Red Star Rising

by Brian Freemantle

  That had to come directly from Guzov! seized Charlie. And fitted perfectly with what he was trying to implant in the woman’s mind. “If they are, then I know nothing about it. But then perhaps I wouldn’t.”

  “I don’t understand?”

  You’re going to right now, determined Charlie. “Perhaps I was never intended to be the proper investigator, just the person everyone, including the Russians, were supposed to believe had been assigned to the case.”

  “Are you suggesting there was—still is—an entirely separate investigation that no one knows is going on?”

  “It would explain a lot of strange things that have happened in the investigation up until now.”

  The word “humiliation” did not feature in that evening’s ORT broadcast, and Charlie was only mentioned once by name and without a photograph being shown. It was the lead item, fronted by Svetlana Modin, and once more claimed to be a world exclusive. A combined and absolutely covert investigation between British and American intelligence had been defeated by the brilliance of Russian detectives who had solved both the murder of the mystery man at the British embassy and that of the originally appointed Russian investigator. The revelation, insisted the woman, would further worsen diplomatic relations between Moscow and the two Western capitals, both of which had issued statements strenuously denying any such joint operation when it had been put to them. A Russian presidential spokesman was quoted that, despite the already issued denials, formal explanations were being demanded from Washington and London.

  Had he manipulated the program sufficiently to deflect any further physical attacks? wondered Charlie, hunched over a tumbler of Islay single malt in his firmly secured hotel suite. Still too unsure to relax, he decided, turning to the promised and combined Russian dossiers that had arrived an hour before he quit the embassy and carried back with him to the Savoy. It took Charlie three hours fully to read the dossiers the first time and an additional two to reread everything for a second before finally pouring himself his second Islay single malt of the evening, his minimal satisfaction at manipulating the television broadcast muted by the Russian material.

  Charlie had seen weaker evidence, some of it more obviously fabricated, overwhelm barristers in English courts. In what passed for justice in Russia, total victory was a forgone conclusion. The Russians hadn’t missed a single trick.

  It was to take another twelve hours for Charlie to change his mind. There was one trick, which even Charlie couldn’t at that moment have imagined. Or hoped for.

  24

  Charlie changed direction, reaching for the ringing telephone instead of the television remote control for the first broadcast of the day. David Halliday said, “Have you seen the news?” and Charlie pressed the power button in time to see a photograph of Svetlana Modin fading from the screen and to catch “strongest protest” as the commentator’s voice-over finished, too.

  “What’s happened?” demanded Charlie.

  “According to the broadcast, she was arrested at four o’clock this morning,” relayed Halliday. “The station says they’ve no idea where she’s been taken or what charge is being made against her, if any. One suggestion was that she is being accused of acting for a hostile foreign power in the dissemination of false information.”

  “Is there such a charge?” So much, thought Charlie, for fame keeping her safe.

  “Probably. I haven’t checked.”

  The TV picture now was of ORT’s senior newsreader, Svetlana’s photograph in the background. The man expanded the protest statement beyond that from the station itself to include the Moscow journalists’ union. There was a reference to that morning’s scheduled murder press conference, which the anchorwoman had intended covering, with the speculations that Russian journalists might boycott it in protest at her arrest. That was followed by stock footage of Svetlana’s most recent appearances, accompanied by a commentary describing them as a series of unrivaled world exclusives.

  “They’re going to sweat her, for her sources,” predicted Halliday. “You think they’ll disclose them, when she tells all?”

  He had to be wary of the recording equipment in the suite Charlie reminded himself. “They might, if it serves their purpose.” And totally destroy him in the process if they chose to do so, he accepted, if his belief of Guzov initiating Svetlana’s approach to him the previous day was right.

  “You think it could cause us more problems here at the embassy?” asked Halliday, with unknowing prescience.

  “It could, I suppose. I’ll just go to the conference, see what I can pick up there,” said Charlie. And lay himself out for sacrifice if Guzov were listening, which Charlie was sure the FSB general was. It didn’t really matter whether the Russian press boycotted the event. The rest of the world media most definitely wouldn’t and there he would be, displayed for all to see, if Guzov chose that moment to denounce his contact with the woman.

  “You spoken to London since last night’s broadcast?”

  “No,” said Charlie.

  “Don’t you think you should, particularly now that she’s been arrested?”

  “I intend to.”

  “Harry Fish has been withdrawn, incidentally. Did you know that?”

  The planted bugs! Charlie thought, deciding the conversation had to end. “No, I hadn’t heard. I need to get going. I’ll see you at the embassy.” Could he infer Fish’s removal to be a victory for Aubrey Smith? At that moment, Charlie didn’t think it was safe for him to assume anything. And even if he did—and was right—he couldn’t imagine that it would indicate anything to save or protect him.

  It was a last-minute thought to order an embassy car to collect him, and Charlie was glad he had as he approached the legation. It was once more under media siege, the embankment road close to being impassable. He was recognized during the vehicle’s slow progress through the crush and it took several moments for Charlie to recover from the flash and strobe-light blindness when they finally reached the sanctuary of the inner courtyard. Charlie asked his driver to wait to take him to Petrovka, unsure what to expect within the building.

  The answer to which appeared to be very little. Neither P-J nor Halliday—despite his earlier conversation with the man—were in their offices, although in Halliday’s there was a pile of that day’s newspapers, all headlining the TV program. There was already waiting for him in the communications room a message from the Director-General that the claim of a covert American/British operation was being officially denied and an instruction that he should not become embroiled in any public or private discussion whatsoever about it. The message concluded that the man would be unavailable the entire day which, without conceding paranoia, Charlie took to be abandonment, compounded by his being told when he called the ambassador’s suite that Peter Maidment was at the Russian Interior Ministry and not expected to be available until late in the afternoon. Neither in the rabbit-hutch office nor in the set-aside apartment was there any message or notification of Harry Fish’s withdrawal. The same two sullen operatives of the previous day were on duty again. The overnight log, again offered by the elder of the two, listed seventy-eight press calls in the two hours following Svetlana Modin’s program.

  An obviously alerted Paul Robertson arrived at the apartment five minutes after Charlie, just as Charlie was replacing the phone from being told that Mikhail Guzov was also unavailable.

  “Has there been a nuclear explosion I didn’t hear? Everyone appears to have been vaporized,” Charlie greeted.

  Robertson ignored the remark, going instead to the other two men. “Why don’t you two take a break? We’ll handle anything for the next fifteen minutes.” The man waited until the door closed behind them before coming back to Charlie. “Maybe people don’t want to become contaminated by the fallout you’ve caused. And on a very personal note.”—the man nodded generally around the room “—which you know is going on record as we speak, I resent and refute all the inferences in your note to the Director-General. I’m not part o
f any cabal or conspiracy, and I’m demanding a formal personnel inquiry when I get back to London into any suggestion or claim that I am. I don’t know—and don’t want to know—what games are going on back there. Or here, apart from what it’s my function to uncover and expose. That clear?”

  “Good for you,” mocked Charlie, refusing the rehearsed attack. “Harry Fish isn’t here any longer though, is he? And how are your own inquiries going?”

  Robertson swept his hand toward the recorder-linked telephones. “I’m now responsible for the duties of Fish’s technicians here. That’s where any contact between you and me begins and ends.”

  “Comforting for me to know I’ve got your help and support,” said Charlie.

  “You’ve got—and will get—absolutely fuck all from me.”

  “You got all your explanations and excuses ready for that inquiry panel you’re demanding when they ask why it’s taken you so long and why you’ve fucked up so many times trying to find the inside source here, Paul?”

  “Most of it could be in the material in which you feature in the diplomatic bag going back to London with Harry Fish.”

  “No they can’t and you know it: the sequences don’t fit in times or dates or events or leaks. . . .” Charlie made his own movement around the wired-for-sound room. “And don’t forget that all that’s being recorded now will be available as a reminder for that inquiry panel of yours.”

  There was a sound at the door, directly followed by it being opened by the elder of the two sound technicians. Hesitantly the man smiled, “You said fifteen minutes?”

  “Perfect timing,” said Charlie, before Robertson could speak. “Best of luck, succeeding eventually in your function of getting your still-free-to-operate informer.”

  For the first time Charlie welcomed the camera flash gauntlet getting out of the embassy and into the similarly media-cordoned Petrovka, confident of its physical protection although finding it difficult to focus in the sudden darkness of the building. He did not immediately recognize Mikhail Guzov waiting for him just inside the entrance. Guzov said: “All this is ridiculous! Absolutely and completely ridiculous!”

  Believing as he did that the FSB officer had been involved if not totally in control of Svetlana Modin’s approach and of the ORT broadcast, Charlie had anticipated a tirade of supposed outrage for the man to distance himself from it but not by this degree of vehemence.

  “I tried to reach you,” embarked Charlie, cautiously.

  “Everything and everyone’s gone mad! I haven’t been able to talk to anyone, reach anyone!”

  The outrage definitely wasn’t faked! Charlie wouldn’t have risked his lunch money on the bet, wanting more time to be sure, but his initial impression was that the red-faced Russian was genuinely furious. “I haven’t seen or heard a full newscast. I don’t know everything that’s happened.”

  “You know at least that the militia arrested Svetlana Modin in the middle of the night!”

  “I didn’t know who initiated it,” encouraged Charlie.

  “The interfering militia commandant, that’s who! Acting without reference to anyone. The Russian media are threatening to boycott the conference, which we decided to cancel until we sorted out the mistake. But now Lvov’s involved himself!”

  “Lvov! How can he involve himself!”

  “Easily. And brilliantly. He’s declared it an attack, an infringement, on the supposed freedom of the press. It’s a platform he’s made all his own, chasing publicity like a dog after a bitch in heat.”

  “Are you still going to cancel?”

  “How can we now?” demanded Guzov, exasperated. “If we cancel, Lvov can—and will—claim the currently elected government can no longer properly run the country and that canceling everything is a panicked reaction to a mistake they shouldn’t have made”—he hesitated—“which the militia certainly shouldn’t have made.”

  Guzov was echoing a politician’s—maybe even a ministerial—judgement, Charlie guessed. Where was his benefit apart from the most obvious that an assassination attempt was unlikely here? It was an additionally hopeful thought that his personal humiliation was being overshadowed, at least for the moment. Unless, perhaps, Svetlana was coerced into naming him. Unlikely, came the reassurance. From his experience, Svetlana Modin wasn’t easily coerced. Rather than being frightened by her detention, the self-promoting woman would be reveling in it, already having calculated how it would increase her fame and notoriety. “So what are you going to do?”

  “Wait. It’s being discussed elsewhere,” disclosed Guzov, leading the way farther and down into the building into what, from its lingering smell, Charlie assumed normally to be a staff canteen, although any trace of its use had been removed. Charlie thought there was something almost pitiful about the very obvious anything-you-can-do-we-can-do-better determination to improve upon the facilities of the British press conference. The improvised Petrovka facility was actually bigger, with far more attendance-recording cameras and the addition of four huge instant-replay screens at the front, sides, and even rear of the room. Each back-padded chair had its individual translation earpiece and microphone in its holster, with a separate already assembled but uncertain-looking group of backup microphone runners to be ready if the main questioning system broke down. There was another group of men and women moving along the lines of set-out chairs, distributing press packs in manila folders. It was impossible to see into the temporary, smoke-windowed translators’ booth, but Charlie guessed it could accommodate at least a dozen linguists. Charlie wondered if the Russians had also copied the internal video and audio recording equipment that Harry Fish had assembled at the embassy. The elevated dais was a goldfish bowl of even more lights and cameras.

  Charlie turned to the FSB general but at that moment Leonid Toplov hurried into the room and without any explanation Guzov moved toward the man. The discussion between the two Russians began quite calmly but within minutes degenerated, Guzov making expansively sweeping movements about the room before trying—and very clearly failing—to reach someone on his cell phone. With a very visible shrug of despair Guzov bustled out through the door, followed by the hapless ministry official. They did so with difficulty, struggling against the flow of early arrivals who at once began to spread out throughout the hall, quickly overwhelming the place-allocating greeting officials. At the initial influx Charlie very quickly attached himself, although not closely enough for conversation, to the momentarily unoccupied backup group of additional microphone distributors. Charlie’s impression from the incoming flow of journalists was that the threatened Russian boycott hadn’t materialized, although from the muted outside broadcast being relayed upon the wide screen on the far wall of the hall the now banner-carrying crowd outside appeared greater than when he’d arrived. On the perimeter of the demonstration there was a disjointed line of confronting, uniformed militia officers as well as plainclothes officials but Charlie could not locate either Guzov or Toplov among them.

  As Charlie watched, more confronting uniformed officers began to move in from either side of the headquarters building which, oddly, appeared to be matched by the growth in the number of protesters, creating surge and countersurge to a silent-movie background of arm-waving, fist-shaking, banner-fluttering jostling. Charlie had intentionally positioned himself to keep the entrance partially in his eye line, so he saw Guzov the moment the man reentered the hall, like a piece of flotsam on an incoming tide. For the briefest moment inside the hall, the FSB general appeared disorientated, gazing around until establishing the raised stage area and, as he moved toward it, where Charlie stood. The Russian, sweat-streaked as well as visibly flushed, escaped from the flow and said, short breathed, “A fiasco! We couldn’t stop it . . . nothing we could do.”

  “What?” demanded Charlie.

  “Lvov,” managed the Russian. “Heading a demonstration here . . .” The rest of what Guzov said was drowned by the increasing outside noise and there was briefly the surreal combination of silen
t television footage on the inside screen accompanied by the permeating uproar. Stepan Lvov, his surprisingly still immaculately designer-dressed and coiffuer-intact wife by his side, was clearly visible on the screen now, the surrealism heightened by their being in the middle of a marching, chanting crowd but separated and untouched by it, protected as they were by an inner cordon of bodyguards. The militia barrier melted in the face of the oncoming tidal wave of people, which was on the screen one moment and the next, sweeping into the hall. Charlie later reasoned that the politician must have had advance scouts already inside because without pause Lvov and his inner caucus turned as if choreographed by unseen directions, toward the raised area where a man already stood, handheld microphone ready for Lvov to reach out and take as he mounted the small stage, which immediately became an oasis of calm just slightly ahead of the room quietening.

  “Svetlana Modin is a brave and courageous woman, a symbol, a visible and recognizable face, of the oppressive, brutish, and even murderous attacks of the government I am going to sweep from office,” declared Lvov, illuminated by a thousand cameras flashes as he turned to suddenly raised photographs of Svetlana. “Her fight for the freedom of the press is my fight for the freedom of this country and when I am elected we will work together to achieve and enjoy both.”

  There had, Charlie supposed, been time enough for Lvov to formulate at least a framework, but the speech itself had to be virtually impromptu and verged on oratorical brilliance. Each attempted and successful act of censorship after the early perestroika spring of press freedom was recited by Lvov in perfectly dated sequence and outcome, each arrest, suspicious death and unquestionable murder of investigative journalists dated and itemized. The “rasping keys to journalistic shackles” was a familiar sound in every newspaper office in the land, a chorus to the cracked songs of a communism desperately trying to regain its former tyranny and to enslave its people as it had once done, but must never be allowed to do again. There should not just be a media strike until Svetlana Modin was freed. Every industry and shop and workplace should stop, immediately, until she was released from illegal arrest and detention. And all those who had tasted the brief democratic freedom piece by piece, inch by inch, being daily taken away from them should show their determination that it stop, never to be imposed again, by registering their vote for him.