Bomb Grade

chapter 33

F rom the beginning Charlie had accepted the primary function of his two spetznaz minders was to ensure he worked within the operational strait-jacket imposed by Dmitri Fomin rather than to provide him with physical protection, just as Ludmilla Ustenkov doubtless monitored everything he did at Dubrovskaya even more effectively than Thomas Bowyer had watched over him at the British embassy. The only time Charlie couldn’t be constantly accompanied was when he went either to the British or American legations, which he used as the excuse to move unobserved the day after Nikolai Ranov’s surprise approach at Dubrovskaya. Charlie did so acknowledging he was taking the biggest chance yet in a situation already too dangerous and that if he’d miscalulated by a single jot – like he’d for too long miscalculated by a lot more – then he was dead. Maybe literally. He’d taken every precaution he could during the previous day’s conversation with Ranov to ensure he wasn’t shuffling blindly into a lesson-teaching reprisal for refusing the extortion, putting everything he’d learned from Gusev about the internal upheaval in the Dolgoprudnaya Family against what the crooked Militia lieutenant told him. And still felt like he was crossing a splintering plank stretched over a snake-pit.

He actually did go to the British embassy, ducking and diving from the metro to trolley and back to the metro again, and there was a message waiting for him from London. To the confirmation of his being officially called as a witness at the Berlin trial, Rupert Dean added that it would obviously mark the formal ending of Charlie’s entrapment attempt. Dean questioned whether it was necessary for Charlie to go to Berlin so early to review his participation in the debriefing of the Russians and Charlie said the request was all part of the German fanaticism for detail: the attempted sting didn’t seem to be working anyway. The trial date gave Charlie just over a month. Everything depended on the chance he was taking and the man he was supposedly meeting and of his not making just one mistake. His talisman feet had every justification for throbbing like they did, quite apart from all the scurrying to avoid anyone discovering where he was going.

He gave himself a full hour and worked even harder at the evasion when he left Morisa Toreza. As he finally went up towards the Bolshoi square he saw that the traffic island flattened by the attacking Mercedes still hadn’t been repaired, twisted metal and glass and bollards just roped off and lying where they’d fallen. He was still early at the Metropole, so he allowed himself a steadying drink before taking the elevator to the third floor and the room stipulated the previous day by Nikolai Ranov.

It was the smiling Militia lieutenant, sports-jacketed and open-collared, who answered the door and gestured for Charlie to enter, and as he did Charlie thought these room arrival shocks really had to stop. Relaxed in an armchair in a room furnished in Odeon-cinema style was the man who’d demanded Hillary’s company at the Up and Down and whom Charlie had taunted there with a reciprocal invitation a month earlier. Charlie was reassured that the man was smiling, too, although it could, he supposed, have been in triumph.

‘Sobelov. Sergei Petrovich,’ introduced the man. He flicked between his fingers the card Charlie had forced upon him and said; ‘I know who you are. And you came without your people.’

Which might just have been that miscalculation of his life, accepted Charlie, because Sobelov’s usual companions were both at a window seat, hunched like Dobermans waiting for the attack signal. Nodding to the lieutenant, Charlie said, ‘I was asked to come alone.’

‘I wanted a gesture of trust.’ The Russian swept an inviting hand towards a chair arranged to face him and said, ‘Please.’ There was a selection of bottles and glasses on the table between them.

‘But you’re not alone.’

‘I wanted my proof first.’ The man leaned forward to pour unasked and said, ‘Macallan’s, isn’t it? Or would you prefer Roederer?’

‘Whisky’s fine.’ It wasn’t a lesson-teaching, Charlie decided: not a violent one, at least. That would have been in a back alley, at night, after getting him alone, not in the grandest hotel in Moscow in broad daylight. He started to relax. Again indicating Ranov – who had gone to sit respectfully with the two protectors – Charlie said, ‘I was also told there was a special business proposition?’

The condescension went from Sobelov, with the smile. ‘Eight canisters. Something in the region of eighty kilos.’

Charlie cupped his glass in both hands and sipped his drink, not hurrying to reply, his mind in total confusion. Part of the Pizhma haul? Or another robbery, to learn of which was why he’d set himself up in business. The volume of plutonium was about right, but the rest of the equation didn’t make sense. But then neither did the four empty containers in Berlin. Different batch numbers, he remembered. That didn’t make sense, either. ‘Is this from the robbery there’s been all the publicity about?’

‘Yes.’

Excitement surged through Charlie. He didn’t understand why the figures didn’t add up or anything about empty containers in Berlin. Only that about eighty kilos they thought had gone – enough to make God knows how many bombs – was after all still in Russia, not in the hands of some madman or fanatical regime. He’d never been so glad in his life to be as wrong as he had been about it already having been smuggled out of the country. Cautiously, seeking time, Charlie said, ‘Eight canisters – eighty kilos – is a lot.’

‘And worth a lot of money.’

‘What would you expect?’

‘You’re the broker.’

‘Twenty million. Maybe as high as twenty-two,’ said Charlie, relying on Hillary’s valuation of ten containers.

‘I want $25,000,000,’ demanded the Russian.

‘I could try.’ The recovery was the essential, not the money. Which would never be paid anyway, although a proportion might have to be put up, for bait. Lost even.

‘You can guarantee a purchaser?’

‘It will need some negotiation. But yes, I can.’ This was wrong, Charlie told himself: against all his own arguments that a robbery as brilliant as Pizhma came after, not before a buyer had been established and a price fixed. As wrong as figures that didn’t add up when they knew exactly how much had been taken at Pizhma and empty containers and wrong batch numbers and… No it wasn’t, Charlie abruptly corrected himself. It wasn’t wrong at all. What had been wrong was his myopically believing the internal battle for ultimate control of the six-clan Dolgoprudnaya Family had begun after the murder of Stanislav Silin. He’d virtually had it spelled out for him by Gusev and not put it in context. And then he remembered a laugh and a word – akrashena – which he’d always known was important without properly realizing just how important. Charlie smiled and said, ‘I think I should have offered congratulations before now.’

Sobelov regarded him warily. ‘For what?’

‘It’s been a bloody battle. At least ten people killed if I’ve correctly interpreted newspaper stories.’

The Russian’s wariness remained. ‘That would show a most unusual business interest on your part.’

‘Isn’t the reason I’m sitting here, having this conversation, that I’ve already shown how seriously I regard business?’ said Charlie, easily.

The smile returned. ‘Which is how I expect you to conduct this business transaction: very seriously indeed. In the hope that it may be the first of many.’

‘I hope there aren’t any hard feelings about the confrontation with people asking me to take out operating insurance?’

Sobelov flicked an impatient hand, still holding Charlie’s business card. ‘None. And thank you, for your congratulations. I’m pleased at the outcome.’

Not as pleased as he was, Charlie thought, as he left the Metropole an hour later with the arrangement to use Ranov as his conduit to the new Dolgroprudnaya boss of bosses. It took a lot to suppress the euphoria but he managed it, zigzagging a circuitous route to Ulitza Chaykovskovo. At the American embassy he was greeted by an equally excited James Kestler with the news that he was going to be the major prosecution witness at the Berlin trial and after that return to Washington for reassignment. Charlie offered congratulations for the second time that day and said he was going to Berlin as well and at once the enthusiastic Kestler began planning celebrations in Germany. They contented themselves that day with a single drink in the embassy mess, because Charlie was anxious to be back in Lesnaya for Natalia’s arranged call. She flustered immediately into apologies for the dinner party. It had been something else Popov hadn’t told her, until the very moment of their arrival. They’d argued about it, particularly about the wedding invitation. She didn’t want him to come and Charlie said he didn’t want to, either. It wouldn’t be a problem. She said she thought Hillary was a very pretty girl: vivacious was the word she used. Charlie said she was a free spirit and that it wasn’t serious and Natalia said she was sorry. When he told her, in Russian because Hillary was with him in the room, that he was going to Berlin but before that to be briefed in London – which was the explanation he’d given the Americans for his intended absence – Natalia said Popov had received an official summons, too. Charlie wasn’t surprised when Hillary received her Berlin summons the following day because he’d pressed Balg for it to be issued, to give her the freedom of movement he wanted.

Charlie did fly to London but only to satisfy any Moscow exit check and only long enough to cross from the arrival to the departure section of Terminal 2, pausing on the way to telephone Gunther Schumann who was again at Tegel airport to meet him. The German conceded at once that he’d promised his superiors too much predicting they could break up the Dolgoprudnaya cell in Berlin – as Mitrov had sneered, the Marzahn address had been empty when they’d raided it – but that the forthcoming trial would more than compensate. And then he listened without interruption to what Charlie recounted before saying, ‘We have got the prints! Of all of them. But we didn’t make the comparison! So we just can’t lose!’

‘Providing they match,’ cautioned Charlie.

They did.

Again Charlie had come with a lot of confidence-shattering evidence – although he’d only just got the most shattering of all – and although he knew he could direct it more accurately than before there was no stage-set theatricals this time, just the bare and windowless interview room with its sparse essential furniture. The only addition was an extra tape recorder.

There was an eyebrow lift at Charlie’s presence when Ivan Mikhailovich Raina was escorted in but no other reaction. Charlie said, ‘You did very well: almost beat us. The others supported you well, too. I thought they’d totally collapsed but they hadn’t, had they? You must frighten them a lot.’

Raina frowned. ‘I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.’

‘Your faction lost,’ declared Charlie. ‘There’s been a lot of killing but Sobelov won.’

There was a brief narrowing of the eyes but that was all. ‘You’re still not making sense.’

‘Let’s look at some more photographs,’ invited Charlie, opening the prepared package. ‘This is the one that will interest you most…’ He set out first the autopsy prints of the naked Stanislav Silin. ‘He was obscenely tortured for a very long time: I’d guess the testicle crushing was the worst but you can see they pulled his teeth out, with pliers I’d guess. And the pathologist says he was blinded long before he died, probably with whatever the heated rod was that inflicted all those burns… And look what they did to his wife.’ The pictures of Malin were also from the autopsy. ‘See what they did to Petr Gavrilovich? They blinded him, too, but I don’t suppose he had the name they wanted. To almost separate the two parts of his body like that the pathologist thinks they actually held the shotgun against his stomach and fired both barrels simultaneously: the skin is burned all around the wound…’

Raina had gone putty grey and his throat was moving where he kept swallowing and Charlie hoped he’d be able to get out of the way if the man actually vomited.

‘… This one really affects you,’ Charlie went on, sliding across the table the German photographs of the empty nuclear cylinders: in several, scientists were actually shown to be groping inside. ‘Those are the ones you brought out. Which were completely empty and clean, otherwise those unprotected physicists wouldn’t be feeling around inside like that. I don’t know how the switch was made, any more than you do, but it was. I guess we’ll establish Sobelov was at Pizhma from the physical comparison against the satellite prints: that’s where it would have been done, at Pizhma.’

‘None of this means anything to me,’ rasped Raina, dry-throated.

‘Yes it does,’ insisted Charlie. ‘It means that Sobelov had you carry into Germany canisters that would have been empty when they eventually got to the Middle East or wherever else you were selling them. Which would have been your death warrant…’ He flicked across another photograph, of the emasculated con man found months before on the Wannsee Lake. ‘… They always kill people who try to con them, like they killed and mutilated him.’

Raina sat shaking his head but not talking and Charlie wondered if he should have been more direct. Still better to frighten the man, he decided. ‘Listen!’ Charlie ordered, pressing the play button on the second pre-set recorder. Mitrov’s reference to akrashena echoed into the room. At once Charlie stopped and rewound it but before repeating it he said, ‘This time don’t listen to the word: listen to the laugh. Your laugh, Ivan Mikhailovich. Your laugh because you thought the joke was funny and you wouldn’t have thought that unless you were part of the inner planning group and knew akrashena didn’t mean wet paint. And you were very much part of the inner planning group weren’t you…?’ Charlie groped unnecessarily for the Dolgoprudnaya list Natalia had supplied and which, until the tests that had been completed an hour earlier, Raina could have rebutted. Exaggerating, Charlie went on, ‘… But not in Moscow: you’re not on this list and it names every member of the Dolgoprudnaya ruling Commission…’ Break, you bastard, thought Charlie: he was dry-throated himself now from talking so long but he lgnored the water carafe, not wanting the Russian to infer desperation when there wasn’t any. ‘… There’s no record of Mitrov, either. And he’s a corps leader. Or of Dedov or Federov or Okulov. I know they’re just street people but there are a lot of street people here, as well. And you know why?’

‘Because there’s no such thing as a Militia Records system and that list is a load of crap, probably something you made up yourself,’ answered Raina, proving his knowledge of Militia inefficiency and lack of criminal intelligence.

Better, thought Charlie. He wanted Raina defiant. That way he’d drop further and more quickly when the trapdoor was sprung. ‘No,’ he said, positively. ‘It’s because none of you are part of Dolgoprudnaya in Moscow. You’re the group here, arranging all the deals. One of the most important links in the nuclear trade: the most important, as the Dolgroprudnaya are the biggest Russian Family. But which you didn’t want to come out because that’ll greatly influence the trial judges here, won’t it? And you and Mitrov aren’t shown to have killed anyone on the satellite film, are you?’

The putty look had gone and Raina had recovered from the shock of the murder photographs, the defiance growing. ‘You’re talking crap and you know it. I don’t know what you’re trying to achieve – I hardly understand a word you’re saying – but I can’t help you any more than I have.’

Charlie sniggered a self-deprecatory laugh. ‘There are so many wrong turns and outright mistakes in an investigation, until finally things slot into place. Like us spending all the first morning of his questioning playing the interrogation of you and the other three back to Mitrov, imagining it would bring an early confession – and then imagining that it did! – when what we were really doing was rehearsing him for what he had to say…’ Charlie poured himself some water at last, staging the interruption now. ‘And he was good: bloody good. But he made just one mistake and it’s turned out worse than ours. But then it wasn’t his fault entirely because he’d heard you name Marzahn as a district where the Dolgoprudnaya lived, so all he really did was pick up your bluff by naming KulmseeStrasse and the number and jeering that there wouldn’t be anyone there, which he knew like you knew that there wouldn’t be…’ Charlie extended his hand towards the Russian, his forefinger narrowed against his thumb. ‘And you came that close to getting away with it. The Germans took the place apart, did every forensic test there is, and collected enough fingerprints to fill a book. But no one thought of comparing them to yours or the others they already had in custody.’ He shook his head. ‘Like I said, there are so many mistakes that get made. We’ve corrected it, of course. Today. We’ve matched so many prints, of each of you to KulmseeStrasse – which Mitrov’s on record as identifying as the Dolgoprudnaya house – that the forensic technicians are complaining of overwork!’

‘Can I have some water, please,’ said Raina.

Once it started the confession flowed freely, like confessions usually do, and Charlie sat back for Schumann to take over, needing the respite and because it was a very necessary part of what would now become an even more extended and sensational trial and it would be necessary for the court evidence to be presented by a German investigator. He listened and dissected every word, though. Raina confirmed that he headed the Berlin cell and that he had been the link between the purchasers and the Dolgoprudnaya supply, not just on this failed occasion but five times before. Pizhma had been by far the greatest – he doubted the total amount of all the five previous shipments came anywhere close to two hundred and fifty kilos – and had been by far the most complicated. He didn’t know the details or the identities – a strict division was always maintained between Stanislav Silin organizing the supplies and his responsibility for their sale – but there’d been a lot of official help with the understanding of it continuing in the future. The dispute between Silin and Sergei Sobelov for supreme control of the Family had been going on for months, which was why Pizhma had been so important. Silin saw it as the way of proving to the six clans his right to be boss of bosses and fight off Sobelov’s challenge. Raina had thought it would confirm Silin’s position, too, which was why he’d remained loyal. It took a lot of pressure from the German to learn who the previous five purchasers had been, because Raina protested the names would obviously be false, although the government-issued passports would have been genuine because only governments could afford the money involved – a total, for the five earlier transactions, of $45,000,000. Schumann switched his demands and got the countries – two consignments to Iran, two to Iraq and one to Algeria – before eventually getting the names of the men with whom Raina had negotiated. Charlie re-entered the interrogation at that point.

‘So Silin didn’t know who your Pizhma customer was, here?’

‘No. He used to meet them, but only once and then there was never any names.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘They usually want to see what they’re buying. There’s a lot of cheating.’

‘So he didn’t know the identity of who brought the ten canisters that Malin took to Odessa?’

‘No.’

‘Did Malin know?’

The Russian shook his head. ‘He had to deliver them to an Iranian customs boat. I did the deal here, with the same man whose name I’ve already given you. It wasn’t possible this time to go to Moscow because we were shipping direct from Pizhma. This time he dealt with me on trust.’

‘What about payment?’

‘Eight million paid up front. It’s already in an account in Zurich. The remainder was to be paid upon successful delivery.’

‘You have signatory authority on the Zurich account?’ intruded Schumann.

‘Jointly, with Silin. It’s all lost now. And what we made before.’

‘We’ll get it,’ promised the eye-patched Schumann, more to himself than to the other two men in the room.

‘Sobelov should never have sacrificed you, should he?’ lured Charlie.

‘No,’ said Raina, viciously.

‘But then he didn’t know your full role?’

The Russian shook his head again. ‘It was just between Silin and me. We were related: proper family.’

‘Sobelov’s wrecked the Dolgoprudnaya, wouldn’t you say?’

‘Caused it a lot of damage,’ conceded Raina.

‘And put you in jail for the rest of your life?’

Raina did not reply.

‘Wouldn’t you like to bring him down? Destroy him, like he’s destroyed you and Silin and all the others?’

Something approaching a smile came to Raina’s face. ‘How?’

‘Tell me who your buyer was going to be here, for what you brought from Pizhma: who it was Mitrov phoned from Warsaw and who you were going from Cottbus to assure everything was all right, that you’d just been delayed. And tell me how to get to him: a way to introduce myself so he’ll think I’ve come from the Dolgoprudnaya.’