the KGB becoming the FSB.”
Charlie coughed, to clear his throat, almost frightened to ask the question to which he might not get the answer he wanted. “Did Ivan tell you how he worked?”
“Yes,” replied Irena, seeming to know the importance of the demand. “He had to go through all the old, raw case files and distill everything into a comprehensive, consecutive account for entry into the official history of the Soviet and now Russian Federation intelligence organizations.” She smiled. “He used to laugh that the remit was always to make it appear that we were the best and always won.”
Irena
In her seesawing mood swings, one moment appearing confidently determined, the next relapsing into twitching uncertainty, it was as if Irena had geared herself to go as far as disclosing Ivan’s job reassignment but then no further, similarly to her abrupt cutoff the previous night. He worked hard at soothing her suddenly returned fears, reluctantly letting the conversation stray from what he was anxious to concentrate entirely upon by letting her ask questions. He explained away his involvement in a murder investigation initially with no apparent intelligence connections as part of the British service’s hugely expanded role countering Islamic and other potential political fanaticism, repeatedly insisting there had been no prior identification of Ivan Nikolaevich Oskin-and most definitely not of Irena-before she’d responded to his television appeal.
“You weren’t linked to Ivan Nikolaevich by the KGB after your Cairo accident, or by them or the FSB after he was wounded in Afghanistan and spent all the time he did convalescing,” reminded Charlie, in support of his argument. “And not an hour ago, you told me you didn’t care if they discovered your involvement anyway. Which I promise you again, they won’t!”
“It was easier for me to
“You can’t stop now.”
“I want to.” She was smoking what had to be her fourth cigarette.
Her conviction wasn’t absolute, judged Charlie. “No, you don’t. You want Ivan’s killers punished.”
“I want another drink.”
“Let me get you some food, instead.”
“The food here’s shit.”
“We’ll go somewhere else.”
“You want to be seen with someone with a face like this!”
“You’ve probably got more reason for self-pity than most, Irena. Don’t use it to hide behind. Your face isn’t disfigured, just marked.”
“Bastard.”
“Not as much of a bastard as those who murdered Ivan.”
Her throat began to work as she swallowed against an outburst, which Charlie was frightened would be yet another breakdown. Instead, seesawing again, Irena said: “Okay.”
Charlie was unsure what she meant. Guessing, he said: “So let’s go on. Ivan discovered something he shouldn’t have seen in the raw case files he was going through to prepare the official intelligence history?”
“Yes.”
“What?” demanded Charlie, tensed forward.
“That’s what I don’t know!
“What did Ivan tell you?”
Irena hesitated. “You’ve unsettled me, from what you’ve just told me.”
Charlie smothered the frustration. “What unsettles you from what I’ve just told you?”
“About political fanaticism.”
“Go on,” urged Charlie.
“It was political, whatever Ivan discovered. He called it sensational: that was the actual word, sensational.”
“But he didn’t tell you what it was?”
“No.”
“He didn’t even give you the slightest indication?”
Irena shook her head. “What he did say was that it was payback time. That what he could get for what he knew would set us up in luxury for the rest of our lives. You know what his words were? That we could get married and live happily ever after.”
Charlie remained briefly silent, unsure how to phrase his next question, not wanting to drive her backwards. “You told me yesterday that Ivan was a fixer. How was he going to fix it that you lived happily and in luxury for the rest of your lives?”
Now it was Irena who paused, arranging her words. “He told me he was going to do a deal. That he held all the cards and that they didn’t have any alternative but to agree to whatever he asked.” The woman gave another humorless laugh. “But they did have an alternative, didn’t they?”
Avoid the word blackmail, Charlie warned himself. “Ivan was going to deal, bargain, to keep you both comfortable, for the rest of your lives after you got married?”
“Yes,”
“Because he’d learned something politically sensational?”
“Yes.”
“But he didn’t tell you what?”
“No.”
Charlie was unsure which or what to offer next from his mental selection. “Neither the KGB nor the FSB ever discovered you and Ivan were together, for all these years?”
Irena shifted, uncomfortably. “No, they never did.”
“You never lived together? Had the same address?”
Irena stared into her empty brandy glass. “We were going to, of course, after we got married. Ivan said that to do so before wouldn’t be safe: that we’d compromise ourselves if we set up home together.”
She was lying-lying badly-and Charlie was sure he knew why. “Ivan was already married, wasn’t he, Irena?”
“Only on paper. There were no children. It was over years ago, before Cairo even.”
“His wife wasn’t in Cairo with him, was she? She was kept back here, in Moscow. And again when he was in Afghanistan.” Unless husband and wife were both KGB, it had been standard KGB operational procedure to hold spouses hostage in Russia against overseas defection. In the case of husband and wife, their children were detained under the guise of receiving a better education than would have normally been available.
“No. She was always here.”
“Which was why you couldn’t visit him, when he was repatriated from Afghanistan, wasn’t it? It was his wife who was able to visit and his wife to whom he went home when he was finally and fully recovered?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know if she’s been hurt, killed even, after Ivan was murdered?” Whoever killed him would have torn apart the house or apartment in which they’d lived.
The hoarse-voiced woman sniggered. “The first mistake in your grand deduction! She died, two months ago. She’d had cancer for years. That’s why Ivan wouldn’t divorce her. . abandon her, even though we’d been together in every other way for so long. He was a good man: intended to make sure she was comfortable from the money he was going to get.”
Could a potential blackmailer be a good man? If Ivan had stayed with a terminally ill wife and undergone all the misfortune than he and his mistress had suffered? “But officially, on all the records and registers, Ivan’s address is where his wife lived?”
Irena nodded, not speaking.
“So you must have it, Irena! Whatever it was that Ivan found among the raw files and smuggled out of the Lubyanka, knowing its significance. Yours was the obvious-the
