Red Star Falling: A Thriller

by Brian Freemantle

  ‘You can surely do more than question Radtsic?’ broke in Aubrey Smith, prepared from the earlier conference at Thames House. ‘He was brought out of Russia by the head of your Moscow rezidentura, Harry Jacobson, who was Radtsic’s control from the moment of Radtsic’s defection approach. It would have been Jacobson who talked to Radtsic of a diversion, wouldn’t it? We can bring Jacobson before this committee in person, as I intend producing some of my officers involved in Natalia’s extraction.’

  Rebecca at last detected the tightness spreading along Monsford’s leg and felt a jump of satisfaction, her own concern lessened by calm reflection.

  ‘It would certainly be an option, if Radtsic remains recalcitrant,’ conceded Monsford, reluctantly.

  ‘Why an option?’ persisted the MI5 Director. ‘Jacobson is an essential witness in his own right. He was at the embassy virtually throughout this entire series of events, would have known everything.’

  ‘It’s obvious we have to hear him,’ declared Geoffrey Palmer, impatiently. ‘Let’s put him on the witness list.’ Turning to Monsford, he said, ‘What you’ve told us is potentially disastrous. The absolute essential now is our tracing the full extent of this cell and eradicating it.’

  ‘To that end I propose we add to the witness list the head of the security probe into my service,’ said Monsford.

  ‘Agreed,’ said Bland, quicker than his co-chairman.

  Rebecca couldn’t discern any tension from Monsford now and decided the man considered himself the finger-flicking master of ceremonies.

  As if in confirmation, Monsford said, ‘I also believe it’s time to counter Moscow’s propaganda by disclosing Maxim Mikhailovich Radtsic’s defection, as well as that of Natalia Fedova.’

  ‘No!’ objected Aubrey Smith, unusually loudly in his anxiety. ‘We only yesterday got Moscow’s agreement to a delegation to the Manchester group. We must not give them an excuse to delay or refuse contact with Charlie Muffin. Additionally, we now know Moscow has detained two MI6 officers. That inevitably means another delegation. There’ll be a time—and an advantage to be gained—in announcing Radtsic’s crossing. But this isn’t it. To do it now would be entirely counter-productive.’

  ‘We agree,’ quickly came in the unidentified spokesman from the Foreign Office contingent. ‘Confronting Moscow now would be a diplomatic mistake: we’ve got too many of our nationals exposed.’

  ‘This is perhaps the moment for me to make a contribution that may have some relevance,’ offered Stanley Brown, the GCHQ director. ‘We intercept some material out of the Lubyanka but not enough. We get much more Russian Foreign Ministry chatter to their embassy here and occasionally their response to the Lubyanka. Translations of what we’ve picked up about this business will be available tomorrow but in essence there’s an expectation of retaliation from us. But two days ago the traffic stopped—’

  ‘Meaning?’ broke in Palmer.

  ‘They know we listen, just as we know they listen to us.’ The man smiled. ‘And knowing it we both seed a fair amount of disinformation in the hope of confusing each other. Stopping electronic communication altogether means they’ve gone to hard copy, hand delivery between ministries and the Lubyanka in Moscow and in the diplomatic pouch to the embassy here. They’ve got a contingency response about which they don’t want us to get the slightest indication.’

  ‘Which we defeat, delay at least to our advantage, by not providing a reason to initiate it,’ pointed out Aubrey Smith.

  ‘We’ll hold back from public disclosure on either defector,’ decided Bland. ‘I would…’

  The Cabinet Secretary stopped at the unexpected telephone intrusion from the secretariat’s table and watched with everyone as a clerk hurried to the door to take a message slip from an outside attendant. The man went directly to Aubrey Smith. The Director-General pushed the envelope sideways to Passmore as he said, ‘This morning we attempted to bring out one of Charlie Muffin’s MI5 support team, Neil Preston. He was detained thirty minutes ago, going through passport control at Sheremetyevo Airport.’

  ‘When in God’s name is this fiasco going to end?’ demanded Geoffrey Palmer, exasperated.

  * * *

  ‘My name’s Birkitt, Edwin Birkitt,’ introduced the CIA interrogator. ‘We’re going to spend a lot of time together.’

  ‘You choose your own cover names or get them allocated?’ came back Irena Yakulova Novikov. She’d fence for as long as she could, get what unsuspecting guidance she could.

  ‘How’s it done in the FSB?’ came back Birkitt, just as quickly. He was a slight, nondescript man, apart from the thick-lensed spectacles. He was unencumbered by any note-taking paraphernalia, entirely dependent upon the automatic listening and filming installations. His Russian was excellent.

  Irena smiled, in begrudging acknowledgement. ‘They’re allocated.’

  ‘Same here. Guess I was lucky this time.’

  ‘I’m not a defector. I went to England to save an operation.’

  ‘And failed. At least you got a hell of a face job. You really get burned at a dinner party with Stepan Lvov?’

  Irena smiled again. ‘So the puppy dog British have given me to you in the expectation that you’ll get more than I told that scruffy bastard who thought he’d fucked the Lvov operation?’

  ‘You’ve got every reason to despise him, beating you as he did.’

  ‘I went willingly, operationally, to England. I did not come willingly here, to the United States. Technically I have been kidnapped. I demand to see people from the Russian embassy.’

  ‘We’re kidnappers, remember? We don’t do things legally.’

  There was an almost imperceptible frown and Irena held back the words she had opened her mouth to utter. Instead she said, ‘You can’t do this!’

  ‘We’re doing it,’ Birkitt pointed out, conversationally. ‘According to what you told Charlie Muffin, you masterminded an operation over eighteen years that would have made the U.S. a client-state of the Russian Federation. That’s got an awful lot of people as mad as hell and the last thing they’re worried about is normal legality. Officially you’re a disappeared, Irena Yakulova. You’re here for as long as we choose to hold you, which is as long as it takes to learn every last scrap about your great plan.’

  ‘You’re out of your mind if you imagine I’m going to do that.’

  ‘You’re out of your mind if you imagine that we won’t.’

  6

  ‘Hello.’

  Sasha squinted up against the cloud-broken sun. ‘Hello.’

  ‘Where are you off to?’

  ‘Home.’ Sasha was carrying a doll lopsidedly by its arm, with its clothes in a half-zipped bag in her other hand. She wore open sandals and a summer dress.

  ‘You can’t walk home from here. It’s too far,’ said Ethel Jackson.

  ‘You’re speaking Russian,’ insisted the child.

  ‘But we’re not in Russia. Hasn’t Mummy told you where you are?’

  ‘I can’t remember where she said.’

  ‘We’re in England.’

  ‘I don’t like it in England. I want to go home.’

  ‘Have you told your mother where you’re going?’

  Sasha pulled her bottom lip uncertainly back and forth between her teeth. ‘I’m going to.’

  ‘It’s always best to tell people where you’re going,’ said Ethel, aware of Natalia bursting through the open patio doors behind the child. Seeing Sasha with the protection supervisor, Natalia slowed but only slightly. ‘Here she is now.’

  Sasha turned and stood with her head bowed over the doll. Ethel put her hand lightly on the child’s shoulder to pull her comfortingly closer. Sasha came without protest. Ethel felt the tremble in the child’s shoulders. As Natalia came within hearing, Ethel said, ‘Sasha and I are going to have cakes on the patio with … You haven’t told me your baby’s name, Sasha?’

  ‘Ludmilla … Luda,’ mumbled the girl.

  ‘With Luda,’ finished Ethel. ‘W
hy don’t we all have cakes together?’

  Natalia looked at how Ethel was reassuring her daughter, then more directly up to the other woman. ‘That would be nice.’ She was short of breath from hurrying.

  They were met at the patio by another protection officer, who nodded to the cake order: Natalia agreed to Sasha’s having Coca-Cola as a treat. The child very studiously ignored the two women, fussily positioning the doll on the fourth chair, arranging and re-arranging its clothes. As she did so, Sasha said, ‘We’re going home, aren’t we, Luda? Don’t like it here, do we, Luda?’ and more quietly mumbled on unintelligibly, a conversation entirely with her doll.

  Natalia moved to speak but before she could, Ethel said, ‘I told you it’s too far to walk, Sasha. And look, you forgot the pram we got for Luda. Why don’t you take her for a short walk in the garden until your Coke arrives?’

  Looking properly to her mother for the first time, Sasha said, ‘Can I take Luda into the garden?’

  ‘Not too far. I want to be able to see you.’

  Unspeaking for several moments, the two women watched Sasha, still heavily in conversation with her doll, trundle its pram out into the garden. Ethel said, ‘You know she couldn’t have gone anywhere.’

  ‘I wasn’t worried about her getting out. I was terrified about someone getting in.’

  ‘That can’t happen either. You’re both safe.’

  ‘Nothing’s supposed to happen,’ heavily qualified Natalia. ‘You’re in the business. You know the search is on: always will be. They don’t give up. It won’t matter that Sasha’s a child.’

  ‘Stop it, Natalia!’ demanded Ethel, sharply. ‘You’re in a protection programme precisely to stop your ever being found, which you won’t ever be.’

  Natalia was silent for several minutes. ‘Have you heard anything new?’

  Ethel hesitated. ‘There’s been another arrest. An MI5 man.’

  ‘Linked to Charlie?’

  ‘One of his original back-up.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘At the airport, trying to get home.’

  ‘They won’t let anyone go,’ insisted the Russian. ‘They’ll pick them all off, one after the other. The more they get, the more they have to match the loss of Maxim Mikhailovich.’

  The tea, Coke, and cakes arrived. Looking out into the garden, Natalia said, ‘We’ll let Sasha come back when she’s ready.’

  Ethel said, ‘Numbers can’t balance their loss of Maxim Mikhailovich.’

  ‘The more people they have, the more confusing they can make their retaliation.’

  Ethel poured the tea. Neither bothered with cake. Ethel said, ‘What retaliation would you expect?’

  ‘The obvious, if they find him and Elena here: just as they’d eliminate Sasha and me. The KGB punishment rules haven’t changed, even though the title has. The orders to hunt down and eliminate us will have been automatic. In the interim, they’ll probably claim Maxim Mikhailovich and Elena were kidnapped, as they claimed with Elena in France; Andrei’s refusal gives them a lot of ground in which to manoeuvre that sort of story.’

  ‘What about you?’

  Natalia shrugged. ‘They won’t bother about me, not publicly; the elimination order will have been promulgated, though. Why do you think I was terrified when I couldn’t find Sasha? They’ll ask for access to me, of course. I meant to talk to Jane about that. I don’t want anyone getting to me from the embassy. I’ve got to agree to a meeting, haven’t I?’

  ‘Yes,’ confirmed Ethel.

  ‘I positively refuse to meet anyone from anywhere. Will you tell Jane that: tell her today?’

  ‘I’ll tell her,’ promised Ethel. After a momentary pause, she said, ‘Have you thought of anything else since you talked to Jane: something that could help Charlie?’

  Natalia shook her head. ‘You saw the film recording of me and Jane?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Charlie’s source must have been inside the embassy,’ insisted Natalia. ‘And if Charlie wasn’t talking to his own people in the lost week, it must have been MI6, mustn’t it?’

  ‘Charlie didn’t go anywhere near the embassy during the lost week,’ reminded Ethel, disappointed at the repetition of Natalia’s conversation with the deputy director. ‘And after all the bugging discovered in the embassy, Charlie wouldn’t have risked landlines.’

  Natalia regarded the other woman curiously, as if she’d misunderstood. ‘He didn’t trust landlines, not at all. Nor the Russian cell phone you issued him here. He guessed you’d fit it with a tracker to know where he was all the time. He only used the phone issued here once, because it worked underground when he finally made contact and then more to confuse the MI6 hunting him. At all other times he used pay-as-you-go Russian cell phones, throwing them away after a single use: he gave me four and had even more himself. That’s how he and I communicated after I was appointed to the committee investigating Maxim Mikhailovich’s background to find the identity of whoever turned him.’

  Ethel’s wicker chair creaked when she moved, needing physical movement at the satisfaction that moved through her. ‘Cell phones can be intercepted by scanners. The FSB would have ring-fenced the embassy with them.’

  ‘Pay-as-you-go are one-off numbers, doubly more difficult to scan at random and that difficulty quadruples if they’re discarded after a single use,’ lectured Natalia, waving to Sasha, who waved back but didn’t move towards them.

  Ethel wasn’t sure of the importance of what she’d learned but believed it was enough. She wasn’t sure, either, whether openly to discuss it with Natalia: they were supposed to be working to a common aim and Ethel didn’t want to destroy the bridge building by knocking away its fragile foundations. Say nothing until she got better guidance, Ethel decided. Following Natalia’s waves to Sasha, Ethel said, ‘It isn’t unusual in ordinary circumstances for someone of Sasha’s age to announce they’re leaving home.’

  ‘I know,’ accepted the Russian. ‘What’s unusual—and makes it different—is what’s happened to her in the last week. With which I haven’t been helping, only thinking of Charlie.’

  ‘But now it’s happened you can help.’

  ‘Can we?’ asked Natalia, pointedly.

  ‘If you’d like me to,’ immediately responded Ethel. ‘If you wouldn’t consider it interfering.’

  ‘I’d think of it as you helping me. You have children?’

  ‘They’re with their father. What I do—have done—isn’t best suited to motherhood. It makes me pretty expert on how it goes wrong, though.’

  ‘You worked in the field, before?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Natalia made as if to speak but didn’t. After several moments she said, ‘Thank you, for being kind. It’s difficult for me, doing what I’ve done, not to despise myself as a traitor. That was always at the back of my mind when I was debriefing people who’d come across.’

  ‘Maxim Mikhailovich fits the traitor profile,’ disputed Ethel. ‘I don’t believe you do. There’s a lot of difference.’

  Once more Natalia appeared to be about to speak but again stopped herself.

  ‘What?’ encouraged Ethel.

  ‘Nothing,’ avoided Natalia, twisting in her equally creaking wicker seat at Sasha’s return. ‘We saved the cakes until you got back.’

  * * *

  No-one—maybe not even Gerald Monsford himself—knew how close he had been to collapse by the end of that day’s regular session. Mentally he strained for the concentration to follow the concluding period but too many of the voices around him seemed disembodied and difficult to connect with their speakers, all of it distracted even more by his inner difficulty deciding which survival move to make next.

  He was pulled towards the bombshell discovery of James Straughan’s bugging, convinced that copies were what Rebecca considered her political strength. But did she actually have copies or only knowledge of their existence? According to Timpson, specialized versions were minuscule, measurable in millimetres: the type, Mo
nsford knew, that Straughan, the ultimate specialist, would have used. But where the hell were they? Did Rebecca actually have them: some at least? Or had Straughan been the storekeeper as well as the recordist? And if he’d kept them, where had he stashed them? He had to be the first to find and destroy everything, Monsford acknowledged.

  But the forensic team, the scientific experts, hadn’t found anything yet. So wherever they were, his destruction wasn’t guaranteed. It was more important, more immediately urgent, to get to Harry Jacobson before anyone else and he had to do that personally, not by telephone, technically secure from eavesdropping though they were supposed to be: under the current investigative scrutiny, Monsford wasn’t sure if communications weren’t now automatically being officially tapped.

  He did, however, alert Jacobson by telephone that he was coming, relief surging through him that there’d been no official approach from the committee, concluding the call with the strict instruction that the man was to talk to no-one, not even Radtsic, until he got to the Hertfordshire safe house.

  Rebecca responded at once to Monsford’s summons. He let her settle in her customary chair, with his own audio apparatus visible to ensure she saw him activate it.

  ‘What do you think about Straughan?’ Monsford demanded, the question intentionally wide.

  He knew, Rebecca accepted: hardly the deduction of the century, even for someone of Monsford’s bovine speed of thought. But he didn’t have any proof and until he did she couldn’t be accused of anything. She had to fight back, find a way to get ahead again. ‘Surprised, obviously. Shocked.’