‘It’s all right,’ soothed Natalia, stretching out an arm towards the girl. ‘Play some more, darling.’
Charlie burned with embarrassment at frightening the child and with frustration at Natalia’s dogmatic, unmovable disbelief. He took all the fervency out of his voice and quietly, reasonably, said: ‘Natalia, listen to me! Please listen! I did come. And when you didn’t arrive I decided I’d misunderstood. So I came on other days… four or five other days in case I’d got the date wrong, which I knew I hadn’t. And I went to the old apartment and tried to find you but they said they didn’t know where you were. And then I decided you hadn’t tried to contact me after alclass="underline" that you hated me and that the photograph was to let me know just how deep that hate was…’ It was a different type of nagging foot pain now, the sort that came when he made a mistake and didn’t know what it was. Which was what it should be because somewhere, somehow, there had been one of the worst mistakes he’d ever suffered in his life and he couldn’t work out how or why it had happened.
Natalia sat shaking her head, not in denial or refusal but in matching incomprehension. ‘None of it makes sense. You got it right: what I meant by the picture! Her birthday…’
‘No!’ stopped Charlie, softly. ‘Oh no…!’
Natalia sat slightly open-mouthed, bewildered.
‘What’s today’s date?’ demanded Charlie, flat-voiced in the gouging, bitter relief that he knew what the mistake was. Why! Why hadn’t he remembered her belief in a God?
‘The twentieth,’ she said, her face clouded, still bewildered. ‘October the twentieth.’
Charlie nodded. ‘That’s my date too: because you’ve adjusted. Automatically.’ He smiled sadly towards the playing child. ‘Is she christened, Natalia?’
‘Of course…’ started the woman, then stopped, finally realizing. In a whisper, she finished: ‘Oh my God, yes.’ Her fault! Her terrible, stupid, ridiculous mistake – after being sure she’d planned how to find him so cleverly and so carefully and had got through to him – that had ruined so much that might have been. Because he had come to her.
‘Eleven days,’ murmured Charlie, disbelievingly. ‘We missed each other by eleven days.’ The difference between the Gregorian calendar by which the West worked and the Julian calculations of the year’s length that Russia followed: followed particularly in its orthodox church ceremonies in recognizing births, deaths and marriages. And he’d missed it! He’d ponced around thinking he was so bloody smart, Jack the Lad who always got everything right, and he hadn’t had the nous to calculate the difference, to be by the space-shot monument on both dates. Charlie couldn’t believe it: he really couldn’t believe he’d overlooked something so simple and so obvious.
‘My fault…’ they each began at the same time, and then stopped. For the first time Natalia smiled.
‘Both our faults,’ said Charlie, actually laughing, his spirits in flight. ‘But it doesn’t matter, darling, not any more. We’ve made it, finally!’
Natalia’s smile faltered, then died. ‘Things are different, Charlie.’
Charlie sat, emptied, as Natalia talked, haltingly and at times changing her mind in mid-sentence to start again. While she was talking, Sasha tired of farming and clambered on to her mother’s lap. Now Natalia sat with both arms wrapped protectively around the child, who’d left Charlie’s doll on the chair but still clutched the wooden model of a cow from her farmyard set.
‘But you’re not married!’ Charlie wondered who the man was: he thought she’d been about to tell him several times but changed her mind with those mid-sentence breaks.
‘He’s asked me.’ Seeing Charlie look around the apartment Natalia said: ‘No, he doesn’t live here.’ The unsaid ‘not yet’ hung in the air.
‘Are you going to? Marry him?’
‘I haven’t decided.’
Charlie felt a pop of hope. ‘Don’t you love him?’
Natalia hesitated, wanting the words to be right. Then, holding Charlie’s eyes, she said: ‘Yes, I love him. I love him very much.’
Charlie’s mind blanked, momentarily, no more words to say or thoughts to think. Sasha stirred, on Natalia’s lap, snuggling tiredly into her chest. Looking at the child Charlie said: ‘Does he know about Sasha?’
Natalia’s hold tightened, perceptibly. ‘My husband is registered as the father. The dates just worked. He’s dead now.’
The drunken womanizer from whom she’d been separated for years, remembered Charlie. With it came a more current thought. There really wasn’t any proof or trace of his being Sasha’s father. Abruptly aware of her consternation, Charlie said: ‘I didn’t mean anything, by that! Nothing… nothing difficult. Believe me!’ From the look on Natalia’s face, Charlie wasn’t sure that she did.
‘He loves Sasha,’ she said. ‘He’s very good to her.’
With an umbilical intuition between mother and daughter Sasha held the wooden animal out towards Charlie and said: ‘Ley’s.’
‘Leys?’ Charlie supposed it could be the Russian word for ‘cow’.
‘That’s the closest she can get to his name.’
‘Who is he?’ asked Charlie, directly.
‘Aleksai Semenovich,’ she said. ‘Aleksai Semenovich Popov.’
‘My boy negotiated all this?’ demanded Fitzjohn.
‘It’s classified, you understand,’ said the FBI Director. Covering himself against the thought of indiscretion, Fenby smiled and said: ‘I checked your security clearance.’ Which was true.
‘It’s on his records, though?’
‘Bold and clear,’ assured Fenby. That was true, too. The stupid son-of-a-bitch didn’t deserve it. If it hadn’t been for his too-important family connections, he’d have hauled Kestler out of Moscow – even if he’d made the mistake of putting him there in the first place – and posted him somewhere like Montana or North Dakota, snowed in where he couldn’t do any more damage. He was profoundly grateful for Peter Johnson’s warning. He could move quickly now, if he had to.
They were at the Four Seasons again, Fenby’s parade ground. The House Speaker waited while their plates were cleared and said: ‘What about the physical danger, sir?’
‘Strictly involved in the planning,’ said Fenby, in further assurance. ‘No physical involvement whatsoever.’
Fitzjohn stirred the ice around his bourbon with its cocktail straw, gazing down into the drink. ‘Jamie’s part will be made known, though? When it’s over?’
‘Of course.’
‘Obliged to you, sir. Greatly obliged.’
At that moment, five thousand miles away in Moscow, the telephone rang in the apartment in which Natalia was now alone, except for Sasha.
‘There’s been a message from Oskin,’ reported Aleksai Popov. ‘He wants to come to Moscow to discuss his re-assignment.’ It was the code they had arranged in the Kirov restaurant to announce a date for the robbery.
As Natalia replaced the receiver, Sasha said: ‘Why are you crying, Mummy?’
‘I’m not crying,’ said Natalia. ‘Your hair flicked in my eye.’
chapter 16
A leksai Popov occupied centre stage – literally, from a slightly raised dais – and clearly enjoyed it. There were maps and charts on display boards and he held a short pointer, like an army baton, in readiness. Natalia sat with the same unidentified ministry officials who now had a bank of individual advisors behind them and the note-taker of the previous meeting was supplemented by four others, as well as by a man operating recording equipment. At a separate bench there was a very short, fidgeting man in a creased uniform of a Militia major and two other men in black, military-style belted outfits devoid of insignia of rank, service or unit. Again there had been no introductions, but to Charlie they were unquestionably spetznaz Special Forces. Directly behind the black-suited men were more aides in anonymous black fatigues. The table for Kestler and Charlie was away from the main grouping, relegating them to the sidelines.
Where he was being kept in more ways than one, Charlie accepted. In the intervening twenty-four hours since his encounter with Natalia he’d gone through the helpless anger and the why-me self-pity and the how-could-it-have-occurred despair. Now he was concentrating upon being objective, which wasn’t any easier than the other emotions but necessary for the catharsis. What there had been between him and Natalia was over, like he’d warned himself in London it might be. She’d thought he’d failed her and was about to make what would probably be a better life than that she might have known with him. Which, after all the shit she’d suffered, she deserved. She had to know he accepted that: most of all that she had nothing to fear from him about Sasha. Natalia might have stopped loving him but he hadn’t stopped loving her. So it was inconceivable he’d cause her any problems about Sasha. He’d have to make her believe that more than she’d believed him the previous day. Sasha was hers, hers alone, no one else’s. He had no right to intrude. Popov loved the child, Natalia had said, was very good to her. So Popov would be the surrogate father. Natalia would marry him and Popov would care for Sasha as if she were his own.