Red Star Rising (30 page)

Charlie Muffin knew all his faults and failings, but hypocrisy was not on his self-criticizing list. Neither was it a factor in the unsettling uncertainty that he began to feel as the day progressed.

Which was, inconceivably, that Russian intelligence might not be implicated in the bugging of the British embassy and genuinely sought not just to resolve the murder of the one-armed man but now that of militia colonel Sergei Romanovich Pavel.

From the mortuary he drove with the Russian directly to Petrovka where he was presented with sheaf after sheaf of transcripts of telephone responses to the press conference and with a minimal selection of actual tape recordings. The overwhelming majority of the printed log contained exactly the same—déjà vu again—press approaches with a similar sprinkling of crank and confidence trickster demands for money in advance of information. There were six separate sheets, each with its relevant tape segment, that were selected as possibly informative, although none was sufficiently complete to be acted upon. Three had been traced to public telephones and Guzov anticipated Charlie by saying that none was that of the kiosk in which Pavel had been shot.

Charlie was impressed by the infrastructure assembled to monitor the inflow, the assigned telephones all in a large room Charlie guessed normally to be a conference facility but manned now by a staff of predominantly male operators on one side, divided from its other by a pool of mostly female typists maintaining a simultaneously transcripted record of the tapes’ contents. Six people—three men and three women—were in the center of the room, pointed out by Guzov as trained interrogators ready instantly to take a call from the initially alerted telephone operator who judged it sufficiently important to intercept and hopefully extend before any nervous disconnection. None was summoned during the time Charlie was in the room: all were in civilian clothes, as further confirmation that all were FSB.

After the practical demonstration, Guzov led the way back to Pavel’s office, which he’d clearly commandeered. It appeared much tidier than when Pavel occupied it, even during the ministerial-attended conferences. On the desk was a wooden frame, its back to Charlie. Intercepting Charlie’s look, Guzov turned it to show Pavel in the center of a family group and said, “He had three daughters. The youngest will be six next month.”

The month of Sasha’s birthday, too, Charlie recognized. He was a day late with his promised call to Natalia. He said, “That looks an impressive setup,” speaking of the telephone room.

Which Charlie didn’t imagine Pavel having either the resources or the authority to have established. Nor did he believe that Guzov and the FSB would have been able to create it in the short time—a matter of hours—since Pavel’s murder. Was that what Pavel had been so anxious to tell him—warn him—that the FSB were, quite literally, in total control of the Russian investigation, irrespective of Pavel’s attempted independence: reducing that effort to irrelevance, in fact? It was an unavoidable speculation that at the same time did nothing to undermine Charlie’s nagging thought that Guzov’s denials might be genuine.

Guzov said, “Does what you saw help to convince you?”

“Of what?” stalled Charlie.

“That we are as anxious as you are—as your country is—to
bring this investigation to its proper and hopefully quick conclusion,” said Guzov. “As I believe is the case in your country, there is always a greater, more personal commitment to solve a murder in which a law officer is the victim. Shouldn’t we stop dancing around a situation and stop distrusting each other until there is a real and positive reason for that distrust . . . ?” The Russian smiled. “Which we both know and expect to happen before it’s all over.”

“I think perhaps we should,” allowed Charlie.

“The tip about Stout was definitely made through a synthesizer,” confirmed Harry Fish. “I’ve already had it transcribed in full. It’s pretty much as Svetlana Modin paraphrased.”

“What about the sex of the caller?” asked Charlie, accepting the transcript.

The electronic expert shook his head. “It’s not the usual sort of synthesizer: there seems to be an additional distorting device that jumbles the tonal range.”

“You telling me you can’t decide whether the voice is male or female!”

“It renders what’s recorded to be virtually androgynous.”

“And you’re also going to tell me you’ve never confronted anything like it before,” said Charlie, sighing.

“Right,” confirmed Fish, hefting in his hand the Russian recordings. “What do you want me to do with these?”

In an uninterrupted rush of impatience, Charlie said, “Run every check to establish if they’ve been tampered with, whether they’re genuine—particularly if the callers were indigenous Russian or from any of the other republics or outside foreigners—whether the calls were from public telephones or private lines, anything identifiable in the background that can’t ordinarily be heard without enhancement to suggest a location, and whatever else you think might help.”

“You going to work with Guzov?” demanded Fish.

Charlie was surprised there hadn’t been any response by now from the Director-General to everything he’d filed to London after
his return from Petrovka: surprised, too, that it had taken Fish so long to start asking the recorded question to be relayed back to Thames House on channels to which he had no access. “With Pavel lying dead in the mortuary, Guzov is now my only link to the Russian investigation.”

“Don’t you find it curious that Pavel had U.S. dollars in his wallet?”

“What’s your point?”

“Just that.”

“There’s nothing whatsoever to be curious about,” insisted Charlie. “U.S. dollars are the currency of Russia, Moscow particularly. It has been since 1991: before that, even.” He pulled out a bundle of mixed notes from his own pocket. “I’ve probably got fifty dollars or so myself.” It was the currency he provided Natalia, in cash and by post, and at irregular dates and amounts to avoid creating a pattern, judging a regular electronic transfer from an English to Moscow bank too liable to arouse suspicion over time. So far, surprisingly, nothing had been lost.

Fish shrugged, no longer interested. “Surely you don’t think Guzov’s given you these to prove the Russians are genuinely going to work with you?”

“It would be stupid to turn my back on anything without seeing what’s in it for me.” Which was, Charlie accepted, the central core of his rigidly followed survival credo.

“I really wouldn’t . . .”

“. . . like to do my job,” Charlie wearily finished for the other man. “You told me. Now tell me something else. The leak of Stout’s arrest came from inside the embassy. So who, in this embassy, has the need for or access to a voice-distorting synthesizer?”

Fish considered the question. “Paula-Jane Venables and David Halliday. But as far as I know—and it’s my job to know—the synthesizers that we and MI6 supply to its officers do not include the gender distortion facility.”

“We both also know Reg Stout couldn’t have been ORT’s source: he was already incommunicado, with Robertson’s heavies at either elbow. There’s another source within this fucking embassy!”

“I’m going around in so many tight circles I’m expecting to disappear up my own ass!” protested Fish, just as exasperated. “You survive this—and I don’t think you’ve got a chance in hell of surviving—and I’m told I’ve got to work with you on something else, I’ll do whatever I can, up to and including killing myself, to avoid it! You contaminate and bring down everyone and everything with whom you come into contact!”

Charlie let some silence into the cavernous room, intrigued at the unexpected outburst. “You got something more you want to tell me, Harry?”

“Point
out
to you,” qualified the other man, quiet-voice now, seemingly embarrassed. “Don’t you think you might be next on the murder list after Sergei Pavel?”

“I certainly believe it’s a possibility I might be
expected
to think.”

“Let’s hope some poor innocents don’t get caught up in the crossfire.”

Some poor innocents like Natalia and Sasha, thought Charlie. And wished he hadn’t.

No longer opposed—not even questioned—by transport officer Howard Barrett, Charlie improvised on basic tradecraft, dispatching three unoccupied embassy pool cars in three different directions before uncomfortably hiding himself in the rear of the fourth to run the embassy gauntlet, redirecting his first time driver after awkwardly hauling himself up from the concealing foot well. He halted the car in less than a mile, descending to the Metro on the Sokolniceskaja line at Park Kultury, and carriage jumping between stations and three interconnecting lines for an additional thirty minutes before finally, with aching feet, regaining ground level at Kitay-Gorod, satisfied that he was alone. He was lucky with the guess initially to go along Novaka, almost at once locating a telephone kiosk at its Staraja intersection.

“It’s me!” proudly announced a child’s voice, on the second ring.

Charlie swallowed against the unexpected difficulty in his throat. “Is your mother there?” He consciously turned, protectively to put his back toward the wall against which the kiosk was built. There was a swirl of traffic but few people, none showing any interest in him.

“Yes.”

Charlie could hear Sasha breathing, not calling for Natalia. “Can I speak to her?”

“She’s in the kitchen.”

“Will you ask her to come to the phone?”

“What’s your name?”

Charlie had to swallow again. “Please call your mother to the telephone.”

Charlie heard the sound of Natalia’s approach and of Sasha’s voice, away from the mouthpiece, say: “It’s a man.”

“Who is this?” demanded Natalia.

“Me,” said Charlie, unthinkingly repeating Sasha’s identification.

“Oh.”

“Sasha’s very good on the telephone.”

“She likes answering it.” Natalia’s voice was neutral, neither welcoming nor rejecting.

“I’m sorry I didn’t call when I said I would.”

“I didn’t expect you to.”

“I guessed you’d understand.”

“I feel . . . it doesn’t matter.”

“It matters a lot,” said Charlie.

“What’s happened hasn’t made things any easier.”

“I told you I’d get out of the business.” Had he? Charlie asked himself: he couldn’t remember. When she didn’t respond he said, “Natalia?”

“I’m in a mess . . . don’t know what to say . . .” she suddenly blurted.

Charlie was surprised, not able to recall Natalia ever sounding so uncertain: lost even. Another impression, a hope, began to form. “We were going to talk about meeting.”

“You sure you can safely do that now?”

He’d never been safe in his life, reflected Charlie. “You know I’ll never put you or Sasha at any risk; wouldn’t ever endanger either of you.”

“I’m not sure.”

He couldn’t let her uncertainty grow, give her any reason to refuse: “I won’t allow any risk!”

“I’ve promised to take Sasha to McDonald’s on Saturday.”

Charlie was jolted by the recollection that McDonald’s was
where the one-armed man had most likely eaten his last meal. Bulldozing her, not allowing her any escape, he said, “How do you want me to do it? Be there and approach you?”

Natalia hesitated. “Just come in. I want time to be sure: you take time ordering. Look about for a seat when you get your meal. If I look directly at you, it’ll be okay. If I ignore you, it’s not. Or at least I don’t think it’s okay.” There was a muffled sound of someone calling, which Charlie didn’t hear, not sufficiently even to decide if it was Sasha. Clearly turning away from the telephone, Natalia said, “In a minute.”

Charlie began: “Who was . . . ?” but abruptly stopped.

There was another pause before Natalia said, “No one’s here with me, apart from Sasha.”

“I’m sorry.”

“So am I.”

“How will you explain to Sasha what I’m doing at McDonald’s?”

“That you’re someone I know. It will be all right. But you must be sure you’re clean.”

There was nothing to be gained from trying further reassurance. “How long does it take you to get there?”

“Half an hour.”

“What time will you arrive?”