taken any decision totally away from me, personally: it’s government to government now.”
“You could argue the point. And the impression that will be created if we back off,” risked Charlie.
“And I will argue it,” promised the man. “But that argument, logical and realistic though it is, won’t necessarily prevail with politicians who think and act in sound bites.”
“Then what the hell can I do?” asked Charlie, hating the sound of his own inadequacy.
“Pray,” replied Smith, unhelpfully.
“To whose God?”
“The One who’s best at miracles,” said Smith, which helped even less.
Bill Bundy was the only one of his three listed callers to have identified himself with a message, and the American answered his phone the moment Charlie returned it.
“You managing to stay sane?” greeted the American.
“I’m not sure.”
“You going to go ahead with the press conference?”
“It’s not been decided yet.” Why was Bundy interested, wondered Charlie.
“I’d like to be there if you do.”
He had to ruffle his feathers, start acting professionally, Charlie decided. “I’ll let you know if it’s decided we go ahead.”
“So you might not?” persisted Bundy.
“I said it hasn’t been decided.”
“You’ll fix my admission, if it does?”
“Yes,” promised Charlie. To try to work out your reason for being so anxious to be there, he thought.
“I can’t imagine how it might help, but my offer to pitch in still stands.”
“I appreciate it,” said Charlie, emptily. He really could have sold tickets, he thought.
“What are you going to do-is London going to do-if you don’t go ahead?”
“We haven’t decided about whether or not to go ahead,” wearily reminded Charlie.
“You want a break, someone to relax with, you’ve got my number, okay?”
“I appreciate that, too,” Charlie lied again.
“Look forward to your call, whatever’s decided.”
Charlie pressed back in his inadequate chair in his inadequate office, deciding the dedicated number and its answering facility should be transferred to the comfort of the compound flat in which the hopeful response lines were being installed. He was about to concentrate upon the American’s approach when the telephone rang once more, the traffic noise obvious the moment Charlie lifted the receiver.
“I didn’t know what they were going to do,” apologized Sergei Pavel at once, from his untapped phone from the street kiosk. “I realize now that telling me to wait outside for you was to get me out of the way while they set everything up-in my own fucking office!”
“You did warn me they were planning something,” said Charlie, as confused at the Russian’s approach as he had been by that of Bundy’s, just minutes earlier. “There’s nothing you could have done if you had known.”
“Except given you a better warning,” said Pavel. “I didn’t want you to think I was part of it: tricking you like that.”
“I wasn’t thinking that,” replied Charlie, honestly.
“You said I could get into the conference with you?”
It took Charlie several moments to reply. He’d believed the man up to now but couldn’t any longer. Pavel had to be a plant, to discover what the British response to the television broadcast was going to be. Which meant, Charlie realized at once, that he couldn’t indicate any uncertainty about the conference. “How can you hope to be there, beside me, after what Kashev and Yudkin said?”
“I’m not part of anything they said or did, or the trap they set. I told you before, none of them wants the investigation to continue. And if it doesn’t, I’ll be held ultimately responsible for its failure.”
“You can’t confront
“Things aren’t that bad, not like they were in the old days.”
“They’re not that much better, either!” argued Charlie.
“I want to be there!”
“Then you shall be,” decided Charlie. Having Pavel publicly at his side would make the Russian televised denunciation of non-cooperation almost as ridiculous as its portrayal of his stumbling inadequacy: almost, he qualified, but not quite.
“How?”
“Call on this number, this way.” Unless a London-ordered cancellation were announced in advance there would not be enough time for any further sabotage to be mounted, even if Pavel were a provocateur.
“Thank you,” said Pavel.
“Let’s wait to see if you’ve got anything to thank me for.”
The car had the now familiar difficulty getting through the thronged embassy gates and it hadn’t gone more than 100 yards along the embankment road when Charlie’s now regular driver said, “It could be two cars following us: one certainly, a BMW again.”
Harry Fish swiveled to stare out of the rear window. Charlie didn’t bother. The electronics expert said, “You actually think the FSB are tailing you!”
“It would be pretty standard practice, after everything that’s happened: we’d do it if it were London.”
“I most certainly wouldn’t. .”
“. . like to do my job,” Charlie finished for the other man.
“At the moment I don’t like doing it, either.” He hoped the intended hotel-room sweep wouldn’t take too long. He had a lot to think about and work out. And the urge to call Natalia was becoming stronger, despite his undertaking not to attempt contact so soon.
“It’s definitely two,” reported the driver. “The BMW and what looks like an old Skoda.”
“What do you want to do, if I do find something?” asked Fish.
“Nothing,” said Charlie, frowning toward the man to indicate his discomfort at the driver being able to hear the conversation, even though he probably wouldn’t understand it. “Just show me where.” If the suite were bugged, he’d have a genuine and essential reason to speak to Natalia.
Fish nodded in understanding, and said nothing more until they were crossing the hotel foyer. “Sorry about that. Stupid of me.”
“No harm done,” said Charlie, standing back for Fish to enter the elevator ahead of him, glad they were alone. “If you find anything I want to use it to my advantage, which is why I want it left. Is there any way they can detect your searching for it?”
“Only if we speak, if and when I do find something. I’ll indicate it and mark it. We can talk later, out of the room.”
The briefcase-sized bag that Fish opened was sectioned to hold and clamp various instruments-including a doctorlike stethoscope-and yards. It was a yard with an elongated attachment, like an elephant’s trunk, that Fish extracted and looped around his neck by a thin strap. There was a regimentation in the way the man operated, with virtually immediate results when he put the nose of the attachment to the telephone, turning to Charlie and nodding. In thirty minutes, he detected six emplacements, three in the living room and three in the bedroom. Having sticker-marked the location of each, Fish unscrewed the first detected telephone handset, pointed into the diaphragm to the sort of pinhead device Charlie recognized from the embassy search, and examined it, in situ and from several angles through an intensity-enhanced magnifying glass before looking up, both frowning and shaking his head. After a further, even more concentrated examination, Fish handed the glass for Charlie to look in detail for himself. Charlie was able under the enlargement to see that the device was not completely cylindrical, which he’d imagined it to be, but had an extension, like a finger, from its left side. Several times, unnecessarily gesturing Charlie against any utterance, Fish painstakingly opened every identified location and subjected each bug to the same intensive scrutiny, finishing every one with the same frowned head shaking.
There were people in the outside corridor and again in the descending elevator so it wasn’t until they were in
