the technical and scientific services division that, until the arrival of the discarded CCTV loops, they could not guarantee his detailed overnight request was possible-their more normal function was to detect counterfeit and deceiving enhancement, not create it-but that what Charlie wanted was certainly scientifically and technically feasible: It might help, after they’d received the recording material, for Charlie to talk directly by telephone, as well as in more detailed messages answering their specific questions. Charlie detected a note of tetchy irritation in the assurance that they had samples of 9mm Makarov ammunition. There was also a personal acknowledgement from Director-General Aubrey Smith, insisting that Charlie continue working not just totally independently from everyone at the embassy-especially those most likely to have been compromised-but also from the incoming internal inquiry team. All communication had to be personal, between the two of them, which left Charlie undecided between the advantages compared to the disadvantages of such close contact with the man who for several months had appeared the loser in the power struggle with his deputy. Smith was a university professor of Middle Eastern studies and an acknowledged expert on the revolutionary movements of the region, who had been pitchforked from academia into intelligence in a knee-jerk reaction to Islamic fanaticism. Smith’s way was ingrained from that academic background to consider and judge events from every perspective. It had seemed to chime with Charlie’s independent way of working and he enjoyed having Smith’s confidence, which in matching measure had alienated him from Jeffrey Smale. And, survival savvy as he was, Charlie was well aware that his job security depended upon Smith emerging the victor in the current department power struggle.
For once Paula-Jane Venables and David Halliday were in their offices, both doors closed with NOT TO BE DISTURBED signs in their occupancy slots, which Charlie ignored, still with time to fill before his appointment with the embassy lawyer. The woman jerked up irritably at his unannounced entry, relaxing when she saw who it was.
“This is proving to be an absolute fucking nightmare!” she announced, unasked.
“How bad could it be, bottom line?” asked Charlie. His being forbidden to share anything upon which he was engaged was no obstacle to his learning as much as he could about everything else in the embassy.
“God only knows. I’m going to have to admit gaps in the telephone log I’m supposed to have kept but haven’t.”
“Don’t admit anything,” advised Charlie, the survival expert. “Wait until you’re asked, answer one question at a time, and don’t volunteer anything.”
“At the moment, I’m guessing the bastards could have listened to something in the region of a hundred, maybe a hundred and fifty, incoming and outgoing calls.”
“What about written stuff?”
“Luckier there. I do have a full log of the sensitive e-mail material and it’s all gone through the communications room, which your friend Harry Fish tells me isn’t compromised.”
“You’re not supposed to rely upon luck,” reminded Charlie.
“You’ve been seconded to the internal inquiry team as well!” she challenged.
“No,” said Charlie, mildly. “But if I were, that would have been the wrong response. You didn’t open the doors to let the bad guys in. As far as I am aware, it was Reg Stout, under Dawkins’s authority, condoned by an ineffectual ambassador. You haven’t got any reason to be defensive. All you’ve got to do is warn the guys who are coming from London of anything the FSB might have learned.”
“I just told you, my telephone logs-the logs they are going to want to examine and question me about-aren’t complete.”
“How much-how many-can you remember of what you haven’t logged?”
“Most of it, I’m pretty sure.”
“So verbally include from memory whatever’s missing from the log when you’re questioned in detail about your telephone records.”
“Considering the way I greeted you when you arrived, you’re being very kind,” said Paula-Jane, smiling.
“Who told you I was anything otherwise?”
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” said the woman, her initial uptightness easing. “I want to make amends!”
“I’m not sure you’ve got any amends to make,” coaxed Charlie, curious to know who’d been digging the mantraps ahead of him.
“I am,” she insisted. “I’ve been invited to a dinner party tonight by the current CIA guy at the American embassy. And I don’t have a partner. Would you have a problem filling the vacancy?”
Charlie found an immediate response difficult, the uncertainty of Natalia’s reaction to his letter in the forefront of his mind. If she missed him on her first call, she’d phone again, came the quick reassurance. It was unlikely there’d be any professional benefit socializing with the Americans, but there was always the possibility of the unexpected. Which was all Charlie ever asked for, a simple possibility. “That could be fun.”
“Let’s try to make sure it is.”
“Don’t tell me it’s a nightmare: I’ve been told that already.”
Halliday gestured Charlie farther into the unexpectedly littered MI6
“Which looks bad enough,” commiserated Charlie, needing to move some of the records to take the offered seat. The headline in that day’s unfiled
Halliday shook his head, smiling. “On open, possibly intercepted transmission, little more than embarrassment. A lot of analyses about Stepan Lvov’s presidential chances, which is occupying every Western embassy in Moscow and shouldn’t surprise anyone in the FSB. My judgement is that Lvov’s a shoo-in, so if I’m right, it’s not even embarrassing that we’ve been monitoring him. If he loses, I’m a bad analyst they don’t have to worry about keeping too close an eye on.”
“Very pragmatic,” complimented Charlie. “I’ve never seen so many worried people running around so many corridors. Or quite so many journalists, cameramen, and TV crews outside this embassy.”
“The inquisitors are due any time, thumbscrews and all.
There’s bound to be a lot of other transgressions swept up in the spring cleaning. And Reg Stout, who’s rightly shitting himself, says he’s called the militia to clear the media away.”
“He told me he hardly speaks Russian.”
Halliday shrugged. “He’s always talking through the hole in his ass.”
“How worried are you about the internal inquiry?”
Halliday smiled again. “I certainly didn’t let the FSB bug-masters in.”
“You must have recognized how fucked up the security was here, before the shit hit the fan?”
Halliday patted the closest folder to him on his desk. “I did, long before the shit hit any fan. And here’s the log, with attached copies of every warning message I’ve sent to London over the last six months. London’s going to have a lot of self-explaining to do, as well as the idiots here. .” The man patted his special folder again. “With this already on my record, I’m going to come out of this inquiry smelling like a rose.”
“Always better than smelling of shit,” agreed Charlie.
“I told Monsford, my director, you’d declined my offer of help, by the way. He said he might take it up with your boss. Thought you should know in advance.”
“I appreciate your telling me that,” said Charlie, deciding at that moment that although admiring Halliday’s apparent professionalism, he didn’t personally like the man. But then, Charlie asked himself, when had liking someone have anything to do with anything?
Charlie had wondered if in five years the official interior design preponderance of desk and countertop Bakelite with matching linoleum floor covering would have disappeared but, of course, it hadn’t-it just became more scratched and scuffed. The insolent, blank-faced disinterest of the counter clerk at Ulitsa Petrovka was the same as Charlie remembered, too: Charlie’s guess at four minutes before the man would bother to look up from the curled- edged, unturned page of what he was reading was short by an additional full minute.
“Important to keep up to date with all the regulations,” sympathized Charlie, sure the man was looking at the latest office-circulating porn magazine: the clerk was two pages short of the photographic offerings.
