“Which it would be, wouldn’t it, for someone they’ve known about for eighteen years, done incalculable damage and who they still haven’t managed to catch?” suggested Smith. “ICON is up there with the all-time greats in the spy ratings. My guess is they’ll have a full-time section permanently hunting him.”
“If they still haven’t caught him?” qualified Charlie.
“The analysts here don’t think they have,” said Smith. “You didn’t mention the gaps in the intercepted CIA radio traffic?”
“Because I didn’t isolate them,” admitted Charlie.
“I didn’t, either,” said Smith, equally honest. “Because the gaps were filled with KGB and FSB traffic, giving an impression of unbroken continuity. You did isolate sleeper, though. And that’s what our provisional assessment is. That the CIA has put ICON to sleep, until they choose to activate him. And while the Russians go on looking for him.”
“They—or he—are expecting something big: maybe a transfer back here to Moscow headquarters?”
“It could be,” agreed Smith. “The FSB will be going even more frantic at the possibility. Anyone being brought in from outside will be put through more loyalty tests than you can imagine.”
“None—or any—of which gets us any closer to understanding why Ivan Nikolaevich Oskin came to be found dead in our embassy grounds,” reminded Charlie. “Do the analysts think they’ve got it all? Or could there be more?”
“No one is going to admit we’ve got it all in less than twenty-four hours: what I’ve told you is basic, surface stuff. Of course they’re going to go on.”
“Any thought of a link up with MI6: maybe Oskin was negotiating with them, even though we know he wasn’t actually killed in the embassy grounds. His being dumped there could have been a message to them, although I don’t believe the resident MI6 officer here knows anything about it. But it would explain MI6’s efforts to get involved, wouldn’t it?”
“You’ve asked the station officer directly?”
“Not since getting this material,” said Charlie, sensing the concern in the man’s voice. “We obviously discussed it before that. I’m sure he doesn’t know anything.”
“If MI6 already had Oskin they wouldn’t admit it or share anything in a million years. And I don’t want to share anything with them or anyone else yet, as I’ve already made clear. Things are still far too uncertain, both here and where you are.”
Aubrey Smith saw this as his way to win the power struggle in London, Charlie recognized at once. “What about Irena Novikov’s demands?”
“I’ll pay her, of course. How much depends upon the ultimate value of what she’s given you. And I could also arrange her asylum.”
Smith was ducking the most important part of his question, Charlie acknowledged. “What about the body? She wants the whole package, not part of it.”
“It’s a technical situation that’s never arisen, as far as I am aware. And I certainly haven’t had time to discuss it with anyone yet. In fact, I can’t think of anyone with whom I could discuss it.”
“I promised I’d give her a reaction as soon as I could.” He’d also promised to make contact with Natalia, Charlie remembered.
“She can’t expect a decision this soon on something as complicated as she’s asked,” complained the Director-General. “Neither can you. What’s the situation with this damned Russian press conference that could make us all look absurd?”
“As confused as everything else.”
“I’m not sure of the benefit of keeping this joint American-British covert business running. Or using this Svetlana woman,” said Smith. “It could be exacerbating a situation that doesn’t need to get any worse.”
Was that a genuine remark or a way of letting him know that all the recorded conversations were still being forwarded to London? “It generates a little confusion.”
“Don’t we have enough confusion already?” asked Smith.
“Hasn’t it occurred to you that there’s almost too much of that coming from somewhere?”
For the first time there was a reflective silence from the London end. “Are you suggesting there’s a positive disinformation operation going on?”
“I don’t know what I’m suggesting, if anything,” avoided Charlie. “It could be a possibility.”
“By whom? To achieve what?”
Charlie started to regret beginning the exchange. “I can’t answer that, either. Maybe I’m imagining there’s some kind of orchestration in a lot of things that have happened.”
“Maybe you have,” said Smith, his tone indicating the exchange was coming to an end. “I’ll get back to you if anything comes up from this end that would take us forward in a more positive way.”
“I’d like something positive to move things forward.” It had been a mistake to offer an amorphous idea without anything to substantiate it, Charlie acknowledged.
The embassy was still only waking up when Charlie ascended to its more regular working area, skeleton night staff handing over to the day workers and diplomats, although neither Paula-Jane nor Halliday were in their offices. That day’s unread newspapers—including those brought in on the early-morning flight from London—were still in their undisturbed stack in Halliday’s outer, unrestricted access room, the English ones uppermost. Only the Times and the Telegraph maintained their Moscow coverage and both their single-column stories were on the inside foreign pages, but datelined from Washington, pointing up the unusual diplomatic response from the State Department to Stepan Lvov’s demand.
Charlie hadn’t expected to find Robertson waiting there when he got to the compound apartment.
“We’re well met,” announced Robertson. “I was looking for you; the hotel said you’d left at dawn.”
“Not quite dawn,” said Charlie. “Early, though. You’re looking for me?”
“I’ve slotted you in for this morning.”
“What?”
“To come before the inquiry panel. We’re getting toward the end: you’re among the last.”
“After the previous charade? Don’t be ridiculous!”
“You can’t refuse,” insisted the man.
“I can and I do,” said Charlie. “And don’t fuck about like you did last time, threatening arrest and my being taken back to London under escort.”
“I will and I can,” Robertson mocked back.
“Go outside for a moment, will you?” Charlie said to the four awkwardly, foot-shuffling telephone monitors witnessing the confrontation.
“You don’t have the authority to get them to do that,” said Robertson.
“Their security classification isn’t high enough for what I am going to tell you.”
“Don’t be . . .” started Robertson but the bravado faltered. To the other four men he said, “Give us a moment, will you?”
“Something has started that’s far more important than my fulfilling some piss-willie regulation that can’t apply to me because as you already know I don’t come into your time frame. I’m not trying to undermine your authority or what you’re trying to achieve here. If you’re determined to persist with this nonsense I want the personal order from the Director-General—and I mean Aubrey Smith himself, no one else—to appear again before your panel.”
“I insist upon knowing what it is you’re involved in.”
“You know I am not going to tell you.”
“Are you sure you’ve got the backing in London to behave like this?”
“No, I’m not at all sure,” admitted Charlie, honestly. “But it’s the stand I’m going to maintain until, again, I’m personally authorized by Smith to tell you any more.”
30
It had been a ridiculous dispute, achieving nothing except his being backed by the Director-General, but Charlie didn’t believe Paul Robertson would have invited the humiliation of being overruled for a second time. Robertson hadn’t made any secret of his resentment at his ridicule of the first examination, or of his uncovering Harry Fish
’s duplicity. Could it be as simple as the man trying to even a score? Robertson and Fish were, after all, part of the same internal counterintelligence division. Of which, taking the possibility further, Robertson was the director and by association shared some of Fish’s caught-out opprobrium. Possible but still infantile, which Charlie found difficult to imagine Robertson would risk appearing.
Unless, of course, the man had been forced into the confrontation. If Harry Fish had been part of the Jeffrey Smale faction in London, it wasn’t a leap to think that Robertson was a fellow traveler and part of the same headquarters conspiracy. If Robertson were, he could have been obeying the instructions of the protection-promising deputy director in staging today’s debacle. But to gain what? Although he’d guaranteed by his sole your Eyes Only designation that the Director-General would be the only recipient of Irena Novikov’s story, the fact that there had been an exchange between them extending over almost three hours would have been visibly evident upon the London transmission log. There was every understandable reason for Smith’s enemies to want to discover as quickly as possible as much as they could about such a long conversation. But could Robertson or anyone else have conceivably imagined they’d learn anything from yes or no polygraph answers no matter how cleverly they’d phrased and posed their questions? Perhaps not under the polygraph routine. But they might have believed they’d learn something in a more open, free-ranging session, just as strongly as Charlie believed he would have instantly recognized what they were trying to achieve and amused himself by misleading them. Whatever, Charlie positively decided he wouldn’t allow it to grow into another distraction.
Charlie’s determination to avoid attracting attention to the contents of the briefcase overwhelmed his preference for comfort and directly after hearing Aubrey Smith’s decision—a telephone message from Robertson’s inquiry clerk, not personally from the man himself—Charlie quit the compound apartment and its too attentive telephone supervisors, and descended to his original rabbit hutch, employing the door wedges to ensure there was no unexpected intrusion. There was less room here than he’d had the previous night in his hotel suite and it was particularly difficult setting out the stolen KGB material, forcing him to spill over onto the floor.
During his first rereading, Charlie factored in every addition he’d learned that morning from London, more fully realizing the importance the Russians were attaching to the hunt for their traitor by its stalled progress being personally controlled by the chairman, first of the KGB and now the FSB, an echelon he’d never before encountered, not even in anecdotal reference in training or instructional lectures. An asset remaining undetected for so long—even one put into inactive hibernation—was unquestionably of major importance but Charlie found it difficult to accept that the chairman himself would participate. His own Director-General was participating in this operation, Charlie reminded himself. But Aubrey Smith had a personal survival interest as well as the initial circumstances of Ivan Oskin’s murder having potential political ramifications, heightened by the bugging of the embassy, and maintained by the huge international media spotlight. Having a CIA informant within the Russian intelligence apparatus, although serious, was far more straightforward and capable, Charlie would have thought, of being handled at a lower operational level. The most obvious and logical conclusion had to be that there were additional reasons—further electronic interceptions not being included in the material he had topping the list—to add to all the other competing unknowns.
Charlie read and reread for another two hours without adding anything more to his list of unanswerable questions and had just, fortunately, packed the envelopes away in his briefcase when there was a knock as well as an unsuccessful attempt to open his blocked door. He pocketed the wedges before he noisily unlocked it for Paula-Jane Venables.
“You make a hermit look like a party animal!” she said, smirking, with her usual coquettishness. Today’s designer creation was beige, the top button of the cream shirt beneath the pipe-edged jacket predictably unfastened.
“Needed a quiet time and place to think,” dismissed Charlie.
“I tried the compound apartment first.”
“I checked your office earlier, too.”
“I know. You’re on my CCTV. That’s why I came looking for you, to see what you wanted.”
Charlie hadn’t known there was an internal television security system: it certainly wasn’t openly visible. “I was just passing.”
“Why don’t you buy me lunch? Or I’ll buy you lunch. We could even arm wrestle for the bill.”
He had more than enough time before speaking again to London and possibly Irena if Smith offered anything further to justify talking to the Russian woman. What about endangering her by association? Wasn’t it the association with him that had crippled Jack Hopkins? “I don’t want to appear ungallant—and I will stand treat—but why should I pay?”
“Because I’ve got something to tell you that I think you should know. And maybe you’ll have something to tell me.”
“Your choice of restaurant, as long as it’s not the American Café,” said Charlie, his curiosity piqued.
“The Pekin, off the ring road: it’s a favorite of yours, isn’t it?”
The embankment episode still in mind, Charlie insisted they travel separately, checking his own journey for pursuit—which he didn’t detect—and glad that if there were a reason to talk to Irena about anything from London, he could do it by telephone and not dance around the Moscow Metro system. Charlie intentionally arrived first at the Chinese restaurant and limited himself to one vodka—clear, not home-brewed yellow—from the aperitif carafe, intrigued by the woman’s surprising approach but determinedly refusing any preconceptions. She arrived earlier than they’d arranged, too, at once locating their table and as she crossed toward it, aware of the sexual fantasy of at least five separate male diners, Charlie thought again how similar he found her to Svetlana Modin. Who, he supposed, would expect contact sometime that day.
Paula-Jane accepted vodka, touched glasses, and said, “I’ll let you order for me.”
Charlie did, and chose Georgian white instead of its heavier red or rice wine. “What makes you think this is one of my favorite Moscow restaurants?”
“You introduced Bill Bundy to it, didn’t you?”
Charlie’s recollection was that it had been the American’s choice. “I don’t think he liked it very much.”
“He’s an all-American steak-and-salad guy, light on the mayo, and I’ll open my own mineral water, thank you,” she mocked. “He does remind me of you in some ways, though.”
“Which ways?”
“Certainly not the mineral water! But you’re both always looking to see who’s behind you.”
“Perhaps I’ve got more reason for caution than he has.”
“You changed your mind about it being a coincidence?”
“Not really.”
“I’d still like to think it was.”
“You seem to know Bundy quite well?” probed Charlie, wanting to move her on.
“Shouldn’t a girl know her own godfather well?”
“Bill Bundy’s your godfather?” exclaimed Charlie, in genuine surprise.
“He and my dad went way back, as far as Vietnam: before he met my mother even. We’ve only really got together here. I couldn’t believe it when I heard he was getting a tour here that overlapped with me.”
Charlie found it difficult, too, remembering what David Halliday had briefly told him about Paula-Jane’s father and wondering why the MI6 man hadn’t mentioned the godfather connection. “Is this what you wanted to tell me?”
Paula-Jane laughed. “Heavens, no! I thought everyone knew about Bill and me. I’d even told London, fortunately, before Paul-Asshole-Robertson.”
“Why fortunately?”
“Robertson described it as a conflict of interest, which is bullshit: we’re both too professional to let work overlap. I think Robertson was made to look stupid by L
ondon already knowing about it. He’s been made to look even more stupid after his run-ins with you, hasn’t he?”
Their food arrived. Charlie shook his head against tasting the wine before they’d finished the vodka. “How’d you know about that?”
“He might be their division director but the guys monitoring your telephones think Robertson’s an asshole, too.”
If they’d gossiped about that they would have gossiped about the incoming calls, too. And that would have included Irena’s. “An informant is hardly necessary in that damned embassy is he: the place is like a twenty-four-hour public address system.”
Paula-Jane stopped with a gingered prawn between her chopsticks. “This is terrific! I’m glad I left the ordering to you.” She became serious. “And our embassy leak is what I want to talk to you about.”
“Talk then,” encouraged Charlie.
“I don’t believe Robertson is any closer to finding who it is now than he was on the day he first arrived here. I think he’s casting around for a way out and you could be it.”
“You want to spell that out a little more clearly?”
“He had me in front of his panel yesterday, for the second time since he got sent back. The questioning was concentrated on what I knew of you and Svetlana Modin and disinformation.”
“What did you tell them?”
“There was nothing I could tell them, was there?” demanded Paula-Jane, rhetorically. “I didn’t know—not until then at least—anything about you and Svetlana and disinformation. Which is what I told them and why Robertson pulled what he thought to be the ace from up his sleeve but which proved instead to be up his ass, about Bundy being my godfather.”
“You didn’t know until then, which was yesterday?” questioned Charlie, determined against any missed nuance.
“Yesterday was the first time it was put to me and I didn’t understand what I was being questioned about,” elaborated the woman. “I do today, completely, from all the other pissed-off people under Robertson’s control. And I wasn’t the only one called in, incidentally. They recalled Dave Halliday and put him through the same hoop about you and Svetlana.”
Red Star Rising Page 32