetual throng of people in which to disappear, although by the same token providing virtually undetectable surveillance cover. Apparently to guard against which the Russian had imposed a trail-clearing ritual requiring Jacobson to board the vessel thirty minutes ahead of Radtsic and to remain at the rail overlooking the gangway to guarantee the deputy FSB director did not have followers. Additionally, Jacobson was forbidden to make any approach for thirty minutes after departure for Radtsic to complete the same check on the British MI6 officer. Radtsic’s satisfaction signal was to drop his empty cigarette packet into the Moskva River.

“It’s good to see you again,” greeted Jacobson, coming up alongside the other man.

“What does London say?” instantly demanded Radtsic.

“They welcome you and your wife. And Andrei, too, of course.”

“It must be soon. Very soon.”

“Arrangements have to be made. We have to coordinate you and your wife leaving here with moving Andrei from Paris. We have to find a suitable house and equip it with all its necessary security. As well as arranging new identities and setting up financial arrangements that’ll be acceptable to you.”

“Most of it can be done when we’re there.”

“There will need to be cooperation, once you are completely safe,” warned Jacobson, guardedly.

Radtsic covered his hesitation by lighting a fresh cigarette from the stub of the old. “I told you I would cooperate.”

“Very full cooperation.”

“We can decide all that when I get there.”

“No, sir,” refused Jacobson. “There must be complete understanding between us now.”

“You are recording this conversation!” demanded the Russian, looking sideways for the first time.

“Yes. I could, of course, have lied and said no, but I want everything to be honest and clear between us.”

“I respect and appreciate that.”

“And I would appreciate an answer.”

Radtsic hesitated further. Then he said: “Of course I will cooperate. That’s the deal, isn’t it?”

“Yes, sir,” confirmed Jacobson. “That’s the deal.”

4

The warning of an official visit was always made by a recorded voice quoting Charlie’s four-digit protection designation, 1716. He had to acknowledge it with a binary response, the first sequence by using his telephone keypad to provide a separate five-digit identification, 10063. That had to be verified by his verbally reciting, for voiceprint recognition, a different number—1316—to separate recording equipment. His failure to provide both in sequential order or wrongly numbering either was his alarm signal that he believed himself to be compromised.