face, not knowing then about Radtsic,” replied Charlie, easily. “Has it been retained, with all the other additions?”
There was another shoulder movement. “It’s been in place for a long time. Why discard it now, of all times?” Her frown remained. “It’s obviously British intelligence with the wife and son. Didn’t you really know Radtsic was going to England?”
“I really didn’t know,” said Charlie.
“The committee convenes tomorrow. I’ll still have my cell phone with me but I won’t be able to take calls as freely as I could in my own office: probably won’t keep it on when we’re in session. I won’t know how we’re going to work until after tomorrow.”
“I’m introducing another precaution,” announced Charlie, lifting from beside the table a bag she hadn’t seen. “Details of your cell phone will be on record at Lubyanka, easily scanned. I’m giving you six new phones, all charge-card operated, so there’s no billing address. I didn’t buy more than one from any shop, choosing new names and addresses at random. Nothing’s traceable to you. Or me. Use one a day, discarding it when you leave Lubyanka at night but taking out the SIM card and battery before you do.”
“Do you think it’s necessary,” Natalia accepted, doubtfully.
“I do,” said Charlie, glad she’d moved on. “I’ll call at noon. If your phone’s off I’ll call at seven and if it’s still off every hour on the hour, after that. If you keep it on mute and still don’t reply I’ll know you’re with people, disconnect, and try again later.”
“I understand.”
“Understand something more,” stressed Charlie. “You’re not under suspicion, but don’t take the slightest chance. In the conditions you’ve described, internal security will be paranoid. Don’t contact me. I’ll call you, always from a different phone. And I’m no longer at the Mira.”
“What’s your new hotel like?”
“A great improvement. I’ve got the bed all to myself.”
“You needn’t be all by yourself, at least not for an hour or so.”
“Thank you both for coming back now. I didn’t want this to extend overnight,” said Aubrey Smith, coming to the end of his account of the Foreign Office encounter. “I want you to sleep on what I’ve told you and have ideas ready first thing tomorrow.”
“You caught me before I’d got home,” said Passmore.
“I’ve put my plans back,” said Jane Ambersom, relieved she’d reached Barry Elliott still at the American embassy. “I told you the sort of man Monsford is, didn’t I?”
“He’s been using the Charlie Muffin business all along,” acknowledged Smith.
“Where did Charlie’s extraction fit in?” questioned Passmore.
“I don’t precisely know and won’t guess,” admitted the Director-General. “The only thing I am sure about is that he didn’t have anything to do with Monsford’s maneuvers. It’s essential, now, that we find Charlie. Monsford’s trying to load the blame onto Charlie for everything that’s gone wrong with Radtsic.”
“If Charlie wasn’t involved, he was ahead of us all, suspecting it wasn’t a straight operation,” Jane pointed out.
“We won’t know that until we get hold of him but it looks that way. I just wish he’d break cover.”
“The last orders to those waiting for him to do just that were to use force if necessary,” reminded Passmore. “I think we should scale that down.”
“Agreed,” said Smith, at once. “Everything has to be reevaluated.”
“I’m surprised Monsford wasn’t challenged more strongly,” said Passmore. “His story still doesn’t explain his total disregard of what he was specifically ordered
“Bland and Palmer are desperate for any way out and if Monsford’s scenario works, they’ve got it,” judged Smith. “I didn’t have anything to oppose him. But there’s a very fine line we’ve got to stay behind. Whatever we do to distance ourselves, we don’t screw up Radtsic’s defection. We do anything and everything to help get the wife and son here. Which means supporting Monsford, who’s right, Radtsic
“You’ve just rounded a circle we can’t break,” complained Passmore.
“That’s why tonight, starting right now, is important,” insisted Smith. “So far we’ve caught all the shit, some of it deserved. I’ll acknowledge the mistakes in what Charlie’s done. But none of those for which we’re not responsible. If Elana and Andrei are allowed to continue on, Monsford will be the golden boy who took a huge risk that worked. We’ll be the incompetents who got everything wrong and don’t deserve to be here any longer. That’s the circle we’ve got to make into a square with enough sharp edges to snag Monsford and we’ve got a little over twelve hours to do it.”
Passmore turned sideways to Jane. “You know how the wheels go around over there.”
When all the brakes were taken off, which she now believed they were, she thought. She was encouraged minutes later when the number she rang from her office was answered and all the more so by the conversation that followed. As usual, Barry Elliott was waiting ahead of her when Jane entered the grill room at the Connought hotel an hour after that.
“I’d like to think you were held up by something involving a certain mother and son I’d guess right now are somewhere close to the Eiffel Tower,” he greeted.
“Things are happening even nearer than that,” said Jane.
Charlie’s reaction had been surprise before excitement at Natalia’s suggestion and probably because of it their lovemaking hadn’t been as good as it usually was. The real satisfaction had come afterward, entwined and tightly holding each other, neither one needing sex or to talk or even to think, just to be there and have the touch and the feel and the comfort of each other.
It was only after Natalia left, carrying her disposable telephones, that Charlie let his thinking run, although at the beginning unfocused, and his once-more-tentative mosaic turned upside down into yet another heap. Natalia was objectively right about the repercussive effects that Radtsic’s defection would have upon his getting her and Sasha safely away, but putting more locks on a stable door from which its horse had bolted was predictable. Unlocking them quickly afterward wasn’t, which just might give him the sufficient advantage of surprise. But there was a long way to go and a lot more to evaluate before they got that far, the major imponderable of which was whether Natalia would be strong enough at that final, nerve-snapping moment of crossing from one existence to another. And because it would remain imponderable it was going to hang over them, undermining their confidence until that precise moment. Which required he do as much as was conceivably possible to instill additional confidence within Natalia. He hoped he’d begun well, insisting the committee appointment was incontrovertible proof that her loyalty was now unquestioned. How was he going to maintain that necessary momentum? The most obvious way was by no longer remaining unconnected and out of touch on the periphery.
It was time to contact the embassy.
26
In the cold dawn after overnight reflection Charlie acknowledged the reaction to his reemergence would be so unpredictable that he needed not just Janus but a virtual army of two-way-facing protectors to watch his back. And all he had was David Halliday, who unquestionably qualified as two-faced but for that reason was very definitely not a protective friend. Halliday did, however, sound more in control when he answered Charlie’s arranged contact. There’d been no overnight traffic from London, Halliday said, but from online surfing of the news wires he’d established the French seizures had achieved widespread international coverage. There was no named identification but increasing speculation that the alleged kidnap had been part of a major but now-foiled espionage operation. There was further speculation that an explanation was being demanded by the French government from London, from which there had so far been no response. Neither had there been any public reaction from the Kremlin.
“I’ve got it all ready, every regulation and agreement there is for an internal inquiry if they come at me,”
