Fury had begun to flood the MI6 Director’s face before Smith finished talking, coloring a look of near hatred. Monsford said: “No, I am certainly not recommending that guaranteed prevention.”
“I’m relieved,” remarked Smith. “Are we agreed, then, that at this stage we limit ourselves to confirming Charlie Muffin’s presence, if indeed he is at the Rossiya Hotel?”
It was several moments before Monsford managed a reply and when he did it was only a throat-blocked, “Yes.”
“It didn’t work,” judged Jane Ambersom, emerging from her silence in the directly following aftermath inquest. “Monsford overplayed the buck passing at the beginning.”
“He came close to recovering at the end,” qualified Aubrey Smith.
“But you got the ultimate resolution and its rejection out into the open,” Passmore added, endorsing the qualification.
The woman frowned between the two men. Having seen the disconnection of the MI5 recording apparatus, she asked: “Was assassination ever considered an option?”
“I believe it might have progressed to that,” allowed the Director-General.
Jane considered the reply, again looking between the two men. “You didn’t expand on what you called ‘inconsistencies’?”
“The possibility of assassination was one, an accusation I couldn’t openly make,” said Smith, showing no discomfort at the clear deception in front of Passmore, who in turn gave no reaction to the Director’s unrecorded agreement during his Buckinghamshire return with Gerald Monsford.
“Am I right in inferring, then, that there are limits to our future cooperation?” asked Jane, openly again and encouraged at the prospect of more directly opposing the man responsible for ending her MI6 career.
“Everything is to be decided on an item-by-item basis,” ruled the Director-General.
“Then there is a decision to be made,” disclosed Jane, who took less than five minutes to recount her lunchtime conversation with Barry Elliott.
“Coincidence?” questioned Passmore, the moment she finished.
“Coincidences occur,” conceded Smith. “I’ve never personally made a decision based upon one. What did you tell Elliott?”
“That I’d think about it.”
“Drip-feed it,” ordered Smith. “I want to know his each and every reaction to each and every release. I don’t see how, but if there is a CIA involvement in this-which we’ve already, briefly, touched upon-everything changes.”
“And we’re not sharing Elliott’s approach with MI6?” pressed the woman.
“Surely not until we’re confident MI6 aren’t already aware of Elliott’s approach: maybe even initiated it through their contacts with Langley,” said Passmore.
“Irena Yakulova Novikov was ours, whom we only handed over to the CIA because the White House was the Russian target. Everything Charlie did, including his debriefing that broke her, is still ours, unseen by Langley or Monsford,” said Smith.
“I don’t follow that!” protested Jane.
“I judge what Elliott said as a totally unexpected pebble thrown into an already murky pool,” said Smith. “I want to see how far the ripples spread. And, Jane…?”
“What?”
“I want you to stay very close to Barry Elliott.”
“I will,” promised the woman, the smile at her own amused satisfaction.
In his penthouse office atop the Vauxhall Cross building, Gerald Monsford settled expansively back into his chair and said: “I think I handled that exceptionally well. The onus now is entirely on MI5 and we’re on provable record proposing we back off.”
“Also on provable record is an unequivocal reference to assassination,” pointed out Rebecca, aware that Monsford had not turned on his recording machine and irritated at losing the silver bullet to blow Monsford out of the chair in which he now lolled. She also judged his earlier performance more amateur dramatic than exceptional.
Monsford snorted a laugh. “You’ve missed the whole point! I said no to assassination. When Charlie Muffin, an MI5 officer, is put away with a bang, at whom will the accusing finger point!”
They both looked up as James Straughan hurried into the office from his check of the operations-room traffic to announce: “We’ve got a problem.”
Harry Jacobson’s call was patched through from the Moscow embassy’s sterilized communications room to Gerald Monsford’s equally security-protected office, enabling the exchange to be put on speakerphone for a simultaneous relay to Rebecca Street and James Straughan. Bizarrely for a man of his size, Monsford was once more hunched in his enclosing chair in something close to a fetal ball.
“Radtsic can’t pull a switch like this, not this late!” protested Monsford. “It would mean an entirely different extraction from Paris!”
“Radtsic says if Elana talks to the boy, explains what’s happening, there won’t be any problem,” repeated Jacobson. “If it doesn’t come from her, Andrei or his girlfriend or both will scream abduction and it’ll all go wrong.”
“And Radtsic wants to move at once?”
“He says he could make all the necessary arrangements for Elana by tomorrow. He wants his extraction coordinated with Elana and Andrei’s from Paris. If Andrei comes willingly, we could have them in London at virtually the same time.”
“I personally formulated how we’re getting the kid out,” reminded Monsford.
“I’m telling you what Radtsic told me,” retorted Jacobson. “That with Andrei agreeing, all we need to do is drive them to Orly-I didn’t tell him we were using Orly-and bring them out on the passports that are ready. I did tell him the passports were ready.”
Monsford looked inquiringly at the two others in the room. Straughan shrugged his shoulders. Rebecca said, softly: “We need to talk, not make any quick decisions.”
Into the telephone, Monsford said: “Tell Radtsic we have to talk about it: that it’s an unexpected change that we’ve got properly to consider, not rush into. That he’s got to accept what we’re saying: that it’s the safety of him and his family we’re thinking about.”
“I already have,” said Jacobson. “I’ll tell him again.”
“I haven’t finished,” warned Monsford, irritably. “We might possibly know where Charlie is.”
Jacobson listened without interruption but when the Director finished said: “If he’s there I go on as planned, right?”
“Wrong,” corrected Monsford. “I don’t want us losing the bastard again. Go separately from those Aubrey Smith is putting in place. I want our independent confirmation that we know where Charlie is: no slipups this time. I’m not sure I can any longer trust Smith to keep us fully in the loop.”
“But you still want the diversion?”
“More than ever, after the way that bastard has jerked us around,” insisted Monsford, vehemently. “As Shakespeare said, ‘let’s make us medicines of our great revenge.’”
“Mummy going to Paris to hold little Andrei’s hand solves most of our difficulty but gives us another one,” said Albert Abrahams.
Jonathan Miller shook his head. “We’ve only got to look after one extra for a few hours. It’s the best we could have hoped for.”
“I’d be happier with more direct contact,” said Abrahams. “I’m not comfortable getting things relayed from Moscow via London.”
“Neither am I,” said the Paris station chief. “Straughan’s promised to set a meeting up just before the extraction.”
“More relayed arrangements,” Abrahams pointed out.
16
From the tantrum anecdotes of his sadly too-often-abandoned single mother, Charlie Muffin guessed he’d been born a cynic, suspicious that his bottle milk might be polonium-poisoned or his diaper pin an offensive weapon, but he’d never sneered at the apparent childlike elements of espionage tradecraft. There was nothing derisory at spy liaisons signaled by chalk marks on designated trees or walls, or particularly arranged curtains or plant pots and empty Coke cans or drainpipes or rocks. Some fakes-like others hiding miniature cameras or listening devices-made perfect dead-letter drops because they were so easily dismissed as childlike.