Read Online Red Star Burning by Brian Freemantle - Free Book Online Page A

metaphysically—always survived. Because every time it had only ever been he who’d had to survive, no one else to worry about or to consider. Now it wasn’t only he. It was Natalia—probably bewildered, doubtless confused, with only the vaguest indication of what had happened—and innocent, vulnerable Sasha, whom he’d always pledged to care for and protect.
    He wouldn’t fail them, Charlie determined. He was enduring this animal-farm charade because the finance and facilities of the combined agencies were his best chance of rescuing Natalia and Sasha. None of which, from Jane Ambersom’s almost sadistic dismissal earlier that day, were going to be made available to him. So it had to be just he, alone. Better, far better. He’d never liked—never trusted—other people with him or acting on his behalf: not so much from doubts of their loyalty but from doing things differently, less effectively, than he could.
    Doing it by himself wasn’t going to be easy, Charlie realistically acknowledged. Although he’d always insisted on working alone, there’d usually been an embassy upon which he could call for falsely named passports and air or road escape and cyberspace communications, if the ultimate shit hit the ever-spinning fan. And money: unlimited operational finance, safe openingly available whenever he needed it, which he always had, the more so since his marriage to Natalia. He’d date-staged the transfers from Jersey, so there’d still be some left there, once he’d got away from here. That wouldn’t be as easy as slipping his leash the first time. But this was different. This, quite literally, was life or death: Natalia and Sasha’s life or death. Nothing was going to prevent his keeping them alive: alive and eventually with him. At last.
    *   *   *
     
    James Straughan, who was an asexual bachelor, lived in Berkhamsted, almost sixty miles south of Charlie’s Buckinghamshire interrogation lodge, with an almost totally disoriented mother whose evening meal he had just finished feeding her when his telephone rang.
    “We’ve got a match,” declared the duty officer at the Vauxhall headquarters of MI6.
    “No doubt?” demanded Straughan, continuing with generalities because his was an insecure line, although the London call was being patched through a router.
    “None. What do you want me to do?”
    “Keep everything until I get there tomorrow.” If he told Gerald Monsford tonight, the awkward bastard would probably have him immediately return to London personally to courier the stuff to the man’s Cheyne Walk flat. Straughan considered cleaning, bathing, and getting his mother ready for bed a far more important duty.
    *   *   *
     
    Maxim Mikhailovich Radtsic patiently stood on the other side of the bed, watching Elana set aside her assortment of things, knowing from every neatly stacked item, predominantly photographs, that it was a selection she’d made and unmade several times before and hated her having to do it yet again.
    “That’s everything,” she said triumphantly, looking up.
    “No,” he refused, bluntly. Watched by Elana, it had taken Radtsic two hours of fruitless searching for listening devices but he still insisted on loud radio music to defeat any monitoring installation.
    “I’ve kept everything to the absolute minimum!” she protested, her voice wavering. “That’s all our memories.”
    “I haven’t been told yet how they’re going to get us out but it’ll almost certainly be by air. Luggage, even luggage going into the hold, is photographed. This amount—and these pictures—would be opened and trap us.”
    “I can’t go with nothing!”
    “You have to go with nothing. Everything is going to be new: our lives, our names, house, everything. All new. No history.” It was madness talking, even softly, like this!
    “I can’t,” she pleaded. “That’ll be … that’ll be dying.”
    “Staying here will be dying. Literally.” This was asking too much