Red Star Rising

is nothing, nothing whatsoever, to do with me; nothing, as I have tried to make clear, that I can control or influence. I am here to investigate a crime, nothing else.”

“We know your accredited function,” dismissed Kashev. “You are the only person who has been made vocally available: communication to the ambassador and your Foreign Office has degenerated to the point of formally exchanging unanswered Notes. You plead that you are little more than a messenger boy, which is what we consider you to be. In addition to what we’ve already told London, there will be no further cooperation or communication whatsoever in the murder investigation in which you are supposedly involved. And further, that every detail of British obstruction and inconsistency will be made publicly available to counter whatever diplomatic difficulty is currently being cultivated by London.”

It would be his name publicly attached to the Russian complaints, Charlie immediately realized. “I have made it abundantly clear to your representatives attached to the murder investigation that I will make available each and every response the embassy conference generates. It is an undertaking I repeat now.”

“This meeting is over,” declared Kashev. “And you,” completed the man contemptuously, “can leave now to deliver your messages!”

With the fortunately retained embassy car waiting outside Petrovka, Charlie was back at Smolenskaya long before Harry Fish left for their earlier arranged sweep of his hotel suite.

“We got another problem?” asked Fish.

“I don’t know what the hell we have,” admitted Charlie, continuing on to the basement. Unsure what the Russians intended to announce, Charlie included in his warning to London every accusation, threat and challenge he’d faced at the Petrovka confrontation, as much as possible-which was a lot-verbatim. He was near the end of his second revision when the hammered summons came at his cubicle door and when he opened it Ross Perritt said: “Get up to your rezidentura, now!”

Paula-Jane, Halliday, Robertson, and Fish were already there when Charlie arrived, grouped unspeaking around the widescreen television. P-J needed both hands to gesture him in at the same time as warning against his saying anything to overlay the program-interrupting news announcement. Charlie at once recognized the bespectacled, solemn-faced anchor of the main Rossia news channel.

“. . can only be interpreted as an intentional and provocative determination to interfere in the internal democratic activities of the Russian Federation,” Charlie picked up. “Concerted and genuine attempts by members of the Russian Federation to understand the escalation of the intrusion by the United Kingdom have either been rebuffed or ignored, imposing upon the two countries the severest strain over recent years. That strain culminated earlier today in a recorded confrontation between a representative of the British government and officials of the Russian Federation, up to and including the president’s office, in a final attempt to rectify a deteriorating situation. .”

The picture switch to Pavel’s Petrovka office of four hours earlier, dominated by Charlie isolated against the Russian phalanx he’d faced, was so abrupt that both Paula-Jane and Halliday audibly gasped.

Harry Fish exclaimed: “Jesus!”

Charlie said: “Fuck!”

It was a montage but Charlie at once acknowledged that the editing was so brilliant-photographically as well as verbally-that only he and the Russians who’d been there would have recognized it as such. Apart from an opening shot of the assembled Russians, the camera concentration was entirely upon Charlie and he cringed inwardly at the variety of facial expressions he had been totally unaware of making. There was the wide-eyed surprise of his entry into the room, despite Pavel’s warning, but by far the worst was his brief, blank-minded reaction to the statement from presidential lawyer Semon Yudkin, which had been retained in full. Charlie judged to be the most devastating of all the editing of his initial response to Nikita Kashev’s opening attack, which had been cut to just I am in no way responsible, nor can I in any way influence or change London’s response.

When the transmission reverted to the studio commentator, Charlie was identified by name and portrayed as an ineffectual dupe who could be recognized as such by his contribution to what was referred to as a high-level government meeting. The segment ended with a separately recorded statement by Yudkin declaring that the strongest possible protest Note had been delivered by the London ambassador to the British Foreign Office and repeating the suspension of all cooperation between the two countries until a full explanation, accompanied by an apology, was made.

An aching, embarrassed silence, disturbed only by more embarrassed foot shuffling, descended on the room the moment the news break faded. Charlie broke it. He said: “I have just been sucked up and blown out in bubbles.”

“That doesn’t even come close to describing it,” said the resentful Paula-Jane. “That’s going to become an idiot’s guide training film for every intelligence agency for at least the next hundred years.”

“Didn’t you guess you’d be filmed and recorded?” asked Harry Fish, more professionally.

“I didn’t need to guess: I knew,” Charlie flagellated himself. “I fucked up, big-time.” Except for transmitting his account of the meeting before responding to the summons here, he thought hopefully.

“We’re on the third floor,” persisted the woman. “With luck you’d probably kill yourself outright if you jumped. We won’t stand in your way.”

“They’ve been incredibly clever, generalizing every accusation and even making it sound as if the presidential elections were in some way involved!” assessed Halliday, reflectively. “Years, the commentator claimed. That covers them for whatever they want-the murder and the bugging and any other embarrassment since the end of communism-and a London denial will simply be laughed at, just as you’re being personally laughed at right now.”

The MI6 officer was right, conceded Charlie, running the realities through his mind until he came to one that stopped him. Would Natalia have seen him wriggling like a worm on a hook? It was too forlorn to hope that she wouldn’t.

“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 naive, 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