By coincidence, the same day, several Moscow newspapers reported the shotgun murder by the river of a known Moscow gangster named Petr Gavrilovich Malin. Every account said the Militia considered him the victim of a gangland feud. Gusev provided what he said was the full file on the killing of the man whom Mitrov had identified as the successful courier of the lost ten containers. Gusev did so with the warning that upon Dmitri Fomin’s orders, the dead man was not going to be connected with the Pizhma robbery in any public statement. As far as they were concerned the killing was a gangland dispute and would not be solved, like such disputes never were: they wanted nothing official to reignite the publicity over the Pizhma theft. Through Balg again, Charlie relayed it all to Berlin, but again suggested Schumann keep it from the nuclear smugglers and was glad he did after his next conversation with Natalia.
The advertisements produced more than sufficient business to occupy the now permanently guarded Ludmilla Ustenkov. Charlie accepted what he hoped was questionable and rejected those that were clearly honest, which only amounted to about six enquiries. With London the supplier and buyer, he traded cut-price IBM computers, German refrigerators, five Jaguar and Rover cars and Russian icons, triptychs and a case of semi-precious stones which, upon analysis, weren’t even semi-precious: to fuel the legend he wanted to create Charlie told Viktor Ivanovich to rough the con man up if he tried to repeat the scam, which the man did. Charlie hadn’t intended the man’s nose to be broken. Or that he be forced to eat some of the worthless glass, either, which ripped his bowel when he passed it. Charlie actually made a profit – his only one – importing supposedly stolen computer chips to update American and German hardware, but a second consignment of computers was intercepted at Sheremet’yevo and all their screens smashed before Charlie got to the airport to collect them. That Friday Charlie served a second whisky to Ranov when the Militia officer arrived for his $400 and complained that no one benefited from the sort of skirmishes that had ruined his computer shipment. A lot of money – money that could improve the sort of retainers that Ranov was getting, for instance – could be made if instead of resenting his independence, people traded with him. He only wished he could get the message through to them. Ranov thought it was wastefully counter-productive, too, and wished there was something he could do to help.
Charlie strictly limited his visits to the British embassy and took even more avoidance care moving through Moscow’s metro system, sure he detected special interest around the Dubrovskaya office and once close to Lesnaya. Always awaiting him at Marisa Toreza were fresh demands for expenditure explanations from Gerald Williams, which settled into little more than the man placing on record against any future enquiry his efforts to impose the financial control always overruled by the Director-General. Towards the end of the second month, Charlie was showing an operating loss of $500,000.
Hillary was frightened by the destruction of the second BMW and at first titillated by the need always to have bodyguards, but a lot of the time she was bored.
She kept Lesnaya immaculate and by the end of their second week together had started turning it into a home, with flowers and prints and books and a music selection rather than the sort of rain-sheltering resting place to which Charlie was accustomed. He liked it. She was a superb cook and Charlie complained of putting on weight, which she promised to get off by her own particular exercise, which she practised every night with even more exciting improvisation than she showed in the kitchen. Charlie liked that, too. After specific warnings of how careful they had to be arriving and leaving, Charlie risked inviting to dinner Lyneham and his wife and Kestler with one of his embassy harem, which turned out very successfully, so they repeated it over succeeding weeks. On the first occasion, while the women gossiped and helped in the kitchen, Lyneham said the way things were going Charlie stood a real chance of being blown away and asked how much longer he intended standing with the target on his chest.
The vicarious novelty of always having bodyguards palled for both of them, although Hillary accepted the need, particularly when they flashily toured the clubs, which Charlie felt necessary every week. On their first visit under protection to the Up and Down they saw the group who had demanded Hillary join them and Charlie reversed the invitation, which was accepted. They sat for an hour with the respective guards posturing Rambo body language while Charlie ordered Roederer Crystal and exaggerated his business success to the hirsute bear of a man, pressing cards upon the Russian with the assurance that there was nothing in which he couldn’t, or wouldn’t, trade. Hillary complained on the way back to Lesnaya that her face ached from keeping an idiot, non-comprehending smile in place. And that the hairy man gave her the creeps.
During one of Lyneham’s visits, almost into the second month, Hillary abruptly asked the Bureau chief to find out from Washington how much longer she was expected to stay in Moscow, apologizing afterwards to Charlie for not mentioning it to him first, but saying it was a spur of the moment question. When the reply came that there were no withdrawal plans, Charlie said he’d understand if she wanted to move back to the protection of the embassy. Hillary kissed him and said that wasn’t the reason at all and if she had to stay in Moscow, Lesnaya was where she wanted to be and Charlie was surprised how pleased it made him feel.
Charlie had anticipated most of what had happened after the advertisements, although not perhaps the degree of violence. What he hadn’t anticipated was the open cooperation shown by Popov and Gusev. Over the course of several meetings at the Ministry, Charlie took both of them through the Berlin examination and at the end of the first month Popov announced both he and Gusev were going to the trial as observers if they weren’t called as witnesses. At Popov’s invitation they lunched in a private room in a discreet tavern up in the Lenin Hills and Gusev spent a lot of time discussing the Militia shake-down, producing personnel files not just of Nikolai Ranov but of the patrolmen involved, each of whom he promised to jail when the Dubrovskaya operation wound up. The bloody internal war among its six Families for supreme control of the Dolgoprudnaya was a constant subject of conversation: the death toll, after two months, was ten. It was at the lunch when Gusev produced that total that Popov made the obvious reference to the Lesnaya apartment, which Charlie let pass, imagining he’d misunderstood. He knew he hadn’t when Popov repeated even more pointedly his admiration of pre-revolutionary architecture, not enough of which remained to be enjoyed. He would, responded Charlie, very much like to host a dinner party. Popov, at once, said he would be very happy to accept.
Natalia’s contacts were intermittent, although always prearranged from the call that preceded it so Charlie could guarantee to be at Lesnaya. Apart from the Dolgoprudnaya request he had little professional to talk about so the conversation mostly revolved around Sasha. The continued protection was unsettling her; she’d started to wet the bed and was often sullen and rude. There hadn’t been any more threats and Aleksai was convinced – like the official security division – that it had been nothing more than a nuisance call from someone connected with Shelapin: there’d been a decision to harass the Family to the point of bringing Shelapin in for questioning on several occasions. She’d discussed resigning with Aleksai, who’d said it had to be her decision. She’d finally agreed to marry him, although no date had been fixed. Aleksai had agreed to it being in a church. Charlie lied that he hoped they would be happy.