Red Star Rising Read Free

crossed one leg over the other, to make it easer to lift the pressure on his left heel. The Hush Puppies were new, not yet broken in, and they pinched. She frowned at his doing it. It was too early to tell but she looked capable of pulling out fingernails, which prompted an immediate question. Had those on the right hand of the man back in the mortuary been intact? He’d forgotten to ask, and certainly to look, and he felt a surge of annoyance at the oversight that might have gone further to confirm the extent of any torture to which the man had been subjected.
    “We need to get to know each other,” Paula-Jane announced. “I want to get things straight between us from the start.”
    “That’s always best,” agreed Charlie, noting the peremptory tone.
    There was an imperceptible tightening to her mouth at his close-to-mocking response. “There was clearly a change in your travel plans?”
    Charlie frowned. “You’ve lost me already.”
    “London’s alert was that you were arriving yesterday. I’m guessing that, instead, you flew in this morning and went straight to the mortuary, without having time to make contact with me here.”
    “No. I got here yesterday.”
    “But didn’t bother to call or make personal contact before seeing the body?”
    “Didn’t London tell you in their message
why
I have been sent in?” asked Charlie, patiently.
    “To minimize as much as possible any direct connection with the embassy,” acknowledged the woman. “I’m the MI5 resident here: it’s my territory. You can front it all, but I want to know everything that goes on. Understood?”
    Charlie sighed. Instead of bothering to answer, he said, “Why don’t you tell me what you know? Like where and how the body was found. By whom. And how you think it got there.”
    Paula-Jane hesitated, clearly undecided whether to dismiss his questions or to demand an answer to her own. Eventually she said, “It was found by one of the grounds staff—”
    “A Russian?” Charlie interrupted at once, knowing the diplomatic agreement—and counterespionage nightmare—requiring local nationals to be employed as domestic support staff.
    “Yes,” answered Paula-Jane, shortly.
    “Name?”
    “Personnel will have it.”
    “So you haven’t questioned him?”
    “I was making arrangements to do so when London told me you were being assigned.”
    “Making arrangements!”
    “The protocol is that in any criminal investigation involving a Russian national employed at the embassy, a Russian Foreign Ministry official has to be present.”
    “Did you go to the scene?”
    “Yes.”
    “While the groundsman who found the body was still there?”
    “Yes.” Her face was beginning to redden with anger.
    “And you didn’t ask him anything!”
    “I told you . . .”
    “. . . about the unbreachable protocol,” finished Charlie, angry himself and intentionally mocking.
    “I was told to obey the rules.”
    What was the benefit of pissing into the wind? Charlie asked himself, resigned. “You saw the scene?”
    “Yes.”
    “Was he on his back or his front?”
    “His front.”
    The answer was vital to keeping him on the investigation, and she wasn’t sure, Charlie guessed. If the Russians found a half unarguable reason or excuse to shoulder him aside—or if hefucked up—the personal repercussions in London would be far more serious than here in Moscow. Charlie knew he was on the weaker side of the power struggle being waged between Aubrey Smith, the ascetic, quiet-voiced man who had championed him since his unexpected appointment from Cambridge University don to Director-General and his passed-over and resentful deputy, Jeffrey Smale. Who hated his guts, like so many in a department in which for far too long—apart from rare respites like that which he’d initially enjoyed under Smith—Charlie had clung by his fingertips. Which would be destroyed like those of this murder victim, if he screwed this assignment up.
    “I don’t