Red Star Burning

“I want to see your director, which you told me was his personal wish. I want him and everyone else, all of you, to understand something. My being here, my coming here, was entirely dependent upon Elana and Andrei being here with me. I will not stay, cooperate in any way whatsoever, unless we are together.”

“I will tell them what you’ve said.”

“Speak to your director and tell him what I’m telling you. Undertakings were given and agreed. You are not keeping your part in those undertakings.”

“I will speak to my director,” promised Jacobson. Everything had gone, vanished. Straughan had been right: it was a total, unmitigated disaster.

Gerald Monsford tried to match the blankness of the expressionless men confronting him around the table, his uncertainty worsened by one of them being Aubrey Smith, in whom, despite the facial emptiness, Monsford believed he saw triumph.

“Throughout the formulation of a joint operation approved at the highest level of government to extract an officer of the FSB, the absolute and clearly understood imperative was that there should be no diplomatic risk. Contrary to every order and instruction, you independently organized a parallel extraction of another FSB official, without any consultation or reference to us, your direct liaison to that highest level,” said Sir Archibald Bland, pedantically setting out the accusation, made that much more ominous by the calm, measured delivery.

“Yes, I did,” immediately admitted Monsford, at once encouraged by the frowned break in Smith’s composure.

“Why?” demanded Geoffrey Palmer.

“Precisely because the extraction of Natalia and her daughter was a joint operation,” declared Monsford, embarking upon what he’d concluded his best and least challengeable rebuttal. “That our two organizations were brought together was, according to my recollection, acknowledged to be an extremely rare and unusual decision. There’s been no precedent during my tenure as Director of MI6, nor, as far as I’m aware, during that of at least two of my predecessors. MI6 and MI5 are in every normal circumstance entirely separate and autonomous. It was my decision that the extraction of Maxim Mikhailovich Radtsic, the FSB’s executive deputy, was completely within the customary autonomy of my organization and did not conflict or impinge in any way with that of the woman and her child. To have conjoined the two would have created confusion and endangered both, the first of which has been destroyed anyway by the antics of the MI5 operative Charlie Muffin. …”

“You were categorically ordered against anything that could potentially exacerbate the difficulties already existing between us and the Russian Federation,” persisted Palmer. “Orders you just as categorically ignored. What you-”

“Indeed I was,” interrupted Monsford, his earlier uncertainty diminishing. “Close examination of the transcript of the meeting at which those orders were given will show my intimating the possibility of our nullifying Moscow’s actions by confronting the Russian Federation with a far greater embarrassment, which it’s my contention we’ve achieved by facilitating the defection of Maxim Mikhailovich Radtsic.”

“At the cost of at least six of your operatives, an executive jet, and Radtsic’s wife and son, who to my understanding are accusing us of attempted kidnap,” qualified Aubrey Smith. “It’s inconceivable you expect us to accept you’ve put us ahead in any tit-for-tat exchange, which was something else absolutely forbidden.”

“Nonsense,” rejected Monsford, welcoming the challenge. “We’ve still got their diplomats to exchange for the Manchester travel group, a swap Moscow will fall over themselves to agree when we make Radtsic’s defection public. And following that announcement, our having established Radtsic’s presence in England, it will be little more than a formality negotiating the French release of my officers, along with that of Elana and Andrei to continue their journey here.”

“The indications so far are that it will be anything but a simple formality,” contradicted Palmer. “The French are furious at our mounting an intelligence operation on their soil without prior consultation and agreement with their Service de Documentation Exterieure et de Contre Espionnage.”

“Of course they’re furious,” dismissed Monsford, almost contemptuous in his now totally restored confidence. “We’d be just as furious if they did something similar here. There’ll be a lot of backroom sniping and threats of broken understandings, which don’t matter a damn. What matters is that we’ve got Radtsic, who’s been at the pinnacle of Russian intelligence and espionage activities for almost three decades. Wrecking Russia’s Lvov operation was a coup without much practical benefit to us. Getting Radtsic in the bag is the espionage prize of the century.”

“As you’ve presented it, and if the French difficulty with the wife and son can be resolved, it would appear to be so,” conceded Bland.

“Then all that’s necessary,” seized Monsford, “are some discreet diplomatic negotiations with Paris-along, perhaps, with an equally discreet apology to the SDECE, which I am quite ready personally to make-for this to be recognized exactly as I’ve described it.”

Having destroyed his cell phone, Monsford had to use a pay kiosk within the Foreign Office to reach Rebecca. “‘Dogs, easily won to fawn on any man,’” he quoted the moment Rebecca lifted her receiver. “Which is what I made them do, eat out of my hand, like the well-trained pets they are. Book Scott’s for dinner: we’re going to celebrate.”

“Shall I tell Straughan you don’t want him to wait here?”

“I don’t want Straughan much more for anything. Tell him what you like.”

Which is what Rebecca did, verbally repeating to the operations director Monsford’s every word. In London it was 5:15 P.M., in Paris it was 7:15 P.M.; and in Moscow it was 8:15 P.M. when Charlie rose at Natalia’s entry to the restaurant.

25

“I’m sorry I’m late.”

“We didn’t set a time.” Natalia hadn’t come straight from the Lubyanka, Charlie knew. Her hair was perfectly in place and the black dress didn’t look as if it had been worn throughout a busy day. What little makeup she wore appeared fresh, too.

Natalia hesitated, studying the table, placing it within the restaurant. “Sitting here isn’t a coincidence, is it?”

“I wondered if you’d remember.”

Natalia gave a brief smile. “I remember this table from our first-ever time here and I haven’t forgotten, either, that beneath Charlie the hard man there’s Charlie the romantic.…” The smile went. “And you’ll never know how much I wish things weren’t as they are now.”

What the hell did that mean? “Why don’t we order before we talk?”

“You order for me?” she said, uninterestedly.

Charlie chose fish for her in preference to the boar he’d decided upon while he’d waited and the already selected Georgian wine, unsettled by her mood. “Now let’s talk.”

“How much do you know?”

“Just what I’ve picked up from television, that a Russian mother and her son are being held in France. The diplomatic reference to the two Englishmen is a clear enough espionage identification even without the impounded plane.” Charlie intentionally limited his reply to avoid Natalia’s suspecting he had a secondary source.

Natalia sipped her wine to cover the hesitation Charlie recognized not just to be her positive, no-going-back moment of commitment but the point at which she knowingly crossed their self-erected barrier against their betraying either country’s intelligence. The hesitation continued even when she began talking, naming Radtsic and his wife and son but not knowing how the French seizure had come about. Charlie didn’t interrupt, not wanting to lose something more important for a less essential clarification. Only in the last few moments did she bring her head up, the guilt obvious. “I hated doing that. I … I despise myself.”

The arrival of their meal allowed Charlie a brief reflection. “All our professional lives we’ve kept our oath, adjusted our morality for institutions whose only morality is the expediency of the moment. You’re not betraying