It was the over-anxious Williams who responded too quickly, the ammunition for his intended attacks already set out before him and believing he’d found his next ambush. Looking up from his hurriedly consulted papers, the financial chief said, ‘Not according to the Head of Chancellery’s message…’
‘… Timed at what?’ broke in Charlie, tensed for a reluctant apology if he had been wrong the previous day.
‘Eleven in the morning, precisely,’ said Williams, smiling in anticipated satisfaction. ‘Four and a half hours, for a statement of the magnitude that the Prime Minister had to make, was totally insufficient for the Foreign Office to brief Downing Street in the detail required.’
Charlie looked around the assembled men, thinking again how much redder Williams’ already pink face was likely to become, conscious of Dean’s second frowned look at the man. He’d been lucky, Charlie accepted: hugely, wonderfully lucky in a way he’d never imagined possible. ‘I quite agree,’ he began, mildly. ‘But it would be if it’s Moscow time, three hours ahead of London. Which it will be because it’s customary – and I’m sure that custom hasn’t changed, even though our role has – to use local times on messages. So eleven Moscow time is only eight in the morning, here in London.’ He shook his head, verging on the theatrical. ‘But that creates more questions than answers. You see, I didn’t get back to the embassy until twelve-thirty Moscow time. The ambassador wasn’t even there. He was still being briefed at the Foreign Ministry…’ Charlie looked around the group, imposing the silence. ‘… So how could the Head of Chancellery complain about my insubordination in communicating direct to London instead of speaking to the ambassador first a full hour and a half before I got back to the embassy with anything to talk about?’ Gotcha! thought Charlie, although he wasn’t sure who it was in London he’d caught out, just that he’d hung Bowyer and Saxon out to dry.
Williams’ face was sunset red. None of the others looked comfortable, apart from Rupert Dean who didn’t appear discomfited at all.
‘Was the ambassador told everything when you eventually did see him?’ pressed Johnson.
Charlie did not immediately reply, uncaring if his new silence was inferred as guilt. ‘I gave the ambassador everything I transmitted to London. Bowyer was with me when I did it.’
‘Withholding nothing?’ persisted the deputy.
Again Charlie paused. This could be the moment the sky fell in on him but there was no turning back now: this was, after all, why he’d sat for half an hour after yesterday’s confrontation in the ambassador’s study, totally fabricating five folios of apparent intelligence about the Pizhma robbery before finally marking it ‘Withheld from ambassador’ and putting it into his desk drawer. Looking steadily at the deputy Director, spacing his words, Charlie said, ‘I don’t think I need remind anyone in this room of the reaction when the robbery became public knowledge: of the near hysteria that’s still going on. Throughout the Western embassies in Moscow there was a great deal of speculation, which tended to get out of hand, exaggeration piling upon hyperbole. I do not see my function to be that of spreading rumours and false intelligence. The opposite, in fact. That is why I separated information I considered unreliable. I did not want to mislead anyone here or the ambassador in Moscow…’ All the time Charlie held Johnson’s attention in the totally hushed room. ‘I kept that separated unreliable information in my embassy office to prevent rumour and gossip wrongly influencing anything the ambassador or his Head of Chancellery might communicate to London…’ His pauses were becoming practically cliche, as well as the words. ‘… Strangely – obviously one of those odd coincidences – “withheld” was the very word I wrote on the rumour analysis, to remind myself that it shouldn’t be used in any assessment…’ The final pause. ‘So no, I did not withhold anything from the ambassador that he should have seen. Only what he shouldn’t have been confused by.’
For the men whose lives had been refrigerated throughout the Cold War the atmosphere inside the conference room became glacial. Again there was a long-held look between Rupert Dean and his deputy, beside whom Williams remained puce-faced. Pacey look confused and Simpson appeared irritated.
‘I think there’s been a misunderstanding,’ suggested Dean, easily, still looking directly at Johnson. ‘A mistake, even. You were quite right, sifting the wheat from the chaff. And you were responding as instructed, by me. Which I shall tell Moscow.’
And which the man could just as easily have told him during their earlier lunch, instead of making the nebulous remark about embassy difficulties, Charlie realized, abruptly. Not even that! If Dean knew what the complaint had been – which he clearly did – there had been no need for it to be discussed at all. The man could simply have resolved it with Moscow, like he’d just undertaken to do. Charlie, too often the shuttlecock in too many bureaucratic games, accepted he’d been used again. For some reason Dean had wanted an audience, which presumably he would have manipulated if Gerald Williams and Peter Johnson hadn’t tripped over their own tongues. Charlie conceded there was a lot of speculation in that analysis but it fitted to Charlie’s satisfaction. Certainly it explained Dean’s inexplicable refusal to discuss anything in detail at lunch.
‘Perhaps we could go back to discussing…?’ started Charlie but stopped at the entry into the room of Henry Bates.
The man leaned too closely to the Director-General for Charlie to hear the exchange, offering a single sheet of paper at the same time. Dean scanned it, then looked at Charlie. ‘Agayans was arrested at a Moscow road block this morning. Shelapin has also been arrested. Another three of the plutonium canisters stolen from Pizhma were found with him.’ The man paused and then said, ‘I think we’d best adjourn to see if you can learn anything further.’
‘It’s all coming together!’ said Popov. He was at his favourite window spot at Natalia’s office but looking at her. As well as repeated praise for her interrogation of Lev Yatisyna, there had also been a commendation relayed to Popov by Dmitri Fomin at the meeting they’d just left.
‘Personal acknowledgment for both of us from the White House!’ smiled Natalia.
‘Well deserved, in your case,’ said Popov.
‘And yours,’ said Natalia, enjoying his admiration. He’d called her questioning brilliant at the meeting, when the tape had been played in front of everybody.
‘Well over ten kilos recovered now,’ said Popov.
‘I’ll interrogate both Agayans and Shelapin, of course,’ Natalia decided. She didn’t expect either to be as easy as it had so far been with Yatisyna, but now they had both Family leaders she could bounce one against the other, with Yatisyna in between.
‘You’re going to have to handle it very carefully.’
‘I can do it.’ The confidence was quickly balanced by the recollection of Charlie’s criticism. ‘There’s been a proper forensic examination, particularly on the canisters?’
‘They were marked, as having come from Kirs. The numbering tallied with that listed on the train manifest.’
‘What about fingerprints?’
Popov shrugged. ‘Ask Gusev. He’s in charge of the ground operation.’
‘I want to hit them both hard, with as much evidence as I can.’ Natalia wanted the interrogation of the two Moscow gang leaders to be as quickly productive as it had been with Yatisyna.
‘The Englishman will be proven wrong, if we get it all back in Moscow,’ said Popov.
‘According to Yatisyna there was at least one Arab buyer for what they expected to get out of the plant,’ reminded Natalia.
‘But we’re blocking it!’
It was a debatable point but Natalia didn’t intend presenting the argument. ‘We can do that if I break Shelapin.’
‘I expected Muffin to try to contact me. He’ll obviously know from the American he’s been excluded.’
‘How much longer will the American be allowed in?’ It wasn’t ignoring Charlie’s advice. She wanted to be prepared in advance for any committee debate that i
ncluded a minister or the presidential aide.
Popov shook his head. ‘I personally don’t think there’s any usefulness in continuing the arrangement. He just sat and listened today.’
‘It might be better to go on with it until everything is recovered.’
The man smiled, shaking his head at her. ‘Think about it!’ he demanded. ‘Spy satellites miles high sounded impressive, but apart from making the identification of the lorries and the car easier and quicker it did virtually nothing to help the investigation.’
Natalia held back from reminding the man how much was still missing.
chapter 27
S ome things were not strange or unfamiliar. Indeed, as he settled into the secure communications room in the headquarters basement Charlie had the very real sensation of never having been away. He liked it. He even recognized some of the technicians who recognized him, in return, but the duty officer tempered Charlie’s comforting nostalgia by complaining that things weren’t like they used to be and Charlie commiserated that they never were.
He was immediately linked to Kestler, who said he’d chosen a bad time to be away, although it all seemed pretty straightforward from the briefing to which Popov had summoned him, four hours earlier.
Both Agayans and Shelapin, recounted the American, had been picked up around Bykovo airport, where it had been pretty damned stupid of either of them to have been because it was the known turf both disputed and the most obvious place to look. His guess was that neither had wanted to give the other any edge, by going to the mattress. Agayans had been stopped at a road block. There’d been three cars in the cavalcade and six men picked up, in addition to Agayans himself. There’d been some shooting but no one had been killed, although a Militia man had been badly wounded. They’d got Shelapin in a house raid. The canisters had been found in a car, parked outside, belonging to Shelapin himself. The two seizures had occurred within four or five hours of each other and the Russians were cock-a-hoop. There was another ambassadorial briefing scheduled later at the Foreign Ministry and that evening Radomir Badim was giving a televised news conference to which all the major Western networks and news media had been invited.
‘It’s celebration time in the old town tonight,’ said Kestler
‘It might well be,’ accepted Charlie, a remark to himself rather than a response to what Kestler had said. ‘Who was at the announcement briefing?’
‘Usual crowd,’ said the American.
Charlie stifled his irritation. ‘No new faces?’
‘No.’
‘None?’
The insistence registered with Kestler. ‘New faces like who?’
‘I don’t know,’ avoided Charlie. ‘No one missing from the usual crowd?’
‘No.’
‘None?’
‘You pursuing anything particular here, Charlie? If you are, it might help if you told me what it was.’
‘I’m just filling in all the details.’ One, or maybe then again more than one, in particular, he thought. ‘General Fedova there?’
‘I already told you!’ said the American, exasperated. ‘There were all the usual people.’
‘Who did the talking?’
‘Popov, mostly.’
‘About the arrests?’
‘Yes.’
‘Anyone else, about the arrests?’
‘The Moscow Militia commander: they kind of shared it, like before.’
‘General Fedova contribute at all?’
‘Not about the seizure of Agayans and Shelapin. She appears to be heading the interrogations. Which also seem to be going well.’
Charlie listened intently to the account of the Yatisyna interview, although he’d already heard it from Natalia. ‘The actual tape was played?’
‘She’s good. Treated him like shit. The old demeaning trick. Worked like a dream.’
‘What about the ministry people? Badim?’
‘Lots of back-slapping. Personal commendations, from the presidential guy.’
‘To whom, specifically?’ demanded Charlie.
‘Popov and the woman.’
‘What was said, exactly?’
‘That it was an excellently conducted investigation and that it was an official commendation, to both of them.’
‘Both of them?’ persisted Charlie.
‘Charlie!’ protested the other man again. ‘We together on this or has something come up I don’t know about? If there is I’d sure as hell like to know.’
‘I wasn’t there. I want to get a feel of everything that went on.’ It was the sort of protection, maybe insurance was a better description, that Natalia needed. He still hadn’t guided the younger man to the significance of the Warsaw references on the satellite tape, which he’d half thought about during his meeting with Jurgen Balg. He could always avoid criticism from the American by pleading the analysis had been done in London and communicated direct, which he now knew it had been.
‘OK,’ said the younger man, doubtfully.
‘What about the crooked cop accusation?’
‘A little foot shuffling, but not much. It was kind of passed over. It’s hardly the revelation of the decade, after all.’
‘What about your contribution? You get any praise?’
‘I didn’t have anything to offer today.’
It was coming, thought Charlie: like pulling alligator teeth but it was coming. ‘Nothing more from Washington?’
‘They’re still working on the audio tape.’
The younger man’s reply told him that nothing significant had yet emerged from the eavesdropped conversation but Charlie’s hair-tuned antenna to nuance twitched. ‘What else from Washington?’ he chanced.
‘Some pretty confusing signals,’ admitted Kestler. ‘Which makes me think something is going on that I don’t know about. Like I don’t know what it really is you and I are talking about.’
Here was a ball that had to be juggled carefully, Charlie recognized. ‘What sort of confusing signals?’
‘It takes a year to open the door you pushed and the moment we get inside we get priority instructions to back off and not get compromised. It doesn’t make any sense!’
It didn’t, accepted Charlie. It merely added to the FBI uncertainty. But there again it might give him a route to follow. ‘What are you doing about it?’
‘Obeying orders. I just sat and listened today, like a fucking dummy. And we didn’t make any request for Hillary to examine the car in which the containers were found. She protested that direct and was told to lay off.’
That made least sense of anything: removed the very reason for her being in Moscow. Which worried Charlie and for professional, not personal reasons: in everything she’d done so far Hillary had always found something of forensic value. ‘Hasn’t Lyneham asked for guidance?’
‘The reply was that it was a policy decision. You got any idea what that might mean?’
There was an irony in the American distrusting him for the wrong reasons. ‘How could I possibly know about a policy decision taken in Washington?’
‘I thought it might be a joint policy decision, between Washington and London. And that you might have been recalled to be told what it was.’
‘I was brought back to discuss the exclusion, nothing more.’
‘Your people planning to protest it?’
‘It hasn’t been decided yet.’ Kestler had reason enough to be suspicious, Charlie acknowledged: everything he said appeared either an avoidance or a refusal to give a complete answer. Which, he supposed, it had been.
‘I’m being straight with you now, Charlie.’
The antenna twitched again. Now? When hadn’t he been in the past? And about what? ‘If I get any guidance I’ll tell you. Trust me.’
‘When are you coming back?’
‘Soon.’
‘I look forward to hearing from you.’
‘You will.’
Charlie had left one direct question unasked because it was unlikely Kestler woul
d have known anyway, so to have introduced it would merely have made the American even more suspicious. Natalia would know. And there was an arrangement of sorts for him to call her. But Charlie didn’t, reminded by the presence of the technicians outside his soundproofed booth that all communication with Moscow was automatically recorded. Which meant, he supposed, that there was a voice record of the back-stabbing from Moscow unless Bowyer had communicated through the diplomatic bag. From the meeting that had just been interrupted, Charlie didn’t think that it was going to be a problem any more. And there was no immediate urgency to settle the other query: it could wait until he got back to Moscow to ask Natalia. Far more intriguing was the rest of the conversation he’d had with the younger man. It didn’t make any sense for the Americans to back off, no sense at all. And why now, when he’d been withdrawn to London? Coincidence or connection? Into Charlie’s mind came the stored away conversation with the cynical Lyneham about Kestler’s family connections. Was the policy decision a very limited one, affecting Kestler personally rather than the Moscow Bureau station as a whole? Not if the edict had been extended to Hillary. The Bureau – and America – generally then. So what could…? Charlie positively halted the mental spiral, reminding himself the only effect of revolving in ever-tightening circles was to disappear up your own ass. He now had an easy way to introduce the Bureau into the discussion with Rupert Dean far above. It really was turning out to be a remarkably lucky day.
At first things did not go to Charlie’s satisfaction. He’d guessed they wouldn’t, but obviously he had to begin with the new arrests and the nuclear recovery. He tried to make what he’d learned from Kestler appear additional to the brief message Bates had delivered but there was very little and it showed. He finished actually looking towards Williams for the expected ridicule, but the budgetary controller said nothing, remaining hunched over the papers upon which he’d doodled while Charlie talked. It was the cadaverous deputy who pointed out that the further Moscow seizure didn’t support Charlie’s insistence that the material was moving westwards and even less the fear that it might actually have reached a middleman. Charlie repeated that more remained missing than had been found.
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