Red Star Rising

“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 London 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.”

“I got you called back the first time and as far as I can remember you called me a bastard for doing so,” recalled Charlie. “Why are you warning me like this?”

Paula-Jane smiled, extending her wineglass to be filled. “I still think you’re a bastard and I wouldn’t trust you if the Pope gave you a personal reference. But you were being professional, putting me back in front of Robertson’s people. I accept that now although I didn’t at the time. What I don’t accept is a colleague, even a bastard of a colleague, being set up as Robertson is trying to set you up to cover the fact he can’t do the job he’s been sent here to do.”

“That’s very altruistic.”

“I’d like to think it’s me being professional.”

“Can’t Robertson do his job?”

“He hasn’t caught our spy, has he?”

“I don’t know. Hasn’t he?”

She frowned, pained. “We’d know, believe me!”

“Thank you, for the warning.”

“You are a bastard, aren’t you? I’m not trying to make you into a friend, just to get a free lunch,” said the woman, retreating into her more usual shell.

“I didn’t mean to sound as I just did.”

“Don’t you think you’re treading a fine line, doing whatever it is you are with Svetlana Modin?” she demanded.

“Every end justifies its means.”

“If that end’s successful,” she qualified. “You think it is being successful?”

“I’m still not yet sure what the end is going to be.”

She came forward across the table, her glass cupped between both hands. “Don’t you believe your dead man was a gangster, as the Russians are saying he was?”

“I’m still trying to work through their evidence.”

“But you’re not going back to London yet?”

“I haven’t been recalled yet.”

“You think you are a decoy-me, too, I guess-for a covert operation between the Americas and people we don’t know about?”

“What’s your godfather say about that?”

“I told you, we don’t talk shop.”

“You want me to believe you haven’t asked him?”

“I mean he reminded me we don’t talk shop when I did ask him. He’s as ornery a bastard as you are.”

“I’ve been used as a decoy before,” accepted Charlie. “I didn’t know it then, any more than I know if it’s happening now.”

“Maybe I should be thanking you after all, for keeping me at arm’s length.”

“I thought you already have,” said Charlie.

“So now I’m thanking you again.”

“Which makes us equally grateful, one to the other.”

“What are you going to do about Robertson?”

“Watch my back, which as you know I always do,” shrugged Charlie, gesturing for the bill.

Paula-Jane grimaced rather than smiled. “I can’t tell you how much you remind me of Bill! And lunch was exceptional.”

“I thought so, too,” said Charlie, wondering if Paula-Jane meant it for the same reasons as he did.

The fuller smile came when Charlie picked up the briefcase as he straightened from the table. “Now that’s one way you didn’t remind me of Bill, until now. I never had you pegged as a briefcase man.”

“It’s the militia material I told you I was working through. I need to keep it secure and I don’t have a proper office or an available safe.”

“We’ve got an office safe that’s as secure as Fort Knox, for Christ’s sake!”

“Maybe I could use it when I’ve finished what I have to do,” said Charlie.

“It’s not looking hopeful,” announced Aubrey Smith. “The Americans seem to be using at least three different ciphers, with no obvious linking connection even when they switch between them. Some code-breakers even likened it to ENIGMA, unbreakable without the key.”

“I’d hoped we’d moved forward a long way since the Second World War!” criticized Charlie, disappointed.

“It was the best example they could think of to illustrate their difficulty without possessing the key,” dismissed the Director-General. “The one advance is that we think AJAX is the CIA director.”

“Which would explain the involvement of the KGB chairman,” suggested Charlie, thinking back to his earlier uncertainty. “Like for like.”

“Exactly, if we’re right,” agreed Smith. “Anything more from your end?”

Charlie shifted in the claustrophobic cubicle, unsure how far he could stretch his response. He still hadn’t properly thought through the conversation with Paula-Jane, nor had he completely read Mikhail Guzov’s invented murder case file. He said, “I’ve got to finish what the Russians claim to be their murder solution-the medical stuff particularly-to see if there’s anything I can use to get Ivan’s body.”

“Copy it all to me here,” ordered Smith. “You really think they’ll surrender Oskin’s body, even if you find enough to challenge them? And agree to it coming back here, for whatever supposed reason?”