Bomb Grade

by Brian Freemantle

  ‘The assumption seemed sufficient to alert the Polish and German authorities,’ supported Dean.

  Dean hadn’t told him that earlier. Charlie hoped Jurgen Balg was properly appreciative of the six-hour head start he’d given the man, to get in first.

  ‘Why should we ignore the Russian belief that the plutonium is still in the Moscow area?’ challenged Williams.

  ‘You’ve already got my arguments for that,’ said Charlie, gesturing to the dossiers before each man, undecided whether or not to disclose the Arab buyer/French middleman claim from the Yatisyna interrogation. ‘It has no value in Moscow. The West is the market place.’

  ‘Why?’ persisted Williams, the opposition prepared. ‘Why can’t the buying and selling be done in Moscow?’

  It was the obvious introduction for his new operational suggestion, but the time wasn’t right: he had to convince them more, about everything else, even confuse their thinking slightly, if he could. ‘The buying and selling is done in Moscow! And in St Petersburg and in a lot of other cities and former republics as well! Buying and selling but for delivery in the West. That’s the way the system works.’

  ‘What system?’

  Williams had prepared himself, Charlie acknowledged. ‘The system that previous investigations have established.’

  ‘Nothing’s carved in stone. This robbery is different; bigger than any other. Why can’t it be moved differently from anything in the past?’

  ‘No reason whatsoever.’ Charlie didn’t like having to concede the admission and not because of the enmity between himself and the other man. He was agreeing that he could be wrong and he didn’t want anyone apart from Williams – whom he knew he could never convince – to believe he could be wrong about anything. ‘But from what we know about Warsaw, the probabilities are that it’s being taken – or more likely been taken – out along an established route.’

  ‘Think we know about Warsaw,’ disputed Williams. ‘I’m not prepared to be as easily persuaded. Nor should anyone else.’

  ‘Several of us might be,’ suggested Dean, mildly.

  ‘What have the Polish authorities come back with?’ questioned Williams.

  ‘Nothing,’ conceded the Director-General.

  ‘And the Germans?’

  ‘Nothing,’ the man repeated.

  ‘While the Russians, following standard police investigatory procedure, have recovered several kilos and made arrests!’ said Williams.

  Standard investigatory procedure he’d urged upon them, reflected Charlie. There wasn’t any benefit in pointing that out: it would look as if he was boasting – and in some desperation – because he was being out-argued by Williams. And he was being out-argued. He’d have to do very much better than this to carry the other men with him. ‘You already know what I feel about that: that I believe what was found in Moscow was a false trail.’

  ‘Deliberately laid?’ queried the Director-General.

  ‘I believe so, by those who carried out the successful robbery at Pizhma.’

  ‘So they knew in advance of the attempt at Kirs?’ said Simpson.

  ‘They had to,’ argued Charlie. ‘It’s inconceivable there would be two robberies on the same night from the same plant.’

  ‘Why couldn’t it have been a deliberate decoy, two separate acts of the same planned robbery?’ demanded Williams, ineptly.

  ‘One of those arrested inside the plant was the leader of the biggest Mafia group in the area. If the decoy had been deliberate, those taken at Kirs would have been disposable, street-level people,’ said Charlie, watching Williams’ colour rise. It was another obvious moment to talk of the Yatisyna interrogation but still he held back.

  ‘So one crime group, with inside knowledge of another, set that other Family up. Using their further inside knowledge of the nuclear installation itself?’ set out the Director-General.

  ‘That’s my assessment,’ agreed Charlie.

  ‘Why would they have had to have inside knowledge of the plant itself?’ asked Patrick Pacey. ‘Knowing an entry attempt was being made would have been sufficient, surely?’

  Charlie shook his head. ‘They had to know the material was being moved, because of the decommissioning. And how and when and at what times it was being transported. Whoever it was at Pizhma knew it was being taken to them. All they had to do was wait and intercept it at Pizhma.’

  ‘Someone with a very special inside knowledge, then?’ pressed Dean.

  ‘Very special,’ accepted Charlie. It wasn’t a speculative road down which he wanted to go. He had no intention of offering what he believed to be the significance of akrashena: of even disclosing the importance of the word. It would seem disjointed, but Natalia’s interrogation would provide the deflection. He said, finally, ‘Those who went into Kirs believed they had several buyers already established. The arrested local Mafia leader claims to have met an Arab and a Frenchman in a Moscow club.’ He’d have to get a name from Natalia, he thought, remembering the episode with Hillary Jamieson.

  There were frowned looks from the Director-General and Johnson and Williams shuffled through his documents, confirming Charlie’s impression the bundle consisted of everything he’d sent from Moscow. Williams said, ‘We haven’t been told of this!’

  ‘I only learned about it an hour before I left Moscow,’ lied Charlie.

  ‘What’s the Russian response to it?’ asked the legal advisor.

  It was probably the best chance he’d get to bring the FBI into the discussion and maybe understand some of the Director-General’s enigmatic remarks, which was something else the man had refused to enlarge upon during their lunch. ‘I don’t know, now that I’m excluded because of what the Americans leaked.’

  Charlie was curious at the look that passed between the Director-General and his deputy, before Dean spoke. ‘Which brings us to the reason for this meeting and the principle reason for your recall. Our level of protest.’

  It’s not my principle reason, thought Charlie. He hadn’t scored sufficiently against Williams’ sniping but there didn’t seem any purpose in delaying any further: there certainly wasn’t any purpose in discussing a protest he didn’t want made. ‘I don’t see how we can argue against it. I’ve not officially been given any reason: not officially told my cooperation has been withdrawn. And we’ve got to accept that we were only ever admitted to what the Russians chose to include us. I don’t believe we’ve arguable grounds for complaint.’

  ‘You mean you don’t want us to protest?’ frowned the deputy Director.

  Charlie breathed in deeply, readying himself: for the moment the FBI mystery had to remain unresolved. He looked to each of the men facing him, once more assessing Williams’ colour. ‘No, I don’t,’ he agreed, simply.

  ‘What?’

  The demand came from Pacey, but everyone else was regarding Charlie with matching astonishment.

  ‘What the Russians initially offered appeared precisely the sort of liaison we hoped to achieve,’ allowed Charlie, cautiously. ‘But there was always a strong, underlying resentment. The American leak gave a focus for that resentment, until now I believe the Russians think sharing with us was a mistake …’

  ‘Are you admitting you haven’t established what you actually advised us you had?’ tried Williams, anxious not to miss any imagined opportunity.

  ‘The arrangement always made us dependent upon the Russians,’ said Charlie. ‘They needed us – or the Americans, to be more accurate – because of the satellite. But we had no control or practical participation in what they did or how they used whatever they got from us. We were just sources, nothing else …’

  ‘You weren’t supposed to be anything else!’ interrupted Wiliams, triumphantly. ‘You were specifically forbidden to seek or attempt anything else.’

  ‘Always Russian jurisdiction,’ reminded Simpson, reluctant though he was to support the financial controller.

  ‘Depending on the size of the weapon, enough plutonium has been stolen and is sti
ll unrecovered to manufacture at least forty nuclear devices,’ reminded Charlie. ‘If Moscow always leads and we always have to follow there will be other robberies as big, maybe even bigger. Russian silos and storage plants aren’t controlled. Police who aren’t totally corrupt are woefully inefficient, ineffectual and operate with antiquated methods and equipment. We have to get some agreement – an arrangement – to be proactive. It isn’t a question of national pride and nit-picking jurisdiction. It’s a question of stopping madmen – or the Mafia or warring Latin American drug cartels, all of which could easily afford the asking price – getting as many atomic devices as they want …’ Charlie hesitated, wanting them to assimilate every word, but before he could continue the eager Williams cut across him once more.

  ‘And Charlie Muffin has a way to stop it all!’ The attempted sarcasm was too blatantly hostile and both Dean and Pacey frowned at the man.

  Here we go, thought Charlie. ‘No. Not all. Maybe only a very small percentage: maybe none at all. What I do think is that I could infiltrate the business, to a degree. I want to try to isolate the big traders, in Moscow. And their contacts at the plants and their negotiating middlemen in Europe and their buyers …’ Charlie looked directly to the legal director. ‘You’ve already confirmed law doesn’t even exist in Russia to assemble the sort of criminal intelligence I’m talking about: criminal intelligence we could supply to Moscow, to preserve that all-important jurisdiction. But perhaps more essentially criminal intelligence we could use ourselves and share with other countries outside Russia, which is, after all, where the trade really operates … where the real danger really is.’

  ‘How?’ prompted Dean, simply, knowing already.

  ‘By setting myself up in Moscow as a no-questions-asked broker, a dealer in anything and everything. There are dozens of such middlemen all over Russia already, a lot of them from the West. The Germans have mounted sting operations, although in Germany to retain their legal authority. Why can’t we? And take it one stage further, by setting ourselves up at source?’

  ‘You seriously think it would be possible?’ demanded Peter Johnson.

  ‘Yes,’ insisted Charlie. ‘Easily possible. In Moscow crime rules, not the law. It’s wide open: flaunted. If I didn’t believe I could infiltrate in some worthwhile way I wouldn’t be suggesting it.’ He shrugged. ‘And if I don’t we can kill it off as an idea that didn’t work. At least we would have tried something positive.’ And I might have satisfied a lot of personal as well as professional uncertainties, he thought.

  ‘Aren’t you overlooking the personal risk?’ demanded the thin-featured deputy Director.

  ‘Not at all,’ assured Charlie, even more insistent. ‘I’d need protection. Every one of the traders I’m talking about has his own guards: I wouldn’t be taken seriously if I didn’t have the same. Which Moscow could provide. It would represent their participation. I’m suggesting a joint operation, not usurping or overriding Russian authority.’ The nightclub confrontation had convinced Charlie how essential spetznaz would be if he persuaded these still-unconvinced men. The reflection made him think of Hillary. She’d awoken in Lesnaya without any of the first-morning-after awkwardness and made love and then breakfast as if there had been a lot of mornings-after. Charlie hoped there would be. Which wasn’t just a personal anticipation. He’d need her in what he was trying to get agreed today, if it worked out successfully.

  ‘What would all this cost?’ asked Williams, his face relaxing slightly in expectation.

  He’d have to go for broke, Charlie knew. ‘The expense would be substantial. To fit the part I would need an impressive car, something like a Mercedes or BMW: vehicles like that are virtually tools of the trade, like having bodyguards. A Russian, not just as one of those bodyguard but as a chauffeur. An office. And I’d need to trade, in whatever I’m asked to buy or sell, to establish credibility. The department would have to be my supplier and buyer, but there’d be a financial loss: the need would always be to do the deal, not make a profit.’

  ‘It would cost thousands – tens of thousands even – and take months without the slightest guarantee of your ever being approached to broker any nuclear deal,’ objected Williams. ‘All we’d end up with is a warehouse full of stolen or black-market goods.’

  The vehemence had gone out of the other man’s voice, judged Charlie, curiously: that last remark had been an observation, not a challenge. ‘It’s worked in Germany. In America the FBI have frequently trapped criminals – up to and including the Mafia – with exactly the sort of phoney-front operation I’m proposing. We’ve even done it ourselves, before our role was expanded. The cost would be extremely high. But I’m not suggesting we run it for months. We give it a reasonable period.’

  ‘There’s certainly precedents,’ encouraged Dean. ‘The problem I have with it is that it could only be done with Moscow’s cooperation. And the reason you were brought back is that they’ve withdrawn just that.’

  The most difficult barrier to get around, Charlie acknowledged. ‘I’ve been rejected from a working group dealing with a specific situation at a specific level. This proposal would have to come officially and formally from here, not from me in Moscow. And if it comes from London it would obviously have to be in the same way and at the same level as you proposed my going there in the first place.’ Which he knew, from Natalia, had been to a level of the Foreign Ministry higher than her. But one to which she now appeared to have access. Which, by carefully rehearsing her, opened another channel of persuasion.

  ‘Going over the heads of the people you’ve been dealing with?’ accepted Johnson. ‘Which would surely increase the resentment you’ve already talked about.’

  I hope so, thought Charlie; that was the major object of the exercise, although not the one he wanted them to believe. He said, ‘If those people are involved at all it will only be peripherally. So their resentment won’t matter.’

  ‘What has this proposal got to do with what we should really be discussing: the theft of enough plutonium to make God knows how many weapons?’ demanded Pacey.

  ‘Nothing, in any practical way of getting it back,’ admitted Charlie. ‘But then again, maybe a lot. The Russians are insisting what was stolen at Pizhma is still in Russia and can be retrieved. I’m not as convinced. But I’d like to be proven wrong: what I’m suggesting might just give me a lead.’

  There was a shocked silence. Pacey said, finally, ‘You really think it’s already out?’

  ‘I think it’s a strong possibility,’ said Charlie. ‘I’m looking beyond Pizhma: looking to stop a robbery of that sort of size being repeated. Pizhma, surely, was enough!’

  ‘Dear God!’ said Johnson, hollow-voiced.

  ‘Which is a further argument – the strongest argument – to put to Moscow for their agreeing to what I’m suggesting,’ added Charlie.

  ‘Are the police really as corrupt as you say they are?’ asked the deputy Director, stronger voiced.

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘Then there’s the risk of the Mafias you want to infiltrate learning the whole thing is phoney?’

  ‘It’s a risk,’ conceded Charlie, uneasy with another admission. ‘But again, making the approach as I’ve suggested should restrict the knowledge to a limited number of people.’

  ‘Has anyone thought the information that enabled the Pizhma robbery could have come from the Kirs interception operation?’ demanded Jeremy Simpson.

  I don’t think, I know, thought Charlie. ‘It’s a strong possibility. But it would be impossible to narrow it down. There were at least four hundred spetznaz and Militia personnel involved. Not all of them knew precisely what they were assembled for, although there was some hurried exercises. All the officers and NCOs certainly would have been aware of it.’

  ‘You are officially accredited to the British embassy,’ reminded Patrick Pacey. ‘I’m not comfortable politically with someone with diplomatic status setting himself up as a conduit for crime, even if it’s known about and ap
proved by the Russian government.’

  ‘During the time I would be running the operation, I wouldn’t work from the embassy,’ insisted Charlie. ‘If you remember, my argument for having outside accommodation was because I might have to mix with criminals.’

  ‘Which means you wouldn’t be under embassy supervision,’ said Johnson.

  It couldn’t have been better if it had been rehearsed, thought Charlie: it was even the word he’d used to the Director-General. ‘Am I under embassy supervision?’

  ‘There has been a complaint from the Head of Chancellery,’ disclosed Pacey, the political officer.

  ‘I’d like to know what sort of complaint?’

  ‘Insubordination.’

  ‘Made on the day the nuclear theft became public?’ asked Charlie, expectantly.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I was responding to specific instructions,’ defended Charlie, cautiously, wanting the discussion to run as long as possible for him to gain as much as possible. ‘There was an urgency …’ Abruptly, in mid-sentence, Charlie didn’t continue about the time-saving benefit of giving Sir William Wilkes a written account, which was a weak part of his argument anyway. Instead, recalling his impression walking from the ambassador’s office with Bowyer, Charlie switched to concentrate specifically on time. ‘The ambassador still had several hours before the Prime Minister spoke to the House.’