And the FSB had Natalia and Sasha, balanced Charlie. The fragile opening hadn’t widened, as he’d hoped. He’d wanted a lot more. There was still the unheard recording. Indicating the side table, he said: “There’s been contact from Natalia, hasn’t there?”
“It’ll be the last, after the arrests,” predicted Jane Ambersom, finally entering the discussion.
“Can I hear it?”
In the time it took the woman to activate the machine, Charlie prepared himself, determined against the slightest reaction to Natalia’s voice. The initial seconds of traffic sounds were louder than before: an open street pod, not an enclosed kiosk, he guessed. When it finally came-to a stomach jump, despite Charlie’s expectation-Natalia’s voice was unexpectedly even, as if she’d prepared herself. “They’re examining my debriefing records. I don’t know how much they suspect. Remember, Charlie…” The cutoff was abrupt, either Natalia hurriedly putting down the receiver or having it snatched away and slammed back by someone else.
Charlie had let his head drop, not forgetting his earlier determination against reaction but cultivating it now, although undecided whether seeming to seize this late some significance from what Natalia had said would appear too obviously staged. But could he realistically hope for anything more? Jane had rejoined the two directors and all three were staring expectantly at him as Charlie looked up. The moment he did, the overly aggressive woman said: “What’s the matter with you?” and despite her uncertain sexuality, Charlie would have willingly kissed her. Instead he shook his head, as if confused, continuing to string out a response.
“What’s wrong?” repeated the woman.
It had to look as if the realization was starting out half formed and needed to be coaxed from him. “She’s very frightened: more frightened than she ever was when we had to be careful in Moscow. But she believes they know about us. And if they do, she’s realized she’s caught up in the biggest espionage coup Russia has ever attempted: the total failure of the biggest espionage coup Russia ever attempted. They’ll be convinced-any intelligence organization would-that she knew I was going to wreck it.”
Jane Ambersom turned and said something inaudible to the Director-General but to which Smith shook his head, not turning to her. The man said: “Is there something important in what you’ve just heard?”
They weren’t dismissing him out of hand! Charlie said: “What she hopes I’ve understood from what I’ve just heard. She’s made an offer, her bargain, for her and Sasha to be got out.”
Histrionically, Jane pushed herself back into her chair, snorting in customary derision. “Do you possibly imagine, in whatever dream world you’re living, that you’ll convince us that we’ve got to get your supposed wife and daughter out of Russia?”
The totally fixated deputy director could have chosen what other part of her androgynous body she wanted kissed or otherwise caressed, decided Charlie, in further gratitude. “You’ve established Natalia is not my supposed wife but my legally married wife?”
“Yes,” confirmed Monsford, before either of the others.
Concentrating upon the MI6 Director, Charlie went on: “And you’ve also established, from studying my assignment record, that I have never sabotaged anything involving this organization during my marriage or association with Natalia?”
“Yes,” agreed Monsford, again.
Continuing to address the MI6 chief, Charlie chanced the slightest of exaggerations: “And you know, from her length of service not just with the current FSB but the previous KGB that she’s not just a but the senior debriefer for Russian external intelligence. You’re intelligence experts, all three of you. But not even you can begin to imagine the number of defectors and spy offers and doubles and dissidents she’s interrogated: the answers she could provide to the mysteries and uncertainties over the past twenty years.”
“Are you trying to persuade us that’s what she’s offering by her reference to your debriefing records?” asked the quiet-voiced Aubrey Smith, even more softly than usual.
“I’m not trying to convince you,” said Charlie. “That’s what I’m telling you, as honestly as I’ve told you everything else.”
“If she had all that to offer, why didn’t she come with you in the first place?” clumsily challenged Jane.
I could have done a ventriloquist’s act with this woman, thought Charlie. “Because until now she hasn’t confronted the reality of a firing squad after undergoing interrogation that she knows would extend beyond her sort of debriefing into the KGB-perfected horror of psychiatric hospitals. While all the time knowing-because they’d remind her every day, as the most horrific part of that torture-that Sasha would be committed to the worst of Russian state orphanages.”
“The psychiatrist was right. The man’s mad,” declared Jane Ambersom. They’d once more moved from the formality of the interview after Charlie’s departure but she was unable to sit, instead pacing up and down in front of the dead fireplace around which the easy chairs were set.
“The psychological assessment wasn’t that he was mentally ill,” corrected the Director-General. “It was that Charlie Muffin would recognize more quickly than anyone else the limitations of a new life in a protection program-which indicated the highest analytical intelligence that Cowley had known-as a result of which Charlie was suffering an understandable depression but which he doubted would ever become suicidal. The suicide watch was a shock warning to Charlie, not a necessary precaution.”
“I don’t believe there can be a single opposing argument against our getting Natalia and the child out of Moscow,” declared Monsford, who’d gone through the charade of calling MI6’s Vauxhall Cross building-on his cell phone from Charlie’s exercise patch-before returning for the review.
“Which has to mean there’s an update from your call?” sardonically questioned the fidgeting deputy director.
“There’s already open speculation on Izvestia and in Pravda of retaliatory rebuttals to our arrests.”
“Why should I be surprised about that?” challenged the woman.
“Moscow News is going further,” continued Monsford, who’d added to what he considered his success in getting the address of Charlie’s London flat leaked to the Russians by swallowing his antipathy to David Halliday and authorizing the suggestion being offered by Halliday to the man’s contact in the English-language publication. “They’re hardening the rumor into a reciprocal intelligence sensation. It’s being picked up and repeated on Western wire services.”
“There’s not the slightest indication that what’s going on in Moscow has any connection whatsoever with what we’re discussing here, beyond some obviously enforced telephone contact from a woman stupid enough to trust Charlie Muffin,” rejected Jane. “Our stupidly responding to it is the intended reciprocal intelligence sensation.”
“If Natalia’s got as much as half of what Charlie sketched out, it’s a gold lode we could mine for years,” judged Aubrey Smith, reflectively. “There’s no obvious connection, but it would be on a par with the Lvov business. We could tie in knots not just Russian intelligence but every other service of any importance, up to and including the CIA, who’ve double-crossed and used us, both of us, for the past two decades.”
“There can’t be an argument against getting her and the child out,” repeated Monsford, anxious to stoke the other man’s belief.