“What about our own operation?” queried Straughan.
“The entire reason for what I achieved today,” declared Monsford. “This MI5 business is a bonus we’re going to bleed dry, maybe even literally. Have we got an unsuspected conduit to Moscow: something the FSB will believe unquestioningly?”
Straughan considered the question. “It’s not as easy as it was when there was a Soviet Union.”
“I didn’t imagine it would be,” said Monsford, testily. “I want something to tie Charlie Muffin closer in to whatever the hell these telephone calls are all about: something connected to the Lvov business, for instance.”
“There’s an FSB source at the Polish embassy in Rome we’ve used before,” said Straughan. “Not for more than a year, though.”
“After all the damage Charlie did, the FSB would obviously like to find him, wouldn’t they?” suggested Monsford.
“That’s why he’s in a protection program, isn’t it?” said Rebecca, frowning.
“And because of it no longer living where he once did.” Monsford smiled. “But the FSB don’t know that, do they?”
“So it wouldn’t expose him to any actual harm?” said Straughan.
“Of course it wouldn’t,” agreed Monsford.
“I’ll try to set it up,” undertook the operations director.
“Not
“Everything’s agreed,” Maxim Radtsic assured his wife, his head close to hers as they went north on the Arbatsko line of Moscow’s Metro service, upon which, three hours earlier, he’d kept his latest meeting with Harry Jacobson.
“When?” the woman asked, matchingly low voiced.
“Soon. They know the urgency.”
“I don’t like all this nonsense,” Elana protested, looking around the packed commuter carriage. “It’s silly, playacting like children.”
“It’s very necessary if we’re to keep safe,” insisted Radtsic.
“Why don’t I go to Paris, for a holiday with Andrei, and go to London with him from there. It would be easier for you to get out alone, wouldn’t it?”
She was more frightened than he, realized Radtsic, sympathetically. “It would alert them: make them suspicious.”
“Andrei should be given more warning.”
“It’s got to be the way the British want it.”
“Let’s not take the Metro back to the apartment. I want to walk.”
“It’s a long way to walk from Kurskaya,” Radtsic pointed out, identifying where they were from the route map above the seats.
“I know.”
She knew she wouldn’t very much longer be able to walk the streets of the city, accepted Radtsic, sadly. Would she ever properly understand what he was having to do when it was all over?
“Good-looking kid,” remarked Albert Abrahams, looking down at the selection of photographs he’d taken two hours earlier outside Andrei Radtsic’s Sorbonne college.
“I prefer the girl,” said Jonathan Miller, MI5’s station chief at the Paris embassy. “Can you imagine those legs wrapped around your neck?”
“Name’s Yvette Paruch,” identified Abrahams. “And I have already imagined it. Our Andrei’s not just good- looking, he’s a lucky bastard as well. So what do we do now?”
“London’s orders are to find out everything we can without going anywhere near him. The possibility is that he’s being babysat by the FSB.”
“If he is, there’s a risk they’ll pick up on our sniffing around,” warned Abrahams.
“That’s why Straughan told me to be careful,” reminded Miller.
“Comforting, isn’t it, to get advice we wouldn’t have thought of ourselves from an operations director safe and warm in London?” mocked Abrahams.
6
It was two days before Charlie was summoned for further questioning. In that interim he was held in the barred and locked first-floor room of the hunting lodge with only the gazelle heads for company, apart from morning and afternoon exercise periods in the grounds with two male escorts who refused any conversation and during which there were intentionally staged sightings of other guards. None was visibly armed.
The second session was in the same menagerie-festooned room as before but with a smaller inquiry panel, just Smith, Jane Ambersom, and the overpoweringly large man from the initial interrogation. There was no replay machine on the side table, which had been moved away to the corner of the room.
Once again there was no preamble, although it was the woman who opened the questioning. She took photographs from a case file in front of her and said: “Who is this woman?”
Bitch, thought Charlie, at the same time recognizing the disparagement was intentional, to rile him, which he dismissed as stupid as well as clumsy. There was still the stomach jump of recognition when he took the offered photograph. It was a remarkably sharp image. Natalia was wearing the tightly belted light summer coat he remembered from their most recent Moscow reunion in the Botanical Gardens. She was looking sideways, almost over her shoulder, as if something had suddenly caught her attention. “Natalia Fedova, my wife.”
“And this?”
“Our daughter, Alexandra, which shortens to Sasha,” replied Charlie, looking down at the second print. The child was wearing her school uniform and hat, smiling up at someone who had been cropped from the picture. “When were these taken?”
Jane Ambersom moved to speak, but before she could Monsford replied: “The day before yesterday.”
Aubrey Smith formally introduced Monsford for the first time and said: “SIS are cooperating with us.”
The woman was looking tight faced between the two directors, clearly irritated at both responding to questioning.
“They’re still free then?” pressed Charlie, momentarily off-balanced by MI6’s involvement. It was logical, he conceded, that there would have been linked operations in the past, although he’d never actively participated in one. Charlie remembered the name. During his earlier Moscow assignment the gossip in the MI6
“Let’s get some order back into this debriefing, shall we?” said Jane Ambersom. “There’s a lot more answers we need to get from you.”
“I have not committed any criminal offense!” Charlie said, embarking on one of the several half-formed strategies he’d considered over the preceding forty-eight hours. “Nor have I contravened the Official Secrets Act, to which I am a signatory. My being in the protection program does not require my being held under detention.”
Jane Ambersom’s snort of derision was too obviously forced. “Doesn’t one of the most essential clauses in the Official Secrets Act cover consorting with an enemy!”
“It is an entire section, not a clause,” formally corrected Charlie, both to further her irritation and for the benefit of the bureaucratic recordings. “And that question is both a distortion and a misphrasing of its wording. I have never contravened any section of any act involving, covering, or forbidding the passing of intelligence secrets or information to a foreign power or intelligence service.…” He gestured with the prints he still held. “I provided the specific time and date of my marriage to Natalia Fedova, which I know you will have by now confirmed from Moscow’s Hall of Weddings records. I also know that in the intervening two days since I appeared before you, my
