Charlie personally received formal Russian approval two days later from Dmitri Fomin. The presidential aide used the officially presented London proposal as their discussion paper. Apart from Fomin Charlie faced a familiar five; Badim and Panin from their respective ministries, Popov and Gusev and the taller of the two spetznaz commanders, whose rank and name finally emerged to be General Nikolai Bykov and whose antipathy to the entire project remained as hostile as it had been to everything else involving Westerners. Fomin did virtually all of the talking and Charlie was curious how many preparatory discussions there had been. Several, he guessed, from Fomin’s monologue. He was to attempt nothing without consultation. He would be allowed plainclothed spetznaz protectors and chauffeurs, despite which Russia would not be held responsible for his personal safety in any circumstances whatsoever. Office staff would be supplied by the Militia. Colonel Popov, his already established liaison, would be the conduit through whom he had to work, assisted by Colonel Gusev. No information was to be disseminated in advance of his fully advising either Colonels Popov or Gusev. The entire cost had fully to be borne by London. The experiment would be under permanent review and liable to cancellation, without consultation with him or London, whenever and however Moscow deemed fit. He could not personally be armed.
Charlie had expected constraints every bit as restrictive and would even have been unsure if they hadn’t been. The function of every Russian assigned to him would be to spy upon him first and protect him second. The great uncertainty would be if any would be on a Mafia payrolclass="underline" being appointed from this level made it unlikely, but he’d have to be careful. There was no reference at all to the Pizhma robbery or the Berlin debriefings, which Charlie thought petulant but hardly surprising, even though they had to accept there was little chance now of getting anything more back. And with Fomin clearly in charge, the failure to review the German information with the very person who’d obtained a major proportion of it had to be his decision. Popov remained blank-faced, like everyone else, but at the formal end of the meeting said he was looking forward to resuming their cooperation – the most immediate and important of which was fully to dicuss Germany – and hoped it would be productive. And on a better footing than in the recent past. He considered their disagreements a clash of professionalism and hoped Charlie thought of them that way too. Charlie said he felt exactly the same way and wondered if Popov would relay the conversation to Natalia. Both Popov and the Mililtia commander readily supplied out-of-office contact numbers.
Charlie’s first move, the following day, was to ask the now readily available Popov for a foreign car outlet the Militia suspected to be controlled by a major Mafia Family. The two-day delay in Popov’s reply gave Charlie time to draw $150,000, in cash, from a bulging-eyed Peter Potter. The dark blue BMW 700 it later took Balg and the Bundeskriminalamt a fortnight to identify, from the engine and chassis number, as having been stolen from the car park at Frankfurt airport, cost Charlie $70,000 from a salesroom on Ugreshskaya that Popov told him was run by the Dolgoprudnaya. The car purchase was his first use of Special Forces bodyguards, both of whom clearly regarded it as an assignment of a lifetime. They insisted on army security, identifying themselves only by their given names and patronymic. Boris Denisovich, the driver, was a dark-haired native-born Georgian with a tattoo on the lobes of both ears and Viktor Ivanovich was blond and raw-boned and smiled a lot, as if he couldn’t believe his luck, which he probably couldn’t. Remembering his first-thought requirement, Charlie acknowledged that each could have knocked shit out of him, but more importantly out of anyone else. Hillary came with him to buy the car and both Russians openly – although not offensively – appraised her and Hillary played up to it. The Russians, in their turn, performed their part perfectly in the salesroom. Boris expertly examined the car and insisted upon giving everyone a test drive, at one stage at 120 kilometres an hour along the inner ring road with a fitting Mafia disregard to speed limits or the law. Viktor remained tight to Charlie’s shoulder when Charlie opened the attache case in which the dollars were set out in elastic-banded bricks and carelessly tossed the purchase price, without haggling, to the gap-mouthed sales director. Charlie left the case open, with the rest of the money displayed, while he talked of setting himself up in business and possibly needing more cars and took both their cards with the promise to be in touch.
Charlie took an expansive office suite on the third floor of a block on Dubrovskaya – because he was assured by the Moscow Militia’s Colonel Gusev the street was in the very heart of Dolgoprudnaya territory – again paying the deposit and six months’ rental from his dollar-packed briefcase. He furnished it expensively in Finnish pine and large-leaf potted plants and pre-revolutionary Russian prints and transferred a lot of the embassy booze from Lesnaya to create a bar. He also installed an extensive range of closed-circuit television with freeze-frame and record capacity. The secretary Popov supplied was a dark-haired, doe-eyed girl named Ludmilla Ustenkov. Hillary was at Dubrovskaya when Ludmilla arrived and said if Charlie touched the girl’s ass she’d have his and when Charlie looked surprised said she was only playing her part, which she thought she had to do.
That night, more seriously, she said, ‘This isn’t a game, is it Charlie?’
‘No,’ he said, matching her solemnity.
‘Should I be frightened?’
‘Aren’t you?’
‘Not yet. But I was that night at the club. So I guess I am going to be.’
‘I’ll keep you out of it. I’ll need your help if we get close to anything nuclear, but I won’t let you get into any danger.’ It was, Charlie knew, a promise he couldn’t keep, but he was determined to try as hard as he could.
‘You seem to be in an awful hurry.’
‘I am,’ he admitted. He was ready. It had taken just two weeks.
On the day Charlie moved in to Dubrovskaya the Russian Foreign Ministry issued a formal statement regretting that at least one hundred kilos of weapons-graded nuclear material appeared to have been smuggled out of the country. It was hardly more than confirmation of the speculation that had continued since the German seizure, but it was the first official response and led to fresh media frenzy.
Things went on happening quickly, although not at the level or pace that Charlie really wanted. It began within two days of his advertising himself as an import-export specialist across a range of leading Moscow newspapers and magazines and proved the need for the three additional spetznaz the increasingly amicable Popov drafted into the Dubrovskaya office.
The ground-floor surveillance camera caught the three men entering, so Charlie was half prepared when they thrust into the outer office, told Ludmilla they didn’t need an appointment and swaggered into where Charlie sat, now waiting. Their spokesman was a small, wiry man with sleeked-back, jet black hair and the swarthy complexion of a southerner, Georgian and Azeri perhaps. The heavies were just that, both hard Slavic-featured, each over two metres tall and thick-bodied and Charlie felt a jump of apprehension even though his three minders who would have already been alerted by Ludmilla were only the press of an alarm button away.
The approach was unadulterated Hollywood, which would have been amusing had Charlie not been sure each of the three would quite happily maim him at least or kill him at worst or do either if they simply felt like it. The small man said he represented an association that welcomed new enterprise to the district and actually used the word ‘insurance’ when he talked about the essentials of assured business success. With a message of his own to convey, Charlie offered drinks, which they accepted, and had a Macallan himself because he needed it. He personally arranged the chairs in the best position for the cameras and for the added advantage that sitting they would be at an initial disadvantage for what was to follow. Even so he wished the desk was broader when he retreated behind it. He was glad his hand wasn’t shaking when he sipped the whisky.