Red Star Burning cm-15

by Brian Freemantle

  “What’s he done in between?”

  “Stayed in his room with a bottle of vodka, watching television. We’re monitoring him on CCTV. He’s flicking between news channels, obviously searching for announcements: as far as I know there haven’t been any updates from France. The vodka bottle’s half empty and he’s already chosen a bottle of burgundy for lunch.”

  “We should be with you in less than thirty minutes.”

  “Should I tell him that?”

  “No.”

  “Anything?” Monsford asked when Straughan answered his next call.

  “The Novosti news agency is saying our ambassador is again being summoned to the Russian Foreign Ministry, without giving a time or date,” relayed the operations director. “Associated Press is reporting under a Washington dateline but without accreditation that there is an impending Russian political development connected with the French arrests. There’s a Press Association sidebar that the Russian and French ambassadors have been summoned to our Foreign Office for clarification. Agence France-Presse are saying our embassy in Paris have delivered a second Note seeking access to our detained nationals.”

  “Anything direct from the Foreign Office?”

  “Nothing routed to me. Rebecca’s heard nothing, either.”

  “Call me at once if there’s anything, anything at all.”

  “You told me that before you left,” reminded Straughan.

  “Now I’m telling you again. Tell Rebecca the same.”

  Jacobson was waiting at the door for Monsford. “He’s still in his room: probably seen you arrive. I’ve set things up in the drawing room.”

  Monsford shrugged, discomfited at not having control over the automatic audio and film equipment throughout the house. “I’m to be interrupted if there’s any contact. And you were wrong about no news updates. There’ve been several.”

  “I told you I wasn’t checking the coverage,” reminded Jacobson. “Do you want me to sit in with you?”

  “Why should I: he’s got good English, hasn’t he?”

  “I’m the person Radtsic knows: is most familiar with. I thought it might help.”

  “I’ll see him alone.” It would still be recorded.

  “Will you eat with him?”

  “Let’s get on with it, for Christ’s sake!” demanded Monsford, impatiently.

  The drawing room was at the back of the house, overlooking an expansive, terrace-stepped grassland sporadically hedged between stands of well-established, tightly cultivated trees. At the very bottom of the terrace was a swimming pool that ran its entire width, and far beyond that, over the tops of still more trees, there was the hazed outline of Letchworth. In the interior of the room, over couches and enveloping easy chairs were pleated and tasseled loose covering chintzes, an inner circle grouped casually around a fireplace fronting a low but large table upon which a vacuum coffeepot and cups were already set. Filling the dead fireplace was a huge flower display of what Monsford guessed to be from the outside garden.

  Forewarned by the sound of its opening, Monsford, hand outstretched in readiness, was directly behind the door when Maxim Radtsic started to enter. The Russian abruptly halted, visibly pulling both arms back in refusal. “In Russia it is not done to shake hands on a threshold. It signifies it will be the only meeting.” He intruded a pause. “Perhaps it is indeed an omen.”

  Monsford backed away, changing the offered hand into an indication toward the flower-dominated space and its encompassing couches and chair. “I’m sure it isn’t.”

  Radtsic followed the gesture but didn’t sit. “What time are my wife and son arriving?”

  “Please sit,” encouraged Monsford, doing so himself, glad the door was closing behind Jacobson, although always conscious of the cameras. “There’s coffee.”

  Radtsic perched himself awkwardly on the very edge of an easy chair. “I do not want coffee. I want vodka. And a reply to my question.”

  Monsford pressed a summons bell bordering the fireplace. “It is through no mistake or fault of ours that this problem has arisen. I’m aware you’ve been told in the greatest possible detail all we’ve been able to discover. From that you know your wife and son were being escorted by my officers to an aircraft waiting to bring them safely here.”

  “They’re not safely here, are they!” rejected Radtsic, irritably. “They’re very unsafely in France, where they will have been fully identified.”

  The eavesdropping Jacobson entered already carrying a tray upon which were a full, freezer-frosted vodka bottle, an ice bucket, and two glasses. He almost filled both, adding more when Radtsic shook his head against ice. At Monsford’s refusing head shake, Radtsic said: “You’re not prepared to drink with me!”

  “Like you, I did not want ice,” Monsford tried to recover, hot at the awareness of his second filmed mistake. Monsford raised his unwanted glass and said: “Here’s to your new life, here in the West.”

  “Only a new life if it’s with my family,” corrected the other man, “About whom you still have not properly answered my question.”

  Having until now seen the facial resemblance only from photographs, Monsford was struck by Radtsic’s similarity to Stalin. “They are still in France, where they have accused my officers of kidnap, escalating what could have been negotiated away as a misunderstanding into a criminal matter.”

  “Are you accusing them of being responsible for what’s happened!” flared Radtsic, outraged.

  “Of course I’m not,” denied Monsford, his disappointment at the antagonism slightly eased by the first wisp of the so-far-eluded idea. “I was, though, worried when my officer in Paris told me that Andrei initially refused to come.”

  “You are accusing them!”

  “What I am doing, Maxim Mikhailovich, is being subjective. We do not yet know how the French interception was instigated. Which shouldn’t, though, be our immediate focus. That has to be getting them released and safely here.” Monsford was surprised at what little effect the already consumed vodka had upon the Russian, watching him refill his glass.

  Radtsic frowned. “That’s what I’m waiting for you to tell me, how and when they’re getting here!”

  “They’re not, not today,” declared Monsford, positively. “Our problem is the kidnap allegation. And the association of my officers in that allegation. Because of that the British government are being refused access: any contact whatsoever…”

  “What the hell’s your point!” demanded Radtsic, seizing the intentionally allowed pause.

  “You, the husband and father,” said Monsford, simply, the concept complete in his mind. “There can be no legal prevention against your being allowed contact. Nor does your being here contravene French law. I’ve obviously held back from publicly announcing your being here, because of what’s happened to Elana and Andrei. Now I want to announce it, publicize it. And at the same time connect you by a visual TV conference link not just to Elana and Andrei but simultaneously to French officials. If you can persuade Elana or Andrei to withdraw the allegation they’ll have to be released, to continue here to join you.”

  For several moments Radtsic remained unspeaking, all truculence gone. “Is it technically possible?”

  “Yes,” insisted Monsford. “I can have technicians here in hours, setting it up, as well as French-speaking lawyers to argue the law on your behalf.”

  Once more Radtsic considered the idea, topping up what little could be added to Monsford’s scarcely touched glass and refilling his, which he held out to Monsford. “I have not behaved as I should. I apologize.”

  “It is totally understandable,” accepted Monsford, as their glasses touched. “I drink to your reunion.”

  Shakespeare had been right, as he always was, thought Monsford: sweet are the uses of adversity. And from where better could the sentiment come than As You Like It, which he did like, very much indeed.

  “You are sure?” insisted Aubrey Smith.

  “Absolutely positive,” said Jane Ambers
om.

  “And you can get hold of it?”

  “Yes,” she risked.

  “There’s still the self-incriminating problem,” accepted Smith.

  “I think there’s a way around that,” said Jane.

  “Does it tie in with what Wilkinson’s relayed from Moscow about Charlie’s refusal to work with MI6?” asked John Passmore, joining the review.

  “I haven’t the slightest idea what Charlie’s uncovered,” said Smith. “But Jane’s story seems to support what Charlie’s demanding.” He smiled, humorlessly. “I can hardly wait for Palmer and Bland’s reaction.”

  “From what little we think we know, Charlie and our three aren’t just confronting the Russians to get Natalia and Sasha out. They’re opposed by Monsford and three of his people already in Moscow and completely briefed on the intended extraction,” cautioned Passmore.

  “Go back to Straughan,” the Director-General told Jane. “Promise him every protection, whatever he wants, to get whatever he’s got. Tell him I’ll meet him personally if it’ll help.”

  “He’s terrified,” warned Jane.

  “So am I,” said Smith.

  27

  By the time he entered the Foreign Office every uncertainty was perfectly resolved in Gerald Monsford’s mind, the creaking ice hardened into a solid conviction that he was unassailable. Even Straughan’s message during the return from Hertfordshire of Charlie Muffin’s reappearance hadn’t unsettled him. The man and his family were no longer of any practical use, easily discarded encumbrances.

  Monsford intentionally avoided Vauxhall Cross to arrive early but wasn’t concerned, either, at finding Aubrey Smith ahead of him, alone with Geoffrey Palmer. “Congratulations upon the return of your prodigal son,” he greeted the blank-faced MI5 Director-General.

  “I hope you’ve equally good news of your errant mother and offspring,” Smith mocked back, as Sir Archibald Bland came into the room to complete their quorum.

  “Is the long-awaited emergence of Charlie Muffin good news?” questioned Monsford, setting the stage for his intended lead.

  “That’ll have to be judged on the outcome of both extractions,” suggested Smith.

  “And we’re here to examine the more immediate difficulties of Maxim Radtsic,” halted Bland, impatiently. “Which is dominating the cabinet, who want it concluded in the shortest time possible with absolutely no further problems. I’m authorized to tell you both that you are losing the confidence of this government effectively to continue in the positions you currently hold.”

  For the briefest moment Geoffrey Palmer appeared as shocked as the two directors. It was the confidently prepared Gerald Monsford who recovered first. “Then it’s clearly important that on behalf of MI6 I restore that confidence.”

  “That’s precisely what we expect you to do,” said Palmer, his stiffness the only indication of his anger at not being warned in advance of the cabinet secretary’s threat.

  The drive back from Hertfordshire had allowed Monsford not only to formulate his proposals but mentally to rehearse their presentation, which he did flawlessly. “It will overwhelm all the Charlie Muffin embarrassment,” Monsford concluded, delivering his patronizing coup de grace to Aubrey Smith, “We can warn Russia through back channels that any retaliation will be met with public expose of their Lvov disaster.” Unable to stop himself, Monsford went on: “Which is, perhaps, some mitigation against the directorship changes you’ve indicated towards my MI5 colleague.”

  “That’s an extremely convincing proposal, supported by an equally convincing argument,” cautiously acknowledged Bland, looking to the Intelligence Committee liaison for agreement.

  “Providing the kidnap allegations are withdrawn,” qualified Palmer, equally cautious.

  “My proposals also make it impossible for Moscow to impose any coercion upon France,” insisted Monsford. “They’ll be neutered.”

  “I am grateful to my MI6 colleague for his concern at my professional future,” said Smith, anxious to match Monsford’s condescension. “I also want to make it clear that I am not playing devil’s advocate. But getting the accusation of kidnap withdrawn isn’t the only hurdle. There’s mollifying bruised French pride at MI6 mounting an espionage-linked operation on its sovereign soil. There’s the danger of detained MI6 officers having made incriminating admissions, too. And we don’t know what’s passed between Moscow and Paris. There is absolutely nothing to suggest that this will produce any of the speculated success.”

  “None of my officers will have admitted anything, so I won’t bother addressing that canard,” dismissed Monsford, contemptuously, “Nowhere in my proposals have I discounted or minimized our difficulties. What I have done, to confront them, is bring to this country the highest-ranking Russian intelligence executive ever to defect and already have his agreement personally to persuade his family to deny they are kidnap victims, removing any criminal justification for France to detain them. France’s precious pride can go to hell. Moscow’s, too. We hold the better hand for whatever poker game they choose to play. We can’t lose.”

  None of the others spoke, each of the three waiting for one of the others to comment or commit first. Monsford, too, lapsed into quiet, self-satisfied reflection, amused at how persuasively he’d utilized so much of Charlie Muffin’s arguments to justify his personal involvement at their original Buckinghamshire discussions. He’d started out properly confident, Monsford admitted to himself, but he’d never imagined gaining such an overwhelming victory. Even the condescension he’d directed at Aubrey Smith, a finger snap, unprepared decision, had worked. He was the rule maker, the motivator: the others, Aubrey Smith their leading supplicant, had obediently to follow.

  It was Sir Archibald Bland, the permanent civil servant whose influence spanned all political and diplomatic divides, who at last broke but tried too hard for cynicism. “Some diplomats might sometimes be mistaken for gangsters but very few aspire to such gunpoint blackmail.”

  “I’ve put forward practical, workable proposals,” insisted Monsford, impatient at last with too many confused metaphors. “I’m looking forward to hearing alternatives.”

  “I believe we’ve taken this discussion as far as we can and from which there might well be a place for the suggested diplomatic involvement,” said Palmer.

  “But isn’t there something further?” questioned Monsford, reluctant to quit while he was so far ahead. “What about the resurrection of Charlie Muffin?”

  “I’m curious at your describing Charlie’s reappearance as a resurrection?” quickly seized Aubrey Smith. “Do you have a reason for imagining he might have been dead?”

  Monsford’s balloon didn’t burst but the air began to seep from the overinflated euphoria. “It was an inappropriate remark,” he forced himself to admit. “But I’m sure all of us are curious about what he’s been doing.”

  “Charlie’s surfaced,” Smith told the other two. “I’ve heard very little, apart from discovering he’s refusing to operate with MI6, which makes me as curious as I’m sure it does all of you.”

  “With which I’m more than happy to accept,” Monsford hurried in. “I’m no longer willing to risk either my officers or my service on such an irresponsible operative. I would even suggest the extraction of Charlie Muffin and his family is abandoned and all our officers withdrawn before anything else goes wrong.”

  “We talked…” began Smith but Palmer talked over him.

  “Are you telling us the confounded man’s still refusing specific instructions?”

  “No!” denied Smith emphatically, unsure how far he could manipulate Monsford with Jane Ambersom’s limited information. “There are indications that he’s discovered a situation making it unsafe-maybe even physically dangerous-for him to be associated with the MI6 secondment.”

  “I demand an explanation of that remark!” exploded Monsford, exaggerating the outrage, the fragile confidence wavering.

  “Which I’m as anxious to give as you are to hear,
” said Smith, enjoying the quick reversal. “But as we’re discussing your operatives I was hoping you might have some input.”

  “I haven’t the slightest idea what you’re talking about,” blustered the MI6 Director.

  “In which case there’ll need to be the most rigorous inquiry, which I assure all of you it will get,” undertook Smith. “Perhaps we could get some early indication the three seconded, no-longer-acceptable MI6 officers will be recalled.”

  “Or perhaps they should remain to prevent further disasters,” argued Monsford, panicked half thoughts refusing properly to cohere.

  “You’ve changed your mind remarkably quickly,” challenged Smith, hoping the two government grandees were assessing Monsford as he was. “You began hardly able to wait to disassociate your service from mine: now you’re demanding they remain.”

  “That was before your accusations started!” Monsford threw back, awkwardly.

  Turning that awkwardness back upon the other man, Smith said: “What accusations! I haven’t accused anyone of anything. I merely speculated in the widest possible manner on a reason for Charlie’s curious message. And I would, in passing, strongly argue against abandoning Charlie’s mission. I believed we’d accepted Charlie will try to get his wife and child out, with or without our support.”

  “Precisely the potential danger I’m warning against and why my men must stay,” blurted Monsford, to the frowned confusion of both Bland and Palmer.

  Bland said: “This is spiraling into absurdity. We’ll adjourn but by tomorrow I want this sorted out, to be discussed and resolved constructively. I opened this session warning of lost government confidence. Little of what I’ve heard today has changed the sentiment. I think…” The man stopped at a summoning buzz from outside the room.

  Palmer pressed the door-release button and accepted the message slip from a Foreign Office messenger. Looking up, Palmer said: “It’s just been announced in Moscow that one of the two heart-attack victims from the tourist group has died.”