From the oddly cowed way the Director was slumped behind his desk, Straughan thought Monsford looked like a bull mastiff that had lost its nerve. “The media fanfare is in full tune. It started in Amsterdam, obviously. It was picked up in Moscow-running on the news wires-and the
“They using Charlie’s cover name?” demanded Monsford, straightening slightly from his withdrawn shell.
“Of course they are,” confirmed Straughan. “It’s my guess that Charlie intended the publicity, which will build up when there are no answers to all the questions that are being asked. Our concern has to be that it concentrates attention on Moscow.”
“Jacobson doesn’t think we can run the operation as we planned, now that we’ve lost Charlie,” said the Director.
“We can’t, not until we find him,” agreed Straughan, close to impatience at the statement of the obvious. Curious what the man’s reaction would be, he added: “There’s something else.”
“What?” repeated Monsford, slumping back into his defeatist posture.
“The son, Andrei. He’s living with another student, a French girl named Yvette Paruch: they’re on the same course.”
“What’s your point?”
“Getting him here, without Yvette screaming kidnap.”
“Telling him what’s happening: giving him the chance to prepare himself, you mean?”
“I’d prefer that to trying an unexpected snatch.”
“What if he doesn’t want to come: would he regard his father as a traitor?”
“That
“It can only come from Radtsic. Jacobson’s seeing him tomorrow.”
“Do I tell Jacobson to fix it?” pressed Straughan, determined it should be the Director’s decision.
“Give me a choice of proposals,” ordered Monsford.
As he wiped his mother’s mouth after feeding her that night Straughan said: “He’s looking for a way to avoid direct personal responsibility but I’m not going to let him. I’m not going to carry the can anymore: you mark my words,” and the old lady who didn’t any longer know how to mark or even say words stared unseeingly into a world in which only she lived.
14
Charlie’s dreamless sleep didn’t last the entire flight, just sufficiently for the aching finally to disappear, despite the seat limitations. He straightened, with antenna-prompted awareness, at the first change in the engine pitch, the initial priority to study the rest of the tourist group with whom he’d had no proper contact in Manchester. Charlie didn’t foresee any practical use from being part of it, apart from the initial, prebooked hotel accommodation, but in the entirely unplanned, thin-iced circumstances he’d created for himself it was impossible to anticipate anything he might need.
There were sixteen other people in the party, predominantly couples apart from three teenage girls in addition to Muriel, whose surname he discovered to be Simpson and whom he guessed to be in her early twenties. She was sitting next to him when he awoke.
“You really did need to sleep, didn’t you?” she greeted. She was an auburn-haired, small-featured woman who clearly believed her bust was her most attractive feature, judging from the upthrusting bra in which it was encased beneath a company-advertising T-shirt.
“I’ve been working flat out to get a project almost to closure,” said Charlie, deciding to introduce an already determined insurance for what was soon to follow.
“What sort of project?” she asked, predictably.
“One that means a lot to me,” said Charlie. “I can trust your discretion, can’t I?”
“I’d hope so,” said the woman, smiling at being taken into a confidence.
“You’ve heard of Russian oligarch billionaires settling in England?”
“Of course.” The expectant smile broadened.
“I’ve made a particular study of Russian architecture: got this commission to build a pavilion completely in the prerevolutionary style in the grounds of his Sussex estate for one of the best-known … I can’t, of course, tell you his name.…”
“Of course not,” she agreed, dropping the smile to indicate her seriousness.
“If I get this right, it’ll open every door. I’ve studied all the photographs and all the pictured art work, spent some time in St. Petersburg. I’ve snatched at this trip to confirm the styles that I’ve followed.”
“I can understand the importance of that.”
“I’m telling you now to warn you that I’m going to skip most of your trips.”
For the first time there was a frown. “The firm’s responsible for the people in this group.”
“You don’t have to worry about me,” soothed Charlie, with open-faced sincerity.
“How are you going to get around by yourself?”
Charlie hesitated, anxious to keep the invention as unquestionable as possible. “I studied Russian at university: speak it pretty well.”
The smile came back, broader than before. “Which university?”
The eagerness warned Charlie. “Was Russian your university module?”
“It’s why I’m doing this job, postgraduate. I want to speak it perfectly, eventually to get a diplomatic job.”
“Which university?” asked Charlie, turning her question back upon the girl.
“Manchester, obviously.”
“Bristol,” escaped Charlie.
On their overhead panel the fasten-seat-belt sign came on, the signal for the copilot’s landing announcement.
“I hope you get what you want in Moscow,” said Muriel.
“I’m determined I will,” Charlie promised himself.
Charlie rehearsed for the contradictions of a night arrival, the time of the fewest incoming flights carrying the fewest number of passengers among whom to hide from the fewest number of airport immigration officers and hopefully from the constantly open-eyed CCTV, which in the case of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo, while far less than the Orwellian intrusion of England, still had to be guarded against.
He scanned as much of the cabin as it was possible to see beyond his own tourist party and concluded his luck was holding with three of them-two men, one big enough to be Monsford’s twin, and a woman-remaining the tallest and the heaviest. He got close behind them as they got onto the disembarkation pier and Muriel unwittingly helped by shifting back and forth, a shepherdess keeping her easily strayed flock tight together. Charlie switched his attention between the tall-statured three and one of the smallest women in the group, maneuvering her unevenly wheeled suitcase to give him the excuse to bend away from the easily spotted cameras. His most exposed moment came at the passport booth, which he guarded against as best he could by fumbling through his cabin baggage hold-all close to his face for his tourist-group documentation, aware of the watchful Muriel on the far side as he was passed through unchallenged. Charlie judged his other danger point the camera-monitored registration desk at the Rossiya Hotel on the Ulitsa Razina and again used the burly trio, the Monsford look-alike predominantly, as well as his face-obscuring hold-all.
The prebooked accommodation put Muriel in the next room to his and she paused directly in front of him, handing over the key. “I’m responsible for everyone in the party: to make sure no one breaks the rules. Don’t get me into trouble, okay?”
“I’ve never got a girl into trouble,” said Charlie, acknowledging as he spoke that it was yet another lie. Would
