Bomb Grade cm-11

by Brian Freemantle

  ‘Which, I suppose, we’ll have to rely upon the Americans to tell us about?’ sneered Williams.

  ‘That might be difficult,’ seized Charlie, deflating the accountant. Yet again the room was silent as he summarized the conversation he had just had with Moscow. And yet again there were several long-held looks between the Director-General and Peter Johnson.

  ‘Ordered not to!’ queried the Director, although without quite the surprise Charlie expected.

  ‘Specifically,’ confirmed Charlie. ‘It’s a policy decision to pull back from the cooperation they’ve achieved. The physicist they’ve put in was categorically told not to make any approach to examine what was found in the car.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous!’ said Pacey.

  ‘Fenby does move in mysterious ways,’ remarked Dean, still more mildly than Charlie expected.

  ‘Which surely has to be the explanation,’ said Simpson. ‘They’re doing something, or know something, they’re not sharing with us.’

  ‘Then it’s happening in Washington,’ insisted Charlie. ‘I was asked whether it was a joint resolve, involving us: whether, in fact, I’d be going back. I probably wouldn’t have been told anything if the Bureau in Moscow hadn’t thought there was some connection and that I could tell them what it was.’ Kestler had been indiscreet about what was essentially an internal FBI decision although it did impinge upon their officially agreed cooperation. But there was the family connection to protect him from censure if it was queried from London, which it obviously would be.

  ‘This was supposed to be a joint operation,’ said Williams, addressing the Director-General. ‘Wasn’t there any warning they were going to do this?’

  ‘Not to me,’ said Dean, looking once more to his deputy. ‘Were you told?’

  ‘No,’ said Johnson, shortly.

  ‘We’ve obviously got to find out what it’s all about,’ said Pacey.

  ‘Obviously,’ agreed Dean.

  Choosing his moment – and the exaggeration – Charlie said, ‘In practical terms my expulsion was more inconvenient than a serious setback, as long as we had the American conduit. If they’re going to abandon that then the idea of setting up a sting operation becomes even more valid, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Dean. ‘I think it probably does.’

  Petr Tukhonovich Gusev was a sparse-bodied, fixed-faced man who wore well the ribboned uniform of the Militia controller of the central Moscow region and whose reserve, Natalia decided, had nothing to do with the apprehension that both Oskin and Lvov had shown towards her and her rank. It was, instead, the natural demeanour of a totally professional policeman unwilling to venture an opinion ahead of all the evidence: the voice, when he did speak after considered pause, was as slowly pedantic as it had been at their first encounter on the day the Arbat vehicles had been found.

  He accepted without hesitation the chair Natalia offered, formally straightened the uniform and sat without any discomfort waiting for her to tell him what she wanted. A witness.

  ‘You’re very much part of the efficiency and speed of this investigation that’s been acknowledged. I have asked Colonel Popov officially to commend you. Which will, of course, be noted in your records.’ Natalia wasn’t as sure now that the complimentary approach, which she’d decided upon because the man had been present when she and Aleksai had been publicly praised, was the right one.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Gusev, automatically, flat-voiced.

  ‘I am personally going to question Yevgennie Agayans and Vasili Shelapin.’

  He nodded.

  ‘I want to be as fully prepared as possible.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘So I want to know everything.’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘Where were the canisters found?’

  ‘In Shelapin’s car. And another. It was outside the house in which we arrested him.’

  ‘There was no resistance?’

  ‘We hit it at dawn. They were all sleeping. Shelapin is homosexual. He was with his lover, a boy of twenty. It was in the boy’s car that two of the canisters were found.’

  ‘How old is Shelapin?’

  ‘Fifty-five, sixty maybe.

  ‘There was one in Shelapin’s car?’

  ‘That is correct.’ He could have been giving evidence in a court.

  ‘What cars were they?’

  ‘Both Mercedes. They have large boots.’

  ‘That’s where the canisters were, in the boots?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Natalia hesitated, as the unprepared question came into her mind. ‘Are you telling me what you’ve learned from those at the scene? Or were you there?’

  ‘I was there, in charge. Bykovo is their area: it was the obvious place to concentrate. I led the Shelapin raid and was still there when we got a report about Agayans. So I organized the road block.’

  ‘How did you hear about Agayans?’

  ‘We had a report, from a radio car we’d put in the area.’

  She’d moved away from the core questioning: time to get back.

  ‘What happened to the Shelapin cars?’

  For the first time Gusev’s expressionless face showed a frown. ‘I don’t understand?’

  ‘Were they seized?’

  ‘Of course. Brought to the central Militia garage. So were the Agayans vehicles.’

  ‘I’m only interested in those belonging to Shelapin at the moment. Were they brought to Militia headquarters at once? Or were they scientifically examined at the site, first?’ Natalia took particular care posing the question.

  ‘Scientifically examined. We had to establish the canisters were safe.’

  ‘Quite,’ agreed Natalia. ‘So who carried out the examination? Nuclear experts? Forensic scientists? Or both?’

  Gusev hesitated longer than usual. ‘The nuclear people. It was only the canisters that were important.’

  Natalia felt a dip of uncertainty. ‘After they were found to be safe what happened to the canisters?’

  ‘They took them away to be properly stored.’

  ‘So they weren’t forensically examined? For fingerprints, for instance?’

  ‘No.’

  Again! thought Natalia, anguished. She should have corrected the first omission with Aleksai. Too late now.

  Gusev took the silence to be criticism. ‘We have no facilities, for this stuff! We couldn’t have stored it!’

  ‘Storage wouldn’t have been a factor if a forensic team had been brought to the scene, would it?’

  ‘There was!’

  ‘At the same time?’ She was exceeding her remit – although not her authority – straying into an operational wilderness about which she knew nothing, full of unseen quicksands and sucking whirlpools. She’d have to tell Aleksai.

  ‘No,’ conceded the man. ‘But I don’t understand the significance.’

  ‘Fingerprints could have guided us, literally, to who’d handled it.’

  ‘It was in their cars!’

  ‘You questioned Shelapin?’

  ‘I tried to.’

  ‘Explain that.’

  ‘It was just abuse: obscene abuse.’

  Natalia had interrogated too many people to accept that generalization. ‘There was something,’ she insisted.

  ‘He denied any knowledge of the canisters: said they’d been planted.’

  ‘How were they, in the cars? In boxes? Secured? Loose? What?’

  ‘Loose.’

  ‘Wouldn’t they have rolled about, with the movement of the car?’

  Gusev regarded her even more blankly than normal. ‘There would have been some movement, I suppose.’

  ‘You’re a very senior Militia officer: have you ever had any dealings with Agayans before?’

  ‘No. But I know of him. It’s a major Family.’

  ‘Tell me about his arrest.’

  ‘We set up a road block. The moment they drove up to it I had other cars come in behind, so they were trapped. They began shoo
ting at once. Uzi machine guns: Israeli. One of my officers will lose a leg.’

  ‘How long did it last?’

  ‘It was very brief. I had twenty-five men: they were outnumbered.’

  ‘You heard the Yatisyna tape, about an Arab buyer?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Is the Agayans Family big enough for an operation like they tried at Kirs: with contacts outside Russia?’

  ‘They tried the robbery at Kirs!’

  It hadn’t been a considered question: she couldn’t afford to be that casual with either of the gang leaders. ‘What’s your reaction to Yatisyna’s claim, against the Militia? Were you surprised?’

  ‘No.’ There was no hesitation.

  ‘Why not?’ prompted Natalia.

  ‘Every law enforcement organization in Russia is infected. Are you surprised that virtually every former KGB officer is now involved in organized crime?’

  ‘I would be, if it were true.’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘You’re the head of the largest Militia division in Russia!’ repeated Natalia. ‘If you know it’s true haven’t you tried to do something about it?’ She was going way beyond the original intention of the interview.

  The face broke again, into a patronizing smile. Gusev’s teeth were very bad, overcrowded and displaced: one in the front was practically covering another behind. ‘Since 1992 I have initiated disciplinary proceedings against a total of two hundred and thirty officers, up to the rank of inspector, in the central Moscow division alone. The accusations against ten were unproven but I still dismissed them. The remaining two hundred and twenty are serving prison sentences.’ Gusev paused. ‘I knew Nikolai Ivanovich Oskin. I was looking forward to his being transferred under my jurisdiction. He was an honest man.’

  ‘I was not making any criticism,’ said Natalia. ‘I was asking your opinion.’

  ‘In my opinion there is no such thing as law and order in Russia,’ declared Gusev. ‘The country is collapsing into total chaos. And no one could care!

  ‘A few care.’

  ‘A few is not enough.’

  ‘If I get what I expect from Agayans, we can provide cellmates for a lot of those you’ve already put into jail,’ suggested Natalia.

  ‘I’d like very much to see it.’

  chapter 28

  N atalia decided against repeating the dirty uniform ploy with Vasili Shelapin. She believed she had more upon which to work an interrogation than with Yatisyna. And the examination of the house in which Shelapin had been arrested with his lover, while fastidiously kept, was insufficiently effeminate to justify demeaning psychology. It might even have had the reverse effect. As she had with all the other arrests, however, she’d isolated Shelapin from the moment of his seizure, particularly from the boy, whose name was Yuri Maksimovich Toom and who was in the chorus of a transvestite stage show in a club close to the Arbat.

  Natalia still insisted upon Shelapin wearing prison uniform and watched again through the mirror glass for signs of discomfort. There weren’t any, from Shelapin, but Natalia was caught by the attitude of the two guards. She hadn’t selected or briefed them this time. Both were men and Natalia’s impression was of respect for the gang leader. Shelapin didn’t bother with any chair-lounging performance. He surveyed the room, only once but completely, before propping himself against the table edge to look directly at his escorts. Who were unnerved. Shelapin was, she accepted, very much in control of the room. The attitude was not overtly homosexual: his sexual orientation was neither his boast nor his difficulty, simply his proclivity. She’d been sensible, not attempting the debasing approach: it would have been counter-productive. She had the recording volume turned up and heard perfectly the peremptory demand of someone accustomed always to being obediently answered when he asked who he would be seeing and what their rank would be. There was an irritated frown when the escorts said, apologetically, they didn’t know. Natalia was curious that his interrogator’s rank was important to Shelapin. When he asked how much longer he would have to wait – to which the uneasy men replied they didn’t know that, either – Natalia delayed her entry, to fuel his impatience. He searched the walls for a clock and when he failed to find one glanced briefly behind him, assessing the interview set-up and said he needed a chair. The escorts looked at one another, each for the other to reply: the younger finally said they weren’t responsible for the arrangement. Shelapin told them to find out who was, to get him something to sit upon. The younger one half turned towards the door before stopping to say they didn’t have the authority and would have to wait. Natalia actually leaned forward against the glass for Shelapin’s response, but he said nothing. Instead he leaned forward himself, intently studying the features of both men, each of whom wilted under the memorizing scrutiny. Enough, determined Natalia.

  As she entered the room she looked hard at both guards herself before examining the gangster, which she did with the same head-to-toe distaste with which she’d regarded Yatisyna but to noticeably less effect. Shelapin remained propped against the table, examining her just as closely. Facially he was a fleshy man, heavy jowled and with pouched eyes, and she guessed the ageing body would be sagged beneath the shapeless prison issue. The obviously dyed hair was deeply black and very full, in waves.

  Natalia’s file this time was thin, just the genuine arrest report. She opened it as she sat and for the benefit of the tape said, ‘You are Vasili Fedorovich Shelapin?’

  ‘I want a chair.’

  ‘You will stand.’

  ‘Am I supposed to be intimidated? Or impressed?’

  ‘You’re supposed to answer my questions.’ He hadn’t expected to be interrogated by a woman. It was an advantage.

  He made a snorting, derisive sound. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘You are Vasili Fedorovich Shelapin?’

  ‘I asked who you were.’

  ‘My identity is no concern of yours.’

  ‘Frightened?’

  Now it was Natalia who made the derisive sound. ‘Frightened! Of you! Why should anyone be frightened of you, Vasili Fedorovich?’

  ‘A lot of people are.’

  ‘I’m not one of them.’

  ‘Yet.’

  Natalia thought her ridicule had scored. ‘A number of people were killed in the Pizhma robbery. The principal charge upon which you will be tried is murder, obviously. The nuclear theft also carries the death penalty…’

  ‘… What are you talking about?’ he broke in, impatiently.

  ‘You know very well what I am talking about.’

  ‘I don’t know anything about murders or any nuclear robbery at Pizhma.’

  ‘In the boot of your car – and that of Yuri Maksimovich Toom, who was with you at the time of your arrest – were found canisters of plutonium 239 stolen on the 9th of this month from a transportation train at Pizhma,’ recounted Natalia, again for the benefit of the recording.

  He gave a more genuine, sneering laugh and actually directed it towards the machine. ‘Don’t be absurd! It was planted: maybe you even know by whom.’

  Behind him both guards shifted uneasily. So far this recording wasn’t going to earn her any commendations, Natalia accepted. But it might do, from now on. ‘There is evidence, in addition to the canisters,’ she declared. ‘Quite separate and even more incriminating.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Photographs.’

  ‘What the hell are you talking about now? What photographs?’

  ‘Photographs of Pizhma,’ insisted Natalia, anticipating his collapse. ‘High-definition pictures taken from a specially directed satellite showing every stage of the robbery. And showing, too, the people involved: people that can be positively identified by using developing and enlargement techniques.’ Kestler had talked of height, weight and dress identification, although not of facial recognition which she was trying to suggest without actually claiming it. If they did try to use the satellite pictures in a court hearing, which it was extremely likely they would, they could
n’t logically exclude the Americans from any future progress meetings. That hadn’t been touched upon at any ministerial or operational session she’d so far attended. She’d have to mention it. She pushed aside the digression, looking up expectantly at the man.

  Who laughed at her again, quite genuinely, without any sneer. ‘You’ve got photographs of the people carrying out the robbery?’

  His reaction wasn’t right, not right at all! Where was the collapse, at his believing he was trapped? ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good. Then you can release me right now. And everyone arrested with me. And all the people you picked up at Ulitza Volkhonka. You’ve tried to be too clever and fallen flat on your ass.’

  Natalia had experienced a lot of bluff and a lot of bravado, more desperate last-throw attempts than she could remember. What she could very definitely remember, because she was proud of it, was that she’d never made a mistake separating genuine details from bluster. And her gnawing impression here, wrong though it had to be, was that Shelapin wasn’t at all desperate and wasn’t trying to bluff. Working to match his condenscension, she said, ‘Why should I do that?’

  ‘Because those photographs prove I wasn’t involved. Nor any of my friends.’

  ‘What about the canisters?’

  ‘Is it likely, even if I’d organized the robbery, which I didn’t, that I’d leave that stuff lying around in the trunk of my own car? Come on! I know it’s difficult for everyone connected with the Militia to be honest but try, just for once!’

  ‘They were found on your property, and on the property of people connected with you. Those, and others, will be identified from the satellite pictures. And they’ll talk: they always do in the end. And that will be sufficient to put you in front of a firing squad.’