Red Star Falling: A Thriller by Brian Freemantle Page A

arm extended directly towards him.
    Indicating his own system, Monsford said, ‘I’ll make my own copy, of course.’
    ‘Of course.’
    The sanctimonious bastard was patronizing him, Monsford decided. He’d take his time choosing the deflating moment.
    ‘You’ve got something important to contribute to our enquiry?’ invited Timpson. He’d chosen his own chair and was sitting with his hands comfortably joined across a plump, waistcoated stomach. His face, like his voice, was expressionless and oddly shone, as if he’d polished rather than washed it.
    ‘Your investigation will encompass the apparent suicide of my former operations director, James Straughan?’ embarked Monsford.
    ‘It’s of particular interest because it is inexplicable,’ said Timpson, pedantically.
    Timpson would have been a very difficult bank manager from whom to coax an overdraft, thought Monsford. ‘Straughan was very closely involved, the architect in many ways, of much of what has become the very complicated and far-too-public difficulties in which both MI5 and my service currently find themselves.’
    ‘Are you suggesting his suicide is directly connected?’ asked the flat-voiced man.
    Slightly better, judged Monsford. ‘Your security classification enables you total access to all the operational details of both extractions?’
    ‘All the appropriate documentation and authority has been provided to you,’ insisted Timpson, pedantic again.
    None of which gave this jumped-up clerk the right to sit as if in judgement, thought Monsford. Maybe it was deflation time. ‘As you’ve been provided with all the case documentations and authorities of both extractions, what, in your opinion, is the outstanding indication that there is a security leak within MI6?’
    ‘I’m here at your invitation, to hear what you have to tell me,’ Timpson avoided, the self-satisfaction slipping slightly.
    ‘From that reply it’s obvious you haven’t isolated it yet, which certainly makes this a necessary meeting,’ said Monsford, aggressively. ‘There is no conceivable way the FSB could have burgled Muffin’s London flat unless its address came from one of our two agencies. I believe MI6 to be the source.’
    ‘Straughan?’ demanded the security head, at once.
    Monsford had expected greater surprise. ‘That’s the indication.’
    ‘What indication?’ asked Timpson, a finger-snap question.
    ‘One of my dead officers, Stephan Briddle, was the MI6 supervisor within Charlie Muffin’s original support team,’ set out Monsford, his concentration now entirely upon every word he uttered and the recordings being made of them. ‘Just after midnight—I was asleep, didn’t check the exact time—in the morning of the Vnukovo shooting I received a call at my apartment at Cheyne Walk. It was Briddle, in Moscow. He’d discovered a cell, he told me. It was a fragmented story. The gist was that David Halliday, my other dead officer, was part of that cell, together with Straughan, who was running it. Briddle believed Muffin knew more about it: had proof, even, which was why Muffin refused any MI6 association, fearing he’d be compromised—’
    ‘You have a transcript of this conversation?’ intruded Timpson, finally energized.
    Monsford shook his head, carefully avoiding the denial being audibly recorded. ‘Briddle broke operational security. My home telephone is technically an insecure line, not equipped for automatic recording. The conversation was too brief for me manually to switch my normal answering machine to record.’
    ‘There’ll be an automatic listing on your telephone record of the call being made, though?’
    ‘Of course there will be. I’ve just told you mine is an ordinary public line.’ Monsford’s antipathy towards the other man vanished at the hoped-for question. Stephan Briddle had broken every operational security by making the panicked call on an open line just after midnight, but only to confirm by an ambiguous exchange