The rest of the Commission would be setting out soon, Sergei Petrovich Sobelov one of them. With no idea what he was heading for – the most delicious irony of all – in that ridiculous American car, probably with the head of some girl whose name he didn’t even know gurgling in his lap.
Silin rose at the knock on the study door, almost reaching it before it was respectfully opened by Markov.
‘The cars are outside.’
‘Good.’ Silin wanted to be there at least an hour before the rest, to enjoy their unsuspecting arrival, miss nothing.
Marina waited beyond, in the corridor, neat as she always was, attentive as she always was. ‘The kitchen want to know if you’ll be back tonight.’
‘Not to eat,’ said Silin. The dinner at the dacha was going to be the highlight. The boar would probably already be cooking – prepared, certainly – and there was going to be French wine. He’d be at the head of the table and whatever happened he wanted Sobelov to be kept alive to be strapped into a chair to watch them eat what would be for him the last supper. He’d have insisted Bobin and Frolov inflict their torture on Sobelov by then, so they’d be strapped in chairs, too, on either side of the man they’d backed, knowing what was going to happen to them; shitting themselves, crying, begging for mercy, lying. Maybe he should have brought a doctor in, to keep them alive; there were a lot he could have chosen from. Too late now. A minor oversight. Didn’t affect the main objective. That no one else in the Commission – no one else anywhere – would ever dream of challenging him after today.
‘What time then?’ She kept in step with him towards the main entrance.
Silin stopped there, turning towards her, while Markov checked the street outside. He smoothed the greying hair that didn’t need smoothing, just wanting to touch her. ‘It’ll be very late.’
‘I’ll still wait up.’ She raised her face, expectantly, for him to kiss her, which he did, softly.
At Markov’s gesture Silin hurried to his customized Mercedes directly outside. There were escort Mercedes in front and behind, with four guards in each. Markov settled himself in his customary seat, beside the driver of Silin’s car. Without having to be asked, Markov raised the screen between himself and the driver and Silin, in the rear. At the same time Markov took the Uzi from the glove compartment and placed it more conveniently beside him: one of Silin’s modernizing insistences was that the Commission never carried personal weapons themselves, like the American Mafia heads never risked moving around armed. Like all the glass in the Mercedes, the screen was bullet-proof.
The Pizhma robbery had been brilliant, Silin thought. And the best part of all was that there would be more, as big or maybe even bigger. It was going to be difficult counting the money! He’d make the announcement at dinner that night, so Sobelov would hear with everyone else. So the man would die knowing it. Give them all another example of how reliant they were upon him.
The motorway crossed the outer ring road intersection and Silin looked expectantly for the Dolgoprudnaya direction signs, smiling at its familiarity. Which was something he’d have to guard against from now on, comfortable familiarity. There wouldn’t be any more nonsense again, not after today, but Silin admitted to himself that it had still been a lesson well learned. He wouldn’t relax in future, like he had in the immediate past. Today would show them and …
Silin’s mind trailed away, the thought never finished, at the blurred sight of a Mytishchi direction sign which shouldn’t have been on this road at all because it wasn’t the way to his dacha. That realization came with the awareness that this wasn’t his road at all but one he didn’t recognize. He pressed his console button, to bring down the separating screen. Nothing happened. He pressed it harder. When still nothing happened he jabbed at it again and again and then rapped at the glass behind Markov’s head. It was the electrics: something had gone wrong with the electrics. The man in front of him didn’t turn. Neither did the driver. Silin shouted, although the rear of the car was soundproofed by its protection. They still didn’t turn. Silin twisted to see that the escort car was behind, like the one in front remained with him, then hammered and shouted at the screen and tried the button again. It still didn’t work. Neither did the controls for the windows. Nothing worked.
The turn into a driveway he didn’t recognize was abrupt, throwing him sideways and momentarily full length on the rear seat. When he thrust himself up Silin saw they were approaching a wooden villa he didn’t know – like he didn’t know anything – an old-fashioned building girdled by a verandah. There were people on it, arranged like an audience: Bobin and Frolov were there with the rest of the Commission, with Sobelov at the head of the steps, a smiling host. Silin snatched out for the console again, to lock all the doors.
Very slowly, prolonging every movement, Sobelov descended the steps and tapped lightly, mockingly, for Silin to open his door. Silin actually shook his head, whimpering back across the car to get away from the other man. And then he whimpered even louder when Sobelov, even more mocking, opened the door anyway from his side, clearly knowing it would not be locked.
‘We’re throwing a party for you, Stanislav Georgevich: everyone’s coming,’ smirked the man. ‘We’re all going to enjoy it. You especially. We’ve got a lot to talk about: you’ve got a lot to talk about. To me.’
chapter 22
Expectantly Charlie watched the wired-to-electricity shock go through the assembled Russians at Kestler’s announcement that the photographs proved the breaching of the nuclear canisters to be intentional.
There were two additional Russians, one in recognizable Militia officers’ uniform, the other a slightly built, anonymously dressed civilian whom Charlie’s like-for-like antenna at once recognized. They, like everyone else in the room, gave reactions similar to the ministers and the presidential aide. Natalia managed to look convincingly surprised. She showed no trace of tiredness. She was sitting with the spetznaz officers separating her from Popov, who’d abandoned the black tunic for one of his immaculate suits. The man had nodded and relaxed his face into the beginning of a smile at Charlie’s entry. Charlie had nodded and smiled back more openly.
Predictably the discussion began with the Russians, led by the spetznaz commanders, challenging the American photo interpretation. When that dispute ended with their reluctantly agreeing it was the only possible conclusion, Charlie let the increasingly wilder theories swirl about him but didn’t contribute, even when invited, unwilling to lose a strengthening idea among the general here’s-what-I-think eagerness to voice an opinion. As the discussion trailed into silence Popov abruptly announced that the weather had favoured them, with no disseminating wind, and that containment experts from Kirs and Kotelnich had capped the smashed housings and sufficiently water-suppressed the contamination not just around the site but throughout the carriages to enable the train to complete its journey with the rest of its untampered cargo. A comparison between the loading manifest and what remained on the train put the loss at nineteen canisters, not the American assessment of twenty-two.
‘And we have located the lorries and the cars used in the robbery,’ announced the operational director, triumphantly. With theatrical timing, he added, ‘Here in Moscow.’
Popov deflected the top table attention of Fomin and Badim to the uniformed Militia officer, who coloured although clearly prepared for the introduction, which he completed by naming himself to be Petr Tukhonovich Gusev, colonel-in-charge of the central Moscow region. In a pedantic, police-phrased account, Gusev said that at precisely 4.43 that morning a Militia street patrol had located three lorries and a BMW parked in central Moscow, close to the Arbat. The lorries were empty. The German Ford had been found thirty minutes later, abandoned on the inner Moscow ring road, empty of petrol.
‘In view of the Pizhma contamination, both areas have been sealed pending an examination by nuclear inspectors,’ picked up Popov, on cue. ‘No one involved in securing the areas has been told what the lorries contained, of course, to
avoid a nuclear theft of this magnitude becoming publicly known. The initial Militia patrol carried out some preliminary general checks on all the vehicles. The engines of the lorries and both cars were discernibly hot, to the touch …’ He hesitated, for the implications to be realized. ‘They had clearly arrived in the city within an hour, maybe less, of their being discovered!’ Popov nodded to the Militia commander. ‘By six o’clock this morning, all major routes out of Moscow were sealed. In the five hours since, extra Militia and Federal Security Service personnel have been drafted into the city. Any vehicle attempting to move beyond the outer Moscow ring road is being stopped and searched …’ The man smiled towards the minister. ‘I think we can confidently say that the proceeds of the Pizhma robbery are contained within Moscow and that it will only be a matter of time before they are recovered. Certainly nothing can get through the cordon we now have encircling the city …’
The palpable relief went through the room like a communal sigh. Charlie passingly noted the look on Natalia’s face and then saw Fomin, smiling broadly, turn towards Popov. Before the man could speak Charlie said, ‘I don’t think we can confidently say anything of the sort!’
Popov’s face closed. Fomin turned to Charlie, the intended praise unspoken. ‘You have an observation to make?’
‘Several,’ promised Charlie. ‘There’s no reason at all to suppose the contents of the lorries were transferred where they were found. If an hour elapsed before their discovery – thirty minutes even – the transfer vehicles could have got way beyond the city limits before any checks were in place. So your cordon is useless. Dumping vehicles used in a theft is basic robbery practice. But why abandon the four vehicles where they’re bound to be found so quickly? Or leave the Ford on a no-stopping ring road where its being immediately found was even more assured? The thing’s got a petrol gauge. Knowing that it was running out of fuel, why wasn’t it abandoned in some back alley somewhere? Like the other vehicles could have been split up and left in places where they wouldn’t have been found or aroused suspicion for days. Everything was left for exactly the same reason that the canisters were breached. It’s all decoys: the breaching to delay the beginning of any proper investigation – which it did – and the vehicles to concentrate everything within Moscow. Which it did. Making it that much easier to get the stuff into the West.’
‘A fascinating theory, without any supportive facts,’ sneered the taller of the two spetznaz officers.
‘Establish some facts then!’ Charlie knew he’d get six buckets of shit knocked out of him in a stand-up fight with the Special Forces officer but in a stand-up discussion of deception it wasn’t a contest.
‘How?’ asked the other soldier, sparing his colleague.
Charlie gestured sideways, to Kestler, ‘From the American photographs we know exactly what time the train was stopped: twelve thirty-five the night before last. And we know precisely the time the trucks were found at the Arbat and the Ford on the ring road. They would have been driven fast from the scene of the robbery. So let’s try an average speed of sixty kilometres an hour. Drive the trucks – once they’ve been cleared by your nuclear people and by your forensic examiners – between Pizhma and Moscow to see if the journey takes almost twenty-nine hours! They’d have had to be going backwards to take that long! Fill the Ford up with petrol and see if it can make the journey on one tank. It won’t be able to. See how many times it has to be filled up to get directly from Pizhma to Moscow. The petrol left, on arrival here, will indicate how large a detour they took to offload the canisters before dumping the vehicles in Moscow.’
‘I think we must accept those as valid qualifications,’ conceded Badim, reluctantly.
‘There could be a number of explanations for so much time elapsing,’ tried Gusev, tentatively and badly.
‘That’s surely the point!’ came in Kestler, at once.
‘Nothing has been scaled down outside Moscow,’ insisted Popov. ‘The maximum state of alert is still in operation. The discovery of the vehicles is clearly the most practical way to proceed.’
The defence was greeted with agreeing nods from the minister and the presidential advisor. Natalia frowned, questioningly, towards Popov, who raised his eyebrows in return and Charlie wondered what the hell the exchange meant.
‘I’ve been authorized to offer any scientific assistance that might be necessary,’ declared Kestler, unexpectedly.
‘Scientific assistance?’ queried Badim, cautiously.
‘With Foreign Ministry agreement a senior FBI scientific officer has been assigned to our embassy here. A qualified nuclear physicist.’
The attention switched abruptly to Yuri Panin and from the expression not just on Natalia’s face but that of the Interior Minister Charlie guessed neither had known until that moment. Panin’s reaction confirmed Charlie’s impression. The Foreign Ministry official flushed and said, ‘I intended to explain today, for everyone to be told at the same time.’
Dmitri Fomin moved quickly to defuse the tension. ‘We benefited from the positioning of the satellite.’
‘An outside scientific opinion would provide independent confirmation of the findings of our own experts,’ suggested Popov.
‘She is already here and available,’ assured Kestler.
‘The interrogation of those arrested at Kirs has been productive,’ declared Natalia, entering the discussion at last. ‘I personally participated earlier today in the initial examination of Lev Yatisyna.’
Better late than never, thought Charlie, relieved.
‘A total of twenty-four people were arrested, either at Plant 69 or in the Kirov round-up,’ reminded Natalia. ‘Each is being detained separately, to prevent rehearsed stories being prepared. All have been told they face trial for murder, of those Militia, Special Forces and security guards killed in the operation. The four men seized in the apartment of Valeri Lvov have been specifically charged with the murder of his wife and the rape of the girls. All have also been told they will be charged with the attempted robbery of nuclear material.’
It was right she should set the facts out as she was doing but he hoped she’d soon get to the promised results, to hold their attention.
‘… It has also been made clear that the death penalty will be demanded and that clemency is never exercised in murders of Militia or soldiers …’ Natalia’s pause was every bit as theatrical as Popov’s presentation earlier. ‘… except in very rare and exceptional circumstances. None is in any doubt what that means. Each has been left, totally alone, to decide how to save his own life …’
The taller of the spetznaz officers said: ‘Will clemency be shown to anyone providing the sort of cooperation you want?’
It was Fomin who answered. ‘No,’ said the presidential aide, positively.
The officer looked more towards the note-takers. ‘I would like the request recorded now, for later reference and discussion with the Federal Prosecutor’s office, that the executions are carried out by Special Forces firing squads.’
‘I give my personal assurance to raise the matter with the prosecutor,’ said Fomin.
Charlie’s mind began to slip sideways during the interruption. What they were talking about and trying to resolve now naturally had the utmost and undivided priority. But it was the beginning, not the end, of his Russian posting. Which – quite irrespective of any arrangement he’d made with Natalia – he didn’t intend fulfilling permanently cap-in-hand, with a sign around his neck begging for Russian handouts. He’d need Russian approval for the proposal germinating in his mind. London’s permission, too. And Gerald Williams really would be driven to apoplexy by the amount of money it would need. Worst of all, everything could go disastrously wrong and end up with him impaled by his testicles atop one of the Krelim tower stars, the most reluctant Christmas tree fairy ever. But the idea that had come to him seemed a good one. Something to consider more fully later, he decided.
‘We have confirmed, initially from fingerprints and through finge
rprints from criminal records, the identities of the six arrested men from Moscow,’ resumed Natalia, bringing Charlie’s concentration back to her. ‘All belong to one of the major clans attached to the Ostankino Family. As I’ve already said, I personally interrogated Lev Yatisyna earlier today. I let him conclude we’d established the Moscow connection from confessions we’d already obtained and he confirmed the Kirs robbery was set up by Yevgennie Agayans, leader of the Ostankino clan. An arrest warrant was this morning issued for the man …’ Natalia allowed a long pause. ‘… We’ve also established from interrogating those of the Agayans group we have in custody that the Chechen are their chief rivals, in particular the Shelapin Family, with whom they dispute control of the area around Moscow’s Bykovo airport. We’ve independently confirmed, again from records, that in the past nine months five men have been killed in shootouts between the Agayans and Shelapin Families. Arrest warrants, alleging nuclear theft and attempted nuclear theft, have been issued against both groups …’ Natalia hesitated again, looking this time first towards the military officers and then to the anonymously dressed man, confirming Charlie’s instinctive arrival empathy. ‘… Special Forces units are assisting Militia, as well as contingents from the Federal Security Service, on swoops upon all known addresses and locations used by the two Families.’
Charlie fleetingly wondered if any of the clubs he’d been to would feature among the known locations. Judged with the necessary impartiality, Natalia had performed better than Popov. And personally questioning Yatisyna – and so quickly confirming a lead to who might have carried out the Pizhma robbery – had been a brilliant move.
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