Red Star Rising (43 page)

“Yes,” stumbled Charlie, for the third time.

“They’ll toss Ivan’s body into an unmarked grave. Or maybe not even bother, just incinerate it without even a proper crematorium. I want Ivan properly laid to rest.”

“What are you asking me to do, Irena?” demanded Charlie, striving for control. “You can’t take custody of the body, even though Ivan’s wife is dead. You’re not legally next of kin. And by trying, you’d identify yourself.”

“His body was found in the British embassy,” set out Irena, her argument clearly prepared. “At your press conference you twice, maybe even more than twice, explained British participation resulted from the embassy technically being British not Russian territory. I’ve done research. A body found on British territory is, again technically, the responsibility of Britain, whatever its nationality. I want Ivan’s body given back to the embassy and repatriated to England, for a proper, civilized burial. In return for what I am letting you have I want enough money to live well, if not in luxury, which Ivan promised. I want to live in London or wherever Ivan is buried, so that I can mourn at his grave every day for the rest of my life.”

“That is . . .” started Charlie.

“. . . what I want,” finished Irena. “Make it happen for me.”

Charlie ignored the waiting messages and contact-insistences waiting for him, descending at once to his communications cell in which he remained for more than three hours recounting the approach and final encounter with Irena Novikov, up to and including her concluding asylum demands. He also attached scanned
copies of the thirty-two pages of the stolen KGB and FSB material, designating Director-General Aubrey Smith the sole your Eyes Only recipient. He did so with increasing reluctance, pridefully, even conceitedly, wishing he could have kept everything to himself until he was able to deliver a complete and comprehending solution to the murder investigation and the eighteen-year-plus Russian intelligence operation. But with professional objectivity, he accepted that he couldn’t without the essential code key.

It was not until the end of those three exhaustively concentrated hours that Charlie allowed himself to think beyond the topmost secret Russian intelligence material and its potential significance, to his physical possession and the overwhelming need for it to be totally safeguarded. In normal circumstances that would not have been a consideration, let alone a problem, but with an apparent spy still deeply embedded within the embassy, circumstances were far from normal. There was no one that he could trust. Except, as always, himself. But that would require his permanently carrying everything with him at all times, as he’d briefly carried it from Irena’s apartment, by taxi to avoid the constant danger of Metro pickpockets if not physical attack and robbery as the assassinated Sergei Pavel had been searched, if not actually robbed.

To pad himself like that again would not only attract the attention of Mikhail Guzov and his watchers outside the embassy but the quizzical curiosity of everyone, including the undetected mole, inside it. To carry constantly the thirty-two sheets in a never-surrendered briefcase, an encumbrance with which he rarely bothered anyway, would create the same Russian interest and conceivably FSB robbery, either in a street or far more likely from his Savoy suite.

Could he chance the complete opposite from permanently keeping the material with him by creating his own dead letter drop, an unguarded, insecure hiding place known only to himself? Dead letter boxes, contact caches between spy and controller, were tried and trusted tradecraft facilities which Charlie had utilized but never trusted, but from which, in objective honesty, he had never once lost an exchange.

Not a decision he had immediately to make, Charlie reminded himself. Tonight and tomorrow, every available minute of which was going to be devoted to Ivan Oskin’s hoard, a briefcase would go unnoticed. As anxious as he was to start his examination, Charlie hoped that any waiting calls wouldn’t take much time or throw any surprises.

It didn’t take long to be disappointed.

“It will probably go beyond postponement,” announced Mikhail Guzov when Charlie asked the obvious question. “Everything’s resolved, after all. The thought now is to let the court hearing provide all the answers.”

Charlie’s instant thought was of the disposal of Ivan Oskin’s body and Irena’s determination that the murdered man should be buried in England. His next and almost as quick awareness was that it would spare him the Russian’s intended humiliation. “There are still a lot of questions to which I don’t have answers.”

Guzov didn’t reply at once. “A complete case file is being prepared for you.”

The cancellation had to be connected with the Lvov demonstration hijack, Charlie guessed. But how? “I—and through me, London—don’t have any evidence that everything has been resolved. Until we do—and there is complete and mutual agreement that it
is
resolved—I am going to work on the understanding that it remains an ongoing, combined criminal investigation. . . .” Now it was Charlie who paused, thinking again of Ivan Oskin’s remains. “Which means I expect every item of evidence, including the body to support whatever medical evidence is produced at the trial, to remain intact and available.”

“That’s ridiculous!” protested Guzov, the condescension finally going. “I’ve told you how it’s all been sorted out. It’s over!”

“A lot of accusations were made by Stepan Lvov when he took over your press conference,” reminded Charlie. “Won’t abandoning it altogether be a virtual confirmation of those accusations?”

“That’s a political consideration,” dismissed Guzov, badly.

“Canceling altogether an international press gathering intended to illustrate the professional ability of Moscow police isn’t a political consideration,” easily contradicted Charlie. “That’s a militia and special investigatory consideration and decision, surely?”

“I have not been included in the discussions.”

“Perhaps you should have been, as much to protect your personal reputation as that of the organization you represent.”

“If I’m consulted I will make your opinion known: certainly your belief that the investigation has not been concluded,” said Guzov, with forced formality.

Guzov was ducking everything! “This number you left for me to call? It’s not what I had before for your Petrovka office?”

There was a further hesitation from the other end. “We’ve closed down the incident room at Petrovka.”

Which effectively ended any further contact, acknowledged Charlie. “I’m keeping everything running here. There could be some reaction to your drug gang announcement. Where shall I courier it to you, if it does?”

“Perhaps you’d call me on this number,” said Guzov, after another long pause.

“And perhaps you’d call me when a definite decision’s reached about the press conference?” pressed Charlie.

Charlie was glad he’d spoken to Guzov ahead of returning Svetlana Modin’s call, sure as he was of a link between the two. The broadcaster instantly answered her direct line, the impatience in her voice going the moment she recognized his. “I’m just about to make the pre-recordings, before going on air.”

“Do you want me to call back?” asked Charlie, sure of her reaction.

“No!” Svetlana snatched, anxiously. “We haven’t spoken for a couple of days.”

“No,” agreed Charlie, waiting for her lead.

“Did you see and hear all about my arrest?”

“It would have been difficult not to.”

“What about Lvov’s move today?”

At last! thought Charlie, hopefully. “I haven’t heard about any Lvov move.”

“He’s demanded more about the covert investigation between Britain and America, pointing out that what London and Washington have so far said isn’t a positive denial.”

“He won’t get a response,” predicted Charlie. And wouldn’t expect one, he guessed. It was a political stunt, to continue embarrassing the existing government and keep his name and face on international television screens. But it explained the possible press conference cancellation, to prevent it being hijacked a second time by the presidential contender.

“Why not?” questioned Svetlana.

“He’s not the Russian president yet,” argued Charlie “So why should they respond? Lvov hasn’t got authority officially to demand any sort of explanation, nor the right to expect one. He’s just keeping up the pressure on the government here because of the election.”

“Or perhaps Britain and America don’t want to make an outright denial, only later to be publicly caught lying,” she suggested. “That’s the angle of my exclusive interview with Lvov tonight.”

She was trying to authenticate the story he’d implanted in the first place, Charlie realized, smiling at the irony. “Another exclusive! Congratulations.”

“You think Britain and America are frightened of being caught lying.”

He wouldn’t be lying giving her the inference she so desperately wanted, Charlie decided. Why not go on stirring the pot? “No one, certainly not governments, like being caught avoiding the truth, do they?”

She laughed. “Should I draw a conclusion from that remark?”

“I can’t see what conclusion you could possibly make from what I’ve said.”

“
Thank
you!” said Svetlana, stressing the sincerity.

“Thank
you,
” said Charlie, just as sincerely.

He got safely back to the Savoy in time to see Svetlana’s broadcast and to hear her quote his reply verbatim to continue
her fact-by-innuendo reportage. But then he remained staring, frowning, at the screen for the unexpected live interview from Washington with an American State Department official who actually identified Stepan Lvov by name insisting that there was no truth whatsoever in any suggestion that the American government or its CIA were conducting a clandestine operation in Russia.

Charlie was mildly disconcerted at getting wrong what he considered an obvious prediction but his success at keeping Svetlana Modin’s disinformation pot bubbling outweighed his one miscalculation, and at that moment, there was another uncertainty occupying his concentration above all others. Why hadn’t there been another attempt to kill him? He’d certainly taken every precaution. Charlie recognized that despite all the dodging and weaving, a professional assassin would have by now tried again. And possibly succeeded. Had it really been a proper, determined attempt? Or had it instead been intended as nothing more than a warning, a back-off threat?

Still not relaxing, he not only locked the door of his suite but further secured it with the triangular door wedges he always carried to prevent its innocent but unwanted opening by room servicing staff. He cleared the sitting-room coffee table to set out the four separated and sequentially ordered envelopes, working through one at a time. He did not, on first reading, attempt to analyze any one item or message but tried to get a general overview of the entire haul, hoping for a clue to a common direction to their contents, his initial bewilderment growing until he isolated what he believed to be an incongruity. Encouraged by it—and other dissimilarities specifically in an increasing number of other sometimes single-line slips—Charlie made his first but absolutely essential discovery.

He’d begun by assuming that each communication in all four packages was exchanges between KGB—and latterly FSB—Lubyanka headquarters, recognizable from its obvious and unvarying
CENTER
code identification, and at least five if not more code-obscured foreign field stations or
rezidentura.

It was only when he separated the slips from the fuller messages that Charlie was guided to the all-important different language terminologies. Every code-deciphered word in every communication was an absolutely literal translation into Russian. But from the awkwardness of that translation, or at least thirty of the smaller slips, they had to have originated from radio intercept of a foreign language. But that’s exactly what at least thirty of the smaller slips were, not deciphered from their first-time transmission codes but initially translations from foreign language radio intercepts.

That very first item of December 15, 1991, was not technically a message, which Charlie first construed it to be. The literal translation into Russian appeared clumsily stilted because some of the words didn’t have a precise trans-literal match. The first impossible match that Charlie stumbled upon was the phrase
walk-in,
which no Russian would have written. It was tradecraft terminology of American CIA origin that Charlie immediately and easily understood from its adoption by at least four European intelligence organisations, including both Britain’s MI5 and MI6. It was a term describing a foreign national approaching an American source to offer him or herself—or information he or she possessed—either for money or ideology.
Asset
was another Americanism, which Charlie picked out from another radio intercept dated February 1992, and knew also to have been adopted by other Western intelligence agencies to mean a foreign national suborned or willing to inform or spy upon his country. Both were sourced from the same KGB field station concealed behind the numeric code 68. The next communication was a reaction from
CENTER
to the alerting field station allocating the word
AMBER
as a case code. It included the word “struggle,” which at first confused Charlie until he remembered being told by Natalia when they were together in Moscow and he was learning the Russian
language to be occasionally used colloquially to mean “search,” which appeared as search several more times in messages not only to and from Moscow but to and from a wider spread of field stations, some numerically coded—72, 48, 10, and 58—and others under a variety of worded identifications:
AJAX, TROJAN, OMEGA
, and
MARS
. In several, another recognizable tradecraft term,
sleeper,
appeared apparently as a supposition or a suggestion. A sleeper was a committed spy not actively engaged in day-to-day espionage but left buried—sleeping—until the reason or decision arose to wake him to begin work.