Red Star Burning

understood from what I’ve just heard. She’s made an offer, her bargain, for her and Sasha to be got out.”

Histrionically, Jane pushed herself back into her chair, snorting in customary derision. “Do you possibly imagine, in whatever dream world you’re living, that you’ll convince us that we’ve got to get your supposed wife and daughter out of Russia?”

The totally fixated deputy director could have chosen what other part of her androgynous body she wanted kissed or otherwise caressed, decided Charlie, in further gratitude. “You’ve established Natalia is not my supposed wife but my legally married wife?”

“Yes,” confirmed Monsford, before either of the others.

Concentrating upon the MI6 Director, Charlie went on: “And you’ve also established, from studying my assignment record, that I have never sabotaged anything involving this organization during my marriage or association with Natalia?”

“Yes,” agreed Monsford, again.

Continuing to address the MI6 chief, Charlie chanced the slightest of exaggerations: “And you know, from her length of service not just with the current FSB but the previous KGB that she’s not just a but the senior debriefer for Russian external intelligence. You’re intelligence experts, all three of you. But not even you can begin to imagine the number of defectors and spy offers and doubles and dissidents she’s interrogated: the answers she could provide to the mysteries and uncertainties over the past twenty years.”

“Are you trying to persuade us that’s what she’s offering by her reference to your debriefing records?” asked the quiet-voiced Aubrey Smith, even more softly than usual.

“I’m not trying to convince you,” said Charlie. “That’s what I’m telling you, as honestly as I’ve told you everything else.”

“If she had all that to offer, why didn’t she come with you in the first place?” clumsily challenged Jane.

I could have done a ventriloquist’s act with this woman, thought Charlie. “Because until now she hasn’t confronted the reality of a firing squad after undergoing interrogation that she knows would extend beyond her sort of debriefing into the KGB-perfected horror of psychiatric hospitals. While all the time knowing-because they’d remind her every day, as the most horrific part of that torture-that Sasha would be committed to the worst of Russian state orphanages.”

“The psychiatrist was right. The man’s mad,” declared Jane Ambersom. They’d once more moved from the formality of the interview after Charlie’s departure but she was unable to sit, instead pacing up and down in front of the dead fireplace around which the easy chairs were set.

“The psychological assessment wasn’t that he was mentally ill,” corrected the Director-General. “It was that Charlie Muffin would recognize more quickly than anyone else the limitations of a new life in a protection program- which indicated the highest analytical intelligence that Cowley had known-as a result of which Charlie was suffering an understandable depression but which he doubted would ever become suicidal. The suicide watch was a shock warning to Charlie, not a necessary precaution.”

“I don’t believe there can be a single opposing argument against our getting Natalia and the child out of Moscow,” declared Monsford, who’d gone through the charade of calling MI6’s Vauxhall Cross building-on his cell phone from Charlie’s exercise patch-before returning for the review.

“Which has to mean there’s an update from your call?” sardonically questioned the fidgeting deputy director.

“There’s already open speculation on Izvestia and in Pravda of retaliatory rebuttals to our arrests.”

“Why should I be surprised about that?” challenged the woman.

“Moscow News is going further,” continued Monsford, who’d added to what he considered his success in getting the address of Charlie’s London flat leaked to the Russians by swallowing his antipathy to David Halliday and authorizing the suggestion being offered by Halliday to the man’s contact in the English-language publication. “They’re hardening the rumor into a reciprocal intelligence sensation. It’s being picked up and repeated on Western wire services.”

“There’s not the slightest indication that what’s going on in Moscow has any connection whatsoever with what we’re discussing here, beyond some obviously enforced telephone contact from a woman stupid enough to trust Charlie Muffin,” rejected Jane. “Our stupidly responding to it is the intended reciprocal intelligence sensation.”

“If Natalia’s got as much as half of what Charlie sketched out, it’s a gold lode we could mine for years,” judged Aubrey Smith, reflectively. “There’s no obvious connection, but it would be on a par with the Lvov business. We could tie in knots not just Russian intelligence but every other service of any importance, up to and including the CIA, who’ve double-crossed and used us, both of us, for the past two decades.”

“There can’t be an argument against getting her and the child out,” repeated Monsford, anxious to stoke the other man’s belief.

“Except the obvious one that it’s a trap, a match-maybe even more than a match-for what the Russians fell into by burgling Charlie’s flat,” Jane persisted.

“I’d like us to continue our cooperation by actively considering a joint rescue operation,” declared Monsford, dismissing the woman’s opposition.

“Why joint?” demanded Jane, instantly seeing the possibility of personal revenge. “You want her and the child, why don’t you get them out by yourself.”

“Willingly, despite their being the wife and daughter of one of your officers,” accepted Monsford, confronting the expected question. “You couldn’t, of course, expect us to share whatever she told us of all those famous defectors you didn’t know were spying against this country until they gave their press conferences in Moscow.”

He had no alternative but to go along with Monsford, decided Aubrey Smith, although not for the reasons the MI6 Director was advocating. He’d only too recently survived an internecine war: he wasn’t going to risk walking away from this one until he knew far more than was immediately obvious. “Let’s start the planning tomorrow.”

“I want put on written record my total opposition to any of this,” insisted Jane Ambersom.

There was an echoing silence, each man hoping the other would respond to give him a follow-up advantage. Monsford, believing himself to have the most to gain, broke first. “I’m confused. First you demand to be included in whatever we do. Now you demand your complete opposition placed on provable record. Have I missed something in what we’ve been discussing?”

“My matching confusion also,” quickly came in Aubrey Smith, denying the SIS director whatever he’d set out to achieve.

Surprisingly, there was no renewed flush from the woman at this new confrontation. She said: “I don’t see any dichotomy. You intend a reaction that risks both our organizations being exposed to international ridicule and derision. While opposing whatever you do-and wanting that opposition recognized-I believe my continued involvement as devil’s advocate to be absolutely essential to maintain a balancing voice.”

The immediate impression of Aubrey Smith, who was fundamentally as honest and subjective as possible in the professional position he occupied, was that his recently imposed deputy had established a necessarily important safeguard. Gerald Monsford’s equally quick thought was that Jane Ambersom had put herself forward as a further- and an additional-sacrificial offering if his real objective went wrong, which even the best laid espionage plans so frequently did.

Responding first, the MI6 Director said: “You bring to mind Tennyson’s line of Janus-faces looking diverse ways.”

“I defer to your superior knowledge not just of classics but the art of the two-faced,” Jane shot back. “Didn’t Tennyson also remark that men may come and men may go but others lasting longer?”

“Has anyone got anything further to offer?” demanded Aubrey Smith, impatiently.

“I suspect Jane believes herself outnumbered,” Monsford said, flushed. “Why don’t we achieve a better balance by adding Rebecca to our panel.”

It would give her the opportunity to oppose the whore, Jane Ambersom realized. “I think that’s an excellent suggestion.”

It would probably put him at a three-to-one disadvantage, but at any disaster inquest Monsford’s manipulative hand would be more obvious, rationalized Smith. “If it’s the decision of the prime minister for this to