Red Star Rising

“That’s a cheap, unfair question!” protested Natalia, only just managing to keep her voice under control.

“It’s the practical one,” insisted Charlie, unrepentant.

“Do you think your service would let you go on working for them, with me in London?”

“I doubt it. It’s not important, not anymore. Terrorism is the new buzzword. With my background-as much of it as I would be able to disclose on a CV–I could get work as an antiterrorist consultant like that”-Charlie snapped his fingers-“at probably three times more money than I’m earning now.”

“And hate every minute of it,” predicted Natalia.

“I hate every minute of what I’m doing now,” said Charlie, having to control the loudness of his own voice. “I want to be with you and Sasha more than I want to be in this fucking job.” It wasn’t entirely true but it was close enough. Between assignments, his existence was an aching aimlessness of pub closing times and reheated supermarket dinners for one in a Vauxhall flat more resembling a monastic cell than a place in which to live. The apartment would certainly have to go if he could finally convince Natalia. Sasha would need a house with a garden and a good school and. . and everything that other normal families had, whatever that was.

“It isn’t as easy or as simple as that.”

“Isn’t as easy or as simple as what?” demanded Charlie.

“You think you can appear from nowhere, without any warning after five years, and expect everything to be the same as it was with us?”

Charlie felt physically chilled. “No. I don’t think that at all.”

Neither looked directly at the other across the table, grateful at the interruption of the waiter clearing their table. Charlie shook his head against their ordering any more, asking for the bill instead.

Natalia said: “I’ve got to go.”

“Can I call you again?”

“I don’t know. I’m not sure.”

“We haven’t decided if I can see Sasha.”

“We haven’t decided anything.”

“I’ll call.”

“Not tomorrow.”

“When?”

“I don’t know. A couple of days.”

It would be a mistake to ask why, Charlie decided. He wasn’t actually sure he wanted to know why. “A couple of days then.”

“I’ll leave first. Give me fifteen minutes.”

“I love you,” declared Charlie, a man to whom expressing emotion was always difficult. “I love you and I love Sasha, and I want us to be together.”

“Fifteen minutes,” Natalia repeated.

“You know you’re safe.”

“Safe is what I’ve never been with you, Charlie. And safe with you is all I’ve ever wanted to be. Safe with you and Sasha.”

Charlie’s very determined effort to separate his personal from his professional confusions wasn’t helped by the head-tourniquet hangover from the previous night’s consumption of Islay single malt after he’d got back to the hotel from his reunion with Natalia, the ache worsened by the eye-wincing glare of the sun the moment he stepped outside his hotel to hail a taxi.

Charlie, who knew his every natural as well as carefully cultivated fault, had never included being a fantasizer among them. But that’s what he’d been, he acknowledged, accepting Natalia’s accusation: a head-in-the-clouds fantasizer in imagining he could pitch up in Moscow as he had and expect everything to be as it once had been between them. So if it wasn’t as simple and as easy as he’d fantasized, how-exactly-was it? He didn’t know. He was encouraged by her parting remark but unsettled at the thought of some hidden meaning behind her telling him their being together with Sasha in London wasn’t easy or simple. Was her remark so hidden, though? Hardly. The impossibility of their being together in Moscow was entirely practicable, for all the reasons he’d spelled out to her. What was not so easy, in Natalia’s mind, was surely the mystical obstacle of abandoning Russia, which Charlie had never been able to conceive as an obstacle no matter how many times they’d talked about it from so many different directions. It had to be the suddenness of his being here, Charlie tried to reassure himself. That and the Botanical Gardens reminder of how threatened their existence had once been. Wasn’t that what she’d actually said- safe with you is all I’ve ever wanted to be. It would all be different-better-when they met the next time, after she’d had the opportunity to think everything through.

Charlie had intentionally arrived at the mortuary thirty minutes ahead of the time he’d arranged to meet Sergei Pavel, wanting to talk alone with the pathologist, but the organized crime detective was outside, waiting. So was Mikhail Guzov.

“You’re early.” Guzov’s smile combined satisfaction with a rebuke at Charlie imagining he could outsmart him.

“As you are,” Charlie pointed out. Give the man all the rope he needs to tie himself up in knots, thought Charlie.

“I think it’s impolite to keep people waiting.”

“So do I,” sparred Charlie. “Thank you for your courtesy.”

Guzov’s smile faded. “I’m representing the ministry. Secretary Kashev is occupied talking with your embassy.”

Why had Guzov volunteered that? Probably to convey the impression of cooperation when he was offering virtually nothing, which made the gesture hardly worth the effort, apart from trying to establish his control of the gathering. “Less likely to upset his stomach as his being here did last time. So it’s just the three of us?”

“Let’s go in,” suggested Pavel, talking to Charlie, not the other Russian.

Vladimir Ivanov was waiting in the postmortem room, the body of the one-armed man already on the examination slab. It had a ghostlike grayness from its refrigeration, a faint mist from the room’s warmth wisping from the edges of the cloth in which it had been wrapped. From the disinterested expectancy of the pathologist’s greeting, Charlie guessed Guzov and Pavel had already been into the room once that morning, probably to check that he hadn’t gotten there ahead of them.

“You’ve found more to help us?” prompted Charlie.

Following Ivanov’s inquiring look to the FSB officer, Charlie caught the nod of permission from Guzov. He was curious at the fixed, almost irritable expression on Pavel’s face. The pathologist said, “It’s for you to decide how much help it might be.” The body had thawed sufficiently for the man to raise slightly the remaining hand. “The fingertips-and therefore any prints-were taken off with sulphuric acid: I lifted traces from the thumb, as well as each finger. And see here. .” The man isolated the little finger and that next to it, both of which were roughly stitched after incisions. “I originally thought these distortions were contractions caused by exposure to extreme heat but when I found the acid traces I reexamined the hand much more closely. In my opinion, the disfigurement was caused by frostbite a long time ago, possibly even when he was a child. And this. .” Ivanov turned the back of the hand. “Again, I thought that was a heat burn but it isn’t. It’s a strawberry birthmark that’s been made darker by an acid splash, maybe when he was flailing against the acid being applied to his fingertips-”

“Unquestionably tortured,” broke in Charlie, including Guzov in the remark more in challenge to the official casualness of the first dismissive examination than for confirmation of his own early judgment. Remembering his earlier torture oversight, he saw that the fingernails of the right hand were intact but turned brown by the acid.

“Without any doubt,” agreed the pathologist. Detecting the possible criticism, he added, “I suggested the possibility when we met before.”

Neither Guzov nor Pavel reacted.

“And we have much more now to help with an identification?” persisted Charlie.

“I wouldn’t exactly say much more,” disputed Pavel.

Briskly, actually turning as he gestured toward the door, Guzov said; “I’ve had a room made available for us, where we can talk about the London findings.”

Far too anxious, decided Charlie, ignoring the invitation. Nodding toward the body and an obvious abdominal