Red Star Falling: A Thriller (Charlie Muffin Thrillers)

by Brian Freemantle

  ‘Tuesday morning or Tuesday evening?’

  ‘Tuesday evening,’ said Natalia, promptly again: there was no danger in that answer. ‘When we were first together, before we lived together, we had a contact procedure, dead letter drops. Charlie used it and I picked up.’

  ‘It was a very early arrival, on the Monday: four A.M. He must have filled the drop sometime during that first day,’ calculated Jane. ‘So he’d been able to move about in Moscow roughly thirty-six hours. That first time you met, did he tell you what he’d been doing?’

  The safety of complete honesty seized Natalia. ‘Nothing at all.’

  ‘It’s Charlie we’re working to help,’ prompted Jane, solemnly. ‘Wasn’t there the slightest indication?’

  Natalia shook her head, maintaining the honesty. ‘He was very careful about the actual meeting: wanted to guarantee I’d cleared my trail before he approached me. The drop was at Moscow’s original Botanical Gardens. In those very first days of our originally getting together we’d used a hotel very close, the Mira. That’s where Charlie was living at the beginning of what you’re calling his lost week. It’s virtually a rent-by-the-hour whorehouse now. We went there to hide, nothing more. And talk. But only about what was going to happen. There was all the publicity about the tourist arrests by then. I said we’d never get out: that I’d trapped him. He told me he’d make it work.’

  ‘Charlie was ultra-cautious,’ picked up Jane, searching for crumbs. ‘Didn’t you think there was some significance in that?’

  Natalia shook her head again, still sure she was on safe ground. ‘I have never known a more instinctive, more intuitive espionage professional than Charlie. He finishes other people’s thoughts before they know how to finish them for themselves; knows what they’re going to do or say before they do.…’ She hesitated, weighing her words. ‘The point I’m making is that I didn’t see any significance in the precautions Charlie took. I saw Charlie Muffin being Charlie Muffin.’

  Now it was Jane who hesitated, unsure how to continue. ‘There’s an interpretation that could be made from what you’ve just said.’

  ‘What?’ demanded Natalia, uneasy at not isolating the direction of the remark.

  ‘Was that eulogy of Charlie Muffin the true character assessment? Or was he, in truth, the one you actually managed to turn into a double?’ challenged Jane. ‘There have been other assessments, assessments easily reached from your actually being married to him, that Charlie has for a long time been a double.’

  Natalia remained blank faced, as she had throughout, constantly aware of the cameras and just as expertly now refusing the anger at the accusation, turning the irritation upon herself for allowing even the vaguest twitch of annoyance. For the benefit of the permanently attentive lenses she actually smiled. ‘We began trying to find something that might help get Charlie out of whatever situation he’s in, a situation in itself that makes ridiculous the accusation you’ve just made. I’m as much your captive here as Charlie is in Moscow, which compounds the ridiculousness. As difficult as it obviously is for you to believe, which I accept because our being married is even more difficult to believe, Charlie and I never, ever, exchanged a single operational detail until what you refer to as the lost week—’

  ‘Which you haven’t told me about,’ instantly seized Jane.

  ‘Because your questions haven’t allowed me to.’

  ‘Tell me now.’

  ‘You have to tell me something first,’ demanded Natalia. ‘Did MI5 know Maxim Mikhailovich Radtsic was being extracted before he arrived in Britain?’

  Jane hesitated. Throughout she’d felt comfortable with the other woman, not suspecting professional manipulation and believing that she was being told the truth: this was a reversal of roles she hadn’t anticipated. But by being aware of it, she was forewarned, she reassured herself. ‘No,’ she said, intentionally short.

  ‘Charlie knew,’ Natalia announced.

  ‘How?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ conceded Natalia. ‘But he definitely knew about Radtsic crossing over before I told him I had been appointed to the investigation into Radtsic’s background. The only possible source can be MI6, who, according to what you’ve told me, staged the Vnukovo ambush in which they tried to kill Charlie. Nothing of which makes the slightest sense.’

  ‘That’s our problem,’ agreed Jane. ‘Nothing’s made sense since the beginning of this mess.’

  * * *

  Gerald Monsford decided that he’d come out of it far better than he’d imagined possible, right up to the very moment he’d responded to the committee’s demand. Unquestionably better, too, that it was he who’d provided the explanation in the way he had, instead of fielding Rebecca to provide his opening. But that hadn’t been her ploy. The bitch had meant to leave him stranded, hanging back as she had. He regretted now stranding her in return, rejecting any conversation during their silent ride back to their Vauxhall Cross building. But she definitely had to believe she was safe, not coming forward as he’d instructed and before that physically pulling away from him in front of everyone. It was obvious that he had to get rid of her but he couldn’t risk any move to achieve that until he discovered what she imagined to be her protection. So it remained a concern but not his most pressing one. That was building upon that morning’s success by very precisely pointing the head of the security investigation to substantiate the doubts he’d already sown about James Straughan.

  Matthew Timpson arrived with bank manager’s punctuality befitting his black-suited, portly self-important demeanour. With him, unexpectedly, was the unnamed, crimp-haired, matronly woman, also in black, who’d been among the initial investigative hierarchy.

  She wasn’t introduced now, either. Instead Timpson said, ‘Interviews are always formally witnessed.’

  ‘I didn’t see this as a formal interview.’ Monsford frowned, having hoped for an unrecorded exchange.

  ‘This is a formal investigation: every encounter is formally witnessed and recorded,’ lectured Timpson. ‘You’ll be provided with a verbatim transcript in addition to a copied recording.’

  While they’d talked, the woman had installed a slightly larger than pocket-size recorder on Monsford’s desk, a bell-shaped receiver arm extended directly towards him.

  Indicating his own system, Monsford said, ‘I’ll make my own copy, of course.’

  ‘Of course.’

  The sanctimonious bastard was patronizing him, Monsford decided. He’d take his time choosing the deflating moment.

  ‘You’ve got something important to contribute to our enquiry?’ invited Timpson. He’d chosen his own chair and was sitting with his hands comfortably joined across a plump, waistcoated stomach. His face, like his voice, was expressionless and oddly shone, as if he’d polished rather than washed it.

  ‘Your investigation will encompass the apparent suicide of my former operations director, James Straughan?’ embarked Monsford.

  ‘It’s of particular interest because it is inexplicable,’ said Timpson, pedantically.

  Timpson would have been a very difficult bank manager from whom to coax an overdraft, thought Monsford. ‘Straughan was very closely involved, the architect in many ways, of much of what has become the very complicated and far-too-public difficulties in which both MI5 and my service currently find themselves.’

  ‘Are you suggesting his suicide is directly connected?’ asked the flat-voiced man.

  Slightly better, judged Monsford. ‘Your security classification enables you total access to all the operational details of both extractions?’

  ‘All the appropriate documentation and authority has been provided to you,’ insisted Timpson, pedantic again.

  None of which gave this jumped-up clerk the right to sit as if in judgement, thought Monsford. Maybe it was deflation time. ‘As you’ve been provided with all the case documentations and authorities of both extractions, what, in your opinion, is the outstanding indication that there is a security leak within MI6?’


  ‘I’m here at your invitation, to hear what you have to tell me,’ Timpson avoided, the self-satisfaction slipping slightly.

  ‘From that reply it’s obvious you haven’t isolated it yet, which certainly makes this a necessary meeting,’ said Monsford, aggressively. ‘There is no conceivable way the FSB could have burgled Muffin’s London flat unless its address came from one of our two agencies. I believe MI6 to be the source.’

  ‘Straughan?’ demanded the security head, at once.

  Monsford had expected greater surprise. ‘That’s the indication.’

  ‘What indication?’ asked Timpson, a finger-snap question.

  ‘One of my dead officers, Stephan Briddle, was the MI6 supervisor within Charlie Muffin’s original support team,’ set out Monsford, his concentration now entirely upon every word he uttered and the recordings being made of them. ‘Just after midnight—I was asleep, didn’t check the exact time—in the morning of the Vnukovo shooting I received a call at my apartment at Cheyne Walk. It was Briddle, in Moscow. He’d discovered a cell, he told me. It was a fragmented story. The gist was that David Halliday, my other dead officer, was part of that cell, together with Straughan, who was running it. Briddle believed Muffin knew more about it: had proof, even, which was why Muffin refused any MI6 association, fearing he’d be compromised—’

  ‘You have a transcript of this conversation?’ intruded Timpson, finally energized.

  Monsford shook his head, carefully avoiding the denial being audibly recorded. ‘Briddle broke operational security. My home telephone is technically an insecure line, not equipped for automatic recording. The conversation was too brief for me manually to switch my normal answering machine to record.’

  ‘There’ll be an automatic listing on your telephone record of the call being made, though?’

  ‘Of course there will be. I’ve just told you mine is an ordinary public line.’ Monsford’s antipathy towards the other man vanished at the hoped-for question. Stephan Briddle had broken every operational security by making the panicked call on an open line just after midnight, but only to confirm by an ambiguous exchange the order to assassinate Charlie Muffin, whom David Halliday had chanced upon at the Savoy Hotel bar they’d used together during Charlie’s embassy-murder assignment. But that all-important incoming-telephone record existed, to validate the story no-one could prove to be a lie.

  Timpson hesitated, reflectively. ‘I’m not clear of the connection with James Straughan. How does this have anything to do with the FSB learning of Muffin’s London address?’

  ‘I hadn’t finished,’ bullied Monsford. ‘Briddle also told me that Halliday, maudlin drunk, had talked of arguing with Straughan about an FSB double agent in Rome. Briddle said it hadn’t made sense because Halliday was so drunk but that it involved finding Charlie in London: that Charlie had been his friend and he didn’t want Charlie physically harmed or betrayed, as Straughan had persuaded him to betray everything and everyone else.’

  ‘Does Rome have any significance to you?’ asked Timpson.

  All the superciliousness had gone, Monsford recognized, satisfied: the sort of man Shakespeare called the resty sloth. Shaking his head once more, Monsford said, ‘No. But that’s why I’m pointing you towards Straughan’s file: if there’s anything, it should be there.’ And would be, Monsford knew, because he’d proposed using the FSB’s Rome double to leak Charlie Muffin’s otherwise totally secure London address as part of his original assassination distraction to cover Maxim Radtsic’s defection. Just as he also knew that in his log note Straughan, the consummate, rule-observing professional, would not have identified him as the source of the instruction.

  ‘If Straughan was the mole he’d hardly leave proof behind, would he?’

  Monsford shrugged. ‘I’m offering all that I know in the hope of resolving this eroding uncertainty within my service. If it comes to nothing, if I’m wasting your time, then I’ll apologize. And as I do so, be glad that an officer I always regarded with the highest respect did not, after all, betray his country.’

  ‘We appreciate what you’ve told us,’ said Timpson, rising. ‘As of this moment it’s the focus of our investigation.’

  Monsford was surprised at the call from his deputy, smiling in expectation of a grovelling apology, deciding as he lifted the receiver of their internal line that he’d pressurize her further by rejecting whatever she said.

  ‘There’s been another Moscow announcement,’ said Rebecca Street. ‘Denning and Beckindale, our two other officers with Briddle, were arrested during the shooting. The statement says they are co-operating fully.’

  * * *

  ‘How was it last night?’ asked Barry Elliott.

  ‘Not as bad as I’d feared,’ said Jane. They were in bed again, finishing off the dinner wine.

  ‘What, exactly, did you do wrong?’

  ‘Lost my temper: openly challenged Monsford, which was stupid of me.’ She stretched, careless of the bedcovering falling away from her. ‘This apartment really is more convenient than mine: it took me less than ten minutes to get here tonight. And your kitchen is better equipped than mine.’

  ‘You going to stay over tonight?’ asked Elliott, pleased at the way the conversation was going.

  ‘The Watch Room would use my cell phone if there was no reply from my flat but it would mean my wearing tomorrow the same clothes as today.’

  ‘Why not move some of your stuff in?’

  ‘Do you think that’s a good idea?’ she asked, smiling sideways across the bed.

  ‘I think it’s a very good idea,’ encouraged Elliott. ‘Washington isn’t pleased with me, either, so I might need a shoulder to cry on.’

  ‘What’s their problem?’

  ‘Not knowing what the hell’s going on in Moscow, of course.’

  There was a familiar pause. ‘We think Monsford set Charlie up for assassination.’

  Elliott shifted directly to face the woman. ‘You’ve got to be joking!’

  ‘It started out as a considered diversion but we think that Monsford didn’t call it off.’

  He had to risk it, Elliott decided. ‘Diversion from what?’

  ‘MI6 had a walk-in.’

  ‘Into the embassy?’

  ‘At a government reception.’

  ‘He still in Moscow?’

  ‘Here.’

  ‘How big?’

  ‘The biggest.’

  ‘We talking professional?’

  ‘Personal: very personal. If it leaks, it can only have come from you.’

  Fuck, thought Elliott. ‘What are we proving here?’

  ‘Each other. This is my commitment.’

  5

  Charlie expected the withdrawal of the catheter to be roughly performed, intentionally to hurt, but it wasn’t. It was extracted slowly, by a caressingly soft-handed, substantially busted blond nurse who frequently stopped to ask, smiling, if she was causing him discomfort. Each time Charlie assured her she wasn’t, glad that the procedure was finished and the bedcovering restored before the assembled, expectantly smiling medical team witnessed his lie. There was no pain, either, when she was helped by others to extract the cannula from the back of his hand and disassemble the metal stands supporting the two drips. While he’d lain there Charlie was sure he’d isolated the listening attachment at the mouthpiece corner of the permanently available oxygen supply: he’d always manoeuvred himself in its direction when breaking wind.

  ‘We’re going to look at the wound, put on a lighter dressing,’ announced the bearded, heavily moustached surgeon, coming out of the medical group. None had ever been identified.

  ‘Everything still feels numb,’ said Charlie. It was a pointless persistence, he accepted, but every gesture of resistance, no matter how minimal, was psychologically important. He guessed Mikhail Guzov was trying the same technique by ignoring him for an entire day to generate apprehension for what was to come.

  ‘So you keep telling me,’ said the physician. The
re was dutiful laughter among those assembled behind him.

  Charlie stood unsteadily, momentarily dizzy from being upright on his usually uncomfortable feet for the first time in almost three days as well as from having only one free arm for natural balance. The team and the outside guards trailed behind when they emerged onto the corridor, giving Charlie an unobstructed view on his wheelchair journey, which he at once acknowledged to be another unsettling psychological trick. There were no obvious side corridors to general wards. Every door, its padded rubber exterior heavily studded by regimented, large-headed fixings, was closed. There were no sounds from inside any room he passed. Nor did they encounter another person in any of the half-lighted passages. The intention, Charlie knew, was for him to feel totally abandoned, which he did.

  Charlie was stripped of his back-buttoned smock but retained the overly long trousers, which puddled around his ankles, making it difficult even to stumble the few steps to the examination table. He needed help to get onto it. This time the two assistants were men and far less careful, the purpose of which Charlie again recognized, staying rigid faced against the pain he was insisting he was still too numbed to feel. He tried to twist his head to his injured shoulder as the dressing was cut away but an unseen theatre nurse cupped his head and others turned him onto his uninjured side, giving the surgeon front and back access to his wounded shoulder. Charlie had to close his eyes against the blinding overhead light.

  ‘Although you tell me there’s no feeling we’ll still have a little local anaesthetic, shall we?’ mocked the surgeon.

  Charlie counted three injections. Genuine numbness was very quick.

  ‘This could heal with too much external scar tissue, which we don’t need, do we?’ continued the voice, from behind. ‘Just a cosmetic snip, here and there.’

  Charlie felt the pressure of an instrument, but no pain, then a different pressure, as if his shoulder was being prodded. A whispered conversation began, during which Charlie strained. He was sure he heard heal at least three times. Then what sounded like flat or maybe flag. Week was very clear. So was infection. The new dressing was far less mummifying, the bindings brought around his chest only to keep the bandages in place. There was far more consideration getting him off the table. Once more, briefly upright, he needed support to regain the wheelchair.