Red Star Falling: A Thriller Read Online Free PDF Page A

Radtsic, loudly. ‘I had no active part in the Lvov operation.’
    ‘That’s my point. All we’d ever talked about, up to that point, was getting you, Elena, and Andrei here. We hadn’t spoken about anything operational. Why, after a lifetime at the very top of Russian intelligence, did you suddenly deny involvement in an operation that had never been discussed between us?’
    ‘I didn’t—don’t—want to waste time upon things I don’t know about when I start co-operating.’
    ‘I want you to think very seriously indeed about co-operation. And I’d like us to start that co-operation as early as tomorrow,’ said Jacobson, on his way to the door, wondering how it looked on the television monitor.
    *   *   *
     
    Rebecca sensed the tension in Gerald Monsford, turning when she knew he was no longer looking at her. His head was bowed over the table, both hands outstretched before him but flat, not clenched. He withdrew them as he came up to stare directly across the table at Aubrey Smith.
    ‘It is going to be extremely difficult for me to respond to the situation we’re confronting,’ began the MI6 Director, inwardly fuming at the immediate smiling, head-bent exchange between Jane Ambersom and the MI5 Director-General. ‘At best I can only offer my briefest suggestion of what might have contributed to the airport tragedy. What I am going to tell you now might substantially change. It might even prove entirely unfounded.…’ He paused. ‘And you’ll understand, after what little I have to say, how much I’d welcome it being entirely unfounded: welcome being completely wrong.’
    The room was completely silent, unmoving.
    Monsford gestured farther along the table, to Bland and Palmer. ‘Omitted from the eloquently presented background to the activities of the last few weeks was something I now want to introduce.’
    Monsford cleared his throat, sipped some water. Rebecca no longer sensed the man’s earlier tension.
    ‘You’ve already been told of Muffin’s Vauxhall flat being burgled by three FSB agents,’ resumed Monsford. ‘Neither my MI5 colleagues opposite, nor ourselves at MI6, could understand how that was possible. There is no publicly available documentation from which an identity can be discovered.…’ The pause was longer this time. ‘There is, in fact, only one way Muffin’s correct name and address could have been obtained by the Russians: one that as Director of MI6 I am reluctant even now to confront but cannot ignore.…’
    Aubrey Smith was engaged in a hurried, note-shuffling exchange between Jane on one side and John Passmore on the other.
    Monsford’s gesture this time was to the empty chair beside him. ‘I imagine many of you are curious at this empty seat and of the identity of James Straughan, who should have been occupying it.…’ Monsford raised the nameplate, displaying it more visibly. ‘Until a week ago, James Straughan was the operations director of MI6, a man of outstanding ability and loyalty…’ there was a pause, ‘a man I believed, still want to believe, genuinely was someone of outstanding loyalty.’
    Across the table, Jane Ambersom was no longer scribbling notes. She was rigid with emotion in her chair, her eyes fixed unblinkingly upon Monsford.
    ‘A week ago James Straughan committed suicide,’ declared Monsford. ‘There was no note of explanation or excuse, no reason of which I am aware why he should have done such a thing. Because of the sensitivity of his function within MI6, coupled with an as-yet-unsubstantiated, anonymous allegation that MI6 contains a mole, a complete root and branch security sweep is currently under way within the service I head. Before coming here today I advised the head of that investigation of a conversation I had in the middle of last night with Stephan Briddle. He had no knowledge of the mole allegation or of the current investigation: he’d been in Moscow as part of Charles Muffin’s support team for almost three