Carrick yanked Mikhail’s arms up, turned him, shoved him against the partition wall, then kicked his legs apart. Reuven understood. ‘I permit it,’ he called.
The man, Carrick, he had been told, was a former soldier. He thought the turning of Mikhail, his bodyguard, was done in the military fashion. He wondered when, last, Mikhail had been subjected to a body search, fingers into the groin and armpits. The weapon was taken, Mikhail’s pistol, from the shoulder holster, checked, cleared, then thrown — as if casually — towards him. Reuven caught it.
He did not know about a dust-down as a response to suspicion.
It was brilliant, theatre. He put the Makharov pistol on the table. The man, Carrick, had searched Mikhail for a wire as if he, too, threatened as an infiltrator … Incredible. Carrick nodded as if satisfied, went to the chair and sat, but Reuven noticed that his knuckles whitened as his fingers gripped the chair’s arms. Mikhail had demanded it, Viktor had supported Mikhail. Josef Goldmann, the launderer, had backed away from involvement. Should have had a fucking opinion. Josef Goldmann had brought the man.
Reuven turned to him now. ‘Speak for him.’
He despised Josef Goldmann. Reuven thought he provided a service but had never taken a strategic decision, was merely there, a lapdog at his heel. He ordered Goldmann to repeat the story.
He despised Josef Goldmann because he had admitted his debt but only vaguely stood in the corner for his man. He should have raged at the insult to his own judgement that his saviour was treated in this way, an object of suspicion. Reuven sat back. This was work for the men who had been with him since the early days of building roofs in Perm. Fifteen years before, he himself had led the one-time hard men recruited from State Security, and they had followed. For Reuven Weissberg, they went down into the gutter.
Questions came.
How had Carrick been approached?
What had Carrick done before the approach?
Why had he chosen to work for Josef Goldmann?
Tricks thrown into the game. Who did Carrick report to? How often did he report? Tricks mingled with questions … It was difficult for Reuven to understand the English-language questions posed by Mikhail, some with aggression and some soft-spoken, but he was less interested in the answers than in the face of the man who sat in the chair.
When had he left the military? How long between leaving the military and his first work as a bodyguard? How many employers? How much did the employers pay him? Viktor scribbled the answers. He would be on the telephone to Grigori, giving him details for checking. How often had he seen Simon Rawlings before the suggestion of work was made? How often had he met the contact? How much did he know of the business dealings of Josef Goldmann? He did not see a mistake made, or recognize evasion — but it was early.
Carrick was told to produce his mobile phone. He did so, and Mikhail passed it to Viktor. Questions, most of them repetitive, were asked as Viktor hit the keys and opened the memory. Answers, all repetitive, were offered. Reuven was interested that the man, Carrick, used statements of few words to explain himself. Did not ramble, did not say in four ways what could be said in one, offered minimal explanation. Viktor leaned towards him and whispered that no calls had been made on the mobile since Carrick had reached Berlin, and no calls had been received.
But it was early. A cordless drill lay on the table and a chain-saw underneath it.
‘You are too convenient. You came too easily. You do not explain it.’
‘I have explained it.’
‘What to you is Josef Goldmann?’
‘My employer.’
‘To die for?’
‘Do what I am paid to do.’
‘And report to a senior officer? How many times?’
‘You’re talking shit. You know nothing.’
‘How often did you meet your controller?’
‘You were a policeman once?’
Reuven saw Mikhail flinch. ‘I ask—’
‘You were a crap policeman. We had interrogators in Iraq and you wouldn’t even have made a junior.’
Mikhail spat, ‘You are the angel when someone steps off the street and supposedly attacks Josef Goldmann, and you have the chance to shine … That was convenient. Yes?’
‘Never been in a combat situation? No? Well, you wouldn’t know, would you, how a man reacts? Too fucking ignorant.’
‘The story, I tell you, is too good.’
‘Ask Mr Goldmann. He was there and you were not.’
‘And the angel — what we have to believe — is prepared to give his life for a man who is a stranger to him. Why? Why?’
Viktor had been close to Reuven. He moved now, edged away and stayed close to the partition wall, moved cat-quiet to be behind the chair, was poised to strike … and Josef Goldmann did not speak up for his man.
The answer was quiet. ‘If you had been in combat you would know, but you haven’t so you do not.’
Reuven thought the man, Carrick, had not made a mistake, but still it was early. It interested him that the man hit back, was not intimidated — should have been if the suspicion was justified.
Molenkov asked the question that had circled in his mind since they had driven from the garage. ‘What’s it for?
Beside him, Yashkin frowned, ‘What’s what for?’
‘We take the thing, sell it, we—’
‘You can speak the thing’s name — it doesn’t bite. A Zhukov, as you know, is a Small Atomic Demolition Munition. It has a serial number of RA-114. It is, for the moment, benign. You can talk about it.’
‘You always interrupt me. I was thinking aloud. I—’
‘You were rambling like an old fool. I repeat, “What’s what for?” Tell me.’
The one-time political officer had been able to allow his thoughts to flow freely because the engine of the Polonez ran sweetly. Their wallets were half empty but he fancied the car had received a better and more thorough working-over than it had had for ten or fifteen years. Flat countryside slipped behind them, with little to engage him — less to compete with burdens that seemed to flourish like a virus in his mind — nagging and unwelcome.
He stumbled through what he had to say. ‘We’re paid, that’s the deal — it was agreed. We get paid and—’
‘We get paid a million American dollars. We divide a million American dollars into two equal parts. The story ends.’
‘Security officials are always arrogant. They interrupt.’
‘And a zampolit? Is a political officer not arrogant? The most unpopular and disliked individual in a camp is a zampolit. True or false? True.’
‘I concede. I don’t want to fight. There are two unpopular and disliked individuals in a camp. You were one and I was the other. Nobody loved us, and we didn’t care. It’s ridiculous for us to bicker … What’s it for?’
It was, of course, long gone. He could think, sometimes, of who Colonel Igor Molenkov had been. If a call came for an official, a scientist or manager to attend at a specified hour the office of the zampolit, any man, however senior, sweated, fidgeted, lost sleep and went over in painstaking detail what he had said to whom in an unguarded moment, in an aside with sarcasm — and had that individual reported him? His only friend had been the security officer who had had the same power to destabilize a man’s confidence: a quiet remark in a canteen about documents rated classified having been taken out of the secure zones could reduce anyone working at Arzamas-16 to a trembling wreck. But they had no power now.
‘What’s what for?’