Charlie didn’t tell Hillary, that night or two nights later when a Jaguar and another Mercedes tried to pincer his BMW into the major traffic island where Gorkiy Street reaches Red Square and which Boris Denisovitch prevented by grinding the BMW even harder into the Jaguar, forcing it on to the pavement near the Lenin library and bringing the Mercedes with them so that it was the Mercedes that smashed into the traffic island. Viktor Ivanovich, beside Charlie in the rear, put three shots from his Walther into the body of the Mercedes, but failed to explode the petrol tank, which was what he tried to do.
They didn’t stop, despite the buckled and punctured rear wheel which very quickly stripped its rubber to the bare rim metal and screeched sparks all the way back to the Ugreshskaya salesroom. Charlie bought the replacement BMW, with cash again, the following day, after drawing another $100,000 from the speechless embassy finance officer. Charlie told Hillary the first car had been wrecked in a hit-and-run crash while it was parked off Dubrovskaya. She said she preferred the white colour of the new one, which again from the chassis and engine number the Bundeskriminalamt traced, with some irony, to having been stolen in Berlin from the small car park opposite the Kempinski where Charlie had stayed five weeks earlier.
From the freeze frames from the video, the small, dark-skinned man was identified as an Azeri named Pavel Suntsov, whom Moscow Central Militia listed as a small-time pimp working prostitution and pornography for the Dolgoprudnaya. The two thugs weren’t on record.
The identification was provided by Petr Gusev at a progress meeting convened by Popov at the Interior Ministry, which Charlie took an hour to reach using all the surveillance-avoiding tradecraft he’d never imagined having to employ again but which he did, with nostalgia, to arrive convinced he’d lost the two men clumsily obvious outside the Dubrovskaya office. Gusev suggested posting protective Militia close to the building, even though Charlie’s office was on the third floor and difficult to reach when the block was closed for the night. Three nights later a Militia street patrol disturbed an attempt to torch the whole building. None of the would-be arsonists was caught. As a further precaution Charlie took a ground-floor apartment at Lesnaya and moved Boris Denisovich and Viktor Ivanovich in permanently. There was no attempt to get into the building but the second BMW, which had to be parked in the street, was burned out. Charlie bought a third, stolen like the other two, at what he considered a bargain at $50,000. He referred Gerald Williams’ appalled protest to the Director-General.
A week later a uniformed man who identified himself as the lieutenant in charge of the Militia post responsible for keeping law and order in the area arrived at Dubrovskaya with two street patrolmen and said he hoped Charlie was satisfied with the service he was receiving. They drank Macallan again and after half an hour Charlie agreed to a weekly $400 which the lieutenant said he would collect personally, every Friday, which he did. A tight-lipped and flushed Petr Gusev named the officer from the freeze frame as Nikolai Ranov, whom he’d considered honest and whom he’d considered promoting.
Charlie sent a short list of questions with the freeze-frame copies to Berlin, through Balg, and within days got back more than he’d bargained for from Gunther Schumann. Four of the six seized plutonium containers had been empty when checked by German scientists and the markings weren’t consecutive with the stolen Pizhma batch numbers. Fedor Mitrov couldn’t – or wouldn’t – explain it. It did nothing to diminish the case against the arrested Russians, whose trial was being fixed for November. The formal witnesses list hadn’t been prepared yet but it was a foregone conclusion he would be called, which Charlie accepted as his deadline: he wouldn’t be able to run his phoney set-up after his court identification.
Mitrov named all the men in Charlie’s photographs. Suntsov had graduated from pimp to corps leader and the Dolgoprudnaya regarded Lieutenant Ranov as one of the best and most reliable Militia officers on their payroll. The Dolgoprudnaya owned the Ugreshnaya garage. Schumann’s message ended with the assurance that he’d kept Silin’s assassination from the Russians, as Charlie had suggested before leaving Berlin, but asking again what the point was. Charlie said he hoped it might fit in with something he was investigating in Moscow, although he didn’t tell the German what he’d learned from what he’d got from Natalia after his return from interrogating the arrested Russians, because he still didn’t understand the significance himself.
By coincidence, the same day, several Moscow newspapers reported the shotgun murder by the river of a known Moscow gangster named Petr Gavrilovich Malin. Every account said the Militia considered him the victim of a gangland feud. Gusev provided what he said was the full file on the killing of the man whom Mitrov had identified as the successful courier of the lost ten containers. Gusev did so with the warning that upon Dmitri Fomin’s orders, the dead man was not going to be connected with the Pizhma robbery in any public statement. As far as they were concerned the killing was a gangland dispute and would not be solved, like such disputes never were: they wanted nothing official to reignite the publicity over the Pizhma theft. Through Balg again, Charlie relayed it all to Berlin, but again suggested Schumann keep it from the nuclear smugglers and was glad he did after his next conversation with Natalia.
The advertisements produced more than sufficient business to occupy the now permanently guarded Ludmilla Ustenkov. Charlie accepted what he hoped was questionable and rejected those that were clearly honest, which only amounted to about six enquiries. With London the supplier and buyer, he traded cut-price IBM computers, German refrigerators, five Jaguar and Rover cars and Russian icons, triptychs and a case of semi-precious stones which, upon analysis, weren’t even semi-precious: to fuel the legend he wanted to create Charlie told Viktor Ivanovich to rough the con man up if he tried to repeat the scam, which the man did. Charlie hadn’t intended the man’s nose to be broken. Or that he be forced to eat some of the worthless glass, either, which ripped his bowel when he passed it. Charlie actually made a profit – his only one – importing supposedly stolen computer chips to update American and German hardware, but a second consignment of computers was intercepted at Sheremet’yevo and all their screens smashed before Charlie got to the airport to collect them. That Friday Charlie served a second whisky to Ranov when the Militia officer arrived for his $400 and complained that no one benefited from the sort of skirmishes that had ruined his computer shipment. A lot of money – money that could improve the sort of retainers that Ranov was getting, for instance – could be made if instead of resenting his independence, people traded with him. He only wished he could get the message through to them. Ranov thought it was wastefully counter-productive, too, and wished there was something he could do to help.
Charlie strictly limited his visits to the British embassy and took even more avoidance care moving through Moscow’s metro system, sure he detected special interest around the Dubrovskaya office and once close to Lesnaya. Always awaiting him at Marisa Toreza were fresh demands for expenditure explanations from Gerald Williams, which settled into little more than the man placing on record against any future enquiry his efforts to impose the financial control always overruled by the Director-General. Towards the end of the second month, Charlie was showing an operating loss of $500,000.
Hillary was frightened by the destruction of the second BMW and at first titillated by the need always to have bodyguards, but a lot of the time she was bored.
She kept Lesnaya immaculate and by the end of their second week together had started turning it into a home, with flowers and prints and books and a music selection rather than the sort of rain-sheltering resting place to which Charlie was accustomed. He liked it. She was a superb cook and Charlie complained of putting on weight, which she promised to get off by her own particular exercise, which she practised every night with even more exciting improvisation than she showed in the kitchen. Charlie liked that, too. After specific warnings of how careful they had to be arriving and leaving, Charlie risked inviting to dinner Lyneham and his
wife and Kestler with one of his embassy harem, which turned out very successfully, so they repeated it over succeeding weeks. On the first occasion, while the women gossiped and helped in the kitchen, Lyneham said the way things were going Charlie stood a real chance of being blown away and asked how much longer he intended standing with the target on his chest.
The vicarious novelty of always having bodyguards palled for both of them, although Hillary accepted the need, particularly when they flashily toured the clubs, which Charlie felt necessary every week. On their first visit under protection to the Up and Down they saw the group who had demanded Hillary join them and Charlie reversed the invitation, which was accepted. They sat for an hour with the respective guards posturing Rambo body language while Charlie ordered Roederer Crystal and exaggerated his business success to the hirsute bear of a man, pressing cards upon the Russian with the assurance that there was nothing in which he couldn’t, or wouldn’t, trade. Hillary complained on the way back to Lesnaya that her face ached from keeping an idiot, non-comprehending smile in place. And that the hairy man gave her the creeps.
During one of Lyneham’s visits, almost into the second month, Hillary abruptly asked the Bureau chief to find out from Washington how much longer she was expected to stay in Moscow, apologizing afterwards to Charlie for not mentioning it to him first, but saying it was a spur of the moment question. When the reply came that there were no withdrawal plans, Charlie said he’d understand if she wanted to move back to the protection of the embassy. Hillary kissed him and said that wasn’t the reason at all and if she had to stay in Moscow, Lesnaya was where she wanted to be and Charlie was surprised how pleased it made him feel.
Charlie had anticipated most of what had happened after the advertisements, although not perhaps the degree of violence. What he hadn’t anticipated was the open cooperation shown by Popov and Gusev. Over the course of several meetings at the Ministry, Charlie took both of them through the Berlin examination and at the end of the first month Popov announced both he and Gusev were going to the trial as observers if they weren’t called as witnesses. At Popov’s invitation they lunched in a private room in a discreet tavern up in the Lenin Hills and Gusev spent a lot of time discussing the Militia shake-down, producing personnel files not just of Nikolai Ranov but of the patrolmen involved, each of whom he promised to jail when the Dubrovskaya operation wound up. The bloody internal war among its six Families for supreme control of the Dolgoprudnaya was a constant subject of conversation: the death toll, after two months, was ten. It was at the lunch when Gusev produced that total that Popov made the obvious reference to the Lesnaya apartment, which Charlie let pass, imagining he’d misunderstood. He knew he hadn’t when Popov repeated even more pointedly his admiration of pre-revolutionary architecture, not enough of which remained to be enjoyed. He would, responded Charlie, very much like to host a dinner party. Popov, at once, said he would be very happy to accept.
Natalia’s contacts were intermittent, although always prearranged from the call that preceded it so Charlie could guarantee to be at Lesnaya. Apart from the Dolgoprudnaya request he had little professional to talk about so the conversation mostly revolved around Sasha. The continued protection was unsettling her; she’d started to wet the bed and was often sullen and rude. There hadn’t been any more threats and Aleksai was convinced – like the official security division – that it had been nothing more than a nuisance call from someone connected with Shelapin: there’d been a decision to harass the Family to the point of bringing Shelapin in for questioning on several occasions. She’d discussed resigning with Aleksai, who’d said it had to be her decision. She’d finally agreed to marry him, although no date had been fixed. Aleksai had agreed to it being in a church. Charlie lied that he hoped they would be happy.
Hillary prepared for the Russian dinner party with her usual enthusiasm, deciding upon all-American pot-roast with pumpkin pie for dessert as a meal that would be different for them, relieved when Charlie told her that Gusev spoke English almost as well as Popov. She said, coquettishly, that she was looking forward to seeing Popov again: that day at the Arbat she’d thought he was as sexy as hell.
Charlie hadn’t installed closed-circuit television at Lesnaya but the apartment bell was duplicated on the ground floor for Viktor Ivanovich to vet arrivals and Charlie had learned to time to the second how long it took people to climb the ornate and gilded stairway. Popov had just reached the outside landing when Charlie expectantly opened the door.
Petr Gusev wasn’t with him. Natalia was.
It took John Fenby a long time to acknowledge he wouldn’t quickly be able to keep the personal promise to even the score with the British Director-General. He didn’t know how or when and accepted it probably wouldn’t now involve Moscow – in fact Moscow was still so uncertain it was probably best if his retribution wasn’t connected with Russia at all – but sometime in the future he’d get his chance to screw Rupert Dean and the British service and when he did the Limey bastard was really going to know he’d been screwed. All it needed was patience. Much better, in fact, than hurrying it. This way he could savour it.
It didn’t mean, of course, that he was going to sit back and be dictated to. He was readily prepared to go along with the British insistence that the woman stay in Moscow, although there seemed little point now that they were sure half of the plutonium had been lost. Fcnby was quite happy for Hillary jamieson to be as far away from Pennsylvania Avenue as possible and had already asked his scientific director to headhunt for someone to replace her, even if the qualifications had to drop. Shacking up with the Englishman like the slut had done gave him cast-iron grounds for her dismissal.
Fenby’s preoccupation, as always, was with Kestler and Milton Fitzjohn and Fenby knew he had that all neatly wrapped up.
With his customary attention to detail, Fenby flew personally to Wiesbaden and then to Bonn after several fax and telephone exchanges preparing the way, to promise every FBI assistance at the trial of the nuclear smugglers, delighted how well it all fitted in when he learned how internationally high-profile the Germans intended to make it. Fenby’s strongest guarantee was that James Kestler would publicly appear to present all the American satellite evidence, which he was confident would provide one of the sensational highlights of the hearing.
After which he planned to bring Kestler home in the glory the publicity would achieve and in which the grateful Milton Fitzjohn would be delighted. He hadn’t decided whether to keep the kid at headquarters or to offer him one of the top-drawer embassy postings like London or Paris.
chapter 32
Charlie was as disoriented as Natalia had been realizing where she was when she had arrived downstairs, but she’d recovered by the time she reached the outside landing. Charlie was glad of its half light but wasn’t concerned at some visible surprise that Popov wasn’t accompanied by Petr Gusev. To reinforce the point he said so as he greeted them and used the word surprise at the same time as saying he was delighted to see her, which he was, although he needed to think a lot more about the circumstances before he was sure about that.
Natalia’s second uncertainty was to be welcomed directly inside the apartment by Hillary Jamieson. The American girl had also expected another man and there was momentary, first-meeting hesitancy which Charlie thought easily overcame any outward difficulty.
Inwardly there was a lot of conflicting feelings trying to get to the forefront of Charlie’s mind. Anger was chief among them, which he refused, because at that stage he wasn’t sure he had anything to be angry about and in any case anger never helped rational thinking. So what was it rational to think? Viewed in an objectively straight line, Aleksai Semenovich Popov had accepted a social invitation for himself and the woman he was shortly to many, not on behalf of himself and a Militia colonel. Which was perfectly reasonable – the only misconception his – and even maintained a perhaps necessary element of business because until very recently Natalia had been part of the nuclear investigation
and still headed the specific anti-smuggling division. But was it as simplistic as that? Popov knew he’d gone to Leninskaya soon after he’d arrived. And that he’d been to Moscow before and that Natalia had debriefed him. But to have been as adamant as Natalia was that the man was unaware of their personal relationship meant what old KGB records survived were sterilized of any such suggestions. Which he already knew anyway, for Natalia to hold the rank and position she did. What was left then? A professional episode in the long-distant past which could conceivably explain his going to Leninskaya like he had? As wrong to cloud his reasoning by over-interpretation as it would have been to allow obscuring anger. For the moment he had to follow the straight line. Which didn’t mean, of course, he shouldn’t be on the lookout for unexpected curves. But then he always was.
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