Charlie.
“All the other examining groups are handling copies,” said Natalia.
“Then you’re right,” finally agreed Charlie. “It’s impossible for them to have photocopied a thirty-year archive in just thirty-six hours,”
“So what’s going on?” asked Natalia.
“I don’t know,” replied Charlie. “It’s not our problem. When’s Sasha back?”
“The day after tomorrow.”
“Thursday,” identified Charlie. “Are you working weekends?”
“Of course.”
“I’ll have everything before then. We’ll go for Sunday.”
After several moments, Natalia said: “How?”
“The safest way. I haven’t yet chosen which.”
“Sasha will know it’s not a holiday: that it’s still term time.”
“Don’t say anything to her until Saturday. And only then that it’s a surprise and that the school has agreed. And don’t let her see any of her friends, after you’ve told her.”
“You’ll be with us, won’t you? I won’t be going alone?”
Charlie was unsettled by her complete reliance. “That’s the idea, isn’t it: that at last we’ll all be together?”
“I hope so: hope so very much.”
Charlie wished there weren’t so much uncertainty in her voice. “This is probably the last full time we’ll have together.”
Natalia checked her watch. “I could come back to the hotel for two hours.”
“I’d hoped you could.”
“I want you with me when we go, Charlie: I want to know you’re somewhere close,” she suddenly blurted. “I don’t want it to be just Sasha and me.”
“From Sunday you’re never going to be by yourselves, not ever again.”
It was just after nine when they left the restaurant. In London it was still only six thirty and everyone was still working.
“There’s got to have been a leak.” Monsford was striding up and down in front of the panoramic river view, more angry than nervous. From beside the man’s desk, Rebecca Street had already indicated the sound apparatus was inactive.
“How can there have been a leak?” demanded James Straughan. “Jacobson and Charlie have never met and Jacobson categorically denies he said anything to Halliday, who wasn’t ever involved until the last minute, upon your orders, which were also that Halliday worked blind.”
“It’s not difficult to work out,” calmed Rebecca. “We’re misleading ourselves. Charlie Muffin can’t have had any reason for getting off the Amsterdam plane, apart from distrusting his own shadow. Now he’s got a reason, after the publicity over the seizure of Elana and Andrei. Charlie’s a consummate professional who’s learned and practiced ten times more than anyone ever learns at training school. He’ll have worked out that we’re involved with the two Russian nationals in France at the same time as we’re supposed to be part of the extraction of his wife and child.”
“Elana and Andrei haven’t been identified and there’s been no publicity that Radtsic’s already here!” rejected Monsford, slumping back into his chair.
“People like Charlie Muffin, who trusts no one, can multiply two plus two into the national debt!” argued Rebecca. “What little is publicly known is more than enough to spook Charlie Muffin from coming within a million miles of any of our people.”
Monsford shook his head in refusal, turning to Straughan. “What’s Briddle say?”
“Just that MI5 have retreated into their
“I beat Aubrey Smith into a frazzle in the beginning but he recovered almost completely with the fucking cooperation refusal,” said Monsford, in a rare admission.
“What do we do about our three in Moscow?” asked Straughan.
“They stay!” insisted the MI6 Director, at once. “Now Muffin’s crawled from beneath the stone he’s been under, I want to be his shadow: every time he farts, I want to hear it. I’m not having the Radtsic coup taken away from me by Charlie Muffin.”
“I’ve nominally appointed Briddle our field supervisor,” said Straughan. “Do you have any specific instructions?”
Monsford hesitated, head bent. It certainly wasn’t better to face slings and arrows, he decided: the only way was to take up arms against the sea of trouble. Looking up, he said: “Tell him to call me at ten prompt tomorrow, his time. I’ll take the call personally.”
“It sounds as if you won?” suggested Jane Ambersom.
“We won’t have won until Monsford’s removed, which I’m determined to make happen before I’m fired,” said Aubrey Smith.
“Do you think it was a serious threat?” queried John Passmore.
“Totally serious,” confirmed the MI5 Director-General. “And if I go I’ll go down in flame, which means it’s imperative you get whatever Straughan has.”
“He’s not taking my calls either on his landline or his cell phone,” said Jane.
“Keep trying,” said Smith.
“Are the MI6 backup being withdrawn?” asked Passmore. “Wilkinson doesn’t think it’s going to be easy operating separately out of the same building.”
“I want to speak to Charlie direct,” demanded Smith. “Have Wilkinson tell him that. Tell him also to warn Charlie to watch his back. Talking to Jane, Straughan didn’t rule out physical violence.”
“It’s unthinkable that Monsford would contemplate anything physical against a British intelligence officer,” insisted Passmore.
“No, it’s not,” said Jane, even more insistently. “That’s exactly what he’ll be thinking if it means saving himself.”
28
Charlie worked on the assumption that Patrick Wilkinson, either knowingly or otherwise, would not be alone on the circle line, which he’d most likely join from the station closest to the British embassy. It was also possible they’d imagine he’d get on at Smolenskaya, too, and assemble an ambush there long before his ten A.M. departure, using Wilkinson as their on-time bait. Their obvious concentration would be around the entrance, to avoid which he started his approach from Kurskaya at the height of Moscow’s eight o’clock rush hour, sandwiching himself into the second-to-last carriage, which he’d established from his previous day’s footslogging disgorged its passengers into the instant concealment of a vaulted support column and an angled wall. From its cover he allowed himself a protective sweep for a recognizable face, with the train still at the platform for instant escape, before edging himself back into the human flow that took him to his already chosen observation spot, a set of metal service stairs leading up to a mezzanine range of Control offices twenty meters beyond the towering escalator banks to the circle line’s snack, media, and tobacco kiosks. The overshadowing darkness of the service stairwell gave Charlie unbroken observation of arriving and disembarking commuters as well as an uninterrupted view of the other most likely hideaways from which others trained in his craft would wait in readiness for him to appear. And if they chose his hideaway to be theirs, he had a second girdered stairwell farther along the concourse beneath which he could merge unseen. There was even a conveniently low horizontal stress bar separating two of the upright girders against which he propped himself to take his full weight off his troublesome feet.
It was eight fifty before Charlie made the first recognition, relieved it was Neil Preston, a fellow MI5 officer.
