Red Star Burning

Both had leaked away during the near-sleepless, self-analyzing night and flattened even more with the first of his arranged contacts with Natalia.

While acknowledging it to be understandable, Charlie was still disappointed that Natalia’s previous-day deflation hadn’t lifted. His overnight thinking had concluded that while his mistakes made Natalia and Sasha’s rescue hugely more difficult, it was possible as long as he remained undetected. Natalia, in total contrast, appeared to have sunk into acceptance of inevitable disaster. She’d dismissed the misconceptions as being his, not her, fault and heaped further remorse on herself for not having anything to offer from the Lubyanka. Trying to break her mood, Charlie actually accused her of self-defeat and self-pity and now, entering another kiosk for his second arranged call of the day, was unsure if he hadn’t been too severe on her.

“Can you talk?” Charlie opened, without identifying himself when Halliday answered.

“I’m not sure, not anymore.”

Charlie’e stomach dipped. “Why not?”

“I’m back on board, which I know you’re not. It’s different now.”

If Halliday completely believed he’d been reintegrated, he’d have put down the telephone the moment he’d recognized his voice. “I believed in London that I was on board too, remember?”

“That’s your problem to sort out.”

“I did, by realizing in time that I was the chosen fall guy,” hurried Charlie, sure he was keeping the anxiety from his voice. “Remember that, too? You really believe you’re fully back in the loop? That’s what you’ve got to be absolutely convinced of: that and something equally important. That you’re absolutely safe. That’s the magic word, safety. You got the absolute guarantee of that, David? Or aren’t you suspicious that having been excluded from everything until now, you’ve been picked out as the sacrificial fall guy now they don’t have me for the job?” Bite, you squirming bastard, Charlie thought: swallow the fucking hook!

“I can look after myself.”

He was unsure! “That wasn’t the impression I got yesterday.”

“Nothing can go wrong inside an embassy.”

Halliday was the point man, seized Charlie. And didn’t know enough of his last Moscow assignment to identify a manipulation. “Of course nothing can go wrong inside an embassy! You know what? I wouldn’t be at all surprised if that wasn’t the thinking of that poor sod for whose murder I was last here. You know, the one killed in the embassy grounds?”

“It’s not the same,” protested Halliday, weakly.

“He certainly wasn’t the same when they finished with him,” pressured Charlie. “Did you hear how he was tortured? He only had one arm and they used acid to take off the fingertips of the one hand he still had, to stop his being identified. They took his eyes out, too. And his tongue. All while he was alive…” Charlie could hear uneven, gulped breathing from the other man. “Our being able to talk like this means you’re in the rezidentura by yourself. Where’s everyone else? Do you know how you fit into the complete picture?”

“It was you who reminded me how operations are compartmented!” blurted Halliday.

“Which I shouldn’t have needed to tell you,” coaxed Charlie, sure he had the other man well and truly on his line. “It’s the first lesson, hammered home. But I never accepted it: it was such an obvious one-way ticket to the cliff edge. I kept the golden rule always in the forefront of my mind, as I was told to, and on every assignment I worked my ass off, breaking it to find out as much as I could about what I wasn’t supposed to know. Which wasn’t disobedience or disloyalty or any contravention of any Official Secrets Act. It was to keep myself alive in an environment in which we’re also taught we’re indispensable until that rule’s changed for a greater indispensable need. And why I’m still alive and you’re all by yourself in an empty rezidentura without a fucking clue what you’re doing and won’t be told if you ask. The only thing you can be sure about is that you don’t know whether you’re going to get a pat on the back or a knife stuck into it.”

The breathing was heavier and more uneven, although Charlie didn’t believe Halliday was actually breaking down. There was, eventually, a word that Charlie didn’t catch but then it came again and Charlie heard: “Bastards.”

“Why are they bastards?” Charlie asked at once, not wanting to lose the momentum he’d created.

“Keeping me out: treating me like this.”

He’d made another mistake with Halliday, Charlie acknowledged, although not as great as MI6 by inducting Halliday. He didn’t any longer think Halliday’s constant sideways shuffle from difficulty was his pension concern. It was an abject terror of a job he’d got but never wanted once he’d discovered what it entailed and from which he’d always been running. “I’m here to help you help yourself, David. I can get you safely through this if you trust me.”

“It is the extraction I thought it was.”

He still had to be careful Halliday didn’t spit the hook out. “Who?”

“Janus. The code name’s Janes. I told you that.”

More self-justification, Charlie recognized. Now the all-important question. “What’s the genuine identity?”

“All I know is Janus. That’s the name I’ve got to use calling Straughan.”

“You haven’t managed to get back into Jacobson’s safe?”

“I can’t break the combination, either into his office or the safe itself.”

It had to be a major extraction for the MI6 operations director to be personally involved. “Tell me about Janus.”

“It’s the launch code.”

“It’ll be specific,” demanded Charlie, professionally.

“Janus has gone.”

“That’s the green code, Janus has gone?”

“Yes.”

“What’s the red?”

“Janus is stopped.”

“Is it today?”

There was the first hesitation. “I’m on twenty-four-hour standby.”

“At the embassy?”

Another pause. “I already told you I’m working from inside.”

“Who actually briefed you?

“Straughan.”

Confirmation that it was a major extraction, decided Charlie, positively. “Who’s your relay, here?”

“I don’t know.”

“What’s Jacobson’s function?”

“I don’t know.”

He’d started to row back. “They’re really keeping you out, aren’t they?”

“You’re doing the same. You’re not telling me what you’re going to do.”

And I don’t intend to, thought Charlie, a decision half formed. “Keep out of the way, until your thing’s over.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I believe I was intended to be the disposable part in the Janus extraction.”

“None of the special team is involved in Janus,” challenged Halliday.

“How do you know that?”

“I asked Straughan: said I assumed they were on the same assignment. That was when I got the compartmentalization argument. He said they were nothing to do with it and that I should keep myself apart from them.”

And why it had been easy persuading the paranoid Halliday that he wasn’t safe, realized Charlie. “They haven’t been withdrawn?”

“You think I should watch myself?” demanded Halliday, anxiously.

“I don’t think you should explore dark alleys with them,” goaded Charlie. “They still ostracizing you in the