Bomb Grade

chapter 30

G unther Schumann, the intended Russian-speaking interrogator who met Charlie at Tegel airport, was a superintendent in the special nuclear smuggling division of the Bundeskriminalamt. An appropriate piratical black patch covered a missing left eye, although not the scar from it that ran down his cheek, and he’d developed the habit of winking the good right one conspiratorially when he talked, which he did a lot in excellent English during their preparatory lunch at the Kempinski, where Charlie had made a nostalgic reservation.

The arrests had been a coordinated German and Polish operation made entirely possible from the identification of the Warsaw hotel. The five Russians had arrived at the Zajazd Karczma, which Polish intelligence was staking out, eight days earlier. The initial reason for checking them had only been that they were Russian. On the first night the boot of one of their two cars was picked and three canisters discovered. It had obviously been a contact point because they’d stayed there two days; because he’d occupied the Napoleon room they’d decided a Russian carrying a passport in the name of Fedor Alekseevich Mitrov was the leader. There had been no calls made from the hotel. Mitrov used outside street kiosks five times, never the same one twice. He was the only one to telephone, a further indication of his being in charge. He’d been seen to make notes every time but they hadn’t been found after his arrest. The surveillance had been constant, night and day, but there had been no meeting with anyone else in Warsaw or during the interrupted drive to the border. The accelerator cable of one car, a Volkswagen, had snapped near Lodz and they’d lost half a day getting it replaced. They’d been allowed to cross the border because the German nuclear smuggling legislation was stronger and more wide ranging than in Poland. The Bundeskriminalamt had tapped the Cottbus hotel switchboard but again there had been no calls, either in or out. Mitrov had used a kiosk once, within an hour of their Cottbus arrival, but made no notes.

On their third day at Cottbus the group because very agitated. Two watching Bundeskriminalamt officers, a man and a woman, had been too far away at a pavement cafe to hear an obvious argument between two of the men, with Mitrov visibly gesturing around him to warn of their being overheard. The group had split, leaving separately: one man had gone direct to the railway station and noted train departures for Berlin. Frightened of losing some of the group – but more importantly what they were carrying – the decision had been made to arrest them. It had been done at four in the morning. They had all been asleep and there had been no resistance, although each had been, armed either with Walther or Markarov handguns. Three Uzi machine guns had been found in the two cars, a Mercedes saloon in addition to the repaired Volkswagen. So had a total of six nuclear canisters, equally split between both vehicles. The cars had been legitimately bought, both for cash, from separate Berlin salesrooms, and each was registered at separate Berlin addresses, although the identities of the named owners on both the purchase and registration documents were false. The Bundeskriminalamt were totally satisfied the people living at the addresses – an accountant and his girlfriend and the widow of a railway inspector – were uninvolved and that their homes had been chosen at random, possibly from a telephone book. None of the arrested Russians had made any statement or admission. The canisters alone, marked with the fingerprints of each of the five, guaranteed a case that could be traced backwards to Russia but not forwards, to the plutonium’s destination.

‘And working from your count of twenty-two, there’s still ten containers missing, seven if we use the Russian figure,’ concluded Schumann. ‘Like always, nothing’s ever complete: it’s a bastard.’

‘Maybe not quite as incomplete as usual,’ said Charlie, tapping the bulging briefcase firmly wedged between his feet.

It took Charlie longer than it had the German to set out what he’d brought from Moscow and which had taken him a full day after Balg’s early morning call to collect and collate, from the frantic-for-participation US embassy Bureau and from Rupert Dean in London. Long before Charlie finished Schumann was smiling and nodding, his good eye stuttering up and down.

‘I couldn’t assimilate all that properly to break them and they’d realize it: Mitrov quicker than the others. Is your Russian good enough?’

‘Yes,’ assured Charlie, quickly.

‘We’ll need to build a stage set!’ announced Schumann.

‘And give an Oscar performance,’ agreed Charlie.

Late that evening Charlie surveyed the efforts of nearly seven hours’ work and decided it was indeed very much like a stage set. There were pinboards stretching the entire length of one wall to display every one of the 150 satellite photographs enlarged to their highest definition. Each was accompanied by a separate enhancement of the individuals featured on the general prints, the physical analysis annotated alongside the images. The pictures showing the killing of the train guards were repeated in another display section. Along a second wall was installed a relay of specialized recording and replay equipment and halfway along the third were five full-length criminal line-up boards, calibrated to a giant-sized three metres. Alongside each were scales upon which a person had to sit for their weight to be accurately calculated by counters moved along a minutely marked pendulum bar. Each place was fronted by cameras, Polaroid as well as tripod-mounted. The centre of the room was empty except for five chairs side by side against a table. Official stenographers had their places directly behind and after them, on an elevated platform, were video cameras to record everything.

Schumann said, ‘There should be music and someone yelling “Lights! Action!”’

‘I want to hear much more than that,’ said Charlie.

He and the German spent another hour that night and two the following morning finalizing their confrontation, Schumann eventually but without offence conceding the orchestration to Charlie.

The German still, however, initially played the lead. At Schumann’s order the Russians were quick-marched, militarily, to the weighing and measuring section of the room. To their total, half-resisting bewilderment their height and weight were established and after that the medical teams carefully recorded chest, waist, stomach, biceps and leg dimensions. Finally they were photographed against the scaled height charts, both by the sophisticated cameras and on the instant Polaroid equipment.

Charlie and Schumann positioned themselves so that at all times they could gauge the reaction of the men when, one at a time but led by Mitrov, they were paraded with enforced slowness in front of the Pizhma photographic collage, finishing at the repeated section showing the guard murders at their moment of being committed. From each the reaction was total astonishment: in two cases it was brief, gap-mouthed astonishment. The procession concluded at the electronic equipment, where each warily uneasy man was questioned once more about his involvement in the Pizhma robbery – by Russian speakers other than Charlie and Schumann – to get voice recordings against legally established identities from the repeated although hesitant denials.

Mitrov was a blond-haired, pale-faced man whose thinness was accentuated by his height. None of the others was as tall, although Charlie estimated two to be just short of two metres. The third was middle height, the fourth much shorter. All were thick set, the particularly small man positively fat. In the chaired line to which they were led Mitrov maintained the best control. The small man feasted off his fingernails and another man, blond like Mitrov, kept palming back hair that didn’t need putting into place.

It was a full half an hour before the leader of the physiological analyzing team invited Schumann and Charlie to go through the identification with him, putting the height, weight and body dimensions calculated by the Washington photographic examiners against the just-recorded detailed measurements of the arrested five.

‘No doubt about any of them,’ declared the man, matching the Polaroid prints to the satellite images. ‘Three positive identifications with the shootings…’ His finger jabbed out at three different prints on the separated murder-proving pinboard. ‘… Here, here and here… Each showing someone at the moment of their being shot

…’ He referred to the identity sheets to which the Polaroids were attached. ‘… Yuri Dedov, here…’ he said, picking out the small fat man actually standing over his victim as he fired. The analyst attached a photograph of the averagely tall blond-haired man to another satellite print. ‘This is Valeri Federov firing an Uzi at two guards emerging from the train. And this…’ He pinned a picture of the man of middle height to another satellite print ‘… is Vladimir Okulov shooting in the back a guard who appears to be running away.’ There were six positive identifications of Fedor Mitrov, in two of which the man was seen to be breaking open storage canisters, and four of the fifth man, Ivan Raina, helping him do it.

Schumann carried the matched photographs across to the five, all of whom were fidgeting and foot-shuffling with the exception of Mitrov, although a nerve had begun to pull at the corner of the man’s mouth. The German dealt out his selection in front of each man and said; ‘Everything witnessed, in provable detail, from a satellite…’ He looked to the three killers, in turn, ‘And there you are, caught in the actual act of murder. That’s going to make your trial unique.’

On cue Charlie crossed to the bank of tape machines, still held by the excitement that had swept through him minutes before. The audio tapes had been synched by both Washington and London to the millisecond to the times of the satellite images and the German analyst had just identified Fedor Mitrov as the man who had joked about akrashena as he’d smashed open the plutonium containers. Which was the first segment Charlie had chosen to replay, never believing it would have the significance it now did. The transmission had been cleaned of static and the voice echoed clearly into the room, the sound so good they could even hear Raina’s laugh, after the remark. Schumann and Charlie had decided against the actual interrogations being communal and Charlie snapped the machine off after a short while.

‘Voice prints can be proven as accurately as fingerprints,’ he said. ‘That’s why you were questioned earlier: to get your voices positively recorded against your names. In a few days we’ll have every word each of you spoke, all the time you were at Pizhma: a complete transcript.’

The finger-gnawing Dedov said, ‘What do you want to know?’

‘Everything,’ said Schumann.

The fast-winking German was so euphoric by the second day that he commuted overnight to the Wiesbaden headquarters to brief the alerted Bundeskriminalamt hierarchy that they were getting sufficient for a sensational international trial as well as the chance to target a major Russian Mafia Family domiciled in Berlin.

They carried out their questioning in the stage-set conference room, one man at a time after that first resistance-breaking group encounter, each Russian constantly reminded of the evidence of his guilt. An early conclusion was that apart from Mitrov, the other four were foot soldiers, fetch-and-carry gofers who pointed guns and pressed triggers at people at whom they were told to point guns and press triggers, without asking why.

They questioned the anxious-to-confess Dedov first and the subsequent cross-examination of the other three provided little more than elaboration of what the diminutive fat man told them. They were the Dolgoprudnaya, the leading Moscow Family. Stanislav Georgevich Silin was the boss of bosses of six subsidiary clans which he ruled American Mafia style, through a controlling Commission with himself as chairman. The organization was a pyramid structure run military fashion, even to military designations and titles. They never saw or dealt with Silin direct, always through corps commanders or clan bosses. Mitrov had been their corps commander for the Pizhma robbery. They’d not been involved in any planning: they’d taken their instructions from Mitrov, who had told them where the nuclear train was to be stopped and that the guards and the escorting soldiers all had to be killed, to leave no witnesses. Mitrov hadn’t told them why some containers had to be broken open. After the robbery they’d driven further south, to Uren, where the majority of the twenty-two canisters had been transferred: only six were left in the original trucks. None of them knew where those trucks or the six canisters had been taken. They didn’t know, either, where the other ten canisters had gone. They’d been loaded into three Mercedes and one BMW and they’d all travelled in convoy for the remainder of that day. They’d split northeast of Moscow, at Kalinin. Of course they’d heard of the Agayans and Shelapin Families, even of the territory dispute at Bykovo, but knew nothing about either being involved in a nuclear robbery. They were small time: punks. They certainly hadn’t been at Pizhma: that had been entirely Dolgoprudnaya. None of them knew a Yatisyna organization. They’d stayed at the Zajazd Karczma longer than they’d intended because Mitrov had difficulty making contact from a public kiosk. And then been further delayed by the Volkswagen breakdown in getting to Cottbus, where they’d been told to go, and their buyers hadn’t been waiting, as arranged. Okulov had caused the witnessed pavement argument by accusing Mitrov of screwing up and stranding them with a load of nuclear stuff they couldn’t get rid of. It was Raina who had enquired about Berlin trains, intending to go the following day to make contact with the Dolgoprudnaya group permanently established there. Their middle-of-the-night arrest had come before Mitrov had given him the Dolgoprudnaya’s Berlin address but Raina thought it was somewhere in the Marzahn district, in the old communist-controlled east of the city.

Charlie and Schumann began early on the fifth day with Fedor Alekseevich Mitrov but it was still well into the afternoon before they began a proper interrogation because the morning was occupied playing back the most incriminating parts of the other Russians’ testimonies. Because Charlie had explained what he wanted – and because Schumann had already obtained so much to German satisfaction from the earlier interrogations – Charlie led the questioning. Mitrov started well, fervently denying any position of authority and even more fervently giving any murder orders. But the rejection was eggshell thin and Charlie moved quickly to shatter it.

‘ Akrashena,’ he declared, simply.

Schumann looked incomprehensibly at Charlie and the Russian appeared confused too, although Charlie knew it wasn’t from lack of understanding.

‘ Akrashena ’ repeated Charlie. ‘Explain that to me.’

The tall Russian sniggered in what was supposed to be ridicule. ‘Wet paint.’

‘I know what it means,’ said Charlie. ‘Like I know it was the code name for the militarily planned prevention of a nuclear robbery at Kirs.’

‘I don’t know anything about that,’ said Mitrov.

‘You do!’ insisted Charlie, starting the satellite tape at its prepared section. ‘That’s your voice. We’ve had it scientifically and provably matched. That’s you speaking at the scene of a successful robbery about one that was being militarily stopped elsewhere by an operation named Akrashena. So you tell us how you knew that. And how the Shelapin Family – Shelapin himself – came to be in possession of nuclear material from a robbery he wasn’t connected with. And what’s happened to the ten containers still missing. And who your customers were, for the six canisters you smuggled into Germany. And when you’ve told us all that you can tell us a lot more. Like how well-established the Dolgoprudnaya are here in Berlin and exactly where they are in the Marzahn district.’

Blatant cunning registered on the Russian’s face. ‘Tell me why I should.’

‘Germany doesn’t have capital punishment. Russia does,’ said Charlie, simply. ‘Murder, which you’re guilty of by having given the orders, is a capital crime. So is nuclear theft. The crimes you committed in Russia take precedence over that of smuggling nuclear components into Germany. So you could be transferred back to Moscow to face trial on the greater charges. In Russia, you die. In Germany, you get a custodial sentence. Which, on past history, won’t be very long.’

‘Germany wants the glory of a trial! They wouldn’t miss it by sending me back!’

‘You sure about that?’

Mitrov wasn’t and it showed: the nerve was tugging at his mouth. ‘What guarantees would there be?’

‘Cooperate and the trial, and the sentencing, will be here in Germany,’ promised the German.

‘Let’s see how we go,’ accepted Mitrov, doubtfully.

‘Tell me about the Shelapin involvement,’ Charlie demanded.

‘They’re a Chechen group,’ dismissed Mitrov.

Charlie recognized the first crack in the dam. ‘We know that. Were they part of the Pizhma distribution?’ It wasn’t a naive question.

‘Of course they weren’t! I told you, they’re Chechen!’

‘So how did some of the Pizhma containers end up with Vasili Shelapin? And more with another member of the Family.’

‘I don’t know.’

‘But you knew six containers had to be left in the original trucks, after you unloaded?’ pressed Schumann.

‘Yes.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Yes you do,’ challenged Charlie.

‘I was just told they had to be left.’

‘By whom?’

‘At a planning meeting.’

‘By whom?’ repeated Charlie, refusing the avoidance.

‘Silin.’ The man mumbled the name, as if he hoped they wouldn’t hear it.

‘To be taken into Moscow?’

‘Yes,’ said the Russian, unthinking.

‘So you knew the trucks were going on into Moscow!’

Mitrov hesitated, realizing the mistake. ‘Yes.’

‘Why? Why weren’t they abandoned at Uren?’

‘Silin said they were needed in Moscow.’

‘Why?’

‘He didn’t tell me. Just that he wanted them there.’

‘You’re lying,’ accused Schumann.

‘Confusion,’ blurted Mitrov.

‘Decoy, you mean?’

‘I suppose.’

‘Was it your decision to break open the containers: risk a township?’ demanded Schumann.

‘No!’

‘Silin again?’ probed Charlie.

‘Yes.’

‘Why?’

‘Confusion,’ the man repeated. ‘Delay.’

‘ Akrashena?’ said Charlie.

‘Silin.’

‘So he knew about the Kirs attempt?’

‘Yes.’

‘When did the planning for Pizhma start?’

‘I don’t remember.’

‘When?’

‘Towards the end of the month.’

It wasn’t the answer Charlie expected. ‘Date?’

‘I can’t remember.’

‘The day?’

‘I’m not sure. Tuesday I think.’

‘The thirtieth?’

‘Earlier.’

‘The twenty-third?’

‘That sounds better.’

That was before the first Interior Ministry meeting to plan against the Kirs robbery, calculated Charlie. ‘That was when Silin told you akrashena was the task force code name?’

Mitrov shook his head. ‘Later. More than a week later.’

That fitted better. ‘Did Silin tell you, personally? Or was it part of a discussion involving several people.’

‘Several people.’

‘All Family?’

The wary pause was too obvious. ‘Yes.’

‘That’s a lie.’

‘It was all Family when I was involved.’

‘Explain that,’ demanded Schumann.

‘There’d been another meeting, before. Just Silin.’

‘Who with?’

‘The people he knows.’

There was a sharp spurt of pain in Charlie’s feet at the first-time thought that Kirs had been even more of a decoy that he’d imagined, up until now. ‘Who are these people?’

Mitrov grimaced. ‘Who do you think?’

‘I don’t want to think. I want you to tell me.’

‘Militia.’

‘Who?’

‘I don’t know. No one knows. Only Silin. That’s how it works. Just him and them.’

‘ Them!’ seized Charlie. ‘One person? Or several?’

‘Several. I don’t know how many. All Militia are crooked.’

‘The Dolgoprudnaya are established here, in Berlin?’

There was another wary hesitation. ‘Yes.’

Although he knew the answer, Charlie said, ‘Where else, in Russia?’

‘St Petersburg.’

‘So where are these special Militia people? In Moscow? Or outside?’

‘Moscow, definitely.’

‘Why definitely?’

‘The meetings are so easy. Any uncertainties can be resolved at once, which they couldn’t be if the dealings were with people outside Moscow.’

‘What rank?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Names?’ came in Schumann.

There was a snort of derision from the Russian. ‘There are never names.’

‘You’re a corps commander?’

Mitrov paused. ‘Yes.’

‘Who was the other corps commander, at Pizhrna?’

‘Malin.’

‘Full name,’ demanded Schumann.

‘PetrGavrilovich.’

‘He’s got ten men with him?’ established Charlie, calculating from the satellite photographs.

‘I suppose so.’

‘And ten canisters?’

‘Yes.’

‘Where are they? What route are they taking?’

The man shook his head. ‘You’re too late.’

‘Why are we too late?’ asked the German.

‘They went full south, through the Ukraine.’

‘ Full south?’ questioned Charlie, curious at the phrase.

‘The Black Sea,’ said Mitrov.

‘For simple, quick land access to anywhere in the Middle East after a short voyage,’ accepted Schumann, more to himself than to the other two. ‘When?’

‘Five days ago. Out of Odessa.’

There was no way of knowing whether each canister was full, calculated Charlie, sickened. If they were, as much as a hundred kilos had been lost: twenty bombs, eighty thousand dead. ‘Who were your buyers to be?’

‘I don’t know. I wasn’t part of that. It was arranged here, in Berlin. By our people here.’

‘In Marzahn?’

‘KulmseeStrasse. Number 15,’ smiled Mitrov. ‘You’ll be wasting your time. They’ll have cleared out days ago. They were due at Cottbus the day we were picked up: you missed them by being four or five hours too early!’

‘Who do you think the buyers were?’ pressed Schumann.

Mitrov shrugged. ‘Middle East. Who else?’

‘How did the Pizhma planning come about?’ demanded Charlie.

‘I don’t understand.’

‘What happened first? Did Silin suddenly announce you were going to rob a nuclear train? Or did he say there was going to be a robbery at a nuclear plant that he’d decided to take advantage of?’

Mitrov thought for several moments. ‘He said we were going to rob a train. Then he talked of the Kirs robbery.’

‘He specifically mentioned Kirs!’ pounced Charlie.

‘Yes.’

‘And talked about both robberies at the same meeting?’

Mitrov shook his head. ‘Different times. Pizhma, at first. Then Kirs later.’

All this time! thought Charlie, anguished. All this time they’d not just been going around in circles but revolving in the opposite direction from that in which they should have been going even to half-understand what was happening. How much did he have to change his privately formulated opinion of how it had all been organized? Not much. He was sure now he was looking in the right direction.

Satisfied with what he’d learned, Charlie let Schumann conclude that day’s session and shared the ritual celebration drink with the German before relaying the day’s events to Rupert Dean through the quasi-embassy facilities being set up in preparation for the full diplomatic transfer from Bonn. The Director-General asked hopefully if there could be any doubt about the ten containers getting to some unknown destination and Charlie said he didn’t think so and agreed with Dean they had the sort of disaster they’d feared. London was providing Moscow with a daily transcript to support their sting operation approach as well as advising Washington, but Charlie kept in daily personal touch with Kestler.

Before he could start that night the younger American said, ‘The big gangs are at war here! Name who just got whacked!’

‘Stanislav Georgevich Silin, the head of the Dolgoprudnaya Family,’ said Charlie.

It was a long time before Kestler spoke. ‘How the fuck did you guess?’

‘I’m psychic,’ said Charlie. After he replaced the receiver he said to himself, ‘I hope you’re not in over your head this time, Charlie my son.’

Natalia made Aleksai a drink and didn’t invite him to share in Sasha’s bath-time, which he usually did automatically, instead leaving him alone while she settled the child for the night. The assessment of the German investigation had taken a full day and been subdued throughout. There had been no open criticism of anyone because none was justified, but Natalia suspected Aleksai felt crushed by the German success. And not just German success: Charlie’s success. Which wasn’t confined to Berlin. The final decision of the day, greatly influenced by Germany, had been to accept, although with stringent Moscow-governing restrictions, the British proposal to attempt an entrapment operation in the hope of blocking such a robbery in the future.

Natalia waited until Sasha was dozing before returning to the main room. Unasked, she made Popov another drink and poured wine for herself.

‘Do you want anything to eat?’

‘No.’

‘What then?’

‘Nothing.’

‘It wasn’t a disaster!’ she declared. ‘There was nothing more you could have done.’

‘I could have listened more to the Englishman.’

The admission surprised Natalia. ‘The only obvious failures were my examination of Shelapin.’

‘At least you’ll be spared his court accusations of attempted extortion.’ There had been brief but serious consideration of proceeding against Shelapin anyway, to smash a known Mafia ring; it had only ended when Natalia pointed out a fabricated prosecution was impossible – apart from being illegal – because of the evidence that would emerge at the German hearings.

‘His release – and Agayans’ murder – still reflect on me.’ In any detailed examination of personal failure she had far more to be depressed about than Aleksai.

‘It’s over!’ said Popov. ‘Everyone is now busy making their excuses for what they did or didn’t do to prevent enough plutonium getting out of Russia to start a full-scale war. And we’re at the bottom of the pile, getting all their dirt dumped on us.’

‘Me more than you,’ accepted Natalia, her mind still held by the Shelapin debacle.

Popov came forward on his chair, to face her more directly. ‘Isn’t it about time you made your decision? I’ve given you all the time you asked for. It’s time you told me whether you want to marry me or not.’

‘I know,’ said Natalia. ‘I…’ She physically jumped at the telephone’s ring, hurrying to it: it was more than likely Charlie was back.

The shock was so great and so complete that speech went from her: she gave a half whimper, half scream, holding the receiver away in horror. Popov leaped up, snatching it from her, shouting ‘Hello! hello!’ and then remaining with it limply in his hand.

‘Dead,’ he said. ‘There’s nobody there.’

‘A man,’ groped Natalia, the words croaking out in disbelief. ‘He said to keep my face out. He said if I didn’t Sasha wouldn’t have a face. She wouldn’t die but when they’d finished she wouldn’t have a face.’

And then Natalia screamed, hysterically.

A barbuska, making her way home close to the Arbat, also screamed hysterically when she looked into the oddly parked Mercedes in the hope of finding something to steal and discovered instead the bodies of Stanislav Silin and his wife. Both had been roped into their seats, as if setting out for a Sunday drive in the country.