Red Star Rising

by Brian Freemantle

  “You’ll obviously have to cancel your precious conference,” insisted Paula-Jane. “What the Russian have just done turns it into a farce.”

  “Does it?” challenged Charlie, back in control. “Or is that precisely what they expect to happen: why they staged what they just did, because they weren’t going to be part of it and wanted to stop whatever I might have said, in answer to something I was asked?”

  “You surely don’t expect London will allow it to happen now!” demanded the woman. “You’ll be eaten alive.”

  “I just have been,” admitted Charlie, again. “If the conference is canceled, they win. And I might as well jump, as you suggest.”

  “I think she’s right,” came in Robertson, speaking for the first time. “London’s only thought now will be containment.”

  “Containment of what!” refused Charlie. “That’s the Russians’ strategy.”

  “I think you should talk to London,” suggested Robertson.

  “So do I,” agreed Charlie, fervently wishing that he could have avoided doing so.

  But yet again he was surprised, to the point of bewilderment, when he did. Having by now come to know the Director-General’s emotional-controlling demeanor, Charlie didn’t expect a shouted tirade but he hadn’t anticipated Aubrey Smith hearing him out as patiently as the man did, thinking again as he anxiously explained his side of the debacle how lucky it had been to send his recollected account of Petrovka ahead of his televised humiliation.

  When Charlie finally finished the other man said, “You’ve still been made to look absolutely stupid: a naïve, stumbling idiot.”

  “I know,” accepted Charlie. “But I won’t continue to appear that way if you let me go ahead.”

  “I know the basis upon which you’ve planned everything. You can’t possibly guarantee any sort of exoneration!”

  “They’re gambling that we’ll cancel,” insisted Charlie. “If we do they will have won; beaten us.” Not beaten us, beaten me, he thought.

  “By elevating everything as they have, talking about affecting Russia’s supposed internal democracy, they’ve taken any decision totally away from me, personally: it’s government to government now.”

  “You could argue the point. And the impression that will be created if we back off,” risked Charlie.

  “And I will argue it,” promised the man. “But that argument, logical and realistic though it is, won’t necessarily prevail with politicians who think and act in sound bites.”

  “Then what the hell can I do?” asked Charlie, hating the sound of his own inadequacy.

  “Pray,” replied Smith, unhelpfully.

  “To whose God?”

  “The One who’s best at miracles,” said Smith, which helped even less.

  Bill Bundy was the only one of his three listed callers to have identified himself with a message, and the American answered his phone the moment Charlie returned it.

  “You managing to stay sane?” greeted the American.

  “I’m not sure.”

  “You going to go ahead with the press conference?”

  “It’s not been decided yet.” Why was Bundy interested, wondered Charlie.

  “I’d like to be there if you do.”

  He had to ruffle his feathers, start acting professionally, Charlie decided. “I’ll let you know if it’s decided we go ahead.”

  “So you might not?” persisted Bundy.

  “I said it hasn’t been decided.”

  “You’ll fix my admission, if it does?”

  “Yes,” promised Charlie. To try to work out your reason for being so anxious to be there, he thought.

  “I can’t imagine how it might help, but my offer to pitch in still stands.”

  “I appreciate it,” said Charlie, emptily. He really could have sold tickets, he thought.

  “What are you going to do—is London going to do—if you don’t go ahead?”

  “We haven’t decided about whether or not to go ahead,” wearily reminded Charlie.

  “You want a break, someone to relax with, you’ve got my number, okay?”

  “I appreciate that, too,” Charlie lied again.

  “Look forward to your call, whatever’s decided.”

  Charlie pressed back in his inadequate chair in his inadequate office, deciding the dedicated number and its answering facility should be transferred to the comfort of the compound flat in which the hopeful response lines were being installed. He was about to concentrate upon the American’s approach when the telephone rang once more, the traffic noise obvious the moment Charlie lifted the receiver.

  “I didn’t know what they were going to do,” apologized Sergei Pavel at once, from his untapped phone from the street kiosk. “I realize now that telling me to wait outside for you was to get me out of the way while they set everything up—in my own fucking office!”

  “You did warn me they were planning something,” said Charlie, as confused at the Russian’s approach as he had been by that of Bundy’s, just minutes earlier. “There’s nothing you could have done if you had known.”

  “Except given you a better warning,” said Pavel. “I didn’t want you to think I was part of it: tricking you like that.”

  “I wasn’t thinking that,” replied Charlie, honestly.

  “You said I could get into the conference with you?”

  It took Charlie several moments to reply. He’d believed the man up to now but couldn’t any longer. Pavel had to be a plant, to discover what the British response to the television broadcast was going to be. Which meant, Charlie realized at once, that he couldn’t indicate any uncertainty about the conference. “How can you hope to be there, beside me, after what Kashev and Yudkin said?”

  “I’m not part of anything they said or did, or the trap they set. I told you before, none of them wants the investigation to continue. And if it doesn’t, I’ll be held ultimately responsible for its failure.”

  “You can’t confront both intelligence agencies and the office of the president itself!”

  “Things aren’t that bad, not like they were in the old days.”

  “They’re not that much better, either!” argued Charlie.

  “I want to be there!”

  “Then you shall be,” decided Charlie. Having Pavel publicly at his side would make the Russian televised denunciation of non-cooperation almost as ridiculous as its portrayal of his stumbling inadequacy: almost, he qualified, but not quite.

  “How?”

  “Call on this number, this way.” Unless a London-ordered cancellation were announced in advance there would not be enough time for any further sabotage to be mounted, even if Pavel were a provocateur.

  “Thank you,” said Pavel.

  “Let’s wait to see if you’ve got anything to thank me for.”

  The car had the now familiar difficulty getting through the thronged embassy gates and it hadn’t gone more than 100 yards along the embankment road when Charlie’s now regular driver said, “It could be two cars following us: one certainly, a BMW again.”

  Harry Fish swiveled to stare out of the rear window. Charlie didn’t bother. The electronics expert said, “You actually think the FSB are tailing you!”

  “It would be pretty standard practice, after everything that’s happened: we’d do it if it were London.”

  “I most certainly wouldn’t . . .”

  “. . . like to do my job,” Charlie finished for the other man.

  “At the moment I don’t like doing it, either.” He hoped the intended hotel-room sweep wouldn’t take too long. He had a lot to think about and work out. And the urge to call Natalia was becoming stronger, despite his undertaking not to attempt contact so soon.

  “It’s definitely two,” reported the driver. “The BMW and what looks like an old Skoda.”

  “What do you want to do, if I do find something?” asked Fish.

  “Nothing,” said Charlie, frowning toward the man to indicate his discomfort at the driver being abl
e to hear the conversation, even though he probably wouldn’t understand it. “Just show me where.” If the suite were bugged, he’d have a genuine and essential reason to speak to Natalia.

  Fish nodded in understanding, and said nothing more until they were crossing the hotel foyer. “Sorry about that. Stupid of me.”

  “No harm done,” said Charlie, standing back for Fish to enter the elevator ahead of him, glad they were alone. “If you find anything I want to use it to my advantage, which is why I want it left. Is there any way they can detect your searching for it?”

  “Only if we speak, if and when I do find something. I’ll indicate it and mark it. We can talk later, out of the room.”

  The briefcase-sized bag that Fish opened was sectioned to hold and clamp various instruments—including a doctorlike stethoscope—and yards. It was a yard with an elongated attachment, like an elephant’s trunk, that Fish extracted and looped around his neck by a thin strap. There was a regimentation in the way the man operated, with virtually immediate results when he put the nose of the attachment to the telephone, turning to Charlie and nodding. In thirty minutes, he detected six emplacements, three in the living room and three in the bedroom. Having sticker-marked the location of each, Fish unscrewed the first detected telephone handset, pointed into the diaphragm to the sort of pinhead device Charlie recognized from the embassy search, and examined it, in situ and from several angles through an intensity-enhanced magnifying glass before looking up, both frowning and shaking his head. After a further, even more concentrated examination, Fish handed the glass for Charlie to look in detail for himself. Charlie was able under the enlargement to see that the device was not completely cylindrical, which he’d imagined it to be, but had an extension, like a finger, from its left side. Several times, unnecessarily gesturing Charlie against any utterance, Fish painstakingly opened every identified location and subjected each bug to the same intensive scrutiny, finishing every one with the same frowned head shaking.

  There were people in the outside corridor and again in the descending elevator so it wasn’t until they were in the familiar bar, Charlie in his back-protective corner seat and the drinks ordered, that Charlie was able to say, “What’s all the head shaking about?”

  “They’re not the same,” declared Fish, with another appropriate head movement.

  “What’s not the same?”

  “The listening devices,” said Fish, patiently. “Remember I told you those in the embassy were state of the art, which I thought they were because I’d never seen anything like them before? These are even better! They’re fantastic and I’d sell my soul as well as my body to get hold of one to dismantle and reverse engineer.”

  “What are you telling me?” persisted Charlie, feeling another sink of unwanted bewilderment.

  “These are state of the art: I’ve never seen anything so sophisticated, even without taking them apart. Why weren’t those the same in the embassy, potentially a far bigger and more important target?”

  “You tell me,” invited Charlie.

  “I can’t,” admitted Fish. “But I’d like to be able to.”

  So would he, Charlie decided, adding it to his list.

  16

  Charlie was glad he’d protectively warned the television media of the likelihood of pooled arrangements because overnight, effectively with just six hours before the start of what he realistically accepted to be one of the greatest gambles he’d ever taken, forty-three more attendance applications, ten of them from additional stations, were logged at Robertson’s embassy vetting room. By that time, Charlie’s painstakingly created priority list was mentally shredded by Harry Fish’s discovery in the Savoy Hotel suite, and Charlie personally and arbitrarily decreed the share between Russian, American, and British TV stations, rejecting any decision-reversing arguments against his edicts with the warning that any station refusing to accept his ruling would be refused attendance altogether. Anxious not to miss Sergei Pavel’s expected approach, Charlie accepted Fish’s offer of a pager attachment to his dedicated apartment telephones, as well as his previously allocated line, his suspicion of the man’s overall monitoring confirmed by Fish not asking for an explanation for the request. Charlie was surprised to the point of astonishment—although in turn not seeking an explanation—that Reg Stout was included by Robertson for their final tour of the specially assigned conference facility and the route to it from the gatehouse, accepting Fish’s assurances without fully understanding the detailed explanations that the embassy and its ancillary buildings were totally secured against electronic intrusion. Charlie did understand how completely those attending the conference would be recorded from the three television cameras presenting a 360-degree surveillance within the hall, in addition to those temporarily added to the now fully operational outside cover. There still hadn’t been any contact from Pavel when they ended the tour back in the conference chamber, with a complete rehearsal of the embassy secretaries who were to be stationed throughout the room with handheld microphones for individual questioners and a final check of the translator’s booth.

  Charlie waited until Stout left for his self-appointed supervision of the gatehouse arrivals before saying, “Why’s Reg to be included?”

  “He’s officially responsible for embassy security,” said Robertson.

  Charlie’s intended protest at not being consulted was stopped by his pager’s vibration, its source registering on its screen. Charlie at once recognized the street phone number.

  “It’s your now transferred original line: it’s not secure if it’s transferred a second time through the switchboard,” hurriedly intruded Fish.

  “You’ve just told me everything electrical is totally secure behind a white noise barrier,” said Charlie, as the pager continued to reverberate.

  “There’s a risk with a double transfer,” insisted the other man.

  Mumbo-jumbo bullshit, decided Charlie, picking up the conference-hall extension and telling an immediately responding operator to put the call through.

  The voice Charlie instantly recognized to be Pavel’s said: “Fifteen minutes.”

  “Yes,” acknowledged Charlie, though unsure if the Russian heard him so quickly was the outside street telephone replaced. Turning back to the other two men, Charlie said, “Your secondary monitor, the one I’m not supposed to know you’ve attached to the apartment lines, wouldn’t have got that, would it, Harry?”

  “A backup is an obvious precaution,” tried Robertson.

  “Why play silly buggers and not tell me there was one?” demanded Charlie.

  “We’re not spying on you,” insisted Fish.

  “I would, if I were in your position,” said Charlie, sardonically. “I just wouldn’t be so bad at it.”

  “Who was it?” demanded a tight-lipped Robertson.

  Charlie’s hesitation was more to continue the other man’s annoyance than to avoid the answer. “Sergei Pavel.”

  Initially, there was blank-faced silence from the two men, until Robertson said, “It was my understanding that no one officially involved in your murder investigation was to attend.”

  Your isolated Charlie yet again. “Pavel’s militia, not FSB.”

  “Working entirely independently from the FSB?” questioned Robertson.

  “It’s my decision and my responsibility,” stated Charlie. He was unsure approaching the thronged entrance if the already assembled media were early arrivals or a separate assembly of FSB agents and informers to record and identify those arrivals. Within the gatehouse, in addition to its now totally functioning CCTV system, Reg Stout was virtually at attention behind Russian-speaking embassy staff there to confirm that every attending journalist and technician was listed against their official accreditation documentation. The setup reminded Charlie of the passport controlled and suspect-indexed checks at the long ago Checkpoint Charlie crossing between East and West Berlin during the numbing days of the Cold War. He’d once had to let a man be killed there to prevent being
shot himself, he further recalled. It was wrong to remember; to invite ghosts.

  It was difficult through the gate office window to isolate the face for which Charlie was looking, but from the main, better windowed exit and entry section he at last saw Pavel, trying to keep himself apart from the ebbing and flowing melee while at the same time hopefully using its protective concealment from the sweeping camera lenses. The Russian detective located Charlie at the same time, hurrying through the door Charlie opened to an instant explosion of camera lights.

  “I didn’t expect this,” greeted Pavel. The man’s excitement was obvious.

  “Who is this? I need an identity!” officiously demanded Stout.

  It was Charlie, caught by a sudden idea, who answered, although in the Russian Stout was supposed not to understand. “Colonel Pavel is attending upon my authority,” Charlie told the registration clerks.

  “I need to see some provable ID,” insisted the clerk, also in Russian.

  “You’re looking at it. It’s me,” said Charlie, impatiently.

  Stout shifted, as if to intrude further, but didn’t.

  Pavel nodded back toward the gatehouse as they emerged into the crash-barrier controlled walkway. “Was that a problem?”

  “We’ll see,” said Charlie. He was conscious of one of the temporary camera installations keeping them constantly under observation as they approached the hall. Neither Robertson nor Fish were there. Charlie led the way past Fish’s monitoring technicians making their last-minute equipment adjustments into a rear anteroom in which three closed circuit screens were already operating, although without sound. One showed the approach from the gatehouse along which they had just walked. The other two were focused on the inside of the hall from two different angles, totally covering the area. At that moment on both were pictures of sound technicians moving along the already set-out chairs, depositing on each ear pieces for simultaneous translation.

  Pavel looked briefly at the screens. “It all looks very impressive.”

  “It’s got to be impressive,” said Charlie. “If something doesn’t come out of this, I don’t see a way forward. I’ve lost any contact, certainly any cooperation, with Guzov: with everyone, except you. And what about you? What’s your position going to be, after today?”