Red Star Rising

deal!”

“There was nothing for us to talk about.”

“How did you know? Because I couldn’t reach you we couldn’t broadcast what I wanted.”

Guzov couldn’t possibly have reached her, to prompt the questions, Charlie knew. “What was it you were going to say?”

“You’re not going to like it.”

“Try me.”

“That the combined murder dossier is complete, without any English input. And that the spy in your embassy has beaten you. What’s your comment on that?”

“I don’t have one.”

“That’s what I’m saying tonight!”

“What about the covert U.S. and British operation?”

“That it hasn’t yet been stood down.”

“It sounds like you have other, better, sources than me.”

“We had a deal, remember?” Svetlana said for the second time.

“The embassy incident room has been closed down.”

“Thank you,” said the woman, in the belief that she was getting the confirmation she wanted.

“I can always reach you at this number?”

“I want you to.”

“It might be difficult over the next couple of days. I’ll call when I can.”

Charlie’s luck held for the third time with Natalia’s immediate reply to his call. “I’m going back to London but only briefly. I want to see you, talk to you, before I go.” Sure now that the car crash had only been a warning, Charlie was equally sure he hadn’t put Natalia in any danger keeping their McDonald’s rendezvous, any more than he would be doing now.

“I can’t today.”

She hadn’t refused outright, he thought at once. “Tomorrow, the Botanical Gardens? One o’clock?”

“Not the Botanical Gardens,” Natalia refused. “I don’t like old memories.”

Charlie frowned at the rejection. “Where?”

“The restaurant near the gardens.”

“How’s Sasha?”

“She’s made you another picture. It’s a tiger but it doesn’t have any stripes. And it’s blue.”

“Can I buy her a present?”

“No!” refused Natalia. Seeming to realize her sharpness, she added more softly, “We’ll talk about it tomorrow.”

Irena was already in the apartment when Charlie got there promptly at twelve fifteen, opening the door at once to his knock. “It’s all there,” she said, nodding to the folder he’d left the previous night.

“I’ll take that, too,” said Charlie, nodding to the shrine. The Russians would never release Ivan’s body but at least he could ensure she had her visible memories.

“Why?” she asked, frowning.

“You’ll want it with you in England, won’t you?”

“Yes, but-”

“I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to try to carry it out, do you?”

“I hadn’t thought. .” she groped, uncertainly.

“My way’s guaranteed. We don’t want anything to go wrong, do we?”

“What could go wrong? I don’t really want to part with it.”

“Luggage gets X-rayed as an antiterrorist precaution. Yours could be opened if the medals showed. Get removed. Trust me, Irena. Nothing will happen to any of it.”

Charlie got back to the embassy just after three, with ample time to examine the briefcase retrieved from Paula-Jane’s safe, together with what he’d collected from Irena, and pack it into his specifically assigned and wax- sealed and stamped container inside that night’s untouchable diplomatic shipment to London.

“You’re taking a lot of care,” commented Paula-Jane.

“I always do, just like your godfather, remember?”

When he’d examined it earlier in his rabbit-hutch room, the combination numerals on the briefcase were set as he’d arranged them before it had gone into Paula-Jane’s safe but the pages of the Russian murder file were in a different order from how he’d assembled them and two sheets he’d intentionally inserted back to front from their sequential order had been corrected. And the Savoy suite appeared to be untouched from how he’d left it but every intrusion trap he’d set had been disturbed by intruders who had conducted an otherwise very professional search.

Charlie poured himself the generous Islay single malt he thought he might need and settled himself before his television in good time for Svetlana’s evening broadcast.

32

“It won’t work now!”

“It will work.”

Irena was teetering on the very edge of hysteria, Charlie recognized. As he’d recognized, in his fury, how Svetlana had spun the broadcast totally to defeat his attempt to discover, from his carefully planted information, who was leaking from the British embassy. Guzov could have been the only source for Svetlana, actually using the words anomalies and inconsistencies in the official British Note to the Russian Interior Ministry, but Svetlana had talked of his being “recalled” to prove her insistence of further deteriorating relations between London and Moscow. She’d also used library film footage of him in a segment, suggesting that Charlie was taking new information back to London.

Charlie said, “It’s all going to be as I promised.”

“There’s a permanent FSB watch at the airport. They’ll just increase it: get the manifest naming everyone on board.”

“I’m the only person they’ll be interested in.”

“We’ll be associated-too close-when you pass me the passport and the ticket.”

“The concentration will be inside the terminal,” argued Charlie, the exchange that was necessary between them already formulated in his mind. “I will give you a precise time when I’ll be arriving outside, to within minutes. You get there earlier so that as we go toward the entrance separately we get closer, bunching nearer the door; that’s when I’ll do the drop. You hesitate, as if you’ve forgotten something, so that you’re nowhere near me when we get into the terminal. I’ll do nothing to avoid attention if there is any-attract it, in fact-and you won’t even be noticed: we’ll use the attention, not suffer from it.”

“None of this was how you promised it would be,” complained Irena, although slightly less anxiously.

“Listen to the promises you are already guaranteed,” insisted Charlie, taking his time to list the arrangements in place for Irena’s arrival in London.

“You didn’t say anything about Ivan’s body,” she isolated, the moment Charlie stopped talking.

“I didn’t mention it because it hasn’t been arranged yet.”

“I want Ivan with me, in England. I want him buried there, properly; know the place where he’ll be.”

“He will be buried in England,” stressed Charlie, hoping he sounded sincere.

“I won’t go, leave here, until I know he’s already there.”

“It’s got to be this way-you first, then Ivan.”

“It doesn’t have to be this way!”

“You know it does.” He didn’t need Irena anymore, Charlie thought, brutally. He’d got everything he wanted