“You’re going to be asked for a lot of explanations,” cautioned Rebecca.”They’ll need logical answers. It not logical to include Charlie Muffin in whatever’s gone wrong.”
“Whose side are you on!”
“That question isn’t logical, either,” rejected the woman. “We’re confronting a disaster from which we’re not going to escape with illogical accusations.”
Monsford looked between the two. “Other people knew.”
Rebecca broke the silence that followed. “I don’t understand that remark.”
“Who, outside this room, have either of you discussed Radtsic’s extraction with?”
“I have discussed the Radtsic extraction with no one outside this room and every discussion I have had within this room has been recorded on your personal system specifically installed for that purpose,” replied Rebecca, with stilted formality.
“Every discussion about the Radtsic extraction in which I have been involved within this room is on the same system,” matched Straughan. “Every discussion I have had outside this room, either from my own office or from the communication supervisor’s office, is similarly held on the equipment specifically installed for such purposes.”
“I hope I can believe you,” said Monsford.
“I hope you can believe me, too,” said Rebecca.
“As I also hope you can believe me,” said Straughan.
The jarring telephone broke this next silence and for several moments Monsfsord looked at it, once starting to look toward the woman. He finally lifted it, briefly listened, and said: “I have just this minute come into the building. I’ll be with you on time.”
“Do you want us to come with you?” asked Rebecca, as Monsford rose.
“No,” said the man.
“You’ve forgotten your briefing papers,” said Straughan.
“I don’t need them.”
Rebecca waited for several minutes after the door closed before saying: “He forgot his recording machine, too. But then he’d already done that by not turning it on.”
Maxim Mikhailovich Radtsic physically rose from his chair as Jacobson talked. He remained standing, hunched forward as if worried at missing a single word, shaking his lowered head in disbelief.
“How…? You told me it was all arranged…? Foolproof…”
“That’s what we’ve got to speak about. Sit down, Maxim Mikhailovich.”
Radtsic slumped down and looking questioningly from Jacobson to the three other escorts in the room. “A drink. I need a drink. Vodka.”
One of the unnamed men left the room. Radtsic pulled himself forward in his chair, making a physical effort to recover. “Tell me everything that happened.”
“You’ve heard all I know,” insisted Jacobson. “Now you’ve got to help us.”
“What can I tell you?” demanded the Russian, reaching out for the escort-offered vodka from a tray laden with ice and the remaining bottle. “You know it alclass="underline" you’re supposed to be looking after me; after Elana and Andrei as well. That was our agreement.”
“In Moscow you told me you wanted to telephone Elana: tell her it was all finalized,” Jacobson spelled out, cautiously, his mind functioning on two levels. “And I-”
“Warned me against doing so,” interrupted Radtsic, holding out his empty glass.
“But did you?” demanded Jacobson, hoping for a startled admission.
Instead, Radtsic stretched out unseeingly for the new drink, but with his concentration entirely upon Jacobson. “Of course I didn’t!” he said, his voice no longer uncertain. “What you told me made obvious sense. The risk was too great.”
Unspeaking, Jacobson in turn held his concentration on the man, trying to prevent his mental focus going sideways to the nagging concern at his personal expectations.
“You don’t believe me!” accused Radtsic when Jacobson didn’t speak, his normal peremptory tone completely restored. “I did everything as you wanted: never allowed the slightest risk, not taking any chances. You’re the one, you and your people, who fucked up … who’ve got to sort it out … make it work as you assured me you would.”
“I told you Andrei didn’t want to come,” Jacobson reminded, flatly. Why had the arrogant bastard so clearly identified him on the automatic recording system!
“And I told you however reluctant Andrei was, after hearing his mother explain, he’d cross with her. Andrei isn’t the cause of this: none of it.”
Another personal identification, Jacobson recognized. “That’s not the impression of the people who made contact with Elana and Andrei in Paris.”
“The impression of the people who made contact in Paris!” sneeringly echoed the Russian, holding his glass sideways for more vodka without bothering to look at the man serving it. “Are you talking about those people who allowed themselves to be captured with my wife and son and ruined their escape!”
“Your escape’s not ruined!” refused Jacobson, desperately.
Radtsic, his face clearing, came farther forward in his chair, ignoring the man with the third drink. “At last, some sense! When are they arriving?”
“I didn’t say they’re coming,” squirmed Jacobson. “We’re trying to sort it out and to sort it out we need to know how and why they were intercepted.”
“Answer your own questions!” loudly insisted Radtsic. “Find out and sort it out! It’s the French: your allies, your European partners who are holding them! Tell Paris to release them and bring them here, to me.”
“That’s what we’re trying to do: why we’re talking like this.”
“I was promised I’d be personally meeting your director. Where is he?”
“Working on what we’re all trying to achieve, a way of resolving this.”
“I want to see your director, which you told me was his personal wish. I want him and everyone else, all of you, to understand something. My being here, my coming here, was entirely dependent upon Elana and Andrei being here with me. I will not stay, cooperate in any way whatsoever, unless we are together.”
“I will tell them what you’ve said.”
“Speak to your director and tell him what I’m telling you. Undertakings were given and agreed. You are not keeping your part in those undertakings.”
“I will speak to my director,” promised Jacobson. Everything had gone, vanished. Straughan had been right: it was a total, unmitigated disaster.
Gerald Monsford tried to match the blankness of the expressionless men confronting him around the table, his uncertainty worsened by one of them being Aubrey Smith, in whom, despite the facial emptiness, Monsford believed he saw triumph.
“Throughout the formulation of a joint operation approved at the highest level of government to extract an officer of the FSB, the absolute and clearly understood imperative was that there should be no diplomatic risk. Contrary to every order and instruction, you independently organized a parallel extraction of another FSB official, without any consultation or reference to us, your direct liaison to that highest level,” said Sir Archibald Bland, pedantically setting out the accusation, made that much more ominous by the calm, measured delivery.
“Yes, I did,” immediately admitted Monsford, at once encouraged by the frowned break in Smith’s composure.
“Why?” demanded Geoffrey Palmer.
“Precisely because the extraction of Natalia and her daughter was a joint operation,” declared Monsford, embarking upon what he’d concluded his best and least challengeable rebuttal. “That our two organizations were brought together was, according to my recollection, acknowledged to be an extremely rare and unusual decision. There’s been no precedent during my tenure as Director of MI6, nor, as far as I’m aware, during that of at least two of my predecessors. MI6 and MI5 are in every normal circumstance entirely separate and autonomous. It was my decision that the extraction of Maxim Mikhailovich Radtsic, the FSB’s executive deputy, was completely within the customary autonomy of my organization and did not conflict or impinge in any way with that of the woman and her child. To have conjoined the two would have created confusion and endangered both, the first of which has been destroyed anyway by the antics of the MI5 operative Charlie Muffin.…”