Bomb Grade (16 page)

Natalia accepted tension would be inevitable in all of them in the coming days. And just as inevitably probably get worse. ‘Let's hope it is.'

The trip towards Kirs showed Natalia how thickly the region was forested. They seemed to drive, mostly in silence, constantly through canyons of tight-together trees. She supposed there were cleared areas in which helicopters could set down but driving along this road it was difficult to imagine where. It was, she recognized, superb ambush country. And then accepted the cover would be as good for those they were trying to trap as for themselves. Several times they were slowed practically to a walking pace by huge, flat-bed lorries piled high with chained-in-place cargoes of tree trunks. On four occasions Popov pointed out covered trucks marked with an insignia he identified as that of the nuclear plant, although there was no recognizable lettering: two vehicles in convoy were escorted by uniformed militia motorcyclists, headlights on to clear slower vehicles out of their way.

‘Does that happen a lot?' asked Natalia.

‘I've never seen it before.' Then, abruptly, Popov pointed to her left and said, ‘There!'

There was no immediate, positive break in the trees but then Natalia saw a slip road with a barriered control post some way back from the main highway. And beyond, just visible through the tree screen, four chimneys and what looked like a tower block, although they passed too quickly for her to be sure.

‘It doesn't have a name, just a number,' said Popov, formally. ‘Sixty nine.'

‘Where's the town?'

‘Another four or five kilometres.'

Natalia guessed it was a further two, maybe a little less, before the treeline began to thin and finally straggle into a rolling plain. Almost at once Popov turned off to the right. The road was unmade and holed, jarring Natalia in her seat. It got worse when the hardcore trailed away into a dirt track, snarled with exposed roots and deeper holes. Very quickly the terrain became moonscape, undulating hills and low valleys with little ground covering until they came to a bowl-like core, an enormous open area sloping down for what must have been almost two kilometres to a lake at its bottom. Here there were a few stunted trees and when they got close to the water's edge Natalia saw a small jetty protruding into the lake from an old and lopsided hut. Popov carefully took their car around to the rear of the ramshackle building and parked as close as he could to it on the side furthest from the lake. Here the trees were substantially although oddly thicker, the last hair on a bald head.

As Natalia got out she physically shivered at the cold desolation. ‘What happened here?'

‘An accident a very long time ago, just after the Great Patriotic War,' said Popov. ‘This was where 69 was originally sited. They had to move it.'

‘Is it safe?'

‘Lvov says so. They've carried out tests. People eat the fish from the lake, fishermen built this hut.'

‘This is where we meet him?'

‘His choice, like Oskin's last night. Anyone following would be visible for a very long way.'

Natalia shivered again, acknowledging the security. ‘This is all so …'

‘… Ridiculous?' suggested Popov, when she trailed to a halt.

‘I wasn't going to say that. I'm not sure what I was going to say.' She started at a sound from inside the hut, jerking around to Popov.

‘He had to be here first, to see it's safe,' said the man, gripping her arm for reassurance. ‘If it hadn't been he would have left, through the trees back there.'

The hut was dark, a square box without any furniture apart from benches along two walls and closed cupboards along a third, and actually smelled sourly of fish. There were other smells, too: the rot and decay of dampness. There was a rod and a small bag along one of the benches, which Natalia assumed belonged to the man waiting for them.

Valeri Lvov was thick-set but not fat and his hair was turning from grey into complete white. The shirt was stained and sweat-ringed under the arms and the boots into which the rough work trousers were tucked looked uniform issue. He stood half to attention, like Oskin had the previous night, but with his hands cupped before him, holding the cap he'd taken off as a further mark of respect. He appeared as surprised as Oskin that Natalia offered her hand, responding hesitantly. Lvov's hand was wet and greasy. There was a nervous tic jerking near his left eye and his lower lip pulled constantly between his teeth.

Natalia didn't want to sit – she didn't want to be in the stinking hut – but did so in the hope of relaxing the man. He remained standing until she suggested he sit, too. He did so quite deliberately on the bench opposite and Natalia realized that from where he had chosen Lvov could see the track along which anyone had to approach through a split in one of the badly placed planks.

It was much more difficult than it had been with Oskin to urge the man through his story. He contradicted himself on the date of the first approach and on the day he was taken off the trolley car by the two strangers he was sure came from Moscow. When Natalia asked why, in contrast, he could remember their list of demands, Lvov said it had been written down: they had told him to memorize it. He didn't have the list any more because they'd ordered him to destroy it. That had been before he was able to tell Oskin and felt he had to do everything they told him, to keep his family safe.

‘I know it was wrong. Stupid. I'm sorry.'

‘It's done now,' accepted Natalia. Judging it fitted this part of Lvov's account, she took him through the Yatisyna Family Militia photographs. Lvov didn't hurry, holding several prints up to the better light from the single, unglassed window.

‘No,' he said, finally, offering the package back to her.

‘None at all?' pressed Popov.

‘I'm sorry.'

‘That's all right,' soothed Natalia, the expert debriefer. ‘We only want what you're sure of. Don't tell us anything you think we
want
to hear that isn't true. Or exaggerated.'

‘I'm sure they're going to kill me! Harm my family!' Lvov burst out, answering her literally.

Natalia remained silent for several moments, reaching a decision. ‘You were in the Militia, once?'

‘At the Kirov headquarters,' confirmed Lvov. ‘That's how I met Major Oskin. He arrived a month before I left. I'd already resigned.'

‘Why did you resign?'

‘I wouldn't become part of the system. Become crooked. So they made it hell for me. No one talked with me, accepted me. I had to eat alone, in the canteen. Got all the worst shifts, all the time. They put shit in my locker, sometimes into my boots. There were phone calls to my wife at one or two in the morning with no one at the other end when I was working nights. Other times they were obscene: men saying they were coming around to screw my daughters while she had to watch …'

Positively, Natalia announced, ‘I promise you that neither you nor your family will be harmed, for what you have done. And are doing, to help us. I will take you back into the Militia. Not here. In Moscow. I'll transfer you and your family away from here, to where you'll be safe.' I hope, she thought. She was aware of Popov's look of surprise but didn't respond.

Like Oskin the previous night, there was almost a visible lift of pressure from the man. ‘Thank you! Thank you so much!'

Natalia coaxed Lvov on details, establishing there were two service roads into the complex other than the one she had already seen, also guarded by control posts operating road barriers. The plant was entirely circled by an electrified fence, which at night was permanently lit. The guard contingent had consisted of fifty men but that was being scaled down like everything else in the decommissioning.

Natalia picked on the word, risking the deflection. ‘On our way here today we passed some lorries, going in the opposite direction. There was a small convoy with motorcycle outriders?'

Lvov nodded. That's part of it. A lot of stuff is being moved from Kirov, by special trains. Mostly to one of the closed-city sites around Gorkiy. It's going to go on for several months.'

‘
Had
!' declared Natalia, realizing the mistake of going off at a tangent.

Both men frowned at her, bewildered.

‘Had,' she repeated, to Lvov. ‘You said the guard contingent
had
consisted of fifty men. But that it was being scaled down?'

‘Yes,' agreed Lvov, doubtfully.

‘So what is it now?'

‘Fifteen. I'm the lieutenant in charge.'

‘So how properly can you fill your rosters? Police everything?'

‘We can't,' admitted Lvov, in a puzzled voice as if he thought Natalia already knew that.

Beside her Popov stirred and Natalia guessed the information was new to him. ‘So what do you do?'

‘We don't man the perimeter guard towers at night any more. Or mount the perimeter patrols we used to …' Defensively, Lvov hurried on, ‘The bunker security … the entry combinations and the codes … are very good. They're changed, daily. That's enough, really.'

‘What about the guard posts on the entry roads?' prompted Natalia.

‘That's where I assign the officers I'm left with: the most obvious places.'

‘Day
and
night?' she challenged, expectantly.

‘When I can. I've sometimes got to come down to one man.'

Natalia felt the satisfaction warm through her. She looked sideways at Popov, surprised he didn't answer her smile. ‘They want the codes and security strengths from you?'

Lvov frowned towards Popov, then back to Natalia. ‘I told you that! I told Colonel Popov, too!'

‘Not in the way we understood it,' said Natalia, sympathetically.

‘So because you've got to set them, you know
in advance
the main and subsidiary gate entry codes?'

‘Yes.'

‘How
many
days in advance?'

‘Two.'

‘And you allocate, days in advance, the number of guards there'll be on the approach roads?'

‘Yes. They've said they want one road unmanned. Some are, sometimes.'

There was a more positive movement from Popov. ‘You never told me this!'

‘I told you they wanted rosters and codes!' insisted Lvov, nervously.

‘It doesn't matter now,' said Natalia, as if she were reassuring Lvov but in fact wanting to cut off any criticism from Popov. Because it
didn't
matter. They had it! She'd found how they'd know, ahead of the attempt, when the robbery was to take place. It would be the day of a special code number – which they would know Lvov had supplied – through a gate Lvov had to ensure would be unmanned. So their ambush was guaranteed.

‘I suppose not,' agreed Popov, reluctantly.

‘You've done very well,' Natalia told Lvov. ‘Very well indeed.'

‘You will protect me? And my family?' pleaded the man.

‘You have my word,' promised Natalia.

There was a final meeting the following day with Nikolai Oskin to reinforce the need for closer than usual contact with Lvov and because she felt it necessary, Natalia repeated her safety assurances to the man. That night she and Popov ate alone but at the restaurant close to the cathedral. She chose quail again and ate it this time and agreed to the second bottle of wine, flushed with her success.

'I didn't expect you to bring Lvov to Moscow as well as taking him back into the service,' said Popov.

‘We couldn't have stopped this without him. And don't we need to recruit honest men?'

‘And we can stop it now, can't we?' smiled Popov. ‘Nothing can go wrong.'

‘Definitely.' If she hadn't personally questioned Lvov they might not have found the way, thought Natalia, allowing herself the conceit. She quickly cast it aside. ‘I'm glad you didn't need the gun.'

Popov didn't take the remark with the lightness she'd intended. ‘We might have done.'

There would be shooting, Natalia knew: people would be killed, wounded. ‘I want everything planned very carefully.'

‘What about the Englishman?' asked Popov, suddenly. ‘He suggested participation, at the end of an investigation. For the American, as well.'

For the first time in days Charlie Muffin came into Natalia's mind. She was pleased the consideration was entirely professional. ‘We
are
going to stop it,' she said, reflectively. ‘It would be right to get the maximum benefit, not just here but abroad as well.' Reminded, she said, ‘There've been several attempts to reach you, from both of them. The American's message was that it was important.'

‘If it was it's been delayed,' said Popov, critically.

She should have mentioned it earlier, Natalia conceded, although only to herself. ‘Nothing's more important than this.'

‘What about them?' said Popov, finally allowing his own satisfaction to surface. ‘Do we include them? Prove how efficient we are, after all?'

‘I'm not sure,' said Natalia. ‘I think perhaps we do.'

The anticipated howl of protest at the size of Charlie's expenses came from Gerald Williams, culminating with the financial director's unequivocal refusal to reimburse them, under any circumstances. Savouring the fact that he was arguing from an unshakeable base, Charlie launched the sort of missile he was in Moscow to prevent being manufactured. In one single protest memorandum he invoked the amended Wages Act of 1986, the Trade Union Reform and Employment Rights Act of 1993, the Employment Protection (Consolidation) Act of 1978 and the Employment Protection Regulations of 1995, which between them made Williams' threat technically illegal. At the same time he appealed directly to Rupert Dean, who accepted Charlie's suggestion that Thomas Bowyer accompany him to the nightclubs for which he claimed and independently establish their cost. Bowyer covered it well but Charlie was sure the man was shellshocked at the cost by the end of the evening. There was no acknowledgment or apology from Williams, merely the authorization to Peter Potter in the embassy's financial office to settle the claims in full.