‘Going over the heads of the people you’ve been dealing with?’ accepted Johnson. ‘Which would surely increase the resentment you’ve already talked about.’
I hope so, thought Charlie; that was the major object of the exercise, although not the one he wanted them to believe. He said, ‘If those people are involved at all it will only be peripherally. So their resentment won’t matter.’
‘What has this proposal got to do with what we should really be discussing: the theft of enough plutonium to make God knows how many weapons?’ demanded Pacey.
‘Nothing, in any practical way of getting it back,’ admitted Charlie. ‘But then again, maybe a lot. The Russians are insisting what was stolen at Pizhma is still in Russia and can be retrieved. I’m not as convinced. But I’d like to be proven wrong: what I’m suggesting might just give me a lead.’
There was a shocked silence. Pacey said, finally, ‘You really think it’s already out?’
‘I think it’s a strong possibility,’ said Charlie. ‘I’m looking beyond Pizhma: looking to stop a robbery of that sort of size being repeated. Pizhma, surely, was enough!’
‘Dear God!’ said Johnson, hollow-voiced.
‘Which is a further argument – the strongest argument – to put to Moscow for their agreeing to what I’m suggesting,’ added Charlie.
‘Are the police really as corrupt as you say they are?’ asked the deputy Director, stronger voiced.
‘I think so.’
‘Then there’s the risk of the Mafias you want to infiltrate learning the whole thing is phoney?’
‘It’s a risk,’ conceded Charlie, uneasy with another admission. ‘But again, making the approach as I’ve suggested should restrict the knowledge to a limited number of people.’
‘Has anyone thought the information that enabled the Pizhma robbery could have come from the Kirs interception operation?’ demanded Jeremy Simpson.
I don’t think, I know, thought Charlie. ‘It’s a strong possibility. But it would be impossible to narrow it down. There were at least four hundred spetznaz and Militia personnel involved. Not all of them knew precisely what they were assembled for, although there was some hurried exercises. All the officers and NCOs certainly would have been aware of it.’
‘You are officially accredited to the British embassy,’ reminded Patrick Pacey. ‘I’m not comfortable politically with someone with diplomatic status setting himself up as a conduit for crime, even if it’s known about and approved by the Russian government.’
‘During the time I would be running the operation, I wouldn’t work from the embassy,’ insisted Charlie. ‘If you remember, my argument for having outside accommodation was because I might have to mix with criminals.’
‘Which means you wouldn’t be under embassy supervision,’ said Johnson.
It couldn’t have been better if it had been rehearsed, thought Charlie: it was even the word he’d used to the Director-General. ‘ Am I under embassy supervision?’
‘There has been a complaint from the Head of Chancellery,’ disclosed Pacey, the political officer.
‘I’d like to know what sort of complaint?’
‘Insubordination.’
‘Made on the day the nuclear theft became public?’ asked Charlie, expectantly.
‘Yes.’
‘I was responding to specific instructions,’ defended Charlie, cautiously, wanting the discussion to run as long as possible for him to gain as much as possible. ‘There was an urgency…’ Abruptly, in mid-sentence, Charlie didn’t continue about the time-saving benefit of giving Sir William Wilkes a written account, which was a weak part of his argument anyway. Instead, recalling his impression walking from the ambassador’s office with Bowyer, Charlie switched to concentrate specifically on time. ‘The ambassador still had several hours before the Prime Minister spoke to the House.’
It was the over-anxious Williams who responded too quickly, the ammunition for his intended attacks already set out before him and believing he’d found his next ambush. Looking up from his hurriedly consulted papers, the financial chief said, ‘Not according to the Head of Chancellery’s message…’
‘… Timed at what?’ broke in Charlie, tensed for a reluctant apology if he had been wrong the previous day.
‘Eleven in the morning, precisely,’ said Williams, smiling in anticipated satisfaction. ‘Four and a half hours, for a statement of the magnitude that the Prime Minister had to make, was totally insufficient for the Foreign Office to brief Downing Street in the detail required.’
Charlie looked around the assembled men, thinking again how much redder Williams’ already pink face was likely to become, conscious of Dean’s second frowned look at the man. He’d been lucky, Charlie accepted: hugely, wonderfully lucky in a way he’d never imagined possible. ‘I quite agree,’ he began, mildly. ‘But it would be if it’s Moscow time, three hours ahead of London. Which it will be because it’s customary – and I’m sure that custom hasn’t changed, even though our role has – to use local times on messages. So eleven Moscow time is only eight in the morning, here in London.’ He shook his head, verging on the theatrical. ‘But that creates more questions than answers. You see, I didn’t get back to the embassy until twelve-thirty Moscow time. The ambassador wasn’t even there. He was still being briefed at the Foreign Ministry…’ Charlie looked around the group, imposing the silence. ‘… So how could the Head of Chancellery complain about my insubordination in communicating direct to London instead of speaking to the ambassador first a full hour and a half before I got back to the embassy with anything to talk about?’ Gotcha! thought Charlie, although he wasn’t sure who it was in London he’d caught out, just that he’d hung Bowyer and Saxon out to dry.
Williams’ face was sunset red. None of the others looked comfortable, apart from Rupert Dean who didn’t appear discomfited at all.
‘Was the ambassador told everything when you eventually did see him?’ pressed Johnson.
Charlie did not immediately reply, uncaring if his new silence was inferred as guilt. ‘I gave the ambassador everything I transmitted to London. Bowyer was with me when I did it.’
‘Withholding nothing?’ persisted the deputy.
Again Charlie paused. This could be the moment the sky fell in on him but there was no turning back now: this was, after all, why he’d sat for half an hour after yesterday’s confrontation in the ambassador’s study, totally fabricating five folios of apparent intelligence about the Pizhma robbery before finally marking it ‘Withheld from ambassador’ and putting it into his desk drawer. Looking steadily at the deputy Director, spacing his words, Charlie said, ‘I don’t think I need remind anyone in this room of the reaction when the robbery became public knowledge: of the near hysteria that’s still going on. Throughout the Western embassies in Moscow there was a great deal of speculation, which tended to get out of hand, exaggeration piling upon hyperbole. I do not see my function to be that of spreading rumours and false intelligence. The opposite, in fact. That is why I separated information I considered unreliable. I did not want to mislead anyone here or the ambassador in Moscow…’ All the time Charlie held Johnson’s attention in the totally hushed room. ‘I kept that separated unreliable information in my embassy office to prevent rumour and gossip wrongly influencing anything the ambassador or his Head of Chancellery might communicate to London…’ His pauses were becoming practically cliche, as well as the words. ‘… Strangely – obviously one of those odd coincidences – “withheld” was the very word I wrote on the rumour analysis, to remind myself that it shouldn’t be used in any assessment…’ The final pause. ‘So no, I did not withhold anything from the ambassador that he should have seen. Only what he shouldn’t have been confused by.’