MiriamBell had been in contact with Richard Cartright unless he, in turn, had been in direct touch with the SIS officer in Moscow? Cartright’s communication route was through his own, separate department. Which in turn, according to regulations, should have advised the director-general-as the Foreign Office had told the political officer-not the finance director. So Gerald Williams was talking, unofficially, to Richard Cartright. Who in Moscow had formed some relationship with Natalia’s sister. What silly men, Charlie thought. What silly, silly men.
The connection, from a side office off the director-general’s suite, was immediate. Miriam said, “You don’t write, you don’t phone, you don’t send flowers …?”
Forced cool, judged Charlie. “You called?”
“You didn’t, before you left.”
“It was a rush.”
“You still in London?”
Keep the pot bubbling, decided Charlie. “People aren’t happy.” Maintaining the pretense, he said, “Particularly when I’m here and Moscow’s issuing enigmatic statements.”
“It’s something to do with Tsarskoe Selo is all I know. I don’t know how it fits. If it fits at all, although I suppose it’s got to, somehow. Lestov wants to know when you’re getting back.”
Charlie frowned, not just at the immediately volunteered information-which he knew from Natalia to be accurate-but more at the tone of Miriam’s voice. “What’s the matter?”
“Problems with Washington. I could do with your being back here: talk through some stuff. When
“A few things to sort out here first. You want to talk now?”
“Later. But not too much later. And you watch your back, you hear?”
“You think I need to?” asked Charlie, seriously.
“Yeah, I think you need to. Maybe we both do.”
“You think this new Tsarskoe Selo stuff is important?” Charlie pushed on.
“Lestov says it’ll take a few days to sort out.”
There was his excuse for not immediately returning, Charlie recognized. Still more, possibly. “You called the embassy twice?”
“Thought we had a deal. Wondered what happened to it.”
Ignoring her implied question, he said, “You spoke to Cartright?”
“My call got redirected. Anything wrong?”
“Not at all,” assured Charlie, who hadn’t initiated such an arrangement. “Obvious person to backstop.”
“There really are things to talk about when you get back.” Now that she was working to her own, different agenda there was no reason why she shouldn’t tell Charlie of the conversation with Kenton Peters, although she wouldn’t throw it away. She wouldn’t offer too quickly what she’d gotten from the World Jewish Congress, either. She had a lot of things to trade: to buy insurance with.
By the time Charlie got back to the conference room, the coffee was cold. They didn’t bother to reassemble for the result of his phone call.
“It seems very much like the blind leading the blind,” said Williams.
But who’ll be seeing more clearly by the time it’s all over? wondered Charlie.
Richard Cartright wasn’t happy with the way things had evolved. It was, for all intents and purposes, a combined operation that initially and on the face of it had made quite acceptable his talking as he had with Gerald Williams. But he wasn’t sure any longer. From the sheer restriction of anything and everything he was begrudgingly being allowed to know by his own department-against their constant and unremitting demands for any scrap from him-it had become increasingly obvious this was a very important assignment indeed for someone on his first tour of duty and that it was anything but the combined operation he’d first imagined it to be.
And now he was trapped. On the one hand he’d already cooperated too much with someone from another department suddenly to seek authorization for doing so from his own controllers, which too late he now realized he should have done from the start. On the other, and by the same measure, he didn’t see how he could abruptly refuse, not knowing how much power or influence Gerald Williams possessed.
“You’re not saying a lot,” complained Irena. The man she believed to be mafia was in the restaurant again and if the evening didn’t pick up soon, she was considering changing partners.
“Sorry. Things on my mind. Seen Natalia lately?”
Irena shrugged. “We had a row.”
“So you didn’t know Charlie was back in London?”
“Permanently?”
“Just a discussion recall, as far as I know.”
“Probably banking his profits,” suggested Irena. “Not a bank I’d trust in this city.”
Cartright regretted most of all telling Williams of Charlie Muffin boasting of currency speculation. “I can’t think you’re right about that.”
“You imagine he could afford that apartment any other way?”
It was difficult, acknowledged Cartright, although if Charlie Muffin was doing something as bloody silly as that, it did justify his cooperation with the man’s finance controller. It was a total mess and he desperately wanted to be out of it.
28
After driving parallel to it for what seemed forever, Charlie decided that the redbricked perimeter of Sir Matthew Norrington’s Kingsclere estate must have been modeled on the Great Wall of China although probably went on for much longer. The gate he finally located opened noiselessly to his identifying himself at the security voice box and closed just as quickly behind him. The wall was lined inside by trees and there were more meticulously cultivated on either side of the paved drive that ribboned away ahead of him. He could not see the house. Through the trees to his left there was a herd of disinterested, unafraid deer. He thought there were some white ones but wasn’t sure. To his right, sheep grazed. Far beyond them, too far away to distinguish man from machine, a figure rode a disappearing tractor over the brow of a hill tufted with more trees. Would this have been the scene of perfect, safe tranquillity that Simon Norrington thought about kneeling in front of a grenade-made grave on the outskirts of Yakutsk, waiting for a pistol shot?
Not suspecting its length, Charlie had not timed how long it took to circumnavigate the outer wall. It was a full five minutes before the house came into view, a huge square pile-Georgian, Charlie guessed-with creeper-clad walls and a flagpole on the central turret for the proudly flying red cross on white pennant, the whole thing a monument to the permanence of the English landed class.
Sir Matthew Norrington waited by one of three parked Range Rovers, white-haired, tweed-suited and brogued. The spectacles were horn-rimmed. As he got out of the rented car, Charlie decided it was impossible to decide between his or the other man’s whose suit was the more comfortably shapeless.
Norrington said at once, “Glad to see you. I want to understand what this is all about.” The voice was firm, like the handshake.
“I don’t fully understand myself, but I’ll do my best,” promised Charlie.
“But you are definitely in charge of the investigation? That’s what Sir Rupert said on the phone.” There was an impatience in the question.
“Yes,” said Charlie. I wish, he thought.
The house into which the elderly man led him was as comfortably lived in as the suit and Charlie decided that perhaps it wasn’t a monument to anything after all. The cavernous flagstoned entrance hall was lined with oil paintings, which continued along a paneled corridor. Aware of Charlie’s interest, Norrington said, “The Holbein and the Reynolds are ancestral, but a lot of the more modern collection was Simon’s choice. It’s thought to be quite remarkable.”
The door at which Norrington stopped was halfway along the hall, from the far end of which-or maybe from another room-there was the sound of people. A dog barked, very briefly. The library into which Norrington took
