‘Why now?’ she demanded, anguished. ‘It’s over!’
‘And why you?’ echoed Charlie, reflectively.
‘I’ve been through that. With Aleksai. And the security people. I was named, during the enquiry. Moscow News and Izvestia identified me as the division director and the person in charge of interrogation. And it was said Agayans died under interrogation. And everyone from the President down is still listed in the telephone book – if you can obtain a telephone book – like it was in the old days.’
‘What about Shelapin? He’s the most likely.’
‘Aleksai had him rearrested. He denied knowing anything about it. Said he didn’t fight kids. He and his people are being kept under surveillance. And know it.’
‘The Agayans group then? Their man died.’
‘The same. Total denials. Surveillance there, too.’ Natalia was regaining control although she was wringing her hands in her lap. ‘Whoever it was knew you had a daughter.’
‘No one can explain that.’
Charlie wasn’t prepared to try, not yet, although he thought he could: the threat against Sasha had hardened a lot of the beliefs with which he’d returned from Berlin. ‘They’d rung off, when Popov took the phone?’
‘Yes.’
‘What about the voice?’
‘A man.’
‘You can guess ages from voices.’
Natalia shook her head. ‘I wasn’t rational, Charlie! He said Sasha was going to lose her face!’
Charlie was aloof, icily calm, all emotions suspended. ‘Accent?’
‘Russian.’
‘Not a republic? Or a region?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘I don’t want what you think! I want what you know!’ he said, brutally.
‘Russian.’ She wasn’t sure.
‘Disguised?’
‘I think so. It was distant, as if he were standing away from the mouthpiece. Or had something over it.’
‘A private phone? Or did coins drop?’
‘No coins dropped. I’ve been through all this!’
‘Go through it again, for me. Did he refer to you by name?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘You can’t remember?’
‘Not really.’
‘What can you remember?’
‘Only about her face!’
She was tilting back towards hysteria. ‘How were the words said?’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘All at once, without a pause: as if they were written down or rehearsed? Or with pauses, as if he was waiting for you to say something?’
‘All at once.’
Getting there, thought Charlie. ‘How?’ he repeated. ‘Quickly: hurried? Or slowly? Measured?’
She nodded at his choice of definitions. ‘Measured.’
‘As if he was reading from something written down?’
Natalia frowned at the question. ‘He could have been reading it, I suppose. No one asked me that before. Is it important?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe. What about background, from his end? Any noises?’
‘No.’
‘Sure?’
‘No, I’m not sure! I thought it might be you. I wasn’t listening for noises in the background. Then when he started to talk I wasn’t thinking about anything!’
‘A lot of people were upset – destroyed even – by the investigation,’ he tried, uncomfortable with the effort as he made it. ‘It could be empty harassment.’
‘I’m going to quit, Charlie!’ she announced. ‘I thought the job was the way to protect Sasha, but it’s not, not any more. It’s made her a target. I certainly don’t need the money and Aleksai’s asked me again to marry him. He’ll look after us: protect Sasha.’
‘I don’t think Sasha will actually be attacked.’
She frowned along the bench at him. ‘You can’t say that!’
‘It was obvious that protection would be put into place. At once. If they’d seriously intended to hurt her they’d have attacked her first. You wouldn’t have been given a warning. Sasha’s disfigurement would have been the warning.’
‘You really believe that?’ she demanded again.
No, he thought. ‘Yes,’ he said.
‘It’s over now, with the German arrests. We know what was lost.’ She was recovering, the words slow and considered.
‘Yes.’ Charlie said, doubtfully.
‘There’s no need for our arrangement, not any more.’
‘She’s my daughter!’
Natalia bit her lip. ‘I meant about work.’
‘What do you mean?’ he demanded.
‘I’m frightened, Charlie. Terribly frightened. I can’t afford to make a single mistake. About anything. It would be a mistake for us to go on like this, behind Aleksai’s back. Even though there’s nothing in it. It’s still cheating him. Which isn’t fair. He’s a good man. He loves me.’
He wasn’t totally sure she’d lost all feeling for him, although perhaps love was hoping too much, but he definitely couldn’t lose the special contact: it was more important now than ever. How far could he go to convince her? Hardly any way at all. Too much was still conjecture, sufficient for him but not enough to convince anyone else. ‘There still might be more to learn about Pizhma and Kirs Charlie hesitated as the thought came to him, despising himself for considering it but knowing he was going to use it just the same. ‘That’s why the threat came against Sasha. I don’t think she’ll be attacked but I can’t be sure. How long do you want Sasha going to school in an armoured convoy? One year? Two? Until she goes to high school? It doesn’t matter if you quit. Aleksai will still be where he is: maybe he’ll even be promoted, into your job. He’d be their danger then, not you. And Sasha will be his weakness: his pressure.’
Natalia regarded him blankly, wide-eyed. ‘What can I do?’
‘Go on helping me!’
‘… But you’re moving on from Pizhma? This entrapment idea …’
‘It’s through the entrapment that I might be able to understand what happened at Pizhma. And at Kirs.’
‘How? I don’t follow …’
‘Fedor Mitrov, the Dolgoprudnaya man,’ half lied Charlie. ‘The Germans have agreed a deal, in return for his guiding me to the right people here in Moscow.’
‘The Militia are adamant Silin died in a gang battle. Died grotesquely … and his wife.’ She shuddered.
‘He was killed because he knew who the Kirs and Pizhma organizers were. And who the customers were, for what was stolen.’
Natalia held his eyes for several moments. ‘Are you being completely honest with me? Completely honest about Sasha’s life?’
‘Yes,’ said Charlie, meeting her gaze.
‘Dear God, it must end soon!’ said Natalia, despairingly.
‘Yes,’ agreed Charlie. ‘Very soon. Will you go on helping?’
‘What choice do I have?’
Hillary moved into Lesnaya the same week with three suitcases, a poster of Robert Frost (‘the best American poet ever’) and a long-lashed rabbit doll whose name – Lysistrata – she insisted was only a joke. Charlie said he was glad because he had a lot of fighting still to do, which prompted Hillary to doubt she had any function left: the German business seemed to have wrapped everything up and Washington had barred her from seeking participation before that. She was expecting a recall any day and was surprised it hadn’t already come: it was over a week since she’d sent her complete analysis of how much plutonium 239 there would have been in the lost ten containers and what its bomb-making capability would have been. She’d guessed at twenty-five bombs, possibly twenty-seven of warhead size. Another guess, based largely on previous German interceptions, was that the material could have fetched as much as $25,000,000. Hillary’s withdrawal remark reminded Charlie to ask Rupert Dean to press Washington to let her remain in Moscow. The Director-General guaranteed at once that it wouldn’t be a problem, which it didn’t turn out to be. And that despite Hilla
ry’s warning that the US Head of Chancellery had protested it was unthinkable she move in with him at Lesnaya, which she hadn’t made any secret of doing because she hadn’t seen why she should. They both agreed that Heads of Chancellery were universal pains in the ass.
Charlie didn’t expect the casual reaction from Lyneham and Kestler to Hillary’s change of address. Lyneham begrudgingly handed over the money he’d lost betting against the sting acceptance and said he would have moved in with Charlie rather than live in the compound shithole if he’d known rooms were available. Kestler said Charlie was a lucky son-of-a-bitch. Lyneham also said it was the biggest scandal inside the embassy for years and Hillary had balls. He’d had to tell Washington, because she was attached to his Bureau office, but there hadn’t been a headquarters protest, which was something else Charlie hadn’t expected.
Charlie personally received formal Russian approval two days later from Dmitri Fomin. The presidential aide used the officially presented London proposal as their discussion paper. Apart from Fomin Charlie faced a familiar five; Badim and Panin from their respective ministries, Popov and Gusev and the taller of the two spetznaz commanders, whose rank and name finally emerged to be General Nikolai Bykov and whose antipathy to the entire project remained as hostile as it had been to everything else involving Westerners. Fomin did virtually all of the talking and Charlie was curious how many preparatory discussions there had been. Several, he guessed, from Fomin’s monologue. He was to attempt nothing without consultation. He would be allowed plainclothed spetznaz protectors and chauffeurs, despite which Russia would not be held responsible for his personal safety in any circumstances whatsoever. Office staff would be supplied by the Militia. Colonel Popov, his already established liaison, would be the conduit through whom he had to work, assisted by Colonel Gusev. No information was to be disseminated in advance of his fully advising either Colonels Popov or Gusev. The entire cost had fully to be borne by London. The experiment would be under permanent review and liable to cancellation, without consultation with him or London, whenever and however Moscow deemed fit. He could not personally be armed.
Charlie had expected constraints every bit as restrictive and would even have been unsure if they hadn’t been. The function of every Russian assigned to him would be to spy upon him first and protect him second. The great uncertainty would be if any would be on a Mafia payroll: being appointed from this level made it unlikely, but he’d have to be careful. There was no reference at all to the Pizhma robbery or the Berlin debriefings, which Charlie thought petulant but hardly surprising, even though they had to accept there was little chance now of getting anything more back. And with Fomin clearly in charge, the failure to review the German information with the very person who’d obtained a major proportion of it had to be his decision. Popov remained blank-faced, like everyone else, but at the formal end of the meeting said he was looking forward to resuming their cooperation – the most immediate and important of which was fully to dicuss Germany – and hoped it would be productive. And on a better footing than in the recent past. He considered their disagreements a clash of professionalism and hoped Charlie thought of them that way too. Charlie said he felt exactly the same way and wondered if Popov would relay the conversation to Natalia. Both Popov and the Mililtia commander readily supplied out-of-office contact numbers.
Charlie’s first move, the following day, was to ask the now readily available Popov for a foreign car outlet the Militia suspected to be controlled by a major Mafia Family. The two-day delay in Popov’s reply gave Charlie time to draw $150,000, in cash, from a bulging-eyed Peter Potter. The dark blue BMW 700 it later took Balg and the Bundeskriminalamt a fortnight to identify, from the engine and chassis number, as having been stolen from the car park at Frankfurt airport, cost Charlie $70,000 from a salesroom on Ugreshskaya that Popov told him was run by the Dolgoprudnaya. The car purchase was his first use of Special Forces bodyguards, both of whom clearly regarded it as an assignment of a lifetime. They insisted on army security, identifying themselves only by their given names and patronymic. Boris Denisovich, the driver, was a dark-haired native-born Georgian with a tattoo on the lobes of both ears and Viktor Ivanovich was blond and raw-boned and smiled a lot, as if he couldn’t believe his luck, which he probably couldn’t. Remembering his first-thought requirement, Charlie acknowledged that each could have knocked shit out of him, but more importantly out of anyone else. Hillary came with him to buy the car and both Russians openly – although not offensively – appraised her and Hillary played up to it. The Russians, in their turn, performed their part perfectly in the salesroom. Boris expertly examined the car and insisted upon giving everyone a test drive, at one stage at 120 kilometres an hour along the inner ring road with a fitting Mafia disregard to speed limits or the law. Viktor remained tight to Charlie’s shoulder when Charlie opened the attache case in which the dollars were set out in elastic-banded bricks and carelessly tossed the purchase price, without haggling, to the gap-mouthed sales director. Charlie left the case open, with the rest of the money displayed, while he talked of setting himself up in business and possibly needing more cars and took both their cards with the promise to be in touch.
Charlie took an expansive office suite on the third floor of a block on Dubrovskaya – because he was assured by the Moscow Militia’s Colonel Gusev the street was in the very heart of Dolgoprudnaya territory – again paying the deposit and six months’ rental from his dollar-packed briefcase. He furnished it expensively in Finnish pine and large-leaf potted plants and pre-revolutionary Russian prints and transferred a lot of the embassy booze from Lesnaya to create a bar. He also installed an extensive range of closed-circuit television with freeze-frame and record capacity. The secretary Popov supplied was a dark-haired, doe-eyed girl named Ludmilla Ustenkov. Hillary was at Dubrovskaya when Ludmilla arrived and said if Charlie touched the girl’s ass she’d have his and when Charlie looked surprised said she was only playing her part, which she thought she had to do.
That night, more seriously, she said, ‘This isn’t a game, is it Charlie?’
‘No,’ he said, matching her solemnity.
‘Should I be frightened?’
‘Aren’t you?’
‘Not yet. But I was that night at the club. So I guess I am going to be.’
‘I’ll keep you out of it. I’ll need your help if we get close to anything nuclear, but I won’t let you get into any danger.’ It was, Charlie knew, a promise he couldn’t keep, but he was determined to try as hard as he could.
‘You seem to be in an awful hurry.’
‘I am,’ he admitted. He was ready. It had taken just two weeks.
On the day Charlie moved in to Dubrovskaya the Russian Foreign Ministry issued a formal statement regretting that at least one hundred kilos of weapons-graded nuclear material appeared to have been smuggled out of the country. It was hardly more than confirmation of the speculation that had continued since the German seizure, but it was the first official response and led to fresh media frenzy.
Things went on happening quickly, although not at the level or pace that Charlie really wanted. It began within two days of his advertising himself as an import-export specialist across a range of leading Moscow newspapers and magazines and proved the need for the three additional spetznaz the increasingly amicable Popov drafted into the Dubrovskaya office.
The ground-floor surveillance camera caught the three men entering, so Charlie was half prepared when they thrust into the outer office, told Ludmilla they didn’t need an appointment and swaggered into where Charlie sat, now waiting. Their spokesman was a small, wiry man with sleeked-back, jet black hair and the swarthy complexion of a southerner, Georgian and Azeri perhaps. The heavies were just that, both hard Slavic-featured, each over two metres tall and thick-bodied and Charlie felt a jump of apprehension even though his three minders who would have already been alerted by Ludmilla were only the press of an alarm button away.
The approach was unadulterated Ho
llywood, which would have been amusing had Charlie not been sure each of the three would quite happily maim him at least or kill him at worst or do either if they simply felt like it. The small man said he represented an association that welcomed new enterprise to the district and actually used the word ‘insurance’ when he talked about the essentials of assured business success. With a message of his own to convey, Charlie offered drinks, which they accepted, and had a Macallan himself because he needed it. He personally arranged the chairs in the best position for the cameras and for the added advantage that sitting they would be at an initial disadvantage for what was to follow. Even so he wished the desk was broader when he retreated behind it. He was glad his hand wasn’t shaking when he sipped the whisky.
The terms, the wiry man explained, were reasonable and fair. They wanted ten per cent of his turnover – not profit – and would expect regularly to examine all books to make sure there was a sound and proper understanding between them. When Charlie protested that sounded like a takeover the spokesman said the benefits included a guarantee against airport pilfering, loss of consignments and interference by any of the gangs he was sure Charlie had heard about and which made business so difficult in Russia. The smiles faltered when Charlie said he had indeed heard about such gangs and asked, with smiling politeness of his own, which Family they were from. The no-longer-relaxed spokesman hoped there wasn’t going to be a difficulty and Charlie hoped so, too: he didn’t intend paying protection to anyone for anything and he wanted them not just to understand it themselves but for the people who’d sent them to understand it, as well. He pressed the summons button as he made the announcement, which was fortunate because both the heavies were rising to the smaller man’s gesture when the spetznaz came into the room.
They did it so quietly and so calmly that they were actually there – led by Viktor Ivanovich – before the extortionists fully realized it. One was trying to draw a handgun from his rear waistband at the same time as coming to his feet when he was kicked fully in the groin and went down retching. His companion made the mistake of going for a weapon, too, so that his arm was inside his jacket when it was seized and expertly yanked sideways and then down over an extended knee. It broke with a snap loud enough to hear. The small man’s gun exploded harmlessly into the floor when it was deflected downwards and then heel-handed from his grasp in a chopping blow that broke his wrist and Charlie, dry-throated, managed; ‘I want him to take the message back.’ The man was howling in pain, holding his shattered wrist, and the soldier who disarmed him slapped open-handed across the man’s face until his nose poured blood and his lips split and visibly began to swell before Charlie realized the misunderstanding and stopped the pummelling. The broken-armed man groped again for a gun and at Charlie’s nod had his second arm broken, and the commando who’d brought the retching man down stomped on his clenched, outstretched right hand, crushing all the fingers and the hand itself. More kicks broke ribs. Charlie said, ‘Enough!’ and motioned for all three to be hauled back into the chairs in which he’d originally sat them. He had them searched and all the money they carried displayed in front of them, which he explained was to repair the mess they’d made. Charlie confiscated a knife as well as the handguns. He told the man whose lips were too swollen to respond to tell – when he could – whoever had sent them that any deal was on his terms, not theirs. This had been a lesson; another extortion attempt – any pressure at all – would end in their being hurt far worse. Charlie managed it – just – without his voice cracking, which he was frightened it would. He was still shit scared – literally – his stomach in turmoil. He walked tight-assed ahead of their escort down to the ground level and out into Dubrovskaya and their waiting Mercedes. While two of the spetznaz manhandled them into the vehicle – the broken-handed man only just the most able to drive – Viktor Ivanovich used one of the confiscated Markarovs to smash in the light clusters, front and rear, and all the side windows.
Bomb Grade Page 39