‘This is what we agreed I should do. Infiltrate,’ reminded Charlie. ‘The incredible bonus is getting most of the stuff back.’
‘Let’s make sure it is what’s been agreed: followed by you to the letter!’
Which is what Charlie did, although not to the alphabet the Director-General meant. The instructions Charlie had meticulously to obey hinged upon a telephone number – 5124843 – traced within an hour of Raina providing it to a street kiosk near the Spree bridge on GertrudeStrasse, in what had been East Berlin. He had to call at exactly 11 a.m. and to ask – using the precise words – if the red Volkswagen advertised in the Berliner Zeitung was still for sale. The reply had to be that it was not, but there was a white model available. If he was told it was the wrong number the attempt had to be repeated at the same time on succeeding days until the white model offer was made. The day after the right reply Charlie was to go, again precisely at eleven, for coffee at the Grand Hotel, on the FriedrichStrasse, once again in old East Berlin. He was to carry a copy of the Berliner Zeitung around which should be folded a tourist map of the city. After coffee he was to make his way to the Ganymed restaurant on the Schiffbauerdamm for lunch and afterwards return down the FriedrichStrasse to the U-bahn and take the train for two stops, going westwards. There was no other way to establish contact, which had created the problem from Warsaw and again after the breakdown delay reaching Cottbus. And why Raina was going to Berlin to start the routine later in the day he and his group had been picked up.
‘It could take for ever,’ warned Schumann, after their first unsuccessful telephone attempt the day they returned from Wiesbaden.
‘That’s what worries me,’ said Charlie, working to a time-table no one else was following.
But it didn’t take for ever.
He got the white car offer the following day and spent a further three wandering, on protesting feet, around the once-familiar streets of East Berlin and lunching at the restaurant he’d always enjoyed in the past and did again. Charlie detected his pursuers each day because they weren’t very good, but for once he wanted to be followed. On the fourth day he was stopped entering the U-bahn by an olive-skinned man who ordered Charlie, in bad Russian, into a clattering, bone-jarring Trabant for what Charlie recognized to be a surveillance-checking tour around the eastern part of Berlin – actually going as far as Marzahn – before rejoining the FriedrichStrasse as far as Unter den Linden, where they turned in and stopped.
‘What now?’ demanded Charlie.
‘Wait,’ said the man, responding for the first time to Charlie’s several efforts at conversation.
The man could, Charlie judged, have been from one of half a dozen Middle East countries. Or from anywhere else along or around the Mediterranean. The driver was already getting from the vehicle before Charlie was aware of the Mercedes drawing up behind. The man opened the rear door for Charlie to get out but then blocked his exit, patting him down so thoroughly that any wired device would have been detected, as well as a weapon.
There were three men in the Mercedes, all dark skinned. The man in the rear, into which Charlie was gestured, was diminutive, almost child-like in stature, apart from the features of a grown man. The size of the two in front accentuated the physical comparison. The Mercedes drove off at once, skirting the Brandenburg Gate, and Charlie realized they were going in the direction of the Wannsee forest and the lake on which another con man had been found with his testicles in his mouth.
In keeping with Charlie’s thoughts, the man beside him said, ‘Tell me why I shouldn’t have you killed.’ The voice was small, like the rest of him.
‘Tell me why you should.’ If he had such power, it had to be Turkel.
‘To prevent being trapped.’
‘What you’d prevent is yourself getting at least eighty kilos of plutonium 239. And if you’d thought it was a trap you wouldn’t have kept the meeting.’
‘Where were you told how to arrange things like this?’
‘Moscow.’
‘Who by?’
‘The boss of bosses of the Dolgoprudnaya.’
‘Stanislav Silin?’
Trick question or ignorance? He should have checked with Schumann if Silin’s killing had been widely reported in German newspapers. But it had been in Moscow and people as careful as these would monitor the Russian media: there was even an embassy to do it. Trick question then. ‘Silin’s dead.’
The man at the front turned and Charlie fully realized how big he was, bull-necked and bull-shouldered and with a ham-like hand clenched along the seat back as if in readiness. What would life be like without bodyguards, wondered Charlie: at that moment he would have very much liked the reassurance of his spetznaz protection.
The man beside him nodded. ‘So there have been changes?’
‘Yes.’
‘Was the arrest of Raina and the others part of that?’
Charlie hesitated, unsure how to reply. ‘Yes.’
‘Who has replaced Silin?
‘Sergei Sobelov.’ Charlie saw they were beginning to enter the forest. The red cabbage he’d eaten with the pork at the Ganymed began to repeat from a knotted-up stomach.
‘You are not Russian.’
Another uncertainty. Russia was so large, with so many dialect and even language variations that he could easily lie, although it would be more convenient not to: of everything so far this challenge surprised him most because the other man’s delivery was obviously accented. ‘English. But I operate in Moscow.’ Charlie tried a smile. ‘Import-export.’
‘Why should the Dolgoprudnaya risk trusting a foreigner?’
His Wiesbaden argument thrown back at him, Charlie recognized. Returning it a third way, he said, ‘To avoid risking one of their own people. I’m disposable, if anything goes wrong. And where’s their risk? I was given the system – and a name – to reach you and a quantity to offer if the system worked. If you’re interested I have to go back to Moscow and tell them. All I’m doing at the moment is carrying messages.’
‘What name?’
‘Ari Turkel.’
The man in the front seat shifted again as Turkel gave a brief but humourless smile of acknowledgment. ‘You are well informed. As you would be if Raina has talked under interrogation.’
Dangerous ground, Charlie recognized. But Turkel didn’t know the completeness of their evidence. ‘To make things worse for himself? What have the Germans got? Some Russians with some nuclear material. That’s all. There’ve been arrests like that before. What do the sentences average? Five years. Eight at the most. If Raina or any of them talked of networks and previous shipments and who the customers have been, they’d be talking themselves into twenty years. It wouldn’t make sense.’
‘Unless they were offered a deal.’
All he had was bluff, Charlie decided. He’d make a mistake – probably a fatal one – trying to improvise any more. Through the trees he saw the dull greyness of the lake. ‘What risk are you running now? Today?’
‘None. I made sure of that.’
Charlie gave a shrug, of finality. ‘So we’ve driven into the countryside: wasted half a day. I delivered my message and you’re not interested. I’m sorry. I could probably get transport back into the city if you dropped me near some of the public buildings by the lake, although I’d appreciate being taken back…’ He offered his hand across the car. ‘We don’t want to deal with anyone who’s uncertain, any more than you do. But there’s no hard feelings. I’m sure you’ll find other suppliers in the future.’
The attentive front seat passenger frowned at the dismissal and Turkel’s face stiffened. ‘I didn’t say I wasn’t interested.’
‘No,’ agreed Charlie, ‘ I said I wasn’t interested any longer…’ He pointed to a group of buildings at the lakeside. ‘There! I’ll be able to get a car there.’
Turkel snapped something in a language Charlie didn’t recognize. The driver continued on. ‘What’s your offer?’
‘Eight sealed containers – eighty kilos – for $30,000,000.’