throughout the European Union, and across America and Canada.”
“What about Russia?” demanded Monsford, hunched over the unread file.
“Nothing terrestrial or local-print yet: satellite will of course be available, most definitely our BBC World Service and CNN.”
“Bastards!” hissed Monsford, almost incoherently. “Bastards, bastards, bastards.”
At Monsford’s gesture for her to deny his presence, Rebecca picked up the demanding telephone, insisted Monsford still hadn’t returned, and promised the call would be returned the moment he did.
“Geoffrey Palmer,” she identified. “They’ve been told your cell phone is unreachable.”
“The circuit board’s buckled,” dismissed Monsford. “How did it leak to the French?”
“I haven’t been able to find out yet,” admitted the operations director. “Halliday denies Jacobson told him anything. It was a limited conversation with Jacobson, but he’s adamant he didn’t discuss anything with Halliday either. Jacobson thinks Radtsic made the phone call he’d forbidden the man to make to Elana, in Paris. That’s the line he’s going to take with Radtsic, when Radtsic discovers Elana and Andrei aren’t at the safe house. I obviously haven’t been able to talk to anyone in France, apart from Painter, but Andrei’s another potential source. We know the kid didn’t want to be part of it.…” Straughan indicated the ignored Rebecca. “We’ve talked about that possibility. There are several problems with it. It would have been far more likely for Andrei to have gone to his own people at the Russian embassy than to the French, wouldn’t it? It would have been more natural for the girl, Yvette, to do that, if Andrei told her what was going to happen. But that falls down, too. Neither Elana nor Andrei knew precisely where we were flying from: the ambush was in place on the Orly autoroute and there was a squad already at the airport itself, simultaneously, to impound the plane.”
“What about Charlie Muffin?”
Straughan frowned. “He was always the diversion. He didn’t know anything.”
“He’s a double: tricked us all. He’s gone over to the Russians!” Monsford insisted.
“Whether he has or hasn’t doesn’t affect this,” refused Straughan, ignoring Rebecca’s look. “Charlie Muffin didn’t know anything about Radtsic: if he had-and has gone over-the first thing he’d surely have done was stop Radtsic’s defection?”
“Charlie Muffin has to have had something to do with this!” persisted Monsford, his voice rising against their opposition.
“You’re going to be asked for a lot of explanations,” cautioned Rebecca.”They’ll need logical answers. It not logical to include Charlie Muffin in whatever’s gone wrong.”
“Whose side are you on!”
“That question isn’t logical, either,” rejected the woman. “We’re confronting a disaster from which we’re not going to escape with illogical accusations.”
Monsford looked between the two. “Other people knew.”
Rebecca broke the silence that followed. “I don’t understand that remark.”
“Who, outside this room, have either of you discussed Radtsic’s extraction with?”
“I have discussed the Radtsic extraction with no one outside this room and every discussion I have had within this room has been recorded on your personal system specifically installed for that purpose,” replied Rebecca, with stilted formality.
“Every discussion about the Radtsic extraction in which I have been involved within this room is on the same system,” matched Straughan. “Every discussion I have had outside this room, either from my own office or from the communication supervisor’s office, is similarly held on the equipment specifically installed for such purposes.”
“I hope I can believe you,” said Monsford.
“I hope you can believe me, too,” said Rebecca.
“As I also hope you can believe me,” said Straughan.
The jarring telephone broke this next silence and for several moments Monsfsord looked at it, once starting to look toward the woman. He finally lifted it, briefly listened, and said: “I have just this minute come into the building. I’ll be with you on time.”
“Do you want us to come with you?” asked Rebecca, as Monsford rose.
“No,” said the man.
“You’ve forgotten your briefing papers,” said Straughan.
“I don’t need them.”
Rebecca waited for several minutes after the door closed before saying: “He forgot his recording machine, too. But then he’d already done that by not turning it on.”
Maxim Mikhailovich Radtsic physically rose from his chair as Jacobson talked. He remained standing, hunched forward as if worried at missing a single word, shaking his lowered head in disbelief.
“How…? You told me it was all arranged…? Foolproof…”
“That’s what we’ve got to speak about. Sit down, Maxim Mikhailovich.”
Radtsic slumped down and looking questioningly from Jacobson to the three other escorts in the room. “A drink. I need a drink. Vodka.”
One of the unnamed men left the room. Radtsic pulled himself forward in his chair, making a physical effort to recover. “Tell me everything that happened.”
“You’ve heard all I know,” insisted Jacobson. “Now you’ve got to help us.”
“What can I tell you?” demanded the Russian, reaching out for the escort-offered vodka from a tray laden with ice and the remaining bottle. “You know it all:
“In Moscow you told me you wanted to telephone Elana: tell her it was all finalized,” Jacobson spelled out, cautiously, his mind functioning on two levels. “And I-”
“Warned me against doing so,” interrupted Radtsic, holding out his empty glass.
“But did you?” demanded Jacobson, hoping for a startled admission.
Instead, Radtsic stretched out unseeingly for the new drink, but with his concentration entirely upon Jacobson. “Of course I didn’t!” he said, his voice no longer uncertain. “What you told me made obvious sense. The risk was too great.”
Unspeaking, Jacobson in turn held his concentration on the man, trying to prevent his mental focus going sideways to the nagging concern at his personal expectations.
“You don’t believe me!” accused Radtsic when Jacobson didn’t speak, his normal peremptory tone completely restored. “I did everything as you wanted: never allowed the slightest risk, not taking any chances. You’re the one, you and your people, who fucked up … who’ve got to sort it out … make it work as you assured me you would.”
“I told you Andrei didn’t want to come,” Jacobson reminded, flatly. Why had the arrogant bastard so clearly identified him on the automatic recording system!
“And I told you however reluctant Andrei was, after hearing his mother explain, he’d cross with her. Andrei isn’t the cause of this: none of it.”
Another personal identification, Jacobson recognized. “That’s not the impression of the people who made contact with Elana and Andrei in Paris.”
“The impression of the people who made contact in Paris!” sneeringly echoed the Russian, holding his glass sideways for more vodka without bothering to look at the man serving it. “Are you talking about those people who allowed themselves to be captured with my wife and son and ruined their escape!”
“Your escape’s not ruined!” refused Jacobson, desperately.
Radtsic, his face clearing, came farther forward in his chair, ignoring the man with the third drink. “At last, some sense! When are they arriving?”
“I didn’t say they’re coming,” squirmed Jacobson. “We’re trying to sort it out and to sort it out we need to know how and why they were intercepted.”
“Answer your own questions!” loudly insisted Radtsic. “Find out and sort it out! It’s the French: your allies, your European partners who are holding them! Tell Paris to release them and bring them here, to me.”
“That’s what we’re trying to do: why we’re talking like this.”
“I was promised I’d be personally meeting your director. Where is he?”
“Working on what we’re all trying to achieve, a way of resolving this.”
