Red Star Burning: A Thriller (Charlie Muffin Thrillers)

by Brian Freemantle

  The incredulity had spread to the four unidentified men. One turned and said something to the Director-General, which Charlie thought he heard as “preposterous.”

  “This—all of this—is beyond imagination!” dismissed the woman.

  “Everything I am telling you is the God’s honest truth!”

  “I don’t think you know the meaning of truth. Or of God.”

  “I need help,” pleaded Charlie desperately.

  “You need a miracle and there’s no such thing as miracles,” she said.

  * * *

  “I’ve heard the recording of the Radtsic meeting. You did well: bloody well,” congratulated James Straughan.

  “What about the Director?” demanded Jacobson.

  “He’s heard it too: says the same.”

  “So I’ve got official approval to go ahead?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Shouldn’t that approval be official?”

  “I’ll send it today.”

  “Do you want me to come back for the planning?”

  “We’ll do all that here: you just give us the input when we ask for it.”

  “We mustn’t lose sight of Radtsic’s flakiness.”

  “We won’t. It’s scheduled highest priority now.”

  “The approval will be in the Director’s name, won’t it?”

  “Everything will be done by the book. Don’t worry.”

  The problem was that Jacobson did worry about fulfilling his station-chief responsibilities: he worried a lot.

  5

  “It’s totally inconceivable,” insisted Jane Ambersom. “The man isn’t suicidal. He’s insane. Deluded.”

  “There were times when I thought it was so inconceivable that it couldn’t possibly be made up,” said Geoffrey Palmer, one of the unidentified members of the examining panel and the Foreign Office liaison to the Joint Intelligence Committee.

  “Which doesn’t minimize the potential disaster of the situation,” argued the woman.

  “I wasn’t trying to minimize anything,” said Palmer, who in every respect personified the career civil servant, even to the striped-trousered, black-jacketed uniform, complemented by the bowler hat and tightly furled umbrella for his daily commute from Orpington suburbia.

  “Gerald?” invited the Director-General, addressing his MI6 counterpart, whose inclusion in the meeting he distrusted.

  They had moved from their earlier interrogational formality to leathered armchairs and couches around a dead, carved-wood fireplace in which a man could comfortably stand without bending and in which Gerald Monsford had framed his six-foot-three-inch, bulge-bellied figure to be the focal point of the discussion. Monsford said: “From your provisional inquiries, everything he told us about Jersey checks out?”

  “So far,” qualified Smith, cautiously, not wanting his insecurity-spurred antipathy to be obvious.

  “And it was Charlie Muffin who prevented us and the United States being sucked into the most incredibly successful Russian espionage operation I’ve ever encountered,” said Monsford. Easily lapsing into the pretension of a Classics education he’d never actually had, Monsford added: “If he’s guilty of anything it’s following Ovid’s belief that enemies are the best teachers.”

  Jane Ambersom, who’d endured that affectation as she’d endured other irritations, was amused at the startled reactions from the rest of the group at Monsford’s posturing and said: “It could still be part of that Russian operation.”

  “How?” immediately challenged the MI6 Director, already sure he could in some way use his totally unexpected inclusion in this emergency-convened committee to extract Maxim Mikhailovich Radtsic out of Russia. He extended a hand with his forefinger close to his thumb. “Stepan Lvov, whom the CIA was convinced they had in the bag as their long-established double agent, was just this far from becoming the next president of the Russian Federation. As such, in reality a committed officer of the FSB, Lvov would have maneuvered and manipulated Washington and us down God knows how many roads to destruction: Russian intelligence would have ruled the West as well as what’s left of their former empire: literally ruled the world. How could this have any connection with that?”

  Jane’s face blazed at the ridicule from Monsford, whom she rightly believed was the architect of her transfer to the counterintelligence service. She moved to speak but before she could Monsford went back to the Director-General: “What about other cases, before this last one? How many went the wrong way, to the other side’s benefit?”

  “That check began the moment Muffin’s state of mind was questioned and was upgraded when he disappeared. A conclusion will take time,” avoided Smith. “The preliminary assessment is that while a few weren’t completely successful, none was compromised through any personal fault or failing of Charlie himself. And none of us needs reminding how he prevented the catastrophe to which you’ve already referred.” As well as preventing my dismissal, Smith mentally added.

  “On the subject of preliminary assessments, I have to give to the prime minister and the foreign secretary some indication of the potential problems we might be facing,” came in Sir Archibald Bland, the cabinet secretary, who’d completed the inquiry team.

  “I’m not sure we can provide that this early,” apologized Smith, in reluctant admission. “Charlie Muffin will be held here, under house detention. Questioned further to learn far more about Natalia Fedova. I don’t intend a knee-jerk reaction to a situation as complicated as this appears to be.”

  “I’m not naïve enough to believe this woman doesn’t know anything about operations in which Muffin has been involved for at least the past eight years,” said the deputy director, the disparagement embedded in her mind. “And as such the potential cause of huge embarrassment, if not serious, long-term harm. She should be neutralized.”

  “Killed, you mean?” lured Monsford, deceptively casual.

  Jane Ambersom hesitated, coloring again, inherently suspicious of the man. “If it were deemed necessary. He’s given us her Moscow address: we know where to find her.”

  “What about the child? Do we kill the child as well?” pounced Monsford, baiting her in front of the two civil servants to continue the criticism he’d engineered to achieve her transfer. “I can’t imagine an eight-year-old child knowing enough to cause us difficulties, but we might as well tidy up any loose ends.”

  The woman’s color deepened. “I don’t believe we are considering this seriously enough. This is a high-alert situation that needs to be dealt with as such.”

  “None of us believes otherwise,” said Aubrey Smith, calmly, despite his irritation at the obvious point scoring and astonished at Monsford’s talking as if he’d been closely involved in the Lvov exposure. “I’d hoped to have made clear that I do not intend worsening a potential problem with a panicked reaction.”

  “Which eliminating a woman about whose existence we have only just learned, orphaning a child in the process, would unarguably do,” endorsed Monsford.

  “How, precisely, do we learn more about her?” asked Jane Ambersom, descending to mockery.

  “Going into what Wordsworth described as the burthen of the mystery,” Monsford awkwardly mocked back, intent upon controlling what he was increasingly deciding to be a gift situation from a God in whom he didn’t believe. “The separation and independence of our two services is well established, for all the obvious reasons. I welcome, however, this opportunity for us to come together in a combined operation, to which I guarantee every contribution asked from MI6.”

  “This is precisely how the prime minister wants it handled,” announced Sir Anthony Bland.

  “It seems completely appropriate to me,” quickly agreed Palmer, the functioning liaison between MI5 and MI6.

  “At this early stage I don’t see the reason for a combined operation,” argued Aubrey Smith, recognizing how he was being railroaded, sure it confirmed his suspicion that his directorship remained in doubt.

  “Perhaps I didn�
��t make clear how I envisage such an arrangement,” said Monsford. “I am offering my resources in one specific area: Moscow. I anticipate our working in the closest possible way, discussing every aspect, but equally expect you to be the controller—the Director—of a matched, one for one, team of officers.”

  No one else in the room appeared able to find a response.

  Geoffrey Palmer was the first. “That’s a very generous offer that would seem to resolve any command uncertainty: not, of course, that I would expect any.”

  “We are all agreed that everything is at a very early, exploratory stage,” persisted Aubrey Smith, his unemotional monotone concealing the anger at so effectively being maneuvered into a cul-de-sac. “Let’s look upon this operational cooperation as a step-at-a-time experiment.”

  “I would expect to be an active participant, too,” hurriedly intruded Jane Ambersom, equally concerned at again becoming Monsford’s scapegoat.

  “I would expect all of us to be active participants,” said the compromise-adept Sir Archibald.

  Aubrey Smith, who fully acknowledged his initial survival indebtedness to Charlie Muffin, wondered how long his second chance might last. At least this time he hoped more quickly to recognize at least some of the moves against him, which he hadn’t before.

  * * *

  For as long as he could remember, and Charlie Muffin had an elephantine memory, self-preservation had been a major preoccupation, but never so much as now, incarcerated as he was in a window-barred and double-locked room with only the glazed-eyed relatives of the other wall-mounted animals on the ground floor for sightless company. But this was the first time the preoccupation was not for his own survival. How had Natalia—and Sasha—been detected? The money trail had always been the obvious weakness although it couldn’t have triggered this discovery: two of Natalia’s anguished calls to his abandoned Vauxhall apartment were dated and timed before his Jersey visit. How else? He would have been the concentrated focus of the excoriating, stop-at-nothing FSB investigation after the destruction of Russia’s intended puppetmaster emplacement of Stepan Lvov. What of Natalia’s long ago insistence that she had wiped from KGB and succeeding FSB records as much trace as possible of their connection during his supposed defection debriefing? There was a stomach lurch of belated—too belated—realization. A search as complete and as intense as the FSB’s would have encompassed every government institution. The Hall of Weddings was one such institution, in which every ceremony was bureaucratically registered, electronically as well as in a handwritten ledger.

  Why was he looking backward? Charlie asked himself. Whatever the route, whatever the disclosing mistake, their relationship had been uncovered. Or had it? If it had been positively confirmed, Natalia would no longer be at liberty to telephone him as she had. Suspected at least, Charlie qualified. But sufficient for the scourging fear in which Charlie felt locked because even if she was suspected, Natalia and Sasha had to be got out of Russia.

  But how? And by whom?

  Judged against a lifetime’s need for split-second thinking to split-second confrontations, Charlie believed he’d adequately responded to the stomach-dropping sound of Natalia’s voice. But only just adequately. He’d answered every question about Natalia with complete and total honesty—without offering any additional information—just as he had recounted his Jersey journey, omitting only the financial reason for his making it. But the debrief had concluded without the slightest indication of what might happen to him. Far more worryingly, there had been nothing at all about Natalia and Sasha.

  He had to think of a way to rescue them: a very quick, stop-at-nothing way as guaranteed as possible to get them to safety. What? he asked himself again. And again failed to find an answer.

  * * *

  “To quote Shakespeare, ‘with as little a web as this I will ensnare’: they’ve gone for it!” announced Gerald Monsford, triumphantly. He spoke with his back to the other two in his office in MI6’s Vauxhall Cross headquarters, looking up toward the Houses of Parliament on the opposite side of the Thames.

  “Even dear Jane?” queried Rebecca Street, well aware of Monsford’s antipathy toward the woman whom she had replaced, although unaware of how it had been manipulated.

  “She needed the assurance that she wouldn’t be kept out of the loop,” said Monsford, who’d appointed Rebecca not only as his deputy but as his easily persuaded mistress, which Jane had consistently refused to become, providing an additional reason for her transfer.

  “What about Smith?” asked James Straughan, the director of operations.

  “Palmer and Bland got in with their support first, which wrong-footed poor old Aubrey,” patronized the Director. “Then I played my ace by insisting that he’d control it all, with us limited to committing our Moscow resources, which left him high and dry.”

  “You think he’ll trust us?” asked the woman, professionally objective.

  “At the moment he’s totally confused by the sudden appearance of this mysterious Natalia Fedova,” said Monsford, turning at last from the window. To the woman he said: “I want you to monitor everything: act as our secondary check to guarantee against mistakes.”

  “Nothing will go wrong,” said the blond Rebecca Street, smiling. She dressed to advertise her full-breasted but otherwise slim figure. That day’s promotion was a low-necked crossover black dress, the bodice pin the diamond clasp Monsford had given her as a consummation present. She’d been far more impressed by the clasp than by the over-in-seconds lovemaking she’d endured in the office’s adjoining bedroom suite to gain it.

  “What about our own operation?” queried Straughan.

  “The entire reason for what I achieved today,” declared Monsford. “This MI5 business is a bonus we’re going to bleed dry, maybe even literally. Have we got an unsuspected conduit to Moscow: something the FSB will believe unquestioningly?”

  Straughan considered the question. “It’s not as easy as it was when there was a Soviet Union.”

  “I didn’t imagine it would be,” said Monsford, testily. “I want something to tie Charlie Muffin closer in to whatever the hell these telephone calls are all about: something connected to the Lvov business, for instance.”

  “There’s an FSB source at the Polish embassy in Rome we’ve used before,” said Straughan. “Not for more than a year, though.”

  “After all the damage Charlie did, the FSB would obviously like to find him, wouldn’t they?” suggested Monsford.

  “That’s why he’s in a protection program, isn’t it?” said Rebecca, frowning.

  “And because of it no longer living where he once did.” Monsford smiled. “But the FSB don’t know that, do they?”

  “So it wouldn’t expose him to any actual harm?” said Straughan.

  “Of course it wouldn’t,” agreed Monsford.

  “I’ll try to set it up,” undertook the operations director.

  “Not try: do it,” said Monsford, heavily. “It’ll be an irony that Charlie Muffin’s last service to British intelligence will be for us, not his own people.”

  * * *

  “Everything’s agreed,” Maxim Radtsic assured his wife, his head close to hers as they went north on the Arbatsko line of Moscow’s Metro service, upon which, three hours earlier, he’d kept his latest meeting with Harry Jacobson.

  “When?” the woman asked, matchingly low voiced.

  “Soon. They know the urgency.”

  “I don’t like all this nonsense,” Elana protested, looking around the packed commuter carriage. “It’s silly, playacting like children.”

  “It’s very necessary if we’re to keep safe,” insisted Radtsic.

  “Why don’t I go to Paris, for a holiday with Andrei, and go to London with him from there. It would be easier for you to get out alone, wouldn’t it?”

  She was more frightened than he, realized Radtsic, sympathetically. “It would alert them: make them suspicious.”

  “Andrei should be given more warning.”<
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  “It’s got to be the way the British want it.”

  “Let’s not take the Metro back to the apartment. I want to walk.”

  “It’s a long way to walk from Kurskaya,” Radtsic pointed out, identifying where they were from the route map above the seats.

  “I know.”

  She knew she wouldn’t very much longer be able to walk the streets of the city, accepted Radtsic, sadly. Would she ever properly understand what he was having to do when it was all over?

  * * *

  “Good-looking kid,” remarked Albert Abrahams, looking down at the selection of photographs he’d taken two hours earlier outside Andrei Radtsic’s Sorbonne college.

  “I prefer the girl,” said Jonathan Miller, MI5’s station chief at the Paris embassy. “Can you imagine those legs wrapped around your neck?”

  “Name’s Yvette Paruch,” identified Abrahams. “And I have already imagined it. Our Andrei’s not just good-looking, he’s a lucky bastard as well. So what do we do now?”

  “London’s orders are to find out everything we can without going anywhere near him. The possibility is that he’s being babysat by the FSB.”

  “If he is, there’s a risk they’ll pick up on our sniffing around,” warned Abrahams.

  “That’s why Straughan told me to be careful,” reminded Miller.

  “Comforting, isn’t it, to get advice we wouldn’t have thought of ourselves from an operations director safe and warm in London?” mocked Abrahams.

  6

  It was two days before Charlie was summoned for further questioning. In that interim he was held in the barred and locked first-floor room of the hunting lodge with only the gazelle heads for company, apart from morning and afternoon exercise periods in the grounds with two male escorts who refused any conversation and during which there were intentionally staged sightings of other guards. None was visibly armed.