Red Star Burning

the same time.”

“I personally formulated how we’re getting the kid out,” reminded Monsford.

“I’m telling you what Radtsic told me,” retorted Jacobson. “That with Andrei agreeing, all we need to do is drive them to Orly-I didn’t tell him we were using Orly-and bring them out on the passports that are ready. I did tell him the passports were ready.”

Monsford looked inquiringly at the two others in the room. Straughan shrugged his shoulders. Rebecca said, softly: “We need to talk, not make any quick decisions.”

Into the telephone, Monsford said: “Tell Radtsic we have to talk about it: that it’s an unexpected change that we’ve got properly to consider, not rush into. That he’s got to accept what we’re saying: that it’s the safety of him and his family we’re thinking about.”

“I already have,” said Jacobson. “I’ll tell him again.”

“I haven’t finished,” warned Monsford, irritably. “We might possibly know where Charlie is.”

Jacobson listened without interruption but when the Director finished said: “If he’s there I go on as planned, right?”

“Wrong,” corrected Monsford. “I don’t want us losing the bastard again. Go separately from those Aubrey Smith is putting in place. I want our independent confirmation that we know where Charlie is: no slipups this time. I’m not sure I can any longer trust Smith to keep us fully in the loop.”

“But you still want the diversion?”

“More than ever, after the way that bastard has jerked us around,” insisted Monsford, vehemently. “As Shakespeare said, ‘let’s make us medicines of our great revenge.’”

“Mummy going to Paris to hold little Andrei’s hand solves most of our difficulty but gives us another one,” said Albert Abrahams.

Jonathan Miller shook his head. “We’ve only got to look after one extra for a few hours. It’s the best we could have hoped for.”

“I’d be happier with more direct contact,” said Abrahams. “I’m not comfortable getting things relayed from Moscow via London.”

“Neither am I,” said the Paris station chief. “Straughan’s promised to set a meeting up just before the extraction.”

“More relayed arrangements,” Abrahams pointed out.

16

From the tantrum anecdotes of his sadly too-often-abandoned single mother, Charlie Muffin guessed he’d been born a cynic, suspicious that his bottle milk might be polonium-poisoned or his diaper pin an offensive weapon, but he’d never sneered at the apparent childlike elements of espionage tradecraft. There was nothing derisory at spy liaisons signaled by chalk marks on designated trees or walls, or particularly arranged curtains or plant pots and empty Coke cans or drainpipes or rocks. Some fakes-like others hiding miniature cameras or listening devices-made perfect dead-letter drops because they were so easily dismissed as childlike.

Natalia had never dismissed them, either, not from the very first, uncertain moments of their professionally insane affair. She’d actually encouraged their discussion, most specifically rendezvous locations, which, as cynically wary as ever, Charlie had at first imagined as another debriefing trap. To test which he’d chosen as a site the most historic of Moscow’s botanical gardens, on Ulitsa Mira-created in 1706 by Peter the Great to cultivate medicinally beneficial plants for apothecary potions-to position his tradecraft marker, a tightly rolled copy of Pravda thrust as if discarded into the struts of the third bench from the main entrance. He’d returned at precisely the same time the following day to find a Pravda pincered in the same position but folded, not rolled. He’d responded with his rolled-up signal but concealed himself among the easily available deciduous arboretum from which he’d emerged as Natalia, not an expected then-KGB tracker, arrived to acknowledge it.

They’d kept the oldest of the city’s botanical showpiece as their initial meeting place, advancing the protective tradecraft even after the physical affair had begun by adding calls between its several public, Pravda-discarded telephone kiosks as a double-checking confirmation that it was safe for him to continue on to her apartment.

Charlie had remembered their protective routine leaving Red Square that morning, which Natalia had expected, as she’d expected him to recognize the significance of how she’d made contact with his Vauxhall flat. Charlie didn’t, though, change his already planned day, deciding the primary essential remained his continuing to be free of London, who’d now had close to thirty-six hours and the resources of both British intelligence organizations to locate him. He risked an entire hour watching the Rossiya Hotel for the slightest indication of professional observation, not entering until he was thoroughly satisfied that it wasn’t, and even then limiting himself to minutes, remaining in his room just long enough minimally to pack what he could at the bottom of the hold-all but leaving sufficient belongings, including a toothbrush and shaving kit, for it to appear still occupied. He left the hold-all open to display all the tourist material accumulated that morning and pointedly told the concierge on his way out that he’d forgotten to take it with him for that day’s tours.

He descended into the labyrinthine, Gothic-stationed Moscow Metro system, buying that day’s Pravda on his way, only now slotting his Red Square realization into his itinerary. There was no cause for tradecraft evasion, enabling him to stay on the circle line to the familiar Ulitsa Mira station, unsure if the sentimentally remembered Mira hotel in which he and Natalia had become lovers would still be there. It was, although shabbier and more decayed than it had been then. It ensured, at least, that there was no questioning at his scarcely adequate luggage, which was further explained by the hooker and her work-overalled client leaving as he checked in, paying in advance, as demanded, for a four-night reservation. Charlie remained in the mirror-stained, gray-sheeted room only long enough to confirm that the dirt-rimed shower worked, although intermittently, and pocketing from the hold-all he didn’t expect to be there upon his return the spare David Merryweather passport, driving license, and American Express card.

It was only a short walk to the botanical gardens and Charlie made it cautiously, twice sitting on convenient benches behind the protection of his newspaper-in which there was no reference to his Amsterdam disappearance- to search for surveillance. If he was right, Natalia wouldn’t have given her telephone signal if she’d suspected the gardens to be compromised, but she was working single-handedly against the full resources of the FSB. As he objectively acknowledged that his observation was strictly limited: a guaranteed ambush would be inside, where there was sufficient tree, bush, and hothouse concealment to hide an FSB army.

It wasn’t until he’d scoured the other marker spots and found nothing that he needed briefly to sit and reconsider. If he’d mistaken the significance of the public-phone approach, he hadn’t any idea how, unidentifiably, to trace or reach her. Acknowledging his last resort, Charlie lingered at two outside floral displays to get close to the first of the telephone boxes, which had become their second marker precaution, disconcerted that since their special use it had been converted from an enclosed, convenient-to-emplace shelter into a wall-mounted, hooded pod without useful nooks or crannies. So had the second, closest to the first tubular-roofed hothouse.

But, inexplicably, the third remained as he remembered, still graffiti-daubed and urine-stinking. And the foul floor wetness had soaked darkly upward through the three-day-old copy of Pravda, which, although having been partially dislodged from its under-tray support, had been folded precisely in the way he instantly recognized. Charlie refused the distracting euphoria, disentangling what remained dry to dump in a nearby bin before replacing it with his tightly rolled copy of that day’s issue.

Natalia wouldn’t risk a daylight visit, Charlie knew. Would she check that night? He had the afternoon and early evening to fill before finding out, and the tourist-group itinerary scheduled their return to the Rossiya at six. He checked his hotel room on his way, surprised to find the hold-all still there, and bought a pay-as-you-go Russian cell phone to replace his still-disabled London-issue before descending again into the Metro system. Charlie was in place in a panoramically windowed bar with a view of both front and side entrances by five thirty. And that day’s luck stayed with him. Charlie isolated his suspect within fifteen minutes, well concealed within the covered entrance of an empty office block so dark that his initial impression was of occasional movement rather than a positive physical