Perrit walked away, pointedly not replying.
“I’ve spoken to Robertson,” announced the Director-General, answering Charlie’s question that Perrit had just refused. “What the hell’s happening over there!”
“Too many things, all of them too quickly one after the other.”
“Meaning?” demanded Aubrey Smith. He usually had a soft, never-surprised voice, which Charlie guessed was being stretched to the extreme.
“The embassy’s being manipulated, for a reason or reasons I don’t at the moment understand,” replied Charlie, honestly.
“You in any way compromised or endangered?”
“No,” assured Charlie at once, glad of the review time.
“Do you need backup?”
“No,” said Charlie again, the refusal more professional than self-protective. “More people would mean more confusion, which might well be one of the several intentions.” He hesitated. “On the subject of backup, David Halliday, the MI6 man here, is anxious to get involved. He told me his director was approaching you directly, to talk about it.”
“I don’t like Gerald Monsford and certainly don’t respect his judgement,” said Smith. “He did approach me. I told him no.”
“Thank you,” said Charlie. “I appreciate that.”
“But with so much dependent upon your total success, I’m unsure if you can any longer operate alone.”
“I can!” insisted Charlie.
“I’m keeping open the option of sending in a team.”
“Would I be in charge of it?” asked Charlie, desperately.
“No,” refused the other man, without any hesitation. “What’s the point of all this you’ve asked the technical division to create?”
“To avoid being excluded by the Russians claiming it’s their investigation in which we have no right of participation.”
“No,” agreed the soft-voiced man at once. “We most definitely don’t want that with everything else that’s happening there.”
“Technical say it’s got to have your personal approval.”
“It’ll be authorized the moment we conclude this conversation. I don’t like so much appearing to happen beyond our control. You any idea, the faintest suspicion, who the traitor might be?”
Charlie was caught by the pedantically correct word. “Finding whoever it is isn’t my remit.”
“Neither was it the point of my question.”
“Not yet,” prevaricated Charlie, on this occasion more for self-protection than strict professionalism. “How do I deal with it, if I become suspicious?”
“The way you’re being told right now, only and directly through me. I don’t want another quiet exchange between you, Fish, and Robertson.”
Smith was invoking the most inviolable rule of double-agent penetration, Charlie recognized: slam shut every water-tight door and not answer anyone’s knock. “I understand.”
“I hope you do. I sent you there to do a job, not to become a puppet.”
The self-directed anger at allowing himself to be sidetracked physically burned through Charlie. Robertson had occupied the adjoining compartment ahead of his, Charlie acknowledged, able to get his explanation and story in first. But to whom? Charlie opened his mouth but stopped himself, knowing to attempt a defense would be a further mistake. “I’ll call, if there’s something positive from what I’m doing.”
“I’m expecting you to,” said the other man.
Charlie had subjugated his irritation at having made the cooperation mistake by the time he reached his rabbit-hutch office, more curious at the first than at the second of the two voice-mail messages awaiting him, although choosing to respond to the second.
“I’ve pressed the pathologist for more,” announced Pavel.
Liar, thought Charlie at once. Pavel was offering everything that had been originally available instead of the scraps the man had imagined he could get away with. But it was looking promising. “And?”
“He’s talking about some additional medical findings. And there’s a lot more photographs.”
“I’ll stop by the mortuary first thing tomorrow,” tempted Charlie.
“We could go together,” said Pavel, as Charlie had expected. “We might as well go through it all together.”
Once again bullshit had proved to be the magic fertilizer. “How about my meeting you there at ten?”
“Perfect timing for me,” agreed Pavel.
“What about the others who were there the first time?” pressed Charlie, wanting as much forewarning as possible.
“I’ll let them all know the arrangement,” promised Pavel. “I understand there’s been contact between Nikita Kashev and your embassy?”
“I haven’t heard,” said Charlie, honestly. And wouldn’t have confirmed it if I had, he thought. It had been an unthinking question, even from someone as anxious as the organized crime investigator.
“How about your scientific people in London?” Pavel pressed.
“I haven’t heard anything from them, either,” lied Charlie. Deciding, though, that he should make a gesture, he added, “I’ll drop by the embassy before I come to the mortuary to check if anything comes in overnight.”
“It would be good to hear something that takes the investigation forward.”
It very definitely would, thought Charlie. It would be premature to become overconfident from this very preliminary conversation, but it looked as if he’d kept himself on the inside of the investigation. But in terms of practicality, the inquiry hadn’t moved a stumbling step from the finding of the body.
“Surprised to hear from you so soon after our dinner,” opened Charlie, finally responding to the other voice mail from Bundy.
“I’d welcome talking to someone whose experience and opinions I respect,” said Bundy.
Bollocks, dismissed Charlie. “Been away too long myself to get up to speed yet.”
“You certainly hit the ground at a busy time.”
“Maybe one that talking about on an open-line telephone isn’t such a good idea, unless you’re equipped with an intercept white noise cutout at your end.”
Bundy laughed. “You’re not trying to tell me you’re calling on a phone that hasn’t been swept clean enough to shine in the dark?”
I’m not but someone else already has, decided Charlie. And it was all too easy to decide who that person was. “I’m still uncomfortable after an episode like this.”
“You wouldn’t be on top of your job, which you always have been, if you weren’t more than uncomfortable,” overflattered the American. “We talked the other night about lunch. How about it?”
Charlie’s instinctive inclination was to make an excuse, just as quickly discarded. Charlie was as much a learn-everything Russophile as Bill Bundy and wanted very much to discover the reason for Bundy’s inexplicable interest in him. He was also anxious to get off the telephone and out of the embassy to make contact with Natalia. “Lunch would be good.”
“How about tomorrow? The Pekin on the ring road?”
He now had Bundy’s direct line to cancel if the mortuary visit went on longer than he expected. “One o’clock unless I have to cry off.”
“I hope you don’t cry off,” said the American.
To make what he judged the far more important call Charlie used the same telephone kiosk farther along Smolenskaya from which he’d rearranged his dinner date with Paula-Jane, with whom he guessed he was going to have a confrontation the following day.
“How about the Botanical Gardens?” he suggested, when she answered.
He heard-or hoped he heard-her faint laugh at the venue: the gardens, with their huge cultivation greenhouses, had been one of their tryst locations when he’d first maneuverd the posting to Moscow after learning
