“I’d hoped it was self-explanatory,” said Charlie.
“It is self-serving, unforgivable impertinence for which I demand an explanation,” spluttered the outraged man.
“There was no intended impertinence.”
“The third secretary is responsible for the general administration of this embassy and got the approval of the deputy Director-General for the conference, to discount some of the most preposterous media fantasies. By refusing to appear, causing the conference to be canceled, you’ve assured those fantasies will be exacerbated.”
Doubly trapped before he’d virtually started, Charlie recognized he was making an immediate enemy of the ambassador. “You were aware of my being seconded here?”
The ambassador frowned again. “Of course I am aware of your being seconded here! Mr. Dawkins has kept me fully informed.”
“Seconded for what specific purpose?”
There was a hesitation before the diplomat said: “Do you imagine that you can interrogate me!”
“No, Your Excellency,” said Charlie, belatedly deciding that he should show the expected respect. “I am trying to prevent any further misunderstandings. Are you also aware of yesterday’s exchanges between this embassy and London concerning my role here?”
Instead of answering, Sotley looked inquiringly at Dawkins. The flush-faced man said, “There were some working arrangements that needed to be clarified. I decided-”
“Excellency,” broke in Charlie, talking directly to the ambassador. “I would respectfully suggest that this meeting is suspended to give you the opportunity to read for yourself the exchanges being referred to here, and perhaps discuss them more fully and in private with Mr. Dawkins. I will, of course, be available if you decide there is any reason to discuss the situation further.”
As he made his way back to the rezidentura, Charlie guessed that Dawkins probably wouldn’t have shown him the same mercy, but there was nothing to be gained impaling Dawkins’s head on a spike. Far more important-and worrying-was the revelation that Jeffrey Smale was involving himself in such a hands-on way and that embassy officers were unquestioningly accepting the deputy director’s authority. Maybe, Charlie thought, he was going soft in his advancing years. Then again, perhaps he wasn’t-just impatient with all the interruptions and anxious to get on with the job. Which looked like being further delayed by another wasted day. Then he saw Reg Stout talking animatedly with three men in the corridor along which he was walking, directly in front of the open-doored control box containing the faulty CCTV terminals. All three had cameras around their necks and open work boxes packed with electronic equipment. One of the three was a man named Harry Fish, an MI5 electronics sweeper who’d been in the counterespionage business almost as long as Charlie. The recognition between them was immediate. Fish raised his eyes to heaven at the same time as shaking his head, which Charlie knew wasn’t in denial at God living up there but at the shambles down here on the ground.
Charlie hadn’t expected to be back in the ambassador’s presence so quickly, although on this occasion he was not in the man’s office but in a larger, adjoining conference room. Assembled around the table with Charlie and the three sweepers was the ambassador, Dawkins, Stout, and both the MI5 and MI6 officers. The object of everyone’s attention, in the very center of the table and laid on a white handkerchief to make them more visible, were four black objects the size of pinheads.
“State of the art,” declared Fish, the team leader. “Any electronic or verbal communication conducted through the four terminals in which we found them would have been received with crystal clarity by the FSB or the external directorate, the Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki in their Lubyanka headquarters. I am going to have to bring a much larger team from London to sweep this embassy from top to bottom. .” The balding man looked between Stout and the two intelligence officers before continuing on to the two diplomats. “There will obviously be a complete and extremely full internal inquiry, which I would expect London to send independent people to conduct. In preparation for that it will be necessary for all of you to go back to every communication that was sent on equipment through these terminals-equipment which my team and I will identify-from the date the Russian electricians were allowed on to the premises supposedly to repair the faulty CCTV cameras. Their being allowed within the embassy is a breach of every security guidance and instruction with which every British embassy, particularly this one, is issued. The inquiry will need to see all the documentation, between whomever was involved and consulted, authorizing the Russian entry-”
“I had authorization for everything I allowed to happen,” burst in a stuttering Reg Stout.
Fish raised a hand against the outburst. “The involvement in any inquiry of my team and me will be strictly technical, fully identifying the extent of the penetration.” He nodded to the pinhead bugs. “From this moment, this embassy has to conduct itself in the belief that not one piece of electronic equipment is safe, and that includes private telephones in the apartments within this building, as well as all those in every office, and extends to all mobile and cell phones, the radio masts for whose transmission are on the top of this building. It is inevitable that other listening or monitoring devices will be detected. . ” For the first time Fish included Charlie as he looked around the table. “The embassy is already under the sort of scrutiny the Foreign Office would do its utmost to have avoided. For this penetration to become public, on top of a murder in its grounds, would be a total catastrophe. It is only known about by those of us in this room. It must not, under any circumstance, go beyond.”
“It’s already a disaster,” said Sir Thomas Sotley, more to himself than to others in the room.
“Yes, sir,” agreed Fish, unsympathetically. “It is a complete and absolute disaster.”
The only totally guaranteed bug-free apparatus was now in the embassy’s basement communications room, and Charlie stopped Harry Fish as he was about to enter the descending elevator.
“I’m on my way down there, too,” announced Charlie, unsure if their long association, which had never developed into a friendship, would be sufficient for what he was going to ask. “But first I need a favor.”
“We do very different jobs,” said the man, cautiously, letting the elevator doors close against him.
“The Russians are trying to push me aside from the investigation,” declared Charlie. “I’ve got to prevent that happening, particularly after what you’ve just discovered.”
“How?” asked Fish, holding back from any additional questions as he listened to what Charlie told him, shaking his head at the finish. “It’ll never work.”
“I can make it work.”
“I won’t swear any formal statements. . let my name be used.”
“Just be there, with me,” urged Charlie. “You won’t be identified.”
“Twenty minutes,” insisted Fish. “I’ve already given London a contact schedule.”
“Twenty minutes,” agreed Charlie. Nodding to the camera still slung around the other man’s neck, Charlie said, “Can I have the images of what I want?”
“I hope to Christ I’m not going to regret this.”
“You won’t,” promised Charlie, wishing he could be sure.
It took them five minutes of Fish’s stipulated schedule to collect buckets, a spade, trowels, and plastic sheeting from the gardeners’ shed Reg Stout had earlier identified to Charlie, which ensured they got the necessary attention of the Russian grounds staff. Three stood watching when they got to where the body had been found, the newly turned soil filling the Russian-dug hole visibly different from that which surrounded it. Charlie demanded from one of them that their overseer be summoned and ordered the man to keep all the Russians not just away but out of sight of what he and Fish were about to do. Charlie, reluctantly, did the digging, gouging a mark in the conference-hall wall with the spade edge, grateful for the effort Fish put into the apparent selection of dirt heaped onto the plastic sheeting.