“You’re proposing to send him back in!” exclaimed Rebecca, in apparent surprise.
“No,” denied Smith. “But they’ll think it’ll be Charlie Muffin and from the moment they’re convinced it is, their entire concentration will be upon finding him. It’s Charlie-or their belief that it’s Charlie-who’s going to be the diversion.”
“How?” demanded Rebecca, knowing the importance of reestablishing their briefly imagined supremacy.
“Easily,” said Smith, allowing the vaguest of smiles. “Natalia’s calls were from ordinary public telephones-one more specifically than others-because we were expected, naturally, to trace their origin. Just as we, or rather Charlie, was expected to recognize that the calls to his flat were always at precisely the same time, giving him a pattern. But they wouldn’t have been ordinary public kiosks, would they? They’ll appear to be, but they’ll have recording attachments, automatically triggered by an incoming international call signal, in anticipation of Charlie responding to the numbers, not that of Natalia’s flat. So Charlie will respond, at the precise time which she-or rather the FSB-has established.”
“What if she’s not there at the appointed time?” challenged Monsford. “There hasn’t been any contact from Moscow since the burglary. There wasn’t any response to her calls before then. And from the Russian embassy lawyers who’ve already had legal access to their diplomats in custody here, they’ll know the flat was empty. And we created the legend of his death, so they’ll also know he’s under protection.”
“We’ve already agreed they won’t accept that legend,” Jane pointed out.
“Any more than they’ll accept Charlie’s sudden reappearance is anything more than our trying to lure them into a trap they won’t be able to understand, just as they didn’t understand-or anticipate-the burglary snare we set for them,” said Rebecca. “But they won’t risk being burned twice.”
“Exactly!” agreed Jane, triumphantly. “They won’t accept it and they won’t understand it. But they can’t afford to ignore it. And before this afternoon’s over we need to come up with an even more tantalizing bait.…” Jane paused, caught by the presented analogy. “Our fishing line, Natalia and Sasha’s safety net.”
“Charlie Muffin is the integral part in this,” declared Monsford, desperate to get off the constantly teetering back foot. “Isn’t it time we included him in this discussion?”
Charlie Muffin had a savant’s instinct for atmospheres within environments and was well into his clairvoyant interpretation by the time he shuffled, unescorted now, from the trophy-room door to the conference table already unevenly hedged by its four stiffly seated occupants. Only the one empty chair retained its neat setting, the others at disjointed angles, separating each from its neighbors. There were coffee cups, similarly disarranged-the discarded coffeepot alone on a side table-supporting the impression of prior discussion, although there wasn’t a single doodle on any of the individual memo pads before them. There was one as-yet-unknown woman closer to Gerald Monsford than to either Aubrey Smith or Jane Ambersom, similarly drawn together, both expressionless faces as stiff as their rigidly held attitudes.
Charlie went to the empty chair but didn’t sit until Smith’s head jerk of permission, and as he did the MI5 Director announced: “We want to get your wife and child out. It’s obvious you should be included in the discussion.”
“Thank you,” said Charlie, who hadn’t expected such immediate confirmation but pushing as much genuine sincerity into the two words as possible, finally halting the individually addressed gratitude at the unknown woman, who at once introduced herself.
Having been offered the opening, Charlie added: “At what stage is the planning?”
“It’s starting here, right now,” declared Smith, although looking more to Gerald Monsford than to Charlie. “Perhaps you’d sketch out the SIS ideas in broad outline.”
The MI6 Director attempted to edit out Aubrey Smith’s earlier point-picking but several times lost his way and instead of omitting the passport preparations actually elaborated upon them. Eventually, clearly struggling, Monsford concluded: “This isn’t a proposal even in its broadest sense. It’s a starting point, a basis for the sort of material they’ll need when they make their break.”
Charlie fought against openly showing his dismay, feeling no satisfaction at being right about the planning vacuum before his inclusion. This echelon was too high: obviously none of them had ever worked in the field, trained in operational practicalities, trusting nothing and no one, winning if you’re lucky-or ruthless enough-dying if you’re not. Carefully, initially rephrasing his words to avoid humiliating them, Charlie said: “We won’t get them out disguised as British tourists wearing British clothes on British passports, no matter how good our forgeries and fake documentation. Russian entry visas are stamped and retained upon arrival, to be numerically matched with their departure counterfoils. There’s no way we could introduce forged entry sections into the bureaucratic system.”
“Is that your only comment?” quickly pressed Smith, guessing that it wasn’t.
These posturing four weren’t properly-professionally-working to evolve a rescue operation. Other, better professionals, who knew the smell of shit and what blood tasted like, should have been doing that. These figurehead bureaucrats were playacting to score off one another. But the charade was the best he could hope for at this moment: the only hope he had. “The embassy can be as much a prison as a haven, which links-” he cautiously began once more.
“Indivisible from the paramount problem of getting Natalia and the child under our safekeeping and away from Russian surveillance,” Jane impatiently intruded, unable to hold back from the discussion any longer, seemingly unperturbed by the annoyed looks from both men.
Charlie’s intention had been to continue talking about precisely that but the interruption gave him a moment to reconsider. He was, he belatedly recognized, in a far stronger and definitely more influential position than he’d realized, maybe even able to make Natalia and Sasha’s escape his own, although always insinuating his suggestions to appear those of Monsford or Smith. It would all, of course, go through the pragmatic scrutiny, but the rejecting mesh sifting would be far more widely set with the proposals coming down from the gods. “Which you have obviously talked about before I joined you?”
“You were cut off before you finished what you were saying?” questioned Rebecca, in return.
After a momentary hesitation, Charlie said: “I was also going to suggest that it wasn’t advisable to issue Natalia and Sasha British passports: to involve our embassy, quite apart from the problem of making contact with Natalia without FSB interception. It’s what they’d expect and be most prepared for.”
“The documentation we’ve prepared isn’t British, for that obvious reason,” said Aubrey Smith, ahead of the other Director. “What languages, apart from her own Russian and English, does Natalia speak?”
“German, fluently: she was assigned for a period to East Germany,” replied Charlie, taking his time now, seeking his openings.
“East Germany!” picked up Rebecca, at once. “Was she there the same time as Vladimir Putin?”
Charlie came within a whisker of trying further to enhance Natalia’s value by claiming she had been a contemporary of the Russian president turned premier. “I’ve already told you we never discussed our professional lives. But I think there’s a strong possibility she was in Potsdam at the same time.”
There was a moment’s pause before Smith said: “Just Russian, English, and German?”
“And Polish,” added Charlie. “She has some Polish, although she’s not fluent.”