Red Star Burning

“Then we can’t do anything other than follow his lead.”

“And the Russian passport he asked for?”

Smith hesitated. “Prepare it as Charlie wants. I don’t trust Monsford either.”

All Harry Jacobson’s fragile reassurances had gone, compounded by the breach of tradecraft that he hadn’t properly taken into account until now, when he was actually making his way to the failsafe rendezvous with Maxim Radtsic. It was an inviolable rule in defector extractions that no target meetings should ever be at the same place twice and they’d already met once before at the river-cruise terminal: Jacobson had agreed to its emergency use only because, unprofessionally, he’d never expected it to be necessary. Jacobson’s most obvious fear was that he was walking blindly into an FSB entrapment, almost equaled by the apprehension that Radtsic had lost his already overstretched nerve and wouldn’t turn up a second time. Which, added to his infantile airplane loss of Charlie Muffin, would inevitably mean his dismissal from the service.

Jacobson arrived almost an hour early at the Klenovy Boulevard terminal, scouring every approach as he had at the previous failed meeting place for the slightest indication of an ambush. Having failed to find one, he positioned himself at the highest possible vantage point above the pier, his concentration upon the throng of embarking and disembarking passengers, seeking close-together groups or gatherings of people who did not fit the tourist profile. And failed again to locate anything that triggered his suspicion.

Jacobson rigidly followed Radtsic’s trail-clearing insistence of boarding fifteen minutes ahead of the Russian, stationing himself at the rail overlooking the gangway to ensure Radtsic wasn’t followed. So tensed was Jacobson that the skin of his arms tingled at the slight pressure of his leaning against the rail and he was overly aware of people close to him, twitching away from the briefest contact.

Ten minutes until departure, Jacobson saw. Where the hell was Radtsic! He should have been here by now, visible on the pier to ensure there was no surveillance. So why wasn’t he? Because he wasn’t going to show, Jacobson answered himself. He’d panicked or been found out or lost his nerve, all or any of which could mean his arrest or an attack and then God knows …

There he was, snatched Jacobson, at the first sighting. And making no effort to merge into his tourist surroundings. The barrel-chested, swarthy Maxim Radtsic was wearing a collar and tie with his three-piece business suit, shouldering his way through the last-minute boarders, and Jacobson’s relief was tempered by the thought of the other, still unresolved danger. Jacobson continued to observe the Russian’s precautions, delaying an approach for fifteen minutes after departure for the Russian to complete the same check on him as he moved around the boat and even then not until Radtsic gave the signal that he was satisfied they were both clear.

Today’s sign was again to discard an empty cigarette packet into the Moskva river, a gesture fitting the chain-smoking habit that had developed since the Russian’s first approach.

“What the hell happened?” greeted Jacobson, as he got alongside the other man.

“There was a personal problem,” said Radstic, not looking sideways. The hand holding the cigarette was shaking, creating an almost constant avalanche of ash.

“What problem?”

“Elana.”

“What about her?”

“She’s losing her nerve: doesn’t want to come.”

“Are you coming without her?”

Radtsic gave Jacobson a frowned, sideways look. “Of course not.”

“What then?”

“I’ve persuaded her. But it’s got to be soon now.”

“We’re setting up a diversion: want you to be involved at the very end. You can be the person who makes sure it works by concentrating attention away from you and Elana.”

“How?”

“We’re sending someone in, as a decoy for your people to follow,” lured Jacobson. Radtsic surely had to know about the attempted FSB entrapment of Charlie Muffin, even if the man was elevated way above operational activity.

“How?” repeated the other man.

“It’ll involve your service, when it happens,” Jacobson hedged further.

“What’s my involvement?”

“You have operational oversight, don’t you?”

“Not in a planning stage. There are progress submission and reviews.”

“There hasn’t been anything about a potential English situation?”

Radtsic properly looked at Jacobson for the first time. “Are you trying to trick me?”

“No!” denied Jacobson, meeting the look. “I’ve told you it’s all going to work just as you want.”

“It doesn’t sound right!”

“I’m not tricking you, Maxim Mikhailovich. I’m guaranteeing everything and more than you’ve asked for.” Why was it all going wrong, despaired Jacobson: in less than twenty-four hours he’d been made to look an amateur by a down-at-heel dinosaur and now he was a hairsbreadth from losing the biggest catch in MI6 history!

“I need to think!”

“You need to trust me: trust that I’m telling you the truth.”

“I need to think,” the Russian repeated, doggedly.

“Let’s meet tomorrow,” urged Jacobson, anxiously. “Check your ongoing operational planning involving the British.” With so much going wrong-being misunderstood-he daren’t risk actually mentioning Charlie Muffin and Natalia Fedova until he talked to London and learned whether they’d found the bastard.

“Here, again at noon.”

“Maxim, it should be somewhere else.”

“Here,” insisted the older man.

“Here,” capitulated Jacobson.

“It could be a one-night stand,” said Jonathan Miller, staring down at the photographs Albert Abrahams had laid out before him.

“I established the surveillance the day we got the assignment. If you look more closely, she’s wearing three different outfits, leaving and entering the apartment over three different days. I ran a check at the Sorbonne. She’s registered at the same address with the same telephone number as Andrei. They’re on the same course.”

“Perhaps this will put a finger up Straughan’s ass: get him to answer all our other questions to all our other uncertainties.”

“This is the one that could really fuck everything up.”

“I’d never have worked that out if you hadn’t told me.”

13

There seemed to be no part of Charlie Muffin’s body that didn’t ache. His feet, of course, caused the worst agony. By the time he got back to London he was hobbling so badly that an airport driver returning from taking a disabled passenger to a flight offered Charlie a lift on his empty cart, which Charlie gratefully accepted, deciding that the privilege attracted far less attention than the way he was walking. Despite all of which, Charlie was happy. So far-a long way in opportunity, if not necessarily in miles-reversing the terms of engagement to his personal control was working.

He’d been lucky, Charlie accepted: bloody lucky. But there again, he’d made most of that luck himself. The biggest gamble had been the moment he’d fled the plane. He’d built in most of the contingency protection he could anticipate, pausing in the Amsterdam arrival hall to take the battery from the Russian phone to prevent his being traced by any tracker device installed in London but still leaving open his expectation of unknown escorts on the plane. That there hadn’t been added to his suspicion of a separate agenda of which he was unaware, further