Bomb Grade (50 page)

Natalia waited until Sasha was dozing before returning to the main room. Unasked, she made Popov another drink and poured wine for herself.

‘Do you want anything to eat?'

‘No.'

‘What then?'

‘Nothing.'

‘It wasn't a disaster!' she declared. ‘There was nothing more you could have done.'

‘I could have listened more to the Englishman.'

The admission surprised Natalia. ‘The only obvious failures were my examination of Shelapin.'

‘At least you'll be spared his court accusations of attempted extortion.' There had been brief but serious consideration of proceeding against Shelapin anyway, to smash a known Mafia ring; it had only ended when Natalia pointed out a fabricated prosecution was impossible – apart from being illegal – because of the evidence that would emerge at the German hearings.

‘His release – and Agayans' murder – still reflect on me.' In any detailed examination of personal failure she had far more to be depressed about than Aleksai.

‘It's over!' said Popov. ‘Everyone is now busy making their excuses for what they did or didn't do to prevent enough plutonium getting out of Russia to start a full-scale war. And we're at the bottom of the pile, getting all their dirt dumped on us.'

‘Me more than you,' accepted Natalia, her mind still held by the Shelapin débâcle.

Popov came forward on his chair, to face her more directly. ‘Isn't it about time you made your decision? I've given you all the time you asked for. It's time you told me whether you want to marry me or not.'

‘I know,' said Natalia. ‘I …' She physically jumped at the telephone's ring, hurrying to it: it was more than likely Charlie was back.

The shock was so great and so complete that speech went from her: she gave a half whimper, half scream, holding the receiver away in horror. Popov leaped up, snatching it from her, shouting ‘Hello! hello!' and then remaining with it limply in his hand.

‘Dead,' he said. ‘There's nobody there.'

‘A man,' groped Natalia, the words croaking out in disbelief. ‘He said to keep my face out. He said if I didn't Sasha wouldn't have a face. She wouldn't die but when they'd finished she wouldn't have a face.'

And then Natalia screamed, hysterically.

A
barbuska
, making her way home close to the Arbat, also screamed hysterically when she looked into the oddly parked Mercedes in the hope of finding something to steal and discovered instead the bodies of Stanislav Silin and his wife. Both had been roped into their seats, as if setting out for a Sunday drive in the country.

chapter 31

T
he threat against Sasha changed everything. Charlie's personal feelings became professional now, in a seething mix. Throughout a lifetime of utter disregard to morality, populated by coldly unemotional killers and entrapment experts and out-and-out bastards who wallowed in the pleasure of being out-and-out bastards, the cardinal, self-preserving rule of Charles Edward Muffin, a man who acknowledged no religion, had been that of the Old Testament. Charlie had, however, refined the life for a life, eye for an eye, wound for a wound precept to a very personal, far less verbose creed. Charlie's lesson was that anyone who tried to fuck him got double-fucked in return: worse, if it were possible. He'd wrecked the careers of the British and American intelligence directors who tried to sacrifice him. And – as emotionlessly as the professional killers he always managed to run away from – he'd personally booby-trapped the escape aircraft of the CIA assassins who'd killed Edith. And felt unrepentant satisfaction as the plane disintegrated into a red and yellow fireball.

Now it was happening again. But not a physical attack upon him. The threat of one upon Sasha. Whoever it was had made a terrible mistake involving a baby – his baby – who shouldn't have been part of anything. The panic it indicated didn't matter. They'd done it. So they'd suffer. They didn't know that yet. But they would, because their knowing was part of the retribution. From the moment of Natalia's babbled story, at the botanical gardens again, Charlie's planned entrapment became a totally dedicated, totally personal, totally private exercise to go beyond discovering fresh smuggling attempts to find out who'd threatened his child. And then to make them regret the very day they'd come screaming into the world, which was the way Charlie intended them to leave it.

Even more than before the botanical gardens were obvious because of their closeness to Sasha's crèche. It was the day after his return to Moscow and at Natalia's summons, and he'd never known her so distraught, not even when he'd told her he was returning to London after his phoney defection, because then they'd made their reconciliation plans he hadn't fulfilled. Natalia was dishevelled and physically shaking, ague-like, unable at the beginning to hold a consecutive thought or a cohesive conversation. Although the shaking wasn't because of the cold he led her into the hothouse and sat her down there and tried to calm her and in the end let the account come when and how she wanted to tell it.

The words were staccato, stopping and starting, broken sometimes by near sobs. It took Charlie's a long time to get the actual telephone warning and in the end he wasn't sure he had because Natalia was close to blanking it from her memory. And even longer for him fully to understand the precautions. Sasha was protected at all times at the crèche by a woman officer from the Interior Ministry's security section, in constant radio contact with a central control room. Natalia no longer delivered or collected her personally: they were driven by an armed chauffeur, always accompanied by an armed escort vehicle. A security check had been run on all the parents of the other children, particularly new arrivals, and upon all staff. There were two Militia cars permanently stationed at the front and rear of the building. There was also twenty-four-hour Militia protection and surveillance at Leninskaya and a respond-at-once telephone monitor had been imposed, which was why she'd called him from the ministry and why there couldn't be any more direct contact between them from her apartment.

‘Why now?' she demanded, anguished. ‘It's over!'

‘And why you?' echoed Charlie, reflectively.

‘I've been through that. With Aleksai. And the security people. I was named, during the enquiry.
Moscow News
and
Izvestia
identified me as the division director and the person in charge of interrogation. And it was said Agayans died
under
interrogation. And everyone from the President down is still listed in the telephone book – if you can obtain a telephone book – like it was in the old days.'

‘What about Shelapin? He's the most likely.'

‘Aleksai had him rearrested. He denied knowing anything about it. Said he didn't fight kids. He and his people are being kept under surveillance. And know it.'

‘The Agayans group then? Their man died.'

‘The same. Total denials. Surveillance there, too.' Natalia was regaining control although she was wringing her hands in her lap. ‘Whoever it was knew you had a daughter.'

‘No one can explain that.'

Charlie wasn't prepared to try, not yet, although he thought he could: the threat against Sasha had hardened a lot of the beliefs with which he'd returned from Berlin. ‘They'd rung off, when Popov took the phone?'

‘Yes.'

‘What about the voice?'

‘A man.'

‘You can guess ages from voices.'

Natalia shook her head. ‘I wasn't rational, Charlie! He said Sasha was going to lose her
face
!'

Charlie was aloof, icily calm, all emotions suspended. ‘Accent?'

‘Russian.'

‘Not a republic? Or a region?'

‘I don't think so.'

‘I don't want what you think! I want what you know!' he said, brutally.

‘Russian.' She wasn't sure.

‘Disguised?'

‘I think so. It was distant, as if he were standing away from the mouthpiece. Or had something over it.'

‘A private phone? Or did coins drop?'

‘No coins dropped. I've been through all this!'

‘Go through it again, for me. Did he refer to you by name?'

‘I don't think so.'

‘You can't remember?'

‘Not really.'

‘What can you remember?'

‘Only about her face!'

She was tilting back towards hysteria. ‘How were the words said?'

‘I don't understand.'

‘All at once, without a pause: as if they were written down or rehearsed? Or with pauses, as if he was waiting for you to say something?'

‘All at once.'

Getting there, thought Charlie. ‘How?' he repeated. ‘Quickly: hurried? Or slowly? Measured?'

She nodded at his choice of definitions. ‘Measured.'

‘As if he was reading from something written down?'

Natalia frowned at the question. ‘He could have been reading it, I suppose. No one asked me that before. Is it important?'

‘I don't know. Maybe. What about background, from his end? Any noises?'

‘No.'

‘Sure?'

‘No, I'm not sure! I thought it might be you. I wasn't listening for noises in the background. Then when he started to talk I wasn't thinking about anything!'

‘A lot of people were upset – destroyed even – by the investigation,' he tried, uncomfortable with the effort as he made it. ‘It could be empty harassment.'

‘I'm going to quit, Charlie!' she announced. ‘I thought the job was the way to protect Sasha, but it's not, not any more. It's made her a target. I certainly don't need the money and Aleksai's asked me again to marry him. He'll look after us: protect Sasha.'

‘I don't think Sasha will actually be attacked.'

She frowned along the bench at him. ‘You can't say that!'

‘It was obvious that protection would be put into place. At once. If they'd seriously intended to hurt her they'd have attacked her first. You wouldn't have been
given
a warning. Sasha's disfigurement would have
been
the warning.'

‘You really believe that?' she demanded again.

No, he thought. ‘Yes,' he said.

‘It's over now, with the German arrests. We know what was lost.' She was recovering, the words slow and considered.

‘Yes.' Charlie said, doubtfully.

‘There's no need for our arrangement, not any more.'

‘She's my daughter!'

Natalia bit her lip. ‘I meant about work.'

‘What
do
you mean?' he demanded.

‘I'm frightened, Charlie. Terribly frightened. I can't afford to make a single mistake. About anything. It would be a mistake for us to go on like this, behind Aleksai's back. Even though there's nothing in it. It's still cheating him. Which isn't fair. He's a good man. He loves me.'

He wasn't totally sure she'd lost all feeling for him, although perhaps love was hoping too much, but he definitely couldn't lose the special contact: it was more important now than ever. How far could he go to convince her? Hardly any way at all. Too much was still conjecture, sufficient for him but not enough to convince anyone else. ‘There still might be more to learn about Pizhma and Kirs Charlie hesitated as the thought came to him, despising himself for considering it but knowing he was going to use it just the same. ‘That's why the threat came against Sasha. I don't think she'll be attacked but I can't be sure. How long do you want Sasha going to school in an armoured convoy? One year? Two? Until she goes to high school? It doesn't matter if you quit. Aleksai will still be where he is: maybe he'll even be promoted, into your job. He'd be their danger then, not you. And Sasha will be his weakness: his pressure.'

Natalia regarded him blankly, wide-eyed. ‘What can I do?'

‘Go on helping me!'

‘… But you're moving on from Pizhma? This entrapment idea …'

‘It's through the entrapment that I might be able to understand what happened at Pizhma. And at Kirs.'

‘How? I don't follow …'

‘Fedor Mitrov, the Dolgoprudnaya man,' half lied Charlie. ‘The Germans have agreed a deal, in return for his guiding me to the right people here in Moscow.'

‘The Militia are adamant Silin died in a gang battle. Died grotesquely … and his wife.' She shuddered.

‘He was killed because he knew who the Kirs and Pizhma organizers were. And who the customers were, for what was stolen.'

Natalia held his eyes for several moments. ‘Are you being completely honest with me? Completely honest about Sasha's life?'

‘Yes,' said Charlie, meeting her gaze.

‘Dear God, it must end soon!' said Natalia, despairingly.

‘Yes,' agreed Charlie. ‘Very soon. Will you go on helping?'

‘What choice do I have?'

Hillary moved into Lesnaya the same week with three suitcases, a poster of Robert Frost (‘the best American poet ever') and a long-lashed rabbit doll whose name – Lysistrata – she insisted was only a joke. Charlie said he was glad because he had a lot of fighting still to do, which prompted Hillary to doubt she had any function left: the German business seemed to have wrapped everything up and Washington had barred her from seeking participation before that. She was expecting a recall any day and was surprised it hadn't already come: it was over a week since she'd sent her complete analysis of how much plutonium 239 there would have been in the lost ten containers and what its bomb-making capability would have been. She'd guessed at twenty-five bombs, possibly twenty-seven of warhead size. Another guess, based largely on previous German interceptions, was that the material could have fetched as much as $25,000,000. Hillary's withdrawal remark reminded Charlie to ask Rupert Dean to press Washington to let her remain in Moscow. The Director-General guaranteed at once that it wouldn't be a problem, which it didn't turn out to be. And that despite Hillary's warning that the US Head of Chancellery had protested it was unthinkable she move in with him at Lesnaya, which she hadn't made any secret of doing because she hadn't seen why she should. They both agreed that Heads of Chancellery were universal pains in the ass.