Charlie’s Apprentice (26 page)

The eager Nicholson was in ambush when he got back to the embassy and Gower allowed himself to be pressed into their dining together. The wife, whose name was Jane, was a mousy woman who blinked a lot, as if she needed spectacles. She wore a dragon-patterned silk cheong-sam like a banner to prove she had assimilated the local culture. It was too tight, showing the bumps and knobs of her underwear. Gower remembered to ask about laundry and was assured by Nicholson it was excellent: he simply had to hand it to his Chinese houseboy. It reminded Gower to check his room traps.

‘Ian tells me it’s only a fleeting visit?’ said the woman.

‘Just checking the local facilities: seeing if anything could be improved,’ said Gower.

‘Which will throw us together a lot,’ said Nicholson. ‘That’s a big part of my job, knowing what’s available here and what’s not.’

‘I guess it will,’ agreed Gower. On the ambassador’s direct order he had to go through the pretence with the man.

‘So how long
will
you be here?’ asked Jane.

Gower shrugged, noncommittal. ‘No real time-limit. It’s got to be done properly. But I wouldn’t expect it to be more than a month.’

None of the room snares had been tripped when he got back to his quarters. He still decided to leave what had been pouched to him from London in the embassy security vault.

*

After the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe at Longchamp, which Miller dutifully attended with her, Lady Ann announced her intention to tour the French stables on a bloodstock-buying expedition, which allowed Miller and Patricia Elder almost a month to be permanently together. For only the third time since her affair with Miller began, Patricia moved some of her clothes and personal belongings into the mansion penthouse.

It was obviously the most convenient thing to do, to avoid Patricia having daily to commute to her own house in Chiswick to change her clothes, but Miller was apprehensive at the chance it gave her to press the well rehearsed and too often repeated divorce demands.

Their first night together – the day Gower flew to Beijing – Patricia declared she did not want to go out to eat but to cook for him in the apartment, which she did superbly. Afterwards, huddled together on a couch with brandy bowls in hand, Patricia said this was how it should be all the time and didn’t he think so too. He agreed, nervously, waiting for the familiar complaint, but she didn’t say anything more. Neither did she the next night, when they ate in again, and just very slightly Miller began to relax.

Perhaps, he thought hopefully, there wasn’t going to be a scene: perhaps, having made so many protests, Patricia was reconciled to everything staying as it was. That’s what he really wanted: things to go on undisturbed as they were.

‘New shoes?’ queried Julia.

‘And they’re killing me,’ complained Charlie.

‘That’s a new shirt, too, isn’t it?’

‘Needed some new clothes.’

Julia regarded him with her head to one side, which she often did when something particularly caught her curiosity. ‘Maybe I should start dressing up.’

‘You’re fine as you are,’ said Charlie.

‘I thought you were, too,’ she smiled.

‘Don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he said.

‘Liar.’

Twenty-seven

So large had Natalia Fedova’s Directorate become from the increased demands made upon it that a total of thirty deputies and department heads assembled for the meeting, which because of its size was held in the main conference room at Yasenevo.

Natalia supervised everything, even the seating plan around the long rectangular table, topped by a much smaller one to complete the T. There were only two places at the top table. One was obviously hers, as the division chairperson. The other, on her right, was for Fyodor Tudin, a visible display to all of his authority as her immediate deputy.

There were separate seating arrangements to the left of the room for the secretaries and file clerks: it was essential everything be officially recorded. And not just for the archives but witnessed by each senior executive. Natalia was determined against the slightest mistake, believing she couldn’t afford to make one.

It was the first complete gathering of chief officials since her appointment, which gave Natalia the excuse to host a brief pre-conference reception, designed to prevent any straggling arrivals in the chamber itself, and to minimize the difference in rank between Tudin and herself. She orchestrated the start so that she and the man entered the conference room side by side. Tudin, a swarthy, belly-bulged man whose permanently red face betrayed the blood-pressure brought on by his drinking, smiled and nodded in private approval at the seating arrangements.

Natalia sat first, however, intent upon the men settling before her. The majority were newcomers to the reorganized intelligence service. She had personally approved nearly all of the appointments, vetting them to ensure they genuinely embraced the changes that had swept both the country and the organization. There were only five, including Tudin, whom she considered old guard, men who mourned the passing of the Communist Party and the absolute power of the former KGB. She wondered if they formed a clique with Tudin in any move against her. It was the way putsches had been organized in the past, and three were nominally under Tudin’s direct control, his subordinates in the republic division.

Natalia had prepared her opening remarks as carefully as everything else: throughout she was conscious of Tudin’s persistent sighs of condescension, and once she thought she detected a smirk of complicity from a contemporary of Tudin’s, a man named Pavel Khrenin. She outlined the increased demands upon their reformed Directorate and described it as one of the most important arms of the now independent Russian Federation, in which it was practically regarded as a separate, autonomous ministry. She was pleased at the way the reorganization was proceeding and hoped it would soon be complete: that was not just her expectation but that of the government they served. She had called this conference, the first of what she intended to be regular sessions, to receive a full assessment from every division and directorate head and to inform that government of what had been already established, what it was hoped to create and what their ambitions were for the future. Here Natalia paused, indicating the scurrying note-takers at the separate table: a full transcript was to be taken and submitted to the President and the appropriate ministers for their comment, which she undertook to distribute to each of her subordinate departments if and when she received replies.

Tudin’s final sigh, when it was clear she had finished, was louder and more obvious than those with which he had punctuated her opening address. Determinedly, Natalia refused any reaction. Instead she smiled out into the room, isolating Khrenin to begin the first of the presentations demanded in her convening memorandum. Khrenin was a survivor of the former KGB, although not originally from the First Chief Directorate, and had been appointed to create a new service in Poland. The man appeared startled to be singled out, and started badly: throughout his tone was apologetic for not yet having fully created what was required in the former satellite, constantly stressing the difficulty of establishing a network in a country where anything Russian was derided and anyone identified as having previous connections with the despised KGB faced criminal prosecution.

Not once, while Khrenin spoke, did Tudin sigh. Several times Natalia glanced sideways at her deputy. On each occasion he was staring fixedly down the room, although not directly at Khrenin, his face blank. She wondered if Tudin’s attitude was consideration for an ally or the beginning of an unsettled awareness of the coup she planned.

For her own part Natalia decided that Khrenin’s miserable apology for his failure in a country for which she was ultimately responsible was personally acceptable. But only just.

Natalia urged the reports on through the former satellites of Hungary and Czechoslovakia and tried to maintain the sequence by going on to the chairman of the German division, now a single unit that included East Germany under the reorganization that she had carried out. All, to varying degrees, argued the difficulties of forming new clandestine structures in countries where they were rejected, but again Natalia decided none of the failings were personally damaging.

As the presentations progressed, Natalia became aware of Tudin shifting uncomfortably beside her, although the admitted failings in the satellite countries reflected upon her as the recognized controller and not at all upon him, as the man answerable for obtaining intelligence from republics within the Commonwealth.

She hoped her deputy’s increasing agitation meant he’d seen the abyss towards which he was being irrevocably led. Intent upon heightening his discomfort, Natalia turned sideways and smilingly deferred to him to conduct his subordinates through their accounts.

A considerable effort had clearly been tried to make each report as comprehensibly impressive as possible – which, as one exaggerated recitation followed another, actually focused the awareness of every professional in the room on the fact that in none of the republics was there yet anything approaching even the beginning of an espionage system. Indeed, so obviously embarrassing was it that officers all along the table moved and fidgeted in sympathetic discomfort for those being forced to make the stumbling admissions. A lot stared down at the papers before them, trying to appear occupied in what was written there.

Natalia was one of the few who didn’t move. Rather, prepared for this as for everything else, she remained absolutely motionless, letting her face set more and more fixedly as the presentations finally, humiliatingly, petered out. Tudin did not attempt a final summation, remaining stonily quiet, which was an advantage she hadn’t anticipated. Seizing it, Natalia stretched the silence: there were audio-recordings being made, as well as verbatim notes, and she knew the echoing stillness would sound far worse than any immediately spoken criticism.

At last she turned to her deputy. ‘There appear to be problems in this division?’

‘As there are in the former satellites,’ said Tudin, predictably.

‘
Acceptable
problems,’ qualified Natalia, seeing her opportunity at once. ‘And ones that can be overcome. Can you guarantee the republic difficulties can be resolved by your division?’ So close and looking directly at him, Natalia could see perspiration bubble out on Tudin’s top lip at his recognition of the trap into which he had so easily fallen: already there was a sheen of nervousness upon his forehead and gradually balding head.

‘In time,’ he said, desperately.

‘How much time?’ demanded Natalia, relentlessly.

‘That is impossible to estimate.’

Natalia looked away from the man, pleased at the chilled atmosphere that had grown in the room, trying to gauge from their expressions the reaction of the other officers to the unexpectedly open challenge. As much the professional survivors of headquarters in-fighting as professional intelligence officers, every one of them was utterly expressionless. Turning back to Tudin, she said: ‘I think we have to accept the political realities that exist and what we are expected to provide, in those realities. The admitted, and far less serious, delays in setting up operations in the former satellites are acceptable because those former satellites are much easier to anticipate, politically. This is not the case in the countries that once formed the Soviet Union and now comprise the Commonwealth. Not
one
of them is possible to anticipate.
Each
is unstable and could collapse or be thrown into turmoil by a coup. Virtually each distrusts every other …’ She paused, anxious not to overplay her hand ‘… If one former republic collapses, the Commonwealth could collapse: certainly it would become more unstable. It is the republics that are the predominant concern of our government and which have therefore to be the predominant concern of this organization. We have to have the facilities and the ability to give the warnings and sound the alarms, in
advance
, so that the President can be prepared. And at the moment we are not in a position to do that, are we Colonel Tudin …?’ Natalia hesitated again, not for a reply to a question that was rhetorical anyway but momentarily unsure whether to go on. Deciding to, she said: ‘It was because of the importance of getting eyes and ears into these countries that I separated this Directorate as I did: why, believing as I did then in your unquestioned ability, I entrusted you personally to coordinate and create the apparatus essential for our protection.’ Natalia staged the final pause. ‘I very much hope I have not made a mistake in my choice.’

Tudin was the only man in the chamber whose face was no longer expressionless. The look directed towards Natalia was one of pure and open hatred, and she guessed that behind those hooded, veined eyes he was already planning to initiate whatever scheme he had in mind against her in revenge for such public humiliation.

‘I am sure every one of us in this room is grateful for the political insight,’ Tudin said. The words strained out from him, as if he had difficulty in speaking, not from breathlessness but from some restriction in his throat.

It was pitiful sarcasm and Natalia contemptuously ignored it. ‘I sought an assurance from you, about time.’

‘Which I said was impossible to give.’ There was the quickest of glances down into the room, and Natalia guessed at brief eye contact with Khrenin: it had certainly been to Khrenin’s side of the table.

She didn’t try to follow the look. Instead she allowed another moment of silence. When she spoke again, Natalia looked out into the room. ‘Then I think I have arbitrarily to impose one. As I said in my opening remarks, these conferences are to be regularly established. I propose they should be at three-monthly intervals …’ She went back to look directly at Tudin. ‘In three months I want to hear from you and your subordinate deputies that networks exist in every former republic which once comprised the Soviet Union.’

Tudin’s entrapment was complete and he knew it. He wasn’t able to speak, just to nod.