So London had not sent his complete file. ‘A long time ago.’
‘Funny place. Didn’t know it in the old days but people who did tell me it’s changed a lot. Dangerous as hell now…’ He nodded back towards the retreating airport. ‘A lot of those taxi guys only take you halfway into town before mugging you, stealing your luggage and dumping you in the road.’
‘I’ve heard.’ The state of the roads didn’t seem to have changed, thought Charlie, as the car thumped into a bone-jarring pothole.
Bowyer chanced a look across the car. ‘What’s it like, back home?’
Charlie understood the question and the gossip-eager reason for his being met in. ‘Pretty bad. Blood all over the floor.’
‘I’m damned glad I’m here, out of it.’
‘It’s the best place to be, out of it.’
‘Can’t say I envy you your job, though.’
Charlie hesitated, remembering the back-channel suspicion. ‘It’s going to take a while for me to learn what the job really is.’
‘You’re going to get some help on that,’ offered Bowyer at once. ‘There’s been a scientific and military group here for the last fortnight: they’re going home the day after tomorrow. London’s fixed a briefing, before they leave.’
Charlie frowned, curious Johnson hadn’t warned him in London. ‘That’ll be useful.’
‘And anything else more generally you need, just ask.’
‘I appreciate the offer,’ said Charlie. More often than not in the past when he’d arrived in a city as an outsider he’d met resentment and even outright hostility from in-country embassy personnel. But he wasn’t going to be an outsider this time, was he? Charlie still found the realization difficult and wondered how long it would take to adjust.
‘You certainly seem to have some clout,’ said Bowyer.
‘To get what?’
‘That sort of apartment on Lesnaya, for a start. The Head of Chancellery got turned down on cost grounds for one only half as grand as what you’ve got.’
Charlie hoped it wouldn’t cause any jealousy: insular, bundled-together embassies were breeding grounds for all sorts of irrational attitudes and envies. Remembering again his belief that Bowyer was watching and listening for London’s benefit, Charlie said, ‘I didn’t think it would have worked for me to be in the compound.’
‘Everything still needs to go through the embassy,’ said Bowyer, at once.
Heavily, Charlie said, ‘You’re the conduit to London. I know that.’
‘We’re not going to fall out over territory,’ said Bowyer, reassuring in return. He looked across the car again and grinned. ‘You’re on your own, Charlie.’
Which was always how he’d wanted it to be, reflected Charlie, responsible for no one except himself. The self-accusation came at once. An attitude he’d let wash over into his private life and made him lose Natalia. Ahead, the Moscow high-rises were coming into view. Was he really going to live – think of it as home – in a place that all his working life had been the focus of everything he’d had to oppose and undermine? Hard-headed reality at once blewaway the whimsy. Only as long as he didn’t fuck up, he reminded himself.
Somewhere in this towered city, he thought, Natalia was living. With their baby.
*
By coincidence the Russian who headed the Dolgoprudnaya cell in Berlin arrived at Sheremet’yevo just an hour after Charlie Muffin. The man was met in, too, personally by Stanislav Silin, who had decided their meeting could be best, and most discreetly, conducted during a meandering car ride around Moscow. They’d worked that way before, several times, so the man wasn’t suprised by what otherwise might have seemed inexplicable courtesy.
‘What was that lake business all about?’ asked Silin.
‘The obvious. Some cunt thinking he could get away with a con.’
‘Who did it?’
‘The word is that it was The Turk.’
The traffic slowed, near the Skhodnaya turn-off, and Silin looked briefly across at the other man. ‘I thought he was our buyer?’
‘He’s anybody’s buyer. He’s Iraq’s main middleman and they want everything they can get.’
Silin smiled. ‘Good. I’ve got a spectacular deal.’
‘How much?’
‘Two hundred and fifty kilos.’
‘What? You’ve got to be joking!’
‘Guaranteed.’
‘We haven’t been able to get hold of more than maybe three and a half, four and a half at the most, in the last three years!’
Silin picked up the outer ring road, going north. ‘Nearer five. Like I said, this is spectacular.’
Silin was conscious of the other man shaking his head.
‘It can’t be genuine.’
‘It is. Can you sell it?’
‘Of course I can sell it. There’s a queue.’
He’d have to trust this man more than he was trusting anyone else apart from Marina, accepted Silin. But he’d done that already, agreeing to the way their own Swiss account was established. ‘I’ve promised the suppliers $25,000,000, with $8,000,000 up front. They want it in Switzerland.’
‘What are they selling, uranium or plutonium?’
‘I don’t know, not yet.’
‘It doesn’t matter if it’s authentic, weapons-graded stuff.’
‘What could we expect to get ourselves?’
The man shrugged. ‘I’ve never tried to broker this much. I doubt even The Turk would take it all. Nothing of any size has come from anywhere for a long time; just the shit that got the German killed. So like I said, there’s a queue.’
The motorway began its gradual curve eastwards. ‘Just an estimate?’ invited Silin.
‘Seventy-five million. Could go as high as $100,000,000 if it’s uranium 235.’ The man shook his head again. ‘I just can’t believe it! It’s incredible!’
‘And there’s more,’ promised Silin.
‘What’s the Commission say?’
Silin snatched another sideways glance. That was an impertinent question, even from someone with the special relationship they had. So he’d heard something. Maybe even been approached. ‘Sobelov’s making a bid,’ he announced, bluntly.
There was a movement as the man turned towards him, but he didn’t immediately speak. Then he said, ‘ Because of this?’
Silin shook his head. ‘It’s my negotiation, my contacts, like it always is.’
To their left the signs to Dolgoprudnaya, where they’d both been born and from which the Family got its name, began to appear; Silin had intentionally gone northwards, as a psychological reminder to the other man of their long-standing loyalty to each other.
‘He’s a fool, like he’s always been! No one’s going to follow him.’
‘I think Bobin and Frolov are with him.’
‘Where’s their edge?’
‘They don’t have one. Just muscle. They want a war with the Chechen.’
The man snorted a laugh. ‘What are you going to do?’
‘Nothing, immediately. I don’t want anything to interfere with this. When it’s all sorted out – when you’ve made the deliveries – I’ll make some changes.’ Silin briefly considered taking the Dolgoprudnaya road instead of going in the opposite direction into Moscow but decided against it.
‘This will bring a hell of a lot of heat if it works,’ predicted the man. ‘There’s been nothing this big before. Ever. This is a lot of complete bombs.’
‘That’s for the physicists,’ shrugged Silin. Bluntly again, he said, ‘You had any contact from here, apart from me?’
‘No,’ denied the man at once.
‘Would you tell me, if you had?’
‘How can you ask me that?’ demanded the man, outraged. ‘Aren’t we real family! Cousins.’
‘I can ask when I’m confronting a challenge,’ said Silin. He could have been wrong about the impertinence of the Commission question. They were cousins.
‘If I had been approached, I would have told you,’ said the man, positively. ‘I haven’t been.’
‘It’s good to have someone I can rely on.’
‘You always have been able to. And always will be. You know that.’