being attached to the Foreign Ministry, which technically he probably was. “Another overshadowing but inevitably connected problem.”
“So what’s the resolve?” demanded Guzov.
“A separation, if it’s possible, between the diplomatic and the criminal,” suggested Charlie.
“Answer your own question,” insisted Guzov. “Is that possible?”
“I, for my part, believe that I can work in total cooperation with Colonel Pavel, quite separately from whatever else is affecting the embassy. I will further undertake to do my utmost to persuade London to make available the results of all scientific tests. And as a gesture of my commitment, I will tell you now that there are definitely images upon the CCTV loops that were intended to be rendered useless by being tampered with. The ricocheting score mark on the wall is still evident and has been extensively photographed, although its immediate brick surface has obvious been scraped away for fragment traces of the bullet that made the mark after exiting the man’s head. Also extensively photographed is the second border area from which earth was dug by our forensic experts’ team to retrieve blood residue and, hopefully, the bullet.”
“I must ask that our forensic officers be allowed back into the embassy for a second examination,” said Kashev.
“In the circumstances in which we now find ourselves and which I have made clear to you, that is not my permission to give,” sidestepped Charlie. “That has to be an official request from your ministry to the ambassador. The most I can offer is the expectation of sharing with Colonel Pavel the photographs and the forensic results to which I have referred.”
He’d been cut off by Guzov before getting all that he’d wanted from the easily manipulated gardeners. But he’d done far better than he could possibly have hoped before entering the room. So why wasn’t he feeling far more satisfied?
The doubt vanished an hour later when he entered the Savoy to find waiting for him, on a message slip, another telephone number he recognized at once to be Natalia’s.
7
“Good to speak to you after so long.”
It had to be close to five months, Charlie reckoned. “And to speak to you. How are you?”
“Fine. You?”
Did her voice sound as distant as it had when they’d last spoken? Too soon to tell. “Fine. How’s Sasha?”
“Very well,” said Natalia.
Why were important conversations, which he judged this to be, conducted in such mundane, ordinary words? He said: “I’d like to see her while I’m here. You, too, of course. I’m sorry; I didn’t put that very well, did I?”
“She’s away for a few days on a school trip.”
“Isn’t she young to be away on a trip by herself?” Alone in his hotel room, Charlie grimaced as he uttered the words, wishing he could have bitten them back. There was a strict rule between them that he never questioned Natalia about the upbringing of their daughter. “Ignore what I just said. I’m sorry.” It was the second time he’d apologized in less than five minutes: he was sounding like a stumbling idiot, not someone determined to persuade her against all her previous refusals.
“She’s at a regulated camp up in the hills, about ten kilometers outside Moscow. They’re in purpose-built barracks, four girls to a hut. There are three permanent staff, as well as security and two teachers. She can telephone me every day, which she’s doing
“I said I’m. .” began Charlie, stopping short to avoid repeating himself again.
“Of course we should meet. Why not?” said Natalia, helpfully.
“My movements are uncertain.”
“Of course,” Natalia accepted, without needing to ask why. “I’m fairly flexible, although it might be more convenient if we met initially ahead of Sasha getting back.”
“Tomorrow,” demanded Charlie.
Natalia hesitated. “I’ll wait for your call.”
Following that afternoon’s meeting with Pavel and the others, there was every likelihood that some surveillance would be imposed upon him, acknowledged Charlie, relieved that so far he had not detected any telltale delay in anything Natalia had said to indicate an interception already on his hotel phone. He had to assume, though, that the hotel line was unsafe. And he knew that cell phones could just as easily be scanned. “I’ll use public phones to contact you from now on.”
“I see.”
“And you shouldn’t try to call me here again.”
“No.”
Charlie had forgotten the long-ago subterfuge he and Natalia had needed to stay safe and didn’t imagine Natalia would welcome the rigmarole again, certainly not at the risk it created for Sasha. “I hadn’t properly thought the nonsense through.”
“Neither had I.”
“We can make it work, though,” urgently insisted Charlie, worried by the difficulty, angry at himself that he hadn’t considered it earlier. But then he hadn’t expected the reception committee awaiting him in Pavel’s Petrovka office, which he’d left less than an hour ago and still had to assess. Not any sort of excuse, he criticized himself.
“We both need to think about that,” said Natalia, cautiously. “Particularly where we meet.”
She was very sensibly putting her apartment-her and Sasha’s apartment-off limits, Charlie recognized. The hotel would obviously be impossible, too. “We’ll talk about it when I phone.”
“Definitely before Sasha gets back.”
“Definitely,” agreed Charlie.
“I’ll be waiting.”
Charlie remained listening after Natalia replaced her receiver, relieved at not hearing a second intruding disconnection, reminding himself at the same time that Russian technology would have obviously improved since he’d last worked here. Harry Fish, whose knowledge Charlie respected, had described the listening devices at the embassy as state of the art.
Which was the expression Fish used again the following day, when Charlie entered the assigned inquiry room at the embassy to find the electronics expert with Paul Robertson, the London director of internal counterintelligence, whose peremptory summons had been awaiting Charlie the moment he’d arrived at the embassy.
Fish had three more pinhead devices laid out, again on a white cloth. Nodding to them, the man said: “One was in the terminal relay to the ambassador’s personal phone, the second in that of his personal assistant. The third was on Dawkins’s line. All the bafflers on every terminal, put there to defeat just such emplacements, had been removed.”
“We’ve had our differences in the past,” Robertson immediately reminded Charlie, clearly expecting to take command and control of everything. “That’s where they are, in the past. And where they’ll stay. I want this all wrapped up, which also means I want your input. Which further means I want to know everything you’ve discovered and how it’s going to help me. . ” The sallow-faced man jerked his head sideways, to the electronics expert. “Harry’s told me what he helped you do, so I don’t want any of that bullshit, which I don’t anticipate the Director- General will, either, so we won’t involve him in any discussion about it.”
Two major differences, Charlie remembered. The first had arisen when Robertson had suggested the wrong traitor in a long-ago operation which he’d overturned by identifying the correct one. On the second occasion, Robertson had wrongly accused Charlie of security negligence and been officially censured in the subsequent exonerating inquiry. Charlie had suspected then the personal accusation had been in revenge for Robertson’s initial mistake and didn’t have any doubt about the personal animosity involved this time. How much lower-and heavier-
