Bomb Grade

chapter 6

N ever before, not even when she’d faced the official enquiry into Charlie’s return to London, had Natalia needed the diamond-hard control necessary when her current lover announced the Moscow arrival of her previous lover she’d never expected to see or hear of again. But she managed it. Just. And not rigid-faced, which would have betrayed the effort, or with any shake to her hand or quaver in her voice. She even succeeded with the required indignation at their not having been consulted ahead of the Foreign Ministry agreement and promised to make a formal protest – which she later did, both for the record and because there should have been some discussion – at the discourtesy.

Paradoxically – in a situation of utter paradox – Natalia was actually helped to cover her inner confusion by the stunning unexpectedness of the announcement. Few of her daydreams had been like this, in the early months and years when she’d had fantasies and daydreams, before she’d locked Charlie Muffin away for ever in her memories. She’d expected a letter or a telephone call, a warning of some sort so she could prepare herself and have ready all the words and feelings and even the recriminations.

All of which she supposed she could still do.

Only the fact of Charlie’s assignment was a shock. It hadn’t been a personal, abrupt confrontation. She didn’t think – she knew – she couldn’t have handled that: the self-control was strained to the limit as it was. But now she could prepare herself, take everything at her speed, do everything as and how and when she wanted.

Did she want to meet him again, let him back into her life again as if all the hurt and pain had never happened? It had always been part of the day-dreaming that she did: that he would reappear and finally commit himself and that everything would have a happy ending, like the bedtime stories she told Sasha. But now the daydream could become a reality Natalia wasn’t sure any more. Charlie Muffin was in the past. She was with Aleksai Semenovich now. He was everything that her drunken husband and then Charlie hadn’t been and couldn’t be. Aleksai wanted to marry her but never pressured her, prepared to wait on her terms and for her decision. In the meantime he was a gentle and exciting lover who’d never failed her, either in or out of bed, and who genuinely did treat Sasha as if she were his own: it seemed quite natural, to him and to the child, that it was Aleksai who often read the bedtime story with the happy ending.

‘You should refuse to accept him,’ urged Popov.

Natalia hesitated, her mind divided by too many considerations. There was not the slightest risk of any personal involvement between herself and Charlie ever being discovered. One of Natalia’s first actions after her elevation to chairmanship of the First Chief Directorate of the now long-defunct KGB – from which she had been transferred to become one of four, department-specializing deputy directors in the re-formed Interior Ministry – had been to use her authority to retrieve and sanitize of every personal detail both her and Charlie’s files. And she probably could successfully protest even at this late stage to Charlie’s Moscow posting. Except that it was a very late stage: any objection now would have to be supported with the sort of reasons she didn’t want to present and which, years ago, she’d even obliterated from the records.

There was, however, no reason why she ever had to meet him. Inconceivable though it would be, she could simply avoid ever coming face to face with him. Unless, of course, she chose otherwise. She had the power and the position to do what she liked. She was a department head, so much higher above Charlie in stature and rank that if she didn’t want it to happen, they could remain in the same city for the rest of their lives without ever coming into contact.

Forcing herself at last to answer Popov’s question she said, ‘We need to think carefully about that.’ Not an answer, she told herself, ahead of Popov’s reply. She was letting him make the decision for her instead of deciding for herself. But how could she decide for herself? She needed time to think, like she’d always believed she would have had time to think.

‘OK, let’s do just that,’ he pressed. It was another indication of their familiarity that Popov moved freely about the office and didn’t sit or stand respectfully in front of her. He was at the window now, staring out over Ulitza Zhitnaya at the summer-defying grey day cloaking Moscow.

‘Where’s our advantage, in arguing against his coming here?’

‘He’s a spy! We could make sure his being sent back became public and cause an outcry about our Foreign Ministry accepting him.’

‘It’s obviously a political decision, taken at a high level. They could overrule our objections. And would, to avoid embarrassing themselves. All we would have done is alienate the Foreign Ministry.’

‘Don’t you think you should protest?’

‘Not like that.’

‘Our not being consulted wasn’t an oversight,’ erupted Popov angrily, turning away from the window to look directly at Natalia. ‘First America, now Britain. The acceptance of foreign interference is a direct criticism of us – of me, more than you because I’m operationally in charge of nuclear smuggling.’

Gently, not wanting to antagonize him, Natalia said, ‘The fact is, darling, we haven’t been able to stop it.’

‘That’s not our fault! We didn’t create the nuclear shambles of no one knowing how much of anything was made, where it was stored or who’s in charge of it! All we got is the mess.’

‘How the shambles came about, and who caused it, is in the past,’ said Natalia, still gently. ‘ I know it’s so bad that proper ballistic or warhead counts were never kept, let alone any record of manufacturing materials. And I keep telling anyone who’ll listen, at every meeting I go to. But until we establish where and how big all the stockpiles are, stuff is going to keep disappearing and we’re going to be the butt of every criticism here and in the West.’ Go! she thought. Please leave me alone, in peace, to think! At once she became angry with herself. Aleksai didn’t deserve to be dismissed, even if the dismissal was only in her head.

‘So do I do anything about this? The memorandum came to me.’

‘Not immediately,’ said Natalia, making a decision at last. ‘It’s as much of a political as a practical operational decision. I don’t want to take a stance until I know if there’s any secondary thinking behind it. My initial feeling is that there is probably more benefit for us to accept him, like we had to accept the American, than to make any objection. Let them learn from their own man the chaos we inherited and are having to try to sort out.’

‘I expect he’ll ask for a meeting. The American did.’

‘You’re the operational controller,’ reminded Natalia, quickly. ‘You handle it’

‘Personally?’

‘It would be the right thing, politically. Show the proper level of concern. Which is, after all, our level of concern.’

‘It’s still a criticism!’ complained Popov, again. ‘Particularly sending someone like him. They’re sneering at us.’

Natalia hesitated again, halted by a renewed awareness of the near absurdity of the conversation. It was the sort of situation Charlie would have probably found hysterical, she thought, and wished at once that she hadn’t because what would or wouldn’t have amused Charlie Muffin wasn’t a concern of hers any more. Her first concern, her only concern, was Sasha. And then Aleksai Semenovich. ‘All the offences happened in the old days. That’s all over, like the KGB’s all over.’

‘You know him. What’s he like?’

Had she known him? She’d thought she had but she’d never expected Charlie to abandon her, like he had. So perhaps she hadn’t known him at all. But then he’d always been the chameleon: it had been his strength, to disappear into a background by adopting the colours of his surroundings. So what was he like? Dishevelled, although that had been part of the disguise, like a walking haystack, with hair to match. Invariably walking carefully, on feet that hurt. Very pale blue eyes that saw everything and a mind that missed nothing. And… Abruptly Natalia stopped the mental reverie, discomfited by it. Answering Popov’s question, she said, ‘Difficult for me to remember. He was just one of many and it was a long time ago. Quite small in build. Disarming, in that it was easy to underestimate him…’

‘But you beat him!’

Oh no I didn’t, reflected Natalia. Charlie Muffin had fooled her, totally, like he’d fooled a lot of much higher officials in the KGB. And brought them down with his redefection. At least he hadn’t abandoned her there. She’d actually emerged from the deception with her reputation enhanced sufficiently for the transfer to her present position to have been virtually automatic. ‘Yes. I beat him.’

‘We could put him under surveillance,’ offered Popov.

Charlie would detect it in a moment, Natalia knew. ‘His being here is a Foreign Ministry decision, not ours. Any embarrassment will be theirs, not ours. Let’s just see how it develops.’

‘You sure you don’t want to be involved in seeing him, to give him a very obvious reminder that we know who he is?’

‘Absolutely positive.’

Popov appeared about to continue the discussion, but abruptly said instead, ‘Shall I see you tonight?’

‘Not tonight.’ The rejection was too quick as well as being unfair to him again. Like the thought that followed was unfair although bizarrely fitting: instead of refusing to spend any time with him that night Natalia would have liked to have Aleksai with her, her closest friend and confidant, someone with whom she could have talked everything through and let him know – too late though it was ever now going to be for him to know – who or what Charlie Muffin really was, to her. Why, oh why, had the bloody man reappeared?

‘I’ve got things to do for the next few nights,’ he warned.

‘The weekend, then.’

‘If the weather’s good we could take Sasha on a river trip?’ suggested Popov.

‘She’d like that.’

‘Tell her I love her.’

‘Tell her yourself at the weekend.’

The parting conversation unsettled Natalia even more, piling complication upon complication. She was with Aleksai Semenovich now, in every way and in every respect apart from their not being officially married or actually living together permanently. What had happened with Charlie Muffin had happened way in the past. Which was where it belonged: in the past. He had no right to come back like this, upsetting everything and everyone! Upsetting her, confusing her most of all. No right to… to what? To Sasha? she thought, her reflection ricocheting off at a wild tangent. Sasha was hers. Not Aleksai’s or Charlie’s or anybody else’s. Just hers. Charlie wasn’t even registered as the father: Natalia had used her past KGB influence and importance to pass off Sasha’s father as her loutish, whoring, long-abandoning husband whose cirrhosis-induced death had only just conveniently covered the timing of the pregnancy and the baby’s birth, which was the only useful act the man had ever done for her in their ten years of totally neglectful and sometimes brutalizing marriage. And even then he’d been unaware of doing it.

But it did mean Charlie Muffin had no legally provable right to Sasha: no right to anything. It was insane for him to imagine he could connive an unannounced return like this, as he clearly had connived it, and expect her still to be patiently waiting. As insane as it was for her to try to rationalize it, as she had been trying to do.

There was no reason or necessity why she should ever meet him; she’d already determined that. No reason or necessity, either, why she shouldn’t meet him, if a confrontational situation arose. She was sure she could handle it. Publicly? she asked herself at once. She wasn’t sure about publicly, in front of other people, an audience. Aleksai particularly. Privately, then? She wasn’t sure about that, either. In a lot of ways she was more unsure about encountering him privately than publicly. Maybe it was best if she avoided him altogether. Why, Charlie? she thought, despairingly. Why the fuck did you have to come back and ruin everything?

It was Charlie who’d taught her to swear, like he’d taught her many other things, and she remembered every one of them.

The Lesnaya apartment was far grander than Charlie had imagined it would be. He actually came close to being overwhelmed by it in the first few minutes after following Thomas Bowyer into the airstrip-sized entrance lobby and accepted at once he’d upset a lot of people at the embassy even before he got there. The living room was more of a reception salon, dominated by a huge Venetian mirror over an ornately carved mantelpiece, the cavorting cherub motif continued in the bas-relief of the corniced and moulded ceiling. His entire Vauxhall flat could have fitted into the main bedroom, with room to spare for dancing girls to give the cherubs a rest. As it was the three cardboard boxes containing his pitifully meagre possessions sat at the bottom of the canopied bed like mouse droppings. Major error, conceded Charlie: a posh place to live and a victory over the parsimonious Gerald Williams, but where he really had to live and work from now on was the embassy and by getting this apartment he’d built a resentment barrier he hadn’t needed to erect.

‘Good enough?’ demanded Bowyer, the eyebrow lift confirming Charlie’s apprehension.

‘More than good enough.’ Deciding on the need to make friends even with someone who’d probably report back to London before the end of the day, Charlie dumped his suitcases unopened and held up invitingly the Heathrow duty-free scotch, Macallan. He hadn’t been able to get his preferred Islay single malt at London airport.

‘Wonderful,’ accepted the Scots station chief.

Charlie didn’t believe the tumblers he found in the kitchen were crystal but they certainly looked like cut glass. He served it neat, knowing to add water or to attempt to find ice would offend Bowyer.

‘Death to the enemy, whoever they are,’ toasted Charlie, looking directly at the other man.

‘May they show themselves quickly,’ accepted Bowyer.

‘Would you like a cigarette?’ offered Charlie, continuing his role of host. ‘I don’t smoke but I brought some Marlboro in because I guess I’ll need them.’

Bowyer frowned. ‘Why, if you don’t smoke?’

Charlie felt a burn of embarrassment. ‘When I was here before, to hold up a packet of Marlboro was the guaranteed way to get a taxi.’

Bowyer held back the smirk, but only just. ‘I’ve heard about it. It’s one of the legends. You have been away a long time, haven’t you?’

Charlie decided that whatever Bowyer told London he’d include that, just to make him look a prick. Which he had been, trying too hard to show how smart he was. Not an auspicious beginning, he decided.

John Fenby frowned across his desk at the head of his Scientific Division. ‘She’s a woman!’

The scientific head, Wilbur Benning, ached to remind the Director that females usually were. Instead he said, ‘Hillary Jamieson is one of the most outstanding young physicists I’ve ever encountered. Frankly I’m surprised she’s with us: she could take any one of a dozen jobs paying four times as much as she’s getting at her current grade.’

‘So why isn’t she?’ demanded Fenby, an unshakeable believer in conspiracy theories.

‘No one knows why Hillary Jamieson does anything,’ said Benning. ‘She’s a free spirit, doing whatever she wants to do because she knows she’s too damned clever ever to have to worry about anything.’

‘But is she a threat?’

You prick, thought the scientist. ‘To what?’

Fenby, whose fears were kept chilled by the Cold War, blinked. ‘Any operation she might be involved in.’

Benning was enjoying himself, building up stories to tell in the bar later. The frown was exaggerated, further to unsettle the Director. ‘She’s a headquarters-based scientist, not a field operative.’

Defeated, Fenby said lamely, ‘But is she good?’

‘There’s no one better.’

The change of attitude was palpable. The deference was back from everyone except Sobelov and his demeanour was obvious, too. The man was scared, panicking, not thinking before he spoke and looking more and more foolish with every argument he attempted.

‘They can’t guarantee that much!’ Sobelov protested.

‘They can. And they are. And there’s a revised value. It could be worth as much as $100,000,000, in total.’

‘It’s a trap,’ persisted the challenger.

‘Not for us it isn’t. And the way I’m organizing it you get your war with the Chechen. Except we don’t have to get involved or distracted by it. We just make the money while other Families destroy each other, making fresh opportunities for us.’

‘It’s brilliant!’ said Oleg Bobin, publicly changing sides. ‘Absolutely brilliant.’

Silin let the silence stretch for as long as he felt able. Then, heavily, he said, ‘So I have everyone’s confidence? And agreement to conclude the negotiations?’

The assent was unanimous and immediate, from everyone except Sobelov. Relentlessly, Silin prompted, ‘Sergei Petrovich?’

‘We should be involved in the negotiations,’ persisted the man.

‘It’s always been this way in the past.’

The fool’s worst mistake so far, isolated Silin. ‘To suggest a change would frighten them off, risk the entire deal. Does anyone want it done differently?’

No one spoke.

‘You seem to be alone, Sergei Petrovich.’ Which was how the man was going to stay from now on, thought Silin.

‘Negotiations, yes,’ finally conceded the man. ‘But what about the details of the robbery itself?’

That would leak anyway, from what he had already initiated, Silin decided. Patiently he set out how the robbery was planned but made it sound as if it had all been his idea, not that of the others.

‘Brilliant!’ enthused Bobin again, when Silin finished. ‘Absolutely and totally brilliant!’

‘It’s too complicated!’ protested Sobelov.

‘No, it isn’t,’ refused Silin, sure of himself. ‘Complicated for other people but not for us. Because we’ll be orchestrating everything.’

‘It only wants one person to break.’

‘They won’t,’ said Silin. ‘They’ll die if they do. After watching their families die in front of them.’