Bomb Grade (42 page)

‘You weren't supposed to be anything else!' interrupted Wiliams, triumphantly. ‘You were
specifically
forbidden to seek or attempt anything else.'

‘Always Russian jurisdiction,' reminded Simpson, reluctant though he was to support the financial controller.

‘Depending on the size of the weapon, enough plutonium has been stolen and is still unrecovered to manufacture at least forty nuclear devices,' reminded Charlie. ‘If Moscow always leads and we always have to follow there will be other robberies as big, maybe even bigger. Russian silos and storage plants aren't controlled. Police who aren't totally corrupt are woefully inefficient, ineffectual and operate with antiquated methods and equipment. We have to get some agreement – an arrangement – to be proactive. It isn't a question of national pride and nit-picking jurisdiction. It's a question of stopping madmen – or the Mafia or warring Latin American drug cartels, all of which could easily afford the asking price – getting as many atomic devices as they want …' Charlie hesitated, wanting them to assimilate every word, but before he could continue the eager Williams cut across him once more.

‘And Charlie Muffin has a way to stop it all!' The attempted sarcasm was too blatantly hostile and both Dean and Pacey frowned at the man.

Here we go, thought Charlie. ‘No. Not all. Maybe only a very small percentage: maybe
none
at all. What I do think is that I could infiltrate the business, to a degree. I want to try to isolate the big traders, in Moscow. And their contacts at the plants and their negotiating middlemen in Europe and their buyers …' Charlie looked directly to the legal director. ‘You've already confirmed law doesn't even
exist
in Russia to assemble the sort of criminal intelligence I'm talking about: criminal intelligence we could supply to Moscow, to preserve that all-important jurisdiction. But perhaps more essentially criminal intelligence we could use ourselves and share with other countries
outside
Russia, which is, after all, where the trade really operates … where the real danger really is.'

‘How?' prompted Dean, simply, knowing already.

‘By setting myself up in Moscow as a no-questions-asked broker, a dealer in anything and everything. There are dozens of such middlemen all over Russia already, a lot of them from the West. The Germans have mounted sting operations, although in Germany to retain their legal authority. Why can't we? And take it one stage further, by setting ourselves up at source?'

‘You seriously think it would be possible?' demanded Peter Johnson.

‘Yes,' insisted Charlie. ‘Easily possible. In Moscow crime rules, not the law. It's wide open: flaunted. If I didn't believe I could infiltrate in some worthwhile way I wouldn't be suggesting it.' He shrugged. ‘And if I don't we can kill it off as an idea that didn't work. At least we would have tried something positive.' And I might have satisfied a lot of personal as well as professional uncertainties, he thought.

‘Aren't you overlooking the personal risk?' demanded the thin-featured deputy Director.

‘Not at all,' assured Charlie, even more insistent. ‘I'd need protection. Every one of the traders I'm talking about has his own guards: I wouldn't be taken seriously if I didn't have the same. Which Moscow could provide. It would represent their participation. I'm suggesting a joint operation, not usurping or overriding Russian authority.' The nightclub confrontation had convinced Charlie how essential
spetznaz
would be if he persuaded these still-unconvinced men. The reflection made him think of Hillary. She'd awoken in Lesnaya without any of the first-morning-after awkwardness and made love and then breakfast as if there had been a lot of mornings-after. Charlie hoped there would be. Which wasn't just a personal anticipation. He'd need her in what he was trying to get agreed today, if it worked out successfully.

‘What would all this cost?' asked Williams, his face relaxing slightly in expectation.

He'd have to go for broke, Charlie knew. ‘The expense would be substantial. To fit the part I would need an impressive car, something like a Mercedes or BMW: vehicles like that are virtually tools of the trade, like having bodyguards. A Russian, not just as one of those bodyguard but as a chauffeur. An office. And I'd need to trade, in whatever I'm asked to buy or sell, to establish credibility. The department would have to be my supplier and buyer, but there'd be a financial loss: the need would always be to do the deal, not make a profit.'

‘It would cost thousands – tens of thousands even – and take months without the slightest guarantee of your ever being approached to broker any nuclear deal,' objected Williams. ‘All we'd end up with is a warehouse full of stolen or black-market goods.'

The vehemence had gone out of the other man's voice, judged Charlie, curiously: that last remark had been an observation, not a challenge. ‘It's worked in Germany. In America the FBI have frequently trapped criminals – up to and including the Mafia – with
exactly
the sort of phoney-front operation I'm proposing. We've even done it ourselves, before our role was expanded. The cost would be extremely high. But I'm not suggesting we run it for months. We give it a
reasonable
period.'

‘There's certainly precedents,' encouraged Dean. ‘The problem I have with it is that it could only be done
with
Moscow's cooperation. And the reason you were brought back is that they've withdrawn just that.'

The most difficult barrier to get around, Charlie acknowledged. ‘I've been rejected from a working group dealing with a specific situation at a specific level. This proposal would have to come officially and formally from here, not from me in Moscow. And if it comes from London it would obviously have to be in the same way and at the same level as you proposed my going there in the first place.' Which he knew, from Natalia, had been to a level of the Foreign Ministry higher than her. But one to which she now appeared to have access. Which, by carefully rehearsing her, opened another channel of persuasion.

‘Going over the heads of the people you've been dealing with?' accepted Johnson. ‘Which would surely increase the resentment you've already talked about.'

I hope so, thought Charlie; that was the major object of the exercise, although not the one he wanted them to believe. He said, ‘If those people are involved at all it will only be peripherally. So their resentment won't matter.'

‘What has this proposal got to do with what we should really be discussing: the theft of enough plutonium to make God knows how many weapons?' demanded Pacey.

‘Nothing, in any practical way of getting it back,' admitted Charlie. ‘But then again, maybe a lot. The Russians are insisting what was stolen at Pizhma is still in Russia and can be retrieved. I'm not as convinced. But I'd like to be proven wrong: what I'm suggesting might just give me a lead.'

There was a shocked silence. Pacey said, finally, ‘You
really
think it's already out?'

‘I think it's a strong possibility,' said Charlie. ‘I'm looking beyond Pizhma: looking to stop a robbery of that sort of size being repeated. Pizhma, surely, was enough!'

‘Dear God!' said Johnson, hollow-voiced.

‘Which is a further argument – the strongest argument – to put to Moscow for their agreeing to what I'm suggesting,' added Charlie.

‘Are the police really as corrupt as you say they are?' asked the deputy Director, stronger voiced.

‘I think so.'

‘Then there's the risk of the Mafias you want to infiltrate learning the whole thing is phoney?'

‘It's a risk,' conceded Charlie, uneasy with another admission. ‘But again, making the approach as I've suggested should restrict the knowledge to a limited number of people.'

‘Has anyone thought the information that enabled the Pizhma robbery could have come from the Kirs interception operation?' demanded Jeremy Simpson.

I don't think, I know, thought Charlie. ‘It's a strong possibility. But it would be impossible to narrow it down. There were at least four hundred
spetznaz
and Militia personnel involved. Not all of them knew precisely what they were assembled for, although there was some hurried exercises. All the officers and NCOs certainly would have been aware of it.'

‘You are officially accredited to the British embassy,' reminded Patrick Pacey. ‘I'm not comfortable politically with someone with diplomatic status setting himself up as a conduit for crime, even if it's known about and approved by the Russian government.'

‘During the time I would be running the operation, I wouldn't work from the embassy,' insisted Charlie. ‘If you remember, my argument for having outside accommodation was because I might have to mix with criminals.'

‘Which means you wouldn't be under embassy supervision,' said Johnson.

It couldn't have been better if it had been rehearsed, thought Charlie: it was even the word he'd used to the Director-General. ‘
Am
I under embassy supervision?'

‘There has been a complaint from the Head of Chancellery,' disclosed Pacey, the political officer.

‘I'd like to know what sort of complaint?'

‘Insubordination.'

‘Made on the day the nuclear theft became public?' asked Charlie, expectantly.

‘Yes.'

‘I was responding to specific instructions,' defended Charlie, cautiously, wanting the discussion to run as long as possible for him to gain as much as possible. ‘There was an urgency …' Abruptly, in mid-sentence, Charlie didn't continue about the time-saving benefit of giving Sir William Wilkes a written account, which was a weak part of his argument anyway. Instead, recalling his impression walking from the ambassador's office with Bowyer, Charlie switched to concentrate specifically on time. ‘The ambassador still had several hours before the Prime Minister spoke to the House.'

It was the over-anxious Williams who responded too quickly, the ammunition for his intended attacks already set out before him and believing he'd found his next ambush. Looking up from his hurriedly consulted papers, the financial chief said, ‘Not according to the Head of Chancellery's message …'

‘… Timed at what?' broke in Charlie, tensed for a reluctant apology if he had been wrong the previous day.

‘Eleven in the morning, precisely,' said Williams, smiling in anticipated satisfaction. ‘Four and a half hours, for a statement of the magnitude that the Prime Minister had to make, was totally insufficient for the Foreign Office to brief Downing Street in the detail required.'

Charlie looked around the assembled men, thinking again how much redder Williams' already pink face was likely to become, conscious of Dean's second frowned look at the man. He'd been lucky, Charlie accepted: hugely, wonderfully lucky in a way he'd never imagined possible. ‘I quite agree,' he began, mildly. ‘But it would be if it's Moscow time, three hours ahead of London. Which it will be because it's customary – and I'm sure that custom hasn't changed, even though our role has – to use local times on messages. So eleven Moscow time is only eight in the morning, here in London.' He shook his head, verging on the theatrical. ‘But that creates more questions than answers. You see, I didn't get back to the embassy until twelve-thirty Moscow time. The ambassador wasn't even there. He was still being briefed at the Foreign Ministry …' Charlie looked around the group, imposing the silence. ‘… So how could the Head of Chancellery complain about my insubordination in communicating direct to London instead of speaking to the ambassador first a full hour and a half
before
I got back to the embassy with anything to talk
about
?' Gotcha! thought Charlie, although he wasn't sure who it was in London he'd caught out, just that he'd hung Bowyer and Saxon out to dry.

Williams' face was sunset red. None of the others looked comfortable, apart from Rupert Dean who didn't appear discomfited at all.

‘Was the ambassador told
everything
when you eventually did see him?' pressed Johnson.

Charlie did not immediately reply, uncaring if his new silence was inferred as guilt. ‘I gave the ambassador everything I transmitted to London. Bowyer was with me when I did it.'

‘Withholding nothing?' persisted the deputy.

Again Charlie paused. This could be the moment the sky fell in on him but there was no turning back now: this was, after all, why he'd sat for half an hour after yesterday's confrontation in the ambassador's study, totally fabricating five folios of apparent intelligence about the Pizhma robbery before finally marking it ‘Withheld from ambassador' and putting it into his desk drawer. Looking steadily at the deputy Director, spacing his words, Charlie said, ‘I don't think I need remind anyone in this room of the reaction when the robbery became public knowledge: of the near hysteria that's still going on. Throughout the Western embassies in Moscow there was a great deal of speculation, which tended to get out of hand, exaggeration piling upon hyperbole. I do not see my function to be that of spreading rumours and
false
intelligence. The opposite, in fact. That is why I separated information I considered unreliable. I did not want to mislead anyone here or the ambassador in Moscow …' All the time Charlie held Johnson's attention in the totally hushed room. ‘I kept that separated unreliable information in my embassy office to prevent rumour and gossip wrongly influencing anything the ambassador or his Head of Chancellery might communicate to London …' His pauses were becoming practically cliché, as well as the words. ‘… Strangely – obviously one of those odd coincidences – “withheld” was the very word I wrote on the rumour analysis, to remind myself that it shouldn't be used in any assessment …' The final pause. ‘So no, I did not withhold anything from the ambassador that he should have seen. Only what he
shouldn't
have been confused by.'