But how? And by whom?
Judged against a lifetime’s need for split-second thinking to split-second confrontations, Charlie believed he’d adequately responded to the stomach-dropping sound of Natalia’s voice. But only just adequately. He’d answered every question about Natalia with complete and total honesty-without offering any additional information-just as he had recounted his Jersey journey, omitting only the financial reason for his making it. But the debrief had concluded without the slightest indication of what might happen to him. Far more worryingly, there had been nothing at all about Natalia and Sasha.
He had to think of a way to rescue them: a very quick, stop-at-nothing way as guaranteed as possible to get them to safety. What? he asked himself again. And again failed to find an answer.
“To quote Shakespeare, ‘with as little a web as this I will ensnare’: they’ve gone for it!” announced Gerald Monsford, triumphantly. He spoke with his back to the other two in his office in MI6’s Vauxhall Cross headquarters, looking up toward the Houses of Parliament on the opposite side of the Thames.
“Even dear Jane?” queried Rebecca Street, well aware of Monsford’s antipathy toward the woman whom she had replaced, although unaware of how it had been manipulated.
“She needed the assurance that she wouldn’t be kept out of the loop,” said Monsford, who’d appointed Rebecca not only as his deputy but as his easily persuaded mistress, which Jane had consistently refused to become, providing an additional reason for her transfer.
“What about Smith?” asked James Straughan, the director of operations.
“Palmer and Bland got in with their support first, which wrong-footed poor old Aubrey,” patronized the Director. “Then I played my ace by insisting that he’d control it all, with us limited to committing our Moscow resources, which left him high and dry.”
“You think he’ll trust us?” asked the woman, professionally objective.
“At the moment he’s totally confused by the sudden appearance of this mysterious Natalia Fedova,” said Monsford, turning at last from the window. To the woman he said: “I want you to monitor everything: act as our secondary check to guarantee against mistakes.”
“Nothing will go wrong,” said the blond Rebecca Street, smiling. She dressed to advertise her full-breasted but otherwise slim figure. That day’s promotion was a low-necked crossover black dress, the bodice pin the diamond clasp Monsford had given her as a consummation present. She’d been far more impressed by the clasp than by the over-in-seconds lovemaking she’d endured in the office’s adjoining bedroom suite to gain it.
“What about our own operation?” queried Straughan.
“The entire reason for what I achieved today,” declared Monsford. “This MI5 business is a bonus we’re going to bleed dry, maybe even literally. Have we got an unsuspected conduit to Moscow: something the FSB will believe unquestioningly?”
Straughan considered the question. “It’s not as easy as it was when there was a Soviet Union.”
“I didn’t imagine it would be,” said Monsford, testily. “I want something to tie Charlie Muffin closer in to whatever the hell these telephone calls are all about: something connected to the Lvov business, for instance.”
“There’s an FSB source at the Polish embassy in Rome we’ve used before,” said Straughan. “Not for more than a year, though.”
“After all the damage Charlie did, the FSB would obviously like to find him, wouldn’t they?” suggested Monsford.
“That’s why he’s in a protection program, isn’t it?” said Rebecca, frowning.
“And because of it no longer living where he once did.” Monsford smiled. “But the FSB don’t know that, do they?”
“So it wouldn’t expose him to any actual harm?” said Straughan.
“Of course it wouldn’t,” agreed Monsford.
“I’ll try to set it up,” undertook the operations director.
“Not try: do it,” said Monsford, heavily. “It’ll be an irony that Charlie Muffin’s last service to British intelligence will be for us, not his own people.”
“Everything’s agreed,” Maxim Radtsic assured his wife, his head close to hers as they went north on the Arbatsko line of Moscow’s Metro service, upon which, three hours earlier, he’d kept his latest meeting with Harry Jacobson.
“When?” the woman asked, matchingly low voiced.
“Soon. They know the urgency.”
“I don’t like all this nonsense,” Elana protested, looking around the packed commuter carriage. “It’s silly, playacting like children.”
“It’s very necessary if we’re to keep safe,” insisted Radtsic.
“Why don’t I go to Paris, for a holiday with Andrei, and go to London with him from there. It would be easier for you to get out alone, wouldn’t it?”
She was more frightened than he, realized Radtsic, sympathetically. “It would alert them: make them suspicious.”
“Andrei should be given more warning.”
“It’s got to be the way the British want it.”
“Let’s not take the Metro back to the apartment. I want to walk.”
“It’s a long way to walk from Kurskaya,” Radtsic pointed out, identifying where they were from the route map above the seats.
“I know.”
She knew she wouldn’t very much longer be able to walk the streets of the city, accepted Radtsic, sadly. Would she ever properly understand what he was having to do when it was all over?
“Good-looking kid,” remarked Albert Abrahams, looking down at the selection of photographs he’d taken two hours earlier outside Andrei Radtsic’s Sorbonne college.
“I prefer the girl,” said Jonathan Miller, MI5’s station chief at the Paris embassy. “Can you imagine those legs wrapped around your neck?”
“Name’s Yvette Paruch,” identified Abrahams. “And I have already imagined it. Our Andrei’s not just good-looking, he’s a lucky bastard as well. So what do we do now?”
“London’s orders are to find out everything we can without going anywhere near him. The possibility is that he’s being babysat by the FSB.”
“If he is, there’s a risk they’ll pick up on our sniffing around,” warned Abrahams.
“That’s why Straughan told me to be careful,” reminded Miller.
“Comforting, isn’t it, to get advice we wouldn’t have thought of ourselves from an operations director safe and warm in London?” mocked Abrahams.
6
It was two days before Charlie was summoned for further questioning. In that interim he was held in the barred and locked first-floor room of the hunting lodge with only the gazelle heads for company, apart from morning and afternoon exercise periods in the grounds with two male escorts who refused any conversation and during which there were intentionally staged sightings of other guards. None was visibly armed.
The second session was in the same menagerie-festooned room as before but with a smaller inquiry panel, just Smith, Jane Ambersom, and the overpoweringly large man from the initial interrogation. There was no replay machine on the side table, which had been moved away to the corner of the room.
Once again there was no preamble, although it was the woman who opened the questioning. She took photographs from a case file in front of her and said: “Who is this woman?”
Bitch, thought Charlie, at the same time recognizing the disparagement was intentional, to rile him, which he dismissed as stupid as well as clumsy. There was still the stomach jump of recognition when he took the offered photograph. It was a remarkably sharp image. Natalia was wearing the tightly belted light summer coat he remembered from their most recent Moscow reunion in the Botanical Gardens. She was looking sideways, almost over her shoulder, as if something had suddenly caught her attention. “Natalia Fedova, my wife.”