‘And he did ensure that people knew she’d failed,’ intruded the presidential aide, suddenly.
‘What?’ queried Charlie.
‘He criticized General Fedova from the very beginning,’ disclosed Fomin. ‘Complaining reports, sent over her head. Particularly about the Shelapin and Agayans debriefings. That they were pointless: got nowhere. That she should be removed from the investigation entirely.’
‘Like you would have got nowhere if you’d concentrated on Moscow, which is what we’d planned …’ picked up Gusev, shaking his head. ‘The fucking satellite!’
‘We’re losing the sequence,’ stopped Charlie. ‘Kirs became a total decoy, like the finding of the lorries and some canisters were decoys, but what about the Agayans and Shelapin Families? Why them? Just convenience, because the stuff had to be planted on some group?’
‘Part of the fighting within the Dolgoprudnaya that we didn’t take enough notice of. Agayans and Shelapin were siding with Sobelov, although they’re personally at war. So Silin, through whom we were going to traffic what we got, wanted to harass them: teach them who was the stronger. That’s why we had Oskin approach them, for the Kirs raid. That was all a trick: we could orchestrate everything they did.’
‘Who killed Agayans? And why?’
‘I don’t know. Nothing to do with us. The story is that he knew people, in the Prosecutor’s office, who were afraid he might talk. He threatened to, apparently.’
‘Was Lvov going to talk?’
‘He was going …’ started Gusev and stopped, just as abruptly.
The wrong approach would destroy the admission, letting the man retreat. Which way? ‘He’d already gone, hadn’t he? Gone across to Sobelov? Like Ranov had gone across to Sobelov. But Lvov was important. Four of the containers seized in the first interception here were empty, but they had markings from the Kirs plant. The only person they could have come from to enable Sobelov to make the switch was from someone inside the plant. Which was Lvov. But Sobelov had eight containers, to set himself up in the nuclear business. So he switched another four of the consignment which went to Iran, via Odessa.’
‘I don’t know about that.’
‘But you killed him, didn’t you?’ demanded Charlie, harsh-voiced. ‘As a warning to Oskin and when you thought Oskin might defect you killed him, too. And his family, obscenely. Did you rape Lvov’s girls yourself? Or just pass them around among the Militia from Kirov who helped you?’
‘I didn’t do any of that! And you can’t prove it.’
‘We can,’ said Charlie, looking to Fomin. ‘The bullets that killed them will have been recovered, during the autopsies. Like the bullet that killed the Shelapin man in whose garage you dumped the plutonium cylinders as part of your diversion. They’ll match ballistically, won’t they, Petr Tukhonovich?’
Gusev’s throat worked but initially he couldn’t speak. Then he said, ‘Aleksai Semenovich! He organized it. Everything. Popov told me what to do, always …’
‘Did he tell you to come in so closely after us today?’ demanded Schumann. That wasn’t how we planned it, was it? You had to wait until everything was secure, like the American had been told to wait but ran in after you …’
Gusev pointed a wavering finger at Charlie. ‘He said he guessed from what you said when we arrived that Turket knew who we were!’
‘So Turkel had to die as well?’ said Charlie. He’d quite recovered from the warehouse assault – forgotten any physical part of it – his mind icily sharp. He had to lead up to it and he’d been given the way. His voice as cold as his mind, Charlie said, ‘Popov knew all about it? That’s what you told me. “He said he knew all about you.” What did he know about me, Petr Tukhonovich? And how?’
The smirk came back, the expression of a lost man lashing out in desperation. ‘Everything. Your phone’s tapped, in that fancy apartment. The woman’s, too, long before she thought it was done. He read your KGB record and got the baby’s birth certificate and the record of the woman’s divorce and her husband’s death certificate. Everything! And he knew every time you met outside. Had photographs, in the botanical gardens. He was going to use them and the tape of your telephone conversations to show she was your spy, if the other ways to get rid of her didn’t work. It was obvious he’d get her job.’
‘General Fedova was told her phone was being monitored after the threat to her daughter. Was that a way of trying to get rid of her, to make her resign, through fear?’
‘And it worked! She’d told him she was going quit.’
‘It had to be you who made the threat. Popov was with her at the apartment and the only other person could have been you.’
‘Popov told me what to say: wrote it down,’ said Gusev, defensively.
‘That was a panicked mistake, involving the child,’ said Charlie. ‘Narrowed down who it could be far too much, although it was clever of Popov to be with her when the call came.’
Schumann leaned forward, picking up the bank deposit. ‘What’s the benefit of having money in Switzerland when you live in Russia?’
‘Run money,’ admitted Gusev. ‘That’s why it was so important for us to get here, to find out what all the evidence was: be in court to listen to anything that might emerge. We were ready to run, if there was the slightest danger.’
‘He was going to marry General Fedova,’ said Charlie, quietly.
‘Only if she’d quit and he got the job. But not, obviously, if we had to run.’ The man moved his head. ‘Imagine it, him the head of the entire nuclear anti-smuggling division and me the head of the Militia in Moscow. It would have been fantastic!’
Fomin grated his chair back and stood. ‘I officially withdraw the Russian protest to this arrest. And waive any diplomatic rights and requests involving his trial.’ The man hesitated. ‘And apologies.’
‘Bastard! Lying, fucking bastard! Why?’
‘Too much could have gone wrong: too much did go wrong. The plutonium could have got through.’
‘Poisoning – killing – people as it went. Which wouldn’t have stopped a device being made because there were some that were still sealed!’
‘The source wouldn’t have been trusted again.’ And somehow at the trial at which Popov and Gusev would have been feted as honest Russians he would have made the suggestion in his own evidence that they were the two who had sabotaged the shipment to mark them out for the vengeance pursuit from Baghdad.
‘It was murder!’ said Hillary, disbelievingly.
‘All three died in the shootout. And they were killers.’
‘Their dying another way isn’t any defence! And a court decides whether killers die, not some self-appointed vigilante.’
‘It’s over,’ said Charlie.
‘You’re right,’ said Hillary. ‘There’s an embassy plane coming in to take Kestler’s body back to Washington. I’m going on it. And I’m going to quit, like Natalia.’ Her anger suddenly went. ‘Poor Natalia!’
‘Goodbye then.’
‘Don’t say you’ll keep in touch!’
‘I wasn’t going to,’ assured Charlie. ‘Safe trip.’
‘It will be. You won’t be on it.’
chapter 39
The priest with whom Natalia had discussed the wedding officiated at Popov’s funeral. He’d been content enough in the warmth of the church but the first snows of winter were in the air and outside he hurried through the graveside ceremony. There were only the two of them, Natalia and Charlie, and both shook their heads to the offer of casting the earth.
‘Thank you for coming with me,’ she said, as they walked side by side from the cemetery.
‘I wasn’t sure you’d want me to.’
‘I’m not sure that I did.’
The Berlin prosecutor had ruled the personal details in the taped confession weren’t relevant to the trial and didn’t intend offering them in evidence and Charlie hadn’t told Natalia of the surveillance Popov had imposed upon them, although he had insisted it was safe for
Sasha’s protection to be lifted. He had told her everything he expected to become public but hadn’t described the Zurich account as an escape fund. Fomin had handed over everything Popov had assembled on them and kept locked in his office safe. Charlie hadn’t told her about that, either. Just destroyed it all. Natalia hadn’t cried: shown any emotion. But then Natalia was not a crying person. ‘My posting here has been confirmed. I’m going to be here permanently.’
‘You want that?’ she asked.
‘Yes.’
‘I still might resign.’
‘Why?’
‘My part was hardly an overwhelming success, was it?’
‘It couldn’t have been, with Popov manipulating everything. Has anyone asked for your resignation?’
‘No.’
‘Then don’t offer it.’
‘How long did you suspect Aleksai?’
Charlie shrugged. ‘Not too long,’ he lied.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘You wouldn’t have believed me. You would have thought it was jealousy. I didn’t have any positive proof, until he got to Berlin.’
‘Were you jealous?’
‘You don’t have to ask me that.’
‘I did love him. I can’t now, not after how he tried to use Sasha. But I did love him before.’
‘It’s over now.’
They reached Natalia’s car. ‘You going straight back to Berlin?’
He nodded. ‘I’m being called tomorrow. They rearranged things so I could come here.’
‘Hillary with you?’
He shook his head. ‘She’s gone back to Washington.’
‘Sorry.’
‘It wasn’t serious. I told you, she was a free spirit.’
‘Do you want me to run you to Sheremet’yevo.’
Charlie was surprised by the offer. ‘It would make you tight for time getting back for Sasha. I’ll take a cab.’
‘She’s very confused. Keeps asking me when Ley is coming to live with us. We’re both confused, I suppose.’
‘I’d like to see her sometime.’
‘Not for a while.’
‘There’ll be a lot of time, now that I’m living here.’
‘Yes,’ said Natalia, distantly. ‘There’ll be a lot of time.’
A Biography of Brian Freemantle
Brian Freemantle (b. 1936) is one of Britain’s most prolific and accomplished authors of spy fiction. His novels have sold more than ten million copies worldwide, and have been optioned for numerous film and television adaptations.
Born in Southampton, on the southern coast of England, Freemantle began his career as a journalist. In 1975, as the foreign editor at the Daily Mail, he made headlines during the American evacuation of Saigon: As the North Vietnamese closed in on the city, Freemantle became worried about the future of the city’s orphans. He lobbied his superiors at the paper to take action, and they agreed to fund an evacuation for the children. In three days, Freemantle organized a thirty-six-hour helicopter airlift for ninety-nine children, who were transported to Britain. In a flash of dramatic inspiration, he changed nearly one hundred lives—and sold a bundle of newspapers.
Although he began writing espionage fiction in the late 1960s, he first won fame in 1977, with Charlie M. That book introduced the world to Charlie Muffin—a disheveled spy with a skill set more bureaucratic than Bond-like. The novel, which drew favorable comparisons to the work of John Le Carré, was a hit, and Freemantle began writing sequels. The sixth in the series, The Blind Run, was nominated for an Edgar Award for Best Novel. To date, Freemantle has penned fourteen titles in the Charlie Muffin series, the most recent of which is Red Star Rising (2010), which brought back the popular spy after a nine-year absence.
In addition to the stories of Charlie Muffin, Freemantle has written more than two dozen standalone novels, many of them under pseudonyms including Jonathan Evans and Andrea Hart. Freemantle’s other series include two books about Sebastian Holmes, an illegitimate son of Sherlock Holmes, and the four Cowley and Danilov books, which were written in the years after the end of the Cold War and follow an odd pair of detectives—an FBI operative and the head of Russia’s organized crime bureau.
Freemantle lives and works in London, England.
A school photograph of Brian Freemantle at age twelve.
Brian Freemantle, at age fourteen, with his mother, Violet, at the country estate of a family acquaintance, Major Mears.
Freemantle’s parents, Harold and Violet Freemantle, at the country estate of Major Mears.
Brian Freemantle and his wife, Maureen, on their wedding day. They were married on December 8, 1956, in Southampton, where both were born and spent their childhoods. Although they attended the same schools, they did not meet until after they had both left Southampton.
Brian Freemantle (right) with photographer Bob Lowry in 1959. Freemantle and Lowry opened a branch office of the Bristol Evening World together in Trowbridge, in Wiltshire, England.
A bearded Freemantle with his wife, Maureen, circa 1971. He grew the beard for an undercover newspaper assignment in what was then known as Czechoslovakia.
Freemantle (left) with Lady and Sir David English, the editors of the Daily Mail, on Freemantle’s fiftieth birthday. Freemantle was foreign editor of the Daily Mail, and with the backing of Sir David and the newspaper, he organized the airlift rescue of nearly one hundred Vietnamese orphans from Saigon in 1975.
Freemantle working on a novel before beginning his daily newspaper assignments. His wife, Maureen, looks over his shoulder.
Brian Freemantle says good-bye to Fleet Street and the Daily Mail to take up a fulltime career as a writer in 1975. The editor’s office was turned into a replica of a railway carriage to represent the fact that Freemantle had written eight books while commuting—when he wasn’t abroad as a foreign correspondent.
Many of the staff secretaries are dressed as Vietnamese hostesses to commemorate the many tours Freemantle carried out in Vietnam.
The Freemantle family on the grounds of the Winchester Cathedral in 1988. Back row: wife Maureen; eldest daughter, Victoria; and mother-in-law, Alice Tipney, a widow who lived with the Freemantle family for a total of forty-eight years until her death. Second row: middle daughter, Emma; granddaughter, Harriet; Freemantle; and third daughter, Charlotte.
Freemantle in 1999, in the Outer Close outside Winchester Cathedral. For thirty years, he lived with his family in the basement library of a fourteenth-century house with a tunnel connecting it to the cathedral. Priests used this tunnel to escape persecution during the English Reformation.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
copyright © 1996 by Brian Freemantle
cover design by Mumtaz Mustafa
This edition published in 2011 by Open Road Integrated Media
180 Varick Street
New York, NY 10014
www.openroadmedia.com
Table of Contents
Cover Page
Title Page
Dedication
prologue
chapter 1
chapter 2
chapter 3
chapter 4
chapter 5
chapter 6
chapter 7
chapter 8
ch
apter 9
chapter 10
chapter 11
chapter 12
chapter 13
chapter 14
chapter 15
chapter 16
chapter 17
chapter 18
chapter 19
chapter 20
chapter 21
chapter 22
chapter 23
chapter 24
chapter 25
chapter 26
chapter 27
chapter 28
chapter 29
chapter 30
chapter 31
chapter 32
chapter 33
chapter 34
chapter 35
chapter 36
chapter 37
chapter 38
chapter 39
A Biography of Brian Freemantle
Copyright Page
Bomb Grade Page 48