Bomb Grade (3 page)

Charlie wondered if the telephone boxes in Moscow would be large enough for him to change into his Superman outfit. ‘There are officers from this department already attached to the British embassy in Moscow. Others from SIS, too.'

‘Engaged in their normal functions, which remain quite separate from what you are being appointed to achieve,' said Dean. ‘Our role was extended years ago to combat the terrorism in Northern Ireland. Now it's being widened even further. And what's coming out of Russia and its former satellites provides the potential for the worst terrorism imaginable.'

‘To whom will I be responsible? The station chief? Or direct to London?' Charlie had rarely engaged in an operation where jealously guarded territory did not have to be respected. Diplomatic niceties were always a pain in the ass.

‘London. But through the embassy,' ordered the sharply featured Peter Johnson.

‘What's my officially described position to be?'

It was Patrick Pacey who responded. ‘An attaché. Don't for a moment forget the genuine political importance of what you're doing …' He made a hand movement over the conference table and Charlie became aware that each of the group had his personal dossiers before them. ‘There won't be any of the nonsense of the past,' continued the department's political advisor. ‘Just one example of what you've always explained away –
and
got away with – as necessary operational independence and you're on the first plane back to London. And in this building only long enough to be formally dismissed from the service once and for all.'

‘And don't suffer the slightest doubt at our seriousness,' endorsed the deputy Director. ‘There
are
changes to our function. This is one of them:
you're
one of them. So you've got to change, like everything else about the business we're now in. There's no place for anyone disobeying orders. That clear enough?'

‘Completely,' Charlie said, caught by just one part of the threat. ‘This isn't seen as a temporary assignment: one specific operation?'

‘The Americans got agreement a long time ago to appoint an FBI office in Moscow specifically to monitor nuclear smuggling,' reminded the deputy Director. ‘You're our equivalent.'

‘To
liaise
,' instructed Simpson, the moustache hedge seemingly moving slightly out of time with the man's upper lip. ‘That's your sole function …' He gestured sideways to Pacey. ‘You've got to do more than simply think what the politics are. Whatever it is, it will be inextricably tied up with legality. The Russians are the law, not us. We have – you'll have – no legal jurisdiction. All the nuclear stuff haemorrhaging across Europe is coming overland through Poland and Hungary and Germany and the two countries that made up Czechoslovakia and what was Yugoslavia.'

Minefield was too much of an appalling pun, thought Charlie. ‘It'll be a waste of time even bothering,' he declared. ‘Before we've even begun working our way through the officials we'd need to consult, every terrorist group, despot or dictator will have atom bombs up to their knees.'

‘Let's be more specific,' said the distinctively voiced Director-General. ‘We decide here in London who should be consulted and who shouldn't. The important thing for you to understand,
totally
and at
all
times, is that you must never, ever, act without consulting us.'

He'd made the protest to maintain his credibility, which was all that mattered. There were other, more essential parameters to be established: one more important than all others. ‘I don't think I can operate effectively – as I will
have
to operate – living in the embassy compound.'

‘Why not?' demanded Williams, sensing a danger.

Because it would severely limit the enormous expenses benefits, thought Charlie. ‘According to what you say, the nuclear trade is handled by gangsters: an acknowledged Mafia.' He briefly hesitated, wondering if Natalia had transferred to the Interior Ministry, just as quickly thrusting the intrusion aside. ‘Would the Foreign Office like the idea of my meeting a questionable informant on embassy property …?' He turned his attention to Simpson, warming to his argument. ‘Wouldn't there even be a legal difficulty …?' And then to Pacey. ‘… As well as a political one …?'

‘I still think …' began Williams, anxious to continue his objection, but Dean cut the man off. ‘There are obvious advantages to your living separate from the embassy.'

Push it as far as you can when you're on a roll, Charlie told himself. ‘Crime makes Moscow astronomically expensive. My cost of living allowance will need to be proportionately substantial. Considerably more than might normally be accepted, even in the high-cost diplomatic postings like Tokyo or Washington. And the justifiable out-of-pocket expenses will undoubtedly be larger as well. I'm going to have to go where the Mafias go … clubs … restaurants …' Charlie was close to enjoying himself: certainly he was enjoying Gerald Williams' obvious anguish.

‘I don't think all this needs to be discussed today,' attempted the accountant, blinking nervously at the prospects for gain Charlie was working to establish.

‘I think it's important to discuss and agree
everything
here today that might affect the success of what I have to do,' said Charlie, equally anxious.

Charlie was aware of the Director-General momentarily regarding him with what could have been a bemused smile. Then the man turned to Williams and said, ‘I think things should be put on the highest scale. This is a new role that has to succeed, to stop the political sniping that the country doesn't need intelligence services any more. So I don't want anything endangered by penny-pinching.'

‘I am to liaise with the Russians
and
whatever the FBI arrangement is there?' Charlie hurried on.

‘Yes.' Dean resumed charge of the conversation.

‘They know we're sending someone over specifically for the purpose?'

‘Yes.'

‘Just someone? Or has my name been put forward, for approval?'

‘To the Russians, yes: more formal and official arrangements obviously had to be made with Moscow. With the Americans everything was left open, until today's meeting.' The Director-General paused. ‘Is there a problem?'

If Natalia had transferred at the rank she'd occupied in the former KGB it was possible she'd even know he was coming! Nodding yet again towards his dossier, Charlie said, ‘There will be an extensive file on me, both in Washington and Moscow.'

‘The KGB is defunct. And their records, too. There obviously hasn't been the slightest association with what you once were and what you once did.'

‘I don't think I'm particularly popular in America, either.'

‘What you did, you did to the CIA, not the FBI. Each hates the other. The Bureau would probably approve, not criticize: find it amusing, even. And it's very ancient history, anyway,' dismissed the Director-General, showing how extensively he, and therefore everyone else in the room, had studied Charlie's file.

‘Your sole primary concern is not making mistakes,' warned Johnson.

‘I won't,' promised Charlie, carelessly.

‘No more than once,' said Pacey. ‘I've already told you that.'

‘I like him,' judged the Director-General. It was a remark addressed more to his deputy than anyone else: Charlie Muffin had been Peter Johnson's recommendation.

‘He's a liar and a thief,' insisted the financial controller, seething at Charlie's easy success with allowances and accommodation.

‘Isn't that why he's being sent: poacher turned gamekeeper?' reminded the cadaverous deputy.

‘There are others who could have gone, without the uncertainties that always surround this man,' argued Williams.

‘Costing as much as possible is all part of the budgetary exercises,' said Johnson, defending his choice. ‘We've not only to establish a new role for ourselves. We've got to establish a financial ceiling. The more we spend in expansion, the more important and necessary we'll appear.'

‘That's cynical reasoning,' reproached Williams.

‘Practical reasoning,' corrected Johnson, equally insistent. ‘I want to build a new empire, not destroy one.'

I want
, isolated Dean. He didn't want to confront the other man so soon but he had the worrying impression that Johnson's annoyance at not getting the directorship might become a problem. Maybe it hadn't been as wise as he'd thought to accept Johnson's suggestion about the Moscow posting: it could have made Johnson imagine an unnecessary reliance. ‘
We
want to build a new empire.'

‘Muffin's not the man to do it,' insisted Williams.

‘We're not relying on him doing it alone,' reminded the Director-General.

‘I'll tell Fenby: he was very helpful,' said Johnson. John Fenby was the FBI Director. It had been Johnson's idea, too, to seek the political support of the Americans through govemment-to-government pressure for a specific British posting to Moscow to match their own.

‘Is it really necessary to tell Fenby?' asked the Director-General.

‘We're becoming more like the FBI: we'll need a close working relationship,' Johnson pointed out.

‘You will keep me informed at every stage, won't you?'

‘I don't
think
I need to be reminded to do that.'

This was becoming petulant, decided Dean. Which was ridiculous. Ending it by looking away from his deputy to include everyone else, he said, ‘We've made an important decision today. Let's do all we can from this end to make sure it works.'

Peter Johnson's first act upon returning to his own office was to call Washington.

Stanislav Silin wasn't any longer accustomed to doing things for himself. He'd forgotten how to, like he'd forgotten his own stepping stones to power. When Stanislav Silin wanted something done,
anything
done, he told someone to do it and if the task wasn't performed to his total satisfaction then those who failed were punished. But not this time or this way. For this meeting and for this meeting place he couldn't trust anyone inside the Dolgoprudnaya, not even Petr Markov, and most certainly not outside. Apart, that is, from Marina. No man had been as lucky as he had with a wife like her. The hatred boiled up at the threat Sobelov had created. Soon, he told himself, soon he'd make the man sorry. But there were other things first. He'd had to find this very special apartment himself and arrange the lease himself and for the first time in almost fifteen years he hadn't been able to intimidate the landlord with the inference of who he was for fear the man might sell him out or be under threat from a higher or initially more feared bidder. Which was an irony Silin could appreciate, inconvenient though it had been: he'd even been amused when the landlord had tried to intimidate him with warnings of the consequences of his being a bad tenant.

Silin had specifically chosen the Ulitza Razina, in the oldest Kitay-Gorod district, because all the pre-revolutionary buildings, some actually minor palaces, had under communism been turned into apartment rabbit warrens with a warren's benefit of many different entrances, several from two streets quite separate from the Razina courtyard. Its most important advantage was the personal protection it gave him from Sobelov but it equally protected the people he was meeting that afternoon and upon whom not just his survival but an unimaginable business future depended. Like he could – and would – they could also arrive separately and leave separately and never use the same door or courtyard twice, making discovery or identification totally impossible.

The apartment was bare-board basic, of course, which he regretted. His two city mansions and the dacha in the outer hills were designer-decorated, the marble shipped from Italy, the wall and upholstery silk specially woven before being flown in from Hong Kong: the opulence awed people, giving him an advantage. For this operation, anonymity and secrecy were the only advantages he sought. His single addition was the bottles and glasses set out on the matchwood sideboard: he hadn't even bothered to cover the bed in the adjoining room.

They were coming to him and Silin solicitously arrived well ahead of the arranged time. Not that he intended to be subservient – that would have been quite wrong as well as difficult for him – any more than he expected them to be subservient towards him. They were going to meet and conduct their business as equals. His being there early was simply the politeness of a host.

The two men arrived together, which surprised him, and precisely on time, which didn't. The handshakes were perfunctory, without names: the namelessness had been their insistence from the beginning, after the initial confirmation of their identities, and Silin thought it theatrical but was quite prepared to go along with the pointless affectation. Both declined Silin's hospitality, making it another pointless gesture.

The seats made protesting noises when they sat and Silin's skin itched at once at the thought of who had sat on the lounge chair before him: he didn't lean back, wanting to minimize his contact with the upholstery as much as possible. The leader of the two, neither of whom appeared discomfited, briefly looked around the functional meeting place and said, ‘This is well chosen.'

‘I don't want what we're discussing going beyond this room,' said Silin. ‘Or beyond us three.'

‘Neither do we.'

‘Everything you promised me is possible?'

‘Guaranteed,' assured the spokesman.

‘As much as 250 kilos?'

‘Absolutely.'

‘When?'

‘Four months, maximum. We want to achieve more than just a robbery.'

Silin listened without interruption to the proposal, nodding at the awareness of how much it would, incredibly, benefit him. ‘That would not be difficult to achieve between us.'