Red Star Falling: A Thriller

by Brian Freemantle

  ‘You’re surprisingly fit for a man who’s obviously neglected himself so much in the past,’ announced the surgeon. ‘And your injury is completely healed.’

  ‘You’ve already told me that,’ said Charlie, who’d been surprised at the smallness of the entry and exit wounds they’d held mirrors for him to see for the first time.

  ‘It’ll never cause you any trouble in the future.’

  ‘That’s reassuring,’ said Charlie. ‘So what happens now?’

  The man shrugged. ‘You’re completely out of my hands now.’

  A saloon car was where the van had earlier been when Charlie left the building. The two civilian escorts positioned themselves on either side of him in the rear. There was a third man in the passenger seat, beside the driver.

  ‘Are any of you going to tell me where I’m going?’ tried Charlie.

  ‘No,’ refused the man in the front seat. ‘Be quiet.’

  It was a short journey, the ring road ignored to get into the old part of the city, where there were still pre-revolutionary buildings. But it was into a modern high-rise that they abruptly turned, anonymous until they got through an arched entrance into an inner courtyard in which some of the parked vehicles were official government ZiLs.

  Not the time for any questions, Charlie realized, bewildered but hopeful. He got out as instructed, walked unresisting between his backseat escorts into a foyer, and obediently stood aside while the third man went through document signing and exchanges at a reception desk, from behind which a man immediately came to gesture Charlie farther along a corridor. Almost at the end the man opened a door and said, ‘Wait in there.’

  Almost at once the door opened again, as if the newcomer had been waiting conveniently close, in the next room, even. The man was tall, as impeccably dressed as Mikhail Guzov had always been, but unusually for a Russian wore a crested ring on the little finger of his left hand.

  The man frowned disbelievingly, examining Charlie’s kulak-smocked figure from top to bottom and in cut-crystal English said, ‘Are you really Charlie Muffin?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Charlie. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Chambers, second secretary at the embassy. I’ve come to get you home.’

  29

  It was difficult for Charlie to adjust quickly enough to take control but he did, just. He refused any small talk and determinedly avoided the most personally vital question, for which he doubted the diplomat would have the answer. Unable to accept what was happening and unwilling to risk another, different entrapment, Charlie went as far as warning the embassy driver against speeding or ignoring any other traffic regulation and actually held back from taking off the demeaning kulak smock until they’d passed unimpeded through the embassy gates to an unsuspected reception.

  Peter Warren was the only person Charlie recognized. The ambassador was much younger than the predecessor who’d so disastrously failed to supervise the embassy six months earlier, at once assuring Charlie that every assistance was available and suggesting a personal meeting when Charlie had settled. By similar contrast, the new, grey-haired, Mancunian-accented third secretary was an older man than the preceding, incompetent incumbent who’d done nothing to correct his superior’s failings. The frustration burning through him at the enforced delay, Charlie assured the instantly attentive embassy doctor that he was fit enough to travel and that he’d undergo the medical examination when he reached London, which it was important he do as quickly as possible. His only request was for clothes to replace those in which the FSB had humiliated him as part of their mentally disorientating captivity.

  As they entered the MI5 rezidentura, Warren got as far as, ‘So you don’t—?’ before Charlie cut him off.

  ‘Natalia! What happened to Natalia and Sasha!’

  ‘Both safe, in England. There wasn’t a hitch. Your shooting ensured that.’

  There was no single emotion. It was a colliding combination of relief, continuing confusion, uncertainty, and satisfaction that finally merged into impatience. ‘I’ve been totally isolated, don’t know anything of what’s happened from the moment I was shot. Tell me from that moment.’

  ‘The Director-General wants to talk to you at once.’

  ‘He can wait until I’ve got some idea what he’ll be talking about.’

  ‘I got a bottle of Islay single malt from your commissary records when you were here.’

  ‘That’s thoughtful,’ accepted Charlie, who managed two whiskies in the time it took Warren to set out everything that had followed the Vnukovo ambush.

  ‘And I don’t know it all, just the basic outlines,’ concluded Warren. ‘There’s a lot that’s gone on in London that I obviously haven’t been told about.’

  ‘I’m the only one released: the others from the original back-up team, apart from you, are still being held?’

  ‘Wilkinson got out under another identity through Poland after Preston was picked up at the airport on a test run. We’ve no idea where MI6’s Denning and Beckindale are.’

  ‘Any access granted?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘How much notice was there of my release?’

  Warren poured himself an Islay malt, head curiously to one side. ‘An hour. And for someone who’s been totally isolated, you’re talking as if you know something that no-one else does?’

  Charlie shook his head, refusing the question. ‘What about embassy surveillance?’

  ‘Substantially increased,’ confirmed Warren. ‘And after what happened to Preston I’m a prisoner here as much as the Russians who saw Radtsic in Belmarsh are trapped in their London embassy. Aubrey Smith’s thought is that I’ll be okay coming out as your escort: that they’ll expect someone to travel with you.’

  ‘Which is precisely why you’re not coming with me.’

  ‘Charlie! What the hell’s going on!’

  ‘I won’t know, not until I get back to London. Which I want to do today.’

  ‘There’s two tickets booked on the six o’clock plane, Moscow time: one of them was for me,’ said Warren, miserably.

  ‘Here you’re safe. Outside you won’t be,’ said Charlie. ‘It’s time I talked to the Director.’

  ‘How much do you know?’ was Aubrey Smith’s opening demand when the connection was established from the suspended, totally secure communications pod in the embassy’s communications room.

  ‘I don’t at the moment need to know any more of what happened after I was shot. There’s something more immediately important. My release isn’t right. I think I know what it is but I can’t get proof until I get back tonight. And I’m doing that alone. I don’t want to give the FSB any excuse—’

  ‘We’ve already arranged your arrival at Heathrow,’ broke in Smith.

  ‘Scrap it,’ insisted Charlie. ‘What’s the nearest hospital to London airport?’

  There was a pause. ‘I don’t know. Hammersmith, maybe.’

  ‘Make it Hammersmith,’ said Charlie. ‘Warn the hospital director—but no-one else—that I’ll be arriving. No preparations in advance. I’ll make my own way there from the airport.’

  ‘What’s the problem?’

  Charlie took a deep breath, knowing yet again that he was nakedly splaying himself out for self-offered sacrifice if he were wrong and that if he were he would never again be accorded trust or loyalty from a man who’d already shown him an abundance of both. ‘I’m not sure there is one. Trust me until tonight.’

  There was a pause from London. ‘I’ll have people at the hospital.’

  ‘I’ll be followed from the airport: keep everything at a distance.’

  ‘Are you in physical danger?’

  ‘Not yet. The defectors are, totally.’

  ‘Including Natalia?’

  ‘Very much including Natalia. We shouldn’t take risks with any of them.’

  ‘We’re not,’ guaranteed Smith. ‘They’re all under complete shutdown.’

  ‘They need to be: absolute, total shutdown.’

  ‘T
rust, as always,’ isolated Aubrey Smith, allowing the criticism at last.

  ‘Trust is all I’ve got to offer at the moment.’

  ‘Your cover name at the hospital will be Simpkins,’ supplied Smith.

  ‘That’s one I’ve never had before,’ accepted Charlie.

  ‘It’s the name of my cat,’ said Smith.

  * * *

  None of the jackets offered to Charlie after his brief, noncommittal courtesy encounter with the ambassador fitted him any better than the enveloping smock. Charlie accepted Warren’s raincoat—along with an already prepared replacement passport—to cover the Russian-supplied work shirt and trousers. Thinking not as himself but as those who would be watching the embassy, Charlie abandoned his original intention to get to Sheremetyevo by airport bus because it was unthinkable he would have travelled that way, but once more cautioned the embassy driver against motoring risks. He arrived an hour ahead of the required schedule, was among the first through the check-in line, and, for the benefit of the surveillance he wasn’t bothering to identify, allowed himself one vodka before embarking, curious at how many FSB were inevitably following him onto the flight. He believed he identified two, one actually sitting in the opposite aisle seat, but was sure there would be more. He considered the in-flight meal, having refused anything at the embassy, but decided against it and made the one unwanted whisky last until the co-pilot’s announcement of the London landing.

  Charlie had expected to feel relief—a minimal sensation at least—but there was nothing. His troublesome feet, more extensively exercised in less than one day than they had been over the previous fortnight, prevented his hurrying to the passport check-in queue for which he waited patiently, conscious of the two suspected FSB watchers on the plane unprofessionally anxious to keep level in the non-EU-passenger queue. Charlie switched his search for MI5 protectors he knew would be in the passenger hall and was encouraged at failing to isolate any. He had to walk in front of the foreign-passport checks as he made his way down to the baggage hall, aware as he passed of his aisle-seat companion in a gesticulating dispute with an immigration officer.

  Without luggage to claim, Charlie passed straight through to the arrivals concourse and was relieved at the shortness of the taxi queue, although there were at least six intervening customers and only three available vehicles between him and his followers when he got his cab. As it picked up the M4 into London, Charlie had the first sensation he supposed to be relief but it was too fleeting for him to be sure. He wished he were surer of a lot of other beliefs and emotions.

  Charlie didn’t bother to check for pursuit as he went into the hospital, glad there was an unoccupied receptionist at the desk. ‘I have an appointment with the director. My name is Simpkins.’

  The bespectacled woman frowned, shuffling through paper from a cubby hole in front of her. ‘There’s no note here.’

  ‘Please check his office.’

  ‘There’s always a note.’

  ‘Please check,’ repeated Charlie.

  The woman hesitated but then with obvious reluctance dialed on an internal line, the frown deepening as she replaced the receiver. ‘You’re to go to level F, administration. There should have been a note.’

  ‘I’ll tell them when I get there,’ promised Charlie.

  * * *

  ‘He’s landed safely,’ announced Jane, as she returned from the control room.

  ‘Definitely free?’ pressed Natalia.

  ‘Definitely,’ confirmed Jane, smiling between the two other women in the sitting room of the safe house.

  ‘How badly was he hurt?’

  ‘He’ll have an immediate medical check. He was well enough to travel alone.’

  ‘Do you think champagne’s in order?’ suggested Ethel.

  ‘Absolutely,’ agreed Jane.

  ‘Where’s he being taken?’ asked Natalia.

  ‘Into London,’ generalized Jane.

  ‘Has anyone spoken properly to him yet?’

  ‘Not yet. Not like you mean.’

  Ethel handed glasses around and said, ‘Congratulations. You’ve got him back, Natalia. And it’s largely as a result of all that you did.’

  ‘Yes,’ said the woman, the last to sip her wine. ‘Will he be brought here?’

  ‘Not immediately. He has to be debriefed. We’ve no idea what’s been happening to him since Vnukovo.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘His first question was about you and Sasha,’ said Jane, who’d read Warren’s account from Moscow before flying down to Hampshire.

  Natalia smiled, faintly. ‘That’s good to hear.’

  ‘You haven’t drunk your champagne,’ complained Ethel, hovering over the Russian after topping up the two other glasses and waiting while Natalia made room for more wine.

  ‘You don’t seem very excited,’ finally accused Jane.

  ‘I’m frightened,’ Natalia admitted, openly. ‘I never really thought it would work, that they’d let him go. I still can’t properly understand it and I’m frightened.’

  ‘I think anyone would be frightened, after what you’ve both been through,’ encouraged Ethel. ‘And that’s up to now. There’s still the adjustments you’ve got to make.’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Natalia. ‘There’ll need to be a lot of adjustments.’

  * * *

  ‘Why aren’t I being allowed television anymore? Or radio or newspapers?’ demanded Irena.

  ‘You should be grateful you’re being allowed to stay here, ma’am,’ said Joe Goody, registering the similarity of the protest with that of Radtsic and Elena, earlier.

  ‘I want to know what’s going on!’

  ‘I’ve told you what’s going on,’ said Goody, patiently. ‘You’ve been exposed as a Russian intelligence agent working against the interests of this country, for which you’re going to face trial on charges still being formulated. They will automatically carry a custodial sentence the length of which could be mitigated by the degree of assistance you continue to give us.’

  ‘I’m not telling you any more, don’t want to see you again, until I’m allowed access to diplomats from my embassy.’

  ‘I’ve also told you that arrest warrants have been issued against the Russian intelligence agents who saw Radtsic in prison and who have taken refuge in your London embassy,’ politely continued Goody. ‘There is no question of consular access to you, Radtsic, or Elena while that situation exists. There’s also the matter of your safety that has to be considered.’

  ‘What safety?’ demanded the woman, the belligerence slightly lessening.

  ‘We have reason to believe that if your service discovered your whereabouts you’d be in considerable physical danger.’

  ‘Elimination!’ exclaimed the woman derisively. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. We’ll go home heroes.’

  ‘We don’t believe we are being ridiculous, ma’am,’ said Goody, forever mild, also noting the similarity with Radtsic’s earlier rejection. ‘We believe your service consider all three of you a severe political embarrassment that they’re anxious to eradicate to prevent your publicly appearing in a British court of law.’

  ‘You’re bluffing,’ accused Irena, unable to keep the uncertainty from her voice.

  ‘What I want you very carefully to consider is properly, genuinely, defecting to us and telling us precisely what the disinformation was in everything you told the Americans.’

  ‘Go fuck yourself!’

  ‘I’ll see you tomorrow, ma’am. And don’t worry. As long as you’re here, protected as completely are you are, you’ll remain quite safe.’

  * * *

  ‘You’re right!’ declared the security-cleared surgeon, squinting at the X-ray pictures on the viewing screen. ‘I’ve never seen anything like this before. And as minuscule as that is, I’m not sure a radiologist would have spotted it if the precise location hadn’t been pointed out in advance.’

  ‘Another Russian miracle of miniaturization technology,’ dismissed Charlie. ‘Is it
going to be difficult to get out?’

  ‘Piece of cake,’ assured the man, turning away from the screen to where Charlie sat on the edge of the operating table, naked to the waist, which he wished didn’t bulge so much over the ill-fitting trousers. ‘They didn’t actually put it in the wound socket. That would have risked an infection. They created a skin pocket, next to it, using scar tissue as concealment. I can get it out with a local anaesthetic but I’d want you to stay in overnight.’

  ‘I already reserved a private room before knowing what you thought had been planted in your body,’ said John Passmore. ‘You sure it’s limited to being a tracker?’

  ‘I tested it where they kept me,’ said Charlie. ‘Worked every time I disappeared into the woods: there was someone—once a troop—with me in minutes. But every one of those times and on ordinary exercise in view of their cameras I kept repeating, aloud, that I knew I had a bug embedded in my shoulder. It was never picked up.’

  ‘How did you know?’ asked the surgeon. ‘I wouldn’t have imagined there’d be much pain.’

  ‘There wasn’t,’ agreed Charlie. ‘But it itched like hell.’

  It took less than fifteen minutes from the time the local anaesthetic was administered for the tracker device to be taken from Charlie’s shoulder and soundlessly laid, at Charlie’s urging, on a waiting gauze pad.

  ‘Why so much care?’ asked Passmore.

  ‘I don’t want any indication that it’s been taken out. How many people have you got with you?’

  ‘Enough to make sure you’re totally protected.’ Passmore frowned.

  ‘Where do buses go from here?’ Charlie asked the surgeon.

  The man shrugged. ‘All over.’

  ‘What’s the longest route?’