reaction will be that it was an FSB trick, part of how they’re using her. Which she’ll automatically reject.”
“Do you really believe, expect us to believe, that singlehandedly you could beat the entire Russian intelligence apparatus,” sneered Jane Ambersom, pushing herself into the forefront.
“No, I can’t defeat the
“No one is questioning what you did,” retreated Jane.
“Which I’m not boasting about,” qualified Charlie, caught by the unexpected lessening of the woman’s opposition. “Quite apart from Natalia trusting no one but me, it would take months to train an extraction team and they’d still be ill prepared because as determined as I’d obviously be to omit nothing, I’d still forget
“I think Charlie is talking a lot of logical common sense,” hustled Monsford. “I think there should be made available as much and as many backup provisions and resources as we can anticipate but that the actual extraction be headed by Charlie.”
“I agree,” supported Rebecca.
“What if you fail?” challenged Jane again. “What if they pick you up, which they’re ready and waiting to do, and stage a good, old-fashioned show trial? What happens then?”
“Russia-certainly Moscow-isn’t as controlled as it was in the days of Stalin’s show trials, despite what Putin’s done to turn the clock back,” argued Charlie. “The ultimate humiliation would be theirs, not ours. For a show trial to work they’d need an open although orchestrated court. And some sort of apparent confession to whatever crime they falsify. What they couldn’t control or prevent, when I spoke, would be my disclosing how their intelligence operation so abysmally failed and named those already known to have been assassinated by the FSB.”
“Which would humiliate America as much as Russia,” qualified Jane.
“Not at all,” refused Charlie. “I’d tell it as a CIA success in a joint operation with us, not of the CIA being suckered as they were.”
She didn’t at that moment know how or why, reflected Jane, but she could have a lot more about which to talk to Barry Elliott at their next dinner. “Winning all over again, not just for the second time but publicly, is a forceful argument.”
“No, it’s not,” resisted Smith, recognizing opinion settling against him. “They won’t risk a show trial. They want you dead, like all the others in the Lvov affair they’ve already killed. They’d simply kill you.”
“The others who’ve died were Russian,” Charlie pointed out. “I’m English. And we’ve got three of their diplomats in custody.”
“I don’t believe you seriously imagine those diplomats equate as insurance against your being killed!” said Smith, allowing incredulity into his emotionally flat voice.
“It would give the FSB and even the Kremlin pause for thought if they learned through lawyers representing those arrested diplomats that they’d be named and linked if I died violently, even if it were staged as an accident,” said Charlie.
“By then they would have moved against Natalia and Sasha,” countered Smith.
“Yes,” agreed Charlie, reluctantly forcing the acceptance. “By then I would have already lost them. But you’d have your publicly humiliating second coup, wouldn’t you?”
“We’re wasting time going around in circles,” declared Monsford, impatiently. “We’ve got an intelligence opportunity that’s potentially too promising to ignore. I accept Charlie should participate as he’s proposed, to which I will add all the manpower and resources he’s likely to need.…” Monsford hesitated, and said directly to Aubrey Smith: “Make it, in fact, an entirely SIS operation, with Charlie seconded to me, if you want no part of it and if you, Charlie, are willing to operate that way. It will overcome all the objections, won’t it?”
“Perfectly,” supported Rebecca, with predictable timing.
“I’ll accept that,” agreed Charlie. On my terms, he mentally added.
“The prime minister has ordered it to be a joint operation,” reminded the other woman.
“It’ll have to be approved through our government masters,” said Monsford, matching the reminder. “It’s still early enough to fix a meeting with Bland and Palmer today. That okay with you, Aubrey?”
“A meeting with the government group is certainly necessary,” agreed the MI5 Director-General. “But to sanction a
“Camese!” declared Monsford.
“What?” demanded Jane, voicing the bewilderment of them all.
“Camese,” repeated the M16 Director. “The mortal wife of Janus, the Greek god with two faces, able to look in opposite directions. I propose Camese be the code designation for Natalia’s extraction. It’s appropriate.”
“So’s getting to London,” dismissed the MI5 Director-General.
It was Aubrey Smith’s suggestion that he and Monsford share the car to London for the quickly arranged consultation with their government liaison, which protectively guaranteed the journey was in an MI5 vehicle with a security-cleared MI5 driver, who was as usual separated by the fully raised, soundproof glass screen. For the first thirty minutes they traveled through the Buckinghamshire countryside in self-reflective, self-protective silence, Smith determined upon a complete mental rehearsal, although predictably it was the impatient Monsford who eventually spoke.
“I imagine you’ll want equal participation in the support group?”
“Of course,” agreed Smith, content with the direction the other man had chosen.
“I suggested we accept Charlie’s argument about too many cooks spoiling the broth.”
“Absolutely.” This really was going far better than he could have hoped, thought Smith.
“I am thinking of no more than six, three of mine, three of yours. They could also handle finance, materiel, and travel: everything that Charlie might call upon once he establishes contact with Natalia.”
“Only
“A show trial, you mean?”
“I mean totally satisfying them that success is guaranteed, with no risk of Charlie-or the government-being publicly exposed.”
Monsford lapsed into further silence but when Smith didn’t continue, the MI6 Director said: “You were adamantly opposed to a very specific insurance.”
“As I was opposed earlier today to Charlie’s participation, an objection I’ve since dropped.”
There was another although shorter silence before Monsford said: “As you are now conceding the need for an ultimate insurance, if such a move becomes essential?”
“If such a need arose, we would have lost the advantages of bringing Natalia, with all she potentially knows, here to safety. At which stage it would be containment time.”
“I agree,” fenced Monsford, consciously switching the direction of the conversation onto the other man as he recognized them to be entering the north London suburbs with perhaps only fifteen minutes left in the exchange before reaching their destination.
Smith shifted on his seat, discomfited at being outmaneuvered. “We understand what we’re talking about but it’s not an eventuality we can openly introduce into this afternoon’s discussion: the very purpose for…” The man hesitated, searching for the appropriate ambiguity. “For the airlock through which we have to communicate is to provide legally unchallengeable deniability in Parliament in the event of a catastrophe.”
Now it was Monsford who changed position. “Surely we can sufficiently infer such a guarantee without risking any misunderstandings?”
“There are practicalities that we would need completely to clarify to avoid any misunderstandings between
