Red Star Burning

uncertainly resumed Jane.

“Easily,” said Charlie, determined against further confrontation. “Natalia officially comes within the jurisdiction of the analysis division but her predominant function is debriefing, for which she has the Russian equivalent of a master’s degree in psychology and a track record of marathon proportions. The Russians attach great importance to the psychology of their field agents, as we do. Which creates another function, that of maintaining and monitoring the continuing psychological capability of about-to-graduate intelligence officers facing, for the first time, the reality of being uprooted from the life they know and transposed into an entirely different, alien culture. That brought her frequently to the training school to which I was assigned on the outskirts of Moscow, about five miles beyond Prazskaja.”

“What was the purpose of your false defection?”

He’d already covered that, although not in detail: she was running out of impetus. “In 1988 a Russian agent only ever identified by the name Edwin Sampson was jailed for forty years. He was considered one of the most damaging spies ever to be uncovered in this country but we didn’t know the full extent of what he’d done, apart from the barest evidence we’d managed to get together to convict him: he never confessed or admitted anything. I was put in Wormwood Scrubs, supposedly jailed for fourteen years, also for spying. It was fixed that we’d share the same cell, in which over the course of time I’d gain his trust and get some indication of what else he’d done. It wasn’t anticipated the KGB would try to free him, as they did with George Blake and which indicated the importance they attached to him. But when it emerged that they intended to do just that, it was decided I should appear to defect with him in the hope of learning what made him so important. Which I did. The idea-”

“Was that after a period of time, with the help of our people in the British embassy, you’d pretend to be disillusioned with Russia and flee back to this country,” broke in Jane.

“Yes,” agreed Charlie. “With the added benefit of all I’d learned at the spy school.”

“With such a history no one was going to doubt your loyalty, were they?” persisted Jane.

“No one has, until now. And you’re wrong.”

“But there’s good reason to doubt you now, suddenly presented as we are with a wife who’s a serving officer in Russia’s external intelligence,” challenged Jane. “Is that all she is, your wife? Or could she also be your Control through whom you’re supposed to liaise with Moscow after she joins you here, which you’ve told us has consistently been the plan?”

“What I told you is that it’s consistently been my hope that she would join me here, but that she has always refused, held as she is by that near-mystical bond Russians have for their country,” corrected Charlie, maintaining control but letting his argument come out in a rush. “If I’d been turned and married Natalia for the reason you’ve suggested, she would have been ordered to return with me in the first place, wouldn’t she? And I wouldn’t have told you that she was a member of the FSB. There’d be an unbreakable cover legend, giving her a background as far as possible from any connection with espionage. And would I, as a KGB-cum-FSB double, have destroyed a KGB/FSB operation eighteen years in creation to put Moscow literally in the Oval Office?”

Before Jane Ambersom could respond, the Director-General said: “There is an alternative way to judge this. You could be telling the truth. The FSB could have discovered your relationship with Natalia Fedova and be forcing her to make the approaches to trap you into going back to Russia. Where you, as the person who wrecked that eighteen-year-long operation, would face punishment it’s hard to conceive, judged against the ways they’ve killed the people they’ve eliminated so far…”

“… Unless they made you watch whatever they wanted to do to Natalia and the child before killing you as bestially as possible,” completed Monsford.

“That’s what I believe they want to do,” admitted Charlie, almost inaudibly.

“You think we’re going to let you go back to Russia to stop it happening, don’t you?” taunted the woman.

“Irrespective of whether it’s agreed I go back, they’ll do whatever they want to them both,” pleaded Charlie. “That can’t be allowed to happen. They’ve got to be got out!”

“There’s no way they can be,” said Jane.

“All I had to do was sit and listen to Jane Ambersom stumble about like a bull in a china shop,” gloated the MI6 director. “Christ, we’re lucky being rid of her.”

“Cow,” corrected James Straughan, who always sought to lighten his encounters with someone as unpredictable as Gerald Monsford, particularly when they were alone, which they were now. “It would be a cow in a china shop, not a bull.”

“Cow is certainly more apposite,” agreed Monsford, who’d enjoyed his manipulation of that day’s meeting as he had those that preceded it. “Charlie’s on his knees, pleading for his wife and child to be rescued. Jane came close to orgasm telling him it couldn’t be done.”

“You broached our idea with Smith yet?”

The other man shook his head. “I need exactly the right moment. Smith believes it’s his option to make and his operation to initiate, so that’s how I’ve got to make it seem.”

“Everything’s virtually in place,” assured Straughan, although cautiously. He knew better than to make promises that weren’t guaranteed.

“No more calls from Moscow?”

“Smith hasn’t mentioned any more and I’m sure he would if there’d been more. I don’t think he feels very secure. What about Jacobson?”

“Anxious to get the stuff I’m assembling. The passports for Radtsic and his wife are in the diplomatic pouch tonight.”

“That should reassure Radtsic.”

“Something’s got to, according to Jacobson. He thinks Radtsic is getting critical.”

“Tell Jacobson to give Radtsic whatever assurances the man needs. I don’t want the frightened old bastard collapsing on us,” ordered Monsford. “What about Paris?”

“All in hand.”

“I want something else,” announced the Director.

“What?”

“My own recording system, here in this office. Getting Radtsic safely here is going to be the coup of our lives. I don’t want any foul-ups through faulty memories, which came close with the Lvov business.”

The only memory at fault with the Lvov business is yours, thought Straughan: and if there’d been a proper record you wouldn’t be overflowing the chair you’re sitting in. Aloud he said: “I’ll organize it.”

“And I want personal, manual control. We mustn’t overlook the Official Secrets Act and necessary security clearances.”

“No,” agreed Straughan. “We shouldn’t overlook that.”

Charlie Muffin for the first time felt engulfed in paralyzing, impotent helplessness. He’d faced seemingly impossible, about-to-die crises before but always been able to escape, sometimes badly bruised, sometimes badly burned-often physically, too often metaphysically-always survived. Because every time it had only ever been he who’d had to survive, no one else to worry about or to consider. Now it wasn’t only he. It was Natalia-probably bewildered, doubtless confused, with only the vaguest indication of what had happened-and innocent, vulnerable Sasha, whom he’d always pledged to care for and protect.

He wouldn’t fail them, Charlie determined. He was enduring this animal-farm charade because the finance and facilities of the combined agencies were his best chance of rescuing Natalia and Sasha. None of which, from Jane Ambersom’s almost sadistic dismissal earlier that day, were going to be made available to him. So it had to be just he, alone. Better, far better. He’d never liked-never trusted-other people with him or acting on his behalf: not so much from doubts of their loyalty but from doing things differently, less effectively, than he could.

Doing it by himself wasn’t going to be easy, Charlie realistically acknowledged. Although he’d always insisted on working alone, there’d usually been an embassy upon which he could call for falsely named passports and air or road escape and cyberspace communications, if the ultimate shit hit the ever-spinning fan. And money: unlimited operational finance, safe openingly available whenever he needed it, which he always had, the more so since his marriage to Natalia. He’d date-staged the transfers from Jersey, so there’d still be some left there, once he’d got