Red Star Rising by Brian Freemantle Read Free Book Online Page B

plastic sheeting.
    “You get into any shit over this, you’re on your own,” warned the man, as they walked back to the embassy, their soil samples on the plastic sheet slung between them.
    “I owe you,” thanked Charlie, accepting the offered digital camera images from Fish’s camera.
    Fish waited while Charlie transferred all the soil onto a fresh piece of sheeting, locked his cubbyhole office, and returned the tools to the gardeners’ shed. In the elevator finally taking them to the communications room, Charlie said, “How bad is this?”
    “For a lot of people here, up to and including the ambassador, I’d guess it will be terminal. As it deserves to be.”
    “How were the CCTV cameras sabotaged to make them work intermittently as they did?”
    “With what’s called breakers, cutting the power on and off, to give the impression of a power interruption. The bugs work on a time system, so that the power goes off completely at whatever specific moment you want the screens to go blank.”
    “Does the power actually go
off
? Or is it their operation that’s interrupted?”
    Fish stopped as they emerged into the basement facility. “What’s your point?”
    “Stuff that’s wiped off computer screens can be recovered from a hard drive by specialists, can’t it?”
    “With CCTV, you’re talking continuous film that revolves for a certain period and then reverses to record again: that’s why it’s called a loop. Computers are electric: even if something is saved and then erased, it’s possible to recover the ghost from a hard drive.”
    “The old loops that were affected? What’s going to happen to them?”
    “They get destroyed. We’ve installed new ones.”
    “Can I have the old ones?”
    “I’m glad I do what I do, not what you do,” said Fish.
    “Most of the time I don’t like it much myself,” said Charlie.
    It took Charlie almost as long to pack up for dispatch to London the discarded loops, what he considered sufficient soil samples, and to list the significance of Fish’s digital camera images already transmitted to London as it did to send his requests to London. After what he considered a usefully spent day, he was disappointed that his feet still throbbed in tandem at the continuing feeling that he was missing something.

5
    The postal system of Moscow is as haphazard as its swirling winter blizzards, even in the topsy-turvy summer in which the city was now embalmed. In little more than a twenty-four-hour period it would have been impossible for Natalia to have given a written response to Charlie’s note. Despite which, in the unlikely event of her having received it and decided instead to telephone the Savoy, Charlie still waited until long after any delivery before at last calling the number Sergei Pavel had given him for the organized crime bureau at Ulitsa Petrovka. Charlie had forgotten the Russian system of individually assigned numbers, expecting a general switchboard, and was momentarily surprised when the militia colonel personally answered.
    “I’d expected contact before now,” said the man, when Charlie identified himself. The voice was bland, practically monotone, without any criticism at the delay.
    “There’ve been some unforeseen developments at the embassy.”
    There was the hesitation that Charlie hoped to engender and the tone of Pavel’s voice changed. “What unforeseen developments?”
    “Things we need to talk about,” generalized Charlie. “Thought I’d give a couple of days, too, for all the other things we discussed at the mortuary to come together . . . fuller pathology details, photographs of the scene, further forensic findings, stuff like that.”
    “There are a few things, not all,” begrudged the Russian, cautiously.
    “I’d hoped we could get together some time today, take it all forward?”
    “We’re certain that the murder wasn’t committed anywhere near where the body was found, which makes it a Russian investigation,” declared