‘Tonight wasn’t a good idea, was it?’
‘No.’
‘I’m sorry. I’d apologized to him for the problems in the operation and we’ve seen a lot of each other and I thought it was an idea to get things on a friendly footing. I was wrong in not telling you where we were going and I’m sorry about that, too.’
‘How long will you be in Germany?’
‘I’ve no idea. Quite a while maybe.’
‘I don’t want the protection taken away from Sasha until you get back.’
‘It was a nuisance threat, nothing more.’
‘Not until you get back,’ she insisted. ‘And maybe not even then.’
Two days later, which wasn’t a Friday, Lieutenant Ranov came smiling into Charlie’s Dubrovskaya office and their conversation occupied most of the afternoon and settled some of Charlie’s outstanding questions as well as raising more. It also made him angry at things he’d missed. It meant he was late getting back to Lesnaya. Hillary said, ‘You’ve just missed Natalia. She called to thank us for the other night. Aleksai sent his regards.’
It wasn’t arranged for Natalia to call him until the following day, so it had to have been social politeness. He wondered what it would be like when they did talk.
chapter 33
F rom the beginning Charlie had accepted the primary function of his two spetznaz minders was to ensure he worked within the operational strait-jacket imposed by Dmitri Fomin rather than to provide him with physical protection, just as Ludmilla Ustenkov doubtless monitored everything he did at Dubrovskaya even more effectively than Thomas Bowyer had watched over him at the British embassy. The only time Charlie couldn’t be constantly accompanied was when he went either to the British or American legations, which he used as the excuse to move unobserved the day after Nikolai Ranov’s surprise approach at Dubrovskaya. Charlie did so acknowledging he was taking the biggest chance yet in a situation already too dangerous and that if he’d miscalulated by a single jot – like he’d for too long miscalculated by a lot more – then he was dead. Maybe literally. He’d taken every precaution he could during the previous day’s conversation with Ranov to ensure he wasn’t shuffling blindly into a lesson-teaching reprisal for refusing the extortion, putting everything he’d learned from Gusev about the internal upheaval in the Dolgoprudnaya Family against what the crooked Militia lieutenant told him. And still felt like he was crossing a splintering plank stretched over a snake-pit.
He actually did go to the British embassy, ducking and diving from the metro to trolley and back to the metro again, and there was a message waiting for him from London. To the confirmation of his being officially called as a witness at the Berlin trial, Rupert Dean added that it would obviously mark the formal ending of Charlie’s entrapment attempt. Dean questioned whether it was necessary for Charlie to go to Berlin so early to review his participation in the debriefing of the Russians and Charlie said the request was all part of the German fanaticism for detaiclass="underline" the attempted sting didn’t seem to be working anyway. The trial date gave Charlie just over a month. Everything depended on the chance he was taking and the man he was supposedly meeting and of his not making just one mistake. His talisman feet had every justification for throbbing like they did, quite apart from all the scurrying to avoid anyone discovering where he was going.
He gave himself a full hour and worked even harder at the evasion when he left Morisa Toreza. As he finally went up towards the Bolshoi square he saw that the traffic island flattened by the attacking Mercedes still hadn’t been repaired, twisted metal and glass and bollards just roped off and lying where they’d fallen. He was still early at the Metropole, so he allowed himself a steadying drink before taking the elevator to the third floor and the room stipulated the previous day by Nikolai Ranov.
It was the smiling Militia lieutenant, sports-jacketed and open-collared, who answered the door and gestured for Charlie to enter, and as he did Charlie thought these room arrival shocks really had to stop. Relaxed in an armchair in a room furnished in Odeon-cinema style was the man who’d demanded Hillary’s company at the Up and Down and whom Charlie had taunted there with a reciprocal invitation a month earlier. Charlie was reassured that the man was smiling, too, although it could, he supposed, have been in triumph.
‘Sobelov. Sergei Petrovich,’ introduced the man. He flicked between his fingers the card Charlie had forced upon him and said; ‘I know who you are. And you came without your people.’
Which might just have been that miscalculation of his life, accepted Charlie, because Sobelov’s usual companions were both at a window seat, hunched like Dobermans waiting for the attack signal. Nodding to the lieutenant, Charlie said, ‘I was asked to come alone.’
‘I wanted a gesture of trust.’ The Russian swept an inviting hand towards a chair arranged to face him and said, ‘Please.’ There was a selection of bottles and glasses on the table between them.
‘But you’re not alone.’
‘I wanted my proof first.’ The man leaned forward to pour unasked and said, ‘Macallan’s, isn’t it? Or would you prefer Roederer?’
‘Whisky’s fine.’ It wasn’t a lesson-teaching, Charlie decided: not a violent one, at least. That would have been in a back alley, at night, after getting him alone, not in the grandest hotel in Moscow in broad daylight. He started to relax. Again indicating Ranov – who had gone to sit respectfully with the two protectors – Charlie said, ‘I was also told there was a special business proposition?’
The condescension went from Sobelov, with the smile. ‘Eight canisters. Something in the region of eighty kilos.’
Charlie cupped his glass in both hands and sipped his drink, not hurrying to reply, his mind in total confusion. Part of the Pizhma haul? Or another robbery, to learn of which was why he’d set himself up in business. The volume of plutonium was about right, but the rest of the equation didn’t make sense. But then neither did the four empty containers in Berlin. Different batch numbers, he remembered. That didn’t make sense, either. ‘Is this from the robbery there’s been all the publicity about?’
‘Yes.’
Excitement surged through Charlie. He didn’t understand why the figures didn’t add up or anything about empty containers in Berlin. Only that about eighty kilos they thought had gone – enough to make God knows how many bombs – was after all still in Russia, not in the hands of some madman or fanatical regime. He’d never been so glad in his life to be as wrong as he had been about it already having been smuggled out of the country. Cautiously, seeking time, Charlie said, ‘Eight canisters – eighty kilos – is a lot.’
‘And worth a lot of money.’
‘What would you expect?’
‘You’re the broker.’
‘Twenty million. Maybe as high as twenty-two,’ said Charlie, relying on Hillary’s valuation of ten containers.
‘I want $25,000,000,’ demanded the Russian.
‘I could try.’ The recovery was the essential, not the money. Which would never be paid anyway, although a proportion might have to be put up, for bait. Lost even.
‘You can guarantee a purchaser?’
‘It will need some negotiation. But yes, I can.’ This was wrong, Charlie told himself: against all his own arguments that a robbery as brilliant as Pizhma came after, not before a buyer had been established and a price fixed. As wrong as figures that didn’t add up when they knew exactly how much had been taken at Pizhma and empty containers and wrong batch numbers and… No it wasn’t, Charlie abruptly corrected himself. It wasn’t wrong at all. What had been wrong was his myopically believing the internal battle for ultimate control of the six-clan Dolgoprudnaya Family had begun after the murder of Stanislav Silin. He’d virtually had it spelled out for him by Gusev and not put it in context. And then he remembered a laugh and a word – akrashena – which he’d always known was important without properly realizing just how important. Charlie smiled and said, ‘I think I should have offered congratulations before now.’