Bomb Grade (40 page)

‘Have I passed?'

It took Charlie a moment to reply. ‘You think I was testing you?'

‘Weren't you?'

‘No!' At last he understood the head nodding.

She regarded him doubtfully. ‘I thought you thought I was a dumb-assed bimbo.'

‘I don't think the FBI would include a dumb-assed bimbo in an investigation into a nuclear robbery of this size.'

‘Sometimes people get the wrong impression.' It was an observation, not a defence.

‘I haven't formed one yet.' Which wasn't true. Charlie had already decided she was anything but dumb-assed and wanted her to be very much part of what he had in mind, although he hadn't worked out how or what. In addition to which, he was enjoying the closeness of a woman, which was something he hadn't known for a long time. The continued envy of the other men in the restaurant, like that of others in the bar, wasn't hurting his ego, either.

‘So far this hasn't been what I expected.'

‘Me neither.'

‘Didn't you say something about up and down?'

‘It's a place, not an activity,' reminded Charlie.

Despite the designer-dressed, diamond-shined, coiffure-controlled competition, the reaction to Hillary's arrival at the Up and Down club matched that earlier at the Savoy bar, which Charlie decided was precisely because the competition was designer-dressed, diamond-shined and had every hair concreted in place. They had to try. Hillary didn't. She flowed alongside him utterly self-confident but seemingly unaware of the head-turning and for once Charlie welcomed the envious attention from the equally detail-perfect men. This
was
very much work and this the workplace. Which, he supposed, qualified as a tool the Roederer Crystal he ordered in preference to Dom Perignon with the anecdote to Hillary that it was the favourite champagne of the Romanov family to whom it was delivered in crystal bottles.

‘These real life Mafia?' It was an objective although detached question from a person neither overly awed nor overly frightened.

‘Real life and real death,' said Charlie. The two seemed to be a recurrent reflection.

‘Lot of influence from Central Casting.'

‘This is show-time.'

‘Every night?'

‘There's a circuit. Thought you might have gone around it with Kestler.'

‘He suggested it.' The dismissiveness came down like a shutter.

Nervous of the downstairs dance area, the very definitely non-dancing Charlie remained on the upper level. The stripper was a different girl from Charlie's other visits but just as good and Hillary watched without any discomfort.

‘There's a girl who knows what she's got.'

‘Now I know it, too,' said Charlie.

She looked directly at him. ‘That do anything for you?'

Charlie didn't reply at once. He
had
formed an impression, betore tonight. And been wrong. He didn't any longer think Hillary Jamieson was a prick teaser. Taking his judgment beyond her cleverness, Charlie decided she was someone totally sure of herself and of how and what she wanted to be: so sure – arrogant about it, even, although not offensively so – that she genuinely didn't give a damn what anyone thought of her. Which made her, in fact, totally honest. She knew she had a spectacular body, as spectacular as the performer on stage, and saw no reason to be embarrassed about it and she said ‘fuck' not for effect but because it suited what she wanted to say. There hadn't been any apology in her misunderstanding about his testing her. She'd gone along with it because it amused her. If it hadn't she would have closed him off like she appeared to have closed Kestler off, which was something else he had to find out about. Keeping her believed honesty in mind, Charlie finally said, ‘Yes, it does something for me. She's exciting.'

‘Isn't she demeaning herself – her sex – doing that?'

Another statement? wondered Charlie, surprised by the familiarity of the question. ‘She might be exploited: if the Mafia control is like it's supposed to be she probably is. But she looks very professional to me: she wasn't snatched off the street yesterday. I think she's stripping because she wants to, not because she's being forced to.'

‘So that's all right?' Hillary demanded.

She had him on the back foot, Charlie realized, demanding attitudes and prejudices. ‘Yeah, I think that's all right. It's her body and her decision how to use it. This way's more preferable, I would have thought, than doing it on her back. That's what she's got, beauty: her asset.'

As if assessing his replies she said, slowly; ‘OK.'

‘Have I passed?'

Hillary smiled. ‘The marks are looking good.'

They both looked up at the arrival of a waiter at their table. Ignoring Charlie, the waiter said to Hillary, ‘The gentleman at the table second from the bar wants you to join him.'

To Charlie, Hillary said, ‘What did he say?'

Charlie had already identified the table. There were two men and one girl, all looking in their direction. A thick-set, very heavy man was smiling, expectantly. As Charlie looked, the smiling man said something to the girl, who smiled too. Tightly behind them and obviously part of the same group were two unsmiling men. Most of the suits had a sheen. Shit! Charlie thought.

‘What did he say?' repeated Hillary.

‘The man in the grey suit, two tables from the bar, has invited you for a drink. Actually, it was more than an invitation. The word was that he
wants
you to join him.'

‘Oh,' she said. Then, ‘You think you could help me out of this?' There wasn't any nervousness in the question.

‘If I sit down with them, you sit. It won't be friendly. Very quickly tell me you've got to go to the bathroom so I can tell them what you said if they don't speak English. Then leave. If the girl comes with you, get away from her as best you can: let her go into a cubicle while you only do your hair of something. Anything. Just get away from her. And then get out of the club and back to the compound as quickly as you can: there's always cabs outside.'

‘And leave you with them?'

‘Do what I say, don't examine it. Smile when we go to their table.' Charlie wasn't frightened, not yet, although he knew he would be. At that moment he was angry, at not anticipating what could happen, because this could screw up everything.

It was when he stood that Charlie remembered the photographs of the body on the Berlin lake and what the bodies of Nikolai Oskin and his family had looked like, in the Militia pictures taken in their supposedly safe Moscow flat and the sick feeling lumped in his stomach. He began to smile some way away and hoped Hillary was doing the same: to have checked would have made him look nervous. The grey-suited man kept smiling but tilted his chair to say something to the minder directly behind him. Both protectors came slightly forward in their chairs. The smiling man looked only at Hillary, pushing out just one chair. Charlie took its back, to lean on, hoping they didn't realize how much he needed its support. Nodding to Hillary, Charlie said, ‘She doesn't have any Russian, but thanks for the invitation. We'd like to accept it but we've got to keep a prearranged meeting with a business associate: if Yevgennie Agayans couldn't get here he's coming to the apartment.' Charlie smiled. ‘It seems he can't guarantee his movements.' Christ it sounded thin: transparent. The only thing he was sure about was that the head of the Agayans Family hadn't been picked up yet, because Natalia had told him so. The arrest warrants had been reported in some of the Moscow newspapers but whoever these people were might not have read it, which left him dangling from the underworld grapevine. The size of the Pizhma robbery should have ensured the gossip but there was no guarantee here, either, that they would had heard it. He wasn't definite, even, that they
were
underworld. If they weren't, all he faced was an ugly row with a man who needed two bodyguards, which was scarcely reassuring. He was turning, to cup Hillary's elbow to lead her away, when the grey-suited man said, ‘You know Yevgennie Arkentevich?' Close up he was even larger than he looked across the room, a bear of a man with very thick dark hair and with no break in his eyebrows, which made a black line across his forehead, and there was hair matted over the back of his hands, as well.

Charlie stopped, turning back. ‘I intend to. That's the purpose of tonight's meeting. Arranged by mutual friends.'

‘Where are you from?'

‘England.' Time to move, Charlie knew: to get out. He took Hillary's arm.

‘What business are you in?'

Before Charlie could reply another shiny suit came up from behind and whispered to the man, who nodded without looking away from Charlie.

‘Import. Export. All commodities.' Charlie started to move and said, ‘We will be here again. We like it. Maybe we can drink next time.' He walked with forced slowness, tensed for another halting remark, leaning sideways to Hillary. ‘I'm supposed to be saying what an interesting chance meeting that was so nod and smile back at me and for fuck's sake don't hesitate,' and she responded brilliantly, even turning back with a half-wave at the door, which Charlie thought was going almost too far. There was the usual motor show of Mercedes and Porsches and BMWs and Charlie ostentatiously gave the doorman $20 and said he wanted a Mercedes taxi, which he got at once. Inside he warningly squeezed her thigh before she could speak and when she did she said, ‘That wasn't you making a pass, was it?' And Charlie said it wasn't. He used the movement of putting his arm around her to check through the rear window but there was too much activity around the club entrance and the street outside to establish if they were being followed. Charlie said, ‘This isn't a pass, either.' At Lesnaya Charlie added another $20 tip and settled the fare in the taxi to avoid any delay getting into the apartment, although there was no obvious vehicle behind.

Hillary didn't speak until they got inside. Then, erupting, she said, ‘JESUS!' and the tension drained from Charlie so quickly he felt as if his strings had been cut.

‘What the fuck happened back there?' she demanded.

Charlie emptied the Macallan bottle between them before recounting the nightclub exchange. Hillary listened with her drink untouched, elbows on her knees. ‘Jesus!' she said again, although much quieter, when he finished.

‘I don't think they followed but I obviously couldn't take you back to the embassy.'

‘I'm not shouting kidnap.' For the first time she looked positively around the apartment. ‘Which room's the Tsar got?'

‘It's not the usual embassy apartment,' agreed Charlie.

‘You any idea what embassy compound accommodation is like?'

‘That's why I live here.' He hesitated and then said, ‘There are two bedrooms.'

Hillary looked steadily at him, head to one side. ‘Don't be stupid, Charlie!'

He'd never before had the practical experience of the aphrodisiac of fear but Charlie was surprised how long and effective it lasted. Afterwards Hillary murmured: ‘Don't ever risk sitting on a plutonium container, will you?'

‘Never,' promised Charlie.

Peter Johnson's request for a meeting came at the very end of the day, when Dean was on the point of summoning his deputy to resolve their dispute ahead of the following day's meeting with Charlie Muffin.

‘I think there has been a gross misunderstanding,' said Johnson.

‘On whose part?' demand Dean, refusing the man an escape. The fury he'd felt during his conversation with the FBI Director hadn't diminished, still so strong that he'd changed his mind about the inconvenience of internal disruption. If Johnson wanted to stay it would only be on his terms and the bloody man would know and have to accept it.

Bastard, thought Johnson. ‘Mine. And I must apologize.'

‘Yes,' agreed Dean. ‘You must.'

‘It was never my intention to be disloyal. At all times I had the best interests of the department and its new functions in mind.' The deputy Director had to force the words out.

‘It's obvious how our exclusion has come about, wouldn't you agree?' Dean had checked the telephone log and knew there had been no incoming calls from Washington since he'd spoken to the FBI Director.

‘Yes.'

‘Did you have any knowledge, in advance, what Fenby was doing? Or might do?'

‘No!' denied Johnson, who hadn't. ‘That's unthinkable! I would have been undermining my own organization!'

Dean allowed his scepticism to show in the immediate silence. Then he said, ‘I asked you to make a decision about your future.'

At that moment Johnson actually considered resigning rather than grovel as low as Dean was demanding. But then he thought of the conversations he'd had with the Bureau Director and of their conviction that Dean couldn't last in a job the man himself had indicated he didn't regard as permanent. And of their equal conviction that he was the natural and only possible successor to the directorship. ‘I would like to remain with the department.'

‘And I would like acknowledgment of that in writing.'

The disordered office and its disordered incumbent blurred in front of Johnson's eyes and he had to squeeze them tightly several times to refocus. No! he thought; dear God, no! No matter how ambiguous the wording, an official acknowledgment of a resignation consideration on his personnel record would make him a permanent hostage to the other man. ‘I have apologized.'

‘Verbally.'

‘I consider you are asking too much.'

‘I am asking for the support and loyalty which I don't believe I have so far had.'

‘I give you my solemn undertaking of that.'

All or nothing, decided Dean. ‘I want from you a memorandum telling me that having considered your position, you have decided to stay as deputy Director. I will consider that sufficient. Alternatively I will write my own memoranda of this and our earlier meeting.'