Red Star Burning

“You told me that before you left,” reminded Straughan.

“Now I’m telling you again. Tell Rebecca the same.”

Jacobson was waiting at the door for Monsford. “He’s still in his room: probably seen you arrive. I’ve set things up in the drawing room.”

Monsford shrugged, discomfited at not having control over the automatic audio and film equipment throughout the house. “I’m to be interrupted if there’s any contact. And you were wrong about no news updates. There’ve been several.”

“I told you I wasn’t checking the coverage,” reminded Jacobson. “Do you want me to sit in with you?”

“Why should I: he’s got good English, hasn’t he?”

“I’m the person Radtsic knows: is most familiar with. I thought it might help.”

“I’ll see him alone.” It would still be recorded.

“Will you eat with him?”

“Let’s get on with it, for Christ’s sake!” demanded Monsford, impatiently.

The drawing room was at the back of the house, overlooking an expansive, terrace-stepped grassland sporadically hedged between stands of well-established, tightly cultivated trees. At the very bottom of the terrace was a swimming pool that ran its entire width, and far beyond that, over the tops of still more trees, there was the hazed outline of Letchworth. In the interior of the room, over couches and enveloping easy chairs were pleated and tasseled loose covering chintzes, an inner circle grouped casually around a fireplace fronting a low but large table upon which a vacuum coffeepot and cups were already set. Filling the dead fireplace was a huge flower display of what Monsford guessed to be from the outside garden.

Forewarned by the sound of its opening, Monsford, hand outstretched in readiness, was directly behind the door when Maxim Radtsic started to enter. The Russian abruptly halted, visibly pulling both arms back in refusal. “In Russia it is not done to shake hands on a threshold. It signifies it will be the only meeting.” He intruded a pause. “Perhaps it is indeed an omen.”

Monsford backed away, changing the offered hand into an indication toward the flower-dominated space and its encompassing couches and chair. “I’m sure it isn’t.”

Radtsic followed the gesture but didn’t sit. “What time are my wife and son arriving?”

“Please sit,” encouraged Monsford, doing so himself, glad the door was closing behind Jacobson, although always conscious of the cameras. “There’s coffee.”

Radtsic perched himself awkwardly on the very edge of an easy chair. “I do not want coffee. I want vodka. And a reply to my question.”

Monsford pressed a summons bell bordering the fireplace. “It is through no mistake or fault of ours that this problem has arisen. I’m aware you’ve been told in the greatest possible detail all we’ve been able to discover. From that you know your wife and son were being escorted by my officers to an aircraft waiting to bring them safely here.”

“They’re not safely here, are they!” rejected Radtsic, irritably. “They’re very unsafely in France, where they will have been fully identified.”

The eavesdropping Jacobson entered already carrying a tray upon which were a full, freezer-frosted vodka bottle, an ice bucket, and two glasses. He almost filled both, adding more when Radtsic shook his head against ice. At Monsford’s refusing head shake, Radtsic said: “You’re not prepared to drink with me!”

“Like you, I did not want ice,” Monsford tried to recover, hot at the awareness of his second filmed mistake. Monsford raised his unwanted glass and said: “Here’s to your new life, here in the West.”

“Only a new life if it’s with my family,” corrected the other man, “About whom you still have not properly answered my question.”

Having until now seen the facial resemblance only from photographs, Monsford was struck by Radtsic’s similarity to Stalin. “They are still in France, where they have accused my officers of kidnap, escalating what could have been negotiated away as a misunderstanding into a criminal matter.”

“Are you accusing them of being responsible for what’s happened!” flared Radtsic, outraged.

“Of course I’m not,” denied Monsford, his disappointment at the antagonism slightly eased by the first wisp of the so-far-eluded idea. “I was, though, worried when my officer in Paris told me that Andrei initially refused to come.”

“You are accusing them!”

“What I am doing, Maxim Mikhailovich, is being subjective. We do not yet know how the French interception was instigated. Which shouldn’t, though, be our immediate focus. That has to be getting them released and safely here.” Monsford was surprised at what little effect the already consumed vodka had upon the Russian, watching him refill his glass.

Radtsic frowned. “That’s what I’m waiting for you to tell me, how and when they’re getting here!”

“They’re not, not today,” declared Monsford, positively. “Our problem is the kidnap allegation. And the association of my officers in that allegation. Because of that the British government are being refused access: any contact whatsoever…”

“What the hell’s your point!” demanded Radtsic, seizing the intentionally allowed pause.

“You, the husband and father,” said Monsford, simply, the concept complete in his mind. “There can be no legal prevention against your being allowed contact. Nor does your being here contravene French law. I’ve obviously held back from publicly announcing your being here, because of what’s happened to Elana and Andrei. Now I want to announce it, publicize it. And at the same time connect you by a visual TV conference link not just to Elana and Andrei but simultaneously to French officials. If you can persuade Elana or Andrei to withdraw the allegation they’ll have to be released, to continue here to join you.”

For several moments Radtsic remained unspeaking, all truculence gone. “Is it technically possible?”

“Yes,” insisted Monsford. “I can have technicians here in hours, setting it up, as well as French-speaking lawyers to argue the law on your behalf.”

Once more Radtsic considered the idea, topping up what little could be added to Monsford’s scarcely touched glass and refilling his, which he held out to Monsford. “I have not behaved as I should. I apologize.”

“It is totally understandable,” accepted Monsford, as their glasses touched. “I drink to your reunion.”

Shakespeare had been right, as he always was, thought Monsford: sweet are the uses of adversity. And from where better could the sentiment come than As You Like It, which he did like, very much indeed.

“You are sure?” insisted Aubrey Smith.

“Absolutely positive,” said Jane Ambersom.

“And you can get hold of it?”

“Yes,” she risked.

“There’s still the self-incriminating problem,” accepted Smith.

“I think there’s a way around that,” said Jane.

“Does it tie in with what Wilkinson’s relayed from Moscow about Charlie’s refusal to work with MI6?” asked John Passmore, joining the review.

“I haven’t the slightest idea what Charlie’s uncovered,” said Smith. “But Jane’s story seems to support what Charlie’s demanding.” He smiled, humorlessly. “I can hardly wait for Palmer and Bland’s reaction.”

“From what little we think we know, Charlie and our three aren’t just confronting the Russians to get Natalia and Sasha out. They’re opposed by Monsford and three of his people already in Moscow and completely briefed on the intended extraction,” cautioned Passmore.

“Go back to Straughan,” the Director-General told Jane. “Promise him every protection, whatever he wants, to get whatever he’s got. Tell him I’ll meet him personally if it’ll help.”

“He’s terrified,” warned Jane.

“So am I,” said Smith.

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