It was close to noon when they recrossed the forecourt to the main building, and with the morning wasted Gower agreed to lunch with Nicholson in the embassy mess. On their way there the persistent lawyer-diplomat detoured to enrol Gower as a temporary member of the social club. Inside the dining-room there was virtually a moving line of introductions: when Nicholson announced Gower’s proclaimed purpose for being there nearly everyone grumbled that the survey was long overdue. As he had that morning with the aggrieved wives, Gower felt vaguely disconcerted at deceiving so many people so obviously, but supposed he shouldn’t: it had to be all part of the job to which he was still adjusting. Halfway through the meal, he saw Samuels enter and take a seat at the far side of the room. The political officer ignored him. Gower guessed the mood pendulum had swung back in the opposite direction.
Gower pleaded the need to get the problems he’d discovered that morning into a preliminary report to avoid continuing the pointless exercise in the afternoon. They made arrangements to resume the following morning. Gower declined the offer to eat again with the Nicholsons that night.
Remembering his protective idea of the previous day, believing it showed he was thinking and acting as he should, Gower went back to his quarters to collect his camera before setting out for the second time. Sure of the direction from his earlier excursion and knowing, too, that he would not be able to pick up any follower directly outside the legation, Gower moved off without pause towards the Forbidden City. He measured his pace today and once away from the embassy repeated the attempt to discover company, deviating from the shortest route and then suddenly backtracking on himself. Yet again no one reversed direction in obvious pursuit. Close to the square he tried again, halting abruptly at a street-stall he had already isolated, using sign language to buy a covered carton of yoghurt and staying there to drink it, able while he was doing so to turn this way and that like the interested first-time visitor he was, surveying everyone around him. He could recognize no one drinking or loitering around the stall whom he had seen before, closer to the embassy. No one moved off when he finished his drink to continue towards the square. All around him, the steel-tipped shoes tapped and chattered, like pavement cicadas.
Today Gower ignored the Great Hall, immediately re-entering the Forbidden City. He checked himself just in time from taking the same route as before, instead following different paths and alleys and carefully not stopping at two of the designated message spots. At the others he used the convenient camera as an excuse to stop and study them in detail: remembering the incriminating problem of the pictures the priest had taken, Gower was careful with the exposures it was protectively necessary to take, each time shooting so that the concealment he was detailing in his mind was on the peripheral edge of every frame. He spent longer in the City than he had on the first occasion, lingering and photographing a lot of other locations with apparently more concentrated interest than he’d shown in the places for which he was really visiting the site.
Coal Hill, built from the earth dug out to make the moat for the Forbidden City, was a rolling hump conveniently covered with trees and shrubs and close-knit bushes, surmounted at its very top by a traditional pagoda with three tip-cornered roofs, one on top of the other, like a nipple on a breast. It was laced by paved walkways and in places guarded, like the Forbidden City, by armoured lion figures and hard-shelled monsters from myths he did not know.
Gower climbed steadily towards the top, but not directly, meandering from path to path to find his drops, turning frequently not just to search behind him but using the always pointless check to gaze out from the elevation afforded by the hill out over the ancient city spread out below.
There were two places established on the hill. One was by a tulip-lamped light standard, where a message could be slipped beneath the rotund bottom of a permanently fixed rubbish bin. The other was just two paths to the left, on one of the statues, where the right front paw of one of the snarling lions had lifted slightly with the aged distortion of the metal, creating a barely visible but very usable crack into which a single stiff card could be inserted.
He would use a drop on Coal Hill, Gower determined, positively: perhaps the lion cache or then again maybe the tulip light. He didn’t have to decide until the very moment he left the signal by the temple. Whichever it was, Coal Hill had the better concealment, both hiding places surrounded by shrubbery.
Gower was oddly encouraged by the choice of Coal Hill, seeing it as a further step towards completing his assignment. He had only the temple site to reconnoitre and there couldn’t be any problems there, any more than there had been at the Forbidden City or where he was now. Once he’d positioned the flower alert he could remain within the security of the embassy until he went with the priest to the airport: in his growing confidence, Gower had no doubt Father Snow would at last do what he was told. Incriminated by the photographs he had to produce, the priest had no choice.
His mind upon the pictures, Gower started back down the hill, remembering to keep his pace that of a sightseer leisurely ending a visit, not someone in any sudden hurry. He did not make any attempt to discover if he was under surveillance: he was doing nothing covert, so there was no reason to bother with a pointless exercise. It was a relief to feel as self-assured as he did. He knew everything was going to work out exactly as it should: he’d be back in London very soon, with Marcia. She’d expect a souvenir, he realized abruptly: it would be a mistake if he did not take her back a present. Easily achieved, though, without it becoming an unnecessary interference with what he was in Beijing to achieve. He’d ask Jane Nicholson to shop for him: the sort of cheongsam she’d worn the first night at dinner. He wasn’t sure it was what Marcia would choose for herself, but it was something she could use to lounge around the flat. By now she would have given up her own apartment: knowing her he guessed she would already be making plans for the wedding. One of the first things he’d have to do when he got back was buy her an engagement ring. He wanted it to be something special: whatever she wanted, without giving a damn about the cost.
Samuels was in his office as promised when Gower got back to the embassy. The political officer went with him to the basement security vault, authorizing his access to the officer on duty there. Gower remained inside the vault to examine the package, wanting only to look at the photographs with which he had to force Snow’s departure. The alterations had been expertly done: to Gower’s untrained eye it was impossible to detect any tampering. He replaced them inside the envelope and resealed it, returning everything to the security official and rejoining Samuels in the tiny outer room.
As they walked back up the stairs together, Samuels said: ‘You’ve become a very popular person here. Everyone thinks you’re going to get a lot of improvements made around the place.’
‘I’m embarrassed about it,’ admitted Gower.
‘That’s the only embarrassment we want,’ said the diplomat.
Charlie finally got his confirmation of an affair between Peter Miller and Patricia Elder at precisely eight-thirty on a surprisingly sunny Wednesday morning in early March.
And in addition got far more than he expected.
He was perfectly hidden from the spectacular bordering mansions on the inside of the hedge that surrounds the park, and at that precise moment was finally deciding he’d wasted far too much effort over the past weeks chasing a personal impression that he should at last admit was wrong.
And then they emerged from the private exit of the penthouse.
They were not initially together. Miller came out first, alone, but hesitated after two or three paces, looking back into the still open door and eventually stopping, to wait. Patricia Elder followed. There was a brief conversation, with both consulting their watches, before they began walking together down the outer circle.
Charlie began to smile, knowing that familiar flush of satisfaction at a hunch turning out to be a hundred per cent right, which was always a feeling he savoured, wishing there’d been more
of them in a troublesome life.
Almost at once the expression – and the satisfied feeling – faltered and died, never properly forming.
It was the movement of a camera that caught his eye, in an inconspicuous black Ford parked beyond his concealing hedge, less than five yards from where he stood: a camera aimed by one of the two men to take the last photograph of the disappearing Director-General of Britain’s external intelligence service and his deputy as they turned into Chester Gate, to reach Albany Street.
The Ford started up immediately, trying to move in the direction opposite to that taken by the oblivious couple: it had to pause, because of a passing van, conveniently enabling Charlie to take the number.
Charlie remained where he was for several moments before slowly moving off deeper into the park, towards the boating lake. An enquiry agent, hired by a suspicious Lady Ann? Or was it something professionally far more serious? A private detective agency could probably be easily confirmed from the registration number. It was just possible to check the other alternative, too, if a person remained an awkwardly suspicious and genuine bastard who didn’t believe in virgin births, that there was something good in everybody, or in New Realities for the future.
The taxi got Charlie to Notting Hill in fifteen minutes. He ambled into the tree-lined avenue linking the Bayswater Road with Kensington High Street and dominated on either side, with a few exceptions for millionaire residents, by the London embassies of foreign countries. He showed no reaction whatsoever at identifying from the registration he had so recently recorded the black Ford parked neatly among three other vehicles in the forecourt of what had become the Russian, not the Soviet, embassy.
Reaching Kensington, Charlie hesitated on the pavement, thoughts momentarily refusing even to present themselves for consideration. What the fuck was he going to do about that, he asked himself, wishing he knew.
His feet hurt, too, from walking the entire length of the embassy row.
Twenty-nine
The traditional animosity between the respective policing agencies had only minimally lessened since the transfer of the renamed KGB to the control of the Interior Ministry, which also governed the Militia, but Natalia guessed from the tone of his voice that the man to whom she spoke would have travelled out to the Yasenevo suburb if she had asked. She didn’t. The policeman formally introduced himself as Mikhail Stepanovich Kapitsa, a senior investigator in the organized crime division, in the thick, frequently coughing voice of a heavy smoker: twice their telephone conversation was interrupted by the sound of a match scraping into life. The man agreed they could meet at once: it was better to get everything sorted out as soon as possible, didn’t she think?
Natalia hesitated at the moment of departure, aware before knowing the circumstances she could be entering a situation of enormous personal danger, danger far greater than she had so far faced from Fyodor Tudin.
Decisively, still in her own office, she ordered her official, chauffeur-driven Zil. In addition, as she went through the outer secretariat she made a point of recording a visit to Petrovka. The chauffeur was a pool driver with a Georgian accent and a painful-looking boil on a thick neck. Natalia remembered Tudin was Georgian. The man, hand constantly on his horn, insisted on bulldozing down the central road lanes which in the past had been reserved for government vehicles. Anxious to get to Petrovka, she didn’t object.
A uniformed officer escorted her to the second floor. Kapitsa’s office was fugged with the anticipated smoke, an ashtray on a cluttered desk overflowing, a half-burned cigarette smouldering in it. Kapitsa picked it up as he sat. His dark blue suit shone with wear and there was a snow-line of ash over the front. The left lapel had a burn hole that looked ancient, the cloth frayed around its edges.
‘I appreciate your contacting me,’ embarked Natalia cautiously.
The man smiled. His teeth were yellowed by nicotine. ‘We’re closer together now as colleagues than we ever were. But it’s not going to be easy. To be honest, at the moment I can’t think of a way.’
A man of the past, accustomed to deals and arrangements, guessed Natalia. ‘What’s happened?’
Kapitsa nodded, lighting another cigarette from the butt of its predecessor: as an afterthought, he offered the packet to Natalia. She shook her head. Kapitsa said: ‘Organized crime has become a serious problem in Moscow. And greatly increased since the changes that were supposed to provide things that haven’t been available. And still aren’t now, unless you go to a Mafia outlet …’ He shrugged, apologizing in advance. ‘The order has been given, for a major crackdown …’ Another shrug. ‘Market forces can’t fill the shops and we can’t fill the work rosters with enough men to do the job we’re told to do. So the Mafia go on winning: we haven’t – and won’t – get it under control.’
Natalia was curious at the generality. It would be a mistake to hurry him.
‘We do the best we can, of course: we’ve got to. We’re publicly accountable now, not like before.’
Natalia detected the nostalgia: definitely someone immersed in the past and mourning it.
‘Occasionally we get lucky. Like this time. It’s one of the known Mafia families, the Lubertsy. They’re young. Violent. Trade in a lot of drugs brought up from the southern republics: across the Polish border from Italy, too. There were two kilos of heroin and ten kilos of marijuana, all from the south. There was a lot of medicines, as well: to be sold to people who know what they want but can’t get it through hospitals or from their doctors who prescribe it. We’re still carrying out tests but we think the medicines have been adulterated, to stretch the size and value of the shipment …’ The man paused, to light another cigarette. ‘… Adulterated medical drugs kill sometimes, instead of saving lives. Or maim. Certainly aren’t effective, in doing what they’re supposed to do …’
Natalia couldn’t contain herself any longer. ‘What’s Eduard’s part in all of this?’
‘Organizer,’ said the man, bluntly. ‘He hasn’t admitted it, but there’s no doubt he was in charge. It was a big load, in total. Four lorries. We don’t know where they originated: no one will say. It was on the Serpukhov road.’
‘Only narcotics and medicines?’
Kapitsa shook his head. ‘Quite a lot of domestic electrical stuff, mostly German. That will have definitely come through Poland. Clothing, too. Jeans, naturally.’
‘How did the interception happen?’ This wasn’t just potentially dangerous; it could be catastrophic.
‘Luck, like I said. We chose the Serpukhov direction because we heard drug shipments had come by that route before. Put up a road-block five nights ago and they drove straight into it.’ There was a quick, satisfied smile. ‘There were only eight of us: should have been double that at least if we’d known what we were going into. There were twelve of them.’
‘They fought? Resisted?’ Natalia tried to push back the sensation of numbness threatening to engulf her, clouding her reason.
Kapitsa’s smile remained. He shook his head. ‘They weren’t even worried. I was there, in charge. They laughed at me: asked what arrangements were necessary to solve what they called “a little problem”.’
‘They asked?’ pressed Natalia.
The man gave an apologetic shrug. ‘Eduard asked.’
‘Were there weapons?’
‘Enough for a short war. Handguns. Small-arms. A nine-millimetre machine-gun, in the rear vehicle.’ The smile now was sad. ‘There’s enough spare military weaponry to put a gun in every home in Russia. They’re probably there already. But you know what the irony was: they weren’t carrying the guns to oppose the police! They think they can bribe their way out of that sort of difficulty. The guns were to fight any interception by rival gangs.’
Natalia shook her head, disbelievingly. But she couldn’t be overwhelmed: sit there numbed. She had to think: think beyond what she was being told about her own son in this stinking office in this stinking police station. She had to think of Sasha.
�
�So you can see my problem?’ invited Kapitsa, hopefully.
Natalia regarded the man with renewed caution, alert for a pitfall. ‘I’m not sure that I do.’
The investigator frowned, disappointed. ‘This is an incredible opportunity for us to show we’re doing our job. One we never thought we’d get …’ The man hesitated, both for another cigarette and for Natalia to respond. When she didn’t he said: ‘But one of the people we have in custody – the organizer, it seems – is your son.’
‘Yes,’ Natalia agreed, slowly. She had to assume Fyodor Tudin would find out: protect herself against how the man might try to use the information.
Kapitsa spread his hands towards her. ‘There must be a way, somehow, to avoid the difficulty.’
Natalia’s first thought was that Kapitsa was seeking a bribe, although not one offered as openly as it had been on the Serpukhov road. Cautiously she asked: ‘What did Eduard say, when you wouldn’t take money?’
Kapitsa didn’t reply at once, recalling in detail. ‘He seemed to think it was the beginning of negotiation at first. Kept smiling, very friendly. That gave us the time to collect the guns. Then he got angry. Not frightened. Angry. Asked me if I had any idea what I was doing, and when I said I did he told me who you were. Said it was a waste of time to make a seizure so why didn’t I save myself a lot of unnecessary trouble, take the road-block down and that would be the end of it. That if I wanted the bribe, I could still have it.’ Kapitsa shook his head. ‘He was carrying $5,000, in notes. Called it his passage money, in case they got stopped. He told me to help myself.’
Charlie’s Apprentice Page 22