Balg remained confused. Hesitantly he said, ‘Yes. That’s what I do
… try to do.’
Umberto Fiore was adamant the short notice wasn’t an obstacle to dinner that night and was waiting in the bar when Charlie got to the Savoy. The Italian worked from practically the same script as Balg. The disbelief was far more subtle although just as swift and Charlie accepted that since midday Balg would have rehearsed Fiore. Better prepared himself now, Charlie introduced the flippancy much earlier to cut off Fiore’s attempted warnings about continued cooperation. Charlie ended the evening quite convinced he was right and glad he’d arranged the visit to the American embassy the following day.
Charlie refused to join the much-repeated insistences about how good everything was turning out, unresponsively waiting to see if Kestler would reveal that he’d run a nuclear check in the Kirov region. Which Kestler did, as soon as he’d stopped anticipating their soon-to-occur career benefits.
‘So we’re going to shift a satellite into geo-stationary orbit right over the goddamned place: cover all three sites to see what’s going on.’
‘You already told Balg that? And Fiore? Like you told them everything that happened at the Interior Ministry!’
Kestler blinked at the sudden accusation mid-stride through a lap of the FBI office. From behind his desk Lyneham elbowed his bulk into a more upright position.
‘What?’ tried Kestler.
‘You heard what I said.’
‘What’s going on here?’ demanded Lyneham, apprehensively.
‘A fuck-up’s what’s going on here,’ said Charlie. ‘And it risks the deal we’ve got with the Russians…’ He paused, looking directly at Kestler. ‘… And all because you want to be every body’s best friend. Instead of which you’re a total, utter prick!’
Charlie had no proof, although he was sure he was right, and if he’d kept his nerve Kestler could have called the bluff. But he panicked, speaking ahead of thinking, as he had to Popov. ‘I just… I mean I didn’t… there’s no harm…’
‘What the fuck’s the idiot done?’ demanded Lyneham.
Lyneham came fully upright as Charlie told him, elbows on the desk with his face cupped in his hands. When Charlie stopped, Lyneham looked across at the other American and said, ‘Jesus H. Christ!’
‘I didn’t tell them everything!’ protested Kestler.
‘What, precisely, did you say?’ pressed Charlie, the quietness of his voice belying the anger.
Kestler paused and Charlie wondered if it was for recall or to prepare an acceptable excuse. ‘That it wasn’t the Ukraine business,’ stumbled the man. ‘I said the Russians thought something might be going on, within Russia itself. And that they’d asked us in to see if we’d heard anything to connect outside.’
‘And you told them as well who the Russians were at the meeting!’ pressed Charlie.
‘That, too,’ admitted the man.
‘That all you told them?’ demanded Lyneham.
‘On my life!’
‘I don’t give a fuck about your life: it’s mine I’m worried about,’ admitted Lyneham, openly for the first time.
‘ Why?’ moaned Charlie. ‘If you weren’t going to tell them everything, why tell them anything?’
‘Germany’s important,’ argued the man, desperately. ‘Itaiy, too. We can’t afford to piss them off.’
‘So now they know half a story of which we only know half to start with,’ said Lyneham, wearily. ‘So they’ve cabled Bonn and Rome and they’ll have investigators all over their goddamned countries beating down the doors of every snitch, informer and grass there is and knocking shit out of them. And every snitch, informer and grass is going to go running straight to the bad guys to tell them why the heat’s on. And by the end of the week there won’t be a yak herder in Outer Mongolia who won’t know about it. You any idea what you’ve done, you asshole?’
‘They said it wouldn’t be like that!’ protested Kestler, weakly.
‘What control have either of them got over how it’s going to be?’ pointed out Charlie. ‘They’re just lighting the touch paper.’
Ignoring the younger man, Lyneham said to Charlie, ‘You think you should warn Popov? And the woman?’
Charlie was uncomfortable at Natalia being referred to as ‘the woman’. He said, ‘I think I should. But I’m not going to. It would be closing the door on myself.’ The separation of himself from Kestler was intentional.
Continuing as if Kestler wasn’t in the room, Lyneham said, ‘I know it doesn’t count for a row of beans, but I’m sorry, Charlie. Truly sorry.’
‘Yeah,’ said Charlie, not wanting to be rude but not wanting to acknowledge an empty apology, either: like Lyneham said, it didn’t count for a row of beans.
‘I’d like to say…’ started Kestler but Charlie stopped him. ‘Don’t! I don’t want to hear anything you say. I’m pissed off with everything and anything you say.’
Back at the embassy Charlie spent more than three hours formulating the protest to London, reminding the Director-General of the concern about Kestler in the summary that he’d sent with the official transcript of the Russian meeting and going into itemizing detail of what the American had done since. He concluded by advising London of Kestler’s family connections.
In London Peter Johnson silently read each sheet Dean handed him, looking up stone-faced when he’d finished. ‘This is terrible!’
‘That’s a conservative judgement.’
‘What are we going to do about it?’
‘Nothing,’ said Dean, mildly.
‘Nothing!’
‘Nothing premature and ill-considered.’
‘I think it should go before the committee.’
‘I’ll decide what’s to be done.’
Johnson shifted irritably in his seat. The bloody man treated them like school children. And he knew why: it was Dean’s way of concealing his own inadequacy. ‘This is too important to ignore!’
The Director-General wondered, unconcerned, which way the committee would split in their support between him and Johnson, if ever they were called upon to do so. ‘I didn’t say I was going to ignore it. I said I wasn’t going to do anything premature or ill-considered.’
Johnson wished the innovative idiots who’d decided a re-organized agency should have someone like Dean at its head could have heard this conversation. Moscow had been such an opportunity to achieve so much! Fenby had been honest about the problem with his Moscow appointee so why hadn’t he put some minimal curb on the stupid little sod. ‘I really must recommend a committee discussion on this.’
‘I’ll think about it.’
Which was what worried Johnson. If Dean took some arbitrary decision, which he had the power to do, it would be several days before he knew what it was.
In the solitude of the echoing apartment and the straitjacket embassy cell – leaving neither for any length of time unless it was absolutely necessary – Charlie went over every word and every gesture and tried to find every nuance from his meeting with Natalia, sinking as he had after the initial elation of the Moscow assignment into the swamp of despair at deciding for the second time, and upon stronger evidence now, that she really didn’t have any interest in him any more. She could have made contact if she’d wanted. She’d have known of his posting; had a far easier way of reaching him than before. But she hadn’t. Like she hadn’t shown anything at the meeting. Charlie tried to buoy his hopes by telling himself there was no sign she could have given, in the circumstances and surroundings of the encounter. But then punctured the attempt by convincing himself she could have shown something – he didn’t know what, just something – that would have had a significance only to him. Instead of which the most personally significant gesture had been the contempt with which she’d discarded his pitiful effort with the Lesnaya telephone number. It had, he supposed, epitomized what she’d intended to achieve by hosting the gathering: showing throughout it by her very lack of any sign her utter disdain for him.