Red Star Falling: A Thriller (46 page)

‘Two field agents have got to be withdrawn for their own safety and protection. It’ll be a long time, if ever, before we can reassign them,’ argued Smith.

‘It was always accepted when I was across the river that it was inevitable an officer would break under duress,’ remembered Jane. ‘I thought there would be the same acceptance here.’

‘Under duress,’ qualified Smith, heavily. ‘Did he appear to you to have been someone subjected to extreme duress?’

Jane broke the brief silence that followed. ‘I wouldn’t go as far as “extreme duress.” He’s certainly more subdued than I expected.’

‘That’s my impression, too,’ agreed Passmore. ‘And I ascribe that to his not knowing until a few hours before I met him last night what had happened to his wife and child: whether, even, he’d make it to the hospital knowing there was a Russian assassination squad right behind him. Charlie
is
a complete professional. Okay, he made a mistake about the two he named, for which I believe there’s a mitigating excuse. What he won’t have made any mistake about is knowing, having screwed the Russians for a second time, exactly how big the target is that he’s pinned on himself, Natalia, and even their daughter. I think Charlie’s got more than enough to be subdued about.’

‘Points taken,’ said Aubrey Smith.

But not accepted,
guessed Jane.

*   *   *

Charlie’s debriefing was conducted by two anonymous interrogators and a psychologist, also unnamed, each of whose specific function was the verbal and mental examination of agents subjected to hostile interrogation. It took an unbroken six hours, which included an as-accurate-as-possible identification from a greatly enlarged aerial photograph of the dacha area in which he’d been held as well as estimates of
spetsnaz
barracks and possible weekend-dacha locations of government hierarchy. An additional hour was taken up by a point-by-point review of everything he’d volunteered and every answer he’d given to every detailed question. Charlie remained absolutely truthful throughout, openly admitting his professional failure in not instantly warning of his naming fellow agents, but held back from telling the psychologist of his mental deterioration in his bizarre forest isolation. The three left anticipating a further session after more-detailed analysis.

It was approaching nine o’clock when Charlie, his second Islay malt already poured, dialed the Hampshire number. He used the identification code supplied by Jane Ambersom to authorize the transfer from the control building to the safe house on a secure line and had a further five minutes to prepare himself with a brief reunion conversation with Ethel Jackson. Natalia didn’t immediately speak when the connection was finally made, although he knew she’d picked up the receiver.

‘Natalia?’

‘Yes.’

‘Are you all right?’

‘Yes. You were hurt?’

‘Not seriously. I’m all right now.’

‘I was worried.’ Her voice caught, at the end.

‘So was I. I didn’t know if you’d got out or not.’

‘This is being recorded, isn’t it?’ she asked, professionally.

‘Of course. It’s automatic.’

‘Was it bad for you?’

‘No.’

‘That’s a lie!’

For the first time there was emotion in her voice. ‘It’s over now. I’ll be seeing you and Sasha very soon. But not immediately. A day or two.’

‘I know.’

‘How is she?’

‘Fine. Getting the language well. Ethel’s been very good to us. You know her.’

‘We worked together a long time ago.’

‘Don’t take any risks, getting here.’

‘Don’t you want to see me?’ He tried to make it light but it didn’t work.

‘Why did you say that!’

‘It was a joke.’

‘A bad one.’

‘Answer it as a serious question then.’

‘You know how much I want to see you.’

‘I want very much to see you, too. Just a day or two.’

‘Promise you’ll be careful.’

‘I promise. And don’t forget we’ve got people being careful for us.’ It had ended better than it had begun, Charlie decided. But only minimally. There was a long way to go.

*   *   *

Charlie missed his self-imposed deadline to view the filmed interrogations of the three Russians, despite working an eighteen-hour day, eating what little food he bothered with as he watched, and limiting the Islay malt intake. He was slowed, though, by itemized reruns, which he logged for separate, independent assessment, and the care with which he watched the several-times-replayed Belmarsh prison encounter. Forcing objectivity, Charlie challenged himself to isolate the finger code and awarded himself a 60 percent success score at the same time as conceding it was far behind Natalia. He was relieved his three debriefers dismissed the need for a follow-up session but uncomfortable at having three protection officers assigned to get him to the Foreign Office on the fourth day.

That discomfort remained at Charlie’s discovery that he was appearing before what was left of the original emergency committee, with the addition of FBI officers. It grew at the stage-strutting-by-association of Sir Archibald Bland’s reference to the implanting of the tracker as if it had been life-threatening and Geoffrey Palmer’s account, from his debriefing report, of the
spetsnaz
ambush as another reflected-glory waste of time. There was no proper direction of the encounter until Sir Peter Pickering disclosed that the international humiliation of dumping the FSB assassination squad on the doorstep of the Russian embassy had finally forced a reaction from Moscow and asked for further pressuring ideas, the need for which heightened with Joe Goody’s admission that Radtsic, Elena, and Irena were refusing any further disclosures. Rebecca proposed separating Radtsic from the woman pretending to be his wife, and Mort Bering suggested taking Irena back to America (‘in a transporter, not telling her where the hell she’s going, which wouldn’t be a comfortable safe house when she got there’). Pickering dismissed another of Bering’s proposals by insisted that putting Radtsic on a genuine CIA rendition flight wasn’t acceptable after the Guantanamo outcry and Bland finally, impatiently, intervened with a waving-down, calming hand gesture.

‘I’m going to propose we go with what we’ve got, the three diplomats on the burglary charge,’ said the Cabinet Secretary, reverting to the government eagerness to conclude the episode. ‘We’ve given Moscow a court date. Let’s appoint prosecuting counsel: offer the embassy a list of British counsel to represent their diplomats and let it be known we’ll proceed with a hearing in open court. We know they’ll cave in and that we’ll get our people back. Which will be the end of the whole business. There’s no need to bother with any more re-interrogation of the Radtsic fellow and his supposed wife. Or the other woman. We
know
everything they’ve told us is lies, disinformation. We just ignore it all.’

Charlie looked around the table, waiting, conscious of the nodded agreement of the co-chairman and the shrug of acceptance from Mort Bering.

‘So it’s agreed then?’ invited Palmer.

‘No!’ Charlie at last protested, although too loudly.

‘What!’ demanded Bland, in affronted surprise.

‘You can’t ignore anything—not as much as one word—of what Radtsic and Elena and Irena have said!’ pleaded Charlie. ‘Every single claim, every single episode, has to be gone through word-for-word and then gone through all over again. Every single person they’ve named has got to be investigated and re-investigated, along with everyone close to them, because it might not be the person they’ve identified but a wife or a lover—’

‘Who!’ demanded Bland, the outrage positive now.

‘The spy or source or minister being blackmailed, whom we don’t know about,’ listed Charlie. ‘And there’ll be an episode or a case we’ve misinterpreted or misunderstood and which we’ve got to know about to correct. There will be people genuinely and knowingly sacrificed—as they’ve sacrificed Andrei, who was clearly intended to be an embedded sleeper until a more necessary need arose for him—to ensure we check everything as we’ve got to scrutinize everything.’

‘But that will take—’ Bland began to protest.

‘Years and years,’ agreed Charlie. ‘And we can’t afford not to do it and America can’t afford not to do it. The FSB’s already caused incalculable damage to the CIA with Lvov, even though they didn’t install him as President of the Russian Federation. And now they’ve done it all over again, with Irena, Radtsic, and Elena. They’ve won not once, but twice.…’ Charlie paused, looking directly at Rebecca. ‘And it doesn’t matter that Monsford’s been identified: he’s not important, not involved, anymore. But Radtsic, who’ll eventually be repatriated, will take to Moscow a very full and detailed description of you, whom I understand to be the new MI6 Director.’

*   *   *

‘How long would you have given Charlie before intervening yourself?’ questioned Jane, glad Passmore had accompanied Charlie back to Chelsea to go through the annotated DVDs, leaving her to walk back to Thames House alone with Aubrey Smith.

‘Not long,’ admitted the Director-General. ‘It was a simple test. Charlie either spoke up to stop the nonsense or he didn’t.’

‘And he did, spoiling Rebecca’s chances of promotion in the process. Are you satisfied now that all Charlie’s suffering from is the effects of solitary Russian confinement? How about remorse at changing sides?’

‘We’re going to have to watch him carefully, make sure it’s a complete recovery,’ avoided the man. ‘I never imagined Charlie the sort of agent to be as badly affected so quickly as he clearly has been.’

31

Aware of the renewed apprehension it would cause Natalia, whose fear he’d been assured by Ethel Jackson had begun to diminish, Charlie argued against a protective escort, disappointed at Aubrey Smith’s final insistence, but he persuaded them to let him disembark alone from the helicopter and keep several yards behind to approach the Hampshire safe house. It would have helped if Natalia’s ground security hadn’t so obviously emerged from the surrounding woodland to make their additional presence so obvious.

Charlie was still some way from the house when Natalia hesitantly emerged from the veranda doors, paused, and then more determinedly pressed on to meet him. Charlie stopped, wanting to distance their initial encounter as far away as possible from the perpetually watching cameras. Keeping to their agreed arrangements, Charlie’s personal escorts stopped, too, to keep their distance. It took at least five minutes for Natalia to reach him, so far from the house had the helicopter considerately landed to avoid the disruption of its downdraft. Natalia was serious-faced, looking beyond Charlie to his bodyguards.

‘So you are at maximum protection level?’ she recognized, stopping more than an arm’s length away.

‘It’s an over-reaction,’ dismissed Charlie. ‘You know how everything’s been escalated. You look wonderful.’ She didn’t. Her hair was perfectly prepared—although shorter than he remembered from their last Moscow meeting—and the off-white dress was uncreased but she was visibly thinner, her face lined with strain.

She said, ‘For someone who lies a lot for a living, you’re not very good at it personally. But you’ve certainly dressed for the occasion. Blue suits you.’

‘Jane Ambersom’s choice. The shoes are new, too. They hurt.’ But weren’t entirely responsible for his discomfort, he thought.

‘Do you want to come inside? Sasha will be at her lessons for another hour.’

‘No,’ refused Charlie, positively. ‘Let’s walk around here for a while.’

Natalia looked away to the escorts and then back to Charlie. ‘They’ll have the house cameras on us, lip reading what they can of our conversation, won’t they?’

‘It’s all part of the routine,’ reminded Charlie.

‘I know. But I hate it.’

‘I’m not enjoying it, either.’

She fell in step beside him, walking parallel to the house, but still not putting herself close to him. ‘And you’ve got a permanent bodyguard?’

‘It won’t be forever.’

‘It’ll have to be, for a very long time,’ refused Natalia. ‘Moscow will work out the full extent of the damage we caused.’

‘They’ve caused a lot of damage to us—and to America—in return,’ argued Charlie. ‘It comes out about even.’

Natalia shook her head in continued refusal. ‘It won’t be even for them until they find us: punish us in the only way they know.’ Her voice clogged at the end.

‘They’ll never do that.’

Natalia didn’t reply but followed as he turned away from the tree line to put their backs to the house.

Natalia said, ‘I didn’t know you were shot, not when I was at the airport.’

‘It wouldn’t have made any difference if you had, would it? I told you to go on, whatever happened. That’s what you would have done, isn’t it?’

Natalia didn’t reply at once. ‘I don’t know,’ she said, doubtfully.

‘That was the arrangement.’

‘I still don’t know.’

‘You had Sasha with you!’

‘Yes.’

They walked on in silence for several moments, still apart, their heads lowered against the cameras.

Natalia said suddenly, ‘I’m very frightened.’

‘Yes,’ said Charlie, unhelpfully.

‘You know, don’t you? You’ve worked it out.’

‘Yes.’

‘Does anyone else know?’

‘No.’

‘Sasha will be safe, with you.’

Charlie ignored the remark. ‘How did they find out about us?’

‘I hadn’t sanitized the records as well as I thought I had.’

‘And that led them to the marriage records?’

Natalia nodded. ‘I did what I could to warn you: give you signs. Told you the FSB didn’t suspect me anymore and that I’d seen false documentation about Radtsic’s background on an investigation committee to which I would never have been appointed.’

‘You got me there with telephone calls that you were suspected by the FSB. Why didn’t you include an earlier indication?’

Instead of replying, Natalia said, ‘We always had a pact, didn’t we, Charlie? That Sasha was the most important thing to both of us—more important than either of us to the other.’