Red Star Burning (41 page)

*   *   *

The train had passed the circle-line intersection without any MI6 presence but Charlie maintained his usual caution, jerking up without warning at Dmitrovskaya, knowing there was a conveniently close although neglected postage-stamp park in which he could end their meeting as well as observe his pursuit precaution.

“There’s not a lot more to discuss at this stage,” he resumed, choosing a bench that kept the Metro’s single entrance and exit in sight. “I met with Passmore after the general session at Vauxhall Cross.”

“I know. The Russian passports were shipped separately, direct to me.”

“Unknown to the three from MI6?”

“Yes.”

“You’re sure?”

“Positive.”

“Those are the ones I want. As well as twenty-five thousand pounds, all in U.S. dollars.”

“What about tickets?”

“The twenty-five thousand is traveling expense.”

“Traveling about which you’re not going to give me any details?”

“No. But I want you to be overheard by the others discussing the Polish exit.”

“We’re not to be involved at all, are we?”

“No.”

“That’s ridiculous,” protested Wilkinson. “You’re not just an FSB target: I’ve just told you Smith’s convinced our own side might even want to kill you. You spell out how much more important Natalia has become: why it’s imperative she gets to England. And cap the whole fucking thing telling me you’re going to do it all by yourself.”

“I’m still free because I know how to stay that way. And I performed the Amsterdam vanishing trick because Monsford’s involvement stank from the beginning and now we know why.”

“No, we don’t,” rejected Wilkinson. “We don’t know why you’re at risk from Monsford. I accept we fucked up this morning. You’ve got every reason to be pissed off. But you’ll fail, trying to run the extraction entirely alone. And you know it!”

And Aubrey Smith wouldn’t allow it either, Charlie accepted. And could forbid the passport handover. “I don’t intend running the extraction alone: of course that’s impossible. You’ll all be part of it at the very end. It’s the logistics I’m compartmenting, just as the FSB are compartmenting their Lvov investigation. You’ve got MI6 in permanent pursuit: I haven’t. I can move about, make the plans. You can’t.”

“Aubrey Smith still won’t sanction it,” warned Wilkinson.

“He wouldn’t have liked people from whom he believes I’m in physical danger being led to me this morning,” said Charlie.

“How will I get the passports and money to you, if London approves?”

“I’ll call you, personally, at the
rezidentura.
”

“I might not get a quick response from London, with so much going on elsewhere.”

“Nine o’clock tomorrow morning, as it’s striking,” said Charlie. “And I know you’ll try to follow me when we split up and my feet hurt too much to fuck about losing you, so I’ll come with you back to the Metro to know where you are.…” He took the London-issued cell phone from his pocket. “Did you pick up the tracker signal?”

“After your first call,” admitted Wilkinson.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” asked Charlie, glad he’d followed his instinct.

“Our orders are to look after you, now we’ve linked up,” reminded Wilkinson. “You don’t have to worry about cell-phone trackers anymore.”

There’d been an element of luck, Stephen Briddle congratulated himself as he saw the two get up from the park bench, but he’d worked most of it out himself after learning from Denning and Beckindale’s calls that Wilkinson wasn’t moving from the circle line’s 986 service, positioning them on clockwise platforms to confirm it and already onboard, waiting, when Charlie finally joined it two stations later. He’d managed to keep up with all the line switches, allowing them the longest possible lead. Because of that intentional distancing and the ski-lift height of the escalators, Briddle had still been inside the Dmitrouskaya station when Charlie and Wilkinson found their park bench. The Metro provided complete concealment throughout their encounter and as they came toward him, Briddle recognized he couldn’t be in a better place not just to continue his surveillance but even to stage Monsford’s demanded fatal accident, aware despite his newness to Moscow that there were at least 150 suicides a year on the underground system and that one extra statistic would not arouse any official suspicion.

Briddle was invisibly within the shadows of the platform food stall by the time the two men rode the escalator down for the simultaneous arrival of a train to board and Wilkinson didn’t pause. Neither did Briddle, joining a noisy group of departing food-stall customers to sit two carriages behind his quarry. Briddle had an unbroken view of the outside platform, which was where, as the train lurched into motion, he saw Charlie not on the train, as he’d imagined, but still standing there. And although there was no obvious recognition, Briddle knew Charlie had seen him, too.

*   *   *

An expectant, serious Jane Ambersom was waiting in the anteroom to Smith’s suite with an equally grave-faced John Passmore when the Director-General flurried in from the Foreign Office, gesturing them to follow him.

“You could call it a Solomon resolution, I suppose,” announced Aubrey Smith. “Elana and Andrei withdrew their kidnap claims and the French are releasing Elana into the custody of our Paris embassy, along with all our people. Andrei’s refused to go with them. He was released into Russian protection. Monsford’s hailing it as a victory.”

“Monsford can’t have heard yet,” said Jane.

“Heard what?” Smith frowned.

“Why I haven’t been able to reach Straughan,” said the woman. “Security didn’t immediately react when he didn’t arrive at Vauxhall Cross this morning: he was sometimes delayed because of his mother. Her caregiver found them but Straughan’s protective cover legend caused a delay in Vauxhall being told. The mother could have been dead since last night, overdosed. Straughan’s death is apparently more recent, delayed probably because of what he did after killing her. I don’t know precisely what was found: we probably never will. There were some letters, I believe. I’ve no idea what else.”

“Could they have been killed?”

“If Monsford wanted them to be,” judged Passmore. “The mother’s dementia left her catatonic. She would have swallowed whatever she was given without knowing who gave it to her. MI6 will have taken over everything by now. There won’t be a public inquest or any pathology details released. James Straughan and his sad mother will simply have ceased ever to have existed.”

“How did we find out?” asked Smith.

“Straughan had listed my private number to be contacted in an emergency. It was the police who called me, when the caregiver gave it to them.”

“He’ll have made some arrangement for you to get whatever he had.”

“We can only hope,” said Jane. “I was just leaving for Berkhamsted when Rebecca called, saying there’d been a mistake: that she was taking over.”

“Damn!” exclaimed Smith.

“Maybe it’ll protect Charlie,” suggested Passmore.

“Maybe,” said the other man. “What’s come from Moscow?”

“Nothing yet from Wilkinson, but we know from the others Charlie was using the Moscow Metro,” said Passmore. “Somehow he found out Preston and Warren were support for Wilkinson. He made cell-phone contact, warning that Denning and Beckindale were following. Warren thinks they decoyed them off, but he’s not sure.”

“If Charlie used our phone the tracker would have been activated.”

“It was,” confirmed Passmore. “Both here and in Moscow. MI6 would have got his location.”

“And we haven’t heard from Wilkinson,” repeated Passmore.

“When the hell am I going to get ahead of this, start calling the shots instead of trailing behind in somebody else’s dirt?” demanded Smith, unusually venting his anger.

Charlie Muffin was thinking something similar as he replaced the kiosk telephone after being told by Natalia that it was impossible to meet that night. His call before that, to David Halliday, hadn’t been answered, either. And there’d been more luck than tradecraft expertise in his evading Stephan Briddle, one of possibly three men he’d been warned were trying to kill him.

30

They’d kissed but perfunctorily, acquaintances rather than husband and wife, and afterward remained standing although not together, Radtsic staying close to where he’d greeted Elana just inside the door, Elana, still wearing the vivid red dress, wandering aimlessly around the conservatory like a disappointed prospective buyer.

“This isn’t how it was supposed to be,” said Radtsic, breaking the awkwardness.

“It was my duty to come but I didn’t want to,” said the woman. She stopped close to a corner of the windowed room, frowning up at a roof joint. “They’ll be listening to everything, I suppose?”

“And filming,” confirmed Radtsic. “What’s happened to Andrei?”

“There were always three Russians in the room. After Andrei’s outburst they asked him to go with them, so they could protect him. They asked me, too. I refused. The French officials there asked Andrei if he wanted to go with them. He said yes, at once, and left with them. They would have been your people, wouldn’t they: FSB?”

“Yes,” Radtsic confirmed again. “What did Andrei say to you before he went?”

“Just repeated that he never wanted to see or hear from us again. That we were dead to him, both of us.”

“He’s my son: supposed to respect me and do what I tell him!” It was a plea, not an angry demand.

“He’s a man: a young one but still a man,” corrected Elana, finally slumping into a overpadded, solitary positioned easy chair making it impossible for Radtsic to sit close to her. “He doesn’t respect you anymore, Maxim Mikhailovich. He hates and despises you. And now me, for coming here to you.”

“Do you hate and despise me?”

“I’m not sure, not yet,” admitted Elana, with brutal honesty. “I do know I don’t want to be part of any of this. But I know even more than I’ve ever known anything in my life that I never wanted to lose my son, which is what you’ve made happen.”

“You don’t understand what—”

“Don’t you dare tell me that I don’t understand!” stopped Elana, giving way to shouted anger. “I understand every fucking thing you’ve made me do and with which I went along because I am your wife! And while I don’t know yet if I despise and hate you, I
do
know that I despise and hate myself for doing it, for allowing it to happen.…”

Radtsic began to move toward her but Elana started up, moving away from him. “I don’t want you near me. What will happen to Andrei?”

“I don’t know.”

“Don’t lie to me!” she erupted into almost screaming frustration. “He’ll be punished for what we’ve done, won’t he? Become a nonperson at the age of nineteen. How do you feel about that, Maxim Mikhailovich? You proud about destroying your only son?”

“Stop it, Elana!” demanded Radtsic, matching her anger. “You know why I had to do this. How everything would have worked if Andrei had done what he was told instead of babbling about kidnap, giving the French the legal excuse to hold you—”

“He didn’t say we’d been kidnapped!” halted Elana.

“You?” questioned Radtsic, uncertainty lessening his anger. “But you knew…?”

“I didn’t say it either. Neither of us said we’d been kidnapped.”

“Stop wandering about!” ordered Radtsic, loudly. “I need to know what happened:
how
it happened … if there’s a way of getting him back.”

Elana hesitated, seemingly unsure, but went back to the overstuffed armchair. “I can’t answer your question: don’t have any answers.”

“Tell me from the beginning, from the time you arrived in Paris.”

Elana frowned in recollection. “I did everything you told me. I went to Andrei’s apartment direct from the airport. Yvette wasn’t there. Andrei and I ate dinner at a café quite close. Everyone knew him: I was very proud at how popular he was. I didn’t meet Yvette until the second night. I like her. That first night he kept asking why I’d come so unexpectedly, almost without warning. I decided against telling him outright: I wasn’t sure how he’d react. I told him my coming was part of a surprise: that together we were going London to meet you and that you had something very important to tell him.”

“You didn’t say anything, hint even at a defection?”

“I’ve just told you I didn’t,” said Elana, irritably. “He seemed so happy, so confident. Even a hint would have been a mistake. I wanted to get Andrei here first.” She smiled, wanly. “I was the one guilty of kidnap. I expected him to be more excited at my arriving and of our coming on here. I thought it might have been to do with Yvette: not wanting to leave her, I mean.”

“But he agreed to come?” said Radtsic.

Elana nodded. “But without much enthusiasm.”

“How did you explain being escorted, by English people?”

“He only ever met two English people, Jonathan Miller and his partner, whom I only ever knew as Albert. Remember, Andrei never knew precisely what you did: the position you held. Just that it was something important and very high in the government. I told him you were in London with a Russian delegation for an internal conference and that you’d arranged for us to get to London on a plane taking some people from the British embassy. I told Miller and his partner, so they wouldn’t make any mistakes on our way to the airport. Andrei didn’t like either of them. He was rude when he met them.”

“You think he suspected who they were?”

Elana shook her head. “Although he didn’t know exactly what you did, he did know how powerful you are.” She hesitated. “How powerful you
were
. And he was used to your going away, without any explanation.”

“He didn’t questioning it?”

“After the awkward restaurant meeting with the British he said he couldn’t understand why we couldn’t travel on a normal flight.”

“What did you say?”

“That it was how you wanted it. He never challenges you, does he?”

“Not until now,” corrected Radtsic.

Elana looked up to the conservatory corner she’d examined earlier. “I don’t like being listened to.”