Bomb Grade Read online

  But it did mean Charlie Muffin had no legally provable right to Sasha: no right to anything. It was insane for him to imagine he could connive an unannounced return like this, as he clearly had connived it, and expect her still to be patiently waiting. As insane as it was for her to try to rationalize it, as she had been trying to do.

  There was no reason or necessity why she should ever meet him; she’d already determined that. No reason or necessity, either, why she shouldn’t meet him, if a confrontational situation arose. She was sure she could handle it. Publicly? she asked herself at once. She wasn’t sure about publicly, in front of other people, an audience. Aleksai particularly. Privately, then? She wasn’t sure about that, either. In a lot of ways she was more unsure about encountering him privately than publicly. Maybe it was best if she avoided him altogether. Why, Charlie? she thought, despairingly. Why the fuck did you have to come back and ruin everything?

  It was Charlie who’d taught her to swear, like he’d taught her many other things, and she remembered every one of them.

  The Lesnaya apartment was far grander than Charlie had imagined it would be. He actually came close to being overwhelmed by it in the first few minutes after following Thomas Bowyer into the airstrip-sized entrance lobby and accepted at once he’d upset a lot of people at the embassy even before he got there. The living room was more of a reception salon, dominated by a huge Venetian mirror over an ornately carved mantelpiece, the cavorting cherub motif continued in the bas-relief of the corniced and moulded ceiling. His entire Vauxhall flat could have fitted into the main bedroom, with room to spare for dancing girls to give the cherubs a rest. As it was the three cardboard boxes containing his pitifully meagre possessions sat at the bottom of the canopied bed like mouse droppings. Major error, conceded Charlie: a posh place to live and a victory over the parsimonious Gerald Williams, but where he really had to live and work from now on was the embassy and by getting this apartment he’d built a resentment barrier he hadn’t needed to erect.

  ‘Good enough?’ demanded Bowyer, the eyebrow lift confirming Charlie’s apprehension.

  ‘More than good enough.’ Deciding on the need to make friends even with someone who’d probably report back to London before the end of the day, Charlie dumped his suitcases unopened and held up invitingly the Heathrow duty-free scotch, Macallan. He hadn’t been able to get his preferred Islay single malt at London airport.

  ‘Wonderful,’ accepted the Scots station chief.

  Charlie didn’t believe the tumblers he found in the kitchen were crystal but they certainly looked like cut glass. He served it neat, knowing to add water or to attempt to find ice would offend Bowyer.

  ‘Death to the enemy, whoever they are,’ toasted Charlie, looking directly at the other man.

  ‘May they show themselves quickly,’ accepted Bowyer.

  ‘Would you like a cigarette?’ offered Charlie, continuing his role of host. ‘I don’t smoke but I brought some Marlboro in because I guess I’ll need them.’

  Bowyer frowned. ‘Why, if you don’t smoke?’

  Charlie felt a burn of embarrassment. ‘When I was here before, to hold up a packet of Marlboro was the guaranteed way to get a taxi.’

  Bowyer held back the smirk, but only just. ‘I’ve heard about it. It’s one of the legends. You have been away a long time, haven’t you?’

  Charlie decided that whatever Bowyer told London he’d include that, just to make him look a prick. Which he had been, trying too hard to show how smart he was. Not an auspicious beginning, he decided.

  John Fenby frowned across his desk at the head of his Scientific Division. ‘She’s a woman!’

  The scientific head, Wilbur Benning, ached to remind the Director that females usually were. Instead he said, ‘Hillary Jamieson is one of the most outstanding young physicists I’ve ever encountered. Frankly I’m surprised she’s with us: she could take any one of a dozen jobs paying four times as much as she’s getting at her current grade.’

  ‘So why isn’t she?’ demanded Fenby, an unshakeable believer in conspiracy theories.

  ‘No one knows why Hillary Jamieson does anything,’ said Benning. ‘She’s a free spirit, doing whatever she wants to do because she knows she’s too damned clever ever to have to worry about anything.’

  ‘But is she a threat?’

  You prick, thought the scientist. ‘To what?’

  Fenby, whose fears were kept chilled by the Cold War, blinked. ‘Any operation she might be involved in.’

  Benning was enjoying himself, building up stories to tell in the bar later. The frown was exaggerated, further to unsettle the Director. ‘She’s a headquarters-based scientist, not a field operative.’

  Defeated, Fenby said lamely, ‘But is she good?’

  ‘There’s no one better.’

  The change of attitude was palpable. The deference was back from everyone except Sobelov and his demeanour was obvious, too. The man was scared, panicking, not thinking before he spoke and looking more and more foolish with every argument he attempted.

  ‘They can’t guarantee that much!’ Sobelov protested.

  ‘They can. And they are. And there’s a revised value. It could be worth as much as $100,000,000, in total.’

  ‘It’s a trap,’ persisted the challenger.

  ‘Not for us it isn’t. And the way I’m organizing it you get your war with the Chechen. Except we don’t have to get involved or distracted by it. We just make the money while other Families destroy each other, making fresh opportunities for us.’

  ‘It’s brilliant!’ said Oleg Bobin, publicly changing sides. ‘Absolutely brilliant.’

  Silin let the silence stretch for as long as he felt able. Then, heavily, he said, ‘So I have everyone’s confidence? And agreement to conclude the negotiations?’

  The assent was unanimous and immediate, from everyone except Sobelov. Relentlessly, Silin prompted, ‘Sergei Petrovich?’

  ‘We should be involved in the negotiations,’ persisted the man.

  ‘It’s always been this way in the past.’

  The fool’s worst mistake so far, isolated Silin. ‘To suggest a change would frighten them off, risk the entire deal. Does anyone want it done differently?’

  No one spoke.

  ‘You seem to be alone, Sergei Petrovich.’ Which was how the man was going to stay from now on, thought Silin.

  ‘Negotiations, yes,’ finally conceded the man. ‘But what about the details of the robbery itself?’

  That would leak anyway, from what he had already initiated, Silin decided. Patiently he set out how the robbery was planned but made it sound as if it had all been his idea, not that of the others.

  ‘Brilliant!’ enthused Bobin again, when Silin finished. ‘Absolutely and totally brilliant!’

  ‘It’s too complicated!’ protested Sobelov.

  ‘No, it isn’t,’ refused Silin, sure of himself. ‘Complicated for other people but not for us. Because we’ll be orchestrating everything.’

  ‘It only wants one person to break.’

  ‘They won’t,’ said Silin. ‘They’ll die if they do. After watching their families die in front of them.’

  chapter 7

  Charlie genuinely tried the new Hush Puppies, wanting his renaissance to be complete, but they hadn’t sufficiently spread and hurt like a bugger after a few practice steps around his mausoleum apartment, so he’d put them back on the stretching shoe-trees. The existing blancmange pair destroyed the attempt with the new blue striped suit and the just-unwrapped shirt and the pristine tie, but it would have been destroyed totally by his hobbling about like someone tortured by the medieval Iron Boot.

  A solicitous Thomas Bowyer greeted Charlie with a much-endangered solemn-faced enquiry about difficulty getting a taxi and Charlie resigned himself to the nonsense with the Marlboros already in mocking circulation. He’d never particularly minded people taking the piss out of him: it always put them at the disadvantage of imagined superiority.


  Bowyer said the scientific briefing was fixed for that afternoon, which gave them time to tour the embassy and make all the necessary introductions first. Very quickly Charlie realized there was no one he could remember from his earlier Moscow episode any longer stationed at the river-bordering Morisa Toreza, which was hardly surprising because Moscow was a strictly regulated, two-year term appointment.

  The tour began, obviously, at the intelligence rezidentura, which Charlie remembered but nevertheless went through the new-to-everything charade of the appropriate noises, until he got to the room Bowyer declared to be personally his. It was definitely smaller than the hutch he’d so briefly occupied at the new Embankment building and automatically Charlie looked to the window, which was spared any pigeon assault. It was covered instead with layer upon layer of Moscow street grime so thick Charlie estimated any available light was filtered by half. The dimly obscured but familiar view was of a blank wall.

  ‘Don’t expect you’ll want to occupy it for any length of time,’ said Bowyer, in lukewarm apology. ‘Somewhere to store your stuff, really.’

  ‘It’ll do fine,’ accepted Charlie. Its only use was what Bowyer suggested, a storeroom. But one with a difference, a place he didn’t mind inquisitive people prying into: somewhere, in fact, in which to leave lying about titbits of information he might very much want transmitted back to London.

  It was a confrontation of icy formality with the Head of Chancellery, Nigel Saxon. Charlie listened with polite assertiveness to the familiar lecture against embarrassing the embassy and at its end he dutifully reassured the grey-haired, disdainful man he had been fully briefed in London. Saxon announced he would be attending that afternoon’s scientific guidance and Charlie wondered who was going to be the greatest embassy burden, Bowyer or the Head of Chancellery: it would probably be a close-run contest.

  Paul Smythe appeared not to want to talk about anything else but Lesnaya. As well as being the housing officer, Smythe was responsible for the diplomatic concessionary facilities for which the man went to great lengths to accredit Charlie, all the time trying to draw Charlie out on why he’d been allowed such accommodation privilege. Charlie realized Smythe believed his being allowed Lesnaya indicated power and influence beyond what was obvious from the stated purpose of his being there and decided the apartment could be less of an encumbrance after all. Intentionally feeding grist into the rumour mill, Charlie carefully remained vaguely ambiguous to Smythe’s most direct questions, conveying just the right degree of over-familiarity with upper-echelon London names.

  The last of the necessary moving-in meetings was with the embassy’s financial officer, Peter Potter. Once more, Charlie cultivated the impression of unspecified London influence, which was even easier than it had been with Smythe because Potter had already received from Gerald Williams the scale of allowances Charlie was to be permitted and which clearly overawed the local accountant. He assured Charlie there would never be any difficulty in advancing expenses in any currency Charlie required, in addition to dollars.

  Bowyer insisted on being luncheon host in the embassy dining room, where there were several further introductions and where Charlie was conscious of a lot of curiosity-at-a-distance attention from other people whom he didn’t officially meet.

  ‘Seems to be pretty much general knowledge what I’m here for,’ said Charlie. He’d chosen steak and decided the food was better than he remembered from his other visits.

  ‘It is generally known,’ agreed Bowyer. ‘There was no security restriction put out by London. The embassy was openly informed of your coming – and why – the same time as I was.’

  ‘How have you handled this nuclear business up to now?’

  Bowyer shrugged, toying with his wine glass. ‘Accepting what we were told by the authorities. There’s no other way. Until your coming here we didn’t even have a remit to become involved; I’m not sure that we have even now. Everything I’ve seen so far talks of liaison.’

  The excuse of an ineffectual man, thought Charlie.

  ‘What’s the relationship with the Americans?’

  There was another shrug. ‘Good enough. At least there’s a designated agent who gets fed stuff from Europe and the Middle East, from other FBI stations. Which gives him some weight to pressure the Russians into cooperation.’

  From whom or from where was he going to be fed material with which to negotiate? wondered Charlie. Something to be sorted out in one of his first exchanges with London. ‘Maybe a good idea to make early contact with the Americans.’

  ‘They sent some stuff across addressed to you last night.’

  And he’d been in the embassy for more than three hours without being told, calculated Charlie. ‘What is it?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Bollocks, thought Charlie. ‘Despite which, you decided it could wait until now, without even telling me!’

  Bowyer looked sharply across the table. ‘If it had been anything urgent they would have telephoned. That’s the system.’

  ‘I think we should establish one of our own,’ said Charlie, even-voiced but slowly, a man anxious to avoid misunderstanding. ‘We already seem to have agreed I won’t be spending a great deal of time in the embassy. So I think it’s important for me to be told when anyone tries to make contact with me as soon as they try, don’t you?’

  Bowyer continued to hold Charlie’s gaze but didn’t immediately reply. Charlie hadn’t anticipated the first disagreement being quite so soon. He hoped it didn’t have to be referred to London for adjudication, but operational working logic was in his favour.

  ‘Then you’ll have to maintain daily contact, won’t you?’ said Bowyer, at last.

  Bowyer was the senior officer, to whom he had to defer, so he had to be the supplicant. Charlie always found that difficult. ‘Of course. I expect to. But I hope our relationship will be good enough for you, or someone in the department, to make it a proper two-way exchange and not dependent upon the approach always being from me. Because that wouldn’t be a working relationship, would it? That would almost amount to obstruction.’

  Bowyer swallowed heavily, out-manoeuvred. ‘That’s an absurd remark! Of course it will be properly two-way.’

  Let the man have his indignation, Charlie decided. He’d won the exchange so there was nothing to be gained exacerbating it any further.

  Charlie worked at small talk, letting the other man’s irritation ebb, striving just as hard to infer the impression of undisclosed connections in London as he had begun earlier with the housing officer. And was successful, intrigued at how quickly Bowyer fell into the gossip trap. The man was not, decided Charlie, a very adept intelligence operative. Charlie ended the lunch in no doubt that whatever he left in his embassy office would be disseminated not just to London but to anyone who’d listen within the embassy.

  Bowyer produced the American package as soon as they returned to his room – at the front, overlooking the tended gardens – and courteously offered Charlie first the photographs and then the written German analysis of why Gottfried Braun had been tortured to death. ‘Whatever he did wrong he won’t do again, will he?’ judged Charlie.

  Observing pecking order protocol, Charlie asked for the FBI station chief, not the named nuclear officer, when he telephoned the American embassy and was instantly connected to Barry Lyneham. After thanking the man for the German package, Charlie said, ‘I thought I might drop by sometime personally to say hello.’

  ‘What’s wrong with this afternoon?’ asked Lyneham at once, anxious for a possible restraining influence as soon as possible upon James Kestler.

  ‘Four,’ suggested Charlie.

  ‘Just right for Happy Hour,’ agreed the American.

  The room adjoined Saxon’s office. The Head of Chancellery was already there, reinforcing his authority, and getting more obvious deference from the crumpled, vaguely distracted Andrew Burton, who smiled in strange apology at being described as a scientific expert, than as the second official. Paul Sc
ott wore a crisp check suit, regimental tie and a haircut Charlie had only ever seen in films about American marines. Charlie thought a cast of two hardly qualified as a scientific and military mission: perhaps the others were still buying souvenirs.

  ‘We’ve delayed our return to London for this,’ announced Scott, at once, in the over-loud voice of a man accustomed to stiff-backed respect from those he addressed. He looked with frowned disbelief at Charlie’s shoes.

  ‘That’s very good of you,’ said Charlie. Don’t forget diplomacy, he told himself. He was buggered if he’d stand to attention, though. Uninvited, he sat in what looked to be the most comfortable chair at the side of Saxon’s desk, conscious of the tight-faced exchange between the Chancellery Head and Bowyer.

  ‘What, precisely, is it you want to know?’ demanded Scott.

  ‘What, precisely, the risks are from nuclear material being smuggled out of Russia,’ said Charlie. He hadn’t intended to sound that mocking.

  Scott hesitated. ‘I would have thought that was obvious.’

  Charlie felt a stir of impatience. ‘If entire bombs are being sold to the highest bidder, the risk is obvious. If it’s components that have to be assembled, it would be helpful to know what those components are and how much is needed and your impression of the extent of the trade, if any, you’ve come to believe exists as the result of your investigations.’

  ‘Colonel Scott’s report is restricted for the Cabinet,’ intruded Saxon.

  ‘I’m not asking for Colonel Scott’s report,’ sighed Charlie. ‘I’m asking for his impressions. For which the mission’s return to London was delayed on London’s instructions, for me to be told.’ If this was the way it was going to be, working in the embassy really was going to be impossible, thought Charlie, catching the second tight-faced understanding between Saxon and Bowyer.