‘I’d like to sit down.’
‘You’ve wasted thirty seconds.’
‘I want a guarantee!’
‘You’re not getting one.’ It was time to regain superiority.
‘I want to trade!’
‘Forty-five seconds.’
‘Take what I give you to the prosecutor! Tell him there’s more! A lot more. But he won’t get it unless I get an understanding.’
There’d have to be something among the bluff. ‘All right.’
‘You got Agayans?’
‘There’s a warrant.’
‘But you haven’t got him yet?’
‘No.’ There was no danger in that admission.
‘He did set it up, all of it. He needed us because it was our territory; the Militia were ours.’
‘So you thought’
Yatisyna grimaced, accepting the correction. ‘That’s something else I’ll give you. All the names.’
Important but not the most important. ‘So Agayans approached you?’
‘Six months ago. Said he had buyers for nuclear stuff and that he knew there were three installations around Kirov where it was available. Which we already knew. We already had people inside Kirs. What we didn’t have were buyers. So it was the perfect partnership.’
‘Agayans had buyers?’ isolated Natalia.
‘Yes.’
‘Not just one? Several?’
‘Yes.’
Natalia fought against the excitement, knowing if she gave the slightest indication Yatisyna would believe he’d provided enough. ‘How many?’
‘Three. Maybe four.’
Too vague: he was lying. ‘Names?’
‘I never knew any names.’
‘What was the deal, between you and Agayans?’ With his sleeves rolled back Natalia could see Yatisyna had a bird tattooed on the forefinger of his left hand; she’d heard some Russian Mafia Families affected skin decoration as a mark of recognition.
‘Twenty million dollars, minimum. And affiliation with the Ostankino.’
‘You were going to get twenty million dollars and join one of the six leading Mafia Families in Russia but they didn’t trust you enough to meet one single buyer!’
‘I did meet a buyer. Three months ago. Here in Moscow, in a club.’
‘What nationality?’
‘Arab.’
‘Which country?’
‘I don’t know. He had a European with him: French, I think, who could speak Russian.’
‘Did Agayans know the name?’
‘I think so.’
‘How did everyone refer to each other, when they talked?’
‘They just talked, without using names.’
‘Could you identify the Arab again?’ Natalia decided to bypass the operational group and go direct to the ministers: warn them in advance for Dmitri Fomin to attend, from the President’s secretariat.
‘I think so.’
‘And the Frenchman?’
‘I think so.’
‘Could you describe them, for an artist to make an impression?’ He’d had twenty-four hours to invent this story. There was no guarantee of any of it being true, until they could confront Agayans, but a lot of it sounded convincing enough.
‘I could try.’
Arab, reflected Natalia: with a French intermediary. How would that balance against Aleksai’s insistence of the material still being in Moscow. She was immediately annoyed with herself. With Yatisyna she was discussing a robbery that hadn’t succeeded. And Aleksai had never argued against the West or the Middle East being the final destination, just that it hadn’t moved in that direction yet. ‘I’ll arrange it tomorrow.’
‘And see the Federal Prosecutor?’
‘Yes.’ Dmitri Fomin had already made the decision but there was everything to be gained by stringing the man along.
‘That’s a nice dress,’ said the gang leader. ‘Nice watch, too. You like nice things?’
‘Very much,’ said Natalia. If he wanted to go on she certainly wasn’t going to stop him. ‘You know a lot of Militia people in Kirov who like nice things?’
‘Not just in Kirov,’ said Yatisyna, pointedly.
‘Moscow, too,’ she anticipated.
‘Agayans is very proud of his special friends. He’s introduced me to a lot of them.’
‘Who?’
Yatisyna smiled. ‘After you’ve talked to the prosecutor.’
chapter 24
E ven before he left the American embassy Charlie worked out the priorities to achieve the maximum advantage, the most important of which was getting his side of every story to London first. So he was relieved that Sir William Wilkes’s Rolls wasn’t in the forecourt when he got to Morisa Toreza. He avoided Bowyer’s office and his own cubby-hole, skirting directly to the cipher room. He was connected instantly to the impatiently waiting Director-General, who said at once the Foreign Office briefing had escalated to Downing Street and the Prime Minister’s chairmanship. Charlie promised, page by page, information he insisted was essential before any parliamentary statement was made. Aware that all telephone communications with Moscow were recorded and would later be available for examination, Charlie accepted that if he’d misinterpreted by a jot his balls would within twenty-four hours be fluttering in the wind like the British pennant from the ambassadorial Rolls, which still hadn’t reappeared outside.
‘You made any protest?’ demanded Dean, sharply, when Charlie announced his exclusion.
‘Nothing to object to,’ reminded Charlie. ‘We were always accepted on sufferance.’
‘But the Americans are still in?’
‘They don’t think they will be, for much longer. While they are, we’re covered.’ There was, of course, no question of his ever telling London of the arrangement with Natalia.
‘Full cooperation locally.’
‘It’s working well.’
It was time he brought Fenby down to earth, Dean decided. ‘We’ll discuss it more fully later.’
Charlie remained in the cipher-room hideaway, handing his written account a promised page at a time for simultaneous encryption and transmission, careless of mistyping in his eagerness to get his views and opinions in London before any others. He’d finished most of it before Bowyer appeared, flushed, at the door. ‘Where the hell have you been? The ambassador’s going mad, trying to find you! Everyone is!’
‘Working,’ said Charlie, not looking up.
‘Stop what you’re doing and come with me!’
‘I’m going to finish this.’
‘I told you to come with me!’
‘Call the Director-General and ask if he wants me to stop.’ Charlie held back, just, from referring to Dean as the DG: there was the specific London instruction about Bowyer’s seniority down the drain, he reflected. But there was a purpose in his doing it, like there was in every move he was making now.
‘Are you…!’ started the outraged station chief.
‘… Fifteen minutes,’ stopped Charlie. ‘Call London.’ He went on writing while Bowyer stood for several minutes at the doorway before turning abruptly to stomp back into the main embassy building. Charlie refused to meet the conspiratorial attention upon him from the clerks. It actually took him twenty minutes to finish and a further ten to retrieve his full, un-encrypted report, which was a leaving-the-room afterthought. Charlie found Thomas Bowyer sitting rigidly in the official rezidentura. Charlie was sure Bowyer would have sought London adjudication and that the stuffed-animal demeanour was the result but didn’t press it. He said, ‘Sorry to have kept you,’ wishing the cliche hadn’t sounded so mocking.
‘The ambassador’s waiting,’ said Bowyer, moving jerkily out into the corridor. They went in total silence to the ambassador’s suite.
Wilkes waved away Bowyer’s hurried apologies for lateness but Nigei Saxon sat tensed forward in a chair bordering Wilkes’s desk, impatient to strike. ‘You’ve been in contact with London before consulting us!’ accused the Chancellery head. ‘That’s directly against the instructions you were given. You were told to report to senior authority at all times.’
‘The ambassador was not available,’ said Charlie. ‘It was a matter of urgency.’
‘It was the ambassador’s responsibility to respond to this!’
‘Which is being delayed by this conversation,’ pointed out Charlie. It sound stronger than he intended. Saxon pulled his lips into a tight line.