Bomb Grade

chapter 21

T he doorstep greeting wasn’t as awkward as the first time but Charlie thought it was close. He halted again at the inner door, for Natalia to precede him to where he expected Sasha to be.

‘She’s being looked after. In case something urgent comes up,’ explained Natalia, without being asked.

There was a moment of uncertainty. ‘I’m glad you agreed. It’s right.’

‘I know.’ She hoped he believed her about Sasha and didn’t think she’d done something ridiculous like hiding the child away. Or be offended by what she had half decided to suggest.

‘Last time didn’t work out very well, did it?’ She’d changed again, into a one-piece trousered outfit not unlike that which Popov and the spetznaz officers had worn, although Natalia’s was made of a silky blue material. He wasn’t sure if she’d tried with make-up but if she had she’d failed: her eyes were hollowed and dark ringed and her face was pinched.

‘That’s hardly surprising, in the circumstances.’ She waved him to a chair. He didn’t choose the one by the door this time. ‘I’ve got some Scotch. It isn’t Islay.’

He smiled, briefly. ‘A long memory!’

‘About a lot of things. But just memories, Charlie.’

‘You already told me,’ he acknowledged, disappointed she’d felt the need to reiterate the rejection. ‘And Scotch would be fine.’

He studied the room in her absence, caught again by the complete absence of anyone’s occupation but her own, although she’d stressed Popov didn’t live with her. At once Charlie extended the scrutiny. Sasha did live with her but there wasn’t any trace of the child, either. Natalia had always been obsessively neat, chiding him for his untidiness. Memories, like Natalia had reminded; out-of-place memories. She carried wine back for herself. When she handed Charlie his glass she said, ‘The toast used to be “Death to the enemy.”’

‘It still is. They’re just more difficult to find these days.’

Natalia settled herself on the couch where she’d sat with Sasha, leaning back as if she needed the support of the cushions. The whisky was smooth enough and Charlie began to relax, too. His initial doorway impression had been wrong. Tonight things were much easier. So far, at least.

‘Well?’ Now that he was here – now that she had reversed all the resolutions – Natalia felt too tired to force things as they probably should have been forced. She wasn’t sure any more that she would go through with it. She’d let him lead, maybe make up her mind as things went along.

‘I want to make a lot of things clear,’ began Charlie. ‘I promise you I won’t do anything to cause you any embarrassment. Or difficulty. You. Or Sasha.’ Charlie paused, momentarily unable to say what he felt he had to. ‘She’ll be Popov’s daughter, if that’s what you want…’

Natalia wasn’t sure – not committed-for-the-rest-of-her-life sure – that’s what she did want. Not that Charlie’s reappearance affected any uncertainty. She was sure that was over. She knew she needed Charlie professionally and it was easy sitting here with him now and it would even have been pleasant imagining times like it in future. But what there had once been with Charlie could never be again. ‘You really mean that?… that you’d let Sasha think of someone else as her father?’

Charlie supposed that’s what he did mean but it didn’t sound right put as direct as that. ‘Popov’s more to her than I am. Isn’t that best for her?’ He wasn’t accustomed to selfless decision and didn’t like this one.

‘Yes, but…’

‘And let’s get something else clear. I didn’t set out to force a confrontation between him and me this afternoon. There was nothing personal.’ Charlie meant it, although it was the truth according to Charlie’s rules. Popov had been shown up to be all the things Charlie had mentally labelled him and Charlie had felt then and felt now a satisfaction at having done it in front of Natalia.

Natalia pushed the fatigue away, making her decision, moving aside the wine that wasn’t helping the tiredness. ‘I know. It was unnecessary: achieved nothing. I don’t know why he did, not like that.’

‘It could have been personally difficult for you.’ He never expected the reaction the remark achieved.

Natalia came abruptly forward, elbows on her knees. ‘I took a huge chance with you once, Charlie. More than once. Risked everything…’

‘… I’ve said…’

‘… I’m not opening old wounds,’ overrode Natalia, refusing his interruption in her anxiety to get out what she wanted to say. ‘You must be totally honest with me!’

‘I will be,’ promised Charlie, hoping she believed him.

She hesitated, knowing she couldn’t extract any assurance beyond that. ‘What are you here for? Here in Moscow?’

Charlie looked blankly at her. ‘You know what I’m doing here!’

‘Do I?’

Charlie understood. ‘It’s all changed, Natalia. Like it’s changed here. We’re becoming like an FBI now. I’m here because of nuclear smuggling. That’s all. I promise.’

She remained silent for several minutes, seeking the courage to say the words. ‘I’m going to take another chance. The risk isn’t as great, not like before. I know I need help, your help, Charlie, if I’m to stay where I am. Which I have to do, for Sasha…’ It wasn’t coming out as she wanted. ‘You saw what it was like this afternoon. The resentment. And not just Aleksai. All of them. But they won’t be held responsible for failure…’

‘Stop it…’ Charlie halted just short of calling her darling. ‘Stop it, Natalia. You don’t need to explain. You know you’ll have everything… anything… you want.’ It was instinctive for Charlie to think that to fulfil that undertaking he’d have to get everything from Natalia in return but he didn’t feel embarrassed about it. Professionally, it put him in a spectacular position.

‘I’m trusting you again.’

‘I know that.’ He caught the sad resignation in her voice.

‘Every time I’ve done it before you’ve let me down.’

‘I won’t this time.’

‘You’ve got to mean that, Charlie.’

‘All I can tell you is that I do mean it and all I can do is ask you to believe me.’

‘It isn’t that simple…’ Natalia began.

‘Yes it is,’ anticipated Charlie. ‘Aleksai will never know. No one will ever know.’

‘Now it’s me being utterly selfish, thinking only of myself. Myself and Sasha.’

‘It’s your turn.’ Where the hell was he now? Professionally on the inside track, ahead of everyone. But personally it would need Machiavelli with a slide rule and compasses to work it out. He was going to do all he could to keep in power the mother of his child whom he’d just agreed to surrender to her new lover who couldn’t be allowed to find out what was going on. It was almost too much for a soap opera novel. ‘Have you really thought it through?’

‘No,’ Natalia admitted, honestly. ‘Neither have you.’

‘I don’t have to.’

‘I know it won’t be easy!’ she accepted, abruptly belligerent. ‘Give me just one other choice!’

If he’d been able, Charlie wouldn’t have told her. He wasn’t offended by the obvious inference that if there had been another choice she would have taken it. ‘How strong is the resentment?’

‘Total, in most cases. Strong in others.’

‘So we could be excluded if our usefulness dries up?’

‘Of course,’ agreed Natalia. ‘You always knew that, surely?’

‘It wouldn’t be wise for you to protest.’

‘And I won’t, unless I’m sure of the grounds for doing so.’

Had he not known and now trusted Natalia so completely, Charlie would have suspected this extraordinary episode to be a brilliant con trick for the Russians to close them out but at the same time learn everything being fed in from the West. ‘Don’t, even if you think you are sure.’

Natalia hadn’t thought through the complications of what she was asking. She shook her head in another abrupt mood change, this time despair. ‘It won’t work, will it? If you and Kestler are kept out, how can I introduce something I’ve no way of knowing!’

She was too tired to think properly: if she hadn’t been, perhaps she wouldn’t have sought his help in the first place. ‘We’ll make the approach in such a way they’ll have to meet with us. It won’t be down to Popov alone now, will it?’

‘Probably not,’ said Natalia, uncertainly. She brightened. ‘I’m the official link between the operational group and the ministry and presidential secretariat.’

A mixed blessing for her, incredible for him! As the idea came to him, Charlie said, ‘But you must openly campaign for our inclusion, when I tell you.’

Natalia’s exhausted reasoning was ebbing and flowing, each and every thought difficult to hold. There was an overwhelming relief, at there being someone upon whom she could rely. Trust and rely. The contradiction snatched at her. How could she feel relief and trust and reliance for someone who had so consistently let her down? She just did. Natalia didn’t want to think or consider beyond that simple decision. ‘How?’

‘All you have to do is judge the moment. Which you will always be able to do, from what I tell you in advance. And from knowing who’s going to be at your meetings. Always wait until Badim or Fomin or someone in higher authority is involved. At those sessions press as hard as you can for our inclusion. Your judgment, to those in authority, will be proven right, every time, because you’ll know in advance everything we’ve got. And the opposition and resentment of those arguing against you will be proven wrong, every time. When there aren’t people in higher authority, don’t push. Wait.’

Natalia’s relief became a blanket, the sort of blanket she wanted now to pull up over her and sleep. She stood, unsteadily, needing physical movement to keep herself awake. From the window she could just see the Gagarin monument where they’d both so hopefully waited, forever separated now by a nonsense of religious history. ‘ How will you be able to tell me? You can’t call the ministry. And here…’

‘… Popov will too often be,’ Charlie completed for her. ‘I don’t keep in touch with you. You keep in touch with me.’

Natalia turned from the tower block view, with another pendulum swing. ‘It could work, couldn’t it?’

‘It will work,’ guaranteed Charlie. Because he’d make it work; work better and more successfully than any scheme he’d ever orchestrated before. He’d fantasized of coming back to Moscow to care for her and for a child he didn’t know. Now he was going to. Not in the way he’d imagined – what they were devising was beyond any imagination – but sufficient. Whatever followed – whatever could be built on – was a bonus. Natalia looked obviously at her watch and Charlie hurriedly said, ‘So let’s start now.’

It was a superhuman effort to focus her concentration. ‘How?’

‘The leak at Pizhma was intentional,’ he disclosed. His mind more than ever upon cooperation, Charlie found it interesting that he’d been told direct by Kestler of what the expertly analyzed photographs showed just fifteen minutes before Rupert Dean’s call, relaying the same information Washington had made available to London. And which – but with Dean’s permission – he’d relayed to the ambassador.

The shock was sufficient to rouse her. ‘What?’

It took only seconds for Charlie to outline the unarguable discovery from the enhanced image intensified satellite photographs. Desperately Natalia said, ‘I don’t understand! Why?’

‘I don’t understand or know why, either. Not yet.’

‘I won’t have to argue your participation yet: we’d obviously have to meet to discuss the photographs.’

Tell me something!’ he demanded. ‘Kirov was planned as a military operation. And military operations have code names?’

‘ Akrashena,’ she supplied at once.

‘Does it have a meaning?’ queried Charlie, not recognizing the word.

Natalia smiled, bemused. ‘It means “wet paint”. Aleksai thought it fitted. Remember “ mokrie dela ”?’

The phrase translated as ‘wet jobs’ and had been the old KGB euphemism for assassination. ‘I suppose it does,’ agreed Charlie.

‘Why is it important?’

‘I don’t know that it is,’ avoided Charlie. ‘It was just something I wanted to know.’

‘I’m very tired, Charlie.’

‘I’m going,’ he said, standing.

They stood, momentarily, looking at each other. Then Natalia said, ‘I don’t love you, not any more. But I do love you. Does that make sense?’

‘As much sense as anything tonight,’ accepted Charlie. What had transpired was more than enough, that remark – denial though it was – most of all.

The Director-General had apologized during their last conversation that there was still no confirmation from GCHQ of any voice interception from the satellite and Charlie felt too exhausted after leaving Natalia to go back to the embassy to make a further check. Instead he telephoned the London Watch Room from the Lesnaya apartment for a traffic check, pleased to recognize the voice. George Carroll had been with the department practically as long as Charlie.

Carroll seemed as pleased to hear him. ‘I was bloody glad to hear you’d survived, Charlie. Even if it is Moscow.’

‘Good to think I have. Still learning to adjust, though.’

‘Aren’t we all?’

Charlie frowned. ‘How did you hear?’ The Watch Room was a message relay and alert facility, with no operational function. And as he’d had no contact with it since his posting there was no way George should have known he was still with the department and even less that he was in Russia.

‘You’ve got Red Alert classification.’

The designation required the Watch Room immediately to transfer an operative personally to his case officer on a secure line, irrespective of the time. In the circumstances it was hardly surprising, but Charlie didn’t consider the check he was making justified bothering Rupert Dean. ‘It’s not worth going through to the Director-General tonight; it can wait until tomorrow.’

‘It’s not the Director-General,’ said Carroll. ‘It’s Peter Johnson. I’ll put you through.’

‘No,’ stopped Charlie. ‘There’s no point in troubling him, either.’

He was still staring curiously down at the instrument when it rang again, so quickly after he’d replaced it that he thought Carroll had made the connection anyway. But it wasn’t London.

‘We’re getting cavalry in skirts,’ announced Kestler. ‘Washington is seconding a nuclear physicist here. And it’s a woman!’

‘She might be ugly,’ warned Charlie.

‘Every woman is beautiful in her own special way, even the ugly ones.’

Charlie fell asleep wondering what Christmas cracker Kestler had got that aphorism from. Before that he’d spent a lot of time going over the conversation with George Carroll.

There was a large panel of mirrored glass set into a wall of the interrogation cell, enabling Natalia to watch unseen from an adjoining observation room as Lev Mikhailovich Yatisyna was brought into it. One of the guards was a blonde, heavy-breasted girl, the most attractive Natalia had been able to find in the time available. Her selection was just one of several hurried-together psychological devices to disorientate the man far beyond his realizing how little Natalia had to work from. Fingerprints of three of the six arrested Moscow gangsters linked them to the known Agayans’ Mafia group forming part of the larger Ostankino Family. Her only other advantage was knowing, from the inadequate criminal records, that there’d been bloody turf battles in the past with the Shelapin Family, which formed part of the Chechen Mafia.

Natalia was encouraged by the view from her hidden vantage point. Yatisyna had been wearing overalls when he’d been seized but she planned a lot from the reported search of his Kirov apartment. There’d been fifteen suits, in addition to six sports jackets and casual trousers and twelve shirts had still been in their wrappers, in addition to another twenty pressed and folded in the dressing bureau. There’d been ten pairs of shoes. Everything was imported, either from Italy or France. Dispassionately gazing through the glass, Natalia acknowledged that the dark-haired, swarthy Yatisyna was physically handsome; he would have looked good in any of his designer clothes. Most important of all, he would have known it.

Now he looked ridiculous, which was precisely what Natalia wanted, because he would know that, too. The prison-issue uniform was intentionally three sizes too large, the trouser cuffs puddled around his ankles and the sleeves practically to his fingertips. Regulations required the trousers to be self-supporting, without either belt or braces, but the waistband was much too big and Yatisyna had constantly to hold them up. They were unwashed, from previous use, and the dirtiest it had been possible to find. There was only one chair in the room, for Natalia. There was obvious relief when the man sat on it, able for the first time to let go of his trouser band. Natalia guessed the attempted swagger was almost instinctive but it failed totally because of the scuffing trousers and made him look even more ridiculous. The effort to loll with his arm over the back of the chair didn’t work, either. Natalia had primed both guards. The man made a remark to the girl who laughed, loudly. Natalia hadn’t bothered with the sound system so she didn’t hear what Yatisyna said, although from the facial snarl he was obviously angered. The wardress laughed at him again.

Before going into the room Natalia carefully placed at the top of the file the photographs she’d had taken earlier of the scowling Yatisyna in his engulfing uniform. She entered briskly, apparently in the act of closing the dossier she’d been studying to remind herself who she was seeing. She maintained the distracted, impatient attitude, flicking her hand towards the man. ‘Get up! Stand at the other side of the table. Properly!’ She thought Yatisyna would probably have ignored her if she hadn’t extended the gesture for the male warder physically to remove him. As it was, the gang leader rose very slowly, as if it were his decision to vacate the seat. Having to keep his trousers up again ruined that bravado. Natalia heard the primed laugh, from behind. Before sitting Natalia very obviously examined the seat, as if expecting Yatisyna to have soiled it. When she finally looked up directly at him, Yatisyna’s face was a blaze of fury. Natalia let her eyes slowly go the whole length of his body. At the puckered ankles she smirked, going briefly to include the wardress in her amusement. The girl smirked back. Still smiling, Natalia depressed the start button of the recording equipment on the table beside her and said, ‘So this is what a great big gangster looks like!’ The disdainful, nose-wrinkled sniff wasn’t forced. He stank. She half opened the dossier, just sufficient for Yatisyna to see the photographs of himself. She saw his eyes flicker to them.

‘Fuck off.’

‘You even look the idiot you were, getting set up like that by the Shelapin’s…’ She picked up the photographs, shuffling them through her fingers. ‘I can’t make up my mind which to issue to the newspapers when we announce your arrest. They’re all so good!’

‘Motherfucker!’

‘That’s what Ivan Fedorovich called you! A lot of other things, too. He used amateur a lot: idiot fucking amateur.’ She’d decided Ivan Fedorovich Nikishov, from their sparse records the most senior of the arrested Agayans’ Family, would have been the one with whom Yatisyna would have had most dealings. Nikishov had told her to go to hell thirty minutes earlier, although he had boasted of his clan’s Chechen connections. She’d been shocked by the man’s total disregard to where he was and of what he was being accused, the only inference that he never expected to appear in a court. Would Yatisyna have the same attitude? It was always difficult to gauge how someone would respond to questioning. During the period when she’d been with the KGB she’d had meek-looking, clerk-like men resist interrogation for days and supposedly trained professionals – like Yatisyna was a professional – crumble in minutes.

‘What’s that bastard know?’

‘He knows you all got set up and the leak must have come through your people. And he knows he’s going to die, like you all are. Which he’s cooperating to avoid. But you should be glad the death penalty is automatic for you: it should be quick. I don’t think you’d live longer than a week in any prison, after the damage you’ve done to so many people.’

‘Nothing leaked from me. Or my people.’

He was talking and he shouldn’t have done: the first concession, Natalia realized. ‘That’s not what the Agayans people are telling us, in signed confessions and with promises to give evidence against you

…’

‘Liar!’ erupted Yatisyna, managing something close to a sneering laugh. ‘No one’s going to give evidence against me!’

‘Yes they are! They want to give evidence against you…’ She pulled a sheaf of papers from the file and began to read what she herself had written, thirty minutes earlier. ‘“Lev Mikhailovich planned everything, said all we had to do was follow his instructions.”’ Natalia looked up. ‘Chernenkov attested that.’ Nikita Chernenkov was one of the Agayans group identified by fingerprints. Natalia selected another personally written sheet. ‘“We thought he knew what he was doing. He came to us in Moscow, with this big plan. We were going to make millions. He wanted to become big time in Moscow, not just the provincial punk he is. Said he had contacts and that it would be easy.”’ Natalia came up again. ‘That’s part of Nikishov’s confession…’

Yatisyna shook his head. ‘No one’s going to give evidence. And I mean no one. There’s going to be an amazing loss of memory.’

The arrogance again, recognized Natalia. She had to prevent it hardening. ‘From men who know the alternative is going before a firing squad…’ She quickly stopped, frowning, a person who had said something inadvertent, which she hadn’t. She hurried on, ‘Did you recognize any Militia personnel?’

‘I don’t have to recognize them; they recognize me.’

‘ Every Militia officer came from Moscow: there wasn’t a single man from the entire Kirov region. And the main contingent weren’t Militia anyway: they were spetznaz. Nothing can keep you from the firing squad. Nikishov, maybe. But not you. You’re dead.’ Had he missed what she’d tried to make seem a mistake?

The flush, which had begun to subside, was returning but the remark registered as well as her contempt. ‘What about Nikishov?’

‘What about him?’ she asked, hopefully.

‘You said men who knew the alternative was going before a firing squad. They doing deals!’

‘It’s none of your business.’

‘They are, aren’t they?’

It was going much better than she’d expected. ‘I said it’s none of your business.’

‘He’s lying! It was an Agayans job: Yevgennie Arkentevich himself!’

‘We’ve got scores of witnesses you can’t intimidate. What Nikishov and the others are giving us fills in all the details. And we’ve got all the details. Times, dates, who was at the meetings, everything.’

‘Is Nikishov going to get clemency?’

‘I don’t know what he’s going to get,’ said Natalia in a voice that clearly indicated that she knew very well indeed.

‘So he is!’

Natalia patted the sides of her dossier into a neater pile: she’d assembled it to look impressive largely with statements from past and quite unrelated investigations with less than a quarter, including her fabricated confessions, connected with the Kirs attempt. The very top folios were the formal record of the criminal charges brought against the man, which were some of the few genuine documents and which, under Russian law, had to be officially accepted by a defendant. ‘We’ve talked enough. But you have to acknowledge understanding of the charges.’ She held out a pen towards him, reversing the pages for his signature. She was careful to make the ridiculing photographs more visible as she did so.

He made no move to take the pen. ‘Perhaps there is a reason for us to talk more.’

Natalia felt a warm satisfaction; one of the early ones to collapse, she thought. ‘What reason?’

‘I know a lot of things.’

‘So does everyone else talking to us.’

‘No they don’t. Not what I know.’

‘So tell me.’ The room was becoming filled by the stink from the prison uniform.

‘You can’t show clemency, not yourself, can you? It has to come from the Federal Prosecutor.’

Natalia’s expectation wavered, off balanced by his challenge. Very briefly she considered lying but decided against it. ‘It has to come from the prosecutor.’

‘Get his agreement. I want a positive undertaking before I’ll say anything.’

‘Don’t be stupid,’ rejected Natalia. ‘I haven’t got anything to go to the prosecutor with. You’ve got to tell me what you’re talking about first.’

‘No,’ refused Yatisyna.

Unspeaking, Natalia reoffered the charge sheet and the pen.

Yatisyna still didn’t take it. ‘I want to think. I won’t acknowledge the charges until I’ve had time to think.’

She’d lost it, conceded Natalia. Not for ever, but certainly today. She did have things to say at the soon-to-start conference but there was a wash of disappointment at their not being as much – or as dramatic – as she’d hoped: as impressive as Charlie insisted she had to be, in front of higher authority. ‘We can proceed without your signature. It’s only a formality.’

‘I have the right to a lawyer.’

‘At the discretion of the prosecutor.’

‘See if he’s prepared to deal.’

‘Not until I know what I’m talking about.’

Yatisyna nodded towards the tape recorder. ‘Without that next time.’ There was another head gesture, towards the guards at the door. ‘And them.’

She was going to get more, Natalia decided. It would be wrong to abandon her adopted approach. ‘I’m not going to keep coming here for nothing. Make your mind up. When you have, let me know.’ She stood, abruptly, collecting up her mostly contrived file.

‘I have a request!’

The bombast was going: he was an early breaker. ‘What?’

‘This prison overall stinks. I have the right to a clean one.’

Natalia remained standing, smirked as she again examined the man from head to toe. ‘You haven’t any rights that I don’t choose to allow you. You’re not getting any change of uniform and you’re not getting any deal. All you’re getting at the moment is a trial that will be little more than a formality and then a firing squad. No one’s frightened of you any more, Lev Mikhailovich. You haven’t got any power, can’t frighten anyone, not any more.’

The attractive wardress laughed again, exactly on cue, and Natalia decided it had been a good early morning’s work. And there was a whole day left.

In the hills was definitely best. There were a lot of places in Moscow – he personally owned a linked section of houses and apartments on Ulitza Dvorsovaya, in addition to the two mansions where no one would have dared to see or hear anything – but Silin wanted the death of Sobelov and the two shits who’d supported him to be the most dramatic example possible for everyone. Which meant making it last – for as long as Sobelov could survive the torture – so the country estate was where he’d arranged everything. Even announced, when he’d issued the summons, that it was going to be a special occasion.

Silin smiled to himslf, enjoying the irony that no one else yet knew but soon would: a far more special occasion than any of them had ever known. His people – the few Dolgoprudnaya people he knew he could trust, like Petr Markov – had called from the dacha, confirming they were already there, waiting. Confirming, too, that it was all arranged, in readiness.

The rest of the Commission would be setting out soon, Sergei Petrovich Sobelov one of them. With no idea what he was heading for – the most delicious irony of all – in that ridiculous American car, probably with the head of some girl whose name he didn’t even know gurgling in his lap.

Silin rose at the knock on the study door, almost reaching it before it was respectfully opened by Markov.

‘The cars are outside.’

‘Good.’ Silin wanted to be there at least an hour before the rest, to enjoy their unsuspecting arrival, miss nothing.

Marina waited beyond, in the corridor, neat as she always was, attentive as she always was. ‘The kitchen want to know if you’ll be back tonight.’

‘Not to eat,’ said Silin. The dinner at the dacha was going to be the highlight. The boar would probably already be cooking – prepared, certainly – and there was going to be French wine. He’d be at the head of the table and whatever happened he wanted Sobelov to be kept alive to be strapped into a chair to watch them eat what would be for him the last supper. He’d have insisted Bobin and Frolov inflict their torture on Sobelov by then, so they’d be strapped in chairs, too, on either side of the man they’d backed, knowing what was going to happen to them; shitting themselves, crying, begging for mercy, lying. Maybe he should have brought a doctor in, to keep them alive; there were a lot he could have chosen from. Too late now. A minor oversight. Didn’t affect the main objective. That no one else in the Commission – no one else anywhere – would ever dream of challenging him after today.

‘What time then?’ She kept in step with him towards the main entrance.

Silin stopped there, turning towards her, while Markov checked the street outside. He smoothed the greying hair that didn’t need smoothing, just wanting to touch her. ‘It’ll be very late.’

‘I’ll still wait up.’ She raised her face, expectantly, for him to kiss her, which he did, softly.

At Markov’s gesture Silin hurried to his customized Mercedes directly outside. There were escort Mercedes in front and behind, with four guards in each. Markov settled himself in his customary seat, beside the driver of Silin’s car. Without having to be asked, Markov raised the screen between himself and the driver and Silin, in the rear. At the same time Markov took the Uzi from the glove compartment and placed it more conveniently beside him: one of Silin’s modernizing insistences was that the Commission never carried personal weapons themselves, like the American Mafia heads never risked moving around armed. Like all the glass in the Mercedes, the screen was bullet-proof.

The Pizhma robbery had been brilliant, Silin thought. And the best part of all was that there would be more, as big or maybe even bigger. It was going to be difficult counting the money! He’d make the announcement at dinner that night, so Sobelov would hear with everyone else. So the man would die knowing it. Give them all another example of how reliant they were upon him.

The motorway crossed the outer ring road intersection and Silin looked expectantly for the Dolgoprudnaya direction signs, smiling at its familiarity. Which was something he’d have to guard against from now on, comfortable familiarity. There wouldn’t be any more nonsense again, not after today, but Silin admitted to himself that it had still been a lesson well learned. He wouldn’t relax in future, like he had in the immediate past. Today would show them and…

Silin’s mind trailed away, the thought never finished, at the blurred sight of a Mytishchi direction sign which shouldn’t have been on this road at all because it wasn’t the way to his dacha. That realization came with the awareness that this wasn’t his road at all but one he didn’t recognize. He pressed his console button, to bring down the separating screen. Nothing happened. He pressed it harder. When still nothing happened he jabbed at it again and again and then rapped at the glass behind Markov’s head. It was the electrics: something had gone wrong with the electrics. The man in front of him didn’t turn. Neither did the driver. Silin shouted, although the rear of the car was soundproofed by its protection. They still didn’t turn. Silin twisted to see that the escort car was behind, like the one in front remained with him, then hammered and shouted at the screen and tried the button again. It still didn’t work. Neither did the controls for the windows. Nothing worked.

The turn into a driveway he didn’t recognize was abrupt, throwing him sideways and momentarily full length on the rear seat. When he thrust himself up Silin saw they were approaching a wooden villa he didn’t know – like he didn’t know anything – an old-fashioned building girdled by a verandah. There were people on it, arranged like an audience: Bobin and Frolov were there with the rest of the Commission, with Sobelov at the head of the steps, a smiling host. Silin snatched out for the console again, to lock all the doors.

Very slowly, prolonging every movement, Sobelov descended the steps and tapped lightly, mockingly, for Silin to open his door. Silin actually shook his head, whimpering back across the car to get away from the other man. And then he whimpered even louder when Sobelov, even more mocking, opened the door anyway from his side, clearly knowing it would not be locked.

‘We’re throwing a party for you, Stanislav Georgevich: everyone’s coming,’ smirked the man. ‘We’re all going to enjoy it. You especially. We’ve got a lot to talk about: you’ve got a lot to talk about. To me.’