Rupert Dean sat in the middle of the group. His appointment had, more than any other, marked the change in the role of British intelligence. For the first time in over a decade a Director-General had not entered the service either through its ranks or along diplomatic or Foreign Office routes. Until three years earlier, he had been the Professor of Modern and Political History at Oxford’s Balliol College from which, through numerous newspaper and magazine articles and three internationally acclaimed books, he had become acknowledged as the foremost sociopolitical authority in Europe.
Dean was a small man whose hair retreated in an upright wall from his forehead, as if in alarm. He, too, had glasses but he wasn’t wearing them. Instead, he was shifting the arms through his fingers, like prayer beads. At both seminars he’d appeared conservatively and unremarkably dressed – the same grey suit and unrecognized tie on both occasions – but now Charlie decided the man had been trying for an expected appearance, like Charlie would have tried if he’d had longer warning about this interview by getting the stain off his lapel and wearing an unmarked tie and fresh shirt.
The only other Director-General Charlie had known uncaringly wear the sort of bagged and pockets-full sports jacket like the one Dean was wearing had been Sir Archibald Willoughby, Charlie’s first boss, protector and mentor, and Charlie’s immediate impression was that, given the chance, he could have found a lot of fondly remembered similarities between the two men. Without needing to see, Charlie knew the trousers hidden below the conference table would lack any proper crease except for the ridges of constant wear and would more than likely be stained as well. And the shoes would be comfortable old friends, although not as ancient or as wearer-friendly as the Hush Puppies he wore.
‘Muffin, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, sir.’ Charlie always had the greatest difficulty showing deference to people in authority – and certainly towards anyone whose professionalism or ability he doubted – yet he had felt not the slightest hesitation in instinctively according it to the new service head. The last controller who had automatically instilled such an attitude had again been Sir Archibald.
‘Quite so, quite so. Come in, man. Sit down.’ Dean spoke quickly but with extraordinarily clear diction. There was a thick file in front of the man which Charlie guessed, nervously, to be his personal records. Dean shuffled through the topmost sheets but then abandoned whatever he was searching for, pushing the dossier away more disarranged than when he started. ‘Much to discuss,’ he announced, hurried-voiced, extending both arms sideways figuratively to embrace the men sitting on either side of him. Gerald Williams, expressionless once more, allowed no response to the introduction. The thin man immediately to Dean’s right managed a single head nod of his own at being identified as Peter Johnson, Dean’s deputy. A lot of the surprise at Dean’s appointment had been fuelled by the open secret even before the transfer from Westminster Bridge Road that Johnson, for ten years the department’s Foreign Office link, resented being passed over for the very top job in favour of a schoolmasterly outsider. The bald-headed man broke away at last from his fascination with the river to produce a brief, functional smile when Dean listed Jeremy Simpson as the department’s legal advisor. The red-faced man emerged last, as political officer Patrick Pacey.
Charlie’s mind was way beyond the Director-General’s staccato delivery. Whatever this meeting was about, it certainly had nothing to do with his dismissal or enforced early retirement. What then?
The Director-General made another ineffective foray into the pushed aside file, abandoning the search as quickly as he had begun it to rotate his spectacles. Closer, Charlie saw one of the earpieces was padded with surgical tape for comfort. Tapping them against the discarded dossier, Dean said, ‘We’re in times of change.’
‘Yes, sir’
‘You think you can change?’
‘Yes, sir.’ Into a pumpkin if I have to, Charlie thought.
‘How would you feel about living permanently abroad?’
‘Where, exactly?’
‘Moscow.’
Natalia Nikandrova Fedova rarely thought about him any more. When she’d finally accepted he was going to go on failing her it had been a positive effort to keep him out of her mind but it had become easier as the months passed. But it was unavoidable today. Natalia smiled, the sadness of the past dimming her all-absorbing love of the present, as she watched Sasha whoop and scream with the excitement of opening each new birthday gift. Maybe he didn’t know about Sasha. Natalia had convinced herself she’d found the way to tell him; made up her mind he would understand because he was so very good at the business they were both in – the best she’d ever known, far better than she could have ever been – and hated him for not suddenly arriving, unannounced, as she had sometimes fantasized he would. It shouldn’t have needed a child to bring him back if he’d loved her.
The KGB had still existed, although uncertainly, when she’d tried to reach him: if she hadn’t headed its First Chief Directorate it would have been impossible for her to have tried at all. It didn’t exist any more: not, at least, by name or with the omnipotence with which it had once operated. But his service did and there would still be regulations against his coming to Moscow. But knowing him as well as she believed she did, Natalia knew regulations would not have stopped him. So if she had reached him there was only one conclusion: he didn’t want to see her again. Ever. And wasn’t interested in his child. She’d made a mistake, like she’d made a mistake with the first man to let her down, which she’d compounded by marrying him. Not a good comparison, she told herself, as she had on many previous memory trips. Her second trusting attempt had for all the obvious impossible barriers stopped short of marriage, although that had once been another fantasy, and had most certainly not been the disaster of the first. She had Sasha around whom her life revolved and with whom she was complete, without the need for anyone or anything else.
Or was she?
As if on cue, Aleksai Popov came into the Leninskaya apartment, the brightly wrapped package high above his head for the game Sasha recognized at once, leaping and jumping around his legs in the futile attempt to reach it before he knelt, solemnly to offer it to her.
It was a battery-operated cat that waddled and emitted a purring growl and got the biggest scream so far from Sasha who, unprompted, threw her arms around the man for the thank-you kiss.
Popov disentangled himself to come up to Natalia, kissing her lightly on the cheek: they were still very careful in front of the child.
‘That was far too expensive,’ she said. It would have come from one of the Western-goods shops.
‘I love her. Think of her as mine.’
Natalia was unsure whether or not to be glad of the remark. Sasha hadn’t asked any questions yet but it wouldn’t be much longer. ‘You still shouldn’t have done it.’
Popov shrugged the protest aside. Able, from the way he was standing, to conceal the heavy seriousness between them from other parents in the room he said, simply, ‘Hello.’
‘Hello,’ said Natalia, just as serious. Should she, could she, take another chance?
Stanislav Silin knew he had them rattled, Sobelov most of all. It was a good feeling, like it had been a good feeling watching the bombast leak from the man when Sobelov realized how easily the size of the robbery would re-establish things in their proper order.
Silin had guessed, of course, about the money involved but he didn’t think it was an exaggeration to value 250 kilos of weapons-graded material, which was what he’d been promised, at $75,000,000 at least. They’d been dumbstruck by that, as he’d known they would be because he had been when the size had been put to him. Sobelov had tried to recover, questioning both the amount and the profit, but the others hadn’t doubted him. They hadn’t just believed him, they’d backed him, not even Bobin or Frolov supporting the demand that there should be a change in the system to involve all of them in the negotiations instead of leaving it to him alone, which was his agreed right as the boss of bosses. Silin had been worried at that insistence, unsure how much ground he’d lost: the fact that everyone apart from Sobelov was prepared to leave the brokering to him, like it had always been in the past, had to be the best indicator he could have wished that he could defeat Sobelov’s challenge.