Red Star Burning cm-15

by Brian Freemantle

  “Radtsic’s on the plane,” Straughan announced into the Director’s voice link as he dialed the security-cleared Northolt airfield number. In response to the extraction code he was told the executive jet would be cleared for takeoff in thirty minutes with an estimated Orly arrival one hour, thirty minutes after that. Straughan ignored two intervention attempts from Monsford, instead dialing Miller’s cell phone. To the Paris station chief he said: “Janus is go.”

  Miller said: “Everyone’s safely with me here. We’re moving.”

  “Transport ETA is two hours.”

  “Speak to you before boarding.”

  “I’m trying to talk to you,” complained Monsford, as Straughan finished. “I don’t think you’ve allowed sufficient time to get from Paris to Orly.”

  “It was to activate Paris that I ignored you,” said Straughan. “Both Elana and Andrei turned up. They’re on their way.”

  “What about their timing?”

  “We’ve done trial runs. We’re well within our margins and there are escort cars to warn of difficulties.”

  There was momentary silence from the floor above, before Monsford said: “I’ve decided to personally greet Radtsic at Heathrow.”

  “There is no waiting time built into the Heathrow schedule,” objected Straughan. “Radtsic will be taken directly off the plane to the car taking him to Hertfordshire. His being escorted off the plane will attract attention from other passengers, the large proportion of whom will be Russian. I strongly advise against any delay, even of only minutes, at Heathrow: there’s a permanent media contingent there. Your personal greeting will be better at the safe house. And more fitting, executive to executive, than in the back of a car. Camera light can penetrate smoked glass.”

  “I undertook to meet him personally,” argued Monsford.

  “Without stipulating that it would be at the airport.”

  “I’ve got time to work it out.”

  Which was what Charlie was trying to do in his frustrating isolation, with nothing more than instinct and guesswork from which to operate, having already acknowledged he’d made far too many mistakes relying on both. Had it been another of those mistakes to accept Halliday’s story of being sidelined until the last minute? What if Halliday had instead been one of the deputed search-and-find groups at the Rossiya unable to risk losing him to summon backup to the panorama bar? Halliday had certainly tried to follow him afterward and constantly complained since at not knowing his whereabouts. But if he was part of a London search, would Halliday have disclosed the Janus operational code for the separate extraction? Yes, Charlie answered himself, if it lured him out of hiding. Again too much guesswork. There was an obvious way to test Halliday. From his independent airport inquiry, Charlie knew the first direct British Airways flight from Moscow to London had left at 9:30 that morning. Now it was 10:20.

  Halliday responded on the initial ring.

  “How’d it go?” asked Charlie.

  “Like clockwork,” replied Halliday. “And you know what Straughan told me, after I gave him the signal and asked what he wanted me to do now? He said he didn’t want me to do anything-that it was all over-and put the phone down without so much as a fucking thank-you. It isn’t right!”

  “No,” agreed Charlie, talking more to himself than the other man. “It isn’t right.”

  “‘To the victor belong the spoils of the enemy,’” intoned Monsford from above in a voice Straughan genuinely thought the man had lowered to sound godlike. “I’m going up to Hertfordshire to meet Radtsic there.”

  “I think that’s a better idea,” Straughan replied.

  “Hertfordshire was always my intention. Keep in touch if there’s anything I need to hear before I get there. There can’t be anything immediate, can there?”

  “No,” agreed Straughan. “We’re in the interim period now.”

  The mezzanine-level communications control was the most secure of an already totally secure area within the MI6 building, its daily-changed entry combination restricted to the Director and his deputy, Straughan, and a rota of six duty officers. They did not receive the combination until arriving for their shift, which was why Straughan, in the middle of a conversation with Orly checking the aircraft arrival, was startled for the second time that day by peremptory knocking from outside. Rebecca’s visible annoyance through the observation window matched the irritation of her door hammering.

  “Why didn’t I get today’s entry code?” she demanded, as she flounced past Straughan.

  “I didn’t imagine it would be necessary today: you had permanent visual and audio access from upstairs,” said Straughan, warning the woman with a look to the studiously oblivious duty officer on the far side of the room. “Has he gone?”

  “Ten minutes ago,” she said, also lowering her voice. “He thinks he’ll get there in time to greet Elana and Andrei, before Radtsic. And he was pissed off at your attitude, on the voice link.”

  “And?” prompted Straughan, ignoring the warning.

  Rebecca smiled for the first time. “He never bothered to turn on the equipment.”

  “Why aren’t I surprised?” said Straughan, in resigned cynicism.

  “Well?” prompted the woman, in return.

  “Doubly backed up,” assured Straughan, gesturing to the paraphernalia on his desk. “Every word’s recorded and there’s a tandem line to our own system.”

  Rebecca looked at the wall behind the regular duty officer, upon which was a five-deep battery of clocks set to the local time of every global capital. “How much longer until the French evacuation?”

  “Forty-five minutes,” said Straughan, without consulting the wall clock. “I was talking to Orly when you arrived. Our plane will be cleared for takeoff by the time Elana and Andrei get there. They’ll get here ahead of schedule.”

  Now it was Rebecca who gestured to the electronic litter on Straughan’s desk. “Seems as if our precautions weren’t necessary after all. Everything’s gone according to plan, so there won’t be any buck-passing.”

  Straughan shook his head, doubtfully. “There’ll be a lot of internal uproar, between us and our brothers across the river. And maybe a lot of internal government examination, too. I don’t think we should stop doing it.”

  “Neither do I,” agreed Rebecca.

  Straughan didn’t jump this time, even though the telephone’s shrill was unexpected.

  Rebecca said: “It’ll be Gerald, from the car.”

  It wasn’t. Straughan listened for more than a full minute before saying: “You did the right thing. It’s got to be a cleanup: everything that’s possible to do. I want you as my permanent liaison. This is a catastrophe.”

  “What is?” demanded Rebecca, when Straughan stopped although keeping the telephone in his hand.

  “There was an ambush at a peage outside Orly. They’ve all been seized. Miller and Abrahams as well as Elana and Andrei.”

  “Russian?” groped Rebecca.

  “Painter thinks it was French,” said Straughan, emptily.

  23

  “We have to tell the Director,” insisted Straughan.

  “Not yet!” refused Rebecca. What personal benefit was there? There had to be something!

  “He’ll be at the safe house in less than an hour.”

  “All we can tell him now is that there’s a difficulty. We need to know more. And get Monsford’s reaction recorded.” They now had a disaster of incalculable proportions and she wasn’t going to be hit by a single particle of the shit Monsford would spray in every direction except his own.

  “We know Radtsic’s wife and son won’t be there to greet him: the promise we’ve given him.”

  “What’s Painter and the rest of them doing?”

  “Keeping as far away as possible,” guaranteed Straughan, urgently. “That was their instructions. We don’t want to lose any more people. Painter’s heading them back to Paris.”

  “Why’s Painter think it’s a French seizure?”

 
; “All the vehicles were French. There were some uniforms, the sort the French use in terrorist arrests, although they didn’t have any identifying insignia.”

  “Are we talking Service de Documentation Exterieur et de Contre Espionnage or French police?”

  “I don’t know.” Straughan shrugged, emptily.

  “What’s our relationship if it is French?”

  “I don’t understand the question,” protested the operations director.

  “What’s the chances of the SDECE backing off when they learn it’s us?”

  Straughan stared at Rebecca, not trying to disguise his astonishment. “Let me ask you a question back. What would the chances be of us backing off if we seized two French intelligence officers in a car with the wife and son of the deputy director of the FSB?”

  Rebecca visibly colored. “So what do you think they’ll do?”

  “Take the maximum possible advantage, of course.”

  “They’ve got the wife and son: we’ve got the husband and father,” Rebecca tried again. “What about a trade, reuniting the family for joint, completely shared access?”

  Straughan again looked at Rebecca in disbelief. “Physically reunite the family where: here in the Hertfordshire house or hand Radtsic over to the French?”

  Rebecca’s color, which had begun to subside, flooded her face again. “It’ll have been that little shit Andrei, won’t it?”

  “I’ve logged everything Jonathan Miller told me of every exchange he had with both mother and son,” said Straughan. “As far as I recall, Miller never told either of them exactly where we were flying them from: only that it would obviously be from somewhere along the north coast. Yet the ambush was only a few miles from Orly, as if our route was known in advance. And if Andrei knowingly set out to sabotage it, wouldn’t it be more likely he’d go to the Russians and their embassy, not to the French?”

  “We haven’t yet confirmed it was a French interception,” Rebecca said.

  “Whether it’s Russian or French is largely academic,” dismissed Straughan, philosophically. “The fact is that whichever it is has got them and two of our officers and the service is well and truly in the shit and sinking fast. And we should warn the Director.…” He gestured toward a computer on an adjoining table. “That’s monitoring Radtsic’s flight. It’s on time, landing in thirty minutes.”

  “And it’ll be another two hours after that before he gets to the safe house,” said Rebecca. “Painter and the others will be back to Paris long before that, won’t they?”

  Straughan looked at the French chronometer on the far wall. “Probably before Radtsic’s plane lands.”

  “Does Painter have friends in the SDECE?”

  “He has contact. I don’t know how friendly or not.”

  “We’ll give it a little longer, for Painter to pull in every favor he can,” decided Rebecca. “We need as much information as possible for Gerald. Get a message to Jacobson. Warn him but tell him to say nothing to Radtsic. That’s Gerald’s responsibility: that and informing our government liaison.”

  What sort of marked-card game was Rebecca Street playing? wondered Straughan. Whatever it was, it had been sensible to keep the safeguarding recording running for these exchanges, along with the rest. How much he wished again for someone like Jane Ambersom to help him decide what to do. The telephone interrupted the reflection. Straughan snatched it up, listened, and then said: “Fuck!”

  “What…?” started Rebecca, but stopped, trying to understand from the gabbled conversation. “Tell me!” she demanded, as Straughan slammed the phone down.

  “Our plane’s been seized at Orly along with everyone in it.”

  “You’re right,” agreed Rebecca. “It’s a total fuck-up!”

  He was properly floating, acknowledged Harry Jacobson: floating thirty-five thousand feet off the ground, on his way to justifiably well-earned rewards. Nothing could go wrong now: he’d done it! No one would ever know the fears he’d endured, the potentially calamitous mistakes and shortcuts he’d made. And now they never would. This was going to be engraved in his service record as a 100 percent, all singing, all dancing coup that could never-would never-be taken away from him. But he still wasn’t taking chances. Twice since takeoff Maxim Radtsic had turned from his seat two rows ahead, stupidly expecting recognition, which twice he’d refused and was glad he had: Radtsic hadn’t turned again but on the second occasion Jacobson overheard two Russians in the seats behind refer, laughing, to the Stalin similarities. It would be a story embellished in its telling to their families when photographs of Radtsic appeared in the inevitable publicity to follow the man’s defection. There wasn’t anything he’d miss about Moscow, apart obviously from its exquisite ballet. He’d thought the city dirty and its people arrogant, with any professional advancement drowned in a backwater increasingly stagnated by Putin’s constantly tightened control. Until Radtsic’s unbelievable, once-in-a-lifetime approach, what passed for secret information gathering was virtually the distillation of cocktail-party gossip from one espionage operative to another, flavored by the national political mindset of each teller, additionally spiced as it went around the incestuous intelligence circuit. Paris or Washington was going to be far more rewarding.

  Jacobson’s cell phone was switched to flight mode but he immediately felt the vibration of a mutely received text. When he got it from his pocket it read: CONTACT URGENTLY ON ARRIVAL UNKNOWN TO NOW SOLITARY COMPANION, and although he was still at thirty-five thousand feet Jacobson was no longer floating.

  “It’s definitely SDECE,” announced Paul Painter. Despite twice using both his antiasthma inhalers the words wheezed from the man.

  “Definite confirmation?” demanded Straughan, unsettled by the closeness with which Rebecca was pressed against him to hear both sides of the exchange, her shirt gaped sufficiently for him to see the pinkness of her nipples.

  “Definite,” said Painter.

  “What else?”

  “It’s being dealt with at a political level.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What about the plane? Our people at Orly?”

  “The same.” Painter’s breathing was getting easier.

  “That’s bollocks.”

  “That’s what my SDECE man is telling me.”

  “Has there been any formal contact with the embassy?”

  “Not up to five minutes ago, when we began this conversation. What am I to tell the diplomatic ranks here? I’ve had to warn them there’s a potential situation.”

  “I wish you hadn’t. And don’t forget this conversation is being officially recorded,” warned Straughan. “You have any idea how the SDECE are going to handle it?”

  “It was when I asked that question that I got the political-level answer.”

  “You mean that it’s been taken out of the hands of the SDECE?”

  “Let me tell you again.” Painter sighed, fully recovered now and refusing to be pushed into speculation. “I called my man at the French service and told him I’d heard something had happened on the Orly autoroute. He said it was a security operation, as was the impounding of the plane. He told me he didn’t know what was going to happen next: that it had been passed up to a political level and that everyone, the four at the toll booth and everyone with the plane, were being detained. That’s it. I couldn’t get any answers to how, why, or through whom the SDECE got involved. I am, of course, copying you both the complete voiceprint and hard-copy translation.”

  “What chance is there of it all being kept under wraps?” asked Straughan.

  “Something else I can’t tell you.”

  “What I was-” started Straughan.

  “Wait a minute,” stopped Painter. “There’s something coming in on the news wires.” There was a moment’s silence. “Shit!”

  “What?” demanded Straughan.

  “It’s an official release on Agence France-Presse. It says two Britons have been detained on
suspicion of kidnapping two Russian nationals. Other Britons have been held at Orly, along with an aircraft suspected to be part of the same attempt.”

  Rebecca Street remained in the communications room, where there were better facilities for Straughan to participate in the conference call, peremptorily breaking across Monsford’s announcement of his arrival. “You’re already at the house?”

  “Of course I am. Where are Elana and the boy?”

  “That’s why I’m calling you. It’s bad.”

  The equipment was so finely adjusted that it was possible over Rebecca’s succinct explanation to hear Monsford’s increasingly labored breathing, which was scarcely less difficult than Paul Painter’s, earlier. There was no immediate response when she finished. Finally Rebecca said: “Are you there? Did you hear what I’ve told you?”

  “How…? I mean, why…? Kidnap’s ridiculous.”

  “I’ve told you all we know,” said the woman, smiling as she pushed a note across the desk to the operations director that read: “My?10 to your?5 he’ll give us Shakespeare’s wisdom.”

  “I can’t stay here … need to get back to London. There’ll be calls.… Downing Street. You come down here to take over … you and Straughan.…”

  “I can’t move from here,” refused Straughan. “There’s got to be a coordinator. I’m keeping the line permanently open to Paris. And I’m still waiting to speak to Jacobson.”

  “Bland’s already telephoned twice: Aubrey Smith’s been on once,” picked up Rebecca, the smile widening. “You’re to make contact with Bland as soon as I’ve located you. I need to stay here, where everything’s being channeled, to field it all.”

  “Jacobson!” seized the man. “Where’s Jacobson and Radtsic!”

  “The plane’s just landed: it’s still taxiing,” said Straughan. “I got a message through during the flight, telling Jacobson to ring me the moment he gets off.”