They weren’t just boxing him in, Charlie acknowledged: by appearing on the same platform, he’d be confirming that every claim the Russians were making to be the truth and that the investigation was over. “That’s very generous of you, considering it’s come down to a successful Russian investigation with virtually no input from me.”
“Our agreement was full cooperation,” mocked Guzov. “And there’s something else. The conference is at eleven. Sergei Romanovich’s funeral is in the afternoon.”
Not just boxed in, thought Charlie: the lid was being firmly hammered down as Pavel’s coffin would be! “I would, of course, like to attend that, as well.”
“I expected that you would,” said Guzov. “You have already been included on the list of those officially attending.”
“Has London been informed of these developments?”
“They will be, before the formal announcement,” said the Interior Ministry official, Leonid Toplov. He smiled as he added, “As a matter of courtesy.”
“Continuing that courtesy,” picked up Guzov, “I’ll ensure you receive all the official reports at the embassy before the end of the day. We wouldn’t expect you to appear before the world media without being fully briefed.”
“Thank you,” said Charlie, with little else left to say. “Publicly, at least, it will appear to have been a very successful and well coordinated joint operation between our two countries.”
“I presume you’ll be returning to yours very shortly?”
The first possible crack in Guzov’s confidence, picked out Charlie. Why did the man need to know how quickly he would be leaving Moscow? “There’s no hurry, now that the murder investigation has been resolved, is there? There might be a few things I still need to tidy up.”
As he spoke, Charlie recognized it to be a pitiful attempt to have the last word and wished he hadn’t bothered.
“They’ve beaten you,” judged Aubrey Smith. “Wiped you off the board. And me and the department with you!”
“It looks like it, at this moment.” The admission came out of his mouth like a bad taste.
“This and every moment that’s going to follow,” insisted the Director-General. “You can’t recover from this!”
“I haven’t received all their promised documentation yet.”
“You think they’re likely to have left you an opening there? They’ve done it all perfectly. What if there is something that doesn’t make sense or add up? You can’t challenge them without destroying yourself and all the rest of us. They’ve been brilliantly clever!”
“Which a lot of other people here seem to have been trying to be.”
There was a silence from London. Then Smith said, “There have been some contrary instructions to Moscow of which I have been unaware, until now. The situation, as far as you are concerned, has been corrected. Or had been. It hardly matters anymore.”
“I’d like you to explain that,” said Charlie, who believed he understood completely but wanted confirmation.
“You’ve been caught up more than I suspected in internecine maneuverings here in London. I regret that.”
The first open reference to the power struggle between Aubrey Smith and the disgruntled Jeffrey Smale, Charlie recognized. It would account for his being the choice for the Moscow assignment in the first place.
“Has whatever’s been happening in London been blocked?”
“I’d hoped it had been, until this conversation,” said the other man. “Now it’s academic.”
“I’m still going to keep the appointment with the woman.”
“Do you genuinely imagine that she’s going to keep any appointment after the publicity there’s going to be over the next few days?” demanded Smith. “She could even be part of all the Russians have done to trap you.”
“I need a way out,” said Charlie.
“Maybe your return is that way out.”
“I don’t follow.”
“Hopkins has been interviewed as far as the doctors had judged it safe to do so,” said the other man. “He’s adamant that the other car drove into him intentionally to force him over the edge: that they, whoever they are, believed you were in the car, too. It was a deliberate assassination attempt.”
“How is he?”
“He’ll live but he’ll never walk again.”
“Is he going to be looked after?” demanded Charlie, refusing the dismissal. “Medically and financially, I mean?”
“I know what you mean, and of course he is,” said the other man, impatiently. “And now I want you out.”
“Let me see this through,” pleaded Charlie.
“I’ll not be responsible.”
“I’m not asking you to be. This is being recorded: there’s no responsibility on the department.”
“No!”
“We both need my resolving this. And I can do it.”
There was a pause. “Day to day. I’ll judge it day by day.”
“No one could have anticipated this!” opened Svetlana Modin.
“No one did,” agreed Charlie, accepting the desperation of his making the contact they’d agreed. Could he use the broadcaster: find an escape or at least a stay of execution through her? He had been quite prepared to resign if that was what it would have taken to get Natalia and Sasha with him in London, but he’d wanted the decision to be his, at his timing and on his terms, not ignominiously thrust upon him with accusations of gullible incompetence and failed professionalism. And unfair to Natalia and their daughter though it was, it was still what he wanted.
“How much were you involved?”
Charlie shifted in the telephone box, alert to everything outside. “There has to be no indication that we’ve spoken.”
“I want to go with what I’ve got tonight, which you’re not going to like. It is that you’ve been intentionally humiliated, because of what happened-or rather didn’t happen-with America.”
The wrong reasoning but she was certainly right about humiliation, conceded Charlie. But she had kept her part of the deal making no mention of the embankment collision. And there could conceivably be some physical safety in that being promoted. “I certainly had no input in whatever the official communique says: my first and only awareness of the murders being solved was when I was summoned to Petrovka today to be told, an hour before the official announcement. But I haven’t yet seen any evidence to support the claims.”
“Are you suggesting the investigation
He hadn’t been but an idea began to wisp in his mind. “I’ll answer that after I’ve seen the evidence.”
“Do you believe you were excluded because of the proposed inclusion of America’s CIA?”
Could he maneuver her in the direction he wanted, his idea settling. It was important to put the CIA more firmly in her mind. “If that were the reason, it was misguided or perhaps misunderstood. The approach came
“You’re going to be at tomorrow’s press conference. And also be at Sergei Romanovich’s funeral. Why exclude you one moment and include you the next?”
Neither of which had been mentioned in the official communique, Charlie at once isolated, his disappointment that she hadn’t picked up the lead-in as he’d intended, tempered by the suspicion that she’d come close to confirming an arrangement with Mikhail Guzov.
“That’s a question for Moscow to answer, not me.”
“I don’t think they believe London has genuinely rejected the American approach: that London still hoped to
