Charlie gratefully followed, welcoming the drink and the familiar “death to our enemies” toast.
Halliday said, “We’re virtually under siege since the London announcement of Sotley and Dawkins’s recall. Reg Stout says his outside guards estimate the media mob at more than fifty.”
“Stout’s still on duty?” queried Charlie, surprised.
“Apparently he took the Nazi defense of strictly obeying orders.”
“That’s neither a defense nor an excuse.”
“Which I’ve been telling London for months.”
“Was it you that finally got things moving?” asked Charlie, openly.
“I’d like to think so but for anyone in London finally to admit it would be to concede that they’d been hibernating, wouldn’t it?”
“You going to argue against Stout remaining on station?” pressed Charlie, accepting a top up from the offered bottle.
“Specifying names could risk a libel or slander accusation,” said Halliday.
Charlie didn’t believe it could but he was more interested in pursuing the conversation than in challenging it. “You been before Robertson’s inquisition?”
“P-J got a mauling, apparently. Seems to be pissed off with me for not telling her I was ringing alarm bells.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
Halliday smiled at Charlie’s persistence. “Underwent the whole yes or no shebang, survived without losing a single fingernail or crushed testicle.”
“So who’s whispering all the secrets?”
Halliday shrugged. “How do I know? All I do know is that this embassy has been wide open to any sort of infiltration for months. Against which, how about the finding of the listening devices where they were being a complete coincidence? The FSB gets a chance they can’t believe and are doubly lucky when their guys hit all the right places entirely by accident?”
“You believe in that sort of coincidence?”
“No,” admitted Halliday. “I’m just pointing out that lucky coincidences sometimes happen, like miracles.”
“What about Paula-Jane?” said Charlie, consciously ignoring every London edict.
“What about her?”
“She have any bother?”
Halliday smiled, knowingly. “What have you heard?”
“I haven’t heard anything,” denied Charlie. “You told me you came out smelling of roses but she was pissed off. Just wondered if things went badly for her. This is her first posting, after all.”
Halliday shrugged again. “She didn’t go back on the same plane as Sotley and Dawkins, so I guess she’s okay. She didn’t tell me anything specific apart from getting a bollocking about lack of earlier warning but let’s face it, that’s not her function here.” The man offered the bottle again.
Charlie, who disagreed with that assessment, shook his head in refusal. “Still got things to do.”
“How’s it going?”
“Slowly.”
“My offer still stands. I’m not exactly overstretched and you know my director is more than willing to get me involved.”
Which was what Bundy had said, remembered Charlie: he could set up a sideline business selling tickets. “London’s orders are to keep everything strictly compartmented, certainly until Robertson’s inquiry is resolved.”
“The bastards in London expect too much from ground soldiers like you and me,” sympathized Halliday, the slightest of slurs to his words. “Things go right, they get the glory; things go wrong, we get the shit.”
Why was it, Charlie asked himself as he made his way along the corridor, that he still didn’t like Halliday, even though he was now serving Islay single malt?
Charlie wasn’t surprised to find his roughly packed suitcases tossed carelessly into his office, nor to be told when he called the Savoy Hotel that no new reservation had been made for him. Charlie took the offered suite, all that was available, when he was told his original room was no longer vacant. His initial amusement at wondering what innocent conversations the FSB was going to hear from its new occupant became serious at the realization that until Guzov learned of the change he’d probably have an untapped telephone line. There was one call on his voice-mail register but when he accessed it there was no message, just the click of a telephone being replaced. It wouldn’t, he knew, be Natalia. He called Sergei Pavel’s personal number at Petrovka but got no reply and matched his unknown caller by deciding not to leave a message.
Knowing that no local taxis were permitted within the embassy grounds and with no intention of making himself the focus of the waiting photographers by leaving the embassy like a refugee carrying his possessions on his back, Charlie called the transport office for an embassy car and wasted an additional twenty minutes arguing with Harold Barrett to get one.
Charlie’s telephone rang the moment he replaced it after the transport dispute. Sergei Pavel said, “What’s going on? The hotel told me you’d checked out.”
“It’s a misunderstanding,” said Charlie.
“I want to stop another one from happening,” said the Russian.
Charlie became aware of traffic noise in the background of Pavel’s call and realized the man was telephoning from the street.
Charlie was confident he could juggle the newly added ball without dropping any of those he was so far managing to keep in the air. There was still an explosion of camera lights when the car left the embassy, but Charlie was sure that while not making the evasion suspiciously obvious, he’d sufficiently obscured his face to avoid any identification on the FSB cameras. The media horde actually helped in that, overflowing on to the embankment road to slow the traffic and give Charlie more than sufficient time to check for pursuit. Nothing was obvious so Charlie ordered the English driver off the river road as quickly as it was possible, using his knowledge of the city to twist and double back until he was sure they weren’t being followed.
Charlie hurried his reregistration at the hotel although taking his usual care reestablishing his room traps, and was back on the hopefully watcher-free street within half an hour. He kept to the outskirts of Red Square, using the tourist groups for cover but holding back from getting too immersed, not wanting too many faces from which to pick out the one more interested in him than in St. Basil’s cathedral, the Kremlin, or Lenin’s tomb. Satisfied after half an hour that he was not under surveillance, Charlie moved in the direction of Ulitsa Varvarka and the side-alley rendezvous chosen by Pavel, although not immediately searching for either. He found the street telephone just off the main Varvarka highway, ideally wedged into a corner formed by two side roads that gave him a vantage point from which to continue searching all around him after dialing Natalia’s number.
“I thought you’d call before now?” she challenged, at once.
“We agreed two days. Is there a problem?”
“No.”
“Is Sasha back?”
“Yes.”
“Have you told her I’m here?”
“Not yet. I wanted us to talk some more, before I did.”
“Talk about what?”
“I’m not sure I can do it. Leave everything. Not sure I
Charlie wished there wasn’t so much traffic noise. “It’s the only way it can work for us.”
“Sasha’s happy at her school. I’m frightened it would be too much of an upheaval for her.”
“Children are resilient, adjustable, aren’t they?”
“Not like this. This would be like taking her to the moon.”
“We can’t make decisions like this, on the telephone. We need to meet again.” Charlie waited and when she didn’t respond, said, “Natalia?”
