Radtsic finally fired the cigarette, smiling slightly. “He’s a full-blooded Russian.”
“You knew then?”
“No. What’s there to know?”
“She doesn’t appear to be a casual girlfriend. They’re living together.”
“What!”
The Russian’s surprise was genuine, gauged Jacobson. “Everything’s got to be very quick, once the extraction starts: no unexpected complications. What’s most important is avoiding any interference from the French authorities.”
“I told you Andrei needed to be warned,” reminded Radtsic.
“How often are you in contact: exchange letters or talk on the phone?”
“I’m sure all my telephones are monitored: that my mail is being intercepted. I’ve told you that. I also told you Andrei wouldn’t accept messages through an intermediary.”
“I’ve brought a pocket tape recorder,” said Jacobson. “He knows your voice. Make a recording, telling him to trust the person who brings it to him: that he must do what that person tells him.”
Radtsic shook his head, his inhalations now coming with chain-smoking regularity. “You’re not listening to me! He’ll think it’s a trick. Or something made under duress.”
“How, then, Maxim?” asked Jacobson, desperately. “Tell me how!”
“Elana,” announced the Russian. “She’ll have to be got out first, ahead of me, through Paris. You’ll have to coordinate their extraction, together with mine here.”
“Will she be allowed to travel?”
“I have the authority to approve it.”
“You’ve told me you’re being watched: that your telephone’s tapped and your mail opened,” argued Jacobson. “Your approving Elana’s travel would trigger every alarm.”
“It’s me they’re monitoring, not Elana. There’d be a period, a few days, before the connection was made.”
Jacobson suspected that Radtsic was trying to force the pace and didn’t blame the man: it actually improved the Russian’s control of events, and if Elana was already out of the country it greatly reduced the chances of her suddenly changing her mind. Once in France, she’d be committed, with no way back. And so would Radtsic. “I’ll put it to London: see if they’ll accept it as an alternative to what they’re putting in place now.”
“I can put everything in motion within two days,” promised the Russian, eagerly.
“Don’t!” ordered Jacobson, just as urgently. “You’ve got to wait for London’s approval. Prepare whatever preliminaries are necessary. But don’t positively initiate anything, not until we meet again. And, Maxim…”
“What?”
“Not here. Never again here, at the terminal.”
“Where, instead?”
Insurance time, Jacobson thought at once. “You’ve got my private number. Call tomorrow, at noon, from a public phone. I’ll give you the location then.”
“Will you have spoken to London by noon tomorrow?”
“About a lot of things,” confirmed Jacobson.
Jane Ambersom was an intelligent woman who acknowledged her instinctive aggression to be a failing, just as she recognized its underlying psychological cause to be an ingrained resentment at her androgenic confusion. And she was further annoyed at her inability sufficiently to curb it. Her sexuality, in fact, was entirely and eagerly female, which added frustration to the resentment. She’d endured relationships at university that never went beyond a one-night stand and been hopeful of an affair when she’d first joined MI6, until, too demandingly again, she’d maneuvered her lover into a choice, which he’d made by returning to his wife. As she’d ascended the intelligence-service ladder and come under increased internal-security scrutiny, she’d subjugated sexuality for professional advancement, which she’d quite correctly doubted would have resulted from her submitting to Gerald Monsford’s clumsy, experimental pawing in his conveniently constructed bedroom suite adjoining his office.
Since her transfer to MI5 and her foreign-liaison appointment, she had become extremely hopeful of Barry Elliott, even seeing in her rarely allowed fantasies a somewhat strained parallel with Charlie Muffin and Natalia Fedova. So far their encounters, although social, had remained strictly although not quite formally professional. He’d volunteered that he was neither married nor in a relationship and twice instead of restaurant encounters had suggested art-gallery meetings-the National and Tate Modern-where she’d discovered he enjoyed the same artists. It was upon his recommendation that in less than two weeks and three novels she’d become a committed Elmore Leonard fan.
Lunch that day was at Joe Allen’s, which she’d initially feared she’d have to cancel because of Charlie Muffin’s disappearance, until the Director-General told her there was no practical reason to remain at Thames House.
Elliott, as usual, was considerately there ahead of her, and stood to help her into her chair, with her preferred Rioja already uncorked. He didn’t immediately embark upon a shared-interest discussion, which was something else that Jane preferred, but talked of a planned weekend Shakespeare festival in Stratford, having enjoyed his first visit to the rebuilt Globe Theatre in London. It wasn’t until they were well into their main course that Elliott came to the official reason for the encounter and afterward Jane was quite sure she’d not overreacted to his unexpected return to their earlier discussion.
“Those transcript excerpts of Irena Novikov’s debriefing have given us more problems than answers.”
“I don’t understand,” hedged Jane.
“There’s a lot of disparities between what she appears to have told you and what she’s telling us. We think she’s stalling. She’s appearing to cooperate, which is the deal for her remaining in our protection program, but Langley suspects she’s giving us the run-around. And there’s a lot of access pressure from the Russian embassy in Washington.”
“I’ve given you all I was allowed.”
“We want fuller versions, to check in more detail against what she told your guy, Charlie Muffin. He spent a lot of time with her in Moscow, didn’t he?”
“I don’t think it was a
“There’s nothing of how he caught her out in what you’ve given me.”
“I’ll raise it,” promised Jane, an idea growing in her mind.
“We’d appreciate that. Maybe I could get an idea from Langley about what she’s telling them to offer in return.”
“I like Stratford,” risked Jane, in a complete change of direction. “Know it quite well.”
Elliott looked at her across the table, half smiling. “Why don’t you show me around there?”
“Why don’t I?” Jane smiled back.
“You won’t forget the comparison debriefings, will you?”
“Of course I won’t.”
15
Despite the board-hard Rossiya bed Charlie managed a further two hours’ sleep, deciding initially to continue with the tourist-group concealment, gambling that this soon there wouldn’t be an FSB connection between an inadvertent airport CCTV picture and the Malcolm Stoat name in the hotel register and the Amsterdam flight passenger list.
The broken day began with a breakfast-room getting-to-know-you gathering and a short and vaguely embarrassing promise of an experience of a lifetime from Muriel Simpson, complete with the distribution of the group’s intended itinerary and an overflow of brochures, maps, and information sheets, all of which Charlie collected for later use.
Charlie’s discomfort came within minutes of taking his designated place on the coach with the seat-lifting arrival beside him of the towering man behind whom he’d hopefully hidden for the earlier airport arrival.
