Red Star Rising

It was ten forty, Charlie saw. “There’s obviously an internal e-mail direct to the ambassador, from the communications room?”

Paula-Jane gave an uncertain laugh. “What’s happening here?”

“Nonsense is what’s happening here,” replied Charlie. “If Dawkins gets in touch with you again, tell him the press conference is canceled, and that I want to see him one hour from now.”

It was the same communications officer in charge as the previous day, so there was no identification delay. Charlie began his e-mail to the ambassador, insisting a press conference would further sensationalize an already oversensationalized media situation. For it to have been held would unquestionably destroy any possibility of a successful investigation and, for that reason, he was advising the third secretary that it should be canceled. He, certainly, had no intention of taking part. There had already been procedural difficulties upon which London had adjudicated, putting him in charge of the murder investigation and he took full responsibility for the cancellation. It was inevitable that it would inflame the media, which was unfortunate and would not have occurred if there had been proper consultation, which there should have been from the third secretary, knowing of the previous day’s London ruling.

Charlie copied the message to Dawkins, Stout, and the two resident intelligence officers to coincide with his sending it to the ambassador, and chose the commissary office to confirm his Islay single malt order in which to lose himself for fifteen minutes beyond the time the press conference had been scheduled to begin.

Paula-Jane was waiting for him when Charlie returned to the rezidentura level. She said: “All hell’s broken loose.”

“I’d have been disappointed if it hadn’t,” said Charlie.

The moment he entered the ambassador’s suite, Charlie recognized Sir Thomas Sotley as the quintessential career diplomat, from the top of his gray-tinged head, past the old Etonian tie, the Savile Row suit, and the family- crested signet ring, to the tip of his hand-tooled Lobb shoes. Jeremy Dawkins, a younger clone apart from the tumbling-forward blond hair and already fury-flushed face, was to the right of the ambassador’s antique, green leather inset desk. Behind them was almost an aerial view of the Moskva River.

“What’s the meaning of this?” immediately demanded the ambassador, waving the printout of Charlie’s e-mail like a penalty flag. There was no invitation for Charlie to sit.

“I’d hoped it was self-explanatory,” said Charlie.

“It is self-serving, unforgivable impertinence for which I demand an explanation,” spluttered the outraged man.

“There was no intended impertinence.”

“The third secretary is responsible for the general administration of this embassy and got the approval of the deputy Director-General for the conference, to discount some of the most preposterous media fantasies. By refusing to appear, causing the conference to be canceled, you’ve assured those fantasies will be exacerbated.”

Doubly trapped before he’d virtually started, Charlie recognized he was making an immediate enemy of the ambassador. “You were aware of my being seconded here?”

The ambassador frowned again. “Of course I am aware of your being seconded here! Mr. Dawkins has kept me fully informed.”

“Seconded for what specific purpose?”

There was a hesitation before the diplomat said: “Do you imagine that you can interrogate me!”

“No, Your Excellency,” said Charlie, belatedly deciding that he should show the expected respect. “I am trying to prevent any further misunderstandings. Are you also aware of yesterday’s exchanges between this embassy and London concerning my role here?”

Instead of answering, Sotley looked inquiringly at Dawkins. The flush-faced man said, “There were some working arrangements that needed to be clarified. I decided-”

“Excellency,” broke in Charlie, talking directly to the ambassador. “I would respectfully suggest that this meeting is suspended to give you the opportunity to read for yourself the exchanges being referred to here, and perhaps discuss them more fully and in private with Mr. Dawkins. I will, of course, be available if you decide there is any reason to discuss the situation further.”

As he made his way back to the rezidentura, Charlie guessed that Dawkins probably wouldn’t have shown him the same mercy, but there was nothing to be gained impaling Dawkins’s head on a spike. Far more important-and worrying-was the revelation that Jeffrey Smale was involving himself in such a hands-on way and that embassy officers were unquestioningly accepting the deputy director’s authority. Maybe, Charlie thought, he was going soft in his advancing years. Then again, perhaps he wasn’t-just impatient with all the interruptions and anxious to get on with the job. Which looked like being further delayed by another wasted day. Then he saw Reg Stout talking animatedly with three men in the corridor along which he was walking, directly in front of the open-doored control box containing the faulty CCTV terminals. All three had cameras around their necks and open work boxes packed with electronic equipment. One of the three was a man named Harry Fish, an MI5 electronics sweeper who’d been in the counterespionage business almost as long as Charlie. The recognition between them was immediate. Fish raised his eyes to heaven at the same time as shaking his head, which Charlie knew wasn’t in denial at God living up there but at the shambles down here on the ground.

Charlie hadn’t expected to be back in the ambassador’s presence so quickly, although on this occasion he was not in the man’s office but in a larger, adjoining conference room. Assembled around the table with Charlie and the three sweepers was the ambassador, Dawkins, Stout, and both the MI5 and MI6 officers. The object of everyone’s attention, in the very center of the table and laid on a white handkerchief to make them more visible, were four black objects the size of pinheads.

“State of the art,” declared Fish, the team leader. “Any electronic or verbal communication conducted through the four terminals in which we found them would have been received with crystal clarity by the FSB or the external directorate, the Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki in their Lubyanka headquarters. I am going to have to bring a much larger team from London to sweep this embassy from top to bottom. .” The balding man looked between Stout and the two intelligence officers before continuing on to the two diplomats. “There will obviously be a complete and extremely full internal inquiry, which I would expect London to send independent people to conduct. In preparation for that it will be necessary for all of you to go back to every communication that was sent on equipment through these terminals-equipment which my team and I will identify-from the date the Russian electricians were allowed on to the premises supposedly to repair the faulty CCTV cameras. Their being allowed within the embassy is a breach of every security guidance and instruction with which every British embassy, particularly this one, is issued. The inquiry will need to see all the documentation, between whomever was involved and consulted, authorizing the Russian entry-”

“I had authorization for everything I allowed to happen,” burst in a stuttering Reg Stout.

Fish raised a hand against the outburst. “The involvement in any inquiry of my team and me will be strictly technical, fully identifying the extent of the penetration.” He nodded to the pinhead bugs. “From this moment, this embassy has to conduct itself in the belief that not one piece of electronic equipment is safe, and that includes private telephones in the apartments within this building, as well as all those in every office, and extends to all mobile and cell phones, the radio masts for whose transmission are on the top of this building. It is inevitable that other listening or monitoring devices will be detected. . ” For the first time Fish included Charlie as he looked around the table. “The embassy is already under the sort of scrutiny the Foreign Office would do its utmost to have avoided. For this penetration to become public, on top of a murder in its grounds, would be a total catastrophe. It is only known about by those of us in this room. It must not, under any circumstance, go beyond.”

“It’s already a disaster,” said Sir Thomas Sotley, more to himself than to others in the room.

“Yes, sir,” agreed Fish, unsympathetically. “It is a complete and absolute disaster.”

The only totally guaranteed bug-free apparatus was now in the embassy’s basement communications room, and Charlie stopped Harry Fish as he was about to enter the descending elevator.

“I’m on my way down there, too,” announced Charlie, unsure if their long association, which had never developed into a friendship, would be sufficient for what he was going to ask. “But first I need a favor.”

“We do very different jobs,” said the man, cautiously, letting the elevator doors close against him.