supported by there having been no passport questioning upon his reentry into Heathrow triggered by watchers having alerted the aircraft crew of his disappearance. Charlie estimated that had given him at least two, maybe as much as four, hours’ runaway time. He’d used some of it buying toiletries and a hold-all in which to carry them before purchasing a closing gate ticket on the last-of-the-day Dutch airline flight back to London, which he’d established to be half empty while selecting his escape seat at Heathrow three hours earlier. The hold-all provided just enough luggage for him to be accepted without question at a fifty-pound-a-night, thin-walled room in a Waterloo station hotel.
He’d still ached, although not as badly, when he woke. He no longer shuffled, just walked slowly, to get to a conveniently close internet cafe by nine fifteen. It took less than another thirty minutes of concentrated Google surfing to assemble a selection of holiday companies offering short Russian tours and even less to find one in Manchester eager enough to retain its newly acquired franchise-and full payment in cash, to which he agreed-to allocate him one of their three remaining vacancies on an eight-day block-visa trip to the Russian capital.
By eleven Charlie had emptied the Harrods safe deposit box of his David Merryweather passport and international driving license and used the accompanying American Express card in the same name to buy a suit, trousers, shirts, and underwear, as well as a suitcase additional to the hold-all to carry it all. From experience, he held back from risking new shoes, to which his awkward feet would have needed to adapt.
Charlie’s train arrived precisely on time in Manchester, enabling him to be one of the first of the tour group independently to reach the airport. Muriel, the Russian-speaking tour guide, said she was sorry the cost dictated that it had to be a basic economy night flight. “I took a chance, accepting you as I did, but we need to maintain our booking numbers.”
“What chance was that?” queried Charlie, apprehensively.
“Adding you to the block visa. We’re supposed to supply the names a week before: the embassy requires master copies.”
The apprehension lifted like mist in the sun, which Charlie, prepared to sacrifice his Merryweather identity, decided to be shining down upon him. “Here it is.”
“Malcolm Stoat?” the girl queried. “That wasn’t the name I thought you gave me on the telephone?”
“It was a very bad line. I had difficulty hearing a lot of what you said to me.”
“And you’ve already got a visa?” she said, opening the passport.
“I didn’t know anything about block visas,” lied Charlie. “I thought I had to arrange my own. It does mean you’re not taking any chances, doesn’t it?”
“I suppose I should add your name to my list?”
“Perhaps you should.”
“And I’m really sorry it’s a night flight.”
“I’ll try to sleep,” said Charlie. Which he did, dreamlessly.
By comparison, Gerald Monsford’s day had been a continuous waking nightmare.
“Your future’s hanging by a thread,” threatened the MI6 Director, the moment his demanded connection was made to Moscow. “Because of you, the entire operation’s in jeopardy. You realized that!”
If only you knew how jeopardized it really had been, thought Jacobson. “With respect, sir, you were present throughout my entire London briefing. At which it was specified that the sole purpose of my recall was thoroughly to study and memorize Charlie Muffin’s appearance, nothing more. It was also specified at that briefing that every conceivable aspect of the operation was being supervised and handled by others, from whom I was separated and with whom I under no circumstance would or should have any knowledge or contact, because of the particular function I have to perform to create the diversion at the moment of Radtsic’s extraction. From which I understood there were to be others of whom I had no knowledge carrying out in-flight surveillance and that there would be protective surveillance in place at the known stopover at Schipol.”
The meticulously prepared defense momentarily silenced Monsford, increasing the man’s fury but in turn fogging his reasoning. “You could have alerted the crew!”
Jacobson hoped he timed his answering silence to the millisecond. “I was traveling as an ordinary economy- class passenger. Why-or how-should I have been monitoring another supposedly ordinary economy-class passenger who might only have been booked to Amsterdam closely enough to spot his disappearance? Had I raised an alarm the departure would have been stopped, because security would have insisted the aircraft be searched and all hold baggage unloaded. And I, as the person who raised the alert, would have been publicly identified and even, worse, put before a televised news conference. If my diplomatic cover withstood investigation, the exposure would have been prevented by continuing with the diversion mission.”
Monsford knew his continuing frustration was suffusing his face and was glad he’d taken the call entirely alone, with neither Rebecca nor Straughan as witnesses. With determination, Monsford accepted defeat. “Tell me about Radtsic.”
“He’s falling apart,” said Jacobson, enjoying the screw-turning. “Elana changed her mind about defecting. He claims he’s persuaded her to change it back again but I’m worried.”
“What are you suggesting?” asked Monsford, anxiously.
Monsford couldn’t handle the pressure! Jacobson suddenly realized. “I’m not
“You must have formed some ideas?”
“I’m not sure if we’re not trying to achieve too much, guaranteeing the extraction of Radtsic and his family by making a distraction out of that of Charlie Muffin and his family.…” Again Jacobson tried perfectly to time the pause. “Particularly as we appear to have lost Charlie Muffin.”
How much he would have savored using Jacobson instead of Charlie as the about-to-die decoy, mused Monsford. “You seriously believe we could lose Radtsic?”
“I’d put that possibility as high as seventy-five percent if we don’t get him out soon.”
“Then we can’t change course: all our preparation is irrevocably interlinked.”
“We don’t have Charlie Muffin
“He’s
“We won’t know what Charlie’s been doing,” Jacobson pointed out. “From what Straughan told me yesterday in London there was suspicion from Charlie’s interrogation, after his return from Jersey, that he’d been a long- embedded Russian sleeper. What if he
“It couldn’t be,” groped Monsford, anguished: he’d done everything he could-and more-to promote himself as the architect of it all. “Did you tell Radtsic the use to which we were putting Charlie?”
He couldn’t better have managed the exchange if he’d personally scripted and rehearsed it, thought Jacobson. “I told him there was to be a diversion, without telling him what it was to be. And I didn’t mention Charlie Muffin by name.”
“You get the slightest suspicion that Radtsic knows what’s happening to Natalia?”
“None,” replied Jacobson. “But he’d have to know if Charlie’s disappearance and the sudden emergence of Natalia is part of a Russian operation?” He’d have to hold back from taking this improvisation too far: he’d completely escaped censure.
“When’s your next meeting?”
Jacobson hesitated, unsure if he needed the protection of an indeterminate answer. Deciding that he didn’t, he said, simply: “Tomorrow.”
“Don’t say anything more about a diversion,” ordered Monsford. “But listen hard to everything he says, for anything that doesn’t sound right.”
He’d risen like a Phoenix not just unsinged but smelling of roses, Jacobson decided: sweeter than roses, even.
“What?” demanded Monsford, as the operational director came into his suite for the second time that day.
