‘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 Scott 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.
‘We were taken to several installations in and around Gorkiy,’ recounted Scott, stiffly. ‘In my opinion the security was excellent. The Russian officials who accompanied us admitted they suspected isolated thefts of small amounts of nuclear material in the past but stressed the majority had been from the republics that once made up the Soviet Union, not from Russia itself.‘
So the Cabinet and whoever else was on the mailing list were going to get a load of crap, judged Charlie. Which didn’t make this encounter at all a waste of time. He had his first report – a warning not to believe a word of Scott’s official account – for the Director-General and he’d only been in Moscow a few hours. Turning hopefully to the second man, Charlie said, ‘Let’s talk about amounts and the danger they represent.’
The smile this time was gratitude, at being included. ‘What do you know about nuclear physics?’ asked Burton, innocently.
‘Actually, not a lot,’ admitted Charlie.
‘The explosive of a nuclear weapon is either uranium 235 or plutonium 239. Plutonium is actually created from uranium,’ said the man, settling back in his chair. ‘There’s two ways it can be exploded. It’s either surrounded by a tamper like beryllium oxide, which reflects neutrons and causes them to multiply when they’re compressed into what’s called a critical mass. Or two subcritical sections are driven together by what’s called a gun-barrel arrangement. Either splits the atom, creating a chain reaction of more and more split atoms, which releases an incredible amount of nuclear energy.’
Scott, who’d obviously heard the lecture before, looked bored. Saxon sighed, equally unimpressed. Assholes, thought Charlie. ‘What’s the effect?’ he coaxed. ‘How many people can die?’
‘There’s only been two practical examples, Hiroshima and Nagasaki,’ reminded Burton. ‘Hiroshima used uranium, exploded by the gun-barrel method. 80,000 people died and 70,000 were injured. Nagasaki used plutonium, with a beryllium tamper. That killed 40,000 people and wounded 25,000.’ The man hesitated. ‘They were tests, you understand? To see which method was the more effective.’
No one was looking bored any more.
‘How much uranium or plutonium is needed for bombs like that?’
‘Technologies have greatly improved since 1945,’ said the physicist. ‘But below a certain amount there’s neutron leakage which reduces the effectiveness. The generally accepted critical mass is around five kilos.’
‘Five kilos of uranium can kill 80,000 and five kilos of plutonium can kill 40,000 people!’ pressed Charlie, pedantically, determined totally to understand.
‘At least,’ confirmed the expert.
Charlie looked between the soldier and the scientist, momentarily – rarely – without words. One was a silly bugger who’d let himself be conned everything was safely under lock and key and the other existed in such a rarified atmosphere of pure physics that 80,000 and 40,000 were statistics, not death tolls, and who didn’t realize the obscenity of describing the difference as tests of effectiveness.