five-chair setting replacing the earlier tribunal formality. “We’ve waited for your seating arrangements.”
Without replying, Smith put Jane beside him, nodding to the others to choose their places.
“What about Charlie Muffin?” asked the MI6 deputy.
“Not until we’ve talked things through,” refused Smith, recovering slightly. “I want us to be absolutely clear about what we’re going to do and how we’re going to do it, without the slightest possibility of misunderstandings.”
“It’s surely all remarkably simple,” Monsford bustled in, impatient to assume the other Director’s authority. “We’ve got the photographs my people took of Natalia and Sasha. We can put prints into genuine British passports, although obviously under false, English names. In the passports there’ll be Russian tourist visas: my technical division have provable Russian inks and Cyrillic type fonts for entry and exit stamps. The photographs are good enough for my technical experts again to gauge with sufficient accuracy both the height, weight, and physique of Natalia and the child, for a complete selection of English-manufactured and — labeled clothes, sufficiently worn for them not to appear obviously new. Everything will be shipped to the embassy in the diplomatic bag. My
The pause was as prepared as the recitation for Rebecca to come in on cue: “Taking the urgency into account, our technicians have already started work on the passports and the clothing.”
“You might like to hold on that,” stopped the other woman. “We’ve already prepared a complete documentation selection.”
Smith enjoyed the stretched silence, reluctant to snap it. “You seem to have started a little prematurely.”
“As you have,” challenged Monsford.
“‘You’re in charge,’” quoted Smith, verbatim. “Isn’t that what you said?”
“This isn’t a competition.” stated Rebecca, her overeffusiveness gone.
“Absolutely not,” mocked Jane.
“The problem isn’t one of technical resources or facilities: we can forge or manufacture whatever we need,” stressed Smith, content that the balance had been restored. “The problem is physically getting under our protection-and in a way that can’t diplomatically or publicly rebound-a woman and child presumably under FSB surveillance. How do you suggest we do that?”
“That’s what Gerald meant about detailed consideration,” said Rebecca.
“The entire purpose of this meeting,” reminded Jane, as conscious as Aubrey Smith of their recovery. “What’s your proposal?”
“She and the child have to come to the embassy by themselves,” improvised Monsford, looking to his mistress for support.
“Once they’re in the building, technically British territory…” tried Rebecca, loyally.
“That territorial protection would cease the moment Natalia and Sasha took one step
“At this moment I haven’t the slightest idea,” conceded the SIS Director, although not as an admission of defeat. “This is a planning session, for each of us to give the most constructive input. What’s your contact proposal?”
“Diversions,” declared the MI5 Director-General, enigmatically. “By letting the Russians imagine we’ve taken their bait and that we’re coming for mother and daughter. But then introduce diversion after diversion to send them around in circles until they don’t know which is the genuine extraction and which isn’t.”
“They don’t need to run around in circles,” disputed Rebecca. “They’ve got Natalia and Sasha. They’re the only people the FSB need constantly to watch.”
“You’re looking in the wrong direction, which is what I intend them to do,” argued the soft-voiced Smith. “Of course they’ve got Natalia and Sasha. But Natalia and Sasha aren’t who they really want, are they? They want Charlie Muffin.”
“You’re proposing to send him back in!” exclaimed Rebecca, in apparent surprise.
“No,” denied Smith. “But they’ll think it’ll be Charlie Muffin and from the moment they’re convinced it is, their entire concentration will be upon finding him. It’s Charlie-or their belief that it’s Charlie-who’s going to be the diversion.”
“How?” demanded Rebecca, knowing the importance of reestablishing their briefly imagined supremacy.
“Easily,” said Smith, allowing the vaguest of smiles. “Natalia’s calls were from ordinary public telephones-one more specifically than others-because we were expected, naturally, to trace their origin. Just as we, or rather Charlie, was expected to recognize that the calls to his flat were always at precisely the same time, giving him a pattern. But they wouldn’t have been ordinary public kiosks, would they? They’ll appear to be, but they’ll have recording attachments, automatically triggered by an incoming international call signal, in anticipation of Charlie responding to the numbers, not that of Natalia’s flat. So Charlie will respond, at the precise time which she-or rather the FSB-has established.”
“What if she’s not there at the appointed time?” challenged Monsford. “There hasn’t been any contact from Moscow since the burglary. There wasn’t any response to her calls before then. And from the Russian embassy lawyers who’ve already had legal access to their diplomats in custody here, they’ll know the flat was empty. And we created the legend of his death, so they’ll also know he’s under protection.”
“We’ve already agreed they won’t accept that legend,” Jane pointed out.
“Any more than they’ll accept Charlie’s sudden reappearance is anything more than our trying to lure them into a trap they won’t be able to understand, just as they didn’t understand-or anticipate-the burglary snare we set for them,” said Rebecca. “But they won’t risk being burned twice.”
“Exactly!” agreed Jane, triumphantly. “They won’t accept it and they won’t understand it. But they can’t afford to ignore it. And before this afternoon’s over we need to come up with an even more tantalizing bait.…” Jane paused, caught by the presented analogy. “Our fishing line, Natalia and Sasha’s safety net.”
“Charlie Muffin is the integral part in this,” declared Monsford, desperate to get off the constantly teetering back foot. “Isn’t it time we included him in this discussion?”
Charlie Muffin had a savant’s instinct for atmospheres within environments and was well into his clairvoyant interpretation by the time he shuffled, unescorted now, from the trophy-room door to the conference table already unevenly hedged by its four stiffly seated occupants. Only the one empty chair retained its neat setting, the others at disjointed angles, separating each from its neighbors. There were coffee cups, similarly disarranged-the discarded coffeepot alone on a side table-supporting the impression of prior discussion, although there wasn’t a single doodle on any of the individual memo pads before them. There was one as-yet-unknown woman closer to Gerald Monsford than to either Aubrey Smith or Jane Ambersom, similarly drawn together, both expressionless faces as stiff as their rigidly held attitudes.
Charlie went to the empty chair but didn’t sit until Smith’s head jerk of permission, and as he did the MI5 Director announced: “We want to get your wife and child out. It’s obvious you should be included in the discussion.”
“Thank you,” said Charlie, who hadn’t expected such immediate confirmation but pushing as much genuine sincerity into the two words as possible, finally halting the individually addressed gratitude at the unknown woman, who at once introduced herself.
Having been offered the opening, Charlie added: “At what stage is the planning?”
“It’s starting here, right now,” declared Smith, although looking more to Gerald Monsford than to Charlie. “Perhaps you’d sketch out the SIS ideas in broad outline.”
The MI6 Director attempted to edit out Aubrey Smith’s earlier point-picking but several times lost his way and instead of omitting the passport preparations actually elaborated upon them. Eventually, clearly struggling,
