Charlie’s Apprentice

Thirty-nine

They reconvened within twenty-four hours. Natalia guessed the delay would have been much longer but for Vadim Lestov’s previous role as Interior Minister, to whom the Federal Prosecutor had been responsible and with whom a known friendship had gone beyond officialdom, so that favours could be demanded and met.

Natalia entered the inquiry room on the second day feeling none of the uncertainty of the first occasion. She got there early but Tudin, the lawyer and her son were already ahead of her.

Petr Korolov came in with the three-man committee, a permitted gesture to make clear his equal stature. Korolov, whom she had met on only two other occasions, lowered himself on the front row but not immediately beside her. He looked at her, though, briefly smiling. He was a plump, shiny-faced, balding man corseted in an ill-fitting, waistcoated suit, the sleeves and trousers too long, so that they bagged at wrist and ankle.

‘This examination will be concluded today,’ declared Lestov.

So there had been some ante-room discussion, Natalia realized. She hoped it hadn’t been too much, robbing her of her intended grand finale. She didn’t want to be denied her moment: the vindication she had groped towards – fought blindly for and desperately for – until just a few hours earlier, never properly knowing what was being done to undermine her: to destroy her. Her and Sasha.

Natalia rose, regretting the dip of uncertainty because now there could be nothing to feel uncertain about. She attacked hard and at once. She reminded the inquiry of her original examination of Fyodor Tudin, to establish the responsibility she had given him to organize a service in the republics that he’d so miserably failed to fulfil. She denounced him as an internal, corrosive schemer, doing nothing to protect the newly constituted agency but everything to damage it. She called him a liar, turning to hurl the word at him. And insisted he’d twisted those lies to deceive the tribunal he himself had caused to be convened.

Korolov rose dutifully when asked, faintly smiling at the affectation of the proceedings. For the records, she went through the routine of establishing Korolov’s name and authority. From her briefcase she extracted the first of her limited documentation.

She walked the few paces separating them and said: ‘Do you recognize this?’

Korolov examined it before nodding. ‘It is a memorandum I received from you.’

‘It is dated? Timed?’

‘It is dated the eighteenth. Timed at six-fifteen that evening.’

‘What is the subject of the memorandum?’

‘The arrest of your son, by the Organized Crime Bureau of the Militia.’

‘I identified him as my son. Fully disclosed to you my relationship, at that time?’

‘Yes.’

‘Does that memorandum make any request for special or favoured treatment from your department towards my son?’

‘On the contrary.’

‘Would you explain that?’

Korolov went to the paper he still held. Quoting, he read:‘“I expect the full authority and punishment of the law to be exercised.”’

There was movement from behind her, from where her son sat and then the hissed word: ‘Bitch!’ It was Eduard’s voice. Natalia was glad it had been loud enough for everyone to hear.

‘Is there, in that original memorandum, a request for a meeting between us?’

‘Yes.’ Korolov was relaxed, enjoying a cross-examination he imagined to be amateur but which came, in fact, from someone trained to be a more professional interrogator than any qualified lawyer in his department.

The faint condescension didn’t upset Natalia. Charlie had always preached the benefit of being underestimated: it had perhaps been Fyodor Tudin’s most serious failing.

‘Is there a reason for the suggested meeting?’

‘Yes.’

‘What?’

Again Korolov went to the paper in his hand. ‘A proposed discussion between prosecutors and investigators in my department with officers of the internal security agency to form a combined task force to combat the rise in organized crime in the Russian Federation.’

‘Did I give any personal undertaking?’

‘To make the same proposal to the chairman of your agency, for his approval, and to the appropriate officials of the agency’s internal directorates, if that approval is granted.’

‘Have you …’ began Natalia, but Lestov cut her off.

‘… Enough!’ declared the agency chairman. ‘This inquiry is over!’

So great was Natalia’s disappointment that she practically blurted out a protest, stopping herself just in time. There was so much more she had wanted to get on the record: she felt robbed, cheated. She’d still won, she realized. She wished there was a greater feeling of satisfaction.

*

‘Tudin wanted too much,’ decided Lestov. ‘If he’d put things before internal security, I would have probably had to find against you, without a hearing. That was his mistake: demanding an inquiry before which you could publicly destroy his case.’

‘I had written to the Federal Prosecutor,’ reminded Natalia. She had expected a personal meeting, but not for it to be so immediate, the same afternoon.

‘Yes you had, hadn’t you?’ picked up the security chief. ‘But not to me?’ There was no positive suspicion in the man’s voice, but Natalia thought there was a discernible reserve in his attitude.

‘I wanted to get the opinion of the Federal Prosecutor, before raising it with you. If he had not been enthusiastic, there would have been no point,’ said Natalia, easily.

‘You had no suspicion what Tudin was doing?’

‘None,’ said Natalia, easily again.

‘Some legal charges could be formulated against him.’

‘Would it be wise, opening it all up to public debate in a court? I would have thought dismissal is sufficient.’

Lestov nodded. ‘Perhaps you’re right.’ The chairman paused and then said: ‘I’m going to liaise personally with Korolov about a task force. It is a good idea. Commendable, considering the personal circumstances.’

‘I considered it my duty,’ said Natalia, unembarrassed.

Lestov smiled, at last. It was still a brief expression. ‘I really am most impressed at how you have reorganized your directorate. It’s unfortunate this business had to arise.’

‘It’s resolved now. Very satisfactorily.’

‘I would, in future, like copies of any communication before you send them to outside ministries.’

‘Of course.’

‘You have my sympathy, about your son.’

‘We really have been apart for a very long time. There is nothing left between us.’ Adulterated drugs sometimes maim and kill, she remembered.

Later, at the apartment in Leninskaya, Natalia rocked Sasha back and forth and said: ‘We won, darling. We’re safe.’ She would have liked to have told somebody properly about it: been able to boast. To someone like Charlie, for instance.

With the pressure of Tudin finally removed she could think about Charlie again. She would have to take a holiday. She couldn’t do what she intended from Moscow.

One of the most important strands of the safety net which Charlie Muffin always tried to have beneath him when he was working was the fullest knowledge possible before taking the first step forward, so he was glad of the delay on the visa application. He spent the entire day following his briefing from Patricia Elder studying the Beijing files, working from before Foster’s appointment or even Snow’s arrival through until the most recent folder. That folder contained duplicates of the incriminating photographs, as well as several of Li Dong Ming. Charlie thought the Chinese looked quite a pleasant-faced man. But then so had some photographs of Hitler and Stalin.

Charlie had finished his reading and was sitting in deep contemplation when Walter Foster entered, looking around in obvious and immediate disappointment. ‘I was hoping this would be about a new assignment but it isn’t, is it?’

‘Afraid not,’ said Charlie. ‘But I know how you feel.’

‘Have they got Snow yet?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘They will. The man was an idiot.’

‘Tell me about him. Everything about him.’

Foster frowned. ‘There’s not going to be another attempt to get him out?’

‘I wouldn’t have thought so,’ avoided Charlie, smoothly. ‘Far too dangerous. I’ve just got to write one of those reports: you know how bureaucratic everything is.’

‘It’s going to end in disaster,’ insisted Foster.

‘I hope not,’ said Charlie, mildly. It really was time people thought of a different way to describe what the outcome was going to be.