Bomb Grade

by Brian Freemantle

  There was a chair just inside the door, separate from most of the other furniture, and Charlie chose that. Natalia sat, too, on the window-fronting couch close to where Sasha was playing. It put them practically as far away from each other as it was possible to get, virtually on opposite sides of the room. Charlie pulled his feet under the chair, as if to hide them.

  It could not have been long, just seconds, but to Charlie the silence seemed interminable. Again it was Natalia who broke it, although with near-cliché. ‘Would you like something … a drink …?’

  ‘No. I’m fine.’ Hurriedly he added: ‘Thank you.’ He would have liked a drink – liked several drinks – but didn’t want her leaving the room, her doing anything but sitting there, opposite him; their being together. He didn’t know what to expect or how today was going to end but for as long as it lasted he just wanted her with him, doing nothing else, thinking about nothing else. Just there. Speak! he told himself: say something. Sasha was the reason for his being there, the swaying bridge between them. He babbled: ‘She’s very pretty … beautiful … like …’ He brought himself up short before adding ‘like you’, which would have sounded crass. There was a similarity which Natalia must have recognized, so the remark would not have been too out of place. Today Natalia wore a loose, long sweater and a skirt and her hair was looser than at the formal meeting, although still bunched at the neck. She’d been irritated, sometimes genuinely so, when he’d called her beautiful, complaining her features were too heavy and her nose too pronounced, but Charlie thought she was beautiful. The freckles – the freckles Sasha also had – were more obvious today so she must have worn more make-up than he’d thought before, to cover them.

  ‘Yes.’ It was an acceptance of an obvious fact, not a mother’s conceit. He seemed enraptured with her, which was understandable, too. More worrying than understandable.

  Unthinkingly they’d reverted to English. Briefly Sasha looked up, frowning, but then started playing again. It was as if the language was familiar to her, Charlie thought.

  ‘You must be very proud.’ Banality piled on banality: the way strangers talked, anxious to get away from each other.

  ‘I am.’

  ‘It’s marvellous … incredible … being able to see her.’ Edith had been devastated at not being able to have children: the guilt she’d felt – which Charlie could never understand, because it wasn’t her fault: not anybody’s fault – had been an obstacle in their marriage in the beginning. He suspected she’d never fully believed it wasn’t important to him and that he didn’t blame her or think she’d failed him in some way. But it really hadn’t mattered to Charlie: it was something that couldn’t be, and with the job he’d done it was probably better that it couldn’t. Which was what he and Edith had decided when they’d discussed adoption. And by the time he’d met Natalia he’d so accepted the fact of childlessness that the idea of Natalia becoming pregnant had never once occurred to him. Or to her, he didn’t think. Certainly they’d never talked about it.

  ‘She’s mine, Charlie!’ declared Natalia, warningly. ‘All mine! Legally.’ The bubbling discomfort was still there – growing if anything – but easier to appreciate now. She wasn’t going to tolerate any threat to the unthreatenable, to herself or Sasha. He had to accept that. Properly acknowledge it.

  ‘I know.’

  Not enough. Too glib. ‘I mean it! There isn’t any way you can interfere. Upset anything.’

  ‘Why should I do that? Do anything? Want to. Don’t be silly …’ He shouldn’t have called her silly, but it was too late now. And it was ridiculous for her to regard him as a danger. God, how much he wanted to interfere and upset, although not in the way Natalia meant! Interfere and upset their lives by becoming part of their lives, caring for them, protecting them, so that Natalia would stop worrying any more about danger.

  ‘Your solemn promise!’

  ‘My solemn promise,’

  ‘Don’t ever break it!’ The hissed demand, heavy with all his broken undertakings and commitments of the past, hung between them like a curtain. Natalia flushed, visibly, with what Charlie inferred to be anger.

  ‘I came,’ announced Charlie, seizing the opening, in a hurry to tell her and start putting things back as they had been between them and he wanted them to be again. ‘Virtually to this very place …!’ He pointed beyond her, beyond the window. ‘I got the photograph. And was sure I recognized the background out there, on Leninskaya. Close to the Gagarin monument. I came and I waited …!’ He looked briefly towards Sasha. ‘It was her birthday, wasn’t it! That’s what I was supposed to understand: that I was to be there on her birthday – August the eighth.’

  He had to be lying: cheating her like he’d cheated her so many times and in so many ways before! She knew he hadn’t been there, because she had. And not just that first year, when she’d prayed he’d turn up. The following year as well, on the same date and at the same place, and she’d lingered there for hours.

  ‘Don’t, Charlie! I know it’s not true. It was August the eighth. And it was the Gagarin obelisk. But you never came. I waited. For hours. But you never came.’

  ‘I did!’ implored Charlie, so vehemently that Sasha looked up at him, startled, and uttered a nervous whimper.

  ‘It’s all right,’ soothed Natalia, stretching out an arm towards the girl. ‘Play some more, darling.’

  Charlie burned with embarrassment at frightening the child and with frustration at Natalia’s dogmatic, unmovable disbelief. He took all the fervency out of his voice and quietly, reasonably, said: ‘Natalia, listen to me! Please listen! I did come. And when you didn’t arrive I decided I’d misunderstood. So I came on other days … four or five other days in case I’d got the date wrong, which I knew I hadn’t. And I went to the old apartment and tried to find you but they said they didn’t know where you were. And then I decided you hadn’t tried to contact me after all: that you hated me and that the photograph was to let me know just how deep that hate was …’ It was a different type of nagging foot pain now, the sort that came when he made a mistake and didn’t know what it was. Which was what it should be because somewhere, somehow, there had been one of the worst mistakes he’d ever suffered in his life and he couldn’t work out how or why it had happened.

  Natalia sat shaking her head, not in denial or refusal but in matching incomprehension. ‘None of it makes sense. You got it right: what I meant by the picture! Her birthday …’

  ‘No!’ stopped Charlie, softly. ‘Oh no …!’

  Natalia sat slightly open-mouthed, bewildered.

  ‘What’s today’s date?’ demanded Charlie, flat-voiced in the gouging, bitter relief that he knew what the mistake was. Why! Why hadn’t he remembered her belief in a God?

  ‘The twentieth,’ she said, her face clouded, still bewildered. ‘October the twentieth.’

  Charlie nodded. ‘That’s my date too: because you’ve adjusted. Automatically.’ He smiled sadly towards the playing child. ‘Is she christened, Natalia?’

  ‘Of course …’ started the woman, then stopped, finally realizing. In a whisper, she finished: ‘Oh my God, yes.’ Her fault! Her terrible, stupid, ridiculous mistake – after being sure she’d planned how to find him so cleverly and so carefully and had got through to him – that had ruined so much that might have been. Because he had come to her.

  ‘Eleven days,’ murmured Charlie, disbelievingly. ‘We missed each other by eleven days.’ The difference between the Gregorian calendar by which the West worked and the Julian calculations of the year’s length that Russia followed: followed particularly in its orthodox church ceremonies in recognizing births, deaths and marriages. And he’d missed it! He’d ponced around thinking he was so bloody smart, Jack the Lad who always got everything right, and he hadn’t had the nous to calculate the difference, to be by the space-shot monument on both dates. Charlie couldn’t believe it: he really couldn’t believe he’d overlooked something so simple and so obvious.

  ‘My fault …’
they each began at the same time, and then stopped. For the first time Natalia smiled.

  ‘Both our faults,’ said Charlie, actually laughing, his spirits in flight. ‘But it doesn’t matter, darling, not any more. We’ve made it, finally!’

  Natalia’s smile faltered, then died. ‘Things are different, Charlie.’

  Charlie sat, emptied, as Natalia talked, haltingly and at times changing her mind in mid-sentence to start again. While she was talking, Sasha tired of farming and clambered on to her mother’s lap. Now Natalia sat with both arms wrapped protectively around the child, who’d left Charlie’s doll on the chair but still clutched the wooden model of a cow from her farmyard set.

  ‘But you’re not married!’ Charlie wondered who the man was: he thought she’d been about to tell him several times but changed her mind with those mid-sentence breaks.

  ‘He’s asked me.’ Seeing Charlie look around the apartment Natalia said: ‘No, he doesn’t live here.’ The unsaid ‘not yet’ hung in the air.

  ‘Are you going to? Marry him?’

  ‘I haven’t decided.’

  Charlie felt a pop of hope. ‘Don’t you love him?’

  Natalia hesitated, wanting the words to be right. Then, holding Charlie’s eyes, she said: ‘Yes, I love him. I love him very much.’

  Charlie’s mind blanked, momentarily, no more words to say or thoughts to think. Sasha stirred, on Natalia’s lap, snuggling tiredly into her chest. Looking at the child Charlie said: ‘Does he know about Sasha?’

  Natalia’s hold tightened, perceptibly. ‘My husband is registered as the father. The dates just worked. He’s dead now.’

  The drunken womanizer from whom she’d been separated for years, remembered Charlie. With it came a more current thought. There really wasn’t any proof or trace of his being Sasha’s father. Abruptly aware of her consternation, Charlie said: ‘I didn’t mean anything, by that! Nothing … nothing difficult. Believe me!’ From the look on Natalia’s face, Charlie wasn’t sure that she did.

  ‘He loves Sasha,’ she said. ‘He’s very good to her.’

  With an umbilical intuition between mother and daughter Sasha held the wooden animal out towards Charlie and said: ‘Ley’s.’

  ‘Leys?’ Charlie supposed it could be the Russian word for ‘cow’.

  ‘That’s the closest she can get to his name.’

  ‘Who is he?’ asked Charlie, directly.

  ‘Aleksai Semenovich,’ she said. ‘Aleksai Semenovich Popov.’

  ‘My boy negotiated all this?’ demanded Fitzjohn.

  ‘It’s classified, you understand,’ said the FBI Director. Covering himself against the thought of indiscretion, Fenby smiled and said: ‘I checked your security clearance.’ Which was true.

  ‘It’s on his records, though?’

  ‘Bold and clear,’ assured Fenby. That was true, too. The stupid son-of-a-bitch didn’t deserve it. If it hadn’t been for his too-important family connections, he’d have hauled Kestler out of Moscow – even if he’d made the mistake of putting him there in the first place – and posted him somewhere like Montana or North Dakota, snowed in where he couldn’t do any more damage. He was profoundly grateful for Peter Johnson’s warning. He could move quickly now, if he had to.

  They were at the Four Seasons again, Fenby’s parade ground. The House Speaker waited while their plates were cleared and said: ‘What about the physical danger, sir?’

  ‘Strictly involved in the planning,’ said Fenby, in further assurance. ‘No physical involvement whatsoever.’

  Fitzjohn stirred the ice around his bourbon with its cocktail straw, gazing down into the drink. ‘Jamie’s part will be made known, though? When it’s over?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Obliged to you, sir. Greatly obliged.’

  At that moment, five thousand miles away in Moscow, the telephone rang in the apartment in which Natalia was now alone, except for Sasha.

  ‘There’s been a message from Oskin,’ reported Aleksai Popov. ‘He wants to come to Moscow to discuss his re-assignment.’ It was the code they had arranged in the Kirov restaurant to announce a date for the robbery.

  As Natalia replaced the receiver, Sasha said: ‘Why are you crying, Mummy?’

  ‘I’m not crying,’ said Natalia. ‘Your hair flicked in my eye.’

  chapter 16

  Aleksai Popov occupied centre stage – literally, from a slightly raised dais – and clearly enjoyed it. There were maps and charts on display boards and he held a short pointer, like an army baton, in readiness. Natalia sat with the same unidentified ministry officials who now had a bank of individual advisors behind them and the note-taker of the previous meeting was supplemented by four others, as well as by a man operating recording equipment. At a separate bench there was a very short, fidgeting man in a creased uniform of a Militia major and two other men in black, military-style belted outfits devoid of insignia of rank, service or unit. Again there had been no introductions, but to Charlie they were unquestionably spetznaz Special Forces. Directly behind the black-suited men were more aides in anonymous black fatigues. The table for Kestler and Charlie was away from the main grouping, relegating them to the sidelines.

  Where he was being kept in more ways than one, Charlie accepted. In the intervening twenty-four hours since his encounter with Natalia he’d gone through the helpless anger and the why-me self-pity and the how-could-it-have-occurred despair. Now he was concentrating upon being objective, which wasn’t any easier than the other emotions but necessary for the catharsis. What there had been between him and Natalia was over, like he’d warned himself in London it might be. She’d thought he’d failed her and was about to make what would probably be a better life than that she might have known with him. Which, after all the shit she’d suffered, she deserved. She had to know he accepted that: most of all that she had nothing to fear from him about Sasha. Natalia might have stopped loving him but he hadn’t stopped loving her. So it was inconceivable he’d cause her any problems about Sasha. He’d have to make her believe that more than she’d believed him the previous day. Sasha was hers, hers alone, no one else’s. He had no right to intrude. Popov loved the child, Natalia had said, was very good to her. So Popov would be the surrogate father. Natalia would marry him and Popov would care for Sasha as if she were his own.

  Maybe for the benefit of the military men – or maybe just because he liked occupying the podium – Popov reviewed what Charlie and Kestler had been told at the first encounter; certainly the military aides, behind their commanders, scribbled furiously as if they hadn’t heard it before. Abruptly, dramatically, Popov declared, ‘The attempt is to be made in three days’ time,’ and a stir went through the room. Charlie was aware of Natalia’s eyes upon him and smiled towards her. Although she didn’t respond, there was a softening in her face.

  Popov retreated to the display boards, naming the Kirs plant for the first time and disclosed the two-pronged intention to seize both the intruders to the installation itself as well as to round up the Yatisyna Family. Indicating the black-suited men, Popov said the Special Forces would be helicoptered into the area on the day of the attempt: the group assigned to the nuclear facility would be split, half dispersed inside in advance of the illegal entry, the remainder held outside. The radioed command for the outside group to complete a pincered ambush, once the entry had been made, would simultaneously trigger the house-to-house round-up of the second independent group on standby in Kirov. The two units would comprise 350 men, with another fifty making up a communications, supply, medical and transportation support force; trucks to ferry the spetznaz throughout the area were leaving Moscow that night. Popov hesitated, looking towards Natalia, before saying that he would coordinate both seizure operations from a central command helicopter, which additionally would have continuous, open-channel links to the ministry in Moscow. Popov brought the two military commanders on to the platform before inviting questions, which he pointedly did to the ministry group, not to eit
her Kestler or Charlie.

  The ministry queries were inconsequential, the determination of bureaucrats to be included in the official transcript, so instead of listening absolutely to the answers Charlie concentrated on Popov himself. To hate the man, dislike him even, would be ridiculous. It hadn’t been a may-the-best-man-win contest, both of them evenly competing for Natalia to make her preferred choice. She hadn’t had a choice until the previous day. And by then it was too late. He’d lost his chance but Natalia still had hers. Sasha too. So any personal like or dislike for Popov didn’t feature. If he felt anything it was that Popov was the luckiest bastard in the world, whom he envied more than any other man in the world. Which was coming back to self-pity and he had to stop that.

  Charlie snapped back to full attention upon the briefing at the sound of Kestler’s voice. It was a contribution-to-the-transcript question – whether there could be any doubt about the actual date of the attempt – but it brought Popov and the two officers round to them, giving Charlie his cue. He waited for Popov’s condescending reply that they were quite sure of the timing and then said, immediately, ‘A total of 400 men, at least? With helicopters and ground transport?’

  ‘Yes,’ frowned Popov.

  ‘Even though you’ re bringing in the helicopters and the bulk of the interception force at the very last minute you won’t be able to hide that amount of movement,’ insisted Charlie. ‘You’ll frighten them away. They won’t go anywhere near the place.’

  Natalia shifted uncomfortably. It was a valid observation but she hoped there wasn’t an element of challenge to the man Charlie knew she loved.

  Popov smiled, more patronizing than he’d been to the American. ‘Large-scale army manoeuvres throughout the Kirov region are being publicly announced today, both from here in Moscow and from Kirov itself. By Thursday an actual tented army camp will have been erected eight kilometres from Kirov. In today’s announcement Thursday is being given as the arrival day for the major troop contingent, with their helicopter transport: large-scale movement will be expected.’