“Which is another dangerously accepted assumption,” said Charlie, raising his delivered vodka in a toast to the group to cover his irritation at losing the exchange.
“Can’t say I envy you guys,” came in Probert, attempting to lessen the atmosphere. “Must be a hornet’s nest down there at Smolenskaya Naberezhnaya?”
“It’s kind of busy,” agreed Paula-Jane.
“You just won the understatement of the year award, P-J,” said Probert, leading the laughter.
“From the outside, looking in, I’d say there’s going to be a wholesale massacre,” suggested Bundy.
“I’m keeping my office door locked,” said Paula-Jane, over-emboldened by her earlier reception, although only Probert laughed again this time.
“From what I’ve read in the American papers it seems too late for that,” said Sarah, adding to her wineglass for the third time. “I thought all this spy nonsense was over: actually I never believed most of it in the first place.” She was blue eyed as well as blond, with perfectly sculpted teeth and a milk-and-vitamin-fed complexion. She looked challengingly between her husband and the two other men and said, “Okay, let us in on the secret! How many James Bond coups have any of you had that you know saved the world?”
“Sarah, stop it!” protested Probert.
The arrival of their food contributed to the interruption. Unasked, Charlie took the initiative and ordered his favorite Georgian red wine, intrigued by the total unexpectedness of the dinner party and the vague undertones he was detecting, most surprised—and curious—at facing an adversary he’d never imagined confronting ever again, socially or otherwise. His mind held by Sarah Probert’s outburst, Charlie tried to recall a start-to-finish operation of which he was proud, and couldn’t. He’d stuck a hell of a lot of wrenches into a hell of a lot of engines, though, and who could calculate their outcome if he hadn’t done it? Perversely wanting to keep the uneasy conversation on its present track to see where it might lead, Charlie said, “There’s no such thing as a one-man band in our business: it’s lots of different people offering lots of different tunes eventually to create a song to hum to. Wouldn’t you say that’s how it is, Tex?”
Before her husband could reply, Sarah said, “John says very little about anything, to me at least. That’s why I’m glad we’re moving back to Washington, D.C., where things will be much more normal and I can get my husband back.”
“That’s enough, Sarah!” said Probert.
“Moscow’s not the best foreign posting for a family,” offered Paula-Jane.
Sarah looked across the table at the English woman but deferred to her husband’s warning, pushing aside her scarcely touched meal and picking up the empty white wine bottle with her other hand to gesture for a replacement.
“Is Ann coming back this time?” Charlie asked Bundy, knowing the man’s wife hadn’t enjoyed Moscow and spent a lot of time back in America during their contemporary posting.
“Jury’s still out on that,” said Bundy. “How long are you expecting to be here?”
Charlie shrugged. “Open-ended.”
“Why don’t we make lunch sometime? Catch up on old times?”
“That would be good,” lied Charlie, who’d only ever socialized with the American at mutually attended embassy receptions and even then to the polite minimum.
It was Paula-Jane Venables who recovered the evening, using her enjoyment of Russia in general and Moscow in particular as the springboard—although not in critical comparison with Sarah Probert’s obvious disenchantment—to enthuse about the Bolshoi ballet and of a trip she intended repeating to St. Petersburg to again visit the Hermitage and the Tzars’ village of Tarskoye Selo and to see more opera at the Mariinsky Theatre, culminating with the announcement that when her tour of duty in Moscow ended she intended going east, not west, to take the trans-Siberian railway all the way to the Chinese border and complete her recall to England via Japan if she was refused a visa into China. She amusingly told stories against herself of misadventures and mistakes during her explorations, to the genuine, Tex Probert–led amusement of everyone with the initial exception of Sarah. Shirley Jenkins took up the travelogue with an account of a college-graduation rail journey the length of Latin America as far as Patagonia, and eventually Sarah—and even Bundy—relaxed sufficiently to keep the conversation away from embassy rumor and gossip, the only real subject all of them had in common.
On the way back to the embassy Paula-Jane said, “That wasn’t anything like the fun I’d hoped it would be. Bundy’s a stuffy old fart, frightening all of them with a reputation I didn’t see or hear much to justify. I think he’s stuck in a Cold War time warp, like the way he dresses and how that fucking café is designed.”
“He’s a very dedicated guy,” said Charlie, impressed at her analysis.
“You work a lot with him when you were both here?”
“Not at all. We both preferred to work alone.”
“Like you prefer to do now?”
“We’ve been through that.”
“You didn’t share anything with Bundy!” persisted the woman, disbelievingly.
“Nothing,” said Charlie. “Was it just your idea to invite me along tonight?”
Paula-Jane turned to him in the taxi. “How do you mean?”
“Was my name mentioned, when you were invited?”
Paula-Jane hesitated, thinking. “I don’t remember your name coming up. How could it have? No one at the American embassy could have known you were here, could they?”
“Bundy didn’t seem surprised to see me. And appeared to know what I was doing here.”
“Bundy tries to give the impression of knowing everything before it ever happens,” she dismissed. “I thought we came close to an embarrassment with Sarah.”
“You did well to save the evening,” congratulated Charlie. “You know her well?”
“Hardly at all. This isn’t her first extended trip back to the States. From what Tex has told me, she’s spent more of his Russian tour back home than here.”
As the embassy came into view Charlie leaned toward the windshield and said, “The media siege appears to have been lifted.”
“I thought you might have invited me back to the hotel for a nightcap,” said the woman.
I’d guessed you would, thought Charlie. “Maybe another time.”
“Let’s hope there is one.”
Charlie eagerly took the offered message slip from the Savoy receptionist, his expectation of it being from Natalia collapsing immediately. The only thing written on the slip was the telephone number of Colonel Sergei Pavel.
Charlie’s second arrival at Petrovka was very different from his first. On this occasion there was an instant acknowledgement from a different, attentive desk clerk, and at whose bell-pressed demand another escort officer appeared despite Charlie’s assurance that he knew how to get to Pavel’s office. The bigger surprise, coming close to astonishment, continued when he reached Pavel’s top-floor aerie. Already there, waiting with the organized crime colonel, were the weak-stomached Foreign Ministry official of the mortuary visit, together with the suspected FSB’s Mikhail Guzov, and two other men whose identities Charlie guessed from their nervous, foot-shuffling deference to be the discovering gardeners, which was a bonus Charlie hadn’t expected, but which he decided could more than justify his responding to Pavel’s previous night summons. There were thermoses of black tea waiting on a side table that hadn’t been in Pavel’s office the first time. The voice recorders and film equipment would still be, Charlie knew.
“The situation would appear to have become very complicated,” opened the Foreign Ministry’s Nikita Kashev.
“In what way?” queried Charlie, intentionally awkward to give himself time to compartment the assembled group in their necessary order of priority. Kashev had to be there, according to the diplomatically agreed protocol, for the questioning of the body-discovering gardening team. And the murder investigation was officially the responsibilit
y of Sergei Pavel. Which left Mikhail Guzov as the only one who didn’t have a place. Which put the FSB man in charge. By intruding into the meeting Guzov was positively, although unnecessarily, confirming his own official role and purpose. Why? Could it be a test in reverse, Guzov wanting there to be no misunderstanding of who and what he was: confronting, even, any possible accusation of the FSB bugging the embassy? As always, Charlie accepted, he had to dance on ballet points, an agonizing concept with feet like his.
“A lot of media speculation about continuing difficulties at your embassy,” offered Kashev.
“I am not concerned or interested in any media speculation, apart from how it could interfere with what I am here to do,” Charlie continued with intentional awkwardness. “As I’d hoped to have made clear at our initial meeting, I am here for one specific purpose . . .” He smiled between the gardeners and Pavel. “And I appreciate what I’m anticipating to be our continuing cooperation.”
Reluctantly drawn into the discussion, Pavel introduced the two FSB informant gardeners, Boris Nikolaevich Maksimov and Petr Petrovich Denin, formally including their patronymics. Pavel made the identification at the same time as offering Charlie two separate dossiers, concluding, “And here are their sworn statements.”
Bulldozing time, Charlie at once recognized, his conviction growing that everything was being orchestrated as well as recorded by Guzov. Disregarding the increasingly impatient fidgeting of his audience, Charlie took his time reading the supposed recollections of each gardener, both of which stopped short of two full pages and roughly—very roughly—accorded with Reg Stout’s totally inadequate account of his conversation with Maksimov.
“There are some questions, of course, in light of what was discovered after your crime scene investigation.” Charlie briskly set out, docking Guzov two points on the professional score sheet for the man’s obvious frown. Talking directly to Maksimov, Charlie said: “How close did you go to the body?”
The thin-faced man hesitated, his look to Guzov for guidance too obvious. Haltingly, weak-voiced, he said: “I’m not sure. Not close enough to touch it.”
“You thought at first it might be someone sleeping, didn’t you?”
“What!” asked the man, now including Pavel in his anxious look for help.
“You told the head of security at the embassy that at first you thought the man was sleeping. It’s not in your statement,” said Charlie, waving the folder.
“I don’t remember saying that.”
“Why should you have thought someone was sleeping in the embassy grounds?”
Maksimov scrubbed his hand across his sweating face. “You see people lying drunk at night.”
“What made you changed your mind?”
Maksimov shuddered. “When I got closer . . . saw what had happened to his face . . . that there wasn’t a face.”
“Were the clothes wet?”
“No . . . I don’t know . . .”
“You did touch the body, then?”
“No! I told you I didn’t.”
“You said the clothes weren’t wet. How did you know the clothes weren’t wet if you didn’t touch the body?”
“He said he didn’t know,” came in Guzov, speaking for the first time.
“After saying the clothes weren’t wet,” insisted Charlie.
“I meant I didn’t know, not that I touched the body. I didn’t touch the body.”
“How close did you go to it?”
“Not close . . . no closer than a yard.”
“Close enough to see that there wasn’t a face?”
“That was obvious.”
Maksimov was starting to relax, Charlie recognized. “Not at first, when you thought it was someone sleeping.”
“I don’t remember saying that,” repeated the man.
“What about the chip out of the brickwork? You saw that, didn’t you?”
“No . . . I don’t understand that question.”
“You sure you didn’t?”
“No . . . I mean I don’t know. I can’t remember.”
“What did you mean by telling the embassy security officer that you didn’t do it? Did you mean that you hadn’t killed him?”
“I didn’t mean to say that. It just came out like that.”
“When you got about a yard away you could see the body very clearly?”
The man hesitated, nervously. “Yes.”
Time to sow more seeds, Charlie decided. “I know there wasn’t a face but on which side was the head laying, to its right or to its left?”
There was another pause. Maksimov looked at his supervisor, who shrugged. Maksimov said, “To its right.”
“You’re sure it was to its right?”
“Yes,” said the Russian, sounding anything but sure.
“That’s consistent,” said Charlie, as if to himself, looking down again at Maksimov’s written statement, to provide the delay.
“Consistent with what?” demanded Pavel.
Looking down as he’d had to, Charlie hadn’t been able to see any indication from Guzov for the organized crime detective to ask the question. Charlie said, “The gouge mark in the wall our forensic people believe was caused by the bullet ricochet . . .” He looked from Pavel to the others in the office. “You have passed on what we talked about earlier?”
It was Kashev who answered. “The colonel has, in some detail, which is why we are here and why I think we need to talk very specifically beyond this immediate subject. I want to stress, most forcibly, that my government denies absolutely any knowledge or responsibility for what is being reported in the media as an espionage intrusion into the British embassy. My colleagues also wish—”
“Sir!” Charlie broke in. “And before I continue any further, I apologize for interrupting you. I have no permanent attachment to the British embassy here. I cannot, therefore, discuss anything other than what I have been sent here to investigate. My investigation is, however, overshadowed by the situation to which you refer. And obviously, potentially hampered by it, particularly by the disparities in these”—Charlie fluttered the two inadequate statements—“and what British forensic scientists collected from other parts of the murder scene. And I intentionally use those words, murder scene, because every conclusion British scientists have so far reached is that the crime was very definitely committed on British territory, not somewhere else. I have taken the advice of our embassy lawyer on that . . . the embassy is legally and technically British territory, not Russian.”
“None of those conclusions—or the proof that led to their being reached—has been exchanged, according to the cooperation understanding between our two governments,” intruded Mikhail Guzov, to Charlie’s satisfaction.
It would be wrong to challenge the other man’s official reason for being there, too easily dismissed as Guzov being attached to the Foreign Ministry, which technically he probably was. “Another overshadowing but inevitably connected problem.”
“So what’s the resolve?” demanded Guzov.
“A separation, if it’s possible, between the diplomatic and the criminal,” suggested Charlie.
“Answer your own question,” insisted Guzov. “Is that possible?”
“I, for my part, believe that I can work in total cooperation with Colonel Pavel, quite separately from whatever else is affecting the embassy. I will further undertake to do my utmost to persuade London to make available the results of all scientific tests. And as a gesture of my commitment, I will tell you now that there are definitely images upon the CCTV loops that were intended to be rendered useless by being tampered with. The ricocheting score mark on the wall is still evident and has been extensively photographed, although its immediate brick surface has obvious been scraped away for fragment traces of the bullet that made the mark after exiting the man’s head. Also extensively photographed is the second border area from which earth was dug by our forensic experts’ team to retrieve blood residue and, hopefully, the bullet.”
“I
must ask that our forensic officers be allowed back into the embassy for a second examination,” said Kashev.
“In the circumstances in which we now find ourselves and which I have made clear to you, that is not my permission to give,” sidestepped Charlie. “That has to be an official request from your ministry to the ambassador. The most I can offer is the expectation of sharing with Colonel Pavel the photographs and the forensic results to which I have referred.”
He’d been cut off by Guzov before getting all that he’d wanted from the easily manipulated gardeners. But he’d done far better than he could possibly have hoped before entering the room. So why wasn’t he feeling far more satisfied?
The doubt vanished an hour later when he entered the Savoy to find waiting for him, on a message slip, another telephone number he recognized at once to be Natalia’s.
7
“Good to speak to you after so long.”
It had to be close to five months, Charlie reckoned. “And to speak to you. How are you?”
“Fine. You?”
Did her voice sound as distant as it had when they’d last spoken? Too soon to tell. “Fine. How’s Sasha?”
“Very well,” said Natalia.
Why were important conversations, which he judged this to be, conducted in such mundane, ordinary words? He said: “I’d like to see her while I’m here. You, too, of course. I’m sorry; I didn’t put that very well, did I?”
“She’s away for a few days on a school trip.”
“Isn’t she young to be away on a trip by herself?” Alone in his hotel room, Charlie grimaced as he uttered the words, wishing he could have bitten them back. There was a strict rule between them that he never questioned Natalia about the upbringing of their daughter. “Ignore what I just said. I’m sorry.” It was the second time he’d apologized in less than five minutes: he was sounding like a stumbling idiot, not someone determined to persuade her against all her previous refusals.
“She’s at a regulated camp up in the hills, about ten kilometers outside Moscow. They’re in purpose-built barracks, four girls to a hut. There are three permanent staff, as well as security and two teachers. She can telephone me every day, which she’s doing every day, and she’ll be back in two days.”
Red Star Rising Page 7