“With every justification, knowing the tricks Gerald’s playing,” persisted the woman. “I’ll look after the recording, okay?”
“Okay,” agreed Straughan, pushing it farther across the desk toward her. “Make sure it’s well protected.”
“Protection’s the name of the game and I’m very good at it.”
Straughan had warned his mother’s caregiver he’d be late getting back to Berkhamsted, determined to guarantee the recording quality of his encounter with Rebecca Street, as well as theirs with the Director. He had broken every rule and regulation, in addition to the law itself, Straughan recognized. And was terrified. He wished there was someone in whom he could confide: someone like Jane Ambersom, who had always been so kind and understanding.
As they had been the previous night, Miller and Abrahams were waiting ahead of the Russians, this time in the bar of the George V. There were three additional MI6 officers, again under the supervision of Paul Painter, spread protectively in the expansive adjoining lobby. Painter was directly in their line of sight to give the earliest warning of unexpected, suspect arrivals.
Elana entered again precisely on time, as chic as before in a camel-hair topcoat over a heavy roll-neck white sweater. She was alone. There were no warning signals from the foyer.
“Don’t be alarmed,” said Elana, as she sat.
“We are,” declared Miller, flatly. “Andrei can’t behave like this.”
“He’ll be with me,” promised Elana. “He resents what’s happened … it’s going to make the situation with his father very difficult … but he’s accepted there’s no alternative.”
“Are you quite sure he’s coming?” demanded Abrahams, ordering the woman’s wine.
“He’s given me his word,” said Elana.
“Is that enough?” pressed Abrahams.
Elana’s head came up sharply but the rebuke was halted by the returning waiter. After he’d left she said: “It’s more than enough.”
“London’s worried Andrei might do something unpredictable.”
“He won’t,” insisted the woman. “What are our arrangements?”
Miller hesitated, uncertainly. “It’s tomorrow. I can’t give you a positive time. Everything has to be coordinated with Maxim Mikhailovlich’s departure. I’ll call the apartment to give you the pickup time. Both of us will take you.”
“Where?”
Abrahams gestured in the direction of the Seine. “The bateau mouche ferry terminal at the far end of Avenue V. We can join the perephique from there. Don’t bring any baggage. Just yourselves.”
“I understand.”
“Elana, I must ask you an important question,” said Miller. “What will you do if Andrei backs off at the last minute?”
“I have told you he won’t back off. The question doesn’t apply.”
“Treat it as a hypothetical question.”
“No.”
Charlie stalled at the very moment of commitment, confronted by the choice he’d never imagined having to make. He hadn’t substantially lied to Halliday, prising from the man what little he had during their first contact that day, nor during the second when he’d learned nothing additional. Like an inferior player he’d just rearranged the pieces on a chessboard without achieving checkmate. He had always ignored the compartmenting edict to guarantee personal survival and when he’d discovered that survival threatened, he’d without hesitation committed every illegality short of intentional murder to stay alive. But in the process he’d never, ever, sabotaged a British assignment. Which was what he was contemplating now, the enclosed telephone just yards away in the corner of the bar. He had every justification. He didn’t have the slightest doubt that the Janus-faced combination of MI5 and MI6 intended Natalia and Sasha to be included in his destruction. Why, then, was he holding back? Charlie didn’t know, not fully. On that taunting corner phone he’d fifteen minutes earlier told Natalia- abruptly, Charlie’s mind blocked and just as suddenly he believed he did know the reason for his reluctance, and it worried him because he couldn’t remember the last occasion he’d been halted by self-doubt. Not about himself, he qualified. As always, about Natalia and Sasha and whether what he intended could rebound into another mistake, to go with all the others. Not just self-doubt, self-pity, Charlie recognized. Something that, encouragingly, had been markedly absent from Natalia during that earlier telephone conversation in which she’d unquestioningly told him what he wanted.
This wasn’t going to be a mistake: worsen his chances of getting them to safety. This was going to be the retribution he’d always intended. Charlie rose for the second time from the bar and dialed the number Natalia had provided for the FSB-retained, communist-era neighbor-informing-upon-neighbor facility. There was an immediate automatic answer.
Through a mouthpiece muffled by his handkerchief Charlie said, first in Russian and then, hopefully, in American-accented English: “Malcolm Stoat is leaving through Sheremetyevo Airport in the next twelve hours.”
22
None slept well. All were up before their respective dawns, allowing for the time difference between Moscow and Paris and the disparity between Moscow and London. Harry Jacobson, in the last of a series of hired Toyotas used throughout in place of the identifying diplomatic registration of his embassy Ford, was outside the north Moscow apartment thirty minutes before Maxim Mikhailovich Radtsic’s departure. Jacobson did not try to locate the separate, independent escorts in other vehicles parked hood to trunk in the square or its offshoot streets. David Halliday responded at once to Jacobson’s cell-phone-check call to the British embassy on Smolenskaya Naberezhnaya. Not trusting the reliability of the skeletal early-morning train services, James Straughan had himself collected by an MI6 car from his Berkhamsted home, in which his mother’s caregiver slept overnight. Rebecca Street stayed at Cheyne Walk to make the short journey from Monsford’s apartment to Vauxhall Cross with the MI6 Director. Jonathan Miller and Albert Abrahams met for coffee and croissants at an all-night-workers’ cafe close to the British embassy on rue d’Anjou before crossing to their rezidentura. Elana Radtsic was already in the kitchen, brewing black tea, when Andrei walked in. Answering her question, Andrei said he’d told Yvette he was skipping class that day to show his mother some Paris sights before her return to Moscow. There, seemingly immune now to the bed-bug attacks, Charlie Muffin lay awake but unmoving, frustrated at his isolation from a situation he knew to be happening, although without the slightest knowledge of whose extraction he hoped to have sabotaged: hoping even more that its wrecking would reverberate throughout the highest echelons of British intelligence for the utmost humiliation and career disaster for those who’d tried to destroy him, Natalia, and Sasha.
In Moscow it was raining heavily. London and Paris were overcast, with rain forecast later in the day.
Maxim Radtsic emerged precisely on time. He wore a gray trench coat, its collar turned up to a wide-brimmed, dark gray fedora he’d not worn before to meet Jacobson. The Russian carried a strap-secured briefcase in one hand and a small, weekend bag in the other. He looked neither left nor right getting into a small, unmarked Mercedes parked directly outside his apartment. Although there was no moving traffic in the street or those surrounding it, Radtsic put on his turn signal before pulling away. Jacobson allowed a gap of almost thirty meters before following. As he did so, Jacobson saw in his rearview mirror a Renault emerge from a line of parked vehicles behind but on the other side of the street. Both rigidly conformed to the speed limit.
Straughan had commandeered the mezzanine-level overview eerie normally occupied by the communications supervisor, who was that day relegated to the far side of the room and a secondary desk to which all satellite television, telephone, e-mail, and telex traffic had been transferred, with the exception of the dedicated, permanently open lines to the Moscow and Paris rezidenturas. Also from the overview room there was direct, two-way audio relay to the Director’s suite for simultaneous exchange between Straughan and Monsford. The separately installed CCTV did not have a conference connection, preventing Straughan seeing into Monsford’s office. Rebecca Street confirmed her presence there, inquiring about technical difficulties. Straughan assured her there were none: there were duplicated, already opened lines for such eventualities. He told Monsford he’d spoken to David Halliday in Moscow and that Millar and Abrahams were already at their rezidentura: it was still too early for their intended backup to be mobilized under Paul Painter’s supervision.