Hillary prepared for the Russian dinner party with her usual enthusiasm, deciding upon all-American pot-roast with pumpkin pie for dessert as a meal that would be different for them, relieved when Charlie told her that Gusev spoke English almost as well as Popov. She said, coquettishly, that she was looking forward to seeing Popov again: that day at the Arbat she’d thought he was as sexy as hell.
Charlie hadn’t installed closed-circuit television at Lesnaya but the apartment bell was duplicated on the ground floor for Viktor Ivanovich to vet arrivals and Charlie had learned to time to the second how long it took people to climb the ornate and gilded stairway. Popov had just reached the outside landing when Charlie expectantly opened the door.
Petr Gusev wasn’t with him. Natalia was.
It took John Fenby a long time to acknowledge he wouldn’t quickly be able to keep the personal promise to even the score with the British Director-General. He didn’t know how or when and accepted it probably wouldn’t now involve Moscow – in fact Moscow was still so uncertain it was probably best if his retribution wasn’t connected with Russia at all – but sometime in the future he’d get his chance to screw Rupert Dean and the British service and when he did the Limey bastard was really going to know he’d been screwed. All it needed was patience. Much better, in fact, than hurrying it. This way he could savour it.
It didn’t mean, of course, that he was going to sit back and be dictated to. He was readily prepared to go along with the British insistence that the woman stay in Moscow, although there seemed little point now that they were sure half of the plutonium had been lost. Fcnby was quite happy for Hillary jamieson to be as far away from Pennsylvania Avenue as possible and had already asked his scientific director to headhunt for someone to replace her, even if the qualifications had to drop. Shacking up with the Englishman like the slut had done gave him cast-iron grounds for her dismissal.
Fenby’s preoccupation, as always, was with Kestler and Milton Fitzjohn and Fenby knew he had that all neatly wrapped up.
With his customary attention to detail, Fenby flew personally to Wiesbaden and then to Bonn after several fax and telephone exchanges preparing the way, to promise every FBI assistance at the trial of the nuclear smugglers, delighted how well it all fitted in when he learned how internationally high-profile the Germans intended to make it. Fenby’s strongest guarantee was that James Kestler would publicly appear to present all the American satellite evidence, which he was confident would provide one of the sensational highlights of the hearing.
After which he planned to bring Kestler home in the glory the publicity would achieve and in which the grateful Milton Fitzjohn would be delighted. He hadn’t decided whether to keep the kid at headquarters or to offer him one of the top-drawer embassy postings like London or Paris.
chapter 32
C harlie was as disoriented as Natalia had been realizing where she was when she had arrived downstairs, but she’d recovered by the time she reached the outside landing. Charlie was glad of its half light but wasn’t concerned at some visible surprise that Popov wasn’t accompanied by Petr Gusev. To reinforce the point he said so as he greeted them and used the word surprise at the same time as saying he was delighted to see her, which he was, although he needed to think a lot more about the circumstances before he was sure about that.
Natalia’s second uncertainty was to be welcomed directly inside the apartment by Hillary Jamieson. The American girl had also expected another man and there was momentary, first-meeting hesitancy which Charlie thought easily overcame any outward difficulty.
Inwardly there was a lot of conflicting feelings trying to get to the forefront of Charlie’s mind. Anger was chief among them, which he refused, because at that stage he wasn’t sure he had anything to be angry about and in any case anger never helped rational thinking. So what was it rational to think? Viewed in an objectively straight line, Aleksai Semenovich Popov had accepted a social invitation for himself and the woman he was shortly to many, not on behalf of himself and a Militia colonel. Which was perfectly reasonable – the only misconception his – and even maintained a perhaps necessary element of business because until very recently Natalia had been part of the nuclear investigation and still headed the specific anti-smuggling division. But was it as simplistic as that? Popov knew he’d gone to Leninskaya soon after he’d arrived. And that he’d been to Moscow before and that Natalia had debriefed him. But to have been as adamant as Natalia was that the man was unaware of their personal relationship meant what old KGB records survived were sterilized of any such suggestions. Which he already knew anyway, for Natalia to hold the rank and position she did. What was left then? A professional episode in the long-distant past which could conceivably explain his going to Leninskaya like he had? As wrong to cloud his reasoning by over-interpretation as it would have been to allow obscuring anger. For the moment he had to follow the straight line. Which didn’t mean, of course, he shouldn’t be on the lookout for unexpected curves. But then he always was.
Unwittingly Hillary, the perfect hostess, smoothly covered the immediate arrival, seating Popov and Natalia together on the high-backed, siderope-tethered couch and offering canapes while Charlie poured champagne for everyone except himself, remaining with his preferred whisky. The apartment was the obvious and immediate subject of conversation, which Hillary responded to as openly as she did with everything else and invited them to look around: her and Charlie’s evidently shared bedroom was the last on the escorted tour. There was no cause for Charlie to feel uncomfortable, but he did. Natalia was quite controlled by then, smilingly attentively to the other woman although paying little attention to him, which wasn’t Charlie’s immediate disappointment. Hillary had the advantage of youth by maybe ten years – for the first time Charlie realized he didn’t know how old she was – and although she hadn’t dressed as exuberantly as she sometimes did for their club visits the silk moulded to her Greek goddess figure and stopped short enough to exhibit the forever legs and Charlie thought Natalia suffered by the side-by-side proximity and suspected Natalia thought so too. Natalia’s dress was silk as well, although a subdued black against Hillary’s crimson, but cut more comfortably and longer. The blackness drained what little colour there was from her face and she hadn’t hidden the worry lines around her eyes and lips, and she’d pinned the chignon carelessly and stray hair was already escaping.
And Natalia wasn’t just suffering from the physical contrast. In an austere but superbly tailored and waistcoated black suit and muted tie, Popov was more than ever a Romanov look-alike and was flirting extravagantly with the receptively flattered Hillary. It actually created a brief divide, separating Popov with Hillary and Charlie with Natalia, and provided a further comparison between the laughing banter against artificially subdued conversation. Natalia looked directly at him when she said he seemed to be settling in very comfortably after he agreed he had been extremely lucky to get the Lesnaya apartment. Charlie presumed Sasha would be at the creche, under Militia protection, but Popov was too close for him openly to ask, even though the Russian appeared totally engrossed in some hand-waving anecdote of Hillary’s. Remembering Natalia’s concern during every conversation, particularly about the bed-wetting, Charlie was still surprised Natalia had left her.
Dinner began on the same facile social level, with Popov taking Hillary through the first-time-in-Moscow, how-do-you-like-it routine and smiling quizzically at Hillary’s reply that it was interesting. Then, abruptly and still smiling, he turned to Charlie and said, ‘But you, of course, were here before?’