Bomb Grade (33 page)

‘A fascinating theory, without any supportive facts,' sneered the taller of the two
spetznaz
officers.

‘Establish some facts then!' Charlie knew he'd get six buckets of shit knocked out of him in a stand-up fight with the Special Forces officer but in a stand-up discussion of deception it wasn't a contest.

‘How?' asked the other soldier, sparing his colleague.

Charlie gestured sideways, to Kestler, ‘From the American photographs we know
exactly
what time the train was stopped: twelve thirty-five the night before last. And we know precisely the time the trucks were found at the Arbat and the Ford on the ring road. They would have been driven fast from the scene of the robbery. So let's try an average speed of sixty kilometres an hour. Drive the trucks – once they've been cleared by your nuclear people and by your forensic examiners – between Pizhma and Moscow to see if the journey takes almost twenty-nine hours! They'd have had to be going
backwards
to take that long! Fill the Ford up with petrol and see if it can make the journey on one tank. It won't be able to. See how many times it has to be filled up to get directly from Pizhma to Moscow. The petrol left, on arrival here, will indicate how large a detour they took to offload the canisters before dumping the vehicles in Moscow.'

‘I think we must accept those as valid qualifications,' conceded Badim, reluctantly.

‘There could be a number of explanations for so much time elapsing,' tried Gusev, tentatively and badly.

‘That's surely the point!' came in Kestler, at once.

‘Nothing has been scaled down outside Moscow,' insisted Popov. ‘The maximum state of alert is still in operation. The discovery of the vehicles is clearly the most
practical
way to proceed.'

The defence was greeted with agreeing nods from the minister and the presidential advisor. Natalia frowned, questioningly, towards Popov, who raised his eyebrows in return and Charlie wondered what the hell the exchange meant.

‘I've been authorized to offer any scientific assistance that might be necessary,' declared Kestler, unexpectedly.

‘Scientific assistance?' queried Badim, cautiously.

‘With Foreign Ministry agreement a senior FBI scientific officer has been assigned to our embassy here. A qualified nuclear physicist.'

The attention switched abruptly to Yuri Panin and from the expression not just on Natalia's face but that of the Interior Minister Charlie guessed neither had known until that moment. Panin's reaction confirmed Charlie's impression. The Foreign Ministry official flushed and said, ‘I intended to explain today, for everyone to be told at the same time.'

Dmitri Fomin moved quickly to defuse the tension. ‘We benefited from the positioning of the satellite.'

‘An outside scientific opinion would provide independent confirmation of the findings of our own experts,' suggested Popov.

‘She is already here and available,' assured Kestler.

‘The interrogation of those arrested at Kirs has been productive,' declared Natalia, entering the discussion at last. ‘I personally participated earlier today in the initial examination of Lev Yatisyna.'

Better late than never, thought Charlie, relieved.

‘A total of twenty-four people were arrested, either at Plant 69 or in the Kirov round-up,' reminded Natalia. ‘Each is being detained separately, to prevent rehearsed stories being prepared. All have been told they face trial for murder, of those Militia, Special Forces and security guards killed in the operation. The four men seized in the apartment of Valeri Lvov have been specifically charged with the murder of his wife and the rape of the girls. All have also been told they will be charged with the attempted robbery of nuclear material.'

It was right she should set the facts out as she was doing but he hoped she'd soon get to the promised results, to hold their attention.

‘… It has also been made clear that the death penalty will be demanded and that clemency is never exercised in murders of Militia or soldiers …' Natalia's pause was every bit as theatrical as Popov's presentation earlier. ‘… except in very rare and exceptional circumstances. None is in any doubt what that means. Each has been left, totally alone, to decide how to save his own life …'

The taller of the
spetznaz
officers said: ‘Will clemency be shown to anyone providing the sort of cooperation you want?'

It was Fomin who answered. ‘No,' said the presidential aide, positively.

The officer looked more towards the note-takers. ‘I would like the request recorded now, for later reference and discussion with the Federal Prosecutor's office, that the executions are carried out by Special Forces firing squads.'

‘I give my personal assurance to raise the matter with the prosecutor,' said Fomin.

Charlie's mind began to slip sideways during the interruption. What they were talking about and trying to resolve now naturally had the utmost and undivided priority. But it was the beginning, not the end, of his Russian posting. Which – quite irrespective of any arrangement he'd made with Natalia – he didn't intend fulfilling permanently cap-in-hand, with a sign around his neck begging for Russian handouts. He'd need Russian approval for the proposal germinating in his mind. London's permission, too. And Gerald Williams really would be driven to apoplexy by the amount of money it would need. Worst of all, everything could go disastrously wrong and end up with him impaled by his testicles atop one of the Krelim tower stars, the most reluctant Christmas tree fairy ever. But the idea that had come to him seemed a good one. Something to consider more fully later, he decided.

‘We have confirmed, initially from fingerprints and through fingerprints from criminal records, the identities of the six arrested men from Moscow,' resumed Natalia, bringing Charlie's concentration back to her. ‘All belong to one of the major clans attached to the Ostankino Family. As I've already said, I personally interrogated Lev Yatisyna earlier today. I let him conclude we'd established the Moscow connection from confessions we'd already obtained and he confirmed the Kirs robbery was set up by Yevgennie Agayans, leader of the Ostankino clan. An arrest warrant was this morning issued for the man …' Natalia allowed a long pause. ‘… We've also established from interrogating those of the Agayans group we have in custody that the Chechen are their chief rivals, in particular the Shelapin Family, with whom they dispute control of the area around Moscow's Bykovo airport. We've independently confirmed, again from records, that in the past nine months five men have been killed in shootouts between the Agayans and Shelapin Families. Arrest warrants, alleging nuclear theft and attempted nuclear theft, have been issued against both groups …' Natalia hesitated again, looking this time first towards the military officers and then to the anonymously dressed man, confirming Charlie's instinctive arrival empathy. ‘… Special Forces units are assisting Militia, as well as contingents from the Federal Security Service, on swoops upon all known addresses and locations used by the two Families.'

Charlie fleetingly wondered if any of the clubs he'd been to would feature among the known locations. Judged with the necessary impartiality, Natalia had performed better than Popov. And personally questioning Yatisyna – and so quickly confirming a lead to who might have carried out the Pizhma robbery – had been a brilliant move.

Natalia knew she'd done well, although she kept any awareness from showing. Her satisfaction did not last long.

Popov said: ‘There are clearly members of the Yatisyna Family still free. Or maybe the retribution was exacted by the Agayans mob. Our initial information about the intended robbery at Plant 69 came from the Militia regional commander at Kirov, Nikolai Vladimiro-vich Oskin. Without his contribution, the intrusion at Kirs would have undoubtedly succeeded. And we would now be dealing with an unthinkable nuclear loss twice as large as that we face now. Nikolai Oskin knew the risks he was taking. He asked for protection. He and his family were transferred to Moscow …'

Asked
me
for protection, thought Natalia, in growing apprehension.

‘… Their bodies were found this morning, in the apartment that had been provided for them. Each had been tortured. Oskin was bound in a chair. From the position in which it was placed and the way in which the bodies of his wife and children were left it would appear he was made to watch while they were mutilated and finally killed – each by being decapitated – before being physically tortured to death himself.'

Perhaps, thought Charlie, his most recent idea wasn't such a good one after all.

With an ingrained determination to be part of everything, even if he was not invited, Charlie hung around while Kestler approached Popov to arrange the American scientific examination of the recovered lorries and, when it emerged the Russian team were already at the Arbat, went unchallenged in the Militia car to collect the telephone-alerted woman from the American embassy compound.

Hillary Jamieson was waiting for them at the compound entrance, wearing one-piece overalls Charlie accepted to be scene-of-crime official issue from the colour and the foot-high FBI lettering on the back, but which owed more to designer-inspired alteration than to government seamstresses. The trousers were tapered to shows legs which Charlie would have thought, in other clothes, reached her shoulders but visibly and delightfully stopped at a tightly displayed ass so perfect that Michelangelo would have gone into artistic if not lustful rapture and in this case might just have converted from the sexual proclivities of a lifetime. He would certainly have modelled the breasts, even more provocatively displayed as bra-less both by the tightness of the material and the insufficiently closed zip, for a statue that would have reduced the Venus de Medici to an effigy of someone's washerwoman grandmother.

Kestler was briefly and literally speechless, actually stumbling as he hurried from the car to hold open the rear door for her. Prick teaser meets prick teased, thought Charlie, watching the performance. She shook her head against Kestler taking a large plastic workbox and a thick plastic suit-carrier type sheath from her, following both into the rear and directing to Charlie a sculpted-toothed, favoured-mortal-to-local-aborigine smile as she did so. She gave an apologetic hand flutter to Kestler that her equipment took up too much room to allow him in the back as well. As the disgruntled Kestler got into the front she said, ‘I'm still not sure what the fuck I'm doing here but I hardly expected to hit the ground running! What have we got?'

Kestler noticeably blinked at the ‘fuck'. He said, ‘You haven't met Charlie. Assigned like I am. From England.'

Hillary twisted back in the rear seat. ‘Hi! I thought you were local!'

‘They're different from us: they wear animal skins and grunt a lot,' said Charlie.

She laughed, unrebuked. ‘I thought they did that in England, too! And painted themselves with woad.'

‘Not in London. Only out in the country.'

The car began to slow, impeded by the congestion from part of the inner ring road as well as the Arbat being simultaneously closed off. The driver asked Kestler which scene they wanted and when Kestler identified the Arbat, turned on his emergency siren and lights and overtook the stalled traffic on the wrong side of the road, flashing for street patrol Militia to clear intersections ahead of them, and Charlie was glad they had accepted Popov's suggestion to take an official vehicle. Knowing the closeness of the Arbat Charlie became serious, answering Hillary's initial question while Kestler was engaged with the driver.

She listened, just as seriously. ‘What's this Arbat place?'

‘Tourist quarter. Largely pedestrianized.'

‘How wide an area has been cleared?'

‘Extensive, from what we were told this morning.'

‘It had better be, if these lorries are contaminated.'

‘Not predominantly because of the health risk,' qualified Kestler, from the front. ‘The chief concern is that the general public – abroad as well as here in Moscow – will find out what's happened.'

‘Tell me you're kidding me that no official warning has been given!' demanded the girl.

‘We're not kidding you,' assured Charlie, flatly.

‘This isn't a joke, for fuck's sake!'

‘Welcome to the real world,' invited Charlie.

‘This isn't the real world! It's the
unreal
world!' She looked searchingly around the car, then back to Kestler and Charlie. ‘Where's your protective stuff?'

Kestler and Charlie exchanged looks. Kestler said, ‘We don't have any.'

Hillary said, ‘This isn't happening! I just know this isn't happening!'

‘It is,' argued Charlie. ‘Look!'

The scene ahead was like one from a surrealist movie. For fifty yards in the direction they were approaching the road and the surrounding pavements were crowded with milling, other-way focused people and protesting, horn-blasting vehicles cut off from a view of absolutely unmoving and unpeopled emptiness, as cleanly as a sharp knife separates one side of a cake from the other, by metal-fences barriers hedged by shoulder-to-shoulder Militia. As far as they could see beyond the barrier there were no cars. There were no trolleys. The windows of every building and shop were blank. There was a fountain which didn't spout water. It looked exactly like the desolation Charlie imagined
would
follow a nuclear explosion.

‘Just an ordinary, downtown Moscow street investigation, folks!' mocked Hillary, making an up-and-down hand cupped masturbating gesture. ‘Nothing to see! Just move along now; all go home!' The mockery stopped. ‘How's this going to be kept quiet, for Christ's sake?'

Charlie had had the same thought listening to Natalia itemizing the arrest warrants at that morning's meeting. Instead of answering he physically pulled Hillary against the seat as they reached the barrier. ‘Sit back! Don't go forward!'