“Is it possible that you will get identifiable pictures?”
“That is what our scientists are trying to achieve.”
Sergei Pavel personally escorted Charlie down to the ground-floor reception area, animatedly assuring daily contact.
Charlie felt a satisfying warmth at how Pavel’s attitude-from dismissal to reliance-had changed. Charlie’s estimate of how long it would take Sergei Pavel to contact the FSB’s Mikhail Guzov at the Lubyanka coincided with his reaching a pavement newsstand, at which he was brought to a halt by the
6
The media posse had grown by the time Charlie returned to pick up Paula-Jane Venables from her embassy compound apartment. Some uniformed Russian militia officers had arrived to supplement the British security cordon, keeping the pedestrian door clear. They weren’t doing anything, though, to prevent the television cameramen and photographers from taking pictures, and Charlie told his taxi driver to continue on to a telephone kiosk farther along the embankment and wait while he made a call.
“Ashamed to be seen with me?” Paula-Jane asked, flirtingly, when Charlie warned of the likely ambush.
“You don’t need to be identified with me by the FSB and I don’t want to be linked with you by them.”
“Don’t you think they already know who we’re from: you’ll be on file, for Christ’s sake!”
“Why advertise it?”
“There’s caution for you!” she mocked.
“Pity there hadn’t been a lot more of it in the last few weeks,” said Charlie, heavily.
“You had a bad day?”
“Not at all,” denied Charlie, hoping he wasn’t showing his disappointment at not finding a telephone message from Natalia when he’d gone back to the hotel to change. “I’ve got a cab. I’ll pick you up at the Kalininskaya Bridge, okay?”
“Okay,” she said, her lightness gone.
It took her twenty minutes, arriving uncomfortably on elevated high heels, the shoes coordinating with the clasp bag. The cleavage was so deep, the single rope of pearls looked like a suspension bridge between two peaks. Settling gratefully into the back of the cab, she said, “Television didn’t really show the extent of the scrum. I guess you were right.”
“Where are we going?” asked Charlie, as the cab moved off.
“Where else but the American Cafe, just off the ring road?” She gave the driver the address in Russian.
“You seen the papers?” asked Charlie.
“Heard it on television, when I was trying to estimate the crowd outside. Your friend Harry’s gone ape-shit, along with the entire inquiry team that came in this afternoon. I actually didn’t think I was going to be able to get away tonight after all: they’ve got Sotley in with them now, with Dawkins on standby.”
Charlie was intent upon the cab driver’s reflection in the rearview mirror, relieved from the disinterest on the man’s face that he really didn’t understand English. “Who’d you think couldn’t keep their mouth shut?”
“If we take you, me, and Halliday out of the frame you’ve got a fairly short list of suspects. My money’s on Reg Stout.”
Stout was certainly the most obvious, accepted Charlie. They were on the multilaned freeway now, swept along by the tide of vehicles all around them. Recognizing the landmark of Pushkin’s house, Charlie looked to the right where Natalia’s apartment was, little more than a hundred yards off the main highway.
“Familiar places from when you were here before?” asked Paula-Jane.
“No,” denied Charlie, honestly. The apartment he’d occupied with Natalia and Sasha, an entire floor of a minor, prerevolutionary palace, was on the far side of the city. Wanting to move on from the unwelcomed reminder, he said, “Tell me about the people we’re going to be with tonight.”
“Tex Probert is from the Company,” she said, using spook-speak to identify the CIA. “His wife, Sarah, is over on a visit. Bill Bundy’s his intended replacement, overlapping to settle himself in. Shirley Jenkins, who’s partnering Bundy, is in their legal department. Nice guys, although it takes a lot for Shirley to unbend. . ” She smiled, the remark prepared. “Although she does quite a lot of unbending in certain circumstances, according to the stories I’ve heard.”
Charlie ignored the innuendo. Instead, he said, “Sarah’s over on a visit?”
“From what’s officially described as relocation leave,” explained Paula-Jane. “Tex is due to go back permanently any time now. He’s been assigned a CIA headquarter’s posting at Langley so she’s house-hunting around Washington and finding colleges for the two kids, who’ve been at school there. Bill’s the eventual replacement, like I said: third-term assignment, the Company’s acknowledged Russian guru.”
“I know,” said Charlie.
“You know?”
“He was on station here the same time as me.”
“How about that!” exclaimed Paula-Jane.
How about that indeed? thought Charlie, easing his finger inside his left shoe to massage the discomfort.
Charlie had never understood why nostalgic, back-home theme restaurants and bars in foreign cities never properly replicated back home at all. The American Cafe, which hadn’t existed when he’d lived in Moscow, was designed to represent a 1940s diner that, as far as Charlie was aware, didn’t exist anywhere in the United States. This one was complete with blown-up photographs of Lana Turner and Rita Hayworth, and a cigarette advertising poster of a young, Chesterfield-smoking Ronald Reagan. There was even a bulbous, multilighted although silent jukebox. All the tables were covered in red checked cloths, each topped with a totem ketchup bottle.
“Cute, eh?” enthused Paula-Jane.
“Fascinating,” allowed an unimpressed Charlie.
The American party was already there, around a centrally placed circular table. Charlie instantly recognized Bill Bundy in the middle of the group, guessing from Paula-Jane’s rehearsal that the serious faced, dark-haired girl to the man’s right to be the lawyer Shirley Jenkins. Which made the man next to her Tex Probert, with blond wife Sarah completing the group. Both men stood to shake hands at their introduction and Bundy said, “Good to see you after all this time, Charlie.”
“And you,” said Charlie, who couldn’t isolate a single apparent difference in the man’s appearance from when they’d last met. The preppy, short haircut didn’t look out of place on a man who had to be at least fifty. Nor did the regulation Ivy League suit, complete with metal-pin collared shirt clamping the club tie in place.
“You two guys already know each other?” exclaimed the angular-featured Probert, whose accent explained the nickname: the formal introduction had been John.
“From way back,” confirmed Bundy. “We two can actually remember what the Cold War was like.”
“And dinosaurs,” said Charlie, to the laughing appreciation of the three women, giving him the necessary moment to think. Bundy’s posting quite clearly had nothing whatsoever to do with what he’d been sent from London to investigate but Charlie had never before heard of a third-time overseas assignment-certainly not one that involved moving such an acknowledged Russophile at a time of impending political change. His professional curiosity was piqued.
The arrival of the waiter stopped the conversation. The women agreed to share a bottle of white wine while they decided the menu. Probert chose beer and Charlie stuck with vodka in preference to doctored scotch, knowing the restaurant definitely wouldn’t have a bottle with the correct label, let alone genuine Islay malt, which reminded him to collect his commissary order the following day. Bundy, whom Charlie belatedly remembered never chanced
