Before he could start that night the younger American said, ‘The big gangs are at war here! Name who just got whacked!’
‘Stanislav Georgevich Silin, the head of the Dolgoprudnaya Family,’ said Charlie.
It was a long time before Kestler spoke. ‘How the fuck did you guess?’
‘I’m psychic,’ said Charlie. After he replaced the receiver he said to himself, ‘I hope you’re not in over your head this time, Charlie my son.’
Natalia made Aleksai a drink and didn’t invite him to share in Sasha’s bath-time, which he usually did automatically, instead leaving him alone while she settled the child for the night. The assessment of the German investigation had taken a full day and been subdued throughout. There had been no open criticism of anyone because none was justified, but Natalia suspected Aleksai felt crushed by the German success. And not just German success: Charlie’s success. Which wasn’t confined to Berlin. The final decision of the day, greatly influenced by Germany, had been to accept, although with stringent Moscow-governing restrictions, the British proposal to attempt an entrapment operation in the hope of blocking such a robbery in the future.
Natalia waited until Sasha was dozing before returning to the main room. Unasked, she made Popov another drink and poured wine for herself.
‘Do you want anything to eat?’
‘No.’
‘What then?’
‘Nothing.’
‘It wasn’t a disaster!’ she declared. ‘There was nothing more you could have done.’
‘I could have listened more to the Englishman.’
The admission surprised Natalia. ‘The only obvious failures were my examination of Shelapin.’
‘At least you’ll be spared his court accusations of attempted extortion.’ There had been brief but serious consideration of proceeding against Shelapin anyway, to smash a known Mafia ring; it had only ended when Natalia pointed out a fabricated prosecution was impossible – apart from being illegal – because of the evidence that would emerge at the German hearings.
‘His release – and Agayans’ murder – still reflect on me.’ In any detailed examination of personal failure she had far more to be depressed about than Aleksai.
‘It’s over!’ said Popov. ‘Everyone is now busy making their excuses for what they did or didn’t do to prevent enough plutonium getting out of Russia to start a full-scale war. And we’re at the bottom of the pile, getting all their dirt dumped on us.’
‘Me more than you,’ accepted Natalia, her mind still held by the Shelapin debacle.
Popov came forward on his chair, to face her more directly. ‘Isn’t it about time you made your decision? I’ve given you all the time you asked for. It’s time you told me whether you want to marry me or not.’
‘I know,’ said Natalia. ‘I…’ She physically jumped at the telephone’s ring, hurrying to it: it was more than likely Charlie was back.
The shock was so great and so complete that speech went from her: she gave a half whimper, half scream, holding the receiver away in horror. Popov leaped up, snatching it from her, shouting ‘Hello! hello!’ and then remaining with it limply in his hand.
‘Dead,’ he said. ‘There’s nobody there.’
‘A man,’ groped Natalia, the words croaking out in disbelief. ‘He said to keep my face out. He said if I didn’t Sasha wouldn’t have a face. She wouldn’t die but when they’d finished she wouldn’t have a face.’
And then Natalia screamed, hysterically.
A barbuska, making her way home close to the Arbat, also screamed hysterically when she looked into the oddly parked Mercedes in the hope of finding something to steal and discovered instead the bodies of Stanislav Silin and his wife. Both had been roped into their seats, as if setting out for a Sunday drive in the country.
chapter 31
T he threat against Sasha changed everything. Charlie’s personal feelings became professional now, in a seething mix. Throughout a lifetime of utter disregard to morality, populated by coldly unemotional killers and entrapment experts and out-and-out bastards who wallowed in the pleasure of being out-and-out bastards, the cardinal, self-preserving rule of Charles Edward Muffin, a man who acknowledged no religion, had been that of the Old Testament. Charlie had, however, refined the life for a life, eye for an eye, wound for a wound precept to a very personal, far less verbose creed. Charlie’s lesson was that anyone who tried to fuck him got double-fucked in return: worse, if it were possible. He’d wrecked the careers of the British and American intelligence directors who tried to sacrifice him. And – as emotionlessly as the professional killers he always managed to run away from – he’d personally booby-trapped the escape aircraft of the CIA assassins who’d killed Edith. And felt unrepentant satisfaction as the plane disintegrated into a red and yellow fireball.
Now it was happening again. But not a physical attack upon him. The threat of one upon Sasha. Whoever it was had made a terrible mistake involving a baby – his baby – who shouldn’t have been part of anything. The panic it indicated didn’t matter. They’d done it. So they’d suffer. They didn’t know that yet. But they would, because their knowing was part of the retribution. From the moment of Natalia’s babbled story, at the botanical gardens again, Charlie’s planned entrapment became a totally dedicated, totally personal, totally private exercise to go beyond discovering fresh smuggling attempts to find out who’d threatened his child. And then to make them regret the very day they’d come screaming into the world, which was the way Charlie intended them to leave it.
Even more than before the botanical gardens were obvious because of their closeness to Sasha’s creche. It was the day after his return to Moscow and at Natalia’s summons, and he’d never known her so distraught, not even when he’d told her he was returning to London after his phoney defection, because then they’d made their reconciliation plans he hadn’t fulfilled. Natalia was dishevelled and physically shaking, ague-like, unable at the beginning to hold a consecutive thought or a cohesive conversation. Although the shaking wasn’t because of the cold he led her into the hothouse and sat her down there and tried to calm her and in the end let the account come when and how she wanted to tell it.
The words were staccato, stopping and starting, broken sometimes by near sobs. It took Charlie’s a long time to get the actual telephone warning and in the end he wasn’t sure he had because Natalia was close to blanking it from her memory. And even longer for him fully to understand the precautions. Sasha was protected at all times at the creche by a woman officer from the Interior Ministry’s security section, in constant radio contact with a central control room. Natalia no longer delivered or collected her personally: they were driven by an armed chauffeur, always accompanied by an armed escort vehicle. A security check had been run on all the parents of the other children, particularly new arrivals, and upon all staff. There were two Militia cars permanently stationed at the front and rear of the building. There was also twenty-four-hour Militia protection and surveillance at Leninskaya and a respond-at-once telephone monitor had been imposed, which was why she’d called him from the ministry and why there couldn’t be any more direct contact between them from her apartment.
‘Why now?’ she demanded, anguished. ‘It’s over!’
‘And why you?’ echoed Charlie, reflectively.
‘I’ve been through that. With Aleksai. And the security people. I was named, during the enquiry. Moscow News and Izvestia identified me as the division director and the person in charge of interrogation. And it was said Agayans died under interrogation. And everyone from the President down is still listed in the telephone book – if you can obtain a telephone book – like it was in the old days.’