Bomb Grade

chapter 18

C harlie knew their expulsion was only minutes away: the taller of the two known ministry men actually started to move towards them. Charlie was later to decide Fred Astaire never danced a quicker quickstep than the fast-footed verbal performance he staged that night.

‘Use us! Don’t exclude us!’ A chameleon adapter to the concealment of crowds, Charlie abruptly found himself in the unaccustomed and uncomfortable position of addressing one, not hiding in it. The room was still hushed, people unmoving; even the ministry man stopped, uncertainly. Natalia remained gazing at him.

‘You can’t exclude us!’ challenged Charlie. ‘From this room and this ministry, of course you can. But we know! And we are going to have to act upon what we know, although it isn’t sufficient to advise Washington or London properly. If something’s gone – however it’s gone – then it’s going into the West. Where, with proper cooperation, it still might be possible to stop it. For something to be done! But not with each of us working separately, no one knowing what the other is doing. The only outcome of that will be chaos…’ He still had them! Maybe only just, but there was still complete silence and no one was moving and they were listening to what he was saying. ‘If anything like this quantity of nuclear material has gone, then recovering it or stopping it supersedes any national pride. It’s a simple choice: responsibility or irresponsibility…’

For several moments there was a complete hiatus, everyone suspended in a time warp of indecision, a lot of other-way looking for the escape – for anything – of higher authority. Charlie’s concentration was upon the official he knew and who had started out towards them. The man moved again, finally, but not in their direction but to a crinkle-haired, thick-set man whose slightly bloated bull-necked appearance Charlie had earlier registered for the embassy photograph comparison. The man made a dismissive hand gesture and people moved away to create a confidential cordon for the two to talk.

It was a very brief exchange, with a lot of head movement, the thick-set man for emphasis, the ministry official of acceptance. It was impossible to anticipate anything from the blank-faced approach of the official. ‘You are to wait.’ Behind him the room was emptying back into Popov’s office, very obviously now at the command of the thick-set figure of authority.

Charlie waited until the door closed firmly upon them – but with an attendant standing guard against it on their side – before going to the bar. He downed two vodkas one after the other, each in a single gulp, and emptied half the third before pausing. It wasn’t the booze that made him breathless.

‘Charlie!’ said Kestler, in slow-voiced admiration. ‘I don’t care what the outcome is, that was fucking marvellous!’

‘If we don’t get some sort of entry it was a waste of time.’ Two hundred and fifty kilos, he thought; fifty Nagasaki bombs, 2,000,000 dead, millions more maimed.

‘They haven’t thrown us out,’ reminded the American.

‘Yet.’

‘What the fuck can have happened?’

The younger man was picking up Lyneham’s conversational style, thought Charlie. Or maybe his. He shook his head, in matching bewilderment. ‘We heard Popov say everything was secured; that nothing had been taken! We got a body count! Everything!’

‘You think they’ll try to swing whatever went wrong on to us, after what was said at the planning meeting?’ asked the conscience-pricked Kestler.

Charlie took another drink, shrugging. ‘Nothing practical to be gained speculating down that road, until we know what did go wrong.’

Kestler teetered on the edge of admitting to Charlie what the FBI Director had ordered him to do. ‘If this much has gone, the search for scapegoats will be awesome.’

‘Let’s wait and see what’s happened,’ urged Charlie, again. There would be a scapegoat hunt: it was part of the algebraic formula after every cock-up, as enshrined as Archimedes’ Principle and the Theory of Relativity. Much more relative, in fact, than anything Einstein ever had in mind. How exposed would Natalia be? He had no way of knowing or even guessing, but she headed the specific department trying to defeat the business and at the moment it looked like that business had just got away with the biggest nuclear heist in history. But she had another friend to go to: someone far more closely involved and able to help than he was. He looked to the American. ‘Let’s hope to Christ your satellite picked up something useful.’

Kestler flushed slightly, at having forgotten the one practical thing they had been able to do. ‘You think I should offer it?’ he deferred.

‘No!’ said Charlie, at once. ‘A robbery from Kirs, after the preparation and force that went into stopping it, would have had to be brilliantly planned. So our chances of picking up any sort of trail in the West isn’t good…’ Charlie hesitated, jerking his head towards the guarded door. ‘We’ve got to hope that in their panic they don’t realize that. But if they do cooperate, anything your satellite picks up is our ace-in-the-hole to keep us in the game.’

‘So we sit on it whatever they decide tonight?’

‘Sit on it very tightly,’ confirmed Charlie. ‘If we are thrown out, it’ll be all we’ve got.’

‘I’ll…’ started Kestler and then stopped as the linking door opened.

They couldn’t see who relayed the message but the inner attendant called, ‘You are asked to go in.’

The room had been virtually cleared. Only six people remained, the two known officials, the man to whom everyone deferred, Natalia and the two radio operators still at their light- and needle-flickering equipment. The official group were assembled around Popov’s pushed-aside desk and the thick-set man occupied Popov’s chair. The man said at once, ‘I am Viktor Sergeevich Viskov, deputy Interior Minister…’ A sideways gesture. ‘General Fedova you already know. Mikhail Grigorevich Vasilyev…’ The taller of the two officials straightened slightly. ‘… is my executive assistant. Yuri Petrovich Pan in represents the Foreign Ministry…’

Names for the first time, freely offered: it looked promising, quickly assessed Charlie. And they’d been asked to go in.

There was another gesture. ‘Sit down.’ Natalia and Panin were already seated; Vasilyev remained standing in the presence of his superior.

‘Plant 69 was not the only target,’ announced Viskov. ‘There was also the train.’

‘What train?’ demanded Charlie. It was a risk, interrupting the man, but a greater one would be obediently to accept prepared information and not question what was being kept from them.

The minister looked to Natalia. She said, ‘Plant 69 is being decommissioned. You were told that. Material was being moved to other installations. By train.’

Holy shit! thought Charlie. Why should anyone go to the trouble of breaking in to an installation when stuff was being moved out of them! But a gang had broken in. ‘Tonight’s attempted robbery, actually at the plant? That was a genuine attempt?’

‘Unquestionably,’ confirmed Viskov. ‘All those arrested inside the depot are known Kirov criminals. You heard Lev Yatisyna himself was seized. He heads the main Mafia group in the city: he was leading the group at Kirs.’

Charlie’s feet began to throb. ‘Are you suggesting that tonight – on the same night – there were two quite separate robberies from the same installation? One in fact acting as the unintended or unwitting decoy for the other!’

Viskov sighed. ‘That could be one conclusion.’

The leader of a criminal group wouldn’t set himself up as an intentional decoy. How had one been used to the benefit of the other then? A defector in the Yatisyna clan going across to another, Charlie guessed.

‘The train was in Kirov?’ queried Kestler, entering the discussion.

‘No,’ said Natalia. ‘It left at nine tonight, when the lines could be closed in advance to general traffic with the minimum of inconvenience. Because of what the cargo is, great care is taken in its transportation: it travels very slowly. The interception was at Pizhma.’

‘It left precisely at nine?’ demanded Kestler.

Well done, Charlie mentally applauded: they’d need as much detail as possible accurately to access whatever the satellite might have picked up.

‘Why is the precise timing important?’ queried Viskov.

‘Every known fact is important,’ insisted the American and Charlie thought, you’re learning, my son; you’re learning.

Natalia crossed to the radio operators, picking up a clipboard. Reading from it, she said, ‘Nine-ten is the exact time given.’

Before Natalia could return to her seat, Kestler said, ‘What time was it stopped at Pizham?’

‘Twelve thirty-five. As I said, it moves extremely slowly, because of the great care necessary.’

After what had happened, how the hell could Natalia talk about great care being taken in its transportation! Charlie thought she looked very strained, grey-faced, concentrating upon every word and gesture from the deputy minister. ‘How was it intercepted?’

Natalia waited, for Viskov’s permissive nod. ‘Signals set at stop. Men in rail service overalls on the track, warning of a derailment.’

‘Weren’t the freight cars sealed? Guarded?’ asked Kestler.

‘The guard commander and several of his men came out, to see what the hold-up was,’ said Natalia, dulled by the recitation of disaster. ‘lt seems the doors were left open: a blatant security breach. They were simply shot down, six of them. Two more were killed inside the cars themselves; three others are likely to die, from their injuries. The two signal box operators were found shot dead.’

‘There is need for concerted and quick Western help,’ conceded Viskov, anxious to hurry the meeting on.

Not so fast, thought Charlie. ‘The men seized at Kirs? Where are they being questioned?’

‘There, initially,’ said Natalia, returning to her seat. ‘All will be flown here to Moscow, during the course of the day. The main interrogation will take place here.’ The curiosity with which she looked at Charlie barely covered her inner anxiety, for some sort of guidance. All she had been able to do so far was accept the criticism, direct or implied.

It didn’t conceal it at all from Charlie, who knew her so well. Quite brutally he decided he wouldn’t make his point now: he needed readmission, solely for the job, nothing at all to do with how he wanted to see Natalia again. So she had to infer he had something to offer, something they couldn’t afford to dismiss. If Natalia had to suffer for him to achieve that, then that was the way it had to be. ‘Will transcripts be made available?’

Viskov sighed again, at what he saw as hard bargaining. ‘There could be consultation,’ he offered, limiting the concession.

‘From both sides,’ accepted Charlie.

‘Have you a point to make?’ probed Viskov.

‘Not until I know more,’ lured Charlie, ambiguously. The man was practically on the hook, about to bite!

‘Use us, you said,’ reminded the deputy minister, hopefully.

Because I couldn’t think of anything else to say, thought Charlie. Aloud, exaggerating hugely, he said, ‘I will be fully briefed on London’s input by this afternoon.’

‘So will I,’ promised the American, following Charlie’s example.

‘We’ll be waiting,’ said Viskov. Heavily, he added, ‘And expecting no public announcements, of anything.’

There was already movement on the streets of Moscow when Charlie and Kestler left the ministry. Kestler said, ‘You sure we’ll have anything to offer, as soon as this afternoon? It’s going to take for ever just getting this report together!’

‘Fuck the report!’ said Charlie, urgently. ‘Telephone your Watch Room: whoever or whatever can make things move as fast as possible. We need everything there is from that satellite.’ Sometimes, he conceded, there were advantages after all from working as a team. Particularly when the other player had access to things he didn’t have.

Everyone had remained awake throughout the night at the Ulitza Kuybysheva penthouse, too. With forced humility it was Silin who poured the celebration drinks from the table with the city view and who took Sobelov’s telephone call and who proposed the toast after which he stayed silent for the repeated congratulations which each of the remaining five Commission members were anxious to offer individually.

He’d make them all watch when he put Sobelov to death, Silin decided. Let them see what happened to anyone who believed they could overthrow him. Maybe, even, insist on each of them inflicting some torture upon Sobelov themselves to prove their loyalty.