Bomb Grade

chapter 11

N atalia thought Kirov was small for a provincial capital and odd in the way it clung to the umbilical cord of the Vyatka. From their room she could see over the low dockside warehouses and timber yards to the sluggish river on which even slower boats hauled daisy chains of connected, lumber-laden barges with occasional fussy tugs encouraging the procession from the rear. Beyond the port complex the Stalin era apartment blocks stood in line, grey skittles all in a row. Only vaguely visible through the uncleared midday mist, the far-away fir forests that provided the town’s wood industry had no colour either, deep black outlines against the dull skyline. Apart from the apartment blocks and the abrupt domed towers of the isolated cathedral everything was uninterestingly flat, as if the place was boxed up ready to be moved somewhere else.

By contrast, Popov’s room gave an impression of permanent residence. He’d had to tidy the bathroom cabinet to make space for her things and rearrange the wardrobe for her clothes. He’d had an extra table moved in, for papers and two spread-out maps and his open briefcase was on a bordering chair. A glass held several pencils and a pen: other glasses from the same set ringed a half-empty vodka flask on a side table and a jacket was draped carelessly over the back of another chair. Two pairs of shoes were neatly arranged but outside the wardrobe, and the bed was made but bore the impression where he’d lain on top, before Natalia’s arrival.

Incongruously, a small sled was upturned on its runners against the wall behind the door. A box was beside it. Seeing Natalia’s look, Popov said, ‘For Sasha. There’s a whole farmyard of wooden animals in the box, as well. Do you think she’ll like them?’

‘I’m sure she will,’ smiled Natalia. He really did treat Sasha as if she were his own.

‘Who’s looking after her?’

‘The matron at the creche. There’s an arrangement. I’ll call, later.’

Popov had kissed her, almost anxiously, when she’d arrived and he came close again at the window, folding his arms around her from behind with his face at her shoulder. ‘I enjoyed telling the receptionist you were my wife. You didn’t want a separate room, did you?’

‘Is there really a need for an explanation?’

She felt him nod, into her shoulder. This is genuine: I’m convinced of it. So I’m not taking any chances.’

‘When do I meet Oskin?’

‘Tonight. Dinner. He’s chosen the restaurant.’

‘Lvov?’

‘Tomorrow. We’re going out to Kirs.’

Natalia pulled away from the man. ‘So tell me about it.’

Popov took the larger of the two maps from the table, tracing by pencil the curved road to Kirs. ‘The nuclear plant is on the outskirts of the town itself. It’s being decommissioned: a lot of the technical staff have been transferred already. There are four silos, each holding an ICBM. And a warhead storage facility. There’s also about 250 kilos of cassium and plutonium 239, most of it weapons graded. That’s what they’ve told Lvov they want.’

‘Who’s “they”?’

‘He’s met four men, so far. He’s sure two, at least, come from Moscow.’

‘Names?’

Popov snorted a laugh. ‘Of course not.’

‘Not even talking among themselves?’

Popov shook his head. ‘The first approach was from just one man; Lvov thinks he’s local. There’ve been two further meetings since. That’s when the others turned up. Each time there’ve been threats about what will happen to his family if he doesn’t do what they want.’

‘What do they want?’

‘Guaranteed access. A plan of the facilities, with the storage complexes marked with what each contains. Code systems, to get into the complexes. Guard rosters and manpower strength. And complete details, including the electrical circuitry, of all the alarm systems.’

Natalia let out a deep sigh. ‘They don’t seem to have overlooked anything.’

‘They haven’t.’

‘Any positive date?’

Popov shook his head. ‘The one thing we haven’t got. And can’t do anything without. He’s stalled them so far by saying it’s difficult to get all they demand. They’ve given him two weeks, as of three days ago.’

‘How do they meet Lvov?’

‘He’s never warned. It’s one of the reasons he’s so frightened. They’re just there, unannounced. The first time was a Saturday. He was shopping and the man he thinks is local stopped him in the street. The second time he found people either side of him in the trolley car, going home from work. They made him get off to meet the other two in a park. The last occasion – that was three days ago – they arrived at his apartment when his wife was out, at the cinema with their daughters. They obviously watch him, choosing their moments. He says he feels like an animal, knowing it’s being hunted but not when it’s going to be shot.’

‘It sounds as if he is.’ Natalia looked down at the map, noticing a series of pencilled crosses between Kirov and Kirs. ‘What are these?’

‘Nonsense, for the benefit of curious hotel staff. I’m supposed to be a mining engineer, surveying possible mineral deposits.’ Popov didn’t smile at Natalia’s amused grimace. ‘It accounts for my staying here, for so long. And for driving around the countryside.’

Natalia was suddenly seized by a feeling of unreality going beyond that prompted by near-theatrical subterfuge and accounts of mystery men stalking a frightened nuclear security officer. She’d undergone the obligatory operational training during her long-ago KGB induction but never been called upon to use it. The major part of her previous career had been debriefing and interrogating potential defectors and sometimes recalled Russian field operatives whose psychological stability had become suspect. So all her experiences of practical danger and the fear it engendered had been second-hand, recounted and sometimes exaggerated by others. Now she was involved, living part of the subterfuge. She had secretly to meet men genuinely terrified of being murdered and hear and assess their story. And then to approve, in her name and under her authority, a way to defeat a robbery which, if it wasn’t prevented, could potentially end with the slaughter of hundreds. Or even thousands. The feeling was more than unreality. Natalia was frightened. And not solely, or even predominantly, at the risk of failure, disastrous though that would be. There was an unease at the fear of the unknown, of being physically hurt, even. Natalia positively stopped the mental drift. She was being ridiculous. She was in no physical danger, meeting Oskin or Lvov. Aleksai would be with her: Aleksai, a Militia colonel who’d worked the streets and conducted criminal investigations and had six commendations for bravery that he didn’t boast about, one of them involving a shoot-out in which a hostage-holding murderer had been killed. She smiled at him as he looked up from his map.

‘What is it?’ he frowned.

‘Nothing.’

He smiled back. ‘Yes,’ he said, wrongly guessing what she was thinking. ‘There is a lot of time before we have to meet Oskin. Hours. And it has been a long time for a hard-working mining engineer who’s missed his wife.’

Natalia held her smile but wished he hadn’t misunderstood. Of course she loved him and of course she wanted to go to bed with him and for him to make love to her because it was always so good because he was such a consummate lover and Natalia liked sex. But not now, not at this moment in these circumstances. She hadn’t understood enough; been told enough. It would have been better later, when she’d settled in after the flight from Moscow and asked all her questions and met Oskin. But she was meeting Oskin, she realized. He was Aleksai’s source and it was probably better if she heard everything herself from the regional Militia chief rather than entering the conversation with preconceived impressions from what Aleksai told her.

Aleksai was a consummate lover. Natalia couldn’t remember a time when he’d failed her and often, like now, there was surprise as well as excitement because lovemaking to Aleksai was a complete pleasure to which he gave himself completely, arousing her to total abandonment. He loved her with his mouth and she loved him the same way and when she tried to pull him into her he held back until she mewed with frustration and slapped at him, hard, and said she was coming but still he refused. When he did, finally, she exploded almost at once and he did as well but he didn’t stop and she came again and then clung to him, exhausted, panting ‘bastard’ over and over again into his ear, slapping him again, although not so hard, when he laughed back at her.

They slept as they lay and Natalia would have missed the meeting with Oskin entirely if Popov hadn’t awakened her. As it was, she had to hurry to bath and repair her love-bedraggled hair. In the reflection of the mirror when she was doing that she saw Popov check the clip of the Markarov and settle the gun comfortably in the rear waistband of his trousers. She thought the gun looked enormous and felt another flicker of fear.

Popov became aware of her attention and looked back at her, in the mirror. ‘It’s best. Just a precaution. Nothing’s going to happen.’

‘If you say so.’ Natalia was authorized to carry a weapon but had never done so and was glad her rank had for years now freed her going through the once-required range practice. She’d hated the noise and the weight of a pistol she could never hold properly or fire without squinting her eyes closed at the trigger pull, so that her score rate had always been appalling.

The restaurant was virtually in the shadow of the Uspenskii cathedral and their last three or four hundred metres were slowed by people making their way to the evening service. Natalia, who had followed her religion even under communism, hoped she would have time to go there before returning to Moscow.

Popov parked some way away, although there was space far closer, and further bewildered her by fully circling the square and even stopping to look into the window of a hunting equipment shop instead of going directly into the restaurant. Which was unexpectedly good, an ancient lopsided and crannied place with a main eating area dominated by a huge central fireplace open on both sides with the chimney mouth hung with hooks and grids to smoke the meat and fish.

They were late because of the straggled churchgoers and their meandering approach but Nikolai Oskin was not there. Their reservation was at a corner table furthest from the main door. Popov ordered a flask of vodka for himself and Georgian wine for Natalia and told the waiter they’d delay ordering because there was a possibility of their being joined by someone else.

‘Possibility?’ queried Natalia.

‘Oskin won’t come if he thinks we were under any sort of special attention.’

‘He was watching us?’

Popov nodded. ‘There’s a public kiosk near the hotel. If he doesn’t show up tonight he’ll phone there at eleven tomorrow.’

Natalia didn’t smile, like she had at the criss-crossed map to account for his being a mining engineer. For several moments she stared fixedly at the door, at people following them in. ‘Where was he?’

Popov shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’

‘How do we know he isn’t being watched? He’s far more likely to attract attention than us, isn’t he?’

‘We don’t. And yes he is. All this is for his benefit – and peace of mind – not ours.’

‘But if he doesn’t come it means…’

‘… Nothing. He and I have been very careful: had our meetings like this all the time. So I’m absolutely sure no one has linked us, in any way. If he imagines anyone outside that’s exactly what it will be, imagination…’ He smiled, sadly, at her seriousness. ‘We’ll laugh about it when it’s all over. But at the moment it’s got to be done his way. Their way.’

It was a further thirty minutes before Nikolai Oskin came into the restaurant. He remained unmoving just inside the door and Popov’s warning touch upon her arm enabled Natalia to study the man. He was extremely short and his fatness made him appear even smaller. Oskin’s approach, having located them, was a strut of quick, jerky steps. He wore civilian clothes, of course. The suit had no tailored crease but was bagged and shiny from wear and neglect. The shirt was reasonably clean but did not appear to have been ironed. Natalia tried to remember the man from his Moscow headquarters posting but couldn’t, although she knew from his personnel records, which she’d read before coming to Kirov, that he had served at Ulitza Zhitnaya until eighteen months earlier. He stood politely and virtually to attention during Popov’s introduction and appeared surprised when Natalia offered her hand. It was only when she did so that Natalia realized he was deferring to her with the respect befitting the absolute head of his department. He sat, at her invitation, and accepted the vodka Popov offered. They did not attempt any conversation until they had ordered. Natalia disinterestedly chose quail, without any appetite.

‘No trouble, then?’ opened Popov.

‘I don’t think so,’ said Oskin. Then, hurriedly, ‘No. None at all. I made sure.’

Natalia wondered if he normally spoke in such a high-pitched voice or whether it was another indication of nervousness. He wasn’t sweating now but as close as he was, Natalia could smell that he had been, very recently. And badly. She moved to speak, stopping just short of referring to her deputy as Aleksai. Instead she said, ‘Colonel Popov believes there is going to be a genuine robbery attempt?’

‘There’s no doubt,’ agreed Oskin, positively. The voice was still high.

‘The man whom Lvov thinks is local, to Kirov? Have you any idea who he is?’

Oskin shook his head. ‘There is one major gang here. Run by a man named Yatisyna, Lev Mikhailovich Yatisyna. If Lvov is right and there is a link with one of the big Moscow Families I think it would be through someone from the Yatisyna group. But it’s only my guess.’

‘Does Yatisyna have a record?’

There was another nod. ‘A lot of petty stuff, when he was young. Two more serious charges, of physical assault. Cleared on both occasions. Witnesses were intimidated against giving evidence.’

‘So there are photographs?’

The arrival of their food delayed Oskin’s answer. Natalia was conscious of Popov’s frown, at her question.

‘The photographs aren’t recent,’ said Oskin. ‘Eight, maybe nine years ago. That was the last time he was brought in.’

‘Still good enough,’ decided Natalia. ‘Let’s take them to Lvov tomorrow; photographs of everyone connected with Yatisyna, in fact. He might be able to identify someone.’ Natalia went through the pretence of eating, rearranging the food on her plate. It looked very good. She wished she was hungry. She was conscious of Oskin looking towards the door at each new arrival.

‘What are we going to do?’ demanded Oskin.

‘Stop it!’ said Popov. ‘What else?’

‘How?’

‘We don’t know yet,’ admitted Natalia.

‘With people from Moscow?’

‘Do you think that’s necessary?’

Oskin swallowed heavily, clearing a mouth he’d over-filled with pork and red cabbage. ‘Whatever you try to do will leak if you attempt it with local personnel.’

‘I could hand-pick a Moscow squad,’ Popov said, to Natalia. ‘It would guarantee security.’

‘When it’s all over I want Kirov cleared up! And cleared out!’ ordered Natalia, looking between the two men.

Oskin finished eating, neatly setting his knife and fork down but staying with his eyes on his half-finished plate. ‘I have a particular request. Something that’s very important.’ The voice was still high-pitched but practically at a whisper.

‘What?’ asked Popov.

‘I believe Lvov. That he and his family will probably be killed, either way. Coming to us… trying to get the people arrested… isn’t going to protect him enough. Just as there won’t be sufficient protection for me if I take part in whatever operation is mounted…‘

‘You mean you don’t want to take part?’ demanded Natalia.

For the first time Oskin smiled, a sad expression. ‘That wouldn’t protect me either. They know here I’m a Militia officer: know nothing could have been set up without my being involved. There’ll be retribution afterwards, whatever happens.’

Oskin had a wife and two sons, Natalia remembered, from the personnel file. ‘What then?’

‘A transfer back to Moscow. If I am not withdrawn I shall be killed. My family too. It wouldn’t just be the nuclear theft. I’d be blamed for the clean-up you’ve just ordered.’

Natalia was aware of the enquiring look from Popov. If Lvov were right and there was a Moscow Family as well as a local organized crime group involved then Oskin was hardly going to be any safer back in the capital. She let her mind run on, trying fully to assimilate what she was being told. Which was staggering – still difficult for her totally to believe – even if it were only half true. As it was equally impossible to believe that one provincial region and one provincial capital was unique in the corruption of its law and order mechanism. So there had to be others. Could the rot really be so bad? If it were – again, if it were only half true – the bad was inevitably going to overwhelm the good. Resulting in what? Chaos, she supposed: anarchic chaos. Too sweepingly catastrophic, she thought at once, refusing the despair. The situation – of which she still had no definite evidence, just the insistence of one very frightened and possibly paranoid man – in one town couldn’t be magnified by any over-active stretch of imagination into applying to a whole country, certainly not a whole country the size of Russia. Neither could, or should, the possibility of an enormous problem be overlooked. So what could she do? Hers was a specific division, in reality quite separate from the regular Militia and other law enforcement organizations, each of which had their own specific directors and chairmen ascending pyramid-fashion to the pinnacle upon which sat the Interior Minister himself. Did she have enough credible authority to emerge beyond her own department to make allegations other directors would inevitably infer to be criticism of their efficient control, organizational ability and honesty, both personal and professional? Natalia didn’t know the full answer. What she was sure about, without any doubt whatsoever, was that if she failed with this nuclear investigation, her own efficiency and organizational ability would be so destroyed she wouldn’t have any credibility left to achieve anything.

‘Well?’ finally prompted Popov, impatiently.

Natalia had been so immersed in her own reflections she momentarily had difficulty refocusing on what Oskin had asked. ‘You’ll be moved back to Moscow. You have my word.’

The tiny fat man straightened in his chair, as if relieved of a physical burden. ‘I am not a coward. Or a weak man.’

‘You’ve proved that already.’

‘It’s not easy to be honest in Russia. Much easier to be the other way.’

‘I know that.’

Popov stretched out a reassuring hand to Oskin’s shoulder. ‘You see! I told you it would be all right!’

Oskin kept his attention upon the door but did appear to relax, slightly. Natalia decided on the spot to move in a Moscow prevention squad hand-picked by Popov. To prevent any leakage of their movements, they would be helicoptered in at the last moment, although not to the airport. She and Popov would rely upon Oskin to designate somewhere close to the city or even nearer to Kirs itself, further to maintain the element of surprise. Trucks would be sent in advance, again from Moscow, for the final assault, with the helicopters kept on standby for any eventuality. Both men agreed Oskin could safely and without arousing suspicion get to Moscow for the final planning session by Natalia officially summoning him for reassignment talks, which was virtually the truth. Natalia agreed to the man’s family accompanying him then, to get them away from the area before the robbery attempt.

Natalia found herself instinctively employing her old debriefing techniques to take Oskin from the very beginning of Lvov’s disclosure, letting the man generalize as Popov had earlier generalized but then returning him to points of his story she wanted in more detail, hiding her disappointment at the final awareness that there was little more than what Popov had previously told her.

She didn’t have to hide it from Popov. He broke in as soon as Oskin began to repeat himself and Natalia reluctantly agreed they’d taken everything as far as they could, at that stage. The cautious Oskin left first with assurances to provide all the available photographs of the Yatisyna clan before their meeting the following day with Valeri Lvov. With Popov totally familiar with the city, it took the two men only minutes to fix a handover rendezvous.

Natalia accepted there was no reason for both of them to keep it. Popov said it would take him about an hour and Natalia decided to go to the cathedral, briefly shutting herself off from talk of murder and mass slaughter amid the incensed-calm of the baroque and filigreed church. She lit a candle for Sasha and then, upon second thoughts, added one from Popov and another for herself. She prayed for all their safety and for guidance in the immediate weeks to follow and still with time to spare sat half-listening to a black-bearded, black-robed prelate incanting the creed. She actually stayed longer than she should, reluctant to quit a sanctuary in which she felt cocooned and safe from the uncertainties outside.

Popov was already at the hotel when she got back, briefcase between his feet. He started up, the annoyance obvious. Before he could speak she said, ‘I’ve been to church. Prayed for us.’

Popov, whom she knew had no religion, said curtly, ‘We’re going to need more than prayers.’

‘How much stuff did Oskin have?’

‘Enough.’

Natalia accepted tension would be inevitable in all of them in the coming days. And just as inevitably probably get worse. ‘Let’s hope it is.’

The trip towards Kirs showed Natalia how thickly the region was forested. They seemed to drive, mostly in silence, constantly through canyons of tight-together trees. She supposed there were cleared areas in which helicopters could set down but driving along this road it was difficult to imagine where. It was, she recognized, superb ambush country. And then accepted the cover would be as good for those they were trying to trap as for themselves. Several times they were slowed practically to a walking pace by huge, flat-bed lorries piled high with chained-in-place cargoes of tree trunks. On four occasions Popov pointed out covered trucks marked with an insignia he identified as that of the nuclear plant, although there was no recognizable lettering: two vehicles in convoy were escorted by uniformed militia motorcyclists, headlights on to clear slower vehicles out of their way.

‘Does that happen a lot?’ asked Natalia.

‘I’ve never seen it before.’ Then, abruptly, Popov pointed to her left and said, ‘There!’

There was no immediate, positive break in the trees but then Natalia saw a slip road with a barriered control post some way back from the main highway. And beyond, just visible through the tree screen, four chimneys and what looked like a tower block, although they passed too quickly for her to be sure.

‘It doesn’t have a name, just a number,’ said Popov, formally. ‘Sixty nine.’

‘Where’s the town?’

‘Another four or five kilometres.’

Natalia guessed it was a further two, maybe a little less, before the treeline began to thin and finally straggle into a rolling plain. Almost at once Popov turned off to the right. The road was unmade and holed, jarring Natalia in her seat. It got worse when the hardcore trailed away into a dirt track, snarled with exposed roots and deeper holes. Very quickly the terrain became moonscape, undulating hills and low valleys with little ground covering until they came to a bowl-like core, an enormous open area sloping down for what must have been almost two kilometres to a lake at its bottom. Here there were a few stunted trees and when they got close to the water’s edge Natalia saw a small jetty protruding into the lake from an old and lopsided hut. Popov carefully took their car around to the rear of the ramshackle building and parked as close as he could to it on the side furthest from the lake. Here the trees were substantially although oddly thicker, the last hair on a bald head.

As Natalia got out she physically shivered at the cold desolation. ‘What happened here?’

‘An accident a very long time ago, just after the Great Patriotic War,’ said Popov. ‘This was where 69 was originally sited. They had to move it.’

‘Is it safe?’

‘Lvov says so. They’ve carried out tests. People eat the fish from the lake, fishermen built this hut.’

‘This is where we meet him?’

‘His choice, like Oskin’s last night. Anyone following would be visible for a very long way.’

Natalia shivered again, acknowledging the security. ‘This is all so…’

‘… Ridiculous?’ suggested Popov, when she trailed to a halt.

‘I wasn’t going to say that. I’m not sure what I was going to say.’ She started at a sound from inside the hut, jerking around to Popov.

‘He had to be here first, to see it’s safe,’ said the man, gripping her arm for reassurance. ‘If it hadn’t been he would have left, through the trees back there.’

The hut was dark, a square box without any furniture apart from benches along two walls and closed cupboards along a third, and actually smelled sourly of fish. There were other smells, too: the rot and decay of dampness. There was a rod and a small bag along one of the benches, which Natalia assumed belonged to the man waiting for them.

Valeri Lvov was thick-set but not fat and his hair was turning from grey into complete white. The shirt was stained and sweat-ringed under the arms and the boots into which the rough work trousers were tucked looked uniform issue. He stood half to attention, like Oskin had the previous night, but with his hands cupped before him, holding the cap he’d taken off as a further mark of respect. He appeared as surprised as Oskin that Natalia offered her hand, responding hesitantly. Lvov’s hand was wet and greasy. There was a nervous tic jerking near his left eye and his lower lip pulled constantly between his teeth.

Natalia didn’t want to sit – she didn’t want to be in the stinking hut – but did so in the hope of relaxing the man. He remained standing until she suggested he sit, too. He did so quite deliberately on the bench opposite and Natalia realized that from where he had chosen Lvov could see the track along which anyone had to approach through a split in one of the badly placed planks.

It was much more difficult than it had been with Oskin to urge the man through his story. He contradicted himself on the date of the first approach and on the day he was taken off the trolley car by the two strangers he was sure came from Moscow. When Natalia asked why, in contrast, he could remember their list of demands, Lvov said it had been written down: they had told him to memorize it. He didn’t have the list any more because they’d ordered him to destroy it. That had been before he was able to tell Oskin and felt he had to do everything they told him, to keep his family safe.

‘I know it was wrong. Stupid. I’m sorry.’

‘It’s done now,’ accepted Natalia. Judging it fitted this part of Lvov’s account, she took him through the Yatisyna Family Militia photographs. Lvov didn’t hurry, holding several prints up to the better light from the single, unglassed window.

‘No,’ he said, finally, offering the package back to her.

‘None at all?’ pressed Popov.

‘I’m sorry.’

‘That’s all right,’ soothed Natalia, the expert debriefer. ‘We only want what you’re sure of. Don’t tell us anything you think we want to hear that isn’t true. Or exaggerated.’

‘I’m sure they’re going to kill me! Harm my family!’ Lvov burst out, answering her literally.

Natalia remained silent for several moments, reaching a decision. ‘You were in the Militia, once?’

‘At the Kirov headquarters,’ confirmed Lvov. ‘That’s how I met Major Oskin. He arrived a month before I left. I’d already resigned.’

‘Why did you resign?’

‘I wouldn’t become part of the system. Become crooked. So they made it hell for me. No one talked with me, accepted me. I had to eat alone, in the canteen. Got all the worst shifts, all the time. They put shit in my locker, sometimes into my boots. There were phone calls to my wife at one or two in the morning with no one at the other end when I was working nights. Other times they were obscene: men saying they were coming around to screw my daughters while she had to watch

…’

Positively, Natalia announced, ‘I promise you that neither you nor your family will be harmed, for what you have done. And are doing, to help us. I will take you back into the Militia. Not here. In Moscow. I’ll transfer you and your family away from here, to where you’ll be safe.’ I hope, she thought. She was aware of Popov’s look of surprise but didn’t respond.

Like Oskin the previous night, there was almost a visible lift of pressure from the man. ‘Thank you! Thank you so much!’

Natalia coaxed Lvov on details, establishing there were two service roads into the complex other than the one she had already seen, also guarded by control posts operating road barriers. The plant was entirely circled by an electrified fence, which at night was permanently lit. The guard contingent had consisted of fifty men but that was being scaled down like everything else in the decommissioning.

Natalia picked on the word, risking the deflection. ‘On our way here today we passed some lorries, going in the opposite direction. There was a small convoy with motorcycle outriders?’

Lvov nodded. That’s part of it. A lot of stuff is being moved from Kirov, by special trains. Mostly to one of the closed-city sites around Gorkiy. It’s going to go on for several months.’

‘ Had!’ declared Natalia, realizing the mistake of going off at a tangent.

Both men frowned at her, bewildered.

‘Had,’ she repeated, to Lvov. ‘You said the guard contingent had consisted of fifty men. But that it was being scaled down?’

‘Yes,’ agreed Lvov, doubtfully.

‘So what is it now?’

‘Fifteen. I’m the lieutenant in charge.’

‘So how properly can you fill your rosters? Police everything?’

‘We can’t,’ admitted Lvov, in a puzzled voice as if he thought Natalia already knew that.

Beside her Popov stirred and Natalia guessed the information was new to him. ‘So what do you do?’

‘We don’t man the perimeter guard towers at night any more. Or mount the perimeter patrols we used to…’ Defensively, Lvov hurried on, ‘The bunker security… the entry combinations and the codes… are very good. They’re changed, daily. That’s enough, really.’

‘What about the guard posts on the entry roads?’ prompted Natalia.

‘That’s where I assign the officers I’m left with: the most obvious places.’

‘Day and night?’ she challenged, expectantly.

‘When I can. I’ve sometimes got to come down to one man.’

Natalia felt the satisfaction warm through her. She looked sideways at Popov, surprised he didn’t answer her smile. ‘They want the codes and security strengths from you?’

Lvov frowned towards Popov, then back to Natalia. ‘I told you that! I told Colonel Popov, too!’

‘Not in the way we understood it,’ said Natalia, sympathetically.

‘So because you’ve got to set them, you know in advance the main and subsidiary gate entry codes?’

‘Yes.’

‘How many days in advance?’

‘Two.’

‘And you allocate, days in advance, the number of guards there’ll be on the approach roads?’

‘Yes. They’ve said they want one road unmanned. Some are, sometimes.’

There was a more positive movement from Popov. ‘You never told me this!’

‘I told you they wanted rosters and codes!’ insisted Lvov, nervously.

‘It doesn’t matter now,’ said Natalia, as if she were reassuring Lvov but in fact wanting to cut off any criticism from Popov. Because it didn’t matter. They had it! She’d found how they’d know, ahead of the attempt, when the robbery was to take place. It would be the day of a special code number – which they would know Lvov had supplied – through a gate Lvov had to ensure would be unmanned. So their ambush was guaranteed.

‘I suppose not,’ agreed Popov, reluctantly.

‘You’ve done very well,’ Natalia told Lvov. ‘Very well indeed.’

‘You will protect me? And my family?’ pleaded the man.

‘You have my word,’ promised Natalia.

There was a final meeting the following day with Nikolai Oskin to reinforce the need for closer than usual contact with Lvov and because she felt it necessary, Natalia repeated her safety assurances to the man. That night she and Popov ate alone but at the restaurant close to the cathedral. She chose quail again and ate it this time and agreed to the second bottle of wine, flushed with her success.

’I didn’t expect you to bring Lvov to Moscow as well as taking him back into the service,’ said Popov.

‘We couldn’t have stopped this without him. And don’t we need to recruit honest men?’

‘And we can stop it now, can’t we?’ smiled Popov. ‘Nothing can go wrong.’

‘Definitely.’ If she hadn’t personally questioned Lvov they might not have found the way, thought Natalia, allowing herself the conceit. She quickly cast it aside. ‘I’m glad you didn’t need the gun.’

Popov didn’t take the remark with the lightness she’d intended. ‘We might have done.’

There would be shooting, Natalia knew: people would be killed, wounded. ‘I want everything planned very carefully.’

‘What about the Englishman?’ asked Popov, suddenly. ‘He suggested participation, at the end of an investigation. For the American, as well.’

For the first time in days Charlie Muffin came into Natalia’s mind. She was pleased the consideration was entirely professional. ‘We are going to stop it,’ she said, reflectively. ‘It would be right to get the maximum benefit, not just here but abroad as well.’ Reminded, she said, ‘There’ve been several attempts to reach you, from both of them. The American’s message was that it was important.’

‘If it was it’s been delayed,’ said Popov, critically.

She should have mentioned it earlier, Natalia conceded, although only to herself. ‘Nothing’s more important than this.’

‘What about them?’ said Popov, finally allowing his own satisfaction to surface. ‘Do we include them? Prove how efficient we are, after all?’

‘I’m not sure,’ said Natalia. ‘I think perhaps we do.’

The anticipated howl of protest at the size of Charlie’s expenses came from Gerald Williams, culminating with the financial director’s unequivocal refusal to reimburse them, under any circumstances. Savouring the fact that he was arguing from an unshakeable base, Charlie launched the sort of missile he was in Moscow to prevent being manufactured. In one single protest memorandum he invoked the amended Wages Act of 1986, the Trade Union Reform and Employment Rights Act of 1993, the Employment Protection (Consolidation) Act of 1978 and the Employment Protection Regulations of 1995, which between them made Williams’ threat technically illegal. At the same time he appealed directly to Rupert Dean, who accepted Charlie’s suggestion that Thomas Bowyer accompany him to the nightclubs for which he claimed and independently establish their cost. Bowyer covered it well but Charlie was sure the man was shellshocked at the cost by the end of the evening. There was no acknowledgment or apology from Williams, merely the authorization to Peter Potter in the embassy’s financial office to settle the claims in full.

The argument provided the brief relief to what settled into a mundane round of routine contact with the American, German and Italian embassies and unsuccessful attempts, still with the Ukraine excuse, to contact Aleksai Popov. The only really positive development was Simpson’s confirmation from London of the embassy’s legal assessment that there was no proper, comprehensive Russian law to enable organized crime groups effectively to be targeted: under communism, the myth had always been that crime did not exist.

With so much time on his hands Charlie allowed the nostalgia of revisiting what had been some of their favourite places when he’d lived in Moscow with Natalia. With the advantage of foreign currency he shopped for food at the free enterprise market on Prospekt Vemadskovo and several times came close to going into the nearby State circus, remembering how much she’d enjoyed a birthday outing there. He subjected his feet to the botanical gardens on Glavnyy Botanichestiy Sad that they’d gone to several times and bench-hopped around the park on Sokol’niki. He had, of course, kept the find-me photograph and studied so hard and so frequently not the baby but the background he’d believed to be her suggested rendezvous that he ended unsure if it was, after all, the spot near the Gagarin memorial on Leninskaya.

Charlie intensely disliked the Lesnaya apartment for which he had fought so hard, feeling like the only bone-clattering ghost in a mausoleum large enough to be the waiting room into the Hereafter. Ironically, its only benefit was the enormous television he ordered from the embassy commissary and upon which he avidly watched the Russian language educational slots, gradually extending his viewing to the more general programmes to tone up his Russian. Apart from which he used Lesnaya like he had the box in Vauxhall, somewhere in which to sleep and shelter from the rain, which was actually becoming more frequent with the approach of autumn.

Otherwise he got out and stayed out as much as possible. Part of the routine was to go early to Morisa Toreza, before most of the embassy staff: in the very beginning he’d tried reversing the tables to get into the inner rezidentura to spy upon Bowyer as Bowyer was spying upon him, but it didn’t work because none of the keys he had been given opened the necessary drawers. He ignored Nigel Saxon as much as possible, who ignored him in return.

It still meant he was entombed far more than he wanted to be in his catafalque office, wishing there was the diversion of crapping pigeons at which he could fire paper clips. He was actually fashioning the prototype of such a weapon when the telephone rang. He recognized at once the voice of the anonymous woman in Popov’s secretariat.

‘The colonel would like a conference on Thursday, at noon,’ she announced. ‘It’s important.’

Charlie had to wait to be connected to James Kestler. When he was, the American said, ‘That’s why you had to hold; she must have called me immediately after you.’

Stanislav Silin supposed they would be using the Ulitza Razina apartment regularly when other robberies were planned after this first one. So he’d have to do something about furnishings and decoration: it offended him to be in surroundings like this. Marina could help. She’d enjoy doing that, like she’d enjoyed working with the interior designers who’d turned the two mansions into far better palaces than they’d been when they were first built. And it would be safe, remain their secret, if Marina was the only other person to know. Although he’d defeated Sobelov’s challenge it had still unsettled him. More even: frightened him. The conduit to unlimited nuclear materials and even more unlimited money was his absolute protection. So his knowledge had to remain a total secret and this apartment, where the conduit was to operate, an essential secret with it.

The two arrived on time and together again and on this occasion accepted the offered drink, both choosing genuine imported Scotch whisky, and the one who always did the talking said, obviously rehearsed, ‘We can afford to become accustomed to what we can really afford.’

Taking his cue, Silin slid their respective bank deposit documents to each man. Neither spoke for several moments, clearly overwhelmed by the size of their fortune.

‘Just the beginning,’ reminded Silin.

‘Just the beginning,’ echoed the spokesman. ‘You’ve already got buyers?’

‘Of course.’

‘Who?’

There was protection in their not knowing, decided the newly cautious Silin: he himself only knew the nationalities, never the names. He only knew the Iraqi middleman as The Turk. ‘Does it matter?’

‘Not in the slightest,’ said the second man. Tapping the bank documents he said, ‘This is all that matters.’

‘How soon should we meet, after the robbery?’ asked the first man.

‘How about a month?’ suggested the Mafia head.

‘There’ll be the rest of the money then?’ asked the greedy man.

‘With a deposit slip to prove it,’ assured Silin. ‘Will that be too soon to discuss another robbery?’

‘I don’t see why it should,’ smiled the man.