‘Of course you wouldn’t have been at Pizhma yourself. That would have been too dangerous, particularly with what was done to the canisters. I guess you stayed home in bed, with Yuri. Is he your alibi for the 9th?’
He laughed at her yet again. ‘Weak! Very weak! You think you’re going to get under my skin, because I prefer to fuck boys rather than girls! I don’t know if it was Yuri that might. I like variety. It might have even been a party, so I would have had more than one. Whoever it was, they’ll tell you where I was: even what we did, if you’re that interested. Are you interested?’
Toom might have been a weakness if there’d been any genuine affection but it looked as if she’d lost there, too. ‘Your not being in any photograph isn’t going to save you.’
Still he out-manoeuvred her. ‘You’ve got to find someone, just one person, you can link with me, though, haven’t you? If you can’t do that, the photographs are in my favour.’
Abruptly, seeking firmer ground, Natalia changed direction. ‘You’re at war, with the Agayans Family, aren’t you?’
‘Am I? About what?’
‘Crime control at Bykovo. The airport particularly.’
‘You’re talking nonsense. I’m a businessman. Freight: transhipment in and out of the country. That sort of thing. I’ve heard of someone called Agayans. He tries to extort money from genuine businessmen like myself, claims he can give me protection, against criminal gangs. I won’t have anything to do with him.’
‘You knew he’d set up a robbery attempt, at a nuclear installation at Kirs, didn’t you?’
‘I’ve got to get this straight!’ mocked Shelapin. ‘We’ve had a robbery at Pizhma, which was photographed. Now we’ve got another at Kirs. This is exciting! What were the pictures like there?’
Natalia felt the perspiration finding its way down her back and guessed her face would be shining. ‘It didn’t work but it was quite a sophisticated attempt at Kirs: Agayans and a local Family. It was from someone in the Agayans clan that you heard about it, wasn’t it? And about the decommissioning that you used much more cleverly than they did, with the interception at Pizhma: where you got all the canisters that were found. Where are the others you and your people took?’
‘Don’t you have photographs?’ he spluttered. Behind him the escorts came close to laughing.
‘We’ve enough for a death sentence. Which we’ll get.’ Why hadn’t the damned canisters been forensically examined?
‘How much did you think you were going to get? Five thousand? Ten?’
Natalia stared at him, bewildered by what he said but not wanting to admit it. ‘What I want is to know where the rest of the canisters are.’
Shelapin shook his head. ‘You think I can’t recognize a shakedown when I see one? I’ve been hit on by experts and you’re no expert. You’re very far from expert. In fact I’ve never known anything so pitiful! You know what you’re going to get from me? Fuck all! I already told you, I don’t give in to extortion.’
She had to conclude this, stop it degenerating any further. ‘Vasili Fedorovich Shelapin, I am formally charging you with complicity in murder and with complicity in the theft of two hundred and fifty kilos of plutonium 239 at Pizhma on the 9th of this month. Whatever you say will be noted and may, upon the discretion of the Federal Prosecutor, form part of the case against you. Have you anything to say?’
‘Yes,’ said Shelapin. ‘Go fuck yourself.’
Natalia had never had such a disastrous interrogation and she was demoralized. It had been her fault. She’d been over-confident, not properly thinking ahead or anticipating how touchy he might be. So he’d been right. She’d been stupid and she deserved the taped humiliation. What worried her most was that there was no obvious way to recover, not with Shelapin at least. She’d only break Shelapin with incontrovertible evidence – maybe not even then – and the Pizhma photographs certainly weren’t it, not by themselves. It had been an appalling mistake even to mention them, certainly until they’d got more from some of the other arrested Shelapin Family members. The canisters themselves were incontrovertible, despite his contemptuous denial, so a successful prosecution was assured. But recovering the missing material was more important than a trial. And she hadn’t done anything to achieve that.
As she entered the second observation room, on the opposite side of the Lubyanka, Natalia called upon all her training to put aside the Shelapin disaster, forcing herself to think only of Yevgennie Agayans. With whom she couldn’t risk the slightest mistake. It had to be an unqualified success, to balance the debacle she’d just suffered.
Through her unseen window Natalia saw a short, fat man, owlish in round-framed spectacles, dark hair greased directly back from his forehead. He didn’t appear as controlled as Shelapin – walking back and forth in front of the table with what could have been apprehension more than impatience – although the how-much-longer demands, in a surprisingly deep voice, were as peremptory as the other gang leader’s. The escorts, two men again, didn’t appear as uncomfortable.
Natalia’s file was thicker for this interview and she’d had a second although smaller tape machine installed, the prepared tape already set. The escorts came to vague attention when she entered the room and Agayans started to straighten before abruptly stopping, which Natalia saw as an encouraging if quickly corrected deference to authority. Moving to capitalize upon it, she immediately charged the man with complicity in murder and attempted nuclear theft with the failed Kirs robbery. In both charges she named Yatisyna.
By the time Natalia finished Agayans was smirking. ‘Rubbish!’
Surer of her pressure with this accusation, Natalia started the intentionally over-tuned tape. Into the room echoed the selected and edited sections of her interview with the Kirov gangster naming Agayans as the mastermind at Kirs.
‘More rubbish,’ shrugged Agayans. He held his hands loosely in front of him and began picking at his left sleeve cuff.
‘We’ve got six of your people, every one of them arrested at the scene, singing louder than larks.’
‘I don’t have any “people”.’
‘They say they work for you.’
‘What as?’
‘You tell me.’
‘No. You tell me.’
‘Enforcers. Thieves. Killers.’
‘They described themselves as that?’
‘They’re prepared to, to save themselves. Testifying that they were always obeying your orders.’
Agayans stopped picking at his cuff to flick a dismissive hand towards the second tape. ‘Play me their statements.’
‘You’ll hear what they say, in court.’
‘Why not now?’ demanded the man.
‘Because I don’t intend sitting here all day, swapping tapes for your amusement. Yatisyna has signed a statement that you’re the ringleader: the planner of everything. Everyone else is fighting for clemency, to stay alive. They’ll get their deals. But you’ll die.’
For the first time there was the flicker of doubt. ‘You’ve got nothing to bring me into court.’
Natalia knew he’d break, if she irritated the proper nerve; it just needed the right prod in the right place to push him over the edge. There was a way but it was a gamble and she’d already lost one, badly. ‘There’s enough, on the statements of Yatisyna and the six members of your own Family. There’s even the attempted murder of the Militia man when you were arrested.’
‘It was self-defence. We were suddenly trapped in a road block. My bodyguards thought we were being attacked by gangsters.’
The deepness of the bass voice reminded Natalia of the incanting priests at the Kirov cathedral, which was an ill-fitting recollection. ‘You’d recognize gangsters, wouldn’t you?’
‘What’s that mean?’
‘That you’re one yourself. Head of a clan.’
‘I’m a businessman.’
‘Import-export? Joint venture development?’ sneered Natalia.