Bomb Grade

by Brian Freemantle

  He might as well be sitting with a begging bowl in front of him instead of a blotting pad, thought Charlie. Hoping against hope that Kestler wouldn’t butt in and ruin the possibility of her saying more, Charlie delayed his response by pouring himself water.

  You’ll have to do better than that, thought Natalia; you were too good a teacher. Ask, Charlie; ask humbly.

  Kestler spoiled the contest. ‘I am authorized by my Bureau to offer any technical assistance you might require,’ the man blurted.

  In front of him Charlie saw Popov reach out for Natalia’s arm. She bent her head towards the man and then nodded. Coming back to them Popov said, ‘We appreciate the offer, but I think our facilities are quite adequate.’

  Charlie’s concentration wasn’t fully upon the predictable rejection. There was nothing unusual in the man getting Natalia’s attention by touching her arm, but Popov had remained holding it as he’d talked and Charlie thought Natalia had begun but then stopped an impromptu movement to cover Popov’s hand with hers. Ridiculous, Charlie thought: in the bewilderment of being confronted by Natalia he was trying too hard and seeing significance where none existed. The colonel had been surprisingly over-familiar and any shift by Natalia, if indeed she had stirred, would have been a gesture of displeasure. Discarding the unnecessary reflection Charlie said, ‘I’d like to make clear that I am extremely grateful to be included. And although I naturally accept the limitation of an observer I would appreciate the opportunity to contribute during the planning.’ There, he thought, I’m practically on my knees. And talking like a recorded message, which should read well in the transcript he intended sending back to London to prove to everyone he was behaving exactly as he had been told.

  Natalia felt Popov go forward, to respond, but quickly spoke ahead of him. ‘I’m sure we would welcome any worthwhile contribution.’ Charlie was far too clever to be ignored: besides which, the idea of virtually having Charlie work for her appealed to Natalia. She hoped he’d interpret it that way, too. Beside her Aleksai was doodling squares within squares along the edge of his blotter. She’d indulged herself, Natalia conceded, enjoyed too much the unexpected ease of meeting Charlie again and of proving to everyone – herself most of all – that she was the person to whom they all had to defer. Which she’d proved enough. Now it was time to defer herself, to let Aleksai take over. Things were still strained between them and she wanted to make amends, not worsen the situation by dominating everything. She pulled back, physically withdrawing, and said, ‘Mine is, of course, the overall responsibility. Colonel Popov is the operational director.’

  The renewed introduction appeared to surprise Popov, who hesitated for several moments, once looking at Natalia as if for guidance before coming back to the two men. It was Kestler who responded to Popov’s invitation for any further questions. Charlie decided, quickly, the American’s mistakes had come from the younger man being over-impressed at the echelon with which they were dealing. He’d adjusted now, probing generally to begin with rather than snatching isolated points out of the air and Charlie withdrew, too, letting the meeting briefly move away from him. His apparent attention upon Popov, as the man spoke, hid his absorption upon Natalia. She, too, deflected to Kestler and occasionally to the two government officials, but a lot of the time she remained looking directly at him.

  Where was the sign? Charlie accepted, as the anxious thought came to him, that it was ridiculous to expect her to behave in any way other than with strict formality – just as it was impossible for him to do anything else in front of the men by whom she was surrounded – but he wanted something from her, a signal or a hint. A signal or a hint about what? That she was glad to see him; that everything was going to be all right? That wasn’t just ridiculous. That was downright bloody madness; the utter delusion of a rambling mind. He was being irrational. Fantasizing, like a lovelorn schoolboy. Charlie didn’t like being irrational or letting himself fantasize and most certainly not thinking like a schoolboy, lovelorn or suffering any other sort of dementia.

  The reflection was shattered by Popov’s revelation of the size of the intended haul. Charlie was so startled he exclaimed, ‘How much?’ and didn’t give a damn that his shock was obvious.

  ‘250 kilos,’ repeated Popov.

  ‘A bomb the size of that which killed 40,000 people in Nagasaki can be made from five kilos of plutonium,’ recited Charlie, dead-voiced. ‘Which means 250 kilos could kill about 2,000,000. And mutilate and injure millions more.’

  There was echoing silence in the room for several moments before Popov said, ‘We’ve had the same estimate from our nuclear experts. We know why we’ve got to stop it.’

  ‘I think we all do,’ said Charlie.

  ‘And we will,’ insisted Popov. ‘I will contact both of you, in advance of the final planning meeting.’

  Charlie wrote hurriedly on the provided notepad while Popov talked. As the man finished, Charlie slid the sheet of paper across the table more towards Natalia than her deputy. ‘My home number here in Moscow, if it has to be out of embassy hours.’ It wasn’t good – in fact it was bumping along at schoolboy level again – but it was the best he could think of.

  ‘I’ve already got that, too,’ reminded Popov.

  ‘Then we don’t need it again, do we?’ said Natalia, picking up the note and crushing it into a discarding ball.

  Charlie remained annoyed at the American’s gaffes but the fury-of-the-moment had gone and there wasn’t any benefit in further belittling the man who apologized anyway the moment they got into the car.

  ‘Just wanted to get things clear,’ said Kestler. ‘And I was told to make the technology offer.’

  ‘No damage done,’ dismissed Charlie, who wasn’t dismissing the experience entirely: he really would have to be careful he wasn’t caught by the fallout of anything the other man might do.

  ‘I was right, wasn’t I?’ demanded the relieved Kestler.

  ‘I owe you $5,’ accepted Charlie.

  ‘This is going to be commendation stuff! Bureau performance medal even!’

  ‘Let’s hope.’

  ‘We’ve got a problem, though. What about Balg and Fiore? You think we should tell them?’

  ‘No!’ said Charlie, immediately alarmed. ‘They start feeding stuff back through their own agencies it could leak out to whoever the customers are in Europe and completely screw the cooperation we’ve been offered today. And keep us permanently on the outside in the future.’

  ‘So what are we going to tell them?’

  ‘Bugger all!’ determined Charlie. ‘We were told Moscow had heard of the Ukraine business and were in contact with Kiev. We’ll let them know if we hear anything more and in the meantime we’d like to be told whatever else they get from their sources.’

  Kestler frowned. ‘That’s pretty shitty.’

  ‘Life’s pretty shitty,’ insisted Charlie.

  ‘They’ll know we lied to them, when it all comes out.’

  ‘You want to risk losing two hundred and fifty kilos of weapons graded nuclear explosives!’

  ‘Of course not!’

  ‘Then the Germans and the Italians don’t get told.’ He very definitely had to guard against Kestler, Charlie decided again.

  ‘You debriefed him, all those years ago?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He didn’t show any sign of recognition.’

  ‘I scarcely recognized him.’

  The ministry observers had agreed it was a good meeting but Natalia welcomed the private review between herself and Popov. He was still aloof, restricting himself to the examination of the earlier conference. She still hadn’t received his threatened dissenting memorandum but Natalia was determined not to ask if he still intended to submit one. Just as she was determined not to be the first to cross the line into their personal relationship in anything she did or said. It had been more than a week now since their argument.

  ‘You even identified yourself, by name!’

  ‘It was hardly
likely he’d draw attention to himself and to what happened in the past, was it?’ Aleksai’s curiosity was entirely understandable.

  ‘He must know we’d have a file!’

  ‘Not necessarily. A lot of the KGB files went with the end of the organization. He didn’t know until today it would be me he was meeting.’ Which was true, Natalia thought. He’d handled the surprise very well, professionally. It was personal situations he’d been incapable of dealing with. Not her problem any more. Natalia had been surprised at herself; surprised how easy it really had been for her.

  ‘I don’t think he’s very good!’

  Charlie’s best trick, Natalia remembered: getting people to despise him. ‘He’s only observing. He can’t cause any problems’

  ‘I didn’t expect you to accept his contributing, at the planning sessions to come.’

  ‘Why not? He can contribute. We don’t have to act on anything he suggests. It’s simply giving them the impression of involvement.’ Was there any point in letting the distance remain between herself and Aleksai? She’d imposed her will and he had every right to be offended. But it wasn’t a game between them, a contest with a winner and a loser.

  ‘We can’t guess what the American would be like under pressure: he could be unpredictable,’ said Popov.

  Natalia wondered what description Aleksai would have chosen for Charlie if he’d known the man as well as she did. ‘They’ll both be totally under our control, at all times. They can’t disrupt anything at Kirs.’

  ‘I still think this is a mistake; one we’ll regret,’ insisted Popov.

  ‘It’s the decision of two ministries, one of which imposed both men upon us.’

  ‘Proposed by you.’

  ‘It can always be rescinded.’ She hesitated. Then she said, ‘I’m not doing anything this evening.’

  Popov stayed for several moments looking steadily at her, as if making up his mind. ‘Neither am I.’

  ‘I could make dinner,’ suggested Natalia, allowing the final concession.

  ‘All right.’

  Natalia wished the acceptance hadn’t been so begrudging.

  ‘I thought one thing was odd,’ said Popov, reverting to the meeting. ‘His offering the contact number like he did, when he knew I already had it.’

  ‘An easy thing to forget.’

  ‘He didn’t strike me as the sort of man who forgot things.’

  Charlie wasn’t, Natalia knew. Any more than she was, although she’d write down the telephone number she’d memorized from the piece of paper, before screwing it up in perhaps her most positive and almost too extreme act of disinterest. She had no real reason to keep it, of course. But then there was no real reason why she shouldn’t have it, either.

  chapter 14

  The reaction from London and Washington was even more frenzied than Charlie expected. Charlie’s assessment of the meeting was longer than the actual transcript itself and took the rest of the day and most of the evening to transmit: even before he’d finished the Director-General telephoned to withdraw him immediately for a personal briefing. Charlie successfully argued that there could be as little as an hour’s notice of the next summons, which had as much to do with his hope of a personal approach from Natalia as it did for a professional one from Popov. There was no good reason for his being recalled: being taken back to London verbally to tell people what they’d already been told in print was a classic bureaucratic knee-jerk. Rupert Dean ended by thanking Charlie for doubting the assessment of the scientific mission.

  Charlie’s summons from the ambassador came early the following morning.

  Sir William Wilkes, who was accompanied by the stone-faced Nigel Saxon, used phrases like ‘amazing information’ and ‘catastrophic potential’ like the ones that had confettied his London briefing and Charlie recognized the familiar routine of everyone wanting from the safety of the sideline to get involved in the best career act in town. Which Charlie willingly provided to be part of the same career act himself. He didn’t expect any favours from the disgruntled Saxon, but it didn’t hurt for the ambassador to refer to him by his Christian name.

  It was, unsurprisingly, Saxon who introduced the rebuke the moment Charlie finished the briefing. ‘You should have advised the ambassador before London!’

  ‘I did not consider a robbery that hasn’t happened as urgent enough to approach Sir William. I would naturally have provided an account.’

  ‘You were wrong! Let’s not have any mistakes in the future,’ said the Head of Chancellery.

  ‘Considering the potential of what we’re discussing we can hardly afford mistakes, can we?’ retorted Charlie, refusing to be bullied. Heavily he added, ‘Like the recent scientific mission appears to have misjudged things.’

  ‘In future we want to know ahead of London,’ insisted Saxon. ‘And don’t forget it.’

  ‘No,’ said Charlie. Bollocks, he thought; my rules, not yours.

  Dean’s subsequent reply to Charlie’s specific query was not as good as Charlie had hoped. There were, responded the Director-General, three possible nuclear installations in Kirov’s administration area, at Kirs, Kotelnich and Murashi. Kirs and Kotelnich were believed to have manufacturing capabilities, but Murashi was classified as a storage facility. Charlie decided against sharing the inadequate information with Kestler: the American was potty trained, old enough to vote and a supposedly trained investigator who should be able to work out the cross-check for himself. And if Kestler did, it would be a test of the promised cooperation if he offered what he got back from Washington. Charlie was totally untroubled by his own hypocrisy: another cardinal Charlie Muffin rule was that rules by which he expected others to abide never applied to him.

  Charlie accepted Balg’s luncheon invitation when he telephoned the German to say the Interior Ministry meeting had been about the supposed Ukraine activity, wanting to maintain the link because Germany was the major route along which nuclear components were channelled. Balg was a thick-bodied, blond-haired man given to heavy jewellery – a chunky identity bracelet and ornately marked ring – and wore the sort of calibrated astronaut’s watch that told the time on Mars. The man chose a Georgian restaurant on Novodevichy Proyezd, overlooking the Moskva.

  ‘So it was a wasted meeting?’ said the German, immediately after they’d ordered.

  ‘Not at all,’ frowned Charlie, gauging a challenge. ‘It maintained our contact with Popov. And proved the Russians intend to work with me.’

  ‘Just Popov?’

  Charlie sipped the heavy Georgian wine, needing thinking time. Balg didn’t believe him. Charlie wouldn’t have believed Balg, if the circumstances were reversed, but he would have disguised the disbelief better. Cautiously, he said, ‘Not just Popov. His director, a woman general. Natalia Fedova.’

  ‘No one else?’ pressed the German intelligence officer.

  Charlie used the wine delay again. ‘There were ministry officials. We never got their names.’

  Now it was Balg who let silence into the conversation. Eventually the man said, ‘The head and deputy head of a division – and ministry officials – convening a conference to discuss so little!’

  ‘I’d been calling them. Kestler, too. Both of us said we had something important, without setting out what it was. It was logical for them to think we had more than they did.’

  ‘They must have been disappointed.’

  ‘It was confirmation of what they had.’

  ‘But nothing more?’

  Why didn’t Balg come right out and call him a lying bastard! ‘They said the working relationship with Kiev is excellent.’

  ‘If they didn’t know in advance from either you or Kestler, it must have been from Kiev that they got their information.’

  A suspicion of his own flickered in Charlie’s mind, firing the first burn of anger. ‘Obviously.’ He lay down his fork, pushing the satsivi away only half-eaten.

  ‘So how was it left?’

  ‘That we’d keep in the closest
touch, passing on whatever we got to build up a fuller picture.’ Jesus, it even sounded like the lie it was!

  ‘And what have you been able to pass on since?’

  That was a karate kick straight in the balls, assessed Charlie, a reminder where the Ukraine information had first come from with the clearly implied threat it could be withheld in the future. ‘Nothing,’ Charlie conceded.

  ‘So unfortunate when a useful source dries up, don’t you think?’

  Charlie was quite prepared to acknowledge the German had good enough cause for the scarcely veiled hostility. But he was buggered if he’d let Balg trample all over him. Pointedly, he said, ‘Unfortunate for everyone.’

  ‘It depends upon the number and veracity of the sources.’

  You weren’t looking where you were going and just stepped in the dog’s shit, Jurgen my son, thought Charlie. He’d expected the German to be cleverer than that: too anxious to launch a blitzkrieg instead of firing a sniper’s shot. ‘It does indeed depend on just that! Which is why I’m glad you and I have reached the understanding we have.’

  Charlie’s chirpiness confounded the other man. Unable to rise to it, Balg instead continued ponderously, ‘Which is why I protect and respect my sources.’

  ‘Most of us do,’ agreed Charlie, still brightly. He’d had enough. He was convinced he knew what his problem was and was glad now that he’d delayed protesting it sufficiently; if push came to shove he could play dirtier than Balg. Which the man was a bloody fool if he didn’t realize. Like he’d be a bloody fool if he didn’t recognize which professional to stay with. ‘I grade my sources, not just on the level of what they tell me but on their long-term value. Don’t you do that?’

  Balg remained confused. Hesitantly he said, ‘Yes. That’s what I do … try to do.’

  Umberto Fiore was adamant the short notice wasn’t an obstacle to dinner that night and was waiting in the bar when Charlie got to the Savoy. The Italian worked from practically the same script as Balg. The disbelief was far more subtle although just as swift and Charlie accepted that since midday Balg would have rehearsed Fiore. Better prepared himself now, Charlie introduced the flippancy much earlier to cut off Fiore’s attempted warnings about continued cooperation. Charlie ended the evening quite convinced he was right and glad he’d arranged the visit to the American embassy the following day.