McDowell said, “This is terrible!”
“No it’s not,” contradicted Charlie. Polyakov wouldn’t have canceled the monitor.
“London wants a full explanation at once.”
For the benefit of the listening public, Charlie said, “I’m sure they do. I think there should be an official note to the government here, asking for one.”
There was momentary silence. “What are you talking about?”
“Our calls are tapped!”
The silence this time was longer. “What’s happening?” asked McDowell, less stridently.
“I’m coming back tonight, on an American charter. With the body and what was found on it.”
“What shall I tell London?”
“That I’ll speak to them tomorrow. And to go on watching television.”
It took another $50 note to persuade the hotel receptionist to summon a taxi, which seemed to be collapsing as dramatically as most of the buildings they passed on their way to the airport. The two coffins were already there. The Aeroflot charter wasn’t. Its arrival was promised within thirty minutes.
Both Charlie and Miriam chose to remain in the luggage shed with the bodies rather than go into the hard-chaired, tobacco-fugged departure lounge. They didn’t find a lot to say. They were both alert to the entry into the shed of any vehicle or uniformed official, other than those handling the luggage of schedule flight passengers. Charlie thought his newspaper-wrapped uniform was better-packaged and -tied than a lot of the items that went by on the arthritic conveyor belt. Miriam hadn’t surrendered hers since bundling it up in the mortuary, either.
The charter was an hour late. Saul Freeman flurried officiously into the shed, immediately set off balance by Charlie’s presence beside a second coffin.
At once the FBI chief said, “There’s no agreement about this! We’ve got enough—”
“Saul!” stopped the woman. “Shut the fuck up. We’re getting out together. No discussion. Okay?”
Freeman looked hesitantly between Miriam and Charlie. “You’ve
got to understand—” he tried, but again she cut him off.
“Saul! You’re not listening! Let’s get the coffins on the plane and the plane off the ground, while we’re still able. I’m sure you’ve got a great speech prepared and I can’t wait to hear it later. But
later
!”
There were some luggage handlers, none Asian-featured superstitious Yakuts, hovering and Charlie waved more $10 notes like flags at a parade. At once the coffins were loaded onto trolleys. Automatically Miriam and Charlie walked beside that for which they were responsible, each with a protective hand resting on the lid. There was only a very small passenger area beyond the hold, but neither Charlie nor Miriam looked for it until after the coffins were not just roped securely into their carrying space but the loading bay ramp was raised. Both finally sagged with the click of its lock.
“I want to know what went on—
is
going on!” demanded Freeman, when they finally pushed aside the curtain separating the cargo bay and slumped into canvas bucket seats.
“It’s a very long story that can wait,” said Miriam. “Charlie and I have a lot to talk about ourselves first, before we can make any sense of anything. So please, let’s wait until we can get our heads straight.”
“We’ve got people flying in from Washington, for Christ’s sake!” said Freeman, awed.
“Good,” said Miriam. “You brought anything to drink?”
“A little Jack Daniel’s,” admitted the Bureau chief, blinking.
Miriam held out her hand, unspeaking. From the briefcase beside his seat Freeman produced a bottle three-quarters full and when she remained with her hand outstretched followed with polystyrene cups.
Miriam drank deeply and, looking out of the window at the moment of takeoff, said, “It’s like being in one of those great escape movies.” She lifted her cup in a toast. “We made it!”
“I wasn’t sure we would,” admitted Charlie.
“For God’s sake, will someone tell me what’s going on?” implored Freeman.
“We got set up,” conceded Miriam, simply. “But out of ten I’d score our recovery at six.”
“That’s about right,” agreed Charlie.
“And we got our Unknown Soldier back. Both of them.” Miriam
stretched out, pushing herself as far back in the stiff canvas as she could. “Now I’m pretty exhausted.”
“You’re happy for this to be your thing, is that right?” demanded Freeman, hopefully.
“I guess that’s it,” sighed Miriam.
“Your choice,” said the man. “It’s your ass.”
“I just made it,” said Miriam. “And the ass is intact.”
They all settled as best they could, trying to sleep, but Charlie was always subconsciously aware of being aboard a droning aircraft and gave up after about an hour. As he thrust himself up in his seat he became aware of Miriam sitting up, too. Freeman snored on.
They didn’t speak for a long time, their refilled cups in their laps. Finally Miriam said, “You know what I think?”
“What?”
“I think if some gal had something you needed badly enough to know and if to screw her was the way to get it, you’d screw her.”
Charlie said, “There a point to this conversation?”
“Don’t want you sitting in judgment on me, like you’ve got the moral high ground, Okay?”
“Okay,” said Charlie. There was a lot he liked about Miriam Bell.
“I thought he did something dull … something to do with trade!” said Irena. “Now I learn he’s …” she waved her hands across the dinner table, seeking a metaphor. Remembering a Russian-dubbed English series that had just ended on Moscow television, she finished, “A Sherlock Holmes!”
Probably not for much longer, thought Cartright, glad he was on the absolute edge of the hurricane that was sweeping through the embassy. He was still recovering from the revelation that Charlie was living with Irena’s sister. “It’s kind of an unusual job.”
“How’d he get an apartment like they have? It’s in what used to be a palace. Incredible!”
“So I understand.”
“Does everyone at the embassy live like that?”
“He’s not properly attached to the embassy,” said Cartright, knowing from the military attaché that deniability was already being considered. “I guess you’d say he was freelance.”
“Obviously a very successful one!” Cartright was much better looking than the American and she hoped he would be better in bed, too. He obviously wasn’t so mean. The restaurant was just off the Arbat, called the Here and Now, and was the social spot of the moment at which to be seen, which she considered promising. So was the imported champagne he’d automatically ordered. She was glad she’d worn the Donna Karan she’d bought in New York. He couldn’t keep his eyes off her cleavage.
“Hasn’t Natalia told you all about him?” questioned Cartright, trying to get the conversation on track.
“We’re not particularly close,” dismissed Irena. She was sure the five-man group at the bar were mafia. One smiled at her. She smiled back.
“See a friend?”
“I thought I had. It wasn’t.”
“Natalia probably considers herself very lucky, able to live in an apartment like that. Accommodation isn’t easy in Moscow, is it?”
“She had a pretty impressive place before.” Irena didn’t return the mafia man’s smile this time.
“If it’s as grand as you say, they probably do a lot of entertaining?”
“I wouldn’t know. Like I said, we’re not close.” The quail was wonderful and from the attention she was attracting Irena was sure the dark-haired girl who’d just come in was the star of the gangster series getting the top TV ratings. Irena was enjoying herself. The tuxedoed band began playing Glen Miller’s “In the Mood.” “A girl could get jealous at someone being more interested in her sister than in her,” Irena protested, pushing her plate and her chair away at the same time. “Come on! Let’s dance. And stop talking about Natalia and Charlie.”
Enough, decided Cartright. There was absolutely no hurry, she had the most spectacular tits and there was Saul Freeman’s recommendation.
During the evening the man she was sure was mafia intercepted Irena on her way to the washroom and asked her if she needed rescuing. She said no but added that she appreciated the gallantry and when he said anytime she gave him her telephone number.
Cartright started to get out of his car when they got to her apartment, in the Moscow suburbs on the way conveniently to Sheremet’
yevo airport, but she stopped him, lying that she had to be up very early the following morning for a flight.
“Perhaps next time,” she said. Maybe she’d found herself someone with money, like Natalia. Discovering what he was like in bed could wait.
They had remained in conference practically the entire day, broken only by Sir Rupert Dean’s summons to Downing Street. Patrick Pacey, the department’s political officer, went with him. The director-general had also several times spoken to the Moscow embassy by telephone—to the ambassador as well as to the head of chancellery—and when he’d finally managed a connection to the Ontario Hotel in Yakutsk it had been eight P.M. local time there and he’d been told that Charlie had checked out.
Throughout the day the attitudes toward Charlie Muffin ebbed and flowed. Initially, after his Nazi-secret declaration, the criticism and accusations had been virtually unanimous, determinedly led by an inwardly very satisfied Gerald Williams, totally supported by the deputy director-general. A lot of the condemnation became muted—or stopped altogether—after the second TV transmission of the hotel parking lot interview with Colonel Vadim Lestov.
Dean said, “We don’t know enough to reach any conclusion or judgment.”
“And whose fault is that?” demanded the finance director. “Muffin was repeatedly told—
ordered
—to maintain the closest contact and report back everything we needed to know and at all costs avoid any reference to possible intelligence and difficult diplomatic situations. He’s done the total and complete opposite, as he always does. And as I have consistently warned that he would. To relay a message telling us to watch television was arrogant impertinence.”
“Made sense, though, to see and hear what the Moscow detective said, didn’t it?” sighed Jeremy Simpson, the legal adviser. “Muffin
also told the Moscow embassy his phone was tapped. Seems a good enough reason for saying nothing.”
“He said a lot
on
television,” pointed out Jocelyn Hamilton.
“Which remains the problem,” agreed Patrick Pacey, knowing the political thinking from having attended the cabinet Intelligence and Security Committee meeting at Downing Street with the director-general. “The last thing the government wants is reminders of Germany’s wartime past, now that we’re European partners. Or having one of our people sitting beside the Yakutsk leader like that, publicly associated with an anti-Russian attack.”
“Made worse by drawing attention to the sort of place Yakutskaya was,” persisted Gerald Williams. “I can’t imagine Russia wants that raked over. From whichever way we look at it, Muffin has put us—this department—in an appalling situation.”
“One, in fact, that we’ve already agreed we had to do everything to avoid, with our whole future so uncertain,” endorsed Hamilton. “There might be an explanation of sorts, but I’ll need a lot to convince me it was justified.”
“That’s a gross exaggeration,” argued the bald, mustached lawyer. “Quite obviously there were a lot of local problems we don’t yet know anything about. The Moscow detective went out of his way to
say
how good the relationship was. Which was exactly what Muffin was told to establish.”
“I think the enormous publicity is unfortunate,” said Pacey, echoing another concern from the earlier Downing Street crisis meeting. “There’d been no public announcement of our being officially allowed to have a man in Moscow. The inference that Russia needs Western help to fight its crime isn’t something we wanted to become too obvious.”
“Which it didn’t. And hasn’t,” insisted Dean, forcefully. “It’s entirely acceptable that someone from the UK—whose department was never identified—should have been in Yakutsk looking into the murder of a British officer, whenever the killing occurred. It was never stated that Charlie was based in Moscow or that he had any intelligence agency background. You inferred it was said, because you
know.”
Pacey flushed, caught out. “No,” he remembered. “It wasn’t, was it?”
Williams felt a further fray in what he’d been so sure was the noose from which Charlie was at last going to dangle. He said, “With anyone else, it would not be necessary for us to be having this discussion: having to defend ourselves, cap in hand, in Downing Street! If this department becomes subsidiary to all those willing and eager to take over our traditional role, it will be dated back to this episode.” The finance director looked to the required records taker. “None of us will be here in a year’s time for us to be reminded of the warning I’ve just given.”
“If, on the other hand, we were all here—and I called for a transcript of what you’ve said all day—you’d be shown to be an absolute fool, wouldn’t you Gerald?” said Simpson. He stroked the drooping mustache. “And I will. There! You’ve got a whole year to work out an explanation for being so wrong.”
“I don’t want this to become personal,” warned Sir Rupert Dean.
“Unfortunately—and usually unfairly—it’s always been personal between Charlie Muffin and Gerald,” said Simpson.
“Every complaint and every warning about this man has been justified by what’s happened,” insisted Williams. “It’s no pleasure for me to have been proven right.”
“You haven’t been,” said Simpson. “Not yet.”
“When’s our first chance to speak to him properly?” asked Hamilton.
“Tomorrow morning,” said Dean.
“Every conceivable thing that could have gone wrong has gone wrong,” insisted Gerald Williams, desperate for the last convincing word.
At that moment Natalia was entering the Russian analysis meeting thinking exactly the same thing. She also suspected her personal survival could be at risk. She hoped she hadn’t miscalculated as she believed her opposition had. It wouldn’t take her long to find out.
“Outrageous!” declared Dmitri Nikulin. “Internationally we have been made to look ridiculous by a tinpot quasi republic still living in the Stone Age. How? Tell me how!”
The head of the presidential secretariat talked directly to Natalia, who in turn looked to Petr Travin beside her. She said, “My deputy
has had all the operational dealings today. Unfortunately, there hasn’t apparently been time for him to advise me.”
Travin had three times claimed he was too occupied talking direct to Yakutsk to give her an account of what was happening, an open challenge to her authority. She knew the man wouldn’t have attempted that without the backing of the deputy interior minister, Viktor Viskov, who sat opposite, fixed-faced, studiously avoiding the man he’d personally appointed to be her deputy and his spy. If this was their chosen moment for a coup, they’d mistimed it.
This afternoon’s meeting had initially been scheduled for the following day, which would possibly have given them the opportunity to complete whatever they were manipulating. But Nikulin’s unexpected decision to bring it forward gave her the most influential audience in front of which to fight, turning Travin’s evasion back upon the man by insisting—in memoranda to the president’s chief of staff—that Travin attend to explain his lack of contact. And bringing the meeting so abruptly and unexpectedly forward hinted the intervention of the president himself, which she guessed to be the main reason for Viskov’s discomfort. From his implacable silence she decided presidential pressure was also the inference drawn by the deputy foreign minister, Mikhail Suslov, the fifth person in Nikulin’s office.
Nikulin frowned between Natalia and her deputy and then said to Travin, “What’s going on here?”
“It’s been very difficult … bad communications,” stumbled Travin, losing his usual smooth-mannered control. “From what I understand, there was no warning, no agreement, to meet the press. The Westerners imagined they were only going to see the chief minister, possibly the Executive Council. We were specifically excluded.”
Charlie had looked trapped, Natalia remembered. Why hadn’t he called? She would have been so much better prepared if they’d talked. It was like trying to walk blindfolded in the dark, but she was sure there was some high ground she could gain if war had been openly declared. She said, “Colonel Lestov was my choice and I think he’s proved to be a good one. He made the whole episode, which I accept we still have properly to have explained, appear the mistake—the stupidity—of the Yakutsk authorities … .” She looked directly at
Travin again. “He talked on television of our demanding an explanation. What did he say to you about that?”
“We didn’t go into that,” said her deputy, uneasily. “At the moment there’s some difficulty about the release of the body they believe to be that of a Russian woman. The Americans and the English are on their way back with their nationals.”
Natalia avoided any surprised reaction to the news of Charlie’s return. “Our pathologist has conducted her own autopsy, hasn’t she?” she persisted, not allowing Travin any relief.
“As far as I understand it, yes,” said the man.
“Don’t you know?” demanded Nikulin, exasperated.
“Yes,” blurted Travin.
“What about everything else? Is there anything more for them to do there?” demanded Natalia.
“I don’t … I thought they should wait, to bring the body back. To avoid it appearing that they weren’t in control. The media are still there. You’ve seen the headlines in our own press. I gather it’s much more in the West.”
“I don’t think they should wait at all!’ said Natalia, looking more fully around the chief of staffs office.”Let’s use the media and the Yakutsk stupidity. Recall our people, having completed their investigation, and let them announce their regret at the body being held and prevented from a civilized burial. Match it with a statement from here, formally asking why that proper burial is being prevented of someone obviously the victim of a terrible crime. Yakutsk will be caught, whichever way they respond. If they return the body, they’ll be complying with our demand. If they don’t, a proper burial there will also be what we demanded … .” She looked at the deputy interior minister.”Don’t you agree that publicly we would appear to be in control either way?”
“I suppose so. Perhaps,” conceded Viskov, reluctantly.
“It sounds good to me,” said Mikhail Suslov.
“I can’t see a problem with it, either,” said Nikulin. “In fact, I think it’s something we should do … .” Pointedly addressing her, the presidential aide said. “And I think it is something that you should do personally, Natalia Nikandrova. Brief Colonel Lestov and prepare our announcement from here.”
Travin was white-faced, staring accusingly at Viskov, who still refused to answer the look.
Carefully trying to judge a safe contribution to the discussion, the deputy foreign minister said, “What do we know about this Englishman’s story of wartime mysteries?”
Travin shifted, the attention back upon him. “Colonel Lestov was only with him and the American woman for about two hours before they flew out. It was the woman who gave them a resume of what he’d said but not any explanation—any facts—to support it.”
“So we
are
dependent upon cooperation?” said Nikulin.
As I have been from the beginning, acknowledged Natalia, finally. Charlie would tell her all she needed to know, to answer all the questions, but most importantly to defend herself—themselves—from any internal attack, within the ministry. Refusing to give up on Travin, she said, “You brought them officially together, as a group. Will there be sufficient cooperation?”
Imagining an escape, Travin said, “I don’t believe there’s been a lot of exchange so far. I found the Englishman belligerent: obstructive. The impression in Yakutsk has been that he’s ineffective.”
Charlie’s favorite chameleon color, Natalia recognized. “Let’s hope you’re wrong.”
“What do we know about him?” asked Nikulin, abruptly.
Natalia felt the first jump of concern. Quickly she said, “He was posted here by agreement, about a year after the official assignment of FBI representation, to cooperate on organized crime—”
“And was largely responsible for the breaking up of a nuclear smuggling incident involving Natalia Nikandrova’s previous deputy,” came in Viskov, accusingly.
“And other government officials,” fought back Natalia.
“He’s here by our permission, like the FBI?” queried Nikulin.
“Yes,” agreed Viskov.
“Then I don’t see that we have a problem,” said the presidential adviser, going to the deputy foreign minister. “If there isn’t a full exchange, we tell his government to withdraw him.”
How much more impossible was it all going to get? Natalia wondered.
The man traveling on the State Department plane with Kenton Peters lay Charlie Muffin’s file aside and said, “Ornery son-of-a-bitch.” There was a strong Texan accent.
“Who did the Agency a lot of harm in the past,” reminded Peters.
“You want it to be an accident? Or obvious?” The operational name on the passport was Henry Packer. It was his own idea of a joke to describe himself as a pipeline specialist on his visa.
“I haven’t decided yet. At the moment you’re just getting sight of the rabbit.”
“Whatever you say.”
“Does it matter one way or the other?”
“No,” said Packer. “Just want to provide maximum satisfaction. I aim to please as well as aim straight.
That was another joke, but Peters didn’t smile.