Bomb Grade cm-11

by Brian Freemantle

  ‘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

  T he 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 Sas
ha’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.’

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