Red Star Burning

by Brian Freemantle

  “No it isn’t!” insisted Charlie. “Nothing’s all over: we’re not over. I’ll get you and Sasha out and we are going to be together.”

  “I want so much to believe you.…”

  It had been a stupid mistake to go sideways: to give way to jealousy. “Are you still at the Lubyanka? You haven’t been suspended or moved to other duties?”

  In contrast to how she’d slumped earlier, Natalia fixed Charlie in a very direct stare. “This is not what we talk about: not how we’ve ever talked.”

  Charlie felt the slightest twitch of irritation, a reaction toward her so rare that he couldn’t remember a previous occasion. “I’m not asking for your betrayal, I’m trying to find a way out for the three of us. If I don’t find that way out, if you don’t help me find it, I can’t imagine what your service will do to you, just as you can’t imagine what they’d do to me. The one thing I don’t need to imagine—know for a positive, incontrovertible certainty—is what will happen to Sasha. Do you want her, from the moment of our arrests, to be put into a state orphanage until she’s fifteen and then thrown out, literally onto the street, nowhere to go, no one to help or guide her except the brothel traffickers waiting outside to teach her the only way she’ll be able to survive!”

  Natalia began to cry, which she’d never before done in front of him, and Charlie was shocked at his own outburst, unable to believe he’d attacked her as he had. Not an attack, he tried to console himself. What had needed to be said finally to get her out of the cocoon into which she wanted to retreat rather than confront the reality of where and how they now were. “You hear what I’m saying: understand what I’m saying!”

  “It would have been better if I’d understood a long time ago, wouldn’t it?” She sobbed.

  * * *

  Because all the factors were in place, like already tested lights simply needing to be turned on, James Straughan adhered strictly to Monsford’s insistence upon unbreakable security by deciding personally to flick all the switches, delegating to no one. Unlike America’s CIA, MI6 does not maintain its dedicated clandestine aircraft facilities but has fee-paying call upon that under the Foreign Office budget. Availability of both aircraft and crew was reconfirmed, together with morning and evening flight plans protectively stretched over the next four consecutive days into and out of Orly from Northolt military airfield on the outskirts of London, the spread adjustable to all the other time-dictated coordinates. While Straughan remained on the secure line from the Vauxhall Cross communication center, the duty officer at the MI6 rezidentura at the Paris embassy relayed the intended rendezvous with Elana Radtsic to finalize the Russians’ immediate readiness to move. Straughan stayed on hold for the time it took Harry Jacobson to go from the rezidentura to the totally secure basement communications chamber of the Moscow embassy, his confidence growing at the smoothness with which everything was slotting into its required place.

  “What’s today’s drama,” cynically greeted the Moscow station chief.

  “There isn’t one,” assured Straughan. “It’s to be a straight extraction on the first available direct flight. Guarantee there’s availability for the three escorts who’ll be traveling with you. Give me the flight as soon as you can, for them to make their independent reservations.”

  “What about the side issues?” demanded Jacobson.

  “Canceled. I thought the Director would have told you.”

  There was a momentary pause as the relief swept through Jacobson. “The TV channels here have been virtually cleared for nonstop repeats of the hotel seizures.”

  “It’s been media pandemonium here, too.”

  “Anyone got any idea where Muffin is?”

  “We don’t know and don’t care. And that’s official.”

  “You okay personally: not catching any shit?”

  “As okay as I’ll ever be. You think you can fix a flight tomorrow? You’re the trigger for everything else.”

  “I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”

  “I’ll be here waiting.” Straughan separately made his alert calls from the communications room to Radtsic’s independent escorts and had just reentered his office when the summons came on his internal line.

  “You got a moment?” asked Rebecca Street.

  “I’m waiting for callbacks.”

  “I’ll come to you.”

  Straughan hesitated. “It sounds important?”

  “It is.”

  * * *

  “I’ll try,” promised Natalia, dry-eyed again after Charlie’s limited explanation. “It won’t be easy.”

  “Don’t risk anything to draw attention to yourself,” insisted Charlie, urgently. “Just listen for any rumors or gossip from which I might be able to make some sense.” Upon which depended David Halliday’s getting something more concrete, balanced Charlie, who’d held back from telling Natalia of his earlier encounter with the man, worried that it might further unsettle her.

  “There’s still a lot of both at the Lubyanka. The turmoil hasn’t subsided yet.”

  “I’m surprised some of it appears to have got into newspapers here, particularly after Putin’s media clampdown.”

  “I suspect they’re intentionally planted.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll try to get a steer on that, too.”

  “Without taking any risks,” repeated Charlie.

  “I heard you the first time.”

  “Remember what else I said. I will get all of us out, safely.”

  Natalia looked steadily at him for several moments. “If you say so.” She looked slightly away, to the infested bed. “I can’t stay. I need to be at Pecatnikov if there’s anything from Sasha’s summer school.” She hesitated. “Or anyone else.”

  “I wasn’t going to ask you to stay, as much as I want you to.”

  “I want to tell you again how—”

  “Don’t,” stopped Charlie, positively. “Keeping one step ahead is the only thing to worry about from now on.”

  Which was virtually the same sentiment, expressed in virtually the same words, exchanged at that moment between Rebecca Street and James Straughan in their river-bordering building almost eighteen hundred miles away in London.

  * * *

  It was several minutes before Andrei Radtsic, his face drained, his head shaking in disbelief, managed brokenly to speak. “I don’t understand what you’re telling me.”

  “I still don’t, not properly,” admitted Elana.

  “There must be something.…”

  Now Elana shook her head. “Your father says this is the only way.”

  Andrei moved aimlessly around the apartment, fingering objects, picking up and putting down. He turned back, gesturing open-armed. “Everything will be over … finished … your job at the university … me, here, what I might have done … I can’t take it in.…”

  “Your father says it will all work out, eventually.”

  “I don’t want to do it: any of it! I won’t do it! You go, both of you. Leave me.”

  “We can’t do that. You’ll be seized: jailed. Used in some way to get us back to Moscow.”

  Andrei stood on the other side of the room, shaking his head again but not speaking.

  “Tell me about the girl, Yvette.”

  “She’s living here with me,” blurted Andrei. “She stayed away, for us to talk: for me to find out why you came so unexpectedly, but she’ll be back.”

  “We didn’t know she’d moved in.”

  “It hasn’t been long.”

  “Do you love her?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Does she love you?”

  “I don’t know,” he said again.

  “We’re going to be called, at this number.”

  “Who by?”

  “The British.”

  “What!”

  “To be told how we’re being got out.”

  “I don’t want this: any of this!”

  “Neither do I, my darling.
But we haven’t a choice.”

  20

  Maxim Radtsic’s insistence upon resuming their meetings to discuss the lead-up arrangements only slightly diminished Harry Jacobson’s satisfaction that the entire ill-conceived, haphazardly planned affair was soon to be over. Jacobson matched Radtsic’s insistence by decreeing the Bolshoi as their venue for the very first of his personal celebrations. Jacobson was a ballet fanatic and Swan Lake his favorite but that night his fear of entrapment superceded his enjoyment of the performance.

  Freed as he now was from the absurd assassination diversion as well as safely shepherding Radtsic to London, Jacobson was able to look past the immediate to the promotions so clearly open to him for what he’d done—and been unarguably prepared to do.

  It was objectively accepted that despite the facile diplomatic charade of cover embassy titles and descriptions, Russian intelligence knew the identities of most if not all British espionage officers in Moscow, just as MI5 and MI6 knew the identities of most if not all Russian operatives in London. That was how each country was so quickly able to match the other, agent for agent, in tit-for-tat spy expulsions. And why Jacobson knew that within days, hours even, of Radtsic’s defection the FSB would identify him as the MI6 Control who’d flown out on the same plane as their deputy executive chairman.

  Which, following that inevitability to its only conclusion, made absolutely impossible his return to Moscow. About which, apart from the ballet, he had no regrets.

  There was the slight blip in Jacobson’s reasoning at the brevity of his Moscow posting until he balanced that brevity to be in his favor rather than against a fitting and deserving reward. He doubted there’d ever been, in this or any other hostile country, another MI6 station chief who, after just months, had landed a catch as big as a deputy head of intelligence. And this wasn’t any other hostile country. This was the hostile country, the Russian Federation, led by a man so determined upon a new, even more frigid Cold War that he’d openly threatened a western-facing missile fence across central Europe after crushing the upstart former republic of Georgia as brutally as then-Czechoslovakia and Hungary had been crushed at the height of communism.

  Jacobson judged Washington his most logical move, the posting for which this impending coup most qualified him. But Jacobson believed himself a true and natural European and genuinely supported its union of nations. Paris was traditionally viewed as the promotional jewel in the diplomatic crown. And of all his intelligence career ladder-scrambling Jacobson had most enjoyed his earlier tour in the French capital, although its ballet lacked the tingling magic of that approaching its intermission before him.

  For which Jacobson was ready, rising as the curtain fell for the encounter ritual of checking Radtsic for unwelcome interest before the Russian assured himself that Jacobson was also clear. Which, by strict tradecraft interpretation, he wasn’t, although there was no possibility of Radtsic’s becoming aware of his three other intended escorts, the only purpose for whose presence was physically to identify the man whose uninterrupted flight they had to guarantee and of whose identity Jacobson himself was unaware: their Bolshoi attendance had been independently arranged by Straughan, after Jacobson’s choice of meeting place.

  Jacobson established himself in the shadow of a pillar close to the bar entrance after very intentionally ordering the twice-as-expensive French over Russian champagne in another early celebration of his anticipated career advancement. Radtsic bulldozed his way into the salon with his accustomed autocratic swagger, ignoring the protests of two separate groups in front of which he forced himself to be served. The swagger remained while he moved back into the now-crowded room, although away from where Jacobson watched. Tonight’s safety signal, from the protection of another pillar deeper within the room, was for Radtsic to consult but quickly pocket his program, which he did more quickly than Jacobson had expected. Jacobson didn’t hurry to respond, double-checking his own surroundings, irritated by Radtsic’s open look of expectation before he reached the man.

  “Ready at last!” greeted the Russian, sardonically.

  “Everything’s fixed, yes.”

  “When?”

  “The nine A.M. British Airways flight the day after tomorrow.”

  “Why not tomorrow!” Radtsic instantly demanded.

  Jacobson maneuvered his back to the pillar, as much to mark Radtsic for the three unknown watching escorts, who, according to Straughan, knew his identity from photographs, as for his own protective view of the chandeliered room. “This is the first completely suitable, available flight upon which you can be fully escorted.”

  “It’s an unnecessary delay.”

  “It ensures your greatest security,” insisted Jacobson.

  “How?” persisted Radtsic.

  “It’s a direct flight, removing stopover interception. Our people will be onboard.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t even know their identities. And go through Sheremetyevo more quietly.”

  “What are you talking about!” questioned the other man, coloring.

  “The way you walk, your whole attitude, attracts attention.”

  Radtsic’s face reddened. “I don’t expect or want to be addressed like this.”

  “And I don’t want all that’s been arranged for your benefit to collapse, with your wife and son already out of the country, by your focusing attention on yourself as you’ve done at every meeting we’ve had.” He shouldn’t have given way to the annoyance, Jacobson warned himself: in less than forty-eight hours he’d be rid of the arrogant bastard.

  It took Radtsic several moments to compose himself. “What are the arrangements?”

  “We have to meet one more time, tomorrow night. I’ll tell you the place and the time by cell phone. At tomorrow’s meeting I’ll give you your ticket—a return, obviously, although you’re not coming back—and your passport. Both are in the name of Ivan Petrovich Umnov. The passport is authentically Russian, so it can’t be challenged. Neither can the exit visa from here nor the entry documentation into Britain, to which will be attached all the British accreditation for an international engineering conference genuinely being held in Birmingham. That’s your cover: you’re an engineer specializing in mineral-drilling machinery. I’ll also give you one hundred pounds in sterling, with the currency-exchange receipts and all the Birmingham contact information, including an apparently confirmed appointment with Yuri Panin, the current deputy trade minister at the Russian embassy in London.” Jacobson drank heavily from his champagne glass, needing it.

  Radtsic, the color gone, said: “Your service is very efficient.”

  “As yours is,” acknowledged Jacobson. “Is there anything we’ve omitted or that isn’t clear to you?”

  “Where is this place, Birmingham?”

  “In the middle of the country.”

  “What about you?” asked Radtsic. “Are you accompanying me?”

  “That hasn’t been positively decided,” lied Jacobson, self-protectively. “My job is to ensure your unhindered passage onto the plane. At Heathrow you’ll be taken from the plane ahead of other passengers. You’ll be taken direct to a waiting car.”

  “Tell me about Elana and Andrei.”

  “Everything is governed by your departure. That schedule has Elana and Andrei arriving in England ahead of you, because of the time difference between Russia and France. They will be waiting at the safe house already prepared.”

  Radtsic smiled. “I would like to tell them tonight how close everything is.”

  “No!” ordered Jacobson, in quiet-voiced urgency. “It’ll be madness to attempt contact now!”

  The resumption bell echoed throughout the salon. Radtsic said nothing but his face had colored again.

  “Give me your solemn undertaking you won’t try to make contact!”

  “I won’t make contact,” said the Russian.

  * * *

  “Where have you been: the arrangement was six. It’s almost eight!”

&n
bsp; From the subdued noise in the background Charlie guessed David Halliday was in a bar: the underlying jazz was modern, the occasional snatched lyric in English. “Where are you?”

  “The Savoy. When you didn’t call I came looking for you here.”

  Charlie had lived at the Savoy, close to Red Square, during the embassy-killing investigation. “I’d hardly be likely to stay there, with everyone and his dog looking for me!”

  “I told you this morning that I need to know where to find you!”

  “And I told you the diplomatic debacle there’d be—as well as the end of your career and pension with it—if the FSB picked up our association by electronically scanning your mobile phone, which they probably do automatically to all embassy personnel. I’m calling you from a public telephone, the number of which you’ll find when you access the last-number display on your phone, which I know you’ll do, just as I know you tried to follow me on the Metro.”

  Charlie listened to the background of Ella Fitzgerald’s “Summertime,” which had been the bartender’s favorite CD when he’d stayed there. He had to buy more Russian cell phones, he reminded himself, still refusing to trust the one issued to him in London. It was several moments before the MI6 man said: “I thought we were working together.”

  “We are, right now. And if we’ve got anything to talk about I don’t want you doing so from a bar stool where you can be overheard.”

  “You think I’m that stupid!”

  Yes, if you’re already topping up the lunchtime vodka, thought Charlie. “You’ve got this number on your phone. Call me back on an outside line in five minutes: if I don’t hear by six minutes, I’ll leave this kiosk.”

  Charlie’s phone rang in three. Halliday said: “I didn’t want to keep you waiting, shit though you are.”

  “That’s considerate of you,” said Charlie, allowing the other man the weak retaliation. “Where are you now?”

  “Looking at Lenin’s tomb. There’s no one within fifty meters of me.”

  “Did you get into Jacobson’s safe?”

  “I couldn’t take the risk. He was around all afternoon. Except that he wasn’t.”