He had never refused her, and never would. Had never contradicted her — water splashed over his head — and would not have gone for the deal if she had opposed it.
‘Did you sleep?’
‘Until you woke me.’
‘Did you sleep through the night, or just now? I ask because of the time. I thought we were to start early.’
Molenkov watched as Major Oleg Yashkin tried to push himself up from the contorted position in which he had slept, then wiped his eyes. Himself, he felt good, had already been down to the river, knelt close to the water, cupped it over his face and rubbed hard to remove dirt. He had washed without soap, then come back to the car. There had been two elderly fishermen close to him but he had not spoken to them, or they to him: old habits of former times dictated that citizens did not interfere or pass comment on the actions of others. They saw nothing and remembered nothing. And when he was clean and had dried his face with his handkerchief he had gone to a stall at the far end of the park and bought two kalatchi rolls, fresh baked.
‘You shouldn’t have let me sleep so long. We have so far to go today. It’s three hundred and twenty kilometres to—’
‘Just now, you slept like a mother holding her baby.’
‘Fuck you, Molenkov.’
‘You had your arm over it, as if it was a baby. Is it alive?’
He saw that Yashkin blinked, then smiled, then ran his filthy hand across the tarpaulin, and said, ‘In a fashion, yes.’
‘It has a pulse, a beat, does it breathe?’
Yashkin wriggled out stiffly from the hatch of the Polonez. He stood and stretched — his breath was foul — then jabbed a finger at Molenkov. ‘What do you want to know?’
‘I want something to eat, but first I want to know what it is, have more understanding of it.’
‘Why now? Why not last week or last month?’
‘I regret nothing, I just ask. Some detail, what is it?’
‘I need to piss.’
He followed Yashkin towards the riverbank, where he sheltered Yashkin from the view of the fishermen while he urinated against a tree trunk — with the weak flow of the old — and listened.
‘I’ll tell you once more and not again. We call it a Small Atomic Demolition Munition. I do not know exactly, but it would have been assembled at some date between ‘sixty-nine and ‘seventy-four, and it would have gone to the Special Forces who were attached to the mechanized divisions. But every six months it would have come back for maintenance work. They came back for the last time, to be dismantled, in ‘ninety-two and ‘ninety-three … and it was called the peace dividend. This one had been returned a week before I took it. Right, now I’m going to wash.’
Molenkov steadied him as he went down to the edge. Water splashed across his face and there was a gulped curse at its cold. He spat to clear his mouth.
‘I didn’t see this one’s inside, but a similar batch had been brought to Arzamas-16 two weeks before from Ukraine. As a security officer I could be anywhere. I was shown the process of breaking up the weapon. You ask what’s there. It’s very simple. The complication’s in the engineering, but the principle is basic — that’s what I was told. First, there’s a canvas bag round it, with carrying straps and handles. Open that and you expose something that looks like a small oil drum, which has hatches in it, screwed down tight. You undo the screws and you see moulded shapes to hold materials in place. A tangle of wires, inside and out. Then conventional military explosive is packed into a sphere, but when the detonator system is removed it’s not dangerous. There is engineering sophistication that I was not told of, and would not have understood — I can only tell you what I saw.’
Again and again, Yashkin had poured the river water over his face and across his short hair. Now he cleaned his hands. Molenkov watched, and tried to build pictures from what was described.
‘Inside the explosive is the “pit” — that’s what the engineers call it. It’s very small. A little bigger than a tennis ball, the size of an ordinary orange, and a perfect sphere. That ball, the pit, is heavy, weighs perhaps four and a half kilos and is plutonium. To go for highly enriched uranium is a different process, but ours is plutonium. It is known in scientific terms as Pu-239. Actually, I held a pit in my hand.’
Wonderment, and a tinge of horror. ‘You held it?’
‘With a glove, but I was told that wasn’t necessary. They say the pit — Pu-239 — is benign. Most extraordinary. It was warm.’
Molenkov closed his eyes, squeezed them shut, pondered, opened them and saw Yashkin shake his hands vigorously to dry them. ‘Warm?’
‘Not hot, but not with the chill of any metal. You asked me if it was alive. Perhaps. It has a natural warmth, not the cold of the dead.’
Molenkov turned to walk back towards the Polonez. A fisherman had a rod that bent over the water. He called, excited, to his friend to come. Over his shoulder, Molenkov shouted to Yashkin that he had new bread rolls in the car, and that they should start out for Kolomna, on the second stage of their journey. And as he walked he gazed down at his open palm and tried to imagine that he held in it a warm orange, which lived.
‘Don’t I get to see Mr Goldmann? For God’s sake—’
‘Mr Goldmann is busy. He is not to be disturbed,’ Viktor said.
Hanging back, half in the shadow of the hall, Carrick watched. It had been predictable that the scene would happen, and it played out predictably. His sarge, Simon Rawlings, was on the top step but blocked by Viktor in the doorway, with Grigori at his side. Carrick thought he hadn’t slept last night, looked washed our. His eyes were bagged and his face stubbled.
‘I want to see him, or I want to see Mrs Goldmann!’ His sarge’s voice rose.
‘It is not possible, and Mrs Goldmann, too, is busy. I am asked to give you an envelope, and it is the finish of your work here.’
Carrick saw it passed, saw it ripped open. It was packed with banknotes, fifties. One flew clear and floated in the wind that came up the street, but his sarge didn’t grovel and didn’t scrabble on the lower steps for it. He stood his ground, but had pocketed the envelope and the remaining notes. ‘So, that’s it. That’s the end.’
‘It is the finish of your work. Please, I require the keys.’
‘I was spiked. Don’t you know that? I was set up. Doesn’t that interest you?’
‘Please, the keys.’
The hand went into the pocket, emerging with the keys. The keys on the ring were thrown forward and caught low down by Grigori. Carrick thought his sarge was losing it — fast.
A snarclass="underline" ‘I have clothes downstairs. I want them.’
Viktor, beside the seam of his trousers, flicked his fingers. That was predictable and had been planned for. From behind him, Grigori picked up and passed forward a black bin-liner. Carrick had packed it: spare suit, spare underwear, spare pair of shirts, socks, shoes and — junk items that went with the job — overalls for car maintenance, heavy-duty gloves, torches, pepper-spray canister and a truncheon, a couple of well-thumbed books. Carrick thought it was because of the disrespect shown to Grigori, the chucked keys, that the bag was heaved forward, landed close to his sarge’s feet.
‘You aren’t listening to me. The drink was spiked. Aren’t you interested?’ There was froth on his sarge’s lips. He seemed to look up and his jaw clenched. ‘You all right, then, Corp? You look all right. Hot-bedding already, are we? Not got a voice? You moved into my space? I’m listening, and I’ve not heard you speak up. I suppose it’s a good bloody career move for you, me being set up. Well, listen to your old sarge. Listen hard. If they fuck me, they’ll fuck you. Remember who told you.’