Bomb Grade

chapter 22

E xpectantly Charlie watched the wired-to-electricity shock go through the assembled Russians at Kestler’s announcement that the photographs proved the breaching of the nuclear canisters to be intentional.

There were two additional Russians, one in recognizable Militia officers’ uniform, the other a slightly built, anonymously dressed civilian whom Charlie’s like-for-like antenna at once recognized. They, like everyone else in the room, gave reactions similar to the ministers and the presidential aide. Natalia managed to look convincingly surprised. She showed no trace of tiredness. She was sitting with the spetznaz officers separating her from Popov, who’d abandoned the black tunic for one of his immaculate suits. The man had nodded and relaxed his face into the beginning of a smile at Charlie’s entry. Charlie had nodded and smiled back more openly.

Predictably the discussion began with the Russians, led by the spetznaz commanders, challenging the American photo interpretation. When that dispute ended with their reluctantly agreeing it was the only possible conclusion, Charlie let the increasingly wilder theories swirl about him but didn’t contribute, even when invited, unwilling to lose a strengthening idea among the general here’s-what-I-think eagerness to voice an opinion. As the discussion trailed into silence Popov abruptly announced that the weather had favoured them, with no disseminating wind, and that containment experts from Kirs and Kotelnich had capped the smashed housings and sufficiently water-suppressed the contamination not just around the site but throughout the carriages to enable the train to complete its journey with the rest of its untampered cargo. A comparison between the loading manifest and what remained on the train put the loss at nineteen canisters, not the American assessment of twenty-two.

‘And we have located the lorries and the cars used in the robbery,’ announced the operational director, triumphantly. With theatrical timing, he added, ‘Here in Moscow.’

Popov deflected the top table attention of Fomin and Badim to the uniformed Militia officer, who coloured although clearly prepared for the introduction, which he completed by naming himself to be Petr Tukhonovich Gusev, colonel-in-charge of the central Moscow region. In a pedantic, police-phrased account, Gusev said that at precisely 4.43 that morning a Militia street patrol had located three lorries and a BMW parked in central Moscow, close to the Arbat. The lorries were empty. The German Ford had been found thirty minutes later, abandoned on the inner Moscow ring road, empty of petrol.

‘In view of the Pizhma contamination, both areas have been sealed pending an examination by nuclear inspectors,’ picked up Popov, on cue. ‘No one involved in securing the areas has been told what the lorries contained, of course, to avoid a nuclear theft of this magnitude becoming publicly known. The initial Militia patrol carried out some preliminary general checks on all the vehicles. The engines of the lorries and both cars were discernibly hot, to the touch…’ He hesitated, for the implications to be realized. ‘They had clearly arrived in the city within an hour, maybe less, of their being discovered!’ Popov nodded to the Militia commander. ‘By six o’clock this morning, all major routes out of Moscow were sealed. In the five hours since, extra Militia and Federal Security Service personnel have been drafted into the city. Any vehicle attempting to move beyond the outer Moscow ring road is being stopped and searched…’ The man smiled towards the minister. ‘I think we can confidently say that the proceeds of the Pizhma robbery are contained within Moscow and that it will only be a matter of time before they are recovered. Certainly nothing can get through the cordon we now have encircling the city…’

The palpable relief went through the room like a communal sigh. Charlie passingly noted the look on Natalia’s face and then saw Fomin, smiling broadly, turn towards Popov. Before the man could speak Charlie said, ‘I don’t think we can confidently say anything of the sort!’

Popov’s face closed. Fomin turned to Charlie, the intended praise unspoken. ‘You have an observation to make?’

‘Several,’ promised Charlie. ‘There’s no reason at all to suppose the contents of the lorries were transferred where they were found. If an hour elapsed before their discovery – thirty minutes even – the transfer vehicles could have got way beyond the city limits before any checks were in place. So your cordon is useless. Dumping vehicles used in a theft is basic robbery practice. But why abandon the four vehicles where they’re bound to be found so quickly? Or leave the Ford on a no-stopping ring road where its being immediately found was even more assured? The thing’s got a petrol gauge. Knowing that it was running out of fuel, why wasn’t it abandoned in some back alley somewhere? Like the other vehicles could have been split up and left in places where they wouldn’t have been found or aroused suspicion for days. Everything was left for exactly the same reason that the canisters were breached. It’s all decoys: the breaching to delay the beginning of any proper investigation – which it did – and the vehicles to concentrate everything within Moscow. Which it did. Making it that much easier to get the stuff into the West.’

‘A fascinating theory, without any supportive facts,’ sneered the taller of the two spetznaz officers.

‘Establish some facts then!’ Charlie knew he’d get six buckets of shit knocked out of him in a stand-up fight with the Special Forces officer but in a stand-up discussion of deception it wasn’t a contest.

‘How?’ asked the other soldier, sparing his colleague.

Charlie gestured sideways, to Kestler, ‘From the American photographs we know exactly what time the train was stopped: twelve thirty-five the night before last. And we know precisely the time the trucks were found at the Arbat and the Ford on the ring road. They would have been driven fast from the scene of the robbery. So let’s try an average speed of sixty kilometres an hour. Drive the trucks – once they’ve been cleared by your nuclear people and by your forensic examiners – between Pizhma and Moscow to see if the journey takes almost twenty-nine hours! They’d have had to be going backwards to take that long! Fill the Ford up with petrol and see if it can make the journey on one tank. It won’t be able to. See how many times it has to be filled up to get directly from Pizhma to Moscow. The petrol left, on arrival here, will indicate how large a detour they took to offload the canisters before dumping the vehicles in Moscow.’

‘I think we must accept those as valid qualifications,’ conceded Badim, reluctantly.

‘There could be a number of explanations for so much time elapsing,’ tried Gusev, tentatively and badly.

‘That’s surely the point!’ came in Kestler, at once.

‘Nothing has been scaled down outside Moscow,’ insisted Popov. ‘The maximum state of alert is still in operation. The discovery of the vehicles is clearly the most practical way to proceed.’

The defence was greeted with agreeing nods from the minister and the presidential advisor. Natalia frowned, questioningly, towards Popov, who raised his eyebrows in return and Charlie wondered what the hell the exchange meant.

‘I’ve been authorized to offer any scientific assistance that might be necessary,’ declared Kestler, unexpectedly.

‘Scientific assistance?’ queried Badim, cautiously.

‘With Foreign Ministry agreement a senior FBI scientific officer has been assigned to our embassy here. A qualified nuclear physicist.’

The attention switched abruptly to Yuri Panin and from the expression not just on Natalia’s face but that of the Interior Minister Charlie guessed neither had known until that moment. Panin’s reaction confirmed Charlie’s impression. The Foreign Ministry official flushed and said, ‘I intended to explain today, for everyone to be told at the same time.’

Dmitri Fomin moved quickly to defuse the tension. ‘We benefited from the positioning of the satellite.’

‘An outside scientific opinion would provide independent confirmation of the findings of our own experts,’ suggested Popov.

‘She is already here and available,’ assured Kestler.

‘The interrogation of those arrested at Kirs has been productive,’ declared Natalia, entering the discussion at last. ‘I personally participated earlier today in the initial examination of Lev Yatisyna.’

Better late than never, thought Charlie, relieved.

‘A total of twenty-four people were arrested, either at Plant 69 or in the Kirov round-up,’ reminded Natalia. ‘Each is being detained separately, to prevent rehearsed stories being prepared. All have been told they face trial for murder, of those Militia, Special Forces and security guards killed in the operation. The four men seized in the apartment of Valeri Lvov have been specifically charged with the murder of his wife and the rape of the girls. All have also been told they will be charged with the attempted robbery of nuclear material.’

It was right she should set the facts out as she was doing but he hoped she’d soon get to the promised results, to hold their attention.

‘… It has also been made clear that the death penalty will be demanded and that clemency is never exercised in murders of Militia or soldiers…’ Natalia’s pause was every bit as theatrical as Popov’s presentation earlier. ‘… except in very rare and exceptional circumstances. None is in any doubt what that means. Each has been left, totally alone, to decide how to save his own life…’

The taller of the spetznaz officers said: ‘Will clemency be shown to anyone providing the sort of cooperation you want?’

It was Fomin who answered. ‘No,’ said the presidential aide, positively.

The officer looked more towards the note-takers. ‘I would like the request recorded now, for later reference and discussion with the Federal Prosecutor’s office, that the executions are carried out by Special Forces firing squads.’

‘I give my personal assurance to raise the matter with the prosecutor,’ said Fomin.

Charlie’s mind began to slip sideways during the interruption. What they were talking about and trying to resolve now naturally had the utmost and undivided priority. But it was the beginning, not the end, of his Russian posting. Which – quite irrespective of any arrangement he’d made with Natalia – he didn’t intend fulfilling permanently cap-in-hand, with a sign around his neck begging for Russian handouts. He’d need Russian approval for the proposal germinating in his mind. London’s permission, too. And Gerald Williams really would be driven to apoplexy by the amount of money it would need. Worst of all, everything could go disastrously wrong and end up with him impaled by his testicles atop one of the Krelim tower stars, the most reluctant Christmas tree fairy ever. But the idea that had come to him seemed a good one. Something to consider more fully later, he decided.

‘We have confirmed, initially from fingerprints and through fingerprints from criminal records, the identities of the six arrested men from Moscow,’ resumed Natalia, bringing Charlie’s concentration back to her. ‘All belong to one of the major clans attached to the Ostankino Family. As I’ve already said, I personally interrogated Lev Yatisyna earlier today. I let him conclude we’d established the Moscow connection from confessions we’d already obtained and he confirmed the Kirs robbery was set up by Yevgennie Agayans, leader of the Ostankino clan. An arrest warrant was this morning issued for the man…’ Natalia allowed a long pause. ‘… We’ve also established from interrogating those of the Agayans group we have in custody that the Chechen are their chief rivals, in particular the Shelapin Family, with whom they dispute control of the area around Moscow’s Bykovo airport. We’ve independently confirmed, again from records, that in the past nine months five men have been killed in shootouts between the Agayans and Shelapin Families. Arrest warrants, alleging nuclear theft and attempted nuclear theft, have been issued against both groups…’ Natalia hesitated again, looking this time first towards the military officers and then to the anonymously dressed man, confirming Charlie’s instinctive arrival empathy. ‘… Special Forces units are assisting Militia, as well as contingents from the Federal Security Service, on swoops upon all known addresses and locations used by the two Families.’

Charlie fleetingly wondered if any of the clubs he’d been to would feature among the known locations. Judged with the necessary impartiality, Natalia had performed better than Popov. And personally questioning Yatisyna – and so quickly confirming a lead to who might have carried out the Pizhma robbery – had been a brilliant move.

Natalia knew she’d done well, although she kept any awareness from showing. Her satisfaction did not last long.

Popov said: ‘There are clearly members of the Yatisyna Family still free. Or maybe the retribution was exacted by the Agayans mob. Our initial information about the intended robbery at Plant 69 came from the Militia regional commander at Kirov, Nikolai Vladimiro-vich Oskin. Without his contribution, the intrusion at Kirs would have undoubtedly succeeded. And we would now be dealing with an unthinkable nuclear loss twice as large as that we face now. Nikolai Oskin knew the risks he was taking. He asked for protection. He and his family were transferred to Moscow…’

Asked me for protection, thought Natalia, in growing apprehension.

‘… Their bodies were found this morning, in the apartment that had been provided for them. Each had been tortured. Oskin was bound in a chair. From the position in which it was placed and the way in which the bodies of his wife and children were left it would appear he was made to watch while they were mutilated and finally killed – each by being decapitated – before being physically tortured to death himself.’

Perhaps, thought Charlie, his most recent idea wasn’t such a good one after all.

With an ingrained determination to be part of everything, even if he was not invited, Charlie hung around while Kestler approached Popov to arrange the American scientific examination of the recovered lorries and, when it emerged the Russian team were already at the Arbat, went unchallenged in the Militia car to collect the telephone-alerted woman from the American embassy compound.

Hillary Jamieson was waiting for them at the compound entrance, wearing one-piece overalls Charlie accepted to be scene-of-crime official issue from the colour and the foot-high FBI lettering on the back, but which owed more to designer-inspired alteration than to government seamstresses. The trousers were tapered to shows legs which Charlie would have thought, in other clothes, reached her shoulders but visibly and delightfully stopped at a tightly displayed ass so perfect that Michelangelo would have gone into artistic if not lustful rapture and in this case might just have converted from the sexual proclivities of a lifetime. He would certainly have modelled the breasts, even more provocatively displayed as bra-less both by the tightness of the material and the insufficiently closed zip, for a statue that would have reduced the Venus de Medici to an effigy of someone’s washerwoman grandmother.

Kestler was briefly and literally speechless, actually stumbling as he hurried from the car to hold open the rear door for her. Prick teaser meets prick teased, thought Charlie, watching the performance. She shook her head against Kestler taking a large plastic workbox and a thick plastic suit-carrier type sheath from her, following both into the rear and directing to Charlie a sculpted-toothed, favoured-mortal-to-local-aborigine smile as she did so. She gave an apologetic hand flutter to Kestler that her equipment took up too much room to allow him in the back as well. As the disgruntled Kestler got into the front she said, ‘I’m still not sure what the fuck I’m doing here but I hardly expected to hit the ground running! What have we got?’

Kestler noticeably blinked at the ‘fuck’. He said, ‘You haven’t met Charlie. Assigned like I am. From England.’

Hillary twisted back in the rear seat. ‘Hi! I thought you were local!’

‘They’re different from us: they wear animal skins and grunt a lot,’ said Charlie.

She laughed, unrebuked. ‘I thought they did that in England, too! And painted themselves with woad.’

‘Not in London. Only out in the country.’

The car began to slow, impeded by the congestion from part of the inner ring road as well as the Arbat being simultaneously closed off. The driver asked Kestler which scene they wanted and when Kestler identified the Arbat, turned on his emergency siren and lights and overtook the stalled traffic on the wrong side of the road, flashing for street patrol Militia to clear intersections ahead of them, and Charlie was glad they had accepted Popov’s suggestion to take an official vehicle. Knowing the closeness of the Arbat Charlie became serious, answering Hillary’s initial question while Kestler was engaged with the driver.

She listened, just as seriously. ‘What’s this Arbat place?’

‘Tourist quarter. Largely pedestrianized.’

‘How wide an area has been cleared?’

‘Extensive, from what we were told this morning.’

‘It had better be, if these lorries are contaminated.’

‘Not predominantly because of the health risk,’ qualified Kestler, from the front. ‘The chief concern is that the general public – abroad as well as here in Moscow – will find out what’s happened.’

‘Tell me you’re kidding me that no official warning has been given!’ demanded the girl.

‘We’re not kidding you,’ assured Charlie, flatly.

‘This isn’t a joke, for fuck’s sake!’

‘Welcome to the real world,’ invited Charlie.

‘This isn’t the real world! It’s the unreal world!’ She looked searchingly around the car, then back to Kestler and Charlie. ‘Where’s your protective stuff?’

Kestler and Charlie exchanged looks. Kestler said, ‘We don’t have any.’

Hillary said, ‘This isn’t happening! I just know this isn’t happening!’

‘It is,’ argued Charlie. ‘Look!’

The scene ahead was like one from a surrealist movie. For fifty yards in the direction they were approaching the road and the surrounding pavements were crowded with milling, other-way focused people and protesting, horn-blasting vehicles cut off from a view of absolutely unmoving and unpeopled emptiness, as cleanly as a sharp knife separates one side of a cake from the other, by metal-fences barriers hedged by shoulder-to-shoulder Militia. As far as they could see beyond the barrier there were no cars. There were no trolleys. The windows of every building and shop were blank. There was a fountain which didn’t spout water. It looked exactly like the desolation Charlie imagined would follow a nuclear explosion.

‘Just an ordinary, downtown Moscow street investigation, folks!’ mocked Hillary, making an up-and-down hand cupped masturbating gesture. ‘Nothing to see! Just move along now; all go home!’ The mockery stopped. ‘How’s this going to be kept quiet, for Christ’s sake?’

Charlie had had the same thought listening to Natalia itemizing the arrest warrants at that morning’s meeting. Instead of answering he physically pulled Hillary against the seat as they reached the barrier. ‘Sit back! Don’t go forward!’

Unprotesting Hillary remained where Charlie had hauled her. As the barriers were briefly moved aside there was the pop of flash bulbs and the sharp whitening of television lights. Obediently pressed against the seat, Hillary said, ‘I just know there’s got to be a reason for what you’ve just done!’

‘Three letters a foot high all over your back,’ said Charlie. ‘God knows who the media were back there but it’s supposedly free here now. How’d you think they’d interpret an FBI scene-of-crime scientific officer, especially one looking like you do, in an ordinary, downtown Moscow street?’

‘Buried deep down somewhere I’m sure there was a compliment,’ grinned Hillary.

‘Buried deep down under a lot of practical common sense, maybe,’ half confirmed Charlie. He was surprised to see the bearded Aleksai Popov already at the scene, which was around a sharp curve in the approach road and completely out of sight of the road block. Popov was surrounded by uniformed and plainclothed officials, grouped about ten metres from the neatly parked, side-of-the-road cluster of vehicles. None wore any sort of protective clothing. Charlie counted four men around the lorries. All appeared to be wearing cotton overalls, like Hillary, but with their faces obscured with hamster-pouched air-filtering masks.

‘Doesn’t look as if I’ll need this,’ said the girl, patting the suit-carrier. ‘Maybe an idea for your guys to stay with the others; though.’

‘You speak Russian?’ challenged Kestler, simply.

Hillary grimaced. ‘Can’t think of everything. Wait until I check for levels.’

Kestler identified Popov as they approached on foot and Charlie was uncritically aware how long it took Natalia’s lover to get his eyes up to the American girl’s face. Popov greeted her in English and said the Russian technicians were expecting her.

From the way she bent her body away from it, her equipment box was heavy. When she was about five metres from the lorries she put it down and took out what looked like a hand-held mobile phone and a mask quite different from those the Russians were wearing. There were no side filters but it was looped to a back-pack canister she slipped expertly on as she continued towards the vehicles. The Russian scientists stood together as a group, watching her, and there was a flurry of hand language when she reached them. Hillary vaulted lightly into the rear of each truck, disappearing for what seemed a long time in every one. After the interior check she went crab-wise beneath them, her hand-held device raised aloft and afterwards checked each cab and finally the BMW before gesturing back to them. Once more, uninvited, Charlie tagged along. There was no objection from anyone. Popov went with them. By the time they got to the lorries, Hillary had the mask unclipped, hanging loosely at her throat.

‘Clean enough to take the kids to school,’ she greeted. To Kestler she said, ‘Ask them what the reading was when they got here.’

Kestler did and a balding technician with a grey, chin-fringed beard said five, offering a much larger instrument for Hillary to look. Charlie attached himself to them as she established, through Kestler, the exact time of their arrival, the scale of dissipation since then and the precise places in each vehicle, including the BMW, that had given off a radiation reading. Hillary ended the scientific exchange with a smiling handshake and Popov said, ‘I’ll let you have the written forensic report.’

‘I’d like to see it as soon as possible,’ accepted Charlie.

‘I can tell you already there’s not a single fingerprint, anywhere,’ said Popov. ‘The canvassed lorry was stolen three months ago, in St Petersburg. The other two from a Moscow haulage company, at the same time. The Moscow registration on the BMW is false: it belongs to a Lada owned by an air traffic controller at Sheremet’yevo. The plates on the Ford abandoned on the ring road were stripped off a genuinely imported Ford parked at Kazan railway terminal.’ Looking directly at Charlie, Popov said, ‘We are going to take all the vehicles on the check run to and from Pizhma tomorrow.’

Charlie decided Popov enjoyed showing the efficiency in front of Hillary, who looked suitably impressed. The man with the beard fringe offered that they’d already checked the Ford, which had shown no radiation whatsoever, and that the vehicle remained isolated on the ring road solely for their examination. Hillary shook her head as Kestler translated and said: ‘Not unless you guys want to.’ Neither did.

Kestler manoeuvred himself next to Hillary in the rear of the Militia car, putting Charlie in the front. He sat turned towards the American, his arm over the seat, so he was instantly able to squeeze the girl’s leg in warning when she started; ‘Well, the story so far…’

She stopped, grinning at Charlie. ‘You trying to tell me a secret?’

‘No!’ he said, pointedly. ‘Maybe keep one.’

She remained silent until they transferred at the ministry into the embassy car. Because Kestler had to drive it put Charlie in the back with Hillary again. At once she said; ‘Sorry. But everything with the driver was in Russian; I didn’t think he could speak English. And anyway, aren’t we on the same side now?’

It was Kestler who explained their acceptance on sufferance, which Charlie finished by saying that if he’d arranged their transport, like Popov had for them, he would have ensured the driver was fluent in English. ‘So what would he have heard?’

‘The level of radiation when I got there was virtually nonexistent,’ reported Hillary. ‘If the Russians’ curie reading is accurate to within a degree, any contamination was entirely residual and from outside, from when they smashed the containers. That’s why I checked the outside and underside of the lorries and confirmed a reading. The inside of the trucks gave me a lot, though. It’s not shown in any of the satellite photographs, but each truck had some sort of hydraulic lifting device, to bring the canisters on board. Near the tailgate of each there’s extensive scratching and on the metal floor of one of the covered lorries there are clear circular markings of the sort you get from rubber pads at the end of support legs. The canvas lorry is flatbed and wooden decked: the wood here has been positively depressed for maybe a millimetre. From the satellite shots of the smashed open containers Washington’s already made weight calculations from height and thickness measurements. The floor markings on the lorries are consistent with the containers being pretty standard, hard outer casing, two-inch thick lead lining. In my opinion the floor markings prove that the containers were full when they were lifted inboard. On our estimate of twenty-two being stolen, that puts the total nuclear graded loss at just under two hundred and forty nine kilos…’

‘… According to this morning’s meeting, they only lost nineteen,’ interrupted Kestler.

‘We’ll have Washington recount,’ said the girl, at once. ‘I can’t see how our picture analysts were wrong, but on the lesser figure the loss will be two hundred and forty two kilos, forty minimum.’

‘Five kilos makes one bomb,’ remembered Charlie. ‘They’ve got enough to make forty-eight, at least.’

Hillary hesitated. ‘Only with proper laboratories staffed by properly qualified technicians and physicists. But you’re right – the bad guys have got enough to rule the world.’

‘Unless they’re stopped,’ said Kestler.

‘I think the most significant thing is that the housing isn’t in the lorries back there any more, either,’ said Hillary, answering the question as Charlie was about to ask it.

Instead he said; ‘So it was transferred, to go on supporting the canisters in the trucks into which it was transferred.’

‘Obviously,’ agreed the physicist.

‘From the timed satellite sequence we know it took an hour to move the containers from the train into the trucks,’ said Charlie.

Hillary took up the calculation. ‘Where the egg box was already prepared. This time the support frames had to be transferred, along with the containers. I’d say two hours, minimum. More likely three. Longer than that if they did it in the dark.’

‘So it wasn’t done at the Arbat,’ concluded Charlie, positively.

‘Who said it was?’ demanded the girl.

‘That was the suggestion at a briefing this morning.’

‘On the street back there!’ exclaimed Hillary. ‘Bullshit! No one taking the trouble these guys did would have risked that.’

‘You think there could have been an expert – a physicist even – involved in the robbery?’ queried Kestler.

‘Advising, maybe,’ she judged. ‘What I am damned sure about is that they didn’t intend losing what they got. Or being caught, getting it.’

Natalia called Lesnaya within an hour of Charlie returning from the embassy, listening without interruption to everything he recounted. She said, ‘There must be a connection, between the two! Kirs had to be a decoy!’

‘Prove it, from the people you’ve got in custody,’ urged Charlie. ‘You did well, personally involving yourself in the questioning.’

‘I’m pretty sure Yatisyna will break quickly.’

‘Did he give you any indication of what he’s got?’

‘If he’s telling the truth about Kirs being set up by Agayans, he might know who the intended purchasers were.’

‘That could take us a long way forward,’ agreed Charlie.

‘I almost promised it at today’s meeting.’

‘Don’t promise what you haven’t got,’ warned Charlie. ‘And don’t tell anyone else. If you get it, keep it for a higher authority meeting. And get all the credit yourself.’

‘I didn’t know anything about the lorries and the cars being found,’ Natalia admitted abruptly.

‘Popov didn’t tell you before the meeting?’ queried Charlie, recalling the look on her face. He could hear Sasha in the background, singing tunelessly.

‘I didn’t get up from the interrogation cell until fifteen minutes before it began. There wasn’t time. For me to be told about Oskin, either. I personally promised the protection!’

In the solitude of his apartment Charlie frowned. ‘It’s work, Natalia! Don’t get personally involved. You couldn’t have anticipated what was going to happen.’

‘I should have done.’

‘Stop it!’ he insisted, sternly.

After several moments’ silence, she said, They’re obviously very well organized, particularly here in Moscow.’

Charlie hesitated. ‘I wasn’t personally challenging Popov. He was assuming too much.’

‘You don’t have to keep apologizing.’

‘I’m not apologizing. I just don’t want you to misunderstand.’

Beyond the sound of Sasha’s tiny, unformed voice Charlie heard a man’s shout. Natalia said quickly, ‘I have to go.’

‘Yes.’ Popov must be in the hallway: it was obvious he would have his own key.

Charlie replaced the phone feeling emptied. It was a feeling he was to experience a lot in the coming days, increasingly about events involving Natalia. Which was not Charlie allowing an intrusion because invariably those events were professional. He actually wished they hadn’t been.

None of which, however, was his immediate concern. That was – finally – the public disclosure of the robbery.

The metal hooks and shackles had probably been fitted into the basement walls when the dacha was first built, to hang meat or support gardening equipment. The bands around Silin’s wrists and ankles were very tight and wide apart, so that he was spreadeagled with his arms and legs widely outstretched. He was trying very hard not to show any fear to Sobelov, who stood directly in front of him.

‘I fixed the Pizhma robbery my way,’ said Sobelov. ‘I even started the war between the Chechen and the Ostankino just the way you planned, to send everyone around in circles. So there’s only one thing I want…’

Silin shook his head, not trusting himself to speak. He was very frightened, knowing he’d totally lost.

‘I want the Moscow contacts, to the nuclear material.’

‘Go to hell,’ managed Silin.

‘That’s where you’re going. But not until I’ve had my fun. You’re going to tell me what I want, you know. You won’t be able to stop yourself.’

He wouldn’t, determined Silin. Whatever they did to him he’d beat the bastards over that.