Red Star Burning: A Thriller (Charlie Muffin Thrillers)

by Brian Freemantle

  “You know him,” accused Halliday, still belligerent.

  “Does he have a gray-checked suit?” persisted Charlie.

  “You do know him!”

  “Not until now,” said Charlie. “I remember him from the plane. And saw him yesterday, watching the hotel. But I’m not involved in whatever he’s doing.”

  But he was going to be, Charlie knew.

  * * *

  “My mother’s making a surprise visit.”

  “When?” asked Yvette.

  “She’s arriving tomorrow,” said Andrei.

  “Why with so little warning?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Does she know about me? That we’re together?”

  “I told them in my last letter that I’d met you but not that you’d moved in.”

  “Do you want me to leave while she’s here? I could, if it would be better.”

  “There’s another bedroom. Why should you?”

  “Maybe it would be better if I weren’t here when she actually arrives: give you space to tell her.”

  “I don’t understand why she didn’t warn me she was coming.”

  “You’ll be able to ask her that, too, while I’m not here.”

  18

  Conflicting impressions and confusions swirled through Charlie’s mind like leaves in an autumn gale, constantly blown out of any order in which he tried to prioritize them, his uncertainties compounded by the distracting but essentially physical need to rid himself of David Halliday’s pursuit, which the man solemnly promised not to attempt but which Charlie knew he would. That focus eventually brought Halliday into the forefront of Charlie’s immediate reflection as he watched, from the concealment of a Metro station pillar, the MI6 officer carried away in the opposite direction from Charlie’s botanical gardens’ destination after thirty minutes of foot-aching, bite-chafing hopscotch between subway trains. Halliday’s vodka-clouded chase went beyond Charlie’s expectation: it was a warning, which again he scarcely needed, that he couldn’t trust Halliday further than an outstretched arm if the man thought there were better personal advantages from cheating him than keeping to their agreed arrangement. Which once more neither disconcerted nor angered Charlie, who would have abandoned Halliday with even less compunction if a better opportunity had presented itself.

  But at that precise moment Charlie believed Halliday to be his asset, because he was the best—the only—self-preserving asset Halliday had in return. Just as he believed that, allowing a necessary margin of exaggeration, Halliday had filled in a third of the far too empty mosaic for him to get a clearer idea of the eventual picture.

  The fury that had engulfed Charlie earlier at the unavoidable inference that Natalia and Sasha were included in his clearly intended sacrifice came again and now he didn’t suppress it: rather he let it burn and build, savoring the anticipation of as-yet-undecided but overwhelmingly fitting retribution. What could be sufficiently overwhelming to punish those who intentionally set out to destroy the two people central to his very existence? A question at the moment impossible to answer. But he would, Charlie determined, however long it took.

  Outwardly conscious of the passing curiosity of Metro users at his standing as he was, Charlie boarded a linking train to connect to Mira station. Whom would he punish? he asked himself again, as he gratefully sat to ease his throbbing legs. They all, in some way, had to be complicit. He guessed Gerald Monsford to have been the primary instigator, too easily identifiable from his preposterous code designation. Monsford’s cow-uddered milkmaid Rebecca Street would have known, too, along with their lickspittle operations director, James Straughan. What about Aubrey Smith? Charlie Muffin was too familiar with the amoral practicability of espionage—that there was absolutely no morality, successful practicability its only goal—to despair at any debt-discarding betrayal by a man whose MI5 career he’d so recently salvaged. But there was still a blip of disappointment that evaporated as quickly as it came. The man’s obvious acquiescence made him as culpable and as deserving of reprisal as the others. The Janus-sexed Jane Ambersom would have looked in whatever self-serving direction the others took, and having been disabled from his army career the order-indoctrinated John Passmore would have obeyed his superiors’ rules of engagement.

  As he crossed to his final Ulitsa Mira connection Charlie acknowledged the background to his mosaic was still incomplete. He couldn’t begin his retribution until he understood the parallel extractions. There was an unsettling similarity to what he’d imagined to be the intended rescue of Natalia and Sasha, the only difference the sex of the offspring. Except for the operational designations, came the immediate caveat. There’d be no purpose allocating two different code names to the same assignment. His earlier recognition that one was planned as a diversion from the other had to be the only conclusion.

  Which brought Charlie’s mind back to the importance of David Halliday. The MI6 man was the only source from whom he could discover more about what he now accepted to be the primary objective. And he’d already rationalized the degree of trust he could expect from a man as desperate to retain his pensioned career as Halliday.

  Or was Halliday that only source? Minimally forewarned as he was, couldn’t he risk contact with those waiting at the embassy? Searching for him from the embassy, he remembered. He’d have to endure the recriminating, explanation-demanding brouhaha from London but their responses might provide further mosaic tiles. The downside might be to confuse Halliday, who’d doubtless learn of his approach, despite his ostracism. Wiser to wait, albeit briefly.

  He was, after all, no nearer linking up with Natalia. That remained his primary objective, he thought, as he bought a copy of Pravda from the station kiosk.

  * * *

  “A total, abject disaster,” announced the flushed Sir Archibald Bland, his voice cracked from his earlier confrontation at 10 Downing Street, where his cabinet-secretary competence had unthinkably been questioned for the first time in his ten years’ tenure. “Everything is to be closed down: canceled, abandoned, whatever. This is a disaster for which each of you is required to provide a full and detailed explanation, prior to your being called upon personally to account for what’s happened. Neither of you will leave this room until I am given that explanation.”

  Gerald Monsford’s squirmed reaction was heightened by the totally contrasting response from Aubrey Smith, who remained as unmoving as his voice retained its accustomed monotone. Smith said: “We’ve only had the opportunity of seeing the televised seizures, hearing the Russians’ accusations, and reading the Evening Standard. What, diplomatically, has so far come from Moscow?”

  The cabinet secretary made an impatient, fly-flicking gesture to Geoffrey Palmer, who said: “The indications are they intend officially charging all sixteen with spying and publicly arraign them in court, just as we arraigned their diplomats. The ambassador’s preliminary assessment is that even if we try to negotiate with a release offer for their burglars, Moscow will still impose a prison term and keep us on a string for months.…”

  “Maybe, even, including in that imprisonment the two tourists, both male, who’ve already suffered heart attacks,” expanded Bland. Outraged, he continued: “Consider the situation you’ve created! Sixteen totally innocent British holidaymakers incarcerated in a Siberian gulag, for God knows how long! It’s absolutely appalling.”

  “So where’s your bloody man, Charlie Muffin or Malcolm Stoat or whatever the hell you choose to call him!” resumed the Foreign Office liaison to the Joint Intelligence Committee, directly addressing Smith.

  “I don’t know,” admitted the MI5 Director-General. “And until I do, we can’t close anything down. Nor, in my opinion, should we consider exchange negotiations involving their diplomats. They’re our only bargaining lever. We shouldn’t surrender it. Any more than we should be panicked by suggestions of show trials and Siberian imprisonment. They’ve scored an impressive PR coup and they know it. They won’t risk their advantage by putti
ng sick men in jail.”

  “We’re not asking your opinion,” rejected Bland. “We’re ordering you to extricate yourselves and this government from a total, unimaginable mess.…” He looked around the table. “How do we find the damn man to get ourselves out of it?”

  “I take it any thoughts of extracting his wife and daughter are abandoned?” ventured Jane Ambersom.

  “Of course it does!” said Bland, irritably. “Do you have a constructive point?”

  “One of my responsibilities is American liaison. Why don’t we ask their help in locating Charlie Muffin in Moscow?”

  Palmer broke the ensuing silence. “Again, what’s your point?”

  “The most obvious is utilizing more people in the search,” offered Jane. “It would also widen the responsibility by letting an American involvement become known.”

  “He’s still your man,” challenged Rebecca Street, eager to separate MI6 from direct accountability for Charlie Muffin.

  Jane smiled at the intervention. “Not if we also let it be known that Muffin is no longer in either of our services, but instead that he’s gone freelance. Moscow knows Irena Novikov is in America: my American link here has told me Moscow has asked for diplomatic access to her. Moscow will also know from their swoop on the Rossiya and the observation they’ll have stepped up on our embassy since Charlie’s Amsterdam disappearance that he’s not working from there. And from their lawyers talking to the arrested diplomats they know Charlie isn’t any longer living at his Vauxhall flat.…”

  “They’ll know he had access to Natalia’s calls,” Rebecca said, trying again to deflate the other woman. “How could he have had that, and discovered the numbers to which to reply, without our resources?”

  “Doesn’t your telephone have a remote-access facility, to access calls from anywhere in the world?” mocked Jane. “Most people’s have. Charlie’s did. Mine has, too.”

  “Both the Amsterdam and Manchester flights originated from England,” persisted the MI6 deputy.

  “So what?” dismissed the other woman. “Freelancers can live wherever it’s most convenient for them to work, can’t they?”

  “It’s a worthwhile suggestion,” accepted Bland. “We’ll keep it on the table, as a contingency. What we need more immediately is a positive rebuttal to their television footage that’s being globally transmitted, along with the accusations they’re making.”

  “By now the media will have swamped Manchester, not just the travel firm but hunting every possible relative of the sixteen who’ve been arrested, for every photograph and anecdote,” predicted Rebecca, desperate to come out ahead in the exchanges. “Every interview will insist they’re not spies. The prime minister or the foreign secretary wouldn’t be lying to Parliament declaring they’re entirely innocent of any Russian accusation. Neither would the government, in an official protest Note to Moscow.”

  “What does the prime minister or the foreign secretary say if they’re challenged in the House about Charlie Muffin?” asked Bland, his tone hinting interest, not rejection.

  “They won’t be, will they?” returned Rebecca, ready for the question. “Charlie Muffin isn’t the name in the media headlines. It’s Malcolm Stoat, who doesn’t exist. Again there’d be no lie denying any knowledge of that name.”

  “The Russians have got photographs of Charlie, from his public exposure during the Lvov affair,” said Monsford, emerging from his protracted silence. “So far they haven’t published them. They could be waiting for just such a denial to wrong-foot us by releasing the pictures.”

  “He was never named, either as Charlie Muffin or Malcolm Stoat, at any of those public appearances,” Smith pointed out.

  “There could be another reason why they haven’t released photographs,” suggested Passmore, his good arm across his body.

  “Associating Charlie with the failure of their Lvov operation, you mean?” too quickly anticipated Monsford.

  “I don’t mean that at all,” dismissed Passmore. “That Lvov failed isn’t publicly known, any more than that his death was a cover-up FSB assassination. What is publicly known is that Stepan Lvov was killed within weeks of a man being murdered in the grounds of the British embassy, with which Charlie was publicly associated.”

  “This is becoming convoluted,” protested Monsford.

  “To illustrate why we can’t abandon Charlie,” insisted Passmore, brusquely. “To abandon him would need our withdrawing all the support in place in Moscow, which would include, presumably, the exit passports waiting at the embassy for Natalia and the child. We’ve all of us acknowledged that Charlie would still try to get them out, which he wouldn’t stand a chance of doing. He’d get picked up and only then be photographically identified and accused not only of spying but also of being linked—openly accused, even—with two assassinations on Russian soil.”

  There was a longer digesting silence before Monsford said: “They’d never be able to do that without the real truth coming out about Lvov and all the others killed in the FSB cleanup.”

  “Putin’s put the straitjacket back on Russia,” argued Passmore. “It’s not as tight as it was at the height of the Cold War, but it’s enough for a public exposure that’ll make what they’ve staged so far look like an amateur rehearsal.”

  “We covered the possibility of his arrest and trial during the Buckinghamshire planning,” remembered Monsford, triumphantly. “What’s to stop Charlie exposing everything about the Lvov business in court?”

  “The straitjacket,” rejected Aubrey Smith, at once. “Charlie would have to be represented by a Russian lawyer and get the agreement of the judge or the tribunal to make a statement in open court. He’d be silenced before he managed to speak ten words.”

  “We could make sure the truth came out from here, publicly if needs be,” argued Monsford.

  “Which with very little editing, maybe no editing at all, could be used as confirming evidence against Charlie, not exoneration in his favor,” punctured Passmore.

  “Are you saying we can’t do anything?” agonized Palmer.

  “I’m saying we can’t cut Charlie adrift, no matter how much we want to.”

  “And there’s an obvious way that’s taken us too long to reach to prevent Charlie causing any more trouble,” said Smith, quietly. “And it’s not what you’re thinking.”

  * * *

  “You did well, stepping in to halt the panic,” Aubrey Smith congratulated his operations director as they walked across Parliament Square on their way back to the MI5 building. Turning to Jane Ambersom on his other side, he went on: “And if it hadn’t been for your input we wouldn’t have reached the decisions we did.”

  “It was Rebecca Street’s idea how the hotel arrests could be honestly refuted,” said Jane, only just keeping the bitterness from her voice.

  “You initiated the discussion,” said Smith. “And if you hadn’t, the way to lift Charlie and close down the whole bloody business wouldn’t have emerged.”

  They waited for a traffic change to cross to the abbey side. Passmore said: “Simple and obvious if Charlie does the simple and obvious thing by eventually approaching the embassy for the passports he asked me separately to provide. From his maneuvering so far I don’t expect him to come through the embassy gate with his hand out, do you?”

  “No,” admitted the Director-General at once. “But there’s somehow, somewhere, got to be a personal exchange. That’s when and how we’ll get him. And once we’ve got him, believe me he’ll never be allowed to cause any more trouble, ever again.”

  “I wish I were as confident as you,” cautioned Passmore.

  “It’s satisfied our government masters for the moment,” Smith pointed out. “Which is all I wanted, time and space in which to think of something better.”

  “What about the others?” questioned the woman, ever conscious of the puppetry of her former director. “Do you trust Monsford to go on working with us now?”

  “No,” conceded Smith, as quickly
as before. “I think he wants out. He can’t say so, not after all the bullshit of seconding Charlie to MI6. But I’m sure he’s got cold feet.”

  “What can we do to keep him onboard?”

  “You tell me,” said Smith, emptily.

  “Which creates another uncertainty we don’t need,” said Passmore, matching the cynicism.

  “Do tell me,” said Smith, abruptly turning his careless cliché into a demand, stopping opposite the House of Lords to confront Jane Ambersom. “You worked with Monsford far better than we do. How far would he go to shelter MI6 from any fallout?”

  “Shelter MI6 from any fallout!” echoed the woman, contemptuously. “The only entity Gerald Monsford wants to shelter from fallout is Gerald Monsford. And there’s no limit whatsoever to what or where Gerald Monsford will go to guarantee that.”

  “You can’t mean that: not really believe that,” disbelieved Passmore.

  “I’ve never believed anything more in my entire life,” said Jane.

  * * *

  They’d driven without speaking back to Vauxhall Cross, both Rebecca Street and James Straughan warned against any conversation by Monsford’s lowering the partitioning glass between them and the driver. Both remained silent until they reached the Director’s suite.

  “It’s time to press the button on the Janus extraction,” Monsford declared as he turned from activating the recording apparatus. “Alert Jacobson and the Paris team at once. They’re to liaise entirely through you, as central Control, to establish you’re in personal command the entire time. Everything’s on standby, ready, isn’t it?”

  To establish that you’re in personal command the entire time, wearily recognized Straughan, “Everything’s on standby but it can’t be immediately activated.”

  “My orders were, and are, to have everything ready at a moment’s notice!” accused Monsford. “Why haven’t they been followed!”

  If the bastard wanted a provable record he’d provide it, for every later examination to hear in crystal clarity, determined Straughan. “I’ve just told you everything’s in place, ready. But it’s got to be synchronized. A flight plan has to be filed for the private plane that’s to be waiting at Orly for Elana and Andrei, whose arrival there has to be coordinated to the minute. Their departure has to be coordinated with Radtsic’s flight from Moscow. If just one coordinate falls out of sequence the extraction collapses into chaotic disaster ten times worse than that we’ve already got.”