“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 rezidentura had tagged Monsford as a reincarnation of Genghis Khan suffering a bad attack of toothache. There’d also been a rumor the man had tried to muscle in to the Lvov affair.
“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 operational files will have been scrutinized for the slightest indication of failure being attributed to my…” Charlie paused again, directly addressing the woman: “to use what appears to be a favored phrase, consorting with the enemy. No indication whatsoever of which will have been found, because none exists. I want … if you like, I plead for … help to get my wife and daughter out of a situation in which, if our relationship is positively established by the FSB, they could be physically harmed, as it was believed I would be physically harmed for Russia’s failure of the Lvov affair, to prevent which I have been put under protection … protection, not house arrest.”
Once more Jane Ambersom’s face was on fire, either from her confusion or her expectation that Charlie would continue, but again Monsford spoke ahead of her. The MI6 Director, hands clasped over his expansive stomach, said: “That was a very spirited and well-argued defense of a charge not yet alleged. But do you believe that buried in all the legislation to which you’ve referred-the Official Secrets Act the most obvious-there isn’t a legal accusation that one of our specialized lawyers could formulate against you?”
Charlie didn’t think he’d left any gaping pitfalls: certainly Monsford’s response was encouraging, even if the man’s inclusion was unsettling and needed separate, intense examination. Don’t falter, he told himself. “I’m quite sure there are several charges that could be laid. But I’m even surer that they’d be thrown out of court, although perhaps with an admonishment which I’d expect, after it was proven there has never been any breach of security.”
“Haven’t we wandered too far from the purpose of this meeting!” protested Jane Ambersom, finally reentering the exchanges.
“Just one thing!” said Charlie, hurriedly, pleased at the woman’s exclusion and talking directly to the MI6 chief. “Were both those photographs taken two days ago?”
“Yes,” confirmed Monsford.
“So they were both still free: not under detention?”
“Yes, both still free.”
Charlie looked back at the print of Natalia, closely studying the background for the first time. “And she was outside the apartment I identified?”
“When is this session going to be formalized!” again protested Jane.
“Was there any indication of surveillance?” persisted Charlie, snatching at every opportunity.
“None,” confirmed Monsford. For some must watch, while some must sleep. So runs the world away, he thought: why was it that Shakespeare had a comment for every situation? Hamlet, he remembered. This would have a happier ending, he was sure.
Natalia and Sasha were still safe! But how professional had the MI6 photographer been? agonized Charlie, who’d never trusted dawn to follow night. If the photographer had failed to detect Russian observation but been identified himself, he would have hastened an FSB move.
“I really do think we’ve answered enough of your questions,” said Aubrey Smith. “Now answer more of ours.”
“From the date of your wedding, which we have indeed confirmed, against the date you provided for Sasha’s birth, Natalia Fedova was pregnant before you married?” established Jane Ambersom, taking up the questioning again. Her tone made it sound like an accusation.
No longer “this woman,” Charlie recognized. “Yes.”
“How long had the affair been going on, before the marriage?”
“About eighteen months.” Everything totally honest, Charlie reminded himself. He needed their help, not their antagonism.
The woman shuffled hurriedly between several sheets of paper from her dossier before looking up. “We know the precise dates of your fake defection, of course: it was a recorded operation-”
“And a successful one, discrediting a genuine defector with whom I broke out of Wormwood Scrubs after he’d been jailed for forty years as a Soviet spy at the height of the Cold War,” broke in Charlie, anxiously establishing what he considered the first of several important facts in his favor.
“I’m familiar with the records.…” Jane paused, to counter Charlie’s defense with another point. “The official records, I mean. So, once more calculated against the known dates and those you have provided, your affair began about six months after the Russian acceptance that your defection was genuine?”
“Yes,” confirmed Charlie, cautiously. He shouldn’t have interjected: she was obviously building up to what she considered an undermining question.
“Tell us about those six months.”
“What about them?” hedged Charlie, reluctant to answer such a generality.
“The Russians had accepted you: believed you had joined their little band of traitors. Did you ever meet, socialize, with those other defectors? With Philby or Blake, for instance?”
“No.”
“Never?”
“Never.”
“Are you sure?”
Charlie hesitated, seeking the trap. Unable to find it, he smiled, condescendingly shaking his head. “It’s hardly likely that I would forget meeting such people, is it?”
“Unless you’re lying!” she said.
Not undermining at all, if that was her best attempt. “I am not lying!”
“What job did the Russians give you, having accepted you as genuine?”
He could use this question, Charlie recognized. “I was assigned to a training school.”
“What sort of training school?” There was a note of triumph in the woman’s voice.
“A training school for intended KGB intelligence officers,” answered Charlie, comfortably.