‘She’s good. Treated him like shit. The old demeaning trick. Worked like a dream.’
‘What about the ministry people? Badim?’
‘Lots of back-slapping. Personal commendations, from the presidential guy.’
‘To whom, specifically?’ demanded Charlie.
‘Popov and the woman.’
‘What was said, exactly?’
‘That it was an excellently conducted investigation and that it was an official commendation, to both of them.’
‘Both of them?’ persisted Charlie.
‘Charlie!’ protested the other man again. ‘We together on this or has something come up I don’t know about? If there is I’d sure as hell like to know.’
‘I wasn’t there. I want to get a feel of everything that went on.’ It was the sort of protection, maybe insurance was a better description, that Natalia needed. He still hadn’t guided the younger man to the significance of the Warsaw references on the satellite tape, which he’d half thought about during his meeting with Jurgen Balg. He could always avoid criticism from the American by pleading the analysis had been done in London and communicated direct, which he now knew it had been.
‘OK,’ said the younger man, doubtfully.
‘What about the crooked cop accusation?’
‘A little foot shuffling, but not much. It was kind of passed over. It’s hardly the revelation of the decade, after all.’
‘What about your contribution? You get any praise?’
‘I didn’t have anything to offer today.’
It was coming, thought Charlie: like pulling alligator teeth but it was coming. ‘Nothing more from Washington?’
‘They’re still working on the audio tape.’
The younger man’s reply told him that nothing significant had yet emerged from the eavesdropped conversation but Charlie’s hair-tuned antenna to nuance twitched. ‘What else from Washington?’ he chanced.
‘Some pretty confusing signals,’ admitted Kestler. ‘Which makes me think something is going on that I don’t know about. Like I don’t know what it really is you and I are talking about.’
Here was a ball that had to be juggled carefully, Charlie recognized. ‘What sort of confusing signals?’
‘It takes a year to open the door you pushed and the moment we get inside we get priority instructions to back off and not get compromised. It doesn’t make any sense!’
It didn’t, accepted Charlie. It merely added to the FBI uncertainty. But there again it might give him a route to follow. ‘What are you doing about it?’
‘Obeying orders. I just sat and listened today, like a fucking dummy. And we didn’t make any request for Hillary to examine the car in which the containers were found. She protested that direct and was told to lay off.’
That made least sense of anything: removed the very reason for her being in Moscow. Which worried Charlie and for professional, not personal reasons: in everything she’d done so far Hillary had always found something of forensic value. ‘Hasn’t Lyneham asked for guidance?’
‘The reply was that it was a policy decision. You got any idea what that might mean?’
There was an irony in the American distrusting him for the wrong reasons. ‘How could I possibly know about a policy decision taken in Washington?’
‘I thought it might be a joint policy decision, between Washington and London. And that you might have been recalled to be told what it was.’
‘I was brought back to discuss the exclusion, nothing more.’
‘Your people planning to protest it?’
‘It hasn’t been decided yet.’ Kestler had reason enough to be suspicious, Charlie acknowledged: everything he said appeared either an avoidance or a refusal to give a complete answer. Which, he supposed, it had been.
‘I’m being straight with you now, Charlie.’
The antenna twitched again. Now? When hadn’t he been in the past? And about what? ‘If I get any guidance I’ll tell you. Trust me.’
‘When are you coming back?’
‘Soon.’
‘I look forward to hearing from you.’
‘You will.’
Charlie had left one direct question unasked because it was unlikely Kestler would have known anyway, so to have introduced it would merely have made the American even more suspicious. Natalia would know. And there was an arrangement of sorts for him to call her. But Charlie didn’t, reminded by the presence of the technicians outside his soundproofed booth that all communication with Moscow was automatically recorded. Which meant, he supposed, that there was a voice record of the back-stabbing from Moscow unless Bowyer had communicated through the diplomatic bag. From the meeting that had just been interrupted, Charlie didn’t think that it was going to be a problem any more. And there was no immediate urgency to settle the other query: it could wait until he got back to Moscow to ask Natalia. Far more intriguing was the rest of the conversation he’d had with the younger man. It didn’t make any sense for the Americans to back off, no sense at all. And why now, when he’d been withdrawn to London? Coincidence or connection? Into Charlie’s mind came the stored away conversation with the cynical Lyneham about Kestler’s family connections. Was the policy decision a very limited one, affecting Kestler personally rather than the Moscow Bureau station as a whole? Not if the edict had been extended to Hillary. The Bureau – and America – generally then. So what could…? Charlie positively halted the mental spiral, reminding himself the only effect of revolving in ever-tightening circles was to disappear up your own ass. He now had an easy way to introduce the Bureau into the discussion with Rupert Dean far above. It really was turning out to be a remarkably lucky day.
At first things did not go to Charlie’s satisfaction. He’d guessed they wouldn’t, but obviously he had to begin with the new arrests and the nuclear recovery. He tried to make what he’d learned from Kestler appear additional to the brief message Bates had delivered but there was very little and it showed. He finished actually looking towards Williams for the expected ridicule, but the budgetary controller said nothing, remaining hunched over the papers upon which he’d doodled while Charlie talked. It was the cadaverous deputy who pointed out that the further Moscow seizure didn’t support Charlie’s insistence that the material was moving westwards and even less the fear that it might actually have reached a middleman. Charlie repeated that more remained missing than had been found.
‘Which, I suppose, we’ll have to rely upon the Americans to tell us about?’ sneered Williams.
‘That might be difficult,’ seized Charlie, deflating the accountant. Yet again the room was silent as he summarized the conversation he had just had with Moscow. And yet again there were several long-held looks between the Director-General and Peter Johnson.
‘Ordered not to!’ queried the Director, although without quite the surprise Charlie expected.
‘Specifically,’ confirmed Charlie. ‘It’s a policy decision to pull back from the cooperation they’ve achieved. The physicist they’ve put in was categorically told not to make any approach to examine what was found in the car.’
‘That’s ridiculous!’ said Pacey.
‘Fenby does move in mysterious ways,’ remarked Dean, still more mildly than Charlie expected.
‘Which surely has to be the explanation,’ said Simpson. ‘They’re doing something, or know something, they’re not sharing with us.’
‘Then it’s happening in Washington,’ insisted Charlie. ‘I was asked whether it was a joint resolve, involving us: whether, in fact, I’d be going back. I probably wouldn’t have been told anything if the Bureau in Moscow hadn’t thought there was some connection and that I could tell them what it was.’ Kestler had been indiscreet about what was essentially an internal FBI decision although it did impinge upon their officially agreed cooperation. But there was the family connection to protect him from censure if it was queried from London, which it obviously would be.
‘This was supposed to be a joint operation,’ said Williams, addressing the Director-General. ‘Wasn’t there any warning they were going to do this?’