identification. It remained that way until the arrival and disembarkation of the tourist coach, when the shifting impression emerged for Charlie to identify as Patrick Wilkinson, the only man on his supposed support team whom he’d previously known.
And then there was another movement, closer to the front of the hotel but emerging from an equally professionally chosen concealing porch. Charlie at once dismissed the man as being another of his memorized backup group. Just as quickly Charlie discounted the obvious surveillance to be FSB, not solely because of the Western tailoring of the gray-checked suit but far more tantalizingly because of his immediate conviction that he’d somehow, somewhere, previously known-or encountered-the watching man.
But how? Where? It wasn’t possible. Yes it was, came the quick contradiction, as Charlie made the positive identification. He’d isolated the man as he’d intently studied those around him on the Amsterdam flight from which he’d fled. The same suited, bespectacled person whose closely barbered neatness was marred by a bushed walrus mustache had been two rows behind but on the opposite side of the aisle.
It had been an even more successful day than Charlie could have hoped for and he was already curious at what was to follow. So, too, but independently were Aubrey Smith and Gerald Monsford, eighteen hundred miles away in London.
Both intelligence chiefs recognized the symbolism of the breakfast conference in the Foreign Office room overlooking 10 Downing Street and each made a gesture of his own by pointedly arriving separately and without prior consultation for the examination of their supposedly joint venture. Aubrey Smith entered last, although not late, behind both Geoffrey Palmer, who was to chair the session as the Foreign Office liaison to the Joint Intelligence and Security Committee, and Cabinet Secretary Sir Archibald Bland.
It was Bland, though, who quickly established the agenda. “The arrest of Russian diplomats has greatly embarrassed Moscow. Aware as we are of what else is going on, we’re anxious to know how much longer-and further-you intend stretching out the situation.”
“What have the Russians said?” asked the MI5 Director-General.
“They’ve refused anything beyond demanded diplomatic immunity and access to embassy lawyers. We’ve delivered two official Notes and publicly summoned the ambassador here to the Foreign Office for an explanation. Which, of course, we haven’t got and didn’t expect. They’re offering a guilty plea, with a mitigating submission of extreme and inexcusable drunkenness. They accept without protest or threatened retaliation our declaring all three persona non grata and expelling them.”
“The media will ridicule that,” insisted Monsford, his own agenda prepared. “And it’s naive to imagine they won’t make a tit-for-tat retaliation: they always do. With hindsight it was a mistake to stage the arrest in the first place. Had I been consulted in advance, I would have opposed it as a completely unnecessary side issue.”
“I have already offered Director Monsford the opportunity to withdraw his participation,” said Smith, to frowned looks between the two government officers. “That offer remains. His officers can easily be recalled from Moscow.”
“If there’s disagreement between you both, this discussion is even more essential,” said Bland. “We accept Moscow will reciprocate. But we can’t-and won’t-make that reciprocation easy for them by mounting an operation about which you’re uncertain. I thought we’d already made that abundantly clear. Is there a problem?”
“Not as far as I am concerned.” Smith wasn’t worried at Monsford’s outburst.
“Director?” invited the cabinet secretary.
Monsford hesitated, off-balanced by Smith’s unanticipated assertion, unsure how to reverse it. “I am surprised by the Director-General’s response.”
“Why?” demanded the increasingly frowning Bland.
“Yes, why?” echoed Smith.
“You will have read the newspaper furor at the mystery disappearance in Amsterdam from a Moscow-bound flight?” questioned Monsford.
“No,” refused Bland. “I don’t read the popular press.”
“I know what you’re talking about,” said Palmer, more helpfully. “What about it?”
“There’s no mystery: the vanishing man is Charlie Muffin,” announced Monsford, who’d had Harry Jacobson’s surveillance relayed by Straughan, but been prevented from speaking directly to his Moscow station head because of Jacobson’s time-clashing meeting with Maxim Radtsic.
“What the…?” stumbled Palmer.
“Why weren’t we told?” finished Bland.
“Charlie switched his arrival, going in on a tourist flight instead of how we’d arranged,” elaborated Smith, in a calm monotone. “It was, as you’re aware, always the understanding that Charlie would work independently. That’s what he chose to do.”
“Without any approval, aware as he was of the publicity his disappearance would create, as well as blowing his false-name cover before he even got into Russia!” interrupted Monsford, emphasizing strained indignation. “It was crassly irresponsible, threatening the entire operation. And in the context of this meeting provides Moscow with a basis for retaliation as embarrassing as that they’re suffering.”
“It provides nothing of the sort: neither was it crassly irresponsible,” rejected Aubrey Smith, contemptuously. “It was an action that, allowed to act independently, Charlie was authorized to make. We know he has arrived undetected in Moscow, as well as the hotel in which he was booked although I don’t expect him to remain there.”
“This is a totally unnecessary, attention-attracting charade,” repeated Monsford. “I do not wish to withdraw my participation. What I do seek, at this moment, is my appointment as official, recognized supervisor of this operation, the failure to confirm which will, I believe, result in the debacle the majority of us are determined to avoid.”
“In response to which, I in turn invite you to consider the available records of every shared meeting between our two services,” said Smith, the flat-voiced outer calmness giving no hint of the gamble upon which he was knowingly embarking. “From those records I would suggest there are overwhelming indications of such inconsistency and prevarication on the part of my counterpart at MI6 that to agree to a single Control management would do more to guarantee than prevent a debacle. Charlie Muffin’s independence was, rightly or wrongly in hindsight, agreed by us all. Your study of the records I’m offering include my belief that Muffin would disregard any cancellation and continue whatever he considered necessary to save his wife and child. Those records also contain my colleague’s rejection of the one guaranteed way of removing the threat of Charlie Muffin acting alone, as I wholly reject it. If you find against me, on either continuing the extraction as a shared operation or in the only assured way of preventing my officer continuing, unsupported, then I must tender my immediate resignation.”
A silence iced the room. Through the triple-glazed windows an equally silent tableau unfolded, featuring the prime minister emerging from his official residence, responding to questions after a brief statement to waiting journalists, and returning inside.
Geoffrey Palmer said: “This has turned out to be a very different discussion from what I imagined it would be.”
Sir Archibald Bland said: “I think it would be advantageous for us and perhaps others to study the offered transcripts before continuing this discussion any further.”
Harry Jacobson decreed their pickup should be at the obelisk commemoration to Yuri Gagarin, complete with its minuscule, actual-size orb in which the man contorted himself for the world’s first manned space flight, Jacobson’s alarm flaring the moment he began his ahead-of-time reconnaissance at the sight of the militia road check, two vans and at least five officers, although Jacobson’s was not one of the cars pulled over. He had, though, to go slowly, which he did more than was necessary to identify the uniforms of the GIA highway police. The openly corrupt shakedown of motorists given the option of paying an on-the-spot “fine” or accepting an eventually more expensive official, invented traffic violation was not unusual, which made it perfect cover for the seizure Jacobson constantly feared. Would Maxim Radtsic be frightened for the same reason, if the Russian wasn’t orchestrating the entire episode?
It was thirty minutes too early for him to find out and Jacobson let his mind return to the previous night’s resented, secondary assignment at the Rossiya Hotel. It was totally unreasonable, as well as dangerously impractical, for him to juggle three balls in the air at the same time. And Jacobson hadn’t been impressed with the
