Bomb Grade (31 page)

It was a superhuman effort to focus her concentration. ‘How?'

‘The leak at Pizhma was intentional,' he disclosed. His mind more than ever upon cooperation, Charlie found it interesting that he'd been told direct by Kestler of what the expertly analyzed photographs showed just fifteen minutes before Rupert Dean's call, relaying the same information Washington had made available to London. And which – but with Dean's permission – he'd relayed to the ambassador.

The shock was sufficient to rouse her. ‘What?'

It took only seconds for Charlie to outline the unarguable discovery from the enhanced image intensified satellite photographs. Desperately Natalia said, ‘I don't understand! Why?'

‘I don't understand or know why, either. Not yet.'

‘I won't have to argue your participation yet: we'd obviously have to meet to discuss the photographs.'

Tell me something!' he demanded. ‘Kirov was planned as a military operation. And military operations have code names?'

‘
Akrashena
,' she supplied at once.

‘Does it have a meaning?' queried Charlie, not recognizing the word.

Natalia smiled, bemused. ‘It means “wet paint”. Aleksai thought it fitted. Remember “
mokrie dela
”?'

The phrase translated as ‘wet jobs' and had been the old KGB euphemism for assassination. ‘I suppose it does,' agreed Charlie.

‘Why is it important?'

‘I don't know that it is,' avoided Charlie. ‘It was just something I wanted to know.'

‘I'm very tired, Charlie.'

‘I'm going,' he said, standing.

They stood, momentarily, looking at each other. Then Natalia said, ‘I don't love you, not any more. But I do love you. Does that make sense?'

‘As much sense as anything tonight,' accepted Charlie. What had transpired was more than enough, that remark – denial though it was – most of all.

The Director-General had apologized during their last conversation that there was still no confirmation from GCHQ of any voice interception from the satellite and Charlie felt too exhausted after leaving Natalia to go back to the embassy to make a further check. Instead he telephoned the London Watch Room from the Lesnaya apartment for a traffic check, pleased to recognize the voice. George Carroll had been with the department practically as long as Charlie.

Carroll seemed as pleased to hear him. ‘I was bloody glad to hear you'd survived, Charlie. Even if it is Moscow.'

‘Good to think I have. Still learning to adjust, though.'

‘Aren't we all?'

Charlie frowned. ‘How
did
you hear?' The Watch Room was a message relay and alert facility, with no operational function. And as he'd had no contact with it since his posting there was no way George should have known he was still with the department and even less that he was in Russia.

‘You've got Red Alert classification.'

The designation required the Watch Room immediately to transfer an operative personally to his case officer on a secure line, irrespective of the time. In the circumstances it was hardly surprising, but Charlie didn't consider the check he was making justified bothering Rupert Dean. ‘It's not worth going through to the Director-General tonight; it can wait until tomorrow.'

‘It's not the Director-General,' said Carroll. ‘It's Peter Johnson. I'll put you through.'

‘No,' stopped Charlie. ‘There's no point in troubling him, either.'

He was still staring curiously down at the instrument when it rang again, so quickly after he'd replaced it that he thought Carroll had made the connection anyway. But it wasn't London.

‘We're getting cavalry in skirts,' announced Kestler. ‘Washington is seconding a nuclear physicist here. And it's a woman!'

‘She might be ugly,' warned Charlie.

‘Every woman is beautiful in her own special way, even the ugly ones.'

Charlie fell asleep wondering what Christmas cracker Kestler had got that aphorism from. Before that he'd spent a lot of time going over the conversation with George Carroll.

There was a large panel of mirrored glass set into a wall of the interrogation cell, enabling Natalia to watch unseen from an adjoining observation room as Lev Mikhailovich Yatisyna was brought into it. One of the guards was a blonde, heavy-breasted girl, the most attractive Natalia had been able to find in the time available. Her selection was just one of several hurried-together psychological devices to disorientate the man far beyond his realizing how little Natalia had to work from. Fingerprints of three of the six arrested Moscow gangsters linked them to the known Agayans' Mafia group forming part of the larger Ostankino Family. Her only other advantage was knowing, from the inadequate criminal records, that there'd been bloody turf battles in the past with the Shelapin Family, which formed part of the Chechen Mafia.

Natalia was encouraged by the view from her hidden vantage point. Yatisyna had been wearing overalls when he'd been seized but she planned a lot from the reported search of his Kirov apartment. There'd been fifteen suits, in addition to six sports jackets and casual trousers and twelve shirts had still been in their wrappers, in addition to another twenty pressed and folded in the dressing bureau. There'd been ten pairs of shoes. Everything was imported, either from Italy or France. Dispassionately gazing through the glass, Natalia acknowledged that the dark-haired, swarthy Yatisyna was physically handsome; he would have looked good in any of his designer clothes. Most important of all, he would have known it.

Now he looked ridiculous, which was precisely what Natalia wanted, because he would know that, too. The prison-issue uniform was intentionally three sizes too large, the trouser cuffs puddled around his ankles and the sleeves practically to his fingertips. Regulations required the trousers to be self-supporting, without either belt or braces, but the waistband was much too big and Yatisyna had constantly to hold them up. They were unwashed, from previous use, and the dirtiest it had been possible to find. There was only one chair in the room, for Natalia. There was obvious relief when the man sat on it, able for the first time to let go of his trouser band. Natalia guessed the attempted swagger was almost instinctive but it failed totally because of the scuffing trousers and made him look even more ridiculous. The effort to loll with his arm over the back of the chair didn't work, either. Natalia had primed both guards. The man made a remark to the girl who laughed, loudly. Natalia hadn't bothered with the sound system so she didn't hear what Yatisyna said, although from the facial snarl he was obviously angered. The wardress laughed at him again.

Before going into the room Natalia carefully placed at the top of the file the photographs she'd had taken earlier of the scowling Yatisyna in his engulfing uniform. She entered briskly, apparently in the act of closing the dossier she'd been studying to remind herself who she was seeing. She maintained the distracted, impatient attitude, flicking her hand towards the man. ‘Get up! Stand at the other side of the table. Properly!' She thought Yatisyna would probably have ignored her if she hadn't extended the gesture for the male warder physically to remove him. As it was, the gang leader rose very slowly, as if it were his decision to vacate the seat. Having to keep his trousers up again ruined that bravado. Natalia heard the primed laugh, from behind. Before sitting Natalia very obviously examined the seat, as if expecting Yatisyna to have soiled it. When she finally looked up directly at him, Yatisyna's face was a blaze of fury. Natalia let her eyes slowly go the whole length of his body. At the puckered ankles she smirked, going briefly to include the wardress in her amusement. The girl smirked back. Still smiling, Natalia depressed the start button of the recording equipment on the table beside her and said, ‘So this is what a great big gangster looks like!' The disdainful, nose-wrinkled sniff wasn't forced. He stank. She half opened the dossier, just sufficient for Yatisyna to see the photographs of himself. She saw his eyes flicker to them.

‘Fuck off.'

‘You even
look
the idiot you were, getting set up like that by the Shelapin's …' She picked up the photographs, shuffling them through her fingers. ‘I can't make up my mind which to issue to the newspapers when we announce your arrest. They're all so good!'

‘Motherfucker!'

‘That's what Ivan Fedorovich called you! A lot of other things, too. He used amateur a lot: idiot fucking amateur.' She'd decided Ivan Fedorovich Nikishov, from their sparse records the most senior of the arrested Agayans' Family, would have been the one with whom Yatisyna would have had most dealings. Nikishov had told her to go to hell thirty minutes earlier, although he had boasted of his clan's Chechen connections. She'd been shocked by the man's total disregard to where he was and of what he was being accused, the only inference that he never expected to appear in a court. Would Yatisyna have the same attitude? It was always difficult to gauge how someone would respond to questioning. During the period when she'd been with the KGB she'd had meek-looking, clerk-like men resist interrogation for days and supposedly trained professionals – like Yatisyna was a professional – crumble in minutes.

‘What's that bastard know?'

‘He knows you all got set up and the leak must have come through your people. And he knows he's going to die, like you all are. Which he's cooperating to avoid. But you should be glad the death penalty is automatic for you: it should be quick. I don't think you'd live longer than a week in any prison, after the damage you've done to so many people.'

‘Nothing leaked from me. Or my people.'

He was talking and he shouldn't have done: the first concession, Natalia realized. ‘That's not what the Agayans people are telling us, in signed confessions and with promises to give evidence against you …'

‘Liar!' erupted Yatisyna, managing something close to a sneering laugh. ‘No one's going to give evidence against me!'

‘Yes they are! They
want to
give evidence against you …' She pulled a sheaf of papers from the file and began to read what she herself had written, thirty minutes earlier. ‘“Lev Mikhailovich planned everything, said all we had to do was follow his instructions.”' Natalia looked up. ‘Chernenkov attested that.' Nikita Chernenkov was one of the Agayans group identified by fingerprints. Natalia selected another personally written sheet. ‘“We thought he knew what he was doing. He came to us in Moscow, with this big plan. We were going to make millions. He wanted to become big time in Moscow, not just the provincial punk he is. Said he had contacts and that it would be easy.”' Natalia came up again. ‘That's part of Nikishov's confession …'

Yatisyna shook his head. ‘No one's going to give evidence. And I mean no one. There's going to be an amazing loss of memory.'

The arrogance again, recognized Natalia. She had to prevent it hardening. ‘From men who know the alternative is going before a firing squad …' She quickly stopped, frowning, a person who had said something inadvertent, which she hadn't. She hurried on, ‘Did you recognize any Militia personnel?'

‘I don't have to recognize them; they recognize me.'

‘
Every
Militia officer came from Moscow: there wasn't a single man from the entire Kirov region. And the main contingent weren't Militia anyway: they were
spetznaz
. Nothing can keep you from the firing squad. Nikishov, maybe. But not you. You're dead.' Had he missed what she'd tried to make seem a mistake?

The flush, which had begun to subside, was returning but the remark registered as well as her contempt. ‘What about Nikishov?'

‘What about him?' she asked, hopefully.

‘You said men who knew the alternative was going before a firing squad. They doing deals!'

‘It's none of your business.'

‘They are, aren't they?'

It was going much better than she'd expected. ‘I said it's none of your business.'

‘He's lying! It was an Agayans job: Yevgennie Arkentevich himself!'

‘We've got scores of witnesses you can't intimidate. What Nikishov and the others are giving us fills in all the details. And we've got
all
the details. Times, dates, who was at the meetings, everything.'

‘Is Nikishov going to get clemency?'

‘I don't know what he's going to get,' said Natalia in a voice that clearly indicated that she knew very well indeed.

‘So he is!'

Natalia patted the sides of her dossier into a neater pile: she'd assembled it to look impressive largely with statements from past and quite unrelated investigations with less than a quarter, including her fabricated confessions, connected with the Kirs attempt. The very top folios were the formal record of the criminal charges brought against the man, which were some of the few genuine documents and which, under Russian law, had to be officially accepted by a defendant. ‘We've talked enough. But you have to acknowledge understanding of the charges.' She held out a pen towards him, reversing the pages for his signature. She was careful to make the ridiculing photographs more visible as she did so.

He made no move to take the pen. ‘Perhaps there is a reason for us to talk more.'

Natalia felt a warm satisfaction; one of the early ones to collapse, she thought. ‘What reason?'

‘I know a lot of things.'

‘So does everyone else talking to us.'

‘No they don't. Not what I know.'

‘So tell me.' The room was becoming filled by the stink from the prison uniform.

‘You can't show clemency, not yourself, can you? It has to come from the Federal Prosecutor.'

Natalia's expectation wavered, off balanced by his challenge. Very briefly she considered lying but decided against it. ‘It has to come from the prosecutor.'