Bomb Grade (29 page)

‘About two to three kilometres in area. Experts are there now assessing the degree.'

Turning directly to Popov, Charlie said, ‘London and Washington have had this information for more than twelve hours: information of a serious radioactive leak. The fact that there has been no public disclosure or announcement must prove our total discretion to anyone who continues to doubt.'

Dear God, thought Natalia, there wasn't any place for him as a lover any more but she needed Charlie as a defender, unwitting though that defence had been. It was her only rational impression: she was confused – disoriented even – by everything Aleksai had said and done.

The attitude change towards them throughout the room was almost imperceptible but Charlie was sure it had changed and in their favour, although not from everyone. He didn't expect any lessening of the military antipathy and Popov would surely remain on the other side of the fence. The importance was the shift of those in higher authority, the minister and the man with the ear of the President whose orders others – even the most hostile – had to obey. Where in the equation would Natalia be? Although her judgment should be businesslike he guessed she'd side
with
Popov.

Radomir Badim, the professional politician, certainly appeared to pick up the vibrations – or maybe decided to generate them – and almost immediately began making conciliatory noises. ‘I think we can appreciate that undertaking. And we're grateful for it.'

Never leave an advantage until all the pips were squeezed out, thought Charlie. ‘I would hope that in the future there will not be any further misunderstandings.'

‘I'm sure there won't be.' It was Badim who looked pointedly at Aleksai Popov, not Charlie, but Popov who hurried back into the discussion.

‘You must concede the circumstances are utterly extraordinary?' invited the bearded man.

Charlie, who'd made it a lifetime's practice never to concede anything, allowed that Popov had balls even if he'd so far worn them around his neck. But he was buggered if he was going to make easy the man's attempted rehabilitation in front of his peers. ‘Or utterly – even admirably – understandable.'

‘
Admirably
!' The astonishment came from Dmitri Fomin.

‘The robbery at Pizhma was brilliantly conceived and carried out,' insisted Charlie. ‘It would be a great mistake to underestimate or despise an adversary clever enough to have done it.'

‘Think like your opponents think?' She shouldn't stay silent any longer, Natalia determined. In little over an hour she'd been brought back from the abyss – now the person to be praised, not condemned, for keeping Charlie and the American so closely involved – so it was time she made a positive contribution instead of sitting there, letting everyone guess her relief. And it
was
intended as a positive contribution. Charlie was more expert than anyone else in the room in putting himself in the mind of his opponents and she wanted to hear something practical, not more inquest avoidance.

Popov showed the most visible surprise at Natalia's intervention, turning sharply towards her. Badim frowned, although Charlie couldn't understand why. Or why, for that matter, Popov had reacted as he had.

‘It's a tried and trusted methodology,' suggested Kestler. ‘Taught even, at Bureau academies.'

Charlie was glad of the space the American's response gave him. He might not know what Natalia's personal attitude was but her outward appearance was most definitely changed. She wasn't slumped any longer and her face wasn't as care-worn as it had been, just perhaps showing the tiredness they all showed and in Natalia's case even that not too noticeably.

‘We need to know, and know quickly, who they are, not how they think!' rejected Popov.

Party time, decided Charlie: for him perhaps with more fun than he and Kestler had anticipated. ‘One could give you the other,' he crushed, relentlessly. ‘And you've already got the way to find out. More than one way, even.' A pause. ‘Haven't
we
?' Ask, you bastard, thought Charlie; I'm not going to help you. Radomir Badim didn't help this time, either.

‘How?' Popov was finally forced to enquire.

‘The most obvious, first,' set out Charlie. ‘Two possibilities. You've rounded up the Yatisyna Family: the leader himseif. Run a criminal records check first, to find out who of the Yatisyna Family you
haven't
got. They are your lever. The best guess is that they have gone across to a rival group who used the attempt at Kirs as the decoy it was …'

‘You might even be able to narrow it down tighter.' picked up Kestler, choosing his moment according to their rehearsal on their way to the ministry. ‘To have known about the Kirs attempt sufficiently far in advance, someone would have had to be pretty high up in the Yatisyna organization. It doesn't matter, though, if that doesn't show up. You won't have got everyone. Mock those you have with the names of those you haven't, sneering how they were sold out. Someone will break, trying to even the score by naming the Moscow Family to which the Yatisyna are most closely affiliated …'

‘Which there's another way of finding out, anyway,' resumed Charlie. ‘Who, among those you've picked up,
isn't
Yatisyna but from Moscow, representing the people with whom the Yatisyna were working? That's easy enough to discover, once you've got your Moscow identities: a simple check on Moscow criminal records. One records comparison will give you the most important lead you need, the name of the Moscow Family rivalling that to which the men you've got in custody belong. Which will most likely and most logically be the Family that attacked at Pizhma. Your interception at Kirs would have been the best and most humiliating bonus they could have imagined.'

The Russians were being inundated with theory – all of it practical and feasible, the sort of basic investigatory process that
should
be followed – but an avalanche nevertheless, calculated to appear a far greater contribution than it was to set in concrete the right of Charlie and Kestler to remain part of everything. From the majority of the expressions confronting them, Charlie guessed they were winning.

‘Which shouldn't be the only approach to the investigation,' Kestler pressed on. ‘There might not even be a connection between Kirs and Pizhma, unlikely though that is: just conceivably the two could be a complete coincidence. In which case the information that made Pizhma possible wouldn't have come from the north at all. But from the south, from wherever the components were being transferred
to
. The receiving installation would have had every detail of the train, wouldn't they? Routes, schedules, quantities, timings. The receiving plant should be blanketed, to discover if the leak came from there …'

The American's pause, whether intentional or otherwise, gave Charlie his entry. Smiling to Popov, as he'd smiled frequently towards the man in seeming friendliness, Charlie said, ‘That would have been our immediate operational reaction. But then I'm sure you've set everything like that in motion already.' A final pause. ‘Haven't you?'

Charlie didn't expect it would be easy next time. But at least he was reasonably sure there would be a next time.

The photographic enhancement, which Fenby got within an hour of Kestler's breathless telephone link from Moscow, went far beyond confirming the radioactivity leak. Refusing to believe what he was told at first, the FBI Director summoned the photo analysts to the seventh floor and had them take him through the montage to prove that not only were the canisters visibly breached but that, viewed in sequence, the only possible conclusion was that they had been intentionally forced. There were at least fifteen shots showing men with either crowbars or cold hammers, prising and smashing at the seals.

‘That's incredible .. it's …' stumbled Fenby.

‘… Suicidal madness?' suggested the photographic chief.

Hillary Jamieson didn't agree when she arrived at Fenby's office, fifteen minutes later; the skirt was as short but at least the shirt was looser. Impressively, she instantly and mentally calculated from the time-stamp on the relevant frames that the men would have only been exposed for a maximum of six minutes and said, ‘Enough to make them sick, maybe. Better if they changed their clothes and showered, but whatever it is in the containers I doubt it would be terminal.'

‘But look at the timing!' insisted Fenby. ‘That stuff's been there leaking for getting on for twenty-four hours now! We're looking at another Chernobyl!'

‘No, we're not,' corrected Hillary, not bothering to soften the rejection. ‘Chernobyl was a melt-down, a China Syndrome. And it was an
entire
reactor: the amount was hugely much greater. But it's still dangerous. Those poor bastards posted around it are in real trouble if they haven't got the proper protective clothing and unless it's sealed pretty damned quick Pizhma – I presume it's a town or a village – is going to be affected. Other places, too, if there are any, the longer it remains unsealed. I can't be any more precise until I know positively what was in the canisters and the extent and degree it had been irradiated.'

Fenby's concern was such that he did not even notice Hillary's careless cursing.

He had a big one here – the biggest of his career so far – of international consequence with the added burden of the House Speaker's very personal attention. Everything had to be right, exactly right, with no wrong moves and certainly no oversights. Overkill didn't matter; overkill was fine, in fact, because too much not too little got done in overkill.

He smiled across the expansive desk at the girl who sat, as she'd sat before, with her legs crossed to display practically the whole length of her thigh. ‘I want to be on top of this, one hundred per cent,' he said, unthinking of the
double entendre
that broadened Hillary's smile. ‘I want you in Moscow.'

‘Me! Moscow!'

‘As soon as you can,' said Fenby. ‘I'll get State to arrange the visa as quickly as possible.'

The conference, which continued after the departure of Kestler and Charlie, broke up in near disarray and with Natalia as exposed as ever although with more chance to influence decisions for which she was ultimately accountable. The Interior Minister insisted Natalia chair the immediately convened and following meeting to prevent the Pizhma haul getting out of the country, which was technically her responsibility as the department head, although Natalia thought there was an element of inferred criticism of Aleksai and suspected he thought so too. The impression increased, spreading, she believed, to the military commanders, when the meeting ended with the belated investigation following virtually every suggestion put forward by Charlie and the American. That second session was expanded, again on Radomir Badim's orders by internal division commanders from the Federal Security Service, the new intelligence service formed from the old KGB, and the Federal Militia to provide as much additional manpower as possible to secure borders into Europe and the West. A further ministerial edict was that every planning decision be channelled to the minister through Natalia, which kept her the inevitable focus for mistakes as much as for successes. And realistically she recognized the risks of mistakes were far greater than the benefit of successes.

Ever conscious of that, Natalia questioned and examined every proposal, relegating to secondary importance the chauvinism of the military and the other male division chiefs and Popov's barely concealed impatience at her operational experience. Natalia rigidly limited her questioning to the practicalities of stopping the stolen nuclear material reaching the West, but was not reluctant to challenge Popov.

She was as annoyed with him as he appeared to be with her. She'd been very vulnerable at the beginning of the minister's inquest and Aleksai had done nothing to help: indeed, he had led the denunciation of Western involvement with which she would have been culpably linked if it had been judged ill-concieved, and she'd felt satisfaction as well as embarrassment for her lover when the attack had blown up in his face.

It was a resentment Natalia intended privately to let him know beyond what he'd doubtless already assumed, but she acknowledged the opportunity wasn't going to be easy that night. As pointedly as Natalia felt able when she left to report to the minister, she demanded Popov contact her with the street-level, city-by-city details of the regional and outer border closures upon which they had decided.

She returned uneasily to Leninskaya, hoping Popov would assume the contact insistence a relayed demand from Radomir Badim that had to be complied with. Which it virtually turned out to be anyway from the point-by-point interrogation to which she was subjected by the minister, as well as by Viskov and Fomin, before they agreed every proposal. Because of the uncertainty, Natalia left Sasha in the care of the crèche staff.

It clearly was Popov's assumption from the formality with which he telephoned, an hour after she arrived back at the apartment.

He recited the demanded details in a flat, expressionless tone, scarcely making any allowances for her to take notes. She didn't ask him to slow or repeat anything. ‘Is there anything additional you want?' he concluded.

‘I don't think so.'

‘I shall stay at the ministry tonight.'

Objectively Natalia accepted it was right he should remain in the ministry building: the need was greater now than when he was preparing for the Kirov interception. ‘Call me immediately there is any development'

‘Of course. Anything else?'

‘I would have liked more support this afternoon.' If she couldn't tell him to his face she'd tell him this way.

‘So would I!'

‘You were too anxious to criticize!'

‘And you to approve!'

‘I wasn't approving! Just showing practical common sense to practical common sense suggestions!'