Bomb Grade (24 page)

Popov arrived at Leninskaya earlier than Natalia had expected, less than half an hour after she'd returned with Sasha. He held the towel and helped dry the child after her bath and afterwards solemnly examined the animals she'd drawn that day to accompany the letters of the alphabet she'd been taught at the crèche and declared they were the best he'd ever seen. He sat easily at the kitchen table while Sasha ate.

‘There was a lot of posturing today,' said Popov.

From everyone, thought Natalia. ‘Yes.'

‘I said it was a mistake to include them, didn't I?'

‘It hasn't proved to be, not yet.'

‘It's something we should give serious consideration to in the future.'

How much I wish I knew what was going to happen in the future, thought Natalia. ‘Perhaps.'

‘You all right?' he demanded, suddenly. ‘You seem … distracted about something.'

‘I am thinking about Thursday,' avoided Natalia, easily.

‘When you handled him before … Muffin, I mean … was he this arrogant?'

Not then. Nor today, Natalia thought. Every point Charlie made had been valid, although she remembered being unsure at the beginning. ‘The first time he was acting a part.'

Sasha scrambled down from the table and disappeared into the corridor. They remained where they were. ‘Why did you suggest they come to the ministry on Thursday?'

‘To ensure we knew where they'll be,' replied Natalia, at once.

Popov smiled, approvingly. ‘That was very clever.'

Sasha re-entered the kitchen loudly demanding they look and Natalia was glad that Popov did because it prevented his seeing her alarm at the sight of the doll Charlie had brought the previous day.

‘Anna,' announced Sasha, proudly, offering it for Popov's closer inspection. ‘My baby.'

Natalia watched helplessly as Popov accepted the doll, still smiling. ‘A very pretty baby.'

‘The man gave it to me,' said Sasha. ‘The man that made Mummy cry.'

Unthinkingly holding the doll on his lap as he would have held a real child, Popov frowned across the table. ‘What …?'

‘The man who talks like you and Mummy do sometimes. Funny talk.' She giggled, involved in a grown-up conversation.

Popov seemed to become aware of the doll. He handed it back to Sasha, all the time looking steadily at Natalia, waiting.

Natalia had to plumb the absolute depths of the debriefing expertise that had taught her how to respond instantly to a situation while at the same time remaining in control of it, knowing the essential requirement was to minimize the lie as much as possible. ‘He came here, yesterday. Unannounced …'

‘WHAT?'

The fury roared from Popov, even making Natalia, who expected it, jump. Sasha gave a tiny shriek of fright and then a whimper, like she had the previous day. She clutched out for Natalia, who lifted the girl on to her lap. Calm, Natalia told herself: she had to feign just the right amount of affront, at Charlie Muffin's impudence, but above all stay calm. ‘Their embassy obviously have records on us, like we have upon their sensitive people. He had the doll for Sasha. His excuse was having been here before. To Moscow …' Desperately she tried to remember every detail of the sanitized records she knew Aleksai had read far more recently than she had. ‘… He wouldn't have known, of course, that it was me who exposed his defection as a deception. He said he hoped I hadn't been caused any trouble. That it wouldn't affect our working relationship now …' Enough! Don't lie too much or say too much!

Popov stayed staring at her, unspeaking, for so long that Sasha made another tiny mewing sound and clawed up to bring her mother's arm tighter around her. ‘Natalia!' said the man, finally, his voice whisper-thin. ‘How did he know you
had
a daughter!'

The abyss opened before her, black and bottomless. ‘The same records where he got this address from, I suppose …' She strengthened her voice. ‘I didn't bother to find out! I asked him to leave and he did. It obviously had nothing whatever to do with the past. Apart, perhaps, from his thinking he might be able to use it to get an advantage the American hasn't got. Which would have been ridiculous …' Inspiration came abruptly to her. ‘But then you were surprised today by his arrogance, weren't you?'

There was another long silent appraisal. ‘Why didn't you tell me?'

Gentle mocking, she decided: a reminder of priority. ‘Darling! It happened yesterday evening! Immediately after which we got the definite date for the robbery. Which meant people had to be told … the military summoned. And today's conference arranged. Don't you think one was just slightly more important than the other? This is when and where you were going to be told. As you are being told.'

‘She said you cried.'

Natalia forced the snorted laugh, holding back from tightening her hold of Sasha and praying for the child not to understand and try to contribute. ‘She says your farmyard animals talk to her. The longest conversations are with the horse.' Don't say anything, darling! Just sit there without saying anything! There was no sound from Sasha apart from the occasional slurp of her sucked thumb.

‘What are you going to do about him?'

Natalia forced the quizzical look, like she was having to force everything else. ‘Do? Why should I do anything? He overextended himself and ended up looking foolish … being humiliated. That's enough, isn't it?'

‘I think there should be something more public: that his embassy be told.'

‘No,' refused Natalia, feeling the ground firmer under foot. ‘Making the rebuke public would give the episode an importance it doesn't have. His embassy – or more likely his people back in London – might
expect
him to try something like this …' She smiled for the first time. ‘With luck he might have even told them he was
going
to try it. Having to admit failure to them himself would be far more humiliating than our making an official complaint. That would make
me
look stupid.'

‘And you're going to let her keep that?' he demanded, nodding to the doll the near-sleeping Sasha still held.

‘Aleksai! It's a toy! You expect me to throw it away? Or send it back to the embassy? Come on! This was a silly little incident of no importance.'

The atmosphere, of Popov's making, lessened and finally died during the evening. They opened a second bottle of wine during dinner and there was no reserve at all when they made love, but then Popov never made love with any reserve. Afterwards, when she thought he'd drifted into sleep, he suddenly said, ‘I overreacted, earlier. I'm sorry.'

‘Let's forget it.' How much I wish I could, she thought.

chapter 17

D
uring the subsequent forty-eight hours Natalia only saw Popov, and almost always among a crowd, by going along their communal corridor to his suite, into the adjoining dressing room in which he had a cot moved to avoid quitting the building at night.

The suite itself was transformed virtually into a war room. The map and chart display boards were brought from the conference hall and the double doors to an ante-room thrown back both to enlarge Popov's normal quarters and to accommodate the radio link equipment. The command helicopter went to Kirov as soon as the phoney army manoeuvre camp was established for a series of test transmissions, all of which worked flawlessly. The
spetznaz
commanders were invariably with Popov, as well as various people from the Foreign and Interior Ministries, usually accompanied by the permanent secretaries who had attended all the planning sessions. Nikolai Oskin was also in constant attendance, as well as Petr Gusev, head of the Moscow Militia under whose authority Oskin was being transferred. Natalia reassured the Kirov commander of his protective transfer and issued instructions for temporary Moscow accommodation for his family. It was only when she was personally discussing the agreed move with Oskin that Natalia learned it would be impossible to bring Valeri Lvov to the promised security of the capital until after the raid: at the meeting at which its precise date and timing had been established Lvov had been told by the men terrorizing him that he had to be at the plant to enable their unimpeded entry. If he wasn't there his wife and daughters would be killed by other gang members watching their apartment.

‘I've already organized a
spetznaz
unit to look after them,' promised Popov, when she raised it with him at the end-of-the-day review session.

‘They won't be able to go anywhere near the apartment until after everything has begun.'

‘I've thought of that, too,' guaranteed Popov. ‘Our people will be in an enclosed van, less than a street away. With a radio tie-in to me. Everything will be secured before there's a chance of anyone getting harmed.'

Natalia felt the latest threat to Lvov proved the wiseness of her banning Popov from the actual interception but didn't remind the man. She was glad he hadn't after all officially protested her ruling, which was why she in turn didn't question the constant reviews and replanning sessions Popov repeatedly conducted. She personally felt some were unnecessarily excessive, like living in the ministry building was excessive, although she conceded such attention to detail made their planning virtually foolproof. She actually felt pride-by-association, too, in how it personally established Popov not just in their own ministry but in the higher echelons of the Foreign Ministry, as well.

The frantic activity was not confined solely to Moscow. Kestler's long explanatory message why he had to provide the Russians with two supposed warnings to Washington – both false and one backdated – on the need for total security prompted a series of urgent and direct personal telephone calls from the nervously unsettled Director himself. Fenby initially forbade either being sent. When he fully realized the commitment Kestler had already and publicly made – confirmed unarguably by the faxed transcript of the planning meeting at which Kestler had given the undertaking – Fenby insisted on revising both messages to include Kestler's supposed doubt about how the British would utilize the atomic smuggling information. When Kestler, uncomfortably reminded of his confrontation with Charlie and Lyneham, honestly protested he had no such doubts, Fenby snapped that it was an order that had to be obeyed. After getting the hopefully absolving cables entirely to his satisfaction, Fenby fabricated responses in which he gave apparent assurances from both the FBI and the State Department that the information would not be dispersed or shared to any other organization and most certainly not with any third country. Fenby's second faked reply pointedly referred to the doubt about Charlie Muffin he'd had Kestler introduce into his cable. Only then did he return the courtesy of Peter Johnson's earlier warning by calling the deputy British Director at home to advise what he had done.

In Moscow, Kestler complained to Lyneham, ‘Everything's being dumped on the Brits.'

‘That it is,' agreed the local Bureau chief, more interested in how far he was from any firing line. Lyneham was personally very sorry but professionally acknowledged that life – their life – was more frequently a bowl of dog dirt than a bowl of cherries.

‘That's not fair. It was my fault,' moaned the younger man.

‘I keep telling you fairness hasn't anything to do with anything,' reminded Lyneham. ‘If you feel that bad about it, 'fess up to the Director and resign. That way you get a squeaky clean conscience without a single Hail Mary.'

Sometimes, thought Kestler, the fat slob tried just a little too hard for the cynic-of-the-year award. ‘You know I can't do that. It wouldn't make anything right, anyway.'

‘Then shut up and do what you're told and accept what's known as political reality. I would have thought you'd learned all about that from your uncle.'

‘What's my uncle got to do with anything?'

Lyneham's eyebrows came close to his hairline. ‘You work it out! It's all too complicated for me!'

By comparison, the forty-eight hours for Charlie were relatively uncomplicated. He had, of course, to prepare the bogus security restriction messages to comply with the Russian demand but his explanatory memo to Rupert Dean simply needed cross-referencing with his earlier complaint about the American, which he specifically ensured it did. His ostracism by Balg and Fiore, jointly designed to frighten him into realizing how great his isolation, if he didn't include them, saved him the chore of lying to them any more: during one of their regular telephone conversations, Kestler told Charlie he was averaging two calls a day from both the German and the Italian. Kestler swore he'd said nothing.

Popov's expanded office, which Charlie recognized from their introductory encounter, was crowded when Charlie and Kestler arrived precisely at the time stipulated by Popov before his departure to Kirov. There were about half a dozen women, the rest men. Seating was directed towards the radio bank at which two head-phoned operators sat, their backs to the room. The equipment glittered with power and sound level lights and there were several dial needles twitching in unison, like heart beat monitors, but there was no sound. In Popov's absence, it was Natalia who resolved the doorway uncertainty, guiding them to seats once more separated from the general grouping. She did so quite detached, not looking directly at either of them or saying anything after the initial, automatic greeting until they got to their seats. There she indicated an open side door through which they could see long, white-clothed tables with attendants behind. There were urns and cups and saucers and salvers of sandwiches, with a gap separating wine and vodka and glasses.

‘If you wish,' she said, with stiffly correct politeness, and then walked back to her own seat in the very front without waiting for either to respond. Apart from the open door, the hospitality room was distinctly separated from where the events at Kirs were to be relayed and was deserted, although a few people sat with glasses they'd carried back into the main office. Charlie and Kestler ignored the invitation.