Bomb Grade (37 page)

Charlie remained in the cipher-room hideaway, handing his written account a promised page at a time for simultaneous encryption and transmission, careless of mistyping in his eagerness to get his views and opinions in London before any others. He'd finished most of it before Bowyer appeared, flushed, at the door. ‘Where the hell have you been? The ambassador's going mad, trying to find you! Everyone is!'

‘Working,' said Charlie, not looking up.

‘Stop what you're doing and come with me!'

‘I'm going to finish this.'

‘I told you to come with me!'

‘Call the Director-General and ask if he wants me to stop.' Charlie held back, just, from referring to Dean as the DG: there was the specific London instruction about Bowyer's seniority down the drain, he reflected. But there was a purpose in his doing it, like there was in every move he was making now.

‘Are you …!' started the outraged station chief.

‘… Fifteen minutes,' stopped Charlie. ‘Call London.' He went on writing while Bowyer stood for several minutes at the doorway before turning abruptly to stomp back into the main embassy building. Charlie refused to meet the conspiratorial attention upon him from the clerks. It actually took him twenty minutes to finish and a further ten to retrieve his full, un-encrypted report, which was a leaving-the-room afterthought. Charlie found Thomas Bowyer sitting rigidly in the official
rezidentura
. Charlie was sure Bowyer would have sought London adjudication and that the stuffed-animal demeanour was the result but didn't press it. He said, ‘Sorry to have kept you,' wishing the cliché hadn't sounded so mocking.

‘The ambassador's waiting,' said Bowyer, moving jerkily out into the corridor. They went in total silence to the ambassador's suite.

Wilkes waved away Bowyer's hurried apologies for lateness but Nigei Saxon sat tensed forward in a chair bordering Wilkes's desk, impatient to strike. ‘You've been in contact with London before consulting us!' accused the Chancellery head. ‘That's directly against the instructions you were given. You were told to report to senior authority at all times.'

‘The ambassador was not available,' said Charlie. ‘It was a matter of urgency.'

‘It was the ambassador's responsibility to respond to this!'

‘Which is being delayed by this conversation,' pointed out Charlie. It sound stronger than he intended. Saxon pulled his lips into a tight line.

‘I do think it's important to get on,' prompted Wilkes. ‘It seems the Russians have pulled off quite a coup.'

Whatever he'd lost here at the embassy he'd made up for by getting his views to London first, Charlie decided. ‘I'd advise caution with that assessment.'

Wilkes's frown was to Bowyer. ‘According to the briefing I've just had at the Foreign Ministry, they've recovered a lot of material. And expect to recover a lot more.'

‘They actually said that?'

‘They inferred it.'

‘I don't believe there are any grounds whatsoever to think that,' said Charlie. ‘They're trumpeting a success to cover a failure: there's still an enormous amount missing …' He stood, putting his dispatch on the ambassador's desk. ‘This is my opinion.'

‘Reached upon what grounds?' demanded Saxon.

‘The facts, as we so far know them. And common sense,' retorted Charlie. ‘The Russians are mounting a containment exercise, blowing up as much smoke as possible. Which I don't blame them for: any government would do the same, in the circumstances in which Moscow finds itself. I just think we should see through the smoke.'

‘Which you can do!' said Saxon.

Charlie looked directly at the man for several moments without speaking, making the disdain clear. ‘Which everyone
should
be able to do, looking at the situation objectively.'

Wilkes came up frowning from Charlie's report. ‘You certainly disagree with the guidance I got, that there was little risk of anything reaching the West: that it was still in Moscow.'

‘Total rubbish,' insisted Charlie. ‘The majority remains missing and are on their way to the West.'

‘Where's your
proof
?' insisted Saxon. ‘Are you seriously suggesting the ambassador
ignores
what he's just been told? That the Russians are lying?'

Sometimes, thought Charlie,
Alice Through the Looking Glass
seemed like a treatise in irrefutable logic. ‘The Russians are doing exactly what every government does when there's a potential disaster: mislead to fool the people they rule and as many outsiders as possible that they
can
handle it. In this case they're trying to fool other governments, too.' And from Wilkes's attitude, Charlie guessed they'd succeeded.

A discernible shift ran through the room at the cynicism. ‘I think that's an extreme opinion,' volunteered Bowyer, entering the discussion. ‘And one not necessarily shared by everyone.'

Charlie looked sideways at the other man, the irritation surging through him. He'd need something positive, some evidence, upon which to complain to London, but he didn't think it would be too hard to achieve. And when he did he'd openly confront this situation. At first it hadn't worried him – he'd even thought it potentially useful – but now he found it a downright bloody nuisance.

‘I asked you for proof, upon which you base your opinions,' repeated Saxon.

If I had it I wouldn't offer it to you, thought Charlie. ‘And I gave you my answer.'

‘Then I think we should rely upon official sources rather than base a reaction upon the opinion of someone with little knowledge or awareness of diplomacy.'

‘Why don't you do just that?' suggested Charlie.

The ambassador came up from Charlie's account a second time, the affability gone. ‘You seem to make a practice of expressing yourself very strongly.'

Charlie supposed that was a diplomatic slap on the back of his legs. He looked pointedly at his watch. ‘In a few hours from now an official statement is going to be made in the House of Commons. If it's wrong or misguided, within a very short time – days even – it could prove to be extremely embarrassing. Most embarrassing of all for the people upon whose guidance that statement was made.'

‘As it could if it is based upon your guidance and your opinion is wrong,' challenged Saxon, immediately.

‘Unquestionably,' accepted Charlie, just as quickly. ‘You asked for my input. That's it, lying on the table there. I am not asking you, not even suggesting, that you take any notice of it. I am prepared to stand and be judged by it. I am not asking anyone else to be.'

The ambassador blinked at the forcefulness, which silenced Saxon and Bowyer, as well.

‘You must have information that we don't know about to be as positive as this?' said Saxon.

‘I have been doing the job I was sent here to perform.'

‘Does that mean you're refusing to give us your sources?' demanded Bowyer.

Fucking right it does, thought Charlie. The bastard was trying to exacerbate a positive confrontation for the ambassador to invoke his ultimate authority! And Charlie didn't want to go as far as having to refuse outright, which he would do if necessary. ‘You have everything I have sent to London.'

Instead of making the demand Bowyer, and possibly Saxon, had hoped, Wilkes said, ‘You're sure of your information?'

‘Judge it on the facts!' urged Charlie, again. ‘Nineteen canisters are still missing! Recovering some is good but there's no cause for any upbeat reaction from London. Or from anywhere else.'

The ambassador nodded, an accepting gesture, and said, ‘Thank you, for your opinion,' and Charlie knew he'd got away with it. Saxon and Bowyer knew it, too.

As they walked back through the embassy corridors, Bowyer said, ‘That was unforgivable! You were insubordinate!'

He had been, by diplomatic standards, accepted Charlie. ‘You going to complain to London?'

‘I'd be surprised if someone doesn't. Leaving me to provide an explanation.'

‘And what would that be?' asked Charlie, directly.

Bowyer halted, in the corridor outside his office. ‘It would be very difficult for me to defend your behaviour back there.'

‘So I'm cast to the wolves,' mocked Charlie, who'd decided what to do during the walk from the ambassador's suite.

‘You cast yourself,' said Bowyer.

The full transcript of what was available from the satellite audio-transmission was waiting when Charlie got back to his cubicle. The word
akrashena
appeared three times, although no specific importance was attached because in the context it read as if in the eavesdropped conversation between the nuclear thieves ‘wet paint' was a mocking sneer at the contamination from the leaking containers. Which couldn't have been better.

Charlie sat back with his hands cupped contentedly over his stomach, allowing himself the self-congratulation. It had taken a long time but at last he was where he always preferred to be: on his own and unencumbered, with an inside track that was going to keep him ahead of the game and already with something that no one else would realize the significance of. He hadn't worked it out totally himself but he was getting there.

It took Charlie much longer to realize the significance of other disparate words, but when he did there was even more self-satisfaction. It was an over-familiar, incomplete reference and it wouldn't have meant anything if Charlie hadn't worked twice in Warsaw, in the old Cold War days, and heard the legend of the
Zajazd Karczma
. So there was the possibility it wouldn't mean anything to the analysts either in London or Washington, who'd be dissecting everything vowel by vowel, although he preferred to think they'd get it in time. But in time it would be too late.

Charlie endured five minutes of Jurgen Balg talking of the ambassadorial briefing before declaring, ‘The rest – or a percentage at least – is moving through Poland. I don't have any timings or routes but it's Warsaw.'

‘You're sure of Warsaw?'

‘Yes.'

‘Then it's more likely to be routed through Germany than the Czech Republic'

‘That would be my guess, too.'

‘What's Moscow doing about it?'

There was no reason to tell the German he'd been excluded: it diminished his usefulness to the other man. ‘They aren't aware of it.'

There was a momentary silence from Balg. ‘What about America?'

‘I don't know.'

This time the silence was longer. ‘Between ourselves?'

‘That's how I'd like it to stay.' Balg might have a reason to break the undertaking, so Charlie supposed he'd have to say something to Kestler. But there was no immediate hurry: self-preservation – with the new addition of protecting Natalia – was always the paramount consideration. And it was, after all, American information which they already had in Washington: probably in full, not intermittent like he had it.

‘I'll be in touch,' promised the German.

‘I'd like to be involved.' It was a lot to expect but if you don't ask you don't get, thought Charlie. So it was worth a try.

Having dealt with things in order of priority, Charlie came back to the decision he'd reached on his way back from the ambassador's office. He wrote steadily for half an hour, leaving until the end the final inscription on the fronting page and was actually putting it into his desk drawer when Thomas Bowyer appeared at the door.

‘You're being recalled to London,' announced Bowyer, triumphantly.

‘I hoped I would be,' replied Charlie, spoiling the other man's moment. But not until the following day, Charlie decided: he couldn't leave without talking to Natalia.

‘We've been excluded,' announced Dean. As he had at the still-inconcluded confrontation with Peter Johnson, Dean spoke extremely slowly, measuring out his anger in every word.

‘I'm sorry to hear that, sir.' Unthinkingly Fenby had picked up Henry Fitzjohn's unctuously polite mannerism: it was not unusual for him to copy speech affectation he admired.

You're going to be, determined Dean. He didn't yet fully know how, because it had to be to his maximum benefit and advantage. All he had at the moment was an implacable determination to overturn with as great an upheaval as possible whatever the water-drinking, salad-eating, ego-driven bastard imagined he was doing. Today was a simple declaration of war, which he expected Fenby too stupid to realize. ‘So was I. The nonsense about governmental leaks didn't justify it.'

‘You think that was the reason, sir?' The FBI Director sat with his chair tilted away from the foot-resting desk of his top-floor office, gazing up Pennsylvania Avenue towards the Capitol with the telephone cupped loosely into his shoulder. Fenby's mind was only half on the conversation: my town, he was thinking; my town and I'm a central player.

‘Can you think of another one?'

‘I thought we gave a satisfactory explanation from here. Guess you did, too, from your end.'

‘We gave an explanation,' agreed the Director-General. Heavily he added, ‘An explanation for ourselves, that's all. In fact I think you should see it. The sanitized version and what really happened. I'm shipping both over in the diplomatic bag from your embassy today.' Charlie's itemized complaints against Kestler were already in front of Dean, isolated in an unusually cleared space on his desk.

In Washington Fenby frowned, at the ‘what really happened' remark. ‘Much obliged, but I really can't see the need.'

‘In return, I'd be interested to see how you handled it, to find where I went wrong. We're treating the whole thing as a joint operation, after all.'

Fenby brought his feet down from the desk. ‘Happy to send it over, sir; try to get it in your embassy bag tonight.' It would involve another morning creating another phoney response, that was all.