Today’s sign was again to discard an empty cigarette packet into the Moskva river, a gesture fitting the chain-smoking habit that had developed since the Russian’s first approach.
“What the hell happened?” greeted Jacobson, as he got alongside the other man.
“There was a personal problem,” said Radstic, not looking sideways. The hand holding the cigarette was shaking, creating an almost constant avalanche of ash.
“What problem?”
“Elana.”
“What about her?”
“She’s losing her nerve: doesn’t want to come.”
“Are you coming without her?”
Radtsic gave Jacobson a frowned, sideways look. “Of course not.”
“What then?”
“I’ve persuaded her. But it’s got to be soon now.”
“We’re setting up a diversion: want you to be involved at the very end. You can be the person who makes sure it works by concentrating attention away from you and Elana.”
“How?”
“We’re sending someone in, as a decoy for your people to follow,” lured Jacobson. Radtsic surely had to know about the attempted FSB entrapment of Charlie Muffin, even if the man was elevated way above operational activity.
“How?” repeated the other man.
“It’ll involve your service, when it happens,” Jacobson hedged further.
“What’s my involvement?”
“You have operational oversight, don’t you?”
“Not in a planning stage. There are progress submission and reviews.”
“There hasn’t been anything about a potential English situation?”
Radtsic properly looked at Jacobson for the first time. “Are you trying to trick me?”
“No!” denied Jacobson, meeting the look. “I’ve told you it’s all going to work just as you want.”
“It doesn’t sound right!”
“I’m not tricking you, Maxim Mikhailovich. I’m guaranteeing everything and more than you’ve asked for.” Why was it all going wrong, despaired Jacobson: in less than twenty-four hours he’d been made to look an amateur by a down-at-heel dinosaur and now he was a hairsbreadth from losing the biggest catch in MI6 history!
“I need to think!”
“You need to trust me: trust that I’m telling you the truth.”
“I need to think,” the Russian repeated, doggedly.
“Let’s meet tomorrow,” urged Jacobson, anxiously. “Check your ongoing operational planning involving the British.” With so much going wrong-being misunderstood-he daren’t risk actually mentioning Charlie Muffin and Natalia Fedova until he talked to London and learned whether they’d found the bastard.
“Here, again at noon.”
“Maxim, it should be somewhere else.”
“Here,” insisted the older man.
“Here,” capitulated Jacobson.
“It could be a one-night stand,” said Jonathan Miller, staring down at the photographs Albert Abrahams had laid out before him.
“I established the surveillance the day we got the assignment. If you look more closely, she’s wearing three different outfits, leaving and entering the apartment over three different days. I ran a check at the Sorbonne. She’s registered at the same address with the same telephone number as Andrei. They’re on the same course.”
“Perhaps this will put a finger up Straughan’s ass: get him to answer all our other questions to all our other uncertainties.”
“This is the one that could really fuck everything up.”
“I’d never have worked that out if you hadn’t told me.”
13
There seemed to be no part of Charlie Muffin’s body that didn’t ache. His feet, of course, caused the worst agony. By the time he got back to London he was hobbling so badly that an airport driver returning from taking a disabled passenger to a flight offered Charlie a lift on his empty cart, which Charlie gratefully accepted, deciding that the privilege attracted far less attention than the way he was walking. Despite all of which, Charlie was happy. So far-a long way in opportunity, if not necessarily in miles-reversing the terms of engagement to his personal control was working.
He’d been lucky, Charlie accepted: bloody lucky. But there again, he’d made most of that luck himself. The biggest gamble had been the moment he’d fled the plane. He’d built in most of the contingency protection he could anticipate, pausing in the Amsterdam arrival hall to take the battery from the Russian phone to prevent his being traced by any tracker device installed in London but still leaving open his expectation of unknown escorts on the plane. That there hadn’t been added to his suspicion of a separate agenda of which he was unaware, further supported by there having been no passport questioning upon his reentry into Heathrow triggered by watchers having alerted the aircraft crew of his disappearance. Charlie estimated that had given him at least two, maybe as much as four, hours’ runaway time. He’d used some of it buying toiletries and a hold-all in which to carry them before purchasing a closing gate ticket on the last-of-the-day Dutch airline flight back to London, which he’d established to be half empty while selecting his escape seat at Heathrow three hours earlier. The hold-all provided just enough luggage for him to be accepted without question at a fifty-pound-a-night, thin-walled room in a Waterloo station hotel.
He’d still ached, although not as badly, when he woke. He no longer shuffled, just walked slowly, to get to a conveniently close internet cafe by nine fifteen. It took less than another thirty minutes of concentrated Google surfing to assemble a selection of holiday companies offering short Russian tours and even less to find one in Manchester eager enough to retain its newly acquired franchise-and full payment in cash, to which he agreed-to allocate him one of their three remaining vacancies on an eight-day block-visa trip to the Russian capital.
By eleven Charlie had emptied the Harrods safe deposit box of his David Merryweather passport and international driving license and used the accompanying American Express card in the same name to buy a suit, trousers, shirts, and underwear, as well as a suitcase additional to the hold-all to carry it all. From experience, he held back from risking new shoes, to which his awkward feet would have needed to adapt.
Charlie’s train arrived precisely on time in Manchester, enabling him to be one of the first of the tour group independently to reach the airport. Muriel, the Russian-speaking tour guide, said she was sorry the cost dictated that it had to be a basic economy night flight. “I took a chance, accepting you as I did, but we need to maintain our booking numbers.”
“What chance was that?” queried Charlie, apprehensively.
“Adding you to the block visa. We’re supposed to supply the names a week before: the embassy requires master copies.”
The apprehension lifted like mist in the sun, which Charlie, prepared to sacrifice his Merryweather identity, decided to be shining down upon him. “Here it is.”
“Malcolm Stoat?” the girl queried. “That wasn’t the name I thought you gave me on the telephone?”
“It was a very bad line. I had difficulty hearing a lot of what you said to me.”
“And you’ve already got a visa?” she said, opening the passport.
“I didn’t know anything about block visas,” lied Charlie. “I thought I had to arrange my own. It does mean you’re not taking any chances, doesn’t it?”
“I suppose I should add your name to my list?”
“Perhaps you should.”