Red Star Rising by Brian Freemantle Read Free Book Online

appear, causing the conference to be canceled, you’ve assured those fantasies will be exacerbated.”
    Doubly trapped before he’d virtually started, Charlie recognized he was making an immediate enemy of the ambassador. “You were aware of my being seconded here?”
    The ambassador frowned again. “Of course I am aware of your being seconded here! Mr. Dawkins has kept me fully informed.”
    “Seconded for what specific purpose?”
    There was a hesitation before the diplomat said: “Do you imagine that you can interrogate
me
!”
    “No, Your Excellency,” said Charlie, belatedly deciding that he should show the expected respect. “I am trying to prevent any further misunderstandings. Are you also aware of yesterday’s exchanges between this embassy and London concerning my role here?”
    Instead of answering, Sotley looked inquiringly at Dawkins. The flush-faced man said, “There were some working arrangements that needed to be clarified. I decided—”
    “Excellency,” broke in Charlie, talking directly to the ambassador. “I would respectfully suggest that this meeting is suspended to give you the opportunity to read for yourself the exchanges being referred to here, and perhaps discuss them more fully and in private with Mr. Dawkins. I will, of course, be available if you decide there is any reason to discuss the situation further.”
    As he made his way back to the
rezidentura,
Charlie guessed that Dawkins probably wouldn’t have shown him the same mercy, but there was nothing to be gained impaling Dawkins’s head on aspike. Far more important—and worrying—was the revelation that Jeffrey Smale was involving himself in such a hands-on way and that embassy officers were unquestioningly accepting the deputy director’s authority. Maybe, Charlie thought, he was going soft in his advancing years. Then again, perhaps he wasn’t—just impatient with all the interruptions and anxious to get on with the job. Which looked like being further delayed by another wasted day. Then he saw Reg Stout talking animatedly with three men in the corridor along which he was walking, directly in front of the open-doored control box containing the faulty CCTV terminals. All three had cameras around their necks and open work boxes packed with electronic equipment. One of the three was a man named Harry Fish, an MI5 electronics sweeper who’d been in the counterespionage business almost as long as Charlie. The recognition between them was immediate. Fish raised his eyes to heaven at the same time as shaking his head, which Charlie knew wasn’t in denial at God living up there but at the shambles down here on the ground.

    Charlie hadn’t expected to be back in the ambassador’s presence so quickly, although on this occasion he was not in the man’s office but in a larger, adjoining conference room. Assembled around the table with Charlie and the three sweepers was the ambassador, Dawkins, Stout, and both the MI5 and MI6 officers. The object of everyone’s attention, in the very center of the table and laid on a white handkerchief to make them more visible, were four black objects the size of pinheads.
    “State of the art,” declared Fish, the team leader. “Any electronic or verbal communication conducted through the four terminals in which we found them would have been received with crystal clarity by the FSB or the external directorate, the
Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki
in their Lubyanka headquarters. I am going to have to bring a much larger team from London to sweep this embassy from top to bottom . . .” The balding man looked between Stout and the two intelligence officers before continuingon to the two diplomats. “There will obviously be a complete and extremely full internal inquiry, which I would expect London to send independent people to conduct. In preparation for that it will be necessary for all of you to go back to every communication that was sent on equipment through these terminals—equipment