Charlie didn’t move, halting the instinctive swing to look into the gardens. “The open pod by the first hothouse?” It was obvious: too obvious! He should have checked every approach, not just that from the main entrance.
“I hoped you’d come: prayed you’d come. I kept checking, hoping you’d remember.”
“I told you I was coming.”
“You didn’t call Pecatniko!” she demanded, the alarm flaring.
“Of course I didn’t call your apartment!” Fortunately, he thought, discerning her fear.
“How did you expect me to know then?”
This was verging upon the surreal, decided Charlie. “I called the numbers from which you phoned.”
“Street kiosks?”
“Each of those you used: we traced them.”
“I don’t understand,” she protested.
“I don’t understand either. Are there people with you?”
There was a pause. “I’m alone. I really don’t understand.”
There was none of the tension that there’d been in her voice on the Vauxhall answering machine. “You can move around?”
Another pause. “So far.”
Her voice was calmer, Charlie judged. “What about surveillance?”
“You taught me how to clear my trail, remember?”
Charlie felt a stir of unease: it had been little more than early relationship game playing, not proper dedicated training, although she’d undergone that at KGB academies. “Where’s Sasha?”
“Summer school.”
He’d forgotten the school semester dates and the additional privileges to which Sasha was entitled as the daughter of a senior state intelligence officer. “I’m at the Mira hotel.”
There was something like a laugh but it was muffled. “You did remember it all, didn’t you?”
“We need to talk.”
“Yes.”
“Leave first, now. Walk past me and through the main gate. Wait on the first bench outside, about twenty meters down on the left side of the road in the direction of the hotel. And I mean wait. I won’t approach you until I’m absolutely sure you’re clear.”
“I told you I’ve guaranteed that.”
“Wait.”
“You’ve seen something: someone!” flared the demand again.
“I need to be absolutely sure. Go now.”
“What if I’m not clear!”
The fear was definitely there. “I’m in room forty-six. Call it tomorrow morning: ten thirty from another street kiosk.”
“I should have agreed to come before, shouldn’t I? Not been so stupid, until it was too late.” There was the slightest catch in Natalia’s voice.
“Move now! We’ve been talking too long.” Charlie kept the dead phone to his ear, seemingly still talking, turning at last to see Natalia go by. She did so without looking toward his kiosk, walking steadily but not hurrying. She was wearing a headscarf, which she rarely did, prompting Charlie’s recollection of their discussing the use of a head covering for a change of appearance, wondering if the now-belted raincoat had a different-color reversible lining. He was concerned at a couple, the man visibly older than the woman, who appeared to follow closely behind Natalia until they settled on a bench and began fumbling each other under the imagined cover of the inadequate half-light. There was no other even vaguely suspicious pursuit and Charlie replaced the receiver, taking both newspapers with him as he moved in the opposite direction from the main entrance, against what would have been any professionally recognizable surveillance upon Natalia, separately dropping each newspaper into a different refuse bin. He studiously ignored the open pod from which Natalia had spoken but hesitated, as if seeking a direction, to study everywhere around it, relieved again at detecting nothing. He continued until he reached a bisecting junction, taking the right-hand path to a side exit from which he looped along the outside road to the main highway.
Charlie picked Natalia out long before he reached her, the raincoat already reversed, and was sure she saw him, although she gave no indication.
When he reached her she said: “I’ve caused a lot of trouble, haven’t I?”
“Nothing I can’t sort out,” he said, wishing he believed it.
Natalia finally backed away from the embrace in which they’d held each other, neither speaking, each satisfied by the feel and touch of the other. She grimaced around the hotel room as they parted and said: “This isn’t what I’ve got special memories of.”
“Try to keep them as they were. Sit on the chair, not the bed. There are things that bite.”
Natalia did as she was told, frowning as Charlie perched himself cautiously on the very edge of the bed. She said: “The FSB have been in turmoil ever since Lvov’s killing, not just at the Lubyanka but in a lot of outstations, too. I’ve inferred a lot but there’ll be a lot more I haven’t got right. It’ll help to fill in the missing parts if you go first.”
Charlie started awkwardly, unprepared, needing initially to go back and elaborate until he got the chronology in order, realizing that for the very first time he was actually sharing espionage intelligence with her. At first Natalia gazed directly at him, intent on everything he said, but gradually dropped her head in what Charlie guessed to be either contemplation or disbelief or a combination of both. Charlie began imagining it would be a long explanation and was surprised how quickly he finished. For what seemed a long time, almost as long as they’d clung to each other, Natalia remained with her head bowed until he finally said: “Natalia?”
It was still several moments before she brought her face up, her hands, too, as if wanting to shield the frowned, shadowed expression that Charlie couldn’t read until, uneven-voiced, she stumbled: “I got so much wrong … didn’t understand so much. Dear God, I’m so sorry,” and he realized she was genuinely, deeply, frightened.
“I said I could sort things out.”
Natalia shook her head. “Not this time, Charlie. And it’s me who’s trapped you so because you won’t be able to get away again. God only knows what they’ll do to you.”
“Now I need to understand,” encouraged Charlie, who from the beginning had found a dichotomy between Natalia’s piety and her profession, in which he’d never recognized any religion or any creed.
“I got so much wrong … made so many mistakes,” she said again.
“I have to understand what you’re talking about, Natalia. Tell me all of it.”
She didn’t begin at once and groped for the words when she finally started, needing twice to stop and start again. “It was the body at the embassy … I knew that’s what you were here for the last time … you made that much clear when we met and then there was television. I did what I promised then, made all the plans to follow you back to England … realized how stupid I’d been for so long, not to have come with you when you asked me … sorry for that … sorry for so much … I didn’t know what happened, of course. Not when you left so quickly. Didn’t understand your last call, that I couldn’t come after all … and then there was the Lvov killing and the others that followed. I guessed there had to be a connection, although I couldn’t understand what it was because you were back in England when it happened. I didn’t guess a connection until I was called in-”
“Called in!” interrupted Charlie, following her so far but wanting absolute clarity. “You were interrogated?”
“A formal interrogation, recorded and transcribed for me to sign.”
“About us? How much about us?” She was recovering, becoming more coherent.
“About your defection. How you tricked me.”
“Nothing more?”
Natalia shook her head. “Just your faked defection and my debriefing, all that time ago. I’d sanitized everything I could retrieve from those old KGB files after we got together. You knew I had, to keep us safe. I obviously had to leave some details though, in case there was a cross-reference. Which there must have been: I don’t know about that. But it can only have been picked up after you left this last time. The first session didn’t start out as hostile. It took your idea to change the original file to indicate you’d been passed on to another more-senior interrogator after me, which I’d done to prevent myself being held responsible for your going back to England then. I was able to say I’d doubted your defection, which was why you had been transferred up the line-”
“You said the first session wasn’t hostile? Did things change?” broke in Charlie again, to keep Natalia on track.
She nodded once more. “I thought it was all over, after that first interview: that I’d satisfied them. The tone changed when I was recalled a week later. They wanted to know why I hadn’t recognized you from the publicity on the embassy killing and flagged it up.”
“What did you say?”
“That I simply hadn’t recognized you from television or newspaper photographs.”
“But they didn’t believe you?”
“The third interrogation came after another week. I had to identify what newspapers and television I’d seen and was ordered to identify you from a collation of photographs and freeze-frames. You weren’t in four sections of the collation: obviously testing me for a reaction, which I didn’t give. It wasn’t actually difficult. I’ve been on the other side, catching people out in debriefings for almost twenty years, after all.”
“What did you do?”
“Replied as I knew I had to reply: stuck to my denial. I insisted there’d only been three debriefings before you were transferred, that it had all been ten years ago, and that I genuinely didn’t remember or recognize you.”
“You think they believe you?”
“I don’t know. There’ve been three occasions when I thought I was under surveillance and I am not sure about my telephone: that’s why I made the calls I did from public booths, as you always told me to.”
“I told you I called back.”
“I still don’t understand that.”
“Our technical people checked. The supposition was that you’d been forced to make the calls under duress. That any replies would be recorded.”
“I chose the phones myself, at random. No one was with me, forcing me to do or say anything.”
The feeling was one of numbness, an unreal sensation he’d never before experienced of being suspended without any control over himself. Too much surmise and supposition, he thought: situations virtually invented where nothing at all needed invention. He could so easily have come back alone, needing only false passports to be available from the embassy, and simply flown back to London with them. There’d been no need for the Amsterdam switch or the tourist diversion: no need for sixteen terrified people to be arrested. “It wasn’t just you who made mistakes. I made far too many.”
“But I’ve trapped you: trapped you and all the others you came in with.”
“They’ll be released, eventually.”
“Eventually, not immediately,” qualified Natalia. “The FSB know you’re here now: those poor people will be used. And when they’re released you won’t be among them. Every way out is going to be locked down against you.”
This far they’d been looking backward, Charlie acknowledged, hearing-but not accepting-Natalia’s defeat. Now they had to look in the opposite direction. No, not yet, Charlie stopped himself at a sudden, still-backward thought. “There’s something else. From what you’ve just told me there’s no way the FSB could have learned my London telephone number?”
“No, they couldn’t.” Natalia frowned.
“What about my address in London?” pressed Charlie.
Natalia’s frown deepened. “How could they? I don’t know it. Why’s this important?”
It would increase her nervousness if he told her of the FSB burglary. “It’s something that happened in London: nothing to do with us here.” He hesitated, needing to ask her about what had appeared an assignation between Natalia and Sasha’s schoolteacher during his previous return. “Igor Karakov?”
“I didn’t know he was going to be at Gorky Park for you to see Sasha. I told you that. Until that last time I never knew if you were ever coming back: if I was ever going to change my mind about coming to you. Igor and I were only ever friends. Never lovers. I told you my decision. It was you who told me I couldn’t come. Then there were the interrogations. And now it’s too late. Now it’s all over.”
“No it isn’t!” insisted Charlie. “Nothing’s all over: we’re not over. I’ll get you and Sasha out and we are going to be together.”
“I want so much to believe you.…”
It had been a stupid mistake to go sideways: to give way to jealousy. “Are you still at the Lubyanka? You haven’t been suspended or moved to other duties?”
In contrast to how she’d slumped earlier, Natalia fixed Charlie in a very direct stare. “This is not what we talk about: not how we’ve ever talked.”
Charlie felt the slightest twitch of irritation, a reaction toward her so rare that he couldn’t remember a previous occasion. “I’m not asking for your betrayal, I’m trying to find a way out for the three of us. If I don’t find that way out, if you don’t help me find it, I can’t imagine what your service will do to you, just as you can’t imagine what they’d do to me. The one thing I don’t need to imagine-know for a positive, incontrovertible certainty-is what will happen to Sasha. Do you want her, from the moment of our arrests, to be put into a state orphanage until she’s fifteen and then thrown out, literally onto the street, nowhere to go, no one to help or guide her except the brothel traffickers waiting outside to teach her the only way she’ll be able to survive!”
Natalia began to cry, which she’d never before done in front of him, and Charlie was shocked at his own outburst, unable to believe he’d attacked her as he had. Not an attack, he tried to console himself. What had needed to be said finally to get her out of the cocoon into which she wanted to retreat rather than confront the reality of where and how they now were. “You hear what I’m saying: understand what I’m saying!”
“It would have been better if I’d understood a long time ago, wouldn’t it?” She sobbed.
Because all the factors were in place, like already tested lights simply needing to be turned on, James Straughan adhered strictly to Monsford’s insistence upon unbreakable security by deciding personally to flick all the switches, delegating to no one. Unlike America’s CIA, MI6 does not maintain its dedicated clandestine aircraft facilities but has fee-paying call upon that under the Foreign Office budget. Availability of both aircraft and crew was reconfirmed, together with morning and evening flight plans protectively stretched over the next four consecutive days into and out of Orly from Northolt military airfield on the outskirts of London, the spread adjustable to all the other time-dictated coordinates. While Straughan remained on the secure line from the Vauxhall Cross communication center, the duty officer at the MI6 rezidentura at the Paris embassy relayed the intended rendezvous with Elana Radtsic to finalize the Russians’ immediate readiness to move. Straughan stayed on hold for the time it took Harry Jacobson to go from the rezidentura to the totally secure basement communications chamber of the Moscow embassy, his confidence growing at the smoothness with which everything was slotting into its required place.
“What’s today’s drama,” cynically greeted the Moscow station chief.
“There isn’t one,” assured Straughan. “It’s to be a straight extraction on the first available direct flight. Guarantee there’s availability for the three escorts who’ll be traveling with you. Give me the flight as soon as you can, for them to make their independent reservations.”
“What about the side issues?” demanded Jacobson.
“Canceled. I thought the Director would have told you.”
There was a momentary pause as the relief swept through Jacobson. “The TV channels here have been virtually cleared for nonstop repeats of the hotel seizures.”
“It’s been media pandemonium here, too.”
“Anyone got any idea where Muffin is?”
“We don’t know and don’t care. And that’s official.”
“You okay personally: not catching any shit?”
“As okay as I’ll ever be. You think you can fix a flight tomorrow? You’re the trigger for everything else.”
“I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”
“I’ll be here waiting.” Straughan separately made his alert calls from the communications room to Radtsic’s independent escorts and had just reentered his office when the summons came on his internal line.
“You got a moment?” asked Rebecca Street.
“I’m waiting for callbacks.”
“I’ll come to you.”
Straughan hesitated. “It sounds important?”
“It is.”
“I’ll try,” promised Natalia, dry-eyed again after Charlie’s limited explanation. “It won’t be easy.”
“Don’t risk anything to draw attention to yourself,” insisted Charlie, urgently. “Just listen for any rumors or gossip from which I might be able to make some sense.” Upon which depended David Halliday’s getting something more concrete, balanced Charlie, who’d held back from telling Natalia of his earlier encounter with the man, worried that it might further unsettle her.
“There’s still a lot of both at the Lubyanka. The turmoil hasn’t subsided yet.”
“I’m surprised some of it appears to have got into newspapers here, particularly after Putin’s media clampdown.”
“I suspect they’re intentionally planted.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I’ll try to get a steer on that, too.”
“Without taking any risks,” repeated Charlie.
“I heard you the first time.”
“Remember what else I said. I will get all of us out, safely.”
Natalia looked steadily at him for several moments. “If you say so.” She looked slightly away, to the infested bed. “I can’t stay. I need to be at Pecatnikov if there’s anything from Sasha’s summer school.” She hesitated. “Or anyone else.”
“I wasn’t going to ask you to stay, as much as I want you to.”
“I want to tell you again how-”
“Don’t,” stopped Charlie, positively. “Keeping one step ahead is the only thing to worry about from now on.”
Which was virtually the same sentiment, expressed in virtually the same words, exchanged at that moment between Rebecca Street and James Straughan in their river-bordering building almost eighteen hundred miles away in London.
It was several minutes before Andrei Radtsic, his face drained, his head shaking in disbelief, managed brokenly to speak. “I don’t understand what you’re telling me.”
“I still don’t, not properly,” admitted Elana.
“There must be something.…”
Now Elana shook her head. “Your father says this is the only way.”
Andrei moved aimlessly around the apartment, fingering objects, picking up and putting down. He turned back, gesturing open-armed. “Everything will be over … finished … your job at the university … me, here, what I might have done … I can’t take it in.…”
“Your father says it will all work out, eventually.”
“I don’t want to do it: any of it! I won’t do it! You go, both of you. Leave me.”
“We can’t do that. You’ll be seized: jailed. Used in some way to get us back to Moscow.”
Andrei stood on the other side of the room, shaking his head again but not speaking.
“Tell me about the girl, Yvette.”
“She’s living here with me,” blurted Andrei. “She stayed away, for us to talk: for me to find out why you came so unexpectedly, but she’ll be back.”
“We didn’t know she’d moved in.”
“It hasn’t been long.”
“Do you love her?”
“I don’t know.”
“Does she love you?”
“I don’t know,” he said again.
“We’re going to be called, at this number.”
“Who by?”
“The British.”
“What!”
“To be told how we’re being got out.”
“I don’t want this: any of this!”
“Neither do I, my darling. But we haven’t a choice.”