Red Star Rising (23 page)

“At least it’ll ensure you come out on top of the local viewing figures, which I never imagined you would,” said Halliday.

“What’s that mean?” demanded Robertson, his voice indicating the annoyance at the man.

“Your timing’s head to head against Stepan Lvov’s major—live—election address to his party conference,” said Halliday. “Didn’t you realize that?”

“No,” admitted Charlie.

“Who the hell’s Stepan Lvov?” asked Robertson.

“The guaranteed new Russian president, who’s going to turn the world into a better place,” identified Halliday.

“Does that include not having his people bug our embassy?” asked Robertson.

“Top of his list, along with a cure for cancer and the common cold,” persisted Halliday.

Reminded by Robertson’s remark of the initial reason for the man and his team being there, Charlie said, “Where’s Harry Fish?”

“Isolating the embassy’s conference hall from any electronic intrusion into the main building,” said Robertson. “He’s apparently got some gizmos that’ll shatter the eardrums of anyone trying to tap into any embassy system.”

And others that detect a lot more electronic intrusion, suddenly thought Charlie, reminded of his bugging concern when Natalia had been in his suite the previous evening. “You think all the accreditation checks will be completed by Wednesday?” he asked the man.

“We’ll probably manage the clearances, providing we don’t get more than another fifty to sixty applications,” undertook Robertson. “The problem already looks like equipment accommodation. Even with handheld cameras and minimal sound booms, it’s
going to be a crush getting all the television crews in. And then there’s the radio station gear.”

“There’ll have to be pool agreements, two or three stations using one group of technicians and equipment,” decided Charlie.

“They don’t like doing that,” Robertson pointed out.

“And if you impose that restriction on any Russian station, there’ll be the automatic assumption—and accusation—that the excluded technicians are suspected of being intelligence agents,” added Halliday.

“Let there be,” dismissed Charlie, most of his concentration still upon Harry Fish. “This isn’t a friend-winning exercise.”

“I’m still not sure what sort of exercise it is,” complained Robertson.

“Winning precisely the right sort of friend,” provided Charlie.

Which he wasn’t going to do at Petrovka, Charlie guessed, hunched in the back of the now readily available embassy car, which was blocked for more than ten minutes getting through the media siege directly outside the embassy gates that spilled over onto the gridlocked embankment road. That delay, compounded by the time-consuming detour to locate Harry Fish, meant he was going to be late getting to the headquarters of the organized crime bureau, but Charlie was encouraged by the necessary conversation with the electronics expert.

An impatiently waiting Sergei Pavel was actually at the point of going back inside the police building when Charlie arrived, only just managing to bring Pavel back by shouting as he got out of the car, which on impulse Charlie asked to wait.

Pavel said at once, “What in the name of God is happening?”

“London miscalculated.”

“They’re planning something inside. I don’t know what but a colonel from the
Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki
arrived with Guzov, so you’re facing both intelligence agencies. And someone from the Kremlin itself.”

“What about forensics?” risked Charlie, a DNA challenge at that moment his main concern.

Pavel frowned. “None. Why?”

“It’s not important,” hurried on a relieved Charlie. “Whatever happens inside now I will personally get you into the conference, freeing you from Guzov’s control and satisfying a Russian presence, which is his argument. But I don’t want to announce it to him or anyone else today. How would it affect you, personally and professionally? Would it be a problem, at either level?”

“From what’s already happened today I don’t know—can’t know—until we meet the others. I’ll call, afterward. It’s chaos up there.”

The group gathering in Pavel’s office numbered the same as those of Charlie’s original confrontation there, but the three he didn’t recognize replaced the earlier forensic scientist. Charlie said, “I apologize for my lateness.” It was a full fifty minutes, he calculated.

To Charlie’s surprise, it was not the baleful Guzov who opened the expected attack but the Foreign Ministry’s Nikita Kashev. “Everything’s been escalated, beyond any common sense,” complained the man, at once. “We have done everything possible to maintain an amicable working relationship. The United Kingdom has done everything to sabotage it with false and unfounded accusations.”

“And I for my part have done everything to make clear to you, to everyone, that I am in no way responsible, nor can I in any way influence or change London’s response to what the British embassy here in Moscow has been subjected to,” argued Charlie.

“I am attached to the legal department of the president’s secretariat,” identified the youngest of the three strangers. “My name is Semon Ivanovich Yudkin. I am authorized to ask you to communicate both to your acting ambassador and to your Foreign Office in London the opinion of our president and our government that the current difficulties are being intentionally exacerbated and manipulated to influence the forthcoming elections in this country. That opinion—and protest—was officially
communicated an hour ago to your ambassador here and to your Foreign Office to London.”

“This . . . what you have said . . . is nothing I can . . . to do.” Charlie stopped, forcing some cohesive control. “This is nothing, nothing whatsoever, to do with me; nothing, as I have tried to make clear, that I can control or influence. I am here to investigate a crime, nothing else.”

“We know your accredited function,” dismissed Kashev. “You are the only person who has been made vocally available: communication to the ambassador and your Foreign Office has degenerated to the point of formally exchanging unanswered Notes. You plead that you are little more than a messenger boy, which is what we consider you to be. In addition to what we’ve already told London, there will be no further cooperation or communication whatsoever in the murder investigation in which you are supposedly involved. And further, that every detail of British obstruction and inconsistency will be made publicly available to counter whatever diplomatic difficulty is currently being cultivated by London.”

It would be his name publicly attached to the Russian complaints, Charlie immediately realized. “I have made it abundantly clear to your representatives attached to the murder investigation that I will make available each and every response the embassy conference generates. It is an undertaking I repeat now.”

“This meeting is over,” declared Kashev. “And you,” completed the man contemptuously, “can leave now to deliver your messages!”

With the fortunately retained embassy car waiting outside Petrovka, Charlie was back at Smolenskaya long before Harry Fish left for their earlier arranged sweep of his hotel suite.

“We got another problem?” asked Fish.

“I don’t know what the hell we have,” admitted Charlie, continuing on to the basement. Unsure what the Russians intended to announce, Charlie included in his warning to London every
accusation, threat and challenge he’d faced at the Petrovka confrontation, as much as possible—which was a lot—verbatim. He was near the end of his second revision when the hammered summons came at his cubicle door and when he opened it Ross Perritt said: “Get up to your
rezidentura
,
now
!”

Paula-Jane, Halliday, Robertson, and Fish were already there when Charlie arrived, grouped unspeaking around the widescreen television. P-J needed both hands to gesture him in at the same time as warning against his saying anything to overlay the program-interrupting news announcement. Charlie at once recognized the bespectacled, solemn-faced anchor of the main Rossia news channel.

“. . . can only be interpreted as an intentional and provocative determination to interfere in the internal democratic activities of the Russian Federation,” Charlie picked up. “Concerted and genuine attempts by members of the Russian Federation to understand the escalation of the intrusion by the United Kingdom have either been rebuffed or ignored, imposing upon the two countries the severest strain over recent years. That strain culminated earlier today in a recorded confrontation between a representative of the British government and officials of the Russian Federation, up to and including the president’s office, in a final attempt to rectify a deteriorating situation . . .”

The picture switch to Pavel’s Petrovka office of four hours earlier, dominated by Charlie isolated against the Russian phalanx he’d faced, was so abrupt that both Paula-Jane and Halliday audibly gasped.

Harry Fish exclaimed: “Jesus!”

Charlie said: “Fuck!”

It was a montage but Charlie at once acknowledged that the editing was so brilliant—photographically as well as verbally—that only he and the Russians who’d been there would have recognized it as such. Apart from an opening shot of the assembled Russians, the camera concentration was entirely upon Charlie and he cringed inwardly at the variety of facial expressions he had been totally unaware of making. There was the wide-eyed
surprise of his entry into the room, despite Pavel’s warning, but by far the worst was his brief, blank-minded reaction to the statement from presidential lawyer Semon Yudkin, which had been retained in full. Charlie judged to be the most devastating of all the editing of his initial response to Nikita Kashev’s opening attack, which had been cut to just
I am in no way responsible, nor can I in any way influence or change London’s response.

When the transmission reverted to the studio commentator, Charlie was identified by name and portrayed as an ineffectual dupe who could be recognized as such by his contribution to what was referred to as a high-level government meeting. The segment ended with a separately recorded statement by Yudkin declaring that the strongest possible protest Note had been delivered by the London ambassador to the British Foreign Office and repeating the suspension of all cooperation between the two countries until a full explanation, accompanied by an apology, was made.

An aching, embarrassed silence, disturbed only by more embarrassed foot shuffling, descended on the room the moment the news break faded. Charlie broke it. He said: “I have just been sucked up and blown out in bubbles.”

“That doesn’t even come close to describing it,” said the resentful Paula-Jane. “That’s going to become an idiot’s guide training film for every intelligence agency for at least the next hundred years.”

“Didn’t you guess you’d be filmed and recorded?” asked Harry Fish, more professionally.

“I didn’t need to guess: I
knew
,” Charlie flagellated himself. “I fucked up, big-time.” Except for transmitting his account of the meeting before responding to the summons here, he thought hopefully.

“We’re on the third floor,” persisted the woman. “With luck you’d probably kill yourself outright if you jumped. We won’t stand in your way.”

“They’ve been incredibly clever, generalizing every accusation and even making it sound as if the presidential elections
were in some way involved!” assessed Halliday, reflectively. “
Years,
the commentator claimed. That covers them for whatever they want—the murder and the bugging and any other embarrassment since the end of communism—and a London denial will simply be laughed at, just as you’re being personally laughed at right now.”

The MI6 officer was right, conceded Charlie, running the realities through his mind until he came to one that stopped him. Would Natalia have seen him wriggling like a worm on a hook? It was too forlorn to hope that she wouldn’t.

“You’ll obviously have to cancel your precious conference,” insisted Paula-Jane. “What the Russian have just done turns it into a farce.”

“Does it?” challenged Charlie, back in control. “Or is that
precisely
what they expect to happen: why they staged what they just did, because they weren’t going to be part of it and wanted to stop whatever I might have said, in answer to something I was asked?”