“There’s not a lot more to discuss at this stage,” he resumed, choosing a bench that kept the Metro’s single entrance and exit in sight. “I met with Passmore after the general session at Vauxhall Cross.”
“I know. The Russian passports were shipped separately, direct to me.”
“Unknown to the three from MI6?”
“Yes.”
“You’re sure?”
“Positive.”
“Those are the ones I want. As well as twenty-five thousand pounds, all in U.S. dollars.”
“What about tickets?”
“The twenty-five thousand is traveling expense.”
“Traveling about which you’re not going to give me any details?”
“No. But I want you to be overheard by the others discussing the Polish exit.”
“We’re not to be involved at all, are we?”
“No.”
“That’s ridiculous,” protested Wilkinson. “You’re not just an FSB target: I’ve just told you Smith’s convinced our own side might even want to kill you. You spell out how much more important Natalia has become: why it’s imperative she gets to England. And cap the whole fucking thing telling me you’re going to do it all by yourself.”
“I’m still free because I know how to stay that way. And I performed the Amsterdam vanishing trick because Monsford’s involvement stank from the beginning and now we know why.”
“No, we don’t,” rejected Wilkinson. “We don’t know why you’re at risk from Monsford. I accept we fucked up this morning. You’ve got every reason to be pissed off. But you’ll fail, trying to run the extraction entirely alone. And you know it!”
And Aubrey Smith wouldn’t allow it either, Charlie accepted. And could forbid the passport handover. “I don’t intend running the extraction alone: of course that’s impossible. You’ll all be part of it at the very end. It’s the logistics I’m compartmenting, just as the FSB are compartmenting their Lvov investigation. You’ve got MI6 in permanent pursuit: I haven’t. I can move about, make the plans. You can’t.”
“Aubrey Smith still won’t sanction it,” warned Wilkinson.
“He wouldn’t have liked people from whom he believes I’m in physical danger being led to me this morning,” said Charlie.
“How will I get the passports and money to you, if London approves?”
“I’ll call you, personally, at the
“I might not get a quick response from London, with so much going on elsewhere.”
“Nine o’clock tomorrow morning, as it’s striking,” said Charlie. “And I know you’ll try to follow me when we split up and my feet hurt too much to fuck about losing you, so I’ll come with you back to the Metro to know where you are.…” He took the London-issued cell phone from his pocket. “Did you pick up the tracker signal?”
“After your first call,” admitted Wilkinson.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” asked Charlie, glad he’d followed his instinct.
“Our orders are to look after you, now we’ve linked up,” reminded Wilkinson. “You don’t have to worry about cell-phone trackers anymore.”
There’d been an element of luck, Stephen Briddle congratulated himself as he saw the two get up from the park bench, but he’d worked most of it out himself after learning from Denning and Beckindale’s calls that Wilkinson wasn’t moving from the circle line’s 986 service, positioning them on clockwise platforms to confirm it and already onboard, waiting, when Charlie finally joined it two stations later. He’d managed to keep up with all the line switches, allowing them the longest possible lead. Because of that intentional distancing and the ski-lift height of the escalators, Briddle had still been inside the Dmitrouskaya station when Charlie and Wilkinson found their park bench. The Metro provided complete concealment throughout their encounter and as they came toward him, Briddle recognized he couldn’t be in a better place not just to continue his surveillance but even to stage Monsford’s demanded fatal accident, aware despite his newness to Moscow that there were at least 150 suicides a year on the underground system and that one extra statistic would not arouse any official suspicion.
Briddle was invisibly within the shadows of the platform food stall by the time the two men rode the escalator down for the simultaneous arrival of a train to board and Wilkinson didn’t pause. Neither did Briddle, joining a noisy group of departing food-stall customers to sit two carriages behind his quarry. Briddle had an unbroken view of the outside platform, which was where, as the train lurched into motion, he saw Charlie not on the train, as he’d imagined, but still standing there. And although there was no obvious recognition, Briddle knew Charlie had seen him, too.
An expectant, serious Jane Ambersom was waiting in the anteroom to Smith’s suite with an equally grave- faced John Passmore when the Director-General flurried in from the Foreign Office, gesturing them to follow him.
“You could call it a Solomon resolution, I suppose,” announced Aubrey Smith. “Elana and Andrei withdrew their kidnap claims and the French are releasing Elana into the custody of our Paris embassy, along with all our people. Andrei’s refused to go with them. He was released into Russian protection. Monsford’s hailing it as a victory.”
“Monsford can’t have heard yet,” said Jane.
“Heard what?” Smith frowned.
“Why I haven’t been able to reach Straughan,” said the woman. “Security didn’t immediately react when he didn’t arrive at Vauxhall Cross this morning: he was sometimes delayed because of his mother. Her caregiver found them but Straughan’s protective cover legend caused a delay in Vauxhall being told. The mother could have been dead since last night, overdosed. Straughan’s death is apparently more recent, delayed probably because of what he did after killing her. I don’t know precisely what was found: we probably never will. There were some letters, I believe. I’ve no idea what else.”
“Could they have been killed?”
“If Monsford wanted them to be,” judged Passmore. “The mother’s dementia left her catatonic. She would have swallowed whatever she was given without knowing who gave it to her. MI6 will have taken over everything by now. There won’t be a public inquest or any pathology details released. James Straughan and his sad mother will simply have ceased ever to have existed.”
“How did we find out?” asked Smith.
“Straughan had listed my private number to be contacted in an emergency. It was the police who called me, when the caregiver gave it to them.”
“He’ll have made some arrangement for you to get whatever he had.”
“We can only hope,” said Jane. “I was just leaving for Berkhamsted when Rebecca called, saying there’d been a mistake: that she was taking over.”
“Damn!” exclaimed Smith.
“Maybe it’ll protect Charlie,” suggested Passmore.
“Maybe,” said the other man. “What’s come from Moscow?”
“Nothing yet from Wilkinson, but we know from the others Charlie was using the Moscow Metro,” said Passmore. “Somehow he found out Preston and Warren were support for Wilkinson. He made cell-phone contact, warning that Denning and Beckindale were following. Warren thinks they decoyed them off, but he’s not sure.”
“If Charlie used our phone the tracker would have been activated.”
“It was,” confirmed Passmore. “Both here and in Moscow. MI6 would have got his location.”
“And we haven’t heard from Wilkinson,” repeated Passmore.
“When the hell am I going to get ahead of this, start calling the shots instead of trailing behind in somebody else’s dirt?” demanded Smith, unusually venting his anger.
Charlie Muffin was thinking something similar as he replaced the kiosk telephone after being told by Natalia that it was impossible to meet that night. His call before that, to David Halliday, hadn’t been answered, either. And there’d been more luck than tradecraft expertise in his evading Stephan Briddle, one of possibly three men he’d been warned were trying to kill him.
