Red Star Burning

“No, they couldn’t.” Natalia frowned.

“What about my address in London?” pressed Charlie.

Natalia’s frown deepened. “How could they? I don’t know it. Why’s this important?”

It would increase her nervousness if he told her of the FSB burglary. “It’s something that happened in London: nothing to do with us here.” He hesitated, needing to ask her about what had appeared an assignation between Natalia and Sasha’s schoolteacher during his previous return. “Igor Karakov?”

“I didn’t know he was going to be at Gorky Park for you to see Sasha. I told you that. Until that last time I never knew if you were ever coming back: if I was ever going to change my mind about coming to you. Igor and I were only ever friends. Never lovers. I told you my decision. It was you who told me I couldn’t come. Then there were the interrogations. And now it’s too late. Now it’s all over.”

“No it isn’t!” insisted Charlie. “Nothing’s all over: we’re not over. I’ll get you and Sasha out and we are going to be together.”

“I want so much to believe you.…”

It had been a stupid mistake to go sideways: to give way to jealousy. “Are you still at the Lubyanka? You haven’t been suspended or moved to other duties?”

In contrast to how she’d slumped earlier, Natalia fixed Charlie in a very direct stare. “This is not what we talk about: not how we’ve ever talked.”

Charlie felt the slightest twitch of irritation, a reaction toward her so rare that he couldn’t remember a previous occasion. “I’m not asking for your betrayal, I’m trying to find a way out for the three of us. If I don’t find that way out, if you don’t help me find it, I can’t imagine what your service will do to you, just as you can’t imagine what they’d do to me. The one thing I don’t need to imagine-know for a positive, incontrovertible certainty-is what will happen to Sasha. Do you want her, from the moment of our arrests, to be put into a state orphanage until she’s fifteen and then thrown out, literally onto the street, nowhere to go, no one to help or guide her except the brothel traffickers waiting outside to teach her the only way she’ll be able to survive!”

Natalia began to cry, which she’d never before done in front of him, and Charlie was shocked at his own outburst, unable to believe he’d attacked her as he had. Not an attack, he tried to console himself. What had needed to be said finally to get her out of the cocoon into which she wanted to retreat rather than confront the reality of where and how they now were. “You hear what I’m saying: understand what I’m saying!”

“It would have been better if I’d understood a long time ago, wouldn’t it?” She sobbed.

Because all the factors were in place, like already tested lights simply needing to be turned on, James Straughan adhered strictly to Monsford’s insistence upon unbreakable security by deciding personally to flick all the switches, delegating to no one. Unlike America’s CIA, MI6 does not maintain its dedicated clandestine aircraft facilities but has fee-paying call upon that under the Foreign Office budget. Availability of both aircraft and crew was reconfirmed, together with morning and evening flight plans protectively stretched over the next four consecutive days into and out of Orly from Northolt military airfield on the outskirts of London, the spread adjustable to all the other time-dictated coordinates. While Straughan remained on the secure line from the Vauxhall Cross communication center, the duty officer at the MI6 rezidentura at the Paris embassy relayed the intended rendezvous with Elana Radtsic to finalize the Russians’ immediate readiness to move. Straughan stayed on hold for the time it took Harry Jacobson to go from the rezidentura to the totally secure basement communications chamber of the Moscow embassy, his confidence growing at the smoothness with which everything was slotting into its required place.

“What’s today’s drama,” cynically greeted the Moscow station chief.

“There isn’t one,” assured Straughan. “It’s to be a straight extraction on the first available direct flight. Guarantee there’s availability for the three escorts who’ll be traveling with you. Give me the flight as soon as you can, for them to make their independent reservations.”

“What about the side issues?” demanded Jacobson.

“Canceled. I thought the Director would have told you.”

There was a momentary pause as the relief swept through Jacobson. “The TV channels here have been virtually cleared for nonstop repeats of the hotel seizures.”

“It’s been media pandemonium here, too.”

“Anyone got any idea where Muffin is?”

“We don’t know and don’t care. And that’s official.”

“You okay personally: not catching any shit?”

“As okay as I’ll ever be. You think you can fix a flight tomorrow? You’re the trigger for everything else.”

“I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”

“I’ll be here waiting.” Straughan separately made his alert calls from the communications room to Radtsic’s independent escorts and had just reentered his office when the summons came on his internal line.

“You got a moment?” asked Rebecca Street.

“I’m waiting for callbacks.”

“I’ll come to you.”

Straughan hesitated. “It sounds important?”

“It is.”

“I’ll try,” promised Natalia, dry-eyed again after Charlie’s limited explanation. “It won’t be easy.”

“Don’t risk anything to draw attention to yourself,” insisted Charlie, urgently. “Just listen for any rumors or gossip from which I might be able to make some sense.” Upon which depended David Halliday’s getting something more concrete, balanced Charlie, who’d held back from telling Natalia of his earlier encounter with the man, worried that it might further unsettle her.

“There’s still a lot of both at the Lubyanka. The turmoil hasn’t subsided yet.”

“I’m surprised some of it appears to have got into newspapers here, particularly after Putin’s media clampdown.”

“I suspect they’re intentionally planted.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. I’ll try to get a steer on that, too.”

“Without taking any risks,” repeated Charlie.

“I heard you the first time.”

“Remember what else I said. I will get all of us out, safely.”

Natalia looked steadily at him for several moments. “If you say so.” She looked slightly away, to the infested bed. “I can’t stay. I need to be at Pecatnikov if there’s anything from Sasha’s summer school.” She hesitated. “Or anyone else.”

“I wasn’t going to ask you to stay, as much as I want you to.”

“I want to tell you again how-”

“Don’t,” stopped Charlie, positively. “Keeping one step ahead is the only thing to worry about from now on.”

Which was virtually the same sentiment, expressed in virtually the same words, exchanged at that moment between Rebecca Street and James Straughan in their river-bordering building almost eighteen hundred miles away in London.

It was several minutes before Andrei Radtsic, his face drained, his head shaking in disbelief, managed brokenly to speak. “I don’t understand what you’re telling me.”

“I still don’t, not properly,” admitted Elana.

“There must be something.…”

Now Elana shook her head. “Your father says this is the only way.”

Andrei moved aimlessly around the apartment, fingering objects, picking up and putting down. He turned back, gesturing open-armed. “Everything will be over … finished … your job at the university … me, here, what I might have done … I can’t take it in.…”