The attitude change towards them throughout the room was almost imperceptible but Charlie was sure it had changed and in their favour, although not from everyone. He didn’t expect any lessening of the military antipathy and Popov would surely remain on the other side of the fence. The importance was the shift of those in higher authority, the minister and the man with the ear of the President whose orders others – even the most hostile – had to obey. Where in the equation would Natalia be? Although her judgment should be businesslike he guessed she’d side with Popov.
Radomir Badim, the professional politician, certainly appeared to pick up the vibrations – or maybe decided to generate them – and almost immediately began making conciliatory noises. ‘I think we can appreciate that undertaking. And we’re grateful for it.’
Never leave an advantage until all the pips were squeezed out, thought Charlie. ‘I would hope that in the future there will not be any further misunderstandings.’
‘I’m sure there won’t be.’ It was Badim who looked pointedly at Aleksai Popov, not Charlie, but Popov who hurried back into the discussion.
‘You must concede the circumstances are utterly extraordinary?’ invited the bearded man.
Charlie, who’d made it a lifetime’s practice never to concede anything, allowed that Popov had balls even if he’d so far worn them around his neck. But he was buggered if he was going to make easy the man’s attempted rehabilitation in front of his peers. ‘Or utterly – even admirably – understandable.’
‘ Admirably!’ The astonishment came from Dmitri Fomin.
‘The robbery at Pizhma was brilliantly conceived and carried out,’ insisted Charlie. ‘It would be a great mistake to underestimate or despise an adversary clever enough to have done it.’
‘Think like your opponents think?’ She shouldn’t stay silent any longer, Natalia determined. In little over an hour she’d been brought back from the abyss – now the person to be praised, not condemned, for keeping Charlie and the American so closely involved – so it was time she made a positive contribution instead of sitting there, letting everyone guess her relief. And it was intended as a positive contribution. Charlie was more expert than anyone else in the room in putting himself in the mind of his opponents and she wanted to hear something practical, not more inquest avoidance.
Popov showed the most visible surprise at Natalia’s intervention, turning sharply towards her. Badim frowned, although Charlie couldn’t understand why. Or why, for that matter, Popov had reacted as he had.
‘It’s a tried and trusted methodology,’ suggested Kestler. ‘Taught even, at Bureau academies.’
Charlie was glad of the space the American’s response gave him. He might not know what Natalia’s personal attitude was but her outward appearance was most definitely changed. She wasn’t slumped any longer and her face wasn’t as care-worn as it had been, just perhaps showing the tiredness they all showed and in Natalia’s case even that not too noticeably.
‘We need to know, and know quickly, who they are, not how they think!’ rejected Popov.
Party time, decided Charlie: for him perhaps with more fun than he and Kestler had anticipated. ‘One could give you the other,’ he crushed, relentlessly. ‘And you’ve already got the way to find out. More than one way, even.’ A pause. ‘Haven’t we?’ Ask, you bastard, thought Charlie; I’m not going to help you. Radomir Badim didn’t help this time, either.
‘How?’ Popov was finally forced to enquire.
‘The most obvious, first,’ set out Charlie. ‘Two possibilities. You’ve rounded up the Yatisyna Family: the leader himseif. Run a criminal records check first, to find out who of the Yatisyna Family you haven’t got. They are your lever. The best guess is that they have gone across to a rival group who used the attempt at Kirs as the decoy it was…’
‘You might even be able to narrow it down tighter.’ picked up Kestler, choosing his moment according to their rehearsal on their way to the ministry. ‘To have known about the Kirs attempt sufficiently far in advance, someone would have had to be pretty high up in the Yatisyna organization. It doesn’t matter, though, if that doesn’t show up. You won’t have got everyone. Mock those you have with the names of those you haven’t, sneering how they were sold out. Someone will break, trying to even the score by naming the Moscow Family to which the Yatisyna are most closely affiliated…’
‘Which there’s another way of finding out, anyway,’ resumed Charlie. ‘Who, among those you’ve picked up, isn’t Yatisyna but from Moscow, representing the people with whom the Yatisyna were working? That’s easy enough to discover, once you’ve got your Moscow identities: a simple check on Moscow criminal records. One records comparison will give you the most important lead you need, the name of the Moscow Family rivalling that to which the men you’ve got in custody belong. Which will most likely and most logically be the Family that attacked at Pizhma. Your interception at Kirs would have been the best and most humiliating bonus they could have imagined.’
The Russians were being inundated with theory – all of it practical and feasible, the sort of basic investigatory process that should be followed – but an avalanche nevertheless, calculated to appear a far greater contribution than it was to set in concrete the right of Charlie and Kestler to remain part of everything. From the majority of the expressions confronting them, Charlie guessed they were winning.
‘Which shouldn’t be the only approach to the investigation,’ Kestler pressed on. ‘There might not even be a connection between Kirs and Pizhma, unlikely though that is: just conceivably the two could be a complete coincidence. In which case the information that made Pizhma possible wouldn’t have come from the north at all. But from the south, from wherever the components were being transferred to. The receiving installation would have had every detail of the train, wouldn’t they? Routes, schedules, quantities, timings. The receiving plant should be blanketed, to discover if the leak came from there…’
The American’s pause, whether intentional or otherwise, gave Charlie his entry. Smiling to Popov, as he’d smiled frequently towards the man in seeming friendliness, Charlie said, ‘That would have been our immediate operational reaction. But then I’m sure you’ve set everything like that in motion already.’ A final pause. ‘Haven’t you?’
Charlie didn’t expect it would be easy next time. But at least he was reasonably sure there would be a next time.
The photographic enhancement, which Fenby got within an hour of Kestler’s breathless telephone link from Moscow, went far beyond confirming the radioactivity leak. Refusing to believe what he was told at first, the FBI Director summoned the photo analysts to the seventh floor and had them take him through the montage to prove that not only were the canisters visibly breached but that, viewed in sequence, the only possible conclusion was that they had been intentionally forced. There were at least fifteen shots showing men with either crowbars or cold hammers, prising and smashing at the seals.
‘That’s incredible.. it’s…’ stumbled Fenby.
‘… Suicidal madness?’ suggested the photographic chief.
Hillary Jamieson didn’t agree when she arrived at Fenby’s office, fifteen minutes later; the skirt was as short but at least the shirt was looser. Impressively, she instantly and mentally calculated from the time-stamp on the relevant frames that the men would have only been exposed for a maximum of six minutes and said, ‘Enough to make them sick, maybe. Better if they changed their clothes and showered, but whatever it is in the containers I doubt it would be terminal.’
‘But look at the timing!’ insisted Fenby. ‘That stuff’s been there leaking for getting on for twenty-four hours now! We’re looking at another Chernobyl!’
‘No, we’re not,’ corrected Hillary, not bothering to soften the rejection. ‘Chernobyl was a melt-down, a China Syndrome. And it was an entire reactor: the amount was hugely much greater. But it’s still dangerous. Those poor bastards posted around it are in real trouble if they haven’t got the proper protective clothing and unless it’s sealed pretty damned quick Pizhma – I presume it’s a town or a village – is going to be affected. Other places, too, if there are any, the longer it remains unsealed. I can’t be any more precise until I know positively what was in the canisters and the extent and degree it had been irradiated.’