Red Star Falling: A Thriller

by Brian Freemantle

  ‘Irena Yakulov called the assassinations a mistake?’

  Better! thought Charlie, encouraged. ‘She said there was no purpose: no benefit.’

  ‘There wasn’t any, not for us.’

  Charlie let in the pause, knowing it would be expected both by Guzov and those later studying the film footage, as well as needing the reflection himself. Subjectively, the humiliatingly manipulated CIA had more cover-up reasons to assassinate the president-elect and the sensation-seeking TV presenter than the instinctively suspected FSB. Which prompted another, inevitable speculation. Had it been an American finger that fired the bullet that put him down in Vnukovo Airport and not the pistol-wielding MI6 man who was his last conscious recollection? ‘No, there wasn’t, was there?’

  ‘I’m surprised you needed Irena Yakulova’s guidance; it was a mistake for her to have offered it.’

  His had been a careless remark, Charlie criticized himself at once. ‘It depends upon whose opinion you’re judging it.’

  ‘It wasn’t her first, either, was it?’

  ‘Wasn’t it?’ hedged Charlie.

  ‘What threat did you use to get her on the plane with you to London, Charlie?’

  ‘You’ve recovered the airport CCTV by now. Nothing, no-one, made her get on the plane to London. She came of her own free will.’

  ‘But hasn’t come back.’

  ‘Again, a choice made of her own free will. As Maxim Mikhailovich Radtsic came of his own free will. As did his wife, who was actually given the choice. That’s quite an exodus, don’t you think, Mikhail Alexandrovich?’ Surely that would prompt a reference to Natalia if they knew of her importance to him?

  Guzov’s face flushed as well as tightened. ‘We’re not discussing Maxim Mikhailovich or his wife.’

  The FSB didn’t know! Or of his awareness of Natalia’s brief secondment to one of the groups vetting Radtsic’s background. ‘A lot of people are discussing it, though, aren’t they? I’d guess it’s going to take years for you to uncover all the contacts Radtsic had, all the information he’s leaked. I’d go as far as to say that you never will uncover it all. There’ll always be the fear that you’ve missed someone: that there’s one leaking source you haven’t been able to plug. Nothing’s ever been as bad, not in your entire history, has it? That’s what Irena Yakulova thinks.’

  The grimaced smile was weak, overly forced. ‘We’ll survive: recover.’

  ‘Not for a very long time: all those years I suggested.’

  ‘We’ll see. Before which we’ve got a great deal more to talk about, haven’t we? We’ve not really made any progress whatsoever this afternoon: not achieved anything worthwhile.’

  Charlie hoped he had, although he couldn’t at that moment isolate exactly what. He was being distracted quite a lot by the jungle-drum throbbing in both feet, which was never a good sign.

  * * *

  ‘Where are we going?’ excitedly demanded Sasha before they reached the end of the drive.

  ‘It’s a surprise,’ said Ethel, from the driving seat.

  ‘I want to know now!’ It was childish frustration, not precociousness.

  ‘It wouldn’t be a surprise then, would it?’ said Natalia. Reverting to English as they turned out onto the main road, she said, ‘I’m not happy doing this.’

  ‘This car is fitted with a tracker—and a back-up if the first one malfunctions, which it won’t—permanently monitored by the control room back at Bramshill: they know to the yard where we are at all times,’ soothed Ethel, speaking English, too. ‘There’s a permanent tri-connection between us, Bramshill, and the protection car behind us, with a four-man—actually women—crew. That car’s also got independent electronic back-up. And there’s absolutely no way your whereabouts could have become known anyway. It’s right, necessary, that you get out like this: more so, perhaps, for Sasha than for you at this time. You’re not going to spend the rest of your life under self-imposed house arrest, are you?’

  ‘I don’t know how I’m going to spend the rest of my life,’ said Natalia. ‘Our talking like this is being monitored too, isn’t it?’

  ‘Simultaneously relayed,’ confirmed Ethel, shifting in her seat, regretting Natalia’s lapse into self-pity. ‘Moscow hasn’t responded to three requests from our Foreign Office for consular access to Charlie.’

  ‘Why!’ demanded Natalia, abruptly twisting in her seat to look directly across the car. ‘Is he dead?’

  ‘No,’ denied Ethel, just as urgently. ‘There’s no indication that he’s even seriously injured. Your people are just being as obstructive as possible; we need something to overcome that obstruction.’

  ‘What’s wrong, Mama?’ said Sasha, her voice uneven, from the rear of the vehicle. ‘Why are you angry?’

  ‘I’m not angry … I … I didn’t properly understand something.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re saying … talking about. Why don’t you speak so that I can hear what you’re saying?’

  ‘We have to talk this way,’ said Natalia, too sharply.

  ‘It’s not far now,’ quickly came in Ethel, seeing the child’s face begin to crumple in the rearview mirror. ‘We’ll play a game. The first one to see … to see a red car gets a prize.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Natalia, recovering.

  ‘Do you know Irena Yakulova Novikov?’

  There was no outburst this time, although Natalia remained sideways in her seat. ‘No. Why do you imagine I would?’

  ‘Charlie brought her out of Moscow with him. She devised the Lvov operation from its inception.’

  When Natalia didn’t respond, instead staying silent but frowning across the car, Ethel chanced a quick sideways look. ‘What?’

  ‘Who said she devised the whole thing?’

  ‘She did, when Charlie trapped her.’

  ‘She’s FSB?’ Natalia was still frowning.

  ‘Of course she is and before that KGB,’ said Ethel, disconcerted by the other woman’s reaction. ‘She made contact with Charlie after a press-conference appeal: tried to close down his investigation by admitting to being the architect as well as Lvov’s lover. She tried to keep everything intact by insisting that Lvov was a genuine CIA source, not a plant.’ Ethel hesitated. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘She shouldn’t have done that.’

  ‘Of course she shouldn’t have done it!’ agreed Ethel, impatiently. ‘Charlie caught her out, threatened to send her back to Moscow to FSB punishment.’

  ‘But…’ started Natalia, but stopped. ‘Where is she now?’

  ‘Washington.’

  ‘There’s one!’ shouted Sasha from the back, as Ethel joined the motorway.

  ‘First prize to you,’ said Ethel.

  ‘What’s the prize!’

  ‘You’ve got to wait until we get to where we’re going.’

  ‘Is she co-operating there?’ asked Natalia.

  ‘I don’t know,’ admitted Ethel.

  ‘Did she co-operate here?’

  ‘I believe Charlie recorded her collapse, after he caught her out. I don’t think there was a positive debriefing.’

  ‘There must have been something more … something that proved she was the Control of the Lvov scheme.’

  ‘Why’s this important, Natalia?’

  ‘I’d like to see it: what she said to Charlie. And know what else she provided: how it was provided.’

  ‘There’s another one!’ came Sasha’s voice from the rear seat.

  ‘And another prize,’ promised Ethel. To Natalia she said, ‘Why?’

  ‘It might tell me something.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘I need to see a pattern: that’s what interrogations have, a pattern, a direction, that this woman.…?’

  ‘Irena Yakulova,’ supplied Ethel.

  ‘That should be obvious if I can see what Irena Yakulova said.’

  ‘I told you I wasn’t sure that she underwent a proper debriefing.’

  ‘There’ll still be indicators,�
� insisted the Russian. ‘Will you tell London—Jane—what I’ve said?’

  ‘I also told you our conversation is being relayed to London.’ Leaning her head back towards the child, Ethel said, ‘We’re here.’

  ‘A zoo!’ exclaimed the child.

  ‘And your prizes are models of the animals you like the most,’ declared Ethel.

  ‘I want a tiger,’ immediately determined Sasha. ‘I coloured a picture of a tiger for your friend who’s going to meet us, didn’t I, Mama? When’s he going to get here?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ said Natalia, her voice thick.

  * * *

  ‘That went in a direction I didn’t expect,’ said Aubrey Smith, turning away from the voice relay.

  ‘We didn’t get anything about what she did—and might have found—going into Radtsic’s background,’ complained Passmore. The review sessions had become completely informal: Smith and Jane Ambersom were sitting in easy chairs in the office annexe, coffee cups and percolator on the table separating them. The operations director was perched on a radiator cover by the window, the Thames behind him.

  ‘Ethel did the obvious, the only thing, going with the flow instead of trying to direct the conversation,’ rejected Jane, defensively.

  ‘And where did that flow take us?’ questioned Passmore.

  ‘I don’t know but I want to find out,’ said the Director-General.

  ‘We’ve taken, accepted, a lot about Natalia Fedova on unproven trust, haven’t we?’ said Passmore. ‘We’ve only got Charlie’s word for everything about her. And he’s not here to give us anything more.’

  ‘What are you suggesting?’ demanded Jane, her face creased.

  ‘I’m not suggesting anything,’ said the operations director. ‘I know I’m a comparative newcomer to this business, without the experience that either of you have, and I also know we’re seeking her help, in our current circumstances. But would it be wise to give her everything that Charlie got from Irena Yakulova?’

  Jane looked to Aubrey Smith to respond. The Director-General said, ‘Normally it wouldn’t be contemplated and I totally accept your reservations. But nothing about our current circumstances are normal: there’s no criteria to draw upon and I hope this won’t provide one for the future. As experienced as we all might consider ourselves to be, we’ve only got our own perspective from which to look in from the outside. Natalia’s been on the inside for more than twenty years. She’s our asset—an invaluable asset able to see and interpret in a way we never could.’

  ‘So we show Natalia everything we’ve got?’ pressed Passmore, seeking a positive decision.

  ‘I haven’t definitely decided,’ avoided Smith. ‘Let’s consider what’s more immediate. I’ve had an advisory call from the enquiry secretariat. Monsford’s producing Jacobson, his Moscow station chief who brought Radtsic out. Do we match their man with Flood and Wilkinson?’

  ‘Wilkinson’s getting cleaned up but I’ve had an hour with him,’ reported the operations chief. ‘He doesn’t know anything about the shooting: all the MI6 men, including Halliday, slipped out of the embassy in the middle of the night—’

  ‘Together?’ interrupted Jane.

  ‘That’s the indication from the embassy log. Wilkinson had three meetings with Charlie, literally chased on all of them by the three MI6 sent in as part of Charlie’s original back-up. Wilkinson doesn’t know what Charlie was doing when he was operating alone, but thinks from Charlie’s refusal to have any MI6 contact even before their first meeting—and before we warned from here that he should watch his back—that Charlie was suspicious of some physical move against him. Charlie didn’t give the slightest lead but Wilkinson got the impression that he might even have had a source—’

  ‘Who?’ broke in Jane. ‘The three supposed to be supporting him were hunting him!’

  ‘Halliday was on station when Charlie was there on the original investigation into the embassy murder,’ remembered Smith. ‘Did Halliday work with the three shipped in from here? And what about Jacobson?’

  ‘Neither of them,’ said Passmore, at once. ‘Wilkinson says the back-up group scarcely saw Jacobson: that he positively ignored them. And the three MI6, in turn, practically ignored Halliday: kept him on the periphery, never properly including him. Halliday certainly wasn’t involved in the runaround to locate Charlie.’

  ‘Could Halliday have been Charlie’s inside source?’ wondered Jane.

  Passmore shrugged. ‘We’re not going to get the answer to that until we speak to Charlie again: if we speak to Charlie ever again.’

  ‘We don’t compete with Monsford and his witness,’ decided the Director-General. ‘We’ll leave the entire concentration on Jacobson and do our best to undermine whatever he produces. And I want you,’ Smith turned to Jane, ‘to do even more to undermine Rebecca Street in the way we’ve discussed.’

  ‘I’ll try,’ promised Jane.

  ‘And we will let Natalia see how Charlie broke Irena Yakulova Novikov,’ the man finally decided.

  * * *

  Before his suicide James Straughan had described to Rebecca the miniaturized digital bugging device he’d installed in Gerald Monsford’s office as a thumb drive. The preceding night the Director hadn’t been able to manage a thumb-size proportion, making it unnecessary for her to have briefly removed her tampon concealment, but Rebecca knew Monsford’s inability wasn’t the blame-shifting cause of her being ostracized that morning, but the locked-door closeting with Harry Jacobson.

  Which Rebecca actually welcomed, deciding there was safety in as much professionally visible separation as possible between them while she devised her escape from any responsibility for the Vnukovo shooting. Her most obvious evasion would be to dispose of the chip: literally to flush it down the toilet in the tampon in which it remained hidden. Which was too obvious and too dangerous. Self-incriminating though it was, its contents could conceivably provide—although she didn’t know how—a shield against whatever Monsford was inevitably planning if the internal-security investigation exposed the supposed mole penetration as the survival straw to which the desperate man was clinging.

  What then? Finding Straughan’s copy—or rather, the location—of the digitally recorded assassination discussion would be a near-guaranteed way out. There’d be the reassurance of actually having both in her possession, enabling her to destroy one and have the other discovered during the ongoing security search. The correction came at once. She provably, vocally, featured on it, knowing that Monsford was lying about there being no intended assassination, leaving her complicit with the man on the one hand and equally responsible on the other by not speaking out at the opening of the committee enquiry.

  Sticking to her intention publicly to be seen distancing herself from Monsford, Rebecca arrived early at the committee chamber, glad no preparation appeared yet to have been made for Jacobson. Picking up the man’s printed nameplate, Rebecca led a chair-carrying attendant to the designated MI6 location and made much of rearranging the seating to put Jacobson between herself and Monsford.

  She was in the process of doing that when Jane Ambersom, also alone, arrived at MI5’s opposite position, pleased at the other woman’s obvious, quizzical attention. Smiling across the conference table, Rebecca said, ‘It’s difficult to fit in any more people.’

  ‘It’s fortunate we didn’t call our witnesses today.’ Jane smiled back, leaving both women satisfied.

  * * *

  He’d done well, Charlie congratulated himself. If just one of his disinformation seeds germinated, the encounter would have been a success. And he’d planted enough for the crop to be far greater. What else had he got? The most important had to be his belief that Natalia and Sasha had safely got away. Which made the tit-for-tat delay in consular access less important, although he still needed positive confirmation of their safety.

  Had he—as well as a lot of other people—wrongly believed the FSB to be the assassins of Svetlana Modin, the TV anchorwoman through whom he’d
publicly exposed the Stepan Lvov plot? There was far more logic—and reason—for her and Lvov to have been killed by the damage-limiting CIA, who would equally have been his far more logical pursuers through a willing MI6 surrogate and would provide every explanation for the airport attack.

  All of which, until proved otherwise, were reasonable conclusions, Charlie decided. But why the totally inexplicable concentration upon Irena Yakulova Novikov and Guzov’s equally inexplicable assertion that the woman had been forced from Moscow and was now held against her will?

  Try as he could—and he’d tried every possible conjecture since Guzov’s departure—Charlie couldn’t find anything vaguely close to answers to those conundrums. Which left him worrying that the afternoon had indeed been very carefully and cleverly programmed, too cleverly yet for him to work out how or why.

  * * *

  They hadn’t foreseen this—couldn’t have foreseen this, Irena accepted. Now she didn’t know what to do, denied access to anyone from the embassy. They hadn’t foreseen that refusal, either: everything too rushed, too panicked. But she wouldn’t panic. She had to make some concessions and she had enough to begin with. But for how long? Could she hope for any indication from Birkitt, who’d shown his apparent inexperience by naming the scruffy man who’d caught her out in Moscow as Charlie Muffin? Unlikely, she accepted, realistically. She’d thought there might have been, at first, but she’d changed that initial impression. Believing she could recognize like for like, Irena had now decided that Birkitt’s seemingly unfocused demeanour, the apparently rambling approach, wasn’t unfocused or rambling at all: that there was a rat-trap mind hearing everything, analyzing everything. That the man who had to be at least twenty years her junior was better at his job than she might be at hers. Most worrying of all was that she believed that he, and the CIA he represented, were quite prepared to carry out every threat he’d made: that she really could simply disappear.