“You were categorically ordered against anything that could potentially exacerbate the difficulties already existing between us and the Russian Federation,” persisted Palmer. “Orders you just as categorically ignored. What you-”
“Indeed I was,” interrupted Monsford, his earlier uncertainty diminishing. “Close examination of the transcript of the meeting at which those orders were given will show my intimating the possibility of our nullifying Moscow’s actions by confronting the Russian Federation with a far greater embarrassment, which it’s my contention we’ve achieved by facilitating the defection of Maxim Mikhailovich Radtsic.”
“At the cost of at least six of your operatives, an executive jet, and Radtsic’s wife and son, who to my understanding are accusing us of attempted kidnap,” qualified Aubrey Smith. “It’s inconceivable you expect us to accept you’ve put us ahead in any tit-for-tat exchange, which was something else absolutely forbidden.”
“Nonsense,” rejected Monsford, welcoming the challenge. “We’ve still got their diplomats to exchange for the Manchester travel group, a swap Moscow will fall over themselves to agree when we make Radtsic’s defection public. And following that announcement, our having established Radtsic’s presence in England, it will be little more than a formality negotiating the French release of my officers, along with that of Elana and Andrei to continue their journey here.”
“The indications so far are that it will be anything but a simple formality,” contradicted Palmer. “The French are furious at our mounting an intelligence operation on their soil without prior consultation and agreement with their Service de Documentation Exterieure et de Contre Espionnage.”
“Of course they’re furious,” dismissed Monsford, almost contemptuous in his now totally restored confidence. “We’d be just as furious if they did something similar here. There’ll be a lot of backroom sniping and threats of broken understandings, which don’t matter a damn. What matters is that we’ve got Radtsic, who’s been at the pinnacle of Russian intelligence and espionage activities for almost three decades. Wrecking Russia’s Lvov operation was a coup without much practical benefit to us. Getting Radtsic in the bag is the espionage prize of the century.”
“As you’ve presented it, and if the French difficulty with the wife and son can be resolved, it would appear to be so,” conceded Bland.
“Then all that’s necessary,” seized Monsford, “are some discreet diplomatic negotiations with Paris-along, perhaps, with an equally discreet apology to the SDECE, which I am quite ready personally to make-for this to be recognized exactly as I’ve described it.”
Having destroyed his cell phone, Monsford had to use a pay kiosk within the Foreign Office to reach Rebecca. “‘Dogs, easily won to fawn on any man,’” he quoted the moment Rebecca lifted her receiver. “Which is what I made them do, eat out of my hand, like the well-trained pets they are. Book Scott’s for dinner: we’re going to celebrate.”
“Shall I tell Straughan you don’t want him to wait here?”
“I don’t want Straughan much more for anything. Tell him what you like.”
Which is what Rebecca did, verbally repeating to the operations director Monsford’s every word. In London it was 5:15 P.M., in Paris it was 7:15 P.M.; and in Moscow it was 8:15 P.M. when Charlie rose at Natalia’s entry to the restaurant.
25
“I’m sorry I’m late.”
“We didn’t set a time.” Natalia hadn’t come straight from the Lubyanka, Charlie knew. Her hair was perfectly in place and the black dress didn’t look as if it had been worn throughout a busy day. What little makeup she wore appeared fresh, too.
Natalia hesitated, studying the table, placing it within the restaurant. “Sitting here isn’t a coincidence, is it?”
“I wondered if you’d remember.”
Natalia gave a brief smile. “I remember this table from our first-ever time here and I haven’t forgotten, either, that beneath Charlie the hard man there’s Charlie the romantic.…” The smile went. “And you’ll never know how much I wish things weren’t as they are now.”
What the hell did that mean? “Why don’t we order before we talk?”
“You order for me?” she said, uninterestedly.
Charlie chose fish for her in preference to the boar he’d decided upon while he’d waited and the already selected Georgian wine, unsettled by her mood. “Now let’s talk.”
“How much do you know?”
“Just what I’ve picked up from television, that a Russian mother and her son are being held in France. The diplomatic reference to the two Englishmen is a clear enough espionage identification even without the impounded plane.” Charlie intentionally limited his reply to avoid Natalia’s suspecting he had a secondary source.
Natalia sipped her wine to cover the hesitation Charlie recognized not just to be her positive, no-going-back moment of commitment but the point at which she knowingly crossed their self-erected barrier against their betraying either country’s intelligence. The hesitation continued even when she began talking, naming Radtsic and his wife and son but not knowing how the French seizure had come about. Charlie didn’t interrupt, not wanting to lose something more important for a less essential clarification. Only in the last few moments did she bring her head up, the guilt obvious. “I hated doing that. I … I despise myself.”
The arrival of their meal allowed Charlie a brief reflection. “All our professional lives we’ve kept our oath, adjusted our morality for institutions whose only morality is the expediency of the moment. You’re not betraying anything or anyone. It’s time for our expediency. Not just yours and mine. Sasha’s, too, which is maybe even more important.”
Natalia was looking away again, picking at her fish as he was at his meal, neither properly eating. Abruptly she said: “That’s my problem. Is it best for Sasha to be taken from everything and everyone she knows to what might as well be the moon, where she’ll get a new name and be told to forget her own, never ever to mention it to anyone: learn a new language and accept a near stranger as her father. That’s what it’s going to be, isn’t it? A suspended life-not really a life at all-in a protection program, not able to tell her why we can’t trust anyone, be proper friends with anyone, terrified at an accent or an intonation that could be Russian and mean they’ve found us.”
He couldn’t lie to her, not after his own so recently fossilized existence. “I came out of a program to get you both. It was everything you’ve described it to be. It’s the beginning, the adjustment, that will be bad. But we can adjust: Sasha’s young enough to adjust. We could become happy, eventually.”
“Where?”
“Anywhere you choose. And aren’t we overlooking why I came here: why you made the calls?”
“There’s more to tell you. Nothing’s complete, as nothing’s ever complete in what we do: how we work encapsulated in an incomprehensible whole,” groped Natalia. “There’s total uproar at Lubyanka, more open talk than I’ve ever known, more combined action than I’ve ever experienced. But it doesn’t seem like uproar: panic. It isn’t encapsulated. People are talking, discussing things, speculating, which they’ve never done.…” She put down her fork to raise an apologetic hand. “I know I’m not making sense. I’m trying to explain it as the words come to me.”
Was there another fear adding to that of a protection program? “How’s it affecting you personally?”
Natalia abandoned her meal altogether, nervously revolving the gold band she carefully avoided wearing on her wedding finger. “I’ve been seconded to an inquiry committee, six of us from the analysis division of the First Chief Directorate, which never changed its functions or designation from the old KGB-”
“You’ve been personally selected!” seized Charlie, aware of the significance.