Read Online Red Star Rising by Brian Freemantle - Free Book Online

The top floor was six flights up, and by the time he got there his feet were burning and he was panting, even though he’d paced himself. He’d passed seven people on the way up two of them women, and been ignored by them all, despite being an unauthorized, foreign stranger. It wasn’t casual security, Charlie decided, but stage management to indicate his unimportance. Charlie waited until he’d fully recovered his breath before knocking on the identified door. He had to knock twice more before there was an unintelligible shout beyond, which he took to be an invitation to enter. The outside office was empty, but Pavel was visible through the open door of the next room, behind a cluttered desk. The man’s jacket was looped around the back of his chair, crushed by his leaning back against it. Pavel’s tie was loosened and his shirt collar open. The shirt and tie, as well as the suit, were what the man had worn at the mortuary: at least, Charlie thought, he’d changed his own shirt. And socks. It reminded him he needed to get some laundry done at the hotel. He supposed he’d have to change again, into the better of his two suits, for that evening’s dinner with Paula-Jane’s American friends.
    “At last!” greeted Pavel.
    “There’s been time for things to develop.”
    “I’m looking forward to hearing what they are,” encouraged Pavel.
    “As I am from you,” parried Charlie, anxious to get the exchange on his terms.
    Pavel pushed two folders through an already cleared space on his desk. “The photographs and the pathology findings of Dr. Ivanov.”
    The meeting was obviously being recorded, Charlie accepted, disbelieving the apparent casualness with which he had been allowed to walk unescorted around the building. He couldn’t isolate a lens but he had to assume the encounter was being filmed, too, so he had to be careful even with facial reactions. There were twelve images in the album, which Charlie instantly decided were inadequate without needing any closer examination. The only two pictures of the flower-bed hole, dug to retrieve bloodsamples and perhaps the bullet, gave no indication of its depth from which to assess the amount of soil removed. Charlie merely flicked through the pathologist’s report, without trying to read anything, judging it equally inadequate simply from its thinness, allowing the frown for the benefit of the undetected camera. He said; “This is only a preliminary medical report, of course? And I’m disappointed there aren’t more photographs.”
    “I understood from Dr. Ivanov that it was complete,” equivocated Pavel, giving himself an escape from the challenge.
    “It’ll obviously be necessary to talk it all through with the pathologist after I’ve read it in detail,” said Charlie. “Might have to send it to London, to be checked through there.”
    “You said there had been developments?” pressed the Russian.
    “Most of which I don’t fully understand and others of which are very awkward,” said Charlie. “I’m particularly concerned that our working relations and arrangements could be affected.”
    “I need you to explain precisely what you’re telling me,” protested Pavel. There was no longer any bland condescension.
    “I’ll set out everything as clearly as I can,” said Charlie, without the slightest intention of doing anything of the sort. “On the phone, you said you were certain that the man wasn’t murdered in the embassy grounds?”
    Pavel shifted at the onus being put upon him. “We recovered a lot of earth, where the shattered head lay. There was remarkably little blood residue, scarcely more than a liter. Very little bone or skin debris, either. And most certainly no bullet, which there obviously would have been if he’d been shot where and how he was found.”
    Far, far too complacent and far too obviously rehearsed, recognized Charlie: if it hadn’t been so overwhelmingly to his own benefit he might even have been offended at the