chair like a confident boxer before the first round.
“I think it’s more interesting now in many ways.”
“How’s that?”
“Take your reason for being here. You’ve got to admit we never had anything like this, right in our own front garden, in the old days.”
“You’re talking about the murder at the embassy, right?” asked Charlie, unable to find a connection to what Bundy appeared to consider logic.
“What the hell else do you think I’m talking about?”
“I don’t recall telling you that’s what I’m here for,” fenced Charlie.
The American spread his hands in front of him, as if he were pleading. “Charlie! It’s me, Bill Bundy, remember? We’ve been here since the beginning: know all the tricks.”
“Difficult to remember them all sometimes,” said Charlie, refusing to contribute to whatever the other man was trying to establish.
“It’s true,” insisted Bundy. “But if you tell me you’re here for something else then I’ll take it you’ve got another agenda you can’t tell me about.”
“Bill!” exclaimed Charlie. “We’re not running a joint operation here!”
“Maybe I could provide some input.”
“And maybe get burned in the effort.”
“I’ve always thought myself pretty fireproof.”
“I’m not,” refused Charlie. He found this entire exchange absolutely bewildering except for one thought: Bundy could be a convenient sacrificial escape if the need arose.
“There’s a nostalgia about the murder, don’t you think?” persisted the American. “Guy gets whacked at the moment of his defection.”
“Is that how you think it happened?” queried Charlie, remembering some of the newspaper conjecture.
“I’d give the idea some room to run. How do you see it?”
The waitress’s arrival spared Charlie’s need for an instant reply, although he didn’t need time to consider one. He was enjoying the verbal ping-pong, the vaguest idea of its purpose forming in his mind but in no hurry to confirm it. In deference to the abuse he’d inflicted upon himself the previous night, Charlie restricted himself to pancake- wrapped duck, crispy beef, and spicy noodles, with boiled rice and a bottle of rice wine, despite Bundy’s protests that he wouldn’t share the alcohol.
“So how do you see it?” repeated Bundy, when the girl left.
“I’m keeping an open mind. Everything’s at a very early stage. Still a lot of technical and scientific stuff to be analyzed and assessed.”
“So you are here for the murder?” openly demanded the American.
“It’s not carved in stone,” avoided Charlie. “There seems to be a lot else happening.”
“Things good with the local homicide guys?”
“There’s some diplomatic protocol to work through; you know what it’s like.”
“Not helped by your guys finding a big bunch of bugs nesting right there in the ambassador’s phone system.”
“Not helped one little bit,” agreed Charlie, without pausing at the alarm bells that rang in his mind.
“Surprised you don’t have help,” pressed Bundy. “Something as serious as this, with the bugging on top, strikes me as a heavy workload.”
“I’m just about keeping a handle on it,” claimed Charlie, hoping his voice conveyed the conviction he didn’t feel at that moment.
“I’ve still got a few open lines here. You wanna bounce anything off me, feel free.”
Charlie needed his control to hold back his surprise at that remark. “That’s very good of you.”
“Maybe it’s jealousy at everything happening on your patch and nothing on mine.”
Charlie recognized the perfect opening. “I got the impression that you guys were very much caught up with the new presidential elections here?”
“I guess your political section was, too, until last week,” said Bundy.
“You keeping out of it?” asked Charlie, risking directness himself.
“Tex has been keeping a tight watching brief.”
“You would have been on station here the first time, when Lvov was with the KGB, right?” demanded Charlie, direct again.
“Right, I was here in Moscow,” agreed Bundy. “Stepan Grigorevich Lvov was in charge of St. Petersburg. It’s a long way away. And I got moved to Cairo after about six months, so I didn’t do much but add him to the list of known KGB personnel.”
“You run a file on him?”
“We knew who he was, basic biog stuff. Wish we had managed more, now that he’s emerged to be the rising star and promised friend of the West.” The American shrugged, expansively. “But there it is, all down to the political analysts now!”
Their food arrived. Charlie couldn’t remember the last time he’d ever knowingly helped another foreign country intelligence agent he trusted as little as he trusted Bundy. Predictably for someone who never drank anything but mineral water, Bundy had ordered the blandest possible food, steam-cooked vegetables, scallops, and bean curd.
“You want to try anything of mine, go ahead,” invited Charlie, wondering why someone who ate like an invalid suggested such a restaurant in the first place.
“I’m okay but thanks,” refused the man, measuring out his water.
“You keep in touch like this with Paula-Jane and Halliday?”
“Not on a regular basis. P-J’s a cute kid.”
“Tex seems to think so,” risked Charlie.
“The guy’s thought very highly of back at Langley,” said Bundy, cleverly choosing an alternative gossip from that offered by Charlie. “I knew P-J’s daddy. Davy Venables was a very formidable operator. You ever come across him in London?”
Charlie shook his head, tipping the last of his wine into his glass, eager to get back to the embassy to set up everything he now knew he needed London to arrange. “It’s been a good meal. Let’s do it again. My treat next time.”
“I’ll keep you up to that,” said Bundy. “It’s good to talk to someone who’s been around the block a few times.”
“I’ve got your number,” said Charlie, enjoying his own double entendre, confident he’d got more from the encounter than the other man.
Charlie didn’t detect the already identified BMW until just before his taxi turned onto the embankment. It continued straight on over the Kalininskaya Bridge, sure of his destination. Which wasn’t good or proper tradecraft, Charlie recognized, curiously. But there was so much else that had been unexpected during the meeting with the American; so much that it was going to take time to interpret whatever its purpose had been.
“It’s taken long enough for you to talk to me!” complained Jack Smethwick, the director of the agency’s technical and scientific division in London, the moment they were connected.
“Wanted to make sure I had as much as possible before bothering you,” said Charlie, soothingly. He’d forgotten the man’s almost perpetual irritation.
“I hope you have.”
“So do I,” said Charlie, from the secure, strut-supported compartment in the communications room. “And I want to get some things clear in my mind.”
“That might make a change.”
“Let’s talk about the loop, which is most important,” said Charlie, refusing an argument. “Can’t the fact that it’s computer-simulated be scientifically detected by the Russians?”
“If it could be, I wouldn’t have done it this way,” said Smethwick. “The loop will be clearly marked as a copy of the supposed original which we’ve enhanced here. It’s perfect.”
So precise was the technical clarity of the line that Charlie could hear the noise of other people working in the
