‘What things?’
‘Did Charlie tell you about abandoning the plane bringing him to Moscow?’
Natalia finally sipped her coffee, considering her answer. ‘It was really what I told him.’
Another chink of light through a gradually opening door? wondered Ethel, who wanted to justify Jane Ambersom’s decision to let her continue the gentle questioning of Natalia. ‘What was that?’
Natalia breathed in, preparing herself. ‘I don’t know anything of what happened with Stepan Lvov, just what I inferred from what followed. I knew Charlie was involved, of course: he appeared on Russian television.’ She sipped more coffee. ‘When Charlie and I got together, personally I mean, I cleansed the records to make it look as if Charlie’s debriefing was passed on up the line to others. But my link with Charlie, sanitized though it was, had to remain in the records. I was called in for interrogation the day Lvov was assassinated. I told the questioning officer the story that Charlie and I had rehearsed and from the initial reaction I believed it had been accepted. But I was called back the following day. The first interrogation had been one-to-one. This time there was a panel of three and the questioning was far more aggressive, although more general. I kept rigidly to my initial account, without the slightest deviation. I was, after all, on my own ground: knew all the interrogation ploys and traps. The more general stuff wasn’t a problem. The interrogation, which I considered hostile, continued the following day and when it ended I was warned I might be recalled.’
Natalia drained her cup and accepted a refill from the other woman. ‘Charlie and I were very careful about our relationship, particularly after we got married. One insistence, when he came back to England, hoping I would join him, was that I always called him from public telephones, never from my home line, which could be tapped. After the third interrogation and the warning of possibly more, I guessed I hadn’t cleansed the records as thoroughly as I’d imagined: that there was something that could trap me. I called Charlie from the public phones as he insisted. He never picked up but I left messages, pleading with him to help Sasha and me. That was always my fear, having Sasha taken away from me. But then it all changed.…’ Natalia straggled to a halt, breathing heavily.
‘What changed?’ prompted Ethel, cautiously, when Natalia didn’t continue.
‘I made a terrible mistake … it’s all my fault.…’
‘Natalia, I need to understand what you’re telling me.’
‘They didn’t suspect me, not after the first interview. Those that followed, the aggressive ones, were to satisfy them I was sufficiently loyal for the job I was being transferred to do. After I started I learned that everyone else had been tested as I had.’
‘What job were you being tested for?’ coaxed Ethel.
Natalia remained silent for several moments.
‘Natalia?’ pressed Ethel, keeping the impatience from her voice.
‘I said, when I got here, that I wouldn’t co-operate until you got Charlie back, but I’ve got to, haven’t I: tell you everything that might make that possible?’
‘Yes, you have,’ said Ethel, forceful for the first time.
‘The loss of Radtsic was cataclysmic within the FSB. They started the investigation within hours of getting the confirmation from airport CCTV of his boarding the plane. By the second day they began creating the committees. That’s where I was transferred, to one of the first-level groups tooth-combing Radtsic’s complete professional background from the day he joining the KGB. They’re convinced there’s been a long-term cell operating throughout Radtsic’s entire professional career.’
‘How many committees?’ asked Ethel, sure she was concealing her excitement.
‘I don’t know, not precisely. I gave Charlie an estimate of ten at my level, the lowest. Each group was separate from the others: that’s why I can only estimate the total. Each member of each committee worked on a batch of material at a time. If we believed we’d found something deserving further examination, we had to alert the rest of the group, in case others came across the same name or discrepancy. After being annotated, to avoid whatever it was being permanently misplaced, it was forwarded up to the next examination level, where the search is, apparently, being speeded up by computer analysis.’
Now it was Ethel who lapsed into a brief silence, mentally assembling what Natalia was telling her. ‘So your mistake was telephoning Charlie?’
‘The mistake was telephoning him in the panic that I did,’ elaborated Natalia. ‘I told him at the end of his Lvov investigation that I’d finally decided to leave Russia for good, bringing Sasha here. If I’d simply told him I was coming he wouldn’t have needed to come to get us. All that business of changing planes and joining a tourist party wrecked everything.’
‘What did Charlie say?’
‘That it wasn’t wrecked: that he’d get us out. Which he did, didn’t he, by sacrificing himself?’
‘Did he say anything about your extraction being endangered by anything other than his detection by the Russian authorities?’
‘Not specifically. He made several references to there being things, situations, that he didn’t understand. It was my impression that he felt threatened but that he didn’t want to make me more nervous than I already was.’
‘What about the extraction itself? How did he prepare you for that?’
Once more there was a moment of consideration. ‘He simply told me to take Sasha to the airport and go through the formalities with the tickets and passports he’d given me the previous day. There would be escorts who’d be with me throughout the flight, first to Helsinki and then on to here. I wouldn’t know them but they’d know Sasha and me.’
‘Where did Charlie say he’d be?’
‘The FSB knew he was in Moscow, so it was obvious there’d be an airport alert for him. The arrangement was to show himself to me outside the terminal, which he did. He told me that after that I wouldn’t see him again until we were all safely on the plane.…’ There was a gulped pause. ‘He also told me that if I became aware of any commotion I wasn’t to stop but keep going. But I wasn’t aware of anything. I expected him to get on the plane but he never did.’
‘How long did you work with your committee, going through Radtsic’s personal archive?’ asked Ethel, tensed against the question off-balancing the other woman.
‘Five days.’ Natalia straightened in her chair, recognizing the changed direction.
‘How much did you read?’ Ethel pressed.
‘I’m not sure.’
She was looking for an escape, Ethel knew. ‘You said you worked in batches: how many batches did you clear in a day?’
‘Maybe ten.’
‘A day?’ repeated Ethel, determined upon as much accuracy as possible.
‘Yes.’
‘How big was each batch?’
Natalia created a measurement between her outstretched hands, saying nothing.
‘Multiply that estimated size by fifty, ten batches over five days, you must have gone through roughly six kilos of material?’
Natalia hesitated. ‘I suppose so.’
‘We’ll need to talk about it, Natalia. We’ll want it all,’ reminded Ethel.
‘When we know what’s happened to Charlie.’
The door burst open, interrupting them. ‘I got a star!’ announced Sasha, proudly.
* * *
Aubrey Smith led the reaction, but not in the way expected by the others who’d watched the simultaneous transmission from the police-college safe house in Hampshire. Looking to Jane Ambersom, he said, ‘Not many people—certainly not anyone I’ve encountered since becoming Director-General—would have officially acknowledged, as you did, that Ethel would achieve more than you could in the time available. That’s not just a verbal commendation: it’ll be on your personnel file by the end of the day.’
Jane hesitated, seeking more than a platitude but couldn’t. ‘Thank you very much.’
‘From her success so far, maybe Ethe
l should get a commendation, too,’ suggested Passmore.
‘She’s well on her way,’ promised the Director-General. ‘It’s essential we learn everything Natalia got from Radtsic’s file.’
‘We’re having one success with the woman-to-woman situation,’ Passmore pointed out. ‘Why don’t we try another?’
‘Agreed.’ Smith smiled, understanding. He turned to Jane. ‘From the chair shifting and body language, despite rumours to the contrary, I don’t think rapacious Rebecca is enjoying the sidelines,’ said the Director-General. ‘I believe the dissatisfaction I’m seeing in Rebecca could be encouraged by comparison with the authority and responsibility accorded to Jane.’
‘You surely don’t imagine she’d ally herself with us!’ questioned Jane.
‘Depends how overlooked or even threatened Rebecca feels herself to be,’ shrugged Smith. ‘All you’ve got to do is present the Natalia disclosure.’
Passmore’s pager beeped, directly followed by a call on the internal link to the communications room. The operations director smiled, turning to the two others. ‘Patrick Wilkinson’s made coded contact, on an open line. His message is that it was an exciting trip but that it’s good to be home.’
‘At least that’s one officer spared from the diplomatic-access machinery,’ remarked Jane.
‘I’ve got people on standby for all the others when the Russians eventually agree: Charlie’s at the top of the list,’ said Passmore.
‘Let’s hope Charlie’s man gets the chance to perform the function if the Russians ever offer it,’ said Smith, doubtfully.
* * *
It was virtually automatic for Charlie to identify the dacha as a brilliantly positioned safe house, as impossible to get into as it was to escape from, the myriad nooks and crannies of its rough timber construction tailored for the inner observation equipment in addition to the specialized guarding army outside. The easily smiling middle-aged woman who served the excellent stroganoff was attractive enough to have been a swallow in the Cold War days of diplomat-targeting sexual entrapment, the male minder sufficiently handsome to have been a raven offering the same temptations to lonely female embassy staff. Charlie noted that the offered wine was his Georgian favourite and that the rack was fully stocked. Mikhail Guzov maintained the exchanges throughout the meal with stories of two undetected years as a KGB officer in the London embassy, which Charlie dismissed as complete invention from the word-perfect tourist-guide recitation of the places and sights Guzov claimed to have visited. Charlie’s disbelief was confirmed by Guzov’s account of a weekend at a Shakespeare festival at Stratford-on-Avon when the movements of Russian diplomats were officially restricted to a twenty-mile radius of London.
‘And now we talk,’ announced Guzov, as their plates were cleared.
‘About what?’ asked Charlie, pleased at the gravy spot besmirching the Russian’s lapel.
‘Irena Yakulova,’ announced the Russian.
Charlie was relieved there was no longer any unsteadiness when he stood: he wasn’t surprised in the circumstances that his feet hurt.
* * *
‘It’s huge,’ declared Mort Bering. As a concession—and because the essential point had been made—the FBI deputy director had travelled out to the CIA headquarters in Virginia.
‘What!’ demanded Larry Stern. At Bering’s request, today’s encounter was in the FBI man’s car, driving without direction through Rock Creek Park.
‘Everything’s tied up with the Lvov thing but the steer Elliott’s getting is that it’s moved on a long way from how you guys got screwed.’
‘What about our getting involved: try to salvage something from the fucking disaster?’ suggested Stern. ‘We need something to impress the Intelligence Committee on the Hill to prevent their discovering what a total fuck-up we made and how many top-echelon guys it’s cost us.’
‘We’re a long way from there yet,’ cautioned Bering. ‘What about the Novikov woman?’
‘We finally got her in the chair: got our best guy on it but she’s still stonewalling. Claims she was kidnapped, demanding access to her embassy.’
‘What’s she being told?’
‘That as far as anyone knows she doesn’t exist anymore; that unless she gives us every last detail of the Lvov emplacement, she’ll stay here until she’s old and grey.’
‘You think she’ll buckle?’
‘There are a lot of mirrors in the safe house, so she can watch that pretty new face of hers wither along with the grey hair if she doesn’t.’
8
Charlie was momentarily bewildered at Guzov’s declaration that the architect of the Stepan Lvov emplacement was to be the focus of their opening session, from which the obvious conclusion had to be that the FSB believed Irena Yakulova Novikov was under British, not American, protection. But then why shouldn’t they believe that?
How could he use it? As much and in as many misleading directions as he could invent, came the answer. But not randomly: not sowing the disinformation seeds like a gardener in a March wind. He could plant offshoots where it was fertile but there had to be a central theme if he was to convince Guzov and those who’d analyze more closely his every inference and innuendo that a thread of truth held together the lies they’d expect him to tell.
What they’d anticipated would be the key, Charlie knew: so the way to convince them was to tell them what they’d prepared themselves to hear, spiced with just the misted shadow of a deception they’d almost subliminally accepted. Had he been with Irena Novikov long enough to fabricate enough to trick those who professionally knew her intimately and who would, inevitably, be called upon to examine microscopically the account he concocted? A step—into the dark—at a time he determined.
‘How is she?’ abruptly began Guzov.
A hesitation would be natural and he had to guard against facial expressions; body language, too. ‘Well enough: she’s hardly going to be ill treated.’
‘So you expect her to come over to you?’
Not the response of a trained interrogator, judged Charlie; conceivably, though, intentionally gauche, to lure him into overconfidence. ‘That’s what she did, came over with me, didn’t she?’
Guzov’s mouth tightened. ‘Under what duress?’
Irena would have been subjected to a lot of FSB rehearsal and planning, right up to the moment she’d left Moscow with him. But she wouldn’t have disclosed any of that during a debriefing. What then? What she might not have mentioned, he decided. ‘Duress of her own making, not mine.’
‘I don’t understand that answer.’
‘How could you? You don’t know the mistakes she made: the mistakes others made. All that she did and said in an effort to save the Lvov operation.’ His first unchallengeable opportunity to sow seeds, Charlie recognized, hoping his slight relaxation in the enveloping chair would have been picked up on film.
‘There hasn’t been any official diplomatic response to our request for consular access,’ said Guzov. ‘Your Foreign Office isn’t even acknowledging her presence in England.’
Creakingly thin ice, Charlie realized at once: how long before London disclosed where Irena really was? ‘Maybe it’s Irena Yakulova who doesn’t want to acknowledge it.’
‘Is she refusing?’ demanded Guzov, directly.
Where was the safe ground? groped Charlie. Spurred by a sudden thought, he said, ‘I’m not going to be allowed consular access until you are granted the same to Irena, am I?’
‘What do you think?’
What Charlie thought was that he was in a box within a box, denied any possibility of confirming Natalia and Sasha’s escape. ‘I wouldn’t know anything about consular access. That’s a diplomatic negotiation.’
‘We believe Irena Yakulova is being held against her will.’
Charlie had days earlier acknowledged that Mikhail Guzov wasn’t a trained interrogator but this was scarcely competent: he had to be careful that his leading the encounter wasn’t obvious to the unknown m
onitoring professionals who’d analyze everything. ‘Irena Yakulova was not nor is under duress. Neither is she being held against her will. Her co-operation is entirely voluntary.’ That would surely prompt a more useful exchange!
‘Neither do we believe that she’s co-operating voluntarily.’
Was that a clumsy encouragement to prove the contrary? At least it gave him an opening. ‘Lvov was a brilliant concept, wasn’t it?’
An obvious wariness settled about the other man. ‘Britain and America, led by the nose! It’s more than brilliant.’
Shit, thought Charlie, disappointed, but caught by the tense in which Guzov had replied. ‘Was brilliant,’ Charlie corrected. ‘And all ruined by those mistakes of the amateurs.’ Which Irena had virtually accused Guzov of being, Charlie remembered, warily.
‘What amateurs?’ the Russian demanded, on cue.
‘It would have all gone to plan if Ivan Nikolaevich Oskin’s body hadn’t been dumped in the grounds of the British embassy, wouldn’t it?’ lured Charlie.
‘Did Irena Yakulova tell you that?’
Blocked, Charlie conceded, at the same time as recognizing his chance to add to what the FSB would know to be true. ‘As well as a lot of other things. Her greatest anger was with the CIA for dumping it as they did. It didn’t make any sense. Any more than the other stupidities.’
‘What other stupidities?’ demanded Guzov, on cue again.
It was verbal tennis, Charlie accepted. He had to play carefully not to infer Irena’s criticism of the man confronting him. ‘I know there was a lot she didn’t tell me. But you yourself were furious at the militia’s unauthorized arrest of Svetlana Modin, the TV anchorwoman. You were using her, weren’t you, Mikhail Alexandrovich?’ He was coming close to suggesting too much, Charlie cautioned himself, and they were a long way now from Irena Yakulova. Was Guzov really inept? Or had the man undergone a crash training course in the hope of his seizure from the moment the FSB learned of his return to Moscow?
Red Star Falling: A Thriller (Charlie Muffin Thrillers) Page 10