Bomb Grade

chapter 31

T he threat against Sasha changed everything. Charlie’s personal feelings became professional now, in a seething mix. Throughout a lifetime of utter disregard to morality, populated by coldly unemotional killers and entrapment experts and out-and-out bastards who wallowed in the pleasure of being out-and-out bastards, the cardinal, self-preserving rule of Charles Edward Muffin, a man who acknowledged no religion, had been that of the Old Testament. Charlie had, however, refined the life for a life, eye for an eye, wound for a wound precept to a very personal, far less verbose creed. Charlie’s lesson was that anyone who tried to fuck him got double-fucked in return: worse, if it were possible. He’d wrecked the careers of the British and American intelligence directors who tried to sacrifice him. And – as emotionlessly as the professional killers he always managed to run away from – he’d personally booby-trapped the escape aircraft of the CIA assassins who’d killed Edith. And felt unrepentant satisfaction as the plane disintegrated into a red and yellow fireball.

Now it was happening again. But not a physical attack upon him. The threat of one upon Sasha. Whoever it was had made a terrible mistake involving a baby – his baby – who shouldn’t have been part of anything. The panic it indicated didn’t matter. They’d done it. So they’d suffer. They didn’t know that yet. But they would, because their knowing was part of the retribution. From the moment of Natalia’s babbled story, at the botanical gardens again, Charlie’s planned entrapment became a totally dedicated, totally personal, totally private exercise to go beyond discovering fresh smuggling attempts to find out who’d threatened his child. And then to make them regret the very day they’d come screaming into the world, which was the way Charlie intended them to leave it.

Even more than before the botanical gardens were obvious because of their closeness to Sasha’s creche. It was the day after his return to Moscow and at Natalia’s summons, and he’d never known her so distraught, not even when he’d told her he was returning to London after his phoney defection, because then they’d made their reconciliation plans he hadn’t fulfilled. Natalia was dishevelled and physically shaking, ague-like, unable at the beginning to hold a consecutive thought or a cohesive conversation. Although the shaking wasn’t because of the cold he led her into the hothouse and sat her down there and tried to calm her and in the end let the account come when and how she wanted to tell it.

The words were staccato, stopping and starting, broken sometimes by near sobs. It took Charlie’s a long time to get the actual telephone warning and in the end he wasn’t sure he had because Natalia was close to blanking it from her memory. And even longer for him fully to understand the precautions. Sasha was protected at all times at the creche by a woman officer from the Interior Ministry’s security section, in constant radio contact with a central control room. Natalia no longer delivered or collected her personally: they were driven by an armed chauffeur, always accompanied by an armed escort vehicle. A security check had been run on all the parents of the other children, particularly new arrivals, and upon all staff. There were two Militia cars permanently stationed at the front and rear of the building. There was also twenty-four-hour Militia protection and surveillance at Leninskaya and a respond-at-once telephone monitor had been imposed, which was why she’d called him from the ministry and why there couldn’t be any more direct contact between them from her apartment.

‘Why now?’ she demanded, anguished. ‘It’s over!’

‘And why you?’ echoed Charlie, reflectively.

‘I’ve been through that. With Aleksai. And the security people. I was named, during the enquiry. Moscow News and Izvestia identified me as the division director and the person in charge of interrogation. And it was said Agayans died under interrogation. And everyone from the President down is still listed in the telephone book – if you can obtain a telephone book – like it was in the old days.’

‘What about Shelapin? He’s the most likely.’

‘Aleksai had him rearrested. He denied knowing anything about it. Said he didn’t fight kids. He and his people are being kept under surveillance. And know it.’

‘The Agayans group then? Their man died.’

‘The same. Total denials. Surveillance there, too.’ Natalia was regaining control although she was wringing her hands in her lap. ‘Whoever it was knew you had a daughter.’

‘No one can explain that.’

Charlie wasn’t prepared to try, not yet, although he thought he could: the threat against Sasha had hardened a lot of the beliefs with which he’d returned from Berlin. ‘They’d rung off, when Popov took the phone?’

‘Yes.’

‘What about the voice?’

‘A man.’

‘You can guess ages from voices.’

Natalia shook her head. ‘I wasn’t rational, Charlie! He said Sasha was going to lose her face!’

Charlie was aloof, icily calm, all emotions suspended. ‘Accent?’

‘Russian.’

‘Not a republic? Or a region?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘I don’t want what you think! I want what you know!’ he said, brutally.

‘Russian.’ She wasn’t sure.

‘Disguised?’

‘I think so. It was distant, as if he were standing away from the mouthpiece. Or had something over it.’

‘A private phone? Or did coins drop?’

‘No coins dropped. I’ve been through all this!’

‘Go through it again, for me. Did he refer to you by name?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘You can’t remember?’

‘Not really.’

‘What can you remember?’

‘Only about her face!’

She was tilting back towards hysteria. ‘How were the words said?’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘All at once, without a pause: as if they were written down or rehearsed? Or with pauses, as if he was waiting for you to say something?’

‘All at once.’

Getting there, thought Charlie. ‘How?’ he repeated. ‘Quickly: hurried? Or slowly? Measured?’

She nodded at his choice of definitions. ‘Measured.’

‘As if he was reading from something written down?’

Natalia frowned at the question. ‘He could have been reading it, I suppose. No one asked me that before. Is it important?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe. What about background, from his end? Any noises?’

‘No.’

‘Sure?’

‘No, I’m not sure! I thought it might be you. I wasn’t listening for noises in the background. Then when he started to talk I wasn’t thinking about anything!’

‘A lot of people were upset – destroyed even – by the investigation,’ he tried, uncomfortable with the effort as he made it. ‘It could be empty harassment.’

‘I’m going to quit, Charlie!’ she announced. ‘I thought the job was the way to protect Sasha, but it’s not, not any more. It’s made her a target. I certainly don’t need the money and Aleksai’s asked me again to marry him. He’ll look after us: protect Sasha.’

‘I don’t think Sasha will actually be attacked.’

She frowned along the bench at him. ‘You can’t say that!’

‘It was obvious that protection would be put into place. At once. If they’d seriously intended to hurt her they’d have attacked her first. You wouldn’t have been given a warning. Sasha’s disfigurement would have been the warning.’

‘You really believe that?’ she demanded again.

No, he thought. ‘Yes,’ he said.

‘It’s over now, with the German arrests. We know what was lost.’ She was recovering, the words slow and considered.

‘Yes.’ Charlie said, doubtfully.

‘There’s no need for our arrangement, not any more.’

‘She’s my daughter!’

Natalia bit her lip. ‘I meant about work.’

‘What do you mean?’ he demanded.

‘I’m frightened, Charlie. Terribly frightened. I can’t afford to make a single mistake. About anything. It would be a mistake for us to go on like this, behind Aleksai’s back. Even though there’s nothing in it. It’s still cheating him. Which isn’t fair. He’s a good man. He loves me.’

He wasn’t totally sure she’d lost all feeling for him, although perhaps love was hoping too much, but he definitely couldn’t lose the special contact: it was more important now than ever. How far could he go to convince her? Hardly any way at all. Too much was still conjecture, sufficient for him but not enough to convince anyone else. ‘There still might be more to learn about Pizhma and Kirs Charlie hesitated as the thought came to him, despising himself for considering it but knowing he was going to use it just the same. ‘That’s why the threat came against Sasha. I don’t think she’ll be attacked but I can’t be sure. How long do you want Sasha going to school in an armoured convoy? One year? Two? Until she goes to high school? It doesn’t matter if you quit. Aleksai will still be where he is: maybe he’ll even be promoted, into your job. He’d be their danger then, not you. And Sasha will be his weakness: his pressure.’

Natalia regarded him blankly, wide-eyed. ‘What can I do?’

‘Go on helping me!’

‘… But you’re moving on from Pizhma? This entrapment idea…’

‘It’s through the entrapment that I might be able to understand what happened at Pizhma. And at Kirs.’

‘How? I don’t follow…’

‘Fedor Mitrov, the Dolgoprudnaya man,’ half lied Charlie. ‘The Germans have agreed a deal, in return for his guiding me to the right people here in Moscow.’

‘The Militia are adamant Silin died in a gang battle. Died grotesquely… and his wife.’ She shuddered.

‘He was killed because he knew who the Kirs and Pizhma organizers were. And who the customers were, for what was stolen.’

Natalia held his eyes for several moments. ‘Are you being completely honest with me? Completely honest about Sasha’s life?’

‘Yes,’ said Charlie, meeting her gaze.

‘Dear God, it must end soon!’ said Natalia, despairingly.

‘Yes,’ agreed Charlie. ‘Very soon. Will you go on helping?’

‘What choice do I have?’

Hillary moved into Lesnaya the same week with three suitcases, a poster of Robert Frost (‘the best American poet ever’) and a long-lashed rabbit doll whose name – Lysistrata – she insisted was only a joke. Charlie said he was glad because he had a lot of fighting still to do, which prompted Hillary to doubt she had any function left: the German business seemed to have wrapped everything up and Washington had barred her from seeking participation before that. She was expecting a recall any day and was surprised it hadn’t already come: it was over a week since she’d sent her complete analysis of how much plutonium 239 there would have been in the lost ten containers and what its bomb-making capability would have been. She’d guessed at twenty-five bombs, possibly twenty-seven of warhead size. Another guess, based largely on previous German interceptions, was that the material could have fetched as much as $25,000,000. Hillary’s withdrawal remark reminded Charlie to ask Rupert Dean to press Washington to let her remain in Moscow. The Director-General guaranteed at once that it wouldn’t be a problem, which it didn’t turn out to be. And that despite Hillary’s warning that the US Head of Chancellery had protested it was unthinkable she move in with him at Lesnaya, which she hadn’t made any secret of doing because she hadn’t seen why she should. They both agreed that Heads of Chancellery were universal pains in the ass.

Charlie didn’t expect the casual reaction from Lyneham and Kestler to Hillary’s change of address. Lyneham begrudgingly handed over the money he’d lost betting against the sting acceptance and said he would have moved in with Charlie rather than live in the compound shithole if he’d known rooms were available. Kestler said Charlie was a lucky son-of-a-bitch. Lyneham also said it was the biggest scandal inside the embassy for years and Hillary had balls. He’d had to tell Washington, because she was attached to his Bureau office, but there hadn’t been a headquarters protest, which was something else Charlie hadn’t expected.

Charlie personally received formal Russian approval two days later from Dmitri Fomin. The presidential aide used the officially presented London proposal as their discussion paper. Apart from Fomin Charlie faced a familiar five; Badim and Panin from their respective ministries, Popov and Gusev and the taller of the two spetznaz commanders, whose rank and name finally emerged to be General Nikolai Bykov and whose antipathy to the entire project remained as hostile as it had been to everything else involving Westerners. Fomin did virtually all of the talking and Charlie was curious how many preparatory discussions there had been. Several, he guessed, from Fomin’s monologue. He was to attempt nothing without consultation. He would be allowed plainclothed spetznaz protectors and chauffeurs, despite which Russia would not be held responsible for his personal safety in any circumstances whatsoever. Office staff would be supplied by the Militia. Colonel Popov, his already established liaison, would be the conduit through whom he had to work, assisted by Colonel Gusev. No information was to be disseminated in advance of his fully advising either Colonels Popov or Gusev. The entire cost had fully to be borne by London. The experiment would be under permanent review and liable to cancellation, without consultation with him or London, whenever and however Moscow deemed fit. He could not personally be armed.

Charlie had expected constraints every bit as restrictive and would even have been unsure if they hadn’t been. The function of every Russian assigned to him would be to spy upon him first and protect him second. The great uncertainty would be if any would be on a Mafia payroll: being appointed from this level made it unlikely, but he’d have to be careful. There was no reference at all to the Pizhma robbery or the Berlin debriefings, which Charlie thought petulant but hardly surprising, even though they had to accept there was little chance now of getting anything more back. And with Fomin clearly in charge, the failure to review the German information with the very person who’d obtained a major proportion of it had to be his decision. Popov remained blank-faced, like everyone else, but at the formal end of the meeting said he was looking forward to resuming their cooperation – the most immediate and important of which was fully to dicuss Germany – and hoped it would be productive. And on a better footing than in the recent past. He considered their disagreements a clash of professionalism and hoped Charlie thought of them that way too. Charlie said he felt exactly the same way and wondered if Popov would relay the conversation to Natalia. Both Popov and the Mililtia commander readily supplied out-of-office contact numbers.

Charlie’s first move, the following day, was to ask the now readily available Popov for a foreign car outlet the Militia suspected to be controlled by a major Mafia Family. The two-day delay in Popov’s reply gave Charlie time to draw $150,000, in cash, from a bulging-eyed Peter Potter. The dark blue BMW 700 it later took Balg and the Bundeskriminalamt a fortnight to identify, from the engine and chassis number, as having been stolen from the car park at Frankfurt airport, cost Charlie $70,000 from a salesroom on Ugreshskaya that Popov told him was run by the Dolgoprudnaya. The car purchase was his first use of Special Forces bodyguards, both of whom clearly regarded it as an assignment of a lifetime. They insisted on army security, identifying themselves only by their given names and patronymic. Boris Denisovich, the driver, was a dark-haired native-born Georgian with a tattoo on the lobes of both ears and Viktor Ivanovich was blond and raw-boned and smiled a lot, as if he couldn’t believe his luck, which he probably couldn’t. Remembering his first-thought requirement, Charlie acknowledged that each could have knocked shit out of him, but more importantly out of anyone else. Hillary came with him to buy the car and both Russians openly – although not offensively – appraised her and Hillary played up to it. The Russians, in their turn, performed their part perfectly in the salesroom. Boris expertly examined the car and insisted upon giving everyone a test drive, at one stage at 120 kilometres an hour along the inner ring road with a fitting Mafia disregard to speed limits or the law. Viktor remained tight to Charlie’s shoulder when Charlie opened the attache case in which the dollars were set out in elastic-banded bricks and carelessly tossed the purchase price, without haggling, to the gap-mouthed sales director. Charlie left the case open, with the rest of the money displayed, while he talked of setting himself up in business and possibly needing more cars and took both their cards with the promise to be in touch.

Charlie took an expansive office suite on the third floor of a block on Dubrovskaya – because he was assured by the Moscow Militia’s Colonel Gusev the street was in the very heart of Dolgoprudnaya territory – again paying the deposit and six months’ rental from his dollar-packed briefcase. He furnished it expensively in Finnish pine and large-leaf potted plants and pre-revolutionary Russian prints and transferred a lot of the embassy booze from Lesnaya to create a bar. He also installed an extensive range of closed-circuit television with freeze-frame and record capacity. The secretary Popov supplied was a dark-haired, doe-eyed girl named Ludmilla Ustenkov. Hillary was at Dubrovskaya when Ludmilla arrived and said if Charlie touched the girl’s ass she’d have his and when Charlie looked surprised said she was only playing her part, which she thought she had to do.

That night, more seriously, she said, ‘This isn’t a game, is it Charlie?’

‘No,’ he said, matching her solemnity.

‘Should I be frightened?’

‘Aren’t you?’

‘Not yet. But I was that night at the club. So I guess I am going to be.’

‘I’ll keep you out of it. I’ll need your help if we get close to anything nuclear, but I won’t let you get into any danger.’ It was, Charlie knew, a promise he couldn’t keep, but he was determined to try as hard as he could.

‘You seem to be in an awful hurry.’

‘I am,’ he admitted. He was ready. It had taken just two weeks.

On the day Charlie moved in to Dubrovskaya the Russian Foreign Ministry issued a formal statement regretting that at least one hundred kilos of weapons-graded nuclear material appeared to have been smuggled out of the country. It was hardly more than confirmation of the speculation that had continued since the German seizure, but it was the first official response and led to fresh media frenzy.

Things went on happening quickly, although not at the level or pace that Charlie really wanted. It began within two days of his advertising himself as an import-export specialist across a range of leading Moscow newspapers and magazines and proved the need for the three additional spetznaz the increasingly amicable Popov drafted into the Dubrovskaya office.

The ground-floor surveillance camera caught the three men entering, so Charlie was half prepared when they thrust into the outer office, told Ludmilla they didn’t need an appointment and swaggered into where Charlie sat, now waiting. Their spokesman was a small, wiry man with sleeked-back, jet black hair and the swarthy complexion of a southerner, Georgian and Azeri perhaps. The heavies were just that, both hard Slavic-featured, each over two metres tall and thick-bodied and Charlie felt a jump of apprehension even though his three minders who would have already been alerted by Ludmilla were only the press of an alarm button away.

The approach was unadulterated Hollywood, which would have been amusing had Charlie not been sure each of the three would quite happily maim him at least or kill him at worst or do either if they simply felt like it. The small man said he represented an association that welcomed new enterprise to the district and actually used the word ‘insurance’ when he talked about the essentials of assured business success. With a message of his own to convey, Charlie offered drinks, which they accepted, and had a Macallan himself because he needed it. He personally arranged the chairs in the best position for the cameras and for the added advantage that sitting they would be at an initial disadvantage for what was to follow. Even so he wished the desk was broader when he retreated behind it. He was glad his hand wasn’t shaking when he sipped the whisky.

The terms, the wiry man explained, were reasonable and fair. They wanted ten per cent of his turnover – not profit – and would expect regularly to examine all books to make sure there was a sound and proper understanding between them. When Charlie protested that sounded like a takeover the spokesman said the benefits included a guarantee against airport pilfering, loss of consignments and interference by any of the gangs he was sure Charlie had heard about and which made business so difficult in Russia. The smiles faltered when Charlie said he had indeed heard about such gangs and asked, with smiling politeness of his own, which Family they were from. The no-longer-relaxed spokesman hoped there wasn’t going to be a difficulty and Charlie hoped so, too: he didn’t intend paying protection to anyone for anything and he wanted them not just to understand it themselves but for the people who’d sent them to understand it, as well. He pressed the summons button as he made the announcement, which was fortunate because both the heavies were rising to the smaller man’s gesture when the spetznaz came into the room.

They did it so quietly and so calmly that they were actually there – led by Viktor Ivanovich – before the extortionists fully realized it. One was trying to draw a handgun from his rear waistband at the same time as coming to his feet when he was kicked fully in the groin and went down retching. His companion made the mistake of going for a weapon, too, so that his arm was inside his jacket when it was seized and expertly yanked sideways and then down over an extended knee. It broke with a snap loud enough to hear. The small man’s gun exploded harmlessly into the floor when it was deflected downwards and then heel-handed from his grasp in a chopping blow that broke his wrist and Charlie, dry-throated, managed; ‘I want him to take the message back.’ The man was howling in pain, holding his shattered wrist, and the soldier who disarmed him slapped open-handed across the man’s face until his nose poured blood and his lips split and visibly began to swell before Charlie realized the misunderstanding and stopped the pummelling. The broken-armed man groped again for a gun and at Charlie’s nod had his second arm broken, and the commando who’d brought the retching man down stomped on his clenched, outstretched right hand, crushing all the fingers and the hand itself. More kicks broke ribs. Charlie said, ‘Enough!’ and motioned for all three to be hauled back into the chairs in which he’d originally sat them. He had them searched and all the money they carried displayed in front of them, which he explained was to repair the mess they’d made. Charlie confiscated a knife as well as the handguns. He told the man whose lips were too swollen to respond to tell – when he could – whoever had sent them that any deal was on his terms, not theirs. This had been a lesson; another extortion attempt – any pressure at all – would end in their being hurt far worse. Charlie managed it – just – without his voice cracking, which he was frightened it would. He was still shit scared – literally – his stomach in turmoil. He walked tight-assed ahead of their escort down to the ground level and out into Dubrovskaya and their waiting Mercedes. While two of the spetznaz manhandled them into the vehicle – the broken-handed man only just the most able to drive – Viktor Ivanovich used one of the confiscated Markarovs to smash in the light clusters, front and rear, and all the side windows.

Charlie didn’t tell Hillary, that night or two nights later when a Jaguar and another Mercedes tried to pincer his BMW into the major traffic island where Gorkiy Street reaches Red Square and which Boris Denisovitch prevented by grinding the BMW even harder into the Jaguar, forcing it on to the pavement near the Lenin library and bringing the Mercedes with them so that it was the Mercedes that smashed into the traffic island. Viktor Ivanovich, beside Charlie in the rear, put three shots from his Walther into the body of the Mercedes, but failed to explode the petrol tank, which was what he tried to do.

They didn’t stop, despite the buckled and punctured rear wheel which very quickly stripped its rubber to the bare rim metal and screeched sparks all the way back to the Ugreshskaya salesroom. Charlie bought the replacement BMW, with cash again, the following day, after drawing another $100,000 from the speechless embassy finance officer. Charlie told Hillary the first car had been wrecked in a hit-and-run crash while it was parked off Dubrovskaya. She said she preferred the white colour of the new one, which again from the chassis and engine number the Bundeskriminalamt traced, with some irony, to having been stolen in Berlin from the small car park opposite the Kempinski where Charlie had stayed five weeks earlier.

From the freeze frames from the video, the small, dark-skinned man was identified as an Azeri named Pavel Suntsov, whom Moscow Central Militia listed as a small-time pimp working prostitution and pornography for the Dolgoprudnaya. The two thugs weren’t on record.

The identification was provided by Petr Gusev at a progress meeting convened by Popov at the Interior Ministry, which Charlie took an hour to reach using all the surveillance-avoiding tradecraft he’d never imagined having to employ again but which he did, with nostalgia, to arrive convinced he’d lost the two men clumsily obvious outside the Dubrovskaya office. Gusev suggested posting protective Militia close to the building, even though Charlie’s office was on the third floor and difficult to reach when the block was closed for the night. Three nights later a Militia street patrol disturbed an attempt to torch the whole building. None of the would-be arsonists was caught. As a further precaution Charlie took a ground-floor apartment at Lesnaya and moved Boris Denisovich and Viktor Ivanovich in permanently. There was no attempt to get into the building but the second BMW, which had to be parked in the street, was burned out. Charlie bought a third, stolen like the other two, at what he considered a bargain at $50,000. He referred Gerald Williams’ appalled protest to the Director-General.

A week later a uniformed man who identified himself as the lieutenant in charge of the Militia post responsible for keeping law and order in the area arrived at Dubrovskaya with two street patrolmen and said he hoped Charlie was satisfied with the service he was receiving. They drank Macallan again and after half an hour Charlie agreed to a weekly $400 which the lieutenant said he would collect personally, every Friday, which he did. A tight-lipped and flushed Petr Gusev named the officer from the freeze frame as Nikolai Ranov, whom he’d considered honest and whom he’d considered promoting.

Charlie sent a short list of questions with the freeze-frame copies to Berlin, through Balg, and within days got back more than he’d bargained for from Gunther Schumann. Four of the six seized plutonium containers had been empty when checked by German scientists and the markings weren’t consecutive with the stolen Pizhma batch numbers. Fedor Mitrov couldn’t – or wouldn’t – explain it. It did nothing to diminish the case against the arrested Russians, whose trial was being fixed for November. The formal witnesses list hadn’t been prepared yet but it was a foregone conclusion he would be called, which Charlie accepted as his deadline: he wouldn’t be able to run his phoney set-up after his court identification.

Mitrov named all the men in Charlie’s photographs. Suntsov had graduated from pimp to corps leader and the Dolgoprudnaya regarded Lieutenant Ranov as one of the best and most reliable Militia officers on their payroll. The Dolgoprudnaya owned the Ugreshnaya garage. Schumann’s message ended with the assurance that he’d kept Silin’s assassination from the Russians, as Charlie had suggested before leaving Berlin, but asking again what the point was. Charlie said he hoped it might fit in with something he was investigating in Moscow, although he didn’t tell the German what he’d learned from what he’d got from Natalia after his return from interrogating the arrested Russians, because he still didn’t understand the significance himself.

By coincidence, the same day, several Moscow newspapers reported the shotgun murder by the river of a known Moscow gangster named Petr Gavrilovich Malin. Every account said the Militia considered him the victim of a gangland feud. Gusev provided what he said was the full file on the killing of the man whom Mitrov had identified as the successful courier of the lost ten containers. Gusev did so with the warning that upon Dmitri Fomin’s orders, the dead man was not going to be connected with the Pizhma robbery in any public statement. As far as they were concerned the killing was a gangland dispute and would not be solved, like such disputes never were: they wanted nothing official to reignite the publicity over the Pizhma theft. Through Balg again, Charlie relayed it all to Berlin, but again suggested Schumann keep it from the nuclear smugglers and was glad he did after his next conversation with Natalia.

The advertisements produced more than sufficient business to occupy the now permanently guarded Ludmilla Ustenkov. Charlie accepted what he hoped was questionable and rejected those that were clearly honest, which only amounted to about six enquiries. With London the supplier and buyer, he traded cut-price IBM computers, German refrigerators, five Jaguar and Rover cars and Russian icons, triptychs and a case of semi-precious stones which, upon analysis, weren’t even semi-precious: to fuel the legend he wanted to create Charlie told Viktor Ivanovich to rough the con man up if he tried to repeat the scam, which the man did. Charlie hadn’t intended the man’s nose to be broken. Or that he be forced to eat some of the worthless glass, either, which ripped his bowel when he passed it. Charlie actually made a profit – his only one – importing supposedly stolen computer chips to update American and German hardware, but a second consignment of computers was intercepted at Sheremet’yevo and all their screens smashed before Charlie got to the airport to collect them. That Friday Charlie served a second whisky to Ranov when the Militia officer arrived for his $400 and complained that no one benefited from the sort of skirmishes that had ruined his computer shipment. A lot of money – money that could improve the sort of retainers that Ranov was getting, for instance – could be made if instead of resenting his independence, people traded with him. He only wished he could get the message through to them. Ranov thought it was wastefully counter-productive, too, and wished there was something he could do to help.

Charlie strictly limited his visits to the British embassy and took even more avoidance care moving through Moscow’s metro system, sure he detected special interest around the Dubrovskaya office and once close to Lesnaya. Always awaiting him at Marisa Toreza were fresh demands for expenditure explanations from Gerald Williams, which settled into little more than the man placing on record against any future enquiry his efforts to impose the financial control always overruled by the Director-General. Towards the end of the second month, Charlie was showing an operating loss of $500,000.

Hillary was frightened by the destruction of the second BMW and at first titillated by the need always to have bodyguards, but a lot of the time she was bored.

She kept Lesnaya immaculate and by the end of their second week together had started turning it into a home, with flowers and prints and books and a music selection rather than the sort of rain-sheltering resting place to which Charlie was accustomed. He liked it. She was a superb cook and Charlie complained of putting on weight, which she promised to get off by her own particular exercise, which she practised every night with even more exciting improvisation than she showed in the kitchen. Charlie liked that, too. After specific warnings of how careful they had to be arriving and leaving, Charlie risked inviting to dinner Lyneham and his wife and Kestler with one of his embassy harem, which turned out very successfully, so they repeated it over succeeding weeks. On the first occasion, while the women gossiped and helped in the kitchen, Lyneham said the way things were going Charlie stood a real chance of being blown away and asked how much longer he intended standing with the target on his chest.

The vicarious novelty of always having bodyguards palled for both of them, although Hillary accepted the need, particularly when they flashily toured the clubs, which Charlie felt necessary every week. On their first visit under protection to the Up and Down they saw the group who had demanded Hillary join them and Charlie reversed the invitation, which was accepted. They sat for an hour with the respective guards posturing Rambo body language while Charlie ordered Roederer Crystal and exaggerated his business success to the hirsute bear of a man, pressing cards upon the Russian with the assurance that there was nothing in which he couldn’t, or wouldn’t, trade. Hillary complained on the way back to Lesnaya that her face ached from keeping an idiot, non-comprehending smile in place. And that the hairy man gave her the creeps.

During one of Lyneham’s visits, almost into the second month, Hillary abruptly asked the Bureau chief to find out from Washington how much longer she was expected to stay in Moscow, apologizing afterwards to Charlie for not mentioning it to him first, but saying it was a spur of the moment question. When the reply came that there were no withdrawal plans, Charlie said he’d understand if she wanted to move back to the protection of the embassy. Hillary kissed him and said that wasn’t the reason at all and if she had to stay in Moscow, Lesnaya was where she wanted to be and Charlie was surprised how pleased it made him feel.

Charlie had anticipated most of what had happened after the advertisements, although not perhaps the degree of violence. What he hadn’t anticipated was the open cooperation shown by Popov and Gusev. Over the course of several meetings at the Ministry, Charlie took both of them through the Berlin examination and at the end of the first month Popov announced both he and Gusev were going to the trial as observers if they weren’t called as witnesses. At Popov’s invitation they lunched in a private room in a discreet tavern up in the Lenin Hills and Gusev spent a lot of time discussing the Militia shake-down, producing personnel files not just of Nikolai Ranov but of the patrolmen involved, each of whom he promised to jail when the Dubrovskaya operation wound up. The bloody internal war among its six Families for supreme control of the Dolgoprudnaya was a constant subject of conversation: the death toll, after two months, was ten. It was at the lunch when Gusev produced that total that Popov made the obvious reference to the Lesnaya apartment, which Charlie let pass, imagining he’d misunderstood. He knew he hadn’t when Popov repeated even more pointedly his admiration of pre-revolutionary architecture, not enough of which remained to be enjoyed. He would, responded Charlie, very much like to host a dinner party. Popov, at once, said he would be very happy to accept.

Natalia’s contacts were intermittent, although always prearranged from the call that preceded it so Charlie could guarantee to be at Lesnaya. Apart from the Dolgoprudnaya request he had little professional to talk about so the conversation mostly revolved around Sasha. The continued protection was unsettling her; she’d started to wet the bed and was often sullen and rude. There hadn’t been any more threats and Aleksai was convinced – like the official security division – that it had been nothing more than a nuisance call from someone connected with Shelapin: there’d been a decision to harass the Family to the point of bringing Shelapin in for questioning on several occasions. She’d discussed resigning with Aleksai, who’d said it had to be her decision. She’d finally agreed to marry him, although no date had been fixed. Aleksai had agreed to it being in a church. Charlie lied that he hoped they would be happy.

Hillary prepared for the Russian dinner party with her usual enthusiasm, deciding upon all-American pot-roast with pumpkin pie for dessert as a meal that would be different for them, relieved when Charlie told her that Gusev spoke English almost as well as Popov. She said, coquettishly, that she was looking forward to seeing Popov again: that day at the Arbat she’d thought he was as sexy as hell.

Charlie hadn’t installed closed-circuit television at Lesnaya but the apartment bell was duplicated on the ground floor for Viktor Ivanovich to vet arrivals and Charlie had learned to time to the second how long it took people to climb the ornate and gilded stairway. Popov had just reached the outside landing when Charlie expectantly opened the door.

Petr Gusev wasn’t with him. Natalia was.

It took John Fenby a long time to acknowledge he wouldn’t quickly be able to keep the personal promise to even the score with the British Director-General. He didn’t know how or when and accepted it probably wouldn’t now involve Moscow – in fact Moscow was still so uncertain it was probably best if his retribution wasn’t connected with Russia at all – but sometime in the future he’d get his chance to screw Rupert Dean and the British service and when he did the Limey bastard was really going to know he’d been screwed. All it needed was patience. Much better, in fact, than hurrying it. This way he could savour it.

It didn’t mean, of course, that he was going to sit back and be dictated to. He was readily prepared to go along with the British insistence that the woman stay in Moscow, although there seemed little point now that they were sure half of the plutonium had been lost. Fcnby was quite happy for Hillary jamieson to be as far away from Pennsylvania Avenue as possible and had already asked his scientific director to headhunt for someone to replace her, even if the qualifications had to drop. Shacking up with the Englishman like the slut had done gave him cast-iron grounds for her dismissal.

Fenby’s preoccupation, as always, was with Kestler and Milton Fitzjohn and Fenby knew he had that all neatly wrapped up.

With his customary attention to detail, Fenby flew personally to Wiesbaden and then to Bonn after several fax and telephone exchanges preparing the way, to promise every FBI assistance at the trial of the nuclear smugglers, delighted how well it all fitted in when he learned how internationally high-profile the Germans intended to make it. Fenby’s strongest guarantee was that James Kestler would publicly appear to present all the American satellite evidence, which he was confident would provide one of the sensational highlights of the hearing.

After which he planned to bring Kestler home in the glory the publicity would achieve and in which the grateful Milton Fitzjohn would be delighted. He hadn’t decided whether to keep the kid at headquarters or to offer him one of the top-drawer embassy postings like London or Paris.