“Brilliant,” agreed Rebecca, dutifully. Asshole, she thought.
“Have you had Andrei’s letter?” asked Elana.
“It arrived today.”
“What’s the problem?”
“There isn’t one. I’d set up a contact system with the embassy that he was finding restrictive, so I’ve scaled it down. Which I was going to have to do anyway.”
“When are you going to tell him what’s happening?”
“When everything’s finalized by the British.”
“When’s that going to be?”
“Very soon.”
“You’re going to be briefed on a special, combined operation,” announced Monsford. “I’m appointing you supervisor of the MI6 contingent.”
“Thank you, sir,” accepted Stephen Briddle. He was an intense, quick-talking man nervous of his first personal encounter with the Director.
“You’ll learn all about the combined assignment at the general briefing. This conversation is strictly between the two of us and must remain that way, no one else. I’ve chosen you because of your special clearance, which might be called upon. I’m sure you won’t let me or the service down.”
“I won’t, sir,” assured Briddle, giving no indication of his immediate unease at the reference to special clearance.
“This meeting is precautionary. I might not need to issue the order so I won’t give you any further details but I will dispatch a weapon ahead of your arrival in Moscow in the diplomatic bag.”
“I understand.”
“Your sole understanding at this point is that this meeting, this conversation, is totally classified.”
“I do understand that.”
“You are going to have a long and assured career in this service.”
“Thank you, sir.”
11
Charlie Muffin disliked shared assignments that made him reliant upon others whose professional ability he didn’t know and therefore couldn’t trust, his unease increased by the inclusion of MI6 as well as by his belated recognition at how quickly his personal involvement had been agreed to. Charlie’s well-honed sensitivity to potential betrayal extended beyond the smell of a rat to being aware of them scuttling underfoot, which was the instinctive impression settling upon him.
His general discomfort began with his 8:00 A.M. arrival not at his Thames House workplace, which he’d expected, but across the river at MI6’s tree- and shrub-festooned edifice, the smoked-glass car sweeping too fast through last-minute-opening steel doors into a basement garage from an unsuspected entrance a block and a half from the actual building. Charlie dismissed the security checks as far more perfunctory than they would have been at Thames House, unquestioningly following the two reimposed escorts who’d steadfastly refused conversation during the journey from Buckinghamshire. A matching electronic warning he guessed to have opened the garage doors had obviously alerted the two men waiting for him as the elevator doors opened.
“At last a face I recognize,” greeted Charlie.
John Passmore was respected within the counterintelligence agency for dropping the civilian entitlement of colonel after his transfer appointment from the SAS, although he continued to wear the regimental tie, which didn’t coordinate with the suit he was wearing today. He was a reserved, taciturn man who responded to Charlie with a curt, unsmiling nod and an immediate introduction to James Straughan.
“Why am I here, not across the river?” demanded Charlie, at once.
“Your own building will be under far tighter Russian surveillance than usual,” said Straughan, leading the way into a directly opposite, anonymously bare office. “And Thames House doesn’t have the separated entry facilities that we do.”
Bollocks, thought Charlie. “You should charge for the helter-skelter approach; sell candy floss to attract the customers.”
“Your proposal for getting Natalia and the girl out has been gone through in some detail,” picked up Passmore, the intended briskness slightly marred by an almost-suppressed stutter. “The instructions are to give you your head but personally I think your chances of success are extremely limited.”
“It’s difficult for them to be otherwise, knowing as little as we do so far,” defended Charlie. “It has to be governed by on-the-spot decisions according to the circumstances as they arise.”
“Which operations are invariably insufficiently prepared, inadequately planned, and blow up in your face,” argued the ex-soldier, feeling out with his remaining hand to the empty left sleeve of his jacket.
“It’s been sanctioned?” pressed Charlie.
“With reservations beyond the obvious,” confirmed Straughan.
“Which are?” queried Charlie, apprehensively.
“Shortly you’ll meet your backup group,” disclosed Straughan. “They’re not being told of your personal relationship to Natalia or that Sasha is your child.”
“It’s the weakest aspect of what you’ll be trying to do,” criticized Passmore, before Charlie could respond. “You’re team leader and because of who Natalia and Sasha are, you’ll take more risks than you should. They’ll know and distrust that if they’re told.”
“Is everything going to be independently monitored, above and beyond the people I’m about to meet?” asked Charlie, presciently. There could be gains, having so many distracting people milling about.
Passmore looked to the other operational director and Straughan momentarily hesitated. “No. But there’s another reservation. There’s to be no maverick bullshit from you. We accept there’s a lot that’s got to be worked out when you get there. But you don’t initiate anything without approval. And we want your acknowledgment, right now, that you understand what I’m saying. If we get the slightest suspicion you’re trying to perform as a one-man band, we abort everything and you’ll lose a wife and child.”
The bullshit was Straughan’s, for the benefit of the inevitable protective recording, Charlie knew. “I’m not going to do anything to put Natalia and Sasha at more risk than they already are. And I’ve already given the undertaking about diplomatic embarrassment.”
“Don’t, for a moment, forget it,” threatened the MI6 division chief, ending the encounter. “People are waiting for us.”
Waiting or scuttling underfoot to trip him? wondered Charlie.
The briefing room was four doors away on the same level, the six men already assembled at name-carded lecture desks in front of a slightly raised stage on the wall behind which were displayed the enlarged photographs of Natalia and Sasha. At the far end of the room were visible camera-projection facilities from which everything would be filmed.
After Straughan’s domination of their introductory meeting, Charlie was mildly curious at Passmore’s supervising the team briefing. This was an unusually linked combination between their two services because of the importance of what had to be achieved, opened the MI5 operations director, the stutter, strangely, no longer pronounced. Each of them had been provided with a individual pack that included the maximum available information upon Natalia Fedova and her background within the FSB. Those packs were to be familiarized until their departure for their Moscow flight that afternoon but would be retrieved before they left the building. Duplicate packs were already waiting for them at the British embassy, in the residential compound of which they were all to be accommodated. The duplicate packs-particularly the photographs of Natalia and the child-were never to be taken outside the embassy. Also awaiting their collection at the embassy were Russian mobile telephones through which they would liaise with their team supervisor, Charlie Muffin. That liaison had always to be through their cell phones:
