‘Thanks,’ said Charlie, hating himself.
‘Suddenly it doesn’t seem as straightforward as it did at Kalisz, though.’
‘It’ll go like clockwork,’ said Charlie, sounding more confident than he was. He looked directly at her. ‘Stay out of things. Wait here until I get back, when it’s all over.’
‘Make that soon, Charlie, OK?’
There were three other men Charlie didn’t recognize with Sergei Sobelov’s two regular protectors when the Dolgoprudnaya boss flounced self-importantly into the Kempinski. Charlie moved at once to intercept them because the identification was necessary for the room allocation: two of the supposed reception clerks, both women, were Bundeskriminaiamt officers. Sobelov offered an effusive handshake, gesturing the others to complete the registration and demanded the bar. Charlie chose a table in the centre of the room, for further identification. The net was sealed, he thought: with him inside it. Sobelov’s escorts came in and settled themselves at adjacent tables, virtually encircling them: tight inside it, Charlie added to the reflection.
Sobelov nodded agreement to the money exchange and said he was being as careful with his part of the bargain. The nuclear couriers using the hotel as a liaison point as Charlie had suggested would only follow the delivery instructions he gave when he used a phrase understood just to himself and them, to prove he wasn’t under any duress or arrest.
‘No evidence, no crime,’ he smiled.
‘Very wise,’ agreed Charlie.
Sobelov examined the large bar. ‘Where are your people?’
‘Time off. I don’t need protection here. Only in Moscow.’
Sobelov shook his head. ‘You shouldn’t take chances.’
‘I’ll share yours.’
Sobelov laughed, looked around him again, apparently searching. ‘What about your clever and gorgeous girlfriend?’
‘Shopping, like they always are. She’ll be around later.’
‘If we’re going to work together we’ll be seeing a lot of each other.’
‘That’s what I’m hoping,’ played along Charlie.
Sobelov leered. ‘You mind sharing your toys?’
‘Not at all.’ He was going to get a lot of pleasure putting this bastard away for life.
‘She fuck well? Looks as if she does.’
‘Wonderful,’ said Charlie, with no alternative. The Russian was working hard at the tough-guy role, enjoying the smiling approval of those around him, and Charlie abruptly guessed it was Sobelov’s first time out of Russia and away from his own territory and that the act covered an uncertainty. Charlie hoped he was right: it would be in his favour in the first few moments of the assault.
Turkel wasn’t uncertain. He was already at the Ermeler Haus when they arrived, occupying one of the private upstairs rooms, and Charlie supposed the four men in the adjoining salon were from the ten-strong escort. Charlie thought he’d spotted three in a car outside on Markisch Ufer – where Sobelov’s group had remained – and wondered where the other three were. He’d warned Sobelov during the drive to the restaurant but there was still the briefest blink of surprise at Turkel’s smallness, even more noticeable against Sobelov’s towering bulk when they came close to shake hands. The comparison was only slightly less when they sat at separate sides of the round table, with Charlie between them.
The encounter became a series of acts, each performing their chosen parts. Sobelov increased the macho charade, dismissing the importance of the previous smuggling group’s arrest (‘they were going to be replaced anyway’) and of grandiose intentions for the future of the Dolgoprudnaya (‘international links, with Latin America and with Italy’). Turkel played the see-all, hear-all, say-nothing entrepreneur diplomat (‘my function is a special one, defying description’) with access to limitless resources for required items (‘there’s always a need and always the money’). Charlie adopted the mantle of the fawning broker eager to impress important new clients, encouraging further promises and exaggerations from both. Charlie wondered how it all sounded on the recordings that were being made.
Because Turkel’s appointment at the Dresdener Bank was for two-thirty it was a hurried although excellent meal and they managed two bottles of Moselle. Their cavalcade – Charlie, Turkel and Sobelov together in a car escorted in front by five of the Iraqi group and behind by five Russians – arrived exactly on time. Sobelov completed the deposit vault documentation, which Charlie savoured witnessing, after which they were taken to the basement security area where, after explaining the shared key locking system – Sobelov retaining one key, the bank official the second – the official left them alone with the three suitcases carried by Turkel’s driver and the glowering giant who’d been present at every encounter. There was nowhere to sit and it took Sobelov two hours to satisfy himself the money was right and at the end Charlie’s feet burned.
In the Mercedes on their way back the Russian handed his bank vault key to Turkel, for return when the plutonium cylinders were declared genuine, a change to the arrangements Turkel had insisted upon during lunch. The Iraqi also insisted on accompanying Sobelov – for whom four contact attempts were already logged – to his room, and upon Charlie being with them, before identifying the delivery location.
Which was an Iraqi diplomatic warehouse in the freight storage section of Schonefeld airport.
That officially made it Iraqi territory’, inviolate from German intrusion, Charlie supposed. Certainly it would be impossible to clear and seal a square half-kilometre around it because quite apart from the volume of people affected, flights couldn’t be suspended without it being obvious, from the simple absence of sound. So there was virtually nothing left of the carefully constructed seizure plan which made Charlie very grateful indeed that he had made one of his own. For his further satisfaction he tried to pick out Sobelov’s protective phrase when the contact call came, half an hour later: it was something about both their journeys being uneventful. How uneventful would it continue to be?
There were uncertainties, although Charlie thought they were manageable. There was no way he could be personally suspected of tampering with the cylinders, although there would be an accusation of sorts because he had taken Hillary to authenticate them. But he could rebut that easily enough by arguing they had been damaged in transit. One doubt was who was going to carry out the examination for Turkel. If it was a qualified physicist the man would know the two-hour fatality danger. But if it was a layman – Turkel himself maybe – told only what the meters should show or how heavy the containers should be if they were full, he’d have to intercede. Which shouldn’t be a problem. Sobelov knew his relationship with Hillary: knew she was an expert and would accept he’d learned enough from her to warn of the danger created by the misreading meters. So all he had to do was yell fire – or whatever the atomic equivalent was – and lead them out to handcuffs and a lifetime in jail. It wouldn’t achieve the arrest the Germans wanted but that wasn’t possible now anyway if they respected the protocol of diplomatic territory. Which was not Charlie’s problem: Charlie’s problem was staying alive and he felt very strongly about that.
Perhaps the biggest unknown now was what the Germans would do. They’d surround the warehouse, even if they couldn’t clear the area. And in minutes. But could he get everyone outside before the Germans tried to take out the guards? If he didn’t and the shooting started, he was buggered. No one was going to believe they would die from something they couldn’t see or feel by following him out into a gun battle they knew damned well could kill them.
Charlie saw the airport indicators first and then the buildings themselves and watched as one plane landed and another took off, so synchronized they could have been at either end of a pendulum.
‘We’ll be first,’ predicted Turkel. ‘They’ll have to find the place once they get to the airport itself.’