Red Star Rising (36 page)

“Thank you,” said Charlie, with little else left to say. “Publicly, at least, it will appear to have been a very successful and well coordinated joint operation between our two countries.”

“I presume you’ll be returning to yours very shortly?”

The first possible crack in Guzov’s confidence, picked out Charlie. Why did the man need to know how quickly he would be leaving Moscow? “There’s no hurry, now that the murder investigation has been resolved, is there? There might be a few things I still need to tidy up.”

As he spoke, Charlie recognized it to be a pitiful attempt to have the last word and wished he hadn’t bothered.

“They’ve beaten you,” judged Aubrey Smith. “Wiped you off the board. And me and the department with you!”

“It looks like it, at this moment.” The admission came out of his mouth like a bad taste.

“This and every moment that’s going to follow,” insisted the Director-General. “You can’t recover from this!”

“I haven’t received all their promised documentation yet.”

“You think they’re likely to have left you an opening there? They’ve done it all perfectly. What if there is something that doesn’t make sense or add up? You can’t challenge them without destroying yourself and all the rest of us. They’ve been brilliantly clever!”

“Which a lot of other people here seem to have been trying to be.”

There was a silence from London. Then Smith said, “There have been some contrary instructions to Moscow of which I have been unaware, until now. The situation, as far as you are concerned, has been corrected. Or had been. It hardly matters anymore.”

“I’d like you to explain that,” said Charlie, who believed he understood completely but wanted confirmation.

“You’ve been caught up more than I suspected in internecine maneuverings here in London. I regret that.”

The first open reference to the power struggle between Aubrey Smith and the disgruntled Jeffrey Smale, Charlie recognized. It would account for his being the choice for the Moscow assignment in the first place.

“Has whatever’s been happening in London been blocked?”

“I’d hoped it had been, until this conversation,” said the other man. “Now it’s academic.”

“I’m still going to keep the appointment with the woman.”

“Do you genuinely imagine that she’s going to keep any appointment after the publicity there’s going to be over the next few days?” demanded Smith. “She could even be part of all the Russians have done to trap you.”

“I need a way out,” said Charlie.

“Maybe your return is that way out.”

“I don’t follow.”

“Hopkins has been interviewed as far as the doctors had judged it safe to do so,” said the other man. “He’s adamant that the other car drove into him intentionally to force him over the edge: that they, whoever they are, believed you were in the car, too. It was a deliberate assassination attempt.”

“How is he?”

“He’ll live but he’ll never walk again.”

“Is he going to be looked after?” demanded Charlie, refusing the dismissal. “Medically and financially, I mean?”

“I know what you mean, and of course he is,” said the other man, impatiently. “And now I want you out.”

“Let me see this through,” pleaded Charlie.

“I’ll not be responsible.”

“I’m not asking you to be. This is being recorded: there’s no responsibility on the department.”

“No!”

“We both need my resolving this. And I can do it.”

There was a pause. “Day to day. I’ll judge it day by day.”

“No one could have anticipated this!” opened Svetlana Modin.

“No one did,” agreed Charlie, accepting the desperation of his making the contact they’d agreed. Could he use the broadcaster: find an escape or at least a stay of execution through her? He had been quite prepared to resign if that was what it would have taken to get Natalia and Sasha with him in London, but he’d wanted the decision to be his, at his timing and on his terms, not ignominiously thrust upon him with accusations of gullible incompetence and failed professionalism. And unfair to Natalia and their daughter though it was, it was still what he wanted.

“How much were you involved?”

Charlie shifted in the telephone box, alert to everything outside. “There has to be no indication that we’ve spoken.”

“I want to go with what I’ve got tonight, which you’re not going to like. It is that you’ve been intentionally humiliated, because of what happened—or rather didn’t happen—with America.”

The wrong reasoning but she was certainly right about humiliation, conceded Charlie. But she had kept her part of the deal making no mention of the embankment collision. And there could conceivably be some physical safety in that being promoted. “I certainly had no input in whatever the official communiqué says: my first and only awareness of the murders being solved was when I was summoned to Petrovka today to be told, an hour before the official announcement. But I haven’t yet seen any evidence to support the claims.”

“Are you suggesting the investigation
isn’t
over?”

He hadn’t been but an idea began to wisp in his mind. “I’ll answer that after I’ve seen the evidence.”

“Do you believe you were excluded because of the proposed inclusion of America’s CIA?”

Could he maneuver her in the direction he wanted, his idea settling. It was important to put the CIA more firmly in her mind. “If that were the reason, it was misguided or perhaps misunderstood. The approach came
from
Washington, as far as I am aware: it wasn’t considered in any depth by London.”

“You’re going to be at tomorrow’s press conference. And also be at Sergei Romanovich’s funeral. Why exclude you one moment and include you the next?”

Neither of which had been mentioned in the official communiqué, Charlie at once isolated, his disappointment that she hadn’t picked up the lead-in as he’d intended, tempered by the suspicion that she’d come close to confirming an arrangement with Mikhail Guzov.

“That’s a question for Moscow to answer, not me.”

“I don’t think they believe London has genuinely rejected the American approach: that London still hoped to work with Washington in the background. But that they’ve beaten you—not you personally, your people—by solving everything first.”

That had to come directly from Guzov! seized Charlie. And fitted perfectly with what he was trying to implant in the woman’s mind. “If they are, then I know nothing about it. But then perhaps I wouldn’t.”

“I don’t understand?”

You’re going to right now, determined Charlie. “Perhaps I was never intended to be the proper investigator, just the person everyone, including the Russians, were supposed to believe had been assigned to the case.”

“Are you suggesting there was—still is—an entirely separate investigation that no one knows is going on?”

“It would explain a lot of strange things that have happened in the investigation up until now.”

The word “humiliation” did not feature in that evening’s ORT broadcast, and Charlie was only mentioned once by name and without a photograph being shown. It was the lead item, fronted by Svetlana Modin, and once more claimed to be a world exclusive. A combined and absolutely covert investigation between British and American intelligence had been defeated by the brilliance of Russian detectives who had solved both the murder of the mystery man at the British embassy and that of the originally appointed Russian investigator. The revelation, insisted the woman, would further worsen diplomatic relations between Moscow and the two
Western capitals, both of which had issued statements strenuously denying any such joint operation when it had been put to them. A Russian presidential spokesman was quoted that, despite the already issued denials, formal explanations were being demanded from Washington and London.

Had he manipulated the program sufficiently to deflect any further physical attacks? wondered Charlie, hunched over a tumbler of Islay single malt in his firmly secured hotel suite. Still too unsure to relax, he decided, turning to the promised and combined Russian dossiers that had arrived an hour before he quit the embassy and carried back with him to the Savoy. It took Charlie three hours fully to read the dossiers the first time and an additional two to reread everything for a second before finally pouring himself his second Islay single malt of the evening, his minimal satisfaction at manipulating the television broadcast muted by the Russian material.

Charlie had seen weaker evidence, some of it more obviously fabricated, overwhelm barristers in English courts. In what passed for justice in Russia, total victory was a forgone conclusion. The Russians hadn’t missed a single trick.

It was to take another twelve hours for Charlie to change his mind. There was one trick, which even Charlie couldn’t at that moment have imagined. Or hoped for.

Charlie changed direction, reaching for the ringing telephone instead of the television remote control for the first broadcast of the day. David Halliday said, “Have you seen the news?” and Charlie pressed the power button in time to see a photograph of Svetlana Modin fading from the screen and to catch “strongest protest” as the commentator’s voice-over finished, too.

“What’s happened?” demanded Charlie.

“According to the broadcast, she was arrested at four o’clock this morning,” relayed Halliday. “The station says they’ve no idea where she’s been taken or what charge is being made against her, if any. One suggestion was that she is being accused of acting for a hostile foreign power in the dissemination of false information.”

“Is there such a charge?” So much, thought Charlie, for fame keeping her safe.

“Probably. I haven’t checked.”

The TV picture now was of ORT’s senior newsreader, Svetlana’s photograph in the background. The man expanded the protest statement beyond that from the station itself to include the Moscow journalists’ union. There was a reference to that morning’s scheduled murder press conference, which the anchorwoman had intended covering, with the speculations that Russian journalists might boycott it in protest at her arrest. That was followed by
stock footage of Svetlana’s most recent appearances, accompanied by a commentary describing them as a series of unrivaled world exclusives.

“They’re going to sweat her, for her sources,” predicted Halliday. “You think they’ll disclose them, when she tells all?”

He had to be wary of the recording equipment in the suite Charlie reminded himself. “They might, if it serves their purpose.” And totally destroy him in the process if they chose to do so, he accepted, if his belief of Guzov initiating Svetlana’s approach to him the previous day was right.

“You think it could cause us more problems here at the embassy?” asked Halliday, with unknowing prescience.

“It could, I suppose. I’ll just go to the conference, see what I can pick up there,” said Charlie. And lay himself out for sacrifice if Guzov were listening, which Charlie was sure the FSB general was. It didn’t really matter whether the Russian press boycotted the event. The rest of the world media most definitely wouldn’t and there he would be, displayed for all to see, if Guzov chose that moment to denounce his contact with the woman.

“You spoken to London since last night’s broadcast?”

“No,” said Charlie.

“Don’t you think you should, particularly now that she’s been arrested?”

“I intend to.”

“Harry Fish has been withdrawn, incidentally. Did you know that?”

The planted bugs! Charlie thought, deciding the conversation had to end. “No, I hadn’t heard. I need to get going. I’ll see you at the embassy.” Could he infer Fish’s removal to be a victory for Aubrey Smith? At that moment, Charlie didn’t think it was safe for him to assume anything. And even if he did—and was right—he couldn’t imagine that it would indicate anything to save or protect him.

It was a last-minute thought to order an embassy car to collect him, and Charlie was glad he had as he approached the legation. It was once more under media siege, the embankment road close
to being impassable. He was recognized during the vehicle’s slow progress through the crush and it took several moments for Charlie to recover from the flash and strobe-light blindness when they finally reached the sanctuary of the inner courtyard. Charlie asked his driver to wait to take him to Petrovka, unsure what to expect within the building.