Red Star Rising

22

And was glad he did.

“Son of a bitch!”

“Bill Bundy?” loudly questioned Charlie, audibly to establish the caller’s identity. Was the American going to join the long line of commentators on the embankment crash?

“You know damned well it is! Just as you damned well know how much shit you’ve dropped me in!”

“Actually, Bill, I don’t know that at all.”

“I told you in advance what Washington was doing-the offer we were making-as a friend. Your intervention to London has totally screwed me!”

Not the crash at all, acknowledged Charlie. And there was no way the American could know of his conversation that morning with the Director-General. “I did nothing of the sort, Bill. I said it would be London’s decision, remember?”

“All the vibes were good and then suddenly, bang, the door gets slammed in our faces. You telling me you didn’t have anything to do with that?”

“That’s exactly what I’m telling you,” lied Charlie. He’d never imagined there was going to be this amount of benefit from having Harry Fish leave the FSB listening devices in place. Recalling his doubts about the man, Charlie wondered if Fish had installed his own bugs to record incoming conversations to the Savoy suite.

“Trying to run everything as a one-man band, as you’re trying to do, is going to fuck up big-time. I think this is something that’s actually going to kill you!”

So did a lot of others, some actually trying very hard to make it happen. “I’m not trying to conduct a one-man band. It’s a joint operation with the Russians; you know that.”

“Mikhail Guzov wouldn’t give you a head cold, unless it was guaranteed to turn into a fatal pneumonia.”

“I thought a pretty good relationship was developing.”

“Okay, so you tell me one, just one, useful scrap of information you’ve got from him.”

“We’re talking; liaising.”

“I’ve heard you called many things over the years, Charlie. Until now naive wasn’t one of them.”

“Don’t you think it was naive of you to expect that you could have worked unofficially with me without Guzov discovering what was going on?”

“It stood a better chance of producing something than what you’re left with now.”

“What I’m left with now is what I’ve got to live and work with, I guess.”

“You’re not going to live with it: you’re going to die because of it.”

“Don’t you think you’re getting a little overdramatic here, Bill?”

“You suffering amnesia or Alzheimer’s, forgetting what happened to Sergei Romanovich Pavel?”

“You got a theory about that?”

Bundy snorted a jeering laugh. “Jesus H Christ, I don’t think you’re suffering amnesia! I think it’s Alzheimer’s! You sucker me like you’ve just done and then expect me to offer you murder theories!”

“Had London accepted your approach I would have expected you to bring something to the table.”

“Now you’re never going to know what help I could have provided, are you, buddy!”

The American’s vernacular, like his dress sense, really was in a time warp, thought Charlie. “It’s unfortunate you brought a decision between our two governments down to a personal level.”

“Your loss, Charlie. We could have walked away covered in glory!”

Now who was sounding naive? thought Charlie.

Whatever he might minimally have gained from managing to extend his stumbling conversation with the terrified woman, he could far too easily have lost by that evening’s television disclosure, which would have already been picked up for repetition in every newspaper the following morning, when it would doubtless be repeated yet again, not only by ORT but by every other TV and radio station in Moscow. It was impossible for the caller to remain unaware of the latest twist in the already overtangled killing of the one-armed man. Would it frighten her away; destroy any fragile confidence he might have instilled? It was the most obvious possibility. But then again, there was an alternative. The television presentation could work to his advantage rather than disadvantage if the unknown caller had seen it. Its thrust had been entirely upon the collapse of cooperation not just with America but with Russia. Would she be able to rationalize through her fear that she’d be safer-more protected even-by his being ostracized by the Russians?

Charlie’s hesitation was longer when the telephone rang for the second time, reluctant to talk on a line open to the FSB but conscious of the benefits if it were something he could use, as he’d just used Bundy’s diatribe.

Curiosity won over caution and the concern ebbed away at the voice of Harry Fish, who knew of the Russian bugging.

“Did you see ORT?”

“Yes,” said Charlie.

“All our dedicated lines are in meltdown: everyone’s asking for you. I’m referring them all to London.”

Surely the man hadn’t forgotten what he’d personally located here! “That’s what I want, all press calls referred to London.”

“Four have been from your favorite TV anchorwoman, who says she’s going to go on calling every fifteen minutes until she gets to you personally. I thought you’d like to know.”

“What else did she say?” Could he use her, as he’d used Bundy?

“Just that, apart from leaving a number.”

“Why don’t you let me have it?”

“You going to talk to her?”

“Maybe.”

“Shouldn’t you get clearance from London? She’s. .” Fish paused. “Her story’s attracting a lot of attention. Maybe you should come back here.”

Now the man was trying to warn him about the listening devices, Charlie realized. “I might, if I decide to call back. Give me the number anyway.”

Charlie dialed from the public telephone kiosk closest to the hotel, the one near Red Square, glad it was enclosed, again with a protective wall to his back, and with a view of about twenty-five yards over which to see any suspicious approach. Svetlana answered personally. Charlie said, “I don’t want my phones blocked every fifteen minutes. It might be someone important.”

She laughed, unoffended. “I really didn’t expect you to come back to me.”

“What do you want?” Despite the video recording he held as insurance, he still had to very carefully weigh every word he uttered.

“I’d say the points were about equal in the teaching-each-other-lessons league, wouldn’t you?”

From the background sounds Charlie guessed she was talking from an open newsroom phone. “I didn’t know it was a competition.”

“You’re making it one. I really don’t want to screw up your investigation: you know the arrangement I’m offering.”

Based upon her success over the past few days, she had every cause for arrogance. “Which is?”

“Why don’t we meet to talk about it?”

Charlie thought there was an eerie familiarity about the conversation. “You won’t forget that I know where you keep your microphones hidden, will you?”

“Are you ever going to let me?”

“The bar, at the Metropol, in an hour,” suggested Charlie.

“Why not your room?”

“The bar.”

“I’ll be there.”

She was ahead of him, although Charlie got there early. She wore the clinging black dress in which she’d appeared on the screen earlier but now high on her left shoulder there was a jeweled clip of what Charlie was sure were genuine diamonds. She sat majestically in the very center of a banquette, champagne already poured from a bottle-French, not Georgian-resting in its cooler. His concentration, as he made his obvious way toward Svetlana, was as much upon identifying potential danger around her as it was upon the woman herself.

“I tried to call your room but the desk told me that you weren’t staying here.”

“Neutral territory,” said Charlie. Which she’d taken over by being first. There was a second glass already waiting but Charlie shook his head against champagne, ordering vodka. “Mikhail Guzov’s taken to dropping in, unannounced. I thought it would be better not to be interrupted, although I got the impression at the embassy that you knew him quite well?”

“Quite well,” she agreed, cautiously.

“If you’ve got with him the same sort of deal you’re going to put to me, he might have thought you were playing one of us off against the other.”

“Did it occur to you he also might have thought you were my source?”

“No,” lied Charlie.

Svetlana touched her glass against Charlie’s when his vodka was served and said, “You stay pretty concentrated upon the job, don’t you?”

“I got the same impression about you.”

“Which makes us well matched.”

“What’s your suggested deal?”

Svetlana waited for their attentive waiter to top up her glass. “How about you and I speaking before every evening transmission. I tell you what I’m going to say. You tell me anything that might seriously impede or endanger anything you’re doing. I cut it out.”

Surely she couldn’t be serious! If he accepted her offer it would give her a spread-open map along which to track, from what he asked her to omit, every twist and turn of the investigation. But by the same token she was offering him a map of her own, which could lead him directly to the embassy informant. Which wasn’t his investigation. But also something he wasn’t going to ignore. “Give me an example.”

“How about the killers of your first victim, and Sergei Pavel being so worried how close you are to them that they tried to kill you on the embankment?”

He’d got it right by agreeing to meet her, Charlie decided. “I don’t want that broadcast.”

“It’s a good story that no one else has picked up on.”

“I thought the idea was not to screw my investigation?”

“As well as for me to get exclusives.”

He had to be careful not to show his desperation. “You broadcast it, I lose the lead I’ve got,” exaggerated Charlie.

“Are you threatening me with the video recording?”

“Are you going to make me?”

Svetlana regarded him expressionlessly for what seemed a long time. “If I hold off, we agree to my deal?”

From scouring the Russian papers as intently as he had, Charlie knew she was right about no one else picking up on the connection, and his concern was as much to avoid Natalia learning about the attempt as the hoarse-voiced woman. And if Svetlana kept her promise, there could be the other opportunities to manipulate things to his benefit. “I agree to the deal.”

Svetlana smiled, gesturing the waiter to replenish their drinks. “And I get my exclusives.”

He couldn’t risk her having a change of heart, Charlie decided. “Since Putin got to power a lot of the freedoms achieved by Gorbachev and Yeltsin have been taken back or eroded, particularly press freedom. How long do you think you can go on like this?”

She laughed, genuinely amused. “Think back before Gorbachev and Yeltsin, to the bad old days. How did the famous dissidents and nonconformists stay out of the gulags? By becoming-and staying-famous in the West, too well known to be moved against.”

“That’s my point!” risked Charlie. “If you keep cutting things when I ask you, you could end up nights in a row with nothing to say.”

“Okay, so I’ve made the first concession,” accepted Svetlana. “But I want the big ones, those that’ll make me untouchable forever! I help you, as I’ve just agreed to do, and you give me your solemn undertaking that you’ll repay me at the end. I get something that’s going to keep me on TV screens around the world. When you learn whatever the hell’s going on, you tell me. You also tell me how you finally got all the answers. I get my global exclusive, with enough to produce the supporting documentary. You get your man and I give you all the credit. How’s that sound?”

Better than he could have hoped, conceded Charlie. Could there be some physical protection in it for him, as well? He couldn’t at that moment imagine what but it was something to keep in mind. The only obvious drawback was the one he’d already identified, that she had the same sort of arrangement with Mikhail Guzov. Not a problem, Charlie decided. He was feeding the source, not drinking from it. “It sounds like something to explore, to our mutual benefit. Let’s see how it works.”

“I’ll make it work.”

So would he, determined Charlie.

Since the relocation of the monitored telephones to the compound apartment, Charlie had virtually abandoned his original assigned rabbit hutch, but on his way to the embassy the following morning he decided to check for any misdirected written messages-or anything else-that might have been misdelivered. Nothing appeared to have been disturbed but on the card table, to its left, were neatly stacked by date Halliday’s English-language publications. To its right, set out on a white sheet of A4 paper upon which was drawn a large question mark, was a polished brass bell.

Charlie was reaching hesitantly for it when through the left-open door behind him Paula-Jane said, “If it weren’t for those raftlike shoes, which I’d recognize anywhere, I’d believe I’d caught the embassy spy himself, breaking into offices.”

Charlie turned, leaving the bell. “How are you?”

“Me? I couldn’t be better. Which I guess you’d very, very much prefer to be.” She was designer-dressed as always, the interlocking C of the Chanel logo on the jacket buttons matching those on her suede loafer. For the first time Charlie acknowledged the coquettish similarity between Paula-Jane Venables and Svetlana Modin, who’d predictably ended their previous night’s encounter with the clear invitation, which he’d just as clearly declined, to share either her bed or his. He wondered where P-J hid her recording equipment, sure there wouldn’t be too much objection to his making his own discovery.

“I assume you’re talking of the car business?” invited Charlie, wanting to get it out of the way as soon as possible.

“Among other things,” said the woman. “You trying to convince me it really was an accident!”

“You wanted to see me?”

“I was sneaking in to get it back.”

“What?” frowned Charlie.

“The bell. I put it there as a joke when I got back last night, the lepers’ bell or for whom the bell tolls: whatever. I’d been to that American Cafe with Tex: his final farewell and I’d drunk too much. This morning I decided there was nothing funny about anything that’s happened to you and wanted to get it back; stop the whole stupid thing. I’m sorry.”

She appeared contrite, which was something else he didn’t expect. “It’s not the best joke that’s ever been tried on me, but thanks for trying to lighten the burden.”

“It should be me, thanking you, for not involving me. You’re probably well enough established to survive this other business with America, as Bill Bundy is. Or would have been if you’d let him in. I’m sure as hell not.”

Charlie was immediately attentive. “Was Bill with you last night?”

Paula-Jane shook her head. “There was a big crisis meeting at the embassy, apparently, after the television broadcast. Tex was only able to make it because he wasn’t any longer officially attached to the embassy; he’s flying back to the States today.”

There’d been an inference of an affair between P-J and the American, Charlie remembered. “I’m not sure I can survive if I don’t wrap it up soon.”

The woman looked very directly at him. “I’ve heard things about you.”

This wasn’t P-J the coquette. “Things like what?”

“That you don’t like to lose. Which is why you so rarely do, irrespective of the shortcuts you take.”

“What do you want me to tell you?” demanded Charlie, trying to jar the innuendo into something more recognizable.

“If you’re not going to trust me-which I know you don’t from what you did during Robertson’s first investigation-I can’t expect you to tell me anything, can I?”

“I thought you were grateful not to be involved?”

The woman smiled wanly. “Grateful doesn’t begin to describe it. I’m sad we got off to such a bad beginning and lost the colleague-to-colleague relationship, though. I could have learned a lot.”

“Or lost a lot, if you believe the car accident wasn’t an accident.”

The smile broadened. “How long’s it going to be, Charlie?”

“How long’s what going to be?”

Paula-Jane shrugged. “I suppose I should have known better. But I thought I’d worked it out; thought I’d run it by you, see what you’d say.”

“Run what by me?” Charlie continued to question, refusing to volunteer anything.

“London wouldn’t have knocked Washington’s offer back and you wouldn’t have been isolated for so long by yourself-my even being excluded, despite all the diplomatic bullshit-if you weren’t on the very edge of the big denouement that’s going to knock everything, and everyone, on its ass! What do you say to that?”

Charlie’s first reaction was to say that the vocabulary of people to whom he’d spoken over the preceding twenty-four hours appeared to be remarkably similar. Instead he said, “I say that it’s very fanciful and I wish it were more realistic.”

The woman remained silent and solemn faced for what seemed a long time. “So much for my trying to make things a little more pleasant between us! I suppose I should have expected it.” She made another vague gesture behind him. “Time to get back to the office work.”

Charlie glanced behind him. “What office work?”

“If you bother to look through what Dave’s left, you’ll see that the Western media have well and truly adopted Stepan Lvov as their own, even before he’s elected. The buzz phrase is ‘Russia’s New Camelot.’ Inevitably London is asking for a full profile.”

“Halliday told me he’s already provided one.”

“For his people. Apparently we need our own. Dave’s given me all his stuff and Tex passed on a lot more. .” The smile was a frigid one. “Some people work quite harmoniously with others.”

As she turned to leave Charlie said, “Don’t you want your bell?”

She paused at the door. “You keep it, Charlie. You might want to ring for help. Let’s hope someone hears.”

Charlie made his way slowly from the main embassy building into the residential compound, trying to decide if the previous thirty minutes really had been a genuine olive branch offer from an inexperienced operative on her initial overseas assignment. First-time appointees-certainly to a high-profile embassy like Moscow, which was rarely if ever a beginner’s posting-were rigidly vetted for any personal weaknesses and there certainly hadn’t been any weak frailty during their initial encounter. Why then the near embarrassingly inept act? Not something to be mulled over at any length but perhaps mentally filed for later reference.

Both duty operators-one male, one female-were lounged in easy chairs, disinterestedly flicking through out-of-date newspapers, their boredom shown in the log listing only four incoming calls after the tidal wave of the previous night’s TV broadcast. One of the four was from the familiarly ranting communist zealot, two were new Japanese press calls, and the fourth was a heavy-breathing blank.

The man said, “Harry told me to tell you he’d be along later, around eleven. He’s with Robertson, in the inquiry room, if you want him.”

Mikhail Guzov wasn’t at his Petrovka telephone when Charlie called. He told the woman who answered that he’d courier transcripts of the overnight contacts, although there was nothing of significance, and asked that Guzov return his call, slumping into another easy chair. He managed to go through Halliday’s newspapers, relieved there was still no reference to the embankment crash, before Fish’s arrival.

“What’s Robertson doing?” asked Charlie, expecting the mole-hunter to be in tow.

“His job, starting the reinterviews,” retorted Fish, more belligerent than unhelpful.

“You tell him about the hopeful call?”

“You didn’t ask me not to.”

“Or that you should.”

“You’re surely not expecting her to call again, after last night? And today’s newspaper follow-ups!”

“That’s not really the point, is it?”

“I don’t think there’s any longer much point in anything we’re doing here,” dismissed the electronics specialist. “Did you call that anchorwoman back?”

“That’s not a point of discussion, either,” refused Charlie, raising a three-day-old copy of the Daily Telegraph to create a physical barrier between himself and the other man. An odd, uncertain silence settled beyond Charlie’s screen. The operators found unexplained reasons to check and recheck their equipment, and Fish very obviously, close to mockery, constantly checked the time as it approached noon, once loudly calling for the two operators to synchronize their watches with his. Charlie kept checking, too, at the same time as forcing himself to read the newspaper comments and poll predictions of the landslide victory in the forthcoming presidential elections of Stepan Lvov.

“A minute to go, if she’s going to call,” announced Fish, unnecessarily.

Charlie finally lowered his newspaper and said “thanks,” disappointed he didn’t convey the intended sarcasm.

All four watched 12:10 register on their individual watches. A full minute later, Fish said: “You’ve lost her, as it was obvious you would.”

The woman monitor coughed and began rummaging in her handbag.

Fish said, “A good job you didn’t tell London.”

“I’m pretty sure they know, aren’t you?” said Charlie.

“How could. .?” started Fish, but was stopped by the telephone.

“I couldn’t decide.”

“I’m glad you did,” said Charlie.

“I’m frightened.” It was more a wheeze than hoarseness.

“I know. Don’t be. We have to meet.”

“I need to be sure.”

“Whatever you want. Tell me and I’ll do it. . whatever you want.”

“Need to be safe.”

“I’ll make sure you’re safe. Kept safe.” It wasn’t so difficult for him to say today.

Charlie could hear the growl of her breathing, which sounded as if it was quickening, as if the fear was building, but he held back from speaking, waiting for her, tensed against the line suddenly going dead. The other three in the room were tensed forward, too, the female operator with her cupped hands to her mouth. Charlie didn’t understand the single word the hoarse-voiced caller said, despite the magnification. Forcing the calmness, he said, “What was that?”

“Arbat,” she repeated. “You know the Arbat?”

“Yes, I know the Arbat.” Moscow’s tourist flea market, jammed with people, the best place for a jostled, easily escapable assassination, he thought.

“Saturday. Go there on Saturday.”

Natalia’s day! was Charlie’s immediate thought: the day he had to meet Natalia and Sasha-after now trebly ensuring he was free of any unwanted company-to make all the promises he intended to keep, make any concessions she demanded to persuade her to come with him to London. “What time on Saturday?”

“Be there at ten.”

“Where? What part? It’s a long street.”

“Just walk. Look at the shops and the stalls.”

“How do we meet?”

“I’ll decide. Don’t be surprised.”

“I need-” started Charlie but the line went dead.

“It’s a hoax,” declared Harry Fish. “You’re going to be made to look a fool again. Or be killed.”

The bastard was probably right, conceded Charlie, before the other thought registered. “I didn’t think you could speak Russian?” he said to the man.

23

During the initial seconds that followed Charlie regretted his challenge. His intuition was that the hoarse-voiced woman had something to offer. But objectively he had to recognize that Harry Fish could be right and that it could all be an elaborate hoax or, he had to accept, another attempt on his life.

Charlie contemptuously refused Fish’s near incoherent insistence that what he had intended to convey was not so much a denial of the language but a qualification that his superficial restaurant-Russian was insufficient for him properly to discuss and assess the shaded nuances of any exchange. In an insistence of his own, Charlie demanded the names of both monitoring operators to be witnesses at any future inquiry that might be convened by London after the documented protest he intended to make to the Director-General.

Which he did.

Consciously invoking more cliches, Charlie wrote of climates of suspicion, vindictiveness, unjustified internal spying and distrust, exacerbated by a still undetected internal informant, positively obstructing every investigatory move he attempted and further endangering any continuing, already fragile cooperation with the Russian authorities. It was not until his second complaining page that Charlie mentioned the contact from the hoarse-voiced woman, inferring London’s awareness of everything he did having been under constant observation by warning that if the woman suspected for a moment that he was not entirely alone for their arranged encounter, as he’d promised, any chance of maintaining that contact would be lost. For that reason, he intended employing even more evasion to keep the hoped-for appointment than he would normally have done to defeat any Russian surveillance, which he had to anticipate, the more so since the most recent publicity about the American approach. Since that publicity, he had not been able personally to reach his replaced Russian liaison, indicating further exclusion as the result of the debacle.

Charlie concluded the unaccustomed officialese by formally requesting that his protest-to which he added the addendum that it was being copied as a matter of courtesy to both Harry Fish and Paul Robertson-be attached to his personnel file, for production at any future inquiry into the manner and outcome of the investigation.

So protectively cocooned was the communications room against any outside electronic intrusion that it was not until Charlie got into the corridor outside that his pager showed two calls from Mikhail Guzov, the second within fifteen minutes of the first. Harry Fish was no longer in the set-aside apartment when Charlie reached it. The earlier operatives had been replaced by two men, both of whom regarded him sullenly. Without speaking, one offered a log of eight new incoming calls, all from journalists, in addition to the two from Guzov.

The FSB general personally answered the Petrovka phone, immediately breaking into Charlie’s greeting. “We know who your dead man is. Everything’s wrapped up.”

The man was in the former office of Sergei Romanovich Pavel when Charlie arrived at the headquarters of the Organized Crime Bureau. There was another plainclothes man introduced as Leonid Toplov, from the Interior Ministry, and two in militia uniform. Nikolai Yaskov wore the epauletes of a colonel, Viktor Malin those of a major. Slightly behind the four stood the pathologist, Vladimir Ivanov, whom Charlie at first failed to recognize out of his stained autopsy scrubs. An extremely attractive blond stenographer was at a side table Charlie could not remember being there before, notebook open in readiness, which Charlie thought an unnecessary prop. On Guzov’s commandeered desk was an already diminishing bottle of vodka, its cap discarded Russian-fashion: once opened, a bottle’s contents had always to be drunk. All five men held glasses and as soon as he saw Charlie, Guzov filled a waiting glass and said, “Join the celebration!”

Charlie accepted the drink, touched invitingly offered glasses from the other men and cautiously said, “Everything seems to have happened very quickly?”

“And proven us right from the beginning,” insisted Guzov.

“Who was he?”

“Maxim Semenovich Poliakov,” announced the uniformed colonel. “Professional criminal, major activities include pimping prostitutes and trafficking heroin from Afghanistan. Ran with a Chechen gang that we finally broke up entirely three days ago. We wouldn’t have been able to do so, without Poliakov. We got him a month ago coming into Moscow with two kilos of heroin and did a deal, information in return for no prosecution.”

“But missed out protection?” observed Charlie.

“He thought he could look after himself,” said Guzov.

“You got an admission of the murder from other members of the gang?” asked Charlie, intentionally ingenuous.

Guzov gave a derisory laugh. “These guys are too professional to confess to anything. They’re actually claiming not to know anyone named Maxim Poliakov. But they’ve given away enough for us to realize they’d discovered Poliakov was our original source. We’re sure three of them were involved in planning the Beslan school massacre, too.”

“It all seems to have been resolved remarkably quickly. And completely,” encouraged Charlie. He was reminded of a theatrical production in which everyone knew their scripts but recited rather than performed them.

“It almost seems”-Guzov searched for the expression-“an anticlimax, after all that’s happened over the last few weeks.”

“Any theories why they killed him in the British embassy? Have they said?”

“Something we’ll probably never know,” dismissed the colonel, Nikolai Yaskov, shaking his head.

“Maybe to cause all the distractions by making it an international incident, bringing your country into the investigation,” suggested Guzov. “They certainly succeeded in doing that, didn’t they?”

The absurd suggestion was undisguised mockery, Charlie accepted. They were baiting him.

“These people believe they’re above any law,” offered the colonel. “They like making grandiose gestures, aping the gangster movies they try so hard to model themselves on.”

“Isn’t murdering senior militia detectives more than grandiose?” asked Charlie. “I’m assuming, of course, that you believe they also killed Sergei Pavel?”

Guzov nodded. “Sergei Romanovich was the investigator who personally arrested Poliakov: persuaded him to turn informant. Killing Sergei, as well as Poliakov, was their settling every score. And of showing their derision of us.”

“That’s how we got them,” came in the colonel. “Going back through all Pavel’s cases. There it was, someone who perfectly matched the description of your dead man. Everything fell into place.”

It was a lie, a setup, from start to whatever finish they intended, Charlie realized. Pavel would have at once remembered personally arresting a one-armed man; he would have recognized the body even without a face that very first day in the mortuary. And then Charlie remembered Pavel’s assurance that he’d found no similarities in the complete archival search he had personally carried out. But why? Why the hell were Guzov and his team of amateur actors putting on this performance? Playing the part in which they’d clearly cast him, Charlie said, “What proof is there that the gang killed Sergei Romanovich Pavel?”

Guzov, who was going around the group adding to their glasses, snorted another laugh. “We’re hardly likely to get a confession, are we? Even without charges, no one in the court is going to be left in any doubt who killed both men. But we’re going to get the proper, fitting punishment even if we can’t proffer the actual charges of murder: heroin trafficking on this scale carries the death penalty. And we’ve got enough proof of that against every single one we’ve arrested. It’s going to be a show trial!”

Stalin was good at show trials, reflected Charlie, on even less manufactured evidence than this. He still couldn’t understand why they were doing it! “I should congratulate you on such a successful investigation. I’m sorry-embarrassed perhaps-not to have been able to contribute.” He hoped the attractive note-taker behind him hadn’t missed the denial of any part in the farce.

“You’ve had a lot of side issues to distract you,” emptily sympathized Guzov.

Was that a reference to the embankment incident? Hardly, decided Charlie. In fact, the belief that it had been a Russian initiative didn’t square with the bullshit they were shoveling now. If they were setting out to smother the two murders this way, there would have been no point or purpose in mounting the embankment crash. From the almost imperceptible lisp, Charlie guessed the Russian was getting slightly drunk. “I’d appreciate a complete dossier. I’ll obviously have to submit a full report, despite being able to contribute so very little.”

“We anticipated that you would,” said Yaskov. “Everything’s being duplicated.”

“I’d also like a full copy of Poliakov’s criminal record.”

There was a hesitation from the uniformed colonel. “I’m not sure. .”

“Of course you can have it,” came in Guzov. “And we can also provide you with a more complete medical report-more complete, even, than that which your medical examiners in London gave us-can’t we, Dr. Ivanov?”

The chill began to envelop Charlie.

“Yes, we can,” said the rehearsed pathologist, the nervousness making his voice almost as hoarse as the unknown woman on the phone.

“Dr. Ivanov realized there was no DNA recorded, on either his initial report or that from your people,” expanded Guzov. “He and other specialists carried out tests on hair follicles and skin tissue, as well as the blood, which in your case was heavily contaminated. Now you’ll have everything to take back to London.”

They knew what he’d done! How he’d faked everything to stay involved in the case, Charlie accepted. And they’d neutered him against any possible challenge because by making one, arguing against anything they intended to say or do, he would expose himself and his own attempted deceit! And not just himself: London and the department, as well. Forcing himself to go on, Charlie said, “You’re making an official announcement, I suppose?”

Guzov looked theatrically at his watch. “In an hour’s time.” He came back to Charlie. “And tomorrow we’re holding a full press conference, although I don’t imagine it will be as extensive as yours at the embassy. I’m presuming you’ll want to attend with me?”

They weren’t just boxing him in, Charlie acknowledged: by appearing on the same platform, he’d be confirming that every claim the Russians were making to be the truth and that the investigation was over. “That’s very generous of you, considering it’s come down to a successful Russian investigation with virtually no input from me.”

“Our agreement was full cooperation,” mocked Guzov. “And there’s something else. The conference is at eleven. Sergei Romanovich’s funeral is in the afternoon.”

Not just boxed in, thought Charlie: the lid was being firmly hammered down as Pavel’s coffin would be! “I would, of course, like to attend that, as well.”

“I expected that you would,” said Guzov. “You have already been included on the list of those officially attending.”

“Has London been informed of these developments?”

“They will be, before the formal announcement,” said the Interior Ministry official, Leonid Toplov. He smiled as he added, “As a matter of courtesy.”

“Continuing that courtesy,” picked up Guzov, “I’ll ensure you receive all the official reports at the embassy before the end of the day. We wouldn’t expect you to appear before the world media without being fully briefed.”

“Thank you,” said Charlie, with little else left to say. “Publicly, at least, it will appear to have been a very successful and well coordinated joint operation between our two countries.”

“I presume you’ll be returning to yours very shortly?”

The first possible crack in Guzov’s confidence, picked out Charlie. Why did the man need to know how quickly he would be leaving Moscow? “There’s no hurry, now that the murder investigation has been resolved, is there? There might be a few things I still need to tidy up.”

As he spoke, Charlie recognized it to be a pitiful attempt to have the last word and wished he hadn’t bothered.

“They’ve beaten you,” judged Aubrey Smith. “Wiped you off the board. And me and the department with you!”

“It looks like it, at this moment.” The admission came out of his mouth like a bad taste.

“This and every moment that’s going to follow,” insisted the Director-General. “You can’t recover from this!”

“I haven’t received all their promised documentation yet.”

“You think they’re likely to have left you an opening there? They’ve done it all perfectly. What if there is something that doesn’t make sense or add up? You can’t challenge them without destroying yourself and all the rest of us. They’ve been brilliantly clever!”

“Which a lot of other people here seem to have been trying to be.”

There was a silence from London. Then Smith said, “There have been some contrary instructions to Moscow of which I have been unaware, until now. The situation, as far as you are concerned, has been corrected. Or had been. It hardly matters anymore.”

“I’d like you to explain that,” said Charlie, who believed he understood completely but wanted confirmation.

“You’ve been caught up more than I suspected in internecine maneuverings here in London. I regret that.”

The first open reference to the power struggle between Aubrey Smith and the disgruntled Jeffrey Smale, Charlie recognized. It would account for his being the choice for the Moscow assignment in the first place.

“Has whatever’s been happening in London been blocked?”

“I’d hoped it had been, until this conversation,” said the other man. “Now it’s academic.”

“I’m still going to keep the appointment with the woman.”

“Do you genuinely imagine that she’s going to keep any appointment after the publicity there’s going to be over the next few days?” demanded Smith. “She could even be part of all the Russians have done to trap you.”

“I need a way out,” said Charlie.

“Maybe your return is that way out.”

“I don’t follow.”

“Hopkins has been interviewed as far as the doctors had judged it safe to do so,” said the other man. “He’s adamant that the other car drove into him intentionally to force him over the edge: that they, whoever they are, believed you were in the car, too. It was a deliberate assassination attempt.”

“How is he?”

“He’ll live but he’ll never walk again.”

“Is he going to be looked after?” demanded Charlie, refusing the dismissal. “Medically and financially, I mean?”

“I know what you mean, and of course he is,” said the other man, impatiently. “And now I want you out.”

“Let me see this through,” pleaded Charlie.

“I’ll not be responsible.”

“I’m not asking you to be. This is being recorded: there’s no responsibility on the department.”

“No!”

“We both need my resolving this. And I can do it.”

There was a pause. “Day to day. I’ll judge it day by day.”

“No one could have anticipated this!” opened Svetlana Modin.

“No one did,” agreed Charlie, accepting the desperation of his making the contact they’d agreed. Could he use the broadcaster: find an escape or at least a stay of execution through her? He had been quite prepared to resign if that was what it would have taken to get Natalia and Sasha with him in London, but he’d wanted the decision to be his, at his timing and on his terms, not ignominiously thrust upon him with accusations of gullible incompetence and failed professionalism. And unfair to Natalia and their daughter though it was, it was still what he wanted.

“How much were you involved?”

Charlie shifted in the telephone box, alert to everything outside. “There has to be no indication that we’ve spoken.”

“I want to go with what I’ve got tonight, which you’re not going to like. It is that you’ve been intentionally humiliated, because of what happened-or rather didn’t happen-with America.”

The wrong reasoning but she was certainly right about humiliation, conceded Charlie. But she had kept her part of the deal making no mention of the embankment collision. And there could conceivably be some physical safety in that being promoted. “I certainly had no input in whatever the official communique says: my first and only awareness of the murders being solved was when I was summoned to Petrovka today to be told, an hour before the official announcement. But I haven’t yet seen any evidence to support the claims.”

“Are you suggesting the investigation isn’t over?”

He hadn’t been but an idea began to wisp in his mind. “I’ll answer that after I’ve seen the evidence.”

“Do you believe you were excluded because of the proposed inclusion of America’s CIA?”

Could he maneuver her in the direction he wanted, his idea settling. It was important to put the CIA more firmly in her mind. “If that were the reason, it was misguided or perhaps misunderstood. The approach came from Washington, as far as I am aware: it wasn’t considered in any depth by London.”

“You’re going to be at tomorrow’s press conference. And also be at Sergei Romanovich’s funeral. Why exclude you one moment and include you the next?”

Neither of which had been mentioned in the official communique, Charlie at once isolated, his disappointment that she hadn’t picked up the lead-in as he’d intended, tempered by the suspicion that she’d come close to confirming an arrangement with Mikhail Guzov.

“That’s a question for Moscow to answer, not me.”

“I don’t think they believe London has genuinely rejected the American approach: that London still hoped to work with Washington in the background. But that they’ve beaten you-not you personally, your people-by solving everything first.”

That had to come directly from Guzov! seized Charlie. And fitted perfectly with what he was trying to implant in the woman’s mind. “If they are, then I know nothing about it. But then perhaps I wouldn’t.”

“I don’t understand?”

You’re going to right now, determined Charlie. “Perhaps I was never intended to be the proper investigator, just the person everyone, including the Russians, were supposed to believe had been assigned to the case.”

“Are you suggesting there was-still is-an entirely separate investigation that no one knows is going on?”

“It would explain a lot of strange things that have happened in the investigation up until now.”

The word “humiliation” did not feature in that evening’s ORT broadcast, and Charlie was only mentioned once by name and without a photograph being shown. It was the lead item, fronted by Svetlana Modin, and once more claimed to be a world exclusive. A combined and absolutely covert investigation between British and American intelligence had been defeated by the brilliance of Russian detectives who had solved both the murder of the mystery man at the British embassy and that of the originally appointed Russian investigator. The revelation, insisted the woman, would further worsen diplomatic relations between Moscow and the two Western capitals, both of which had issued statements strenuously denying any such joint operation when it had been put to them. A Russian presidential spokesman was quoted that, despite the already issued denials, formal explanations were being demanded from Washington and London.

Had he manipulated the program sufficiently to deflect any further physical attacks? wondered Charlie, hunched over a tumbler of Islay single malt in his firmly secured hotel suite. Still too unsure to relax, he decided, turning to the promised and combined Russian dossiers that had arrived an hour before he quit the embassy and carried back with him to the Savoy. It took Charlie three hours fully to read the dossiers the first time and an additional two to reread everything for a second before finally pouring himself his second Islay single malt of the evening, his minimal satisfaction at manipulating the television broadcast muted by the Russian material.

Charlie had seen weaker evidence, some of it more obviously fabricated, overwhelm barristers in English courts. In what passed for justice in Russia, total victory was a forgone conclusion. The Russians hadn’t missed a single trick.

It was to take another twelve hours for Charlie to change his mind. There was one trick, which even Charlie couldn’t at that moment have imagined. Or hoped for.