ridiculous idea to dump the body in your embassy grounds, which was stupid and wouldn’t have happened if Bundy had already been in Moscow. But he wasn’t, not for another five days by which time it was too late. Probert thought Paula-Jane would be able to get whatever it was from Halliday if the body was dumped literally on his doorstep- don’t ask me the reasoning: I don’t think there was one, just CIA stupidity-and that it would be an investigation handled by Russian police that would get nowhere because Bundy could get it fixed through Lvov, which he could have done; still tried to. Instead of which you came and refused to have anything to do with the Venables woman and started your own disinformation, which we had no way of stopping. And Halliday didn’t have anything to tell her anyway, because it wasn’t until Probert got back to the embassy after having the body dumped that he was properly able to read the pages he’d ripped from the gatehouse log of the day he knew Oskin had gone there that Oskin hadn’t seen anybody. Neither Venables nor Halliday had been at the embassy. The log note was that Oskin had refused to give a name or a contact when he’d asked to see an intelligence officer, which is hardly surprising, but that he’d call back. Instead he went to the American embassy and told Probert what he knew, expecting to be paid off. But instead he got tortured to death.
There was renewed and even more obvious discomfited movement from the Americans confronting Charlie.
Charlie: I still don’t understand how you know as much as you do.
Irena: Dumping Oskin’s body in your embassy was disastrous for me. I didn’t have control anymore. But we had an open line into the American embassy, through Lvov’s constant contact with Bundy, who in turn milked the Venables woman as much as he could, because he really is her godfather, which he told her to report to your people to avoid any suspicion. But it still wasn’t enough for me.
Charlie: Who put the bugs into the embassy?
Irena: The Americans. Probert could come and go as he liked to see Venables before you arrived: that’s how he knew the embassy CCTV cameras were faulty and could dump the body after fixing the distraction for the gatehouse guards that night. Bundy told Probert to do it, with some Russian bugs they’d found in an earlier sweep of their Moscow embassy and electronically tweaked them to their receiver frequency. You found those we put in your Savoy suite, of course? You never talked as I hoped you would for me to get in front, not behind you. I guessed you’d found them and wanted to play against us.
Charlie: I never understood the different design, though. How did the bugs get into Stout’s apartment?
Irena: I told you, Probert could come and go in your embassy, whenever he liked. More accurately he could come and go in the residential compound: your embassy under Sotley’s ambassadorship and Stout’s nonexistent security was a joke. We needed to cover ourselves against there being a sweep that found the other bugs Probert planted in Stout’s apartment on his way from a sex session with the Venables girl. It was easy for Probert to get into Stout’s apartment, which she’d pointed out to him and which Stout, of course, never bothered to lock. It was Bundy who persuaded Venables to finger Stout to your spy catchers, after we had Lvov suggest it to him.
Charlie: Paula-Jane beat the polygraph.
Irena: Bundy laughed about her to Lvov that she genuinely didn’t believe she was doing anything wrong, so I suppose she didn’t have any guilt taking the polygraph, which is a flawed test anyway.
Charlie: Who killed Pavel?
Irena: We did. He was a bad choice and I was wrong in not supervising the militia enough, which was how Svetlana Modin came to be arrested later and why we had to stage Lvov’s big scene. Pavel was too ready to listen to whatever you suggested, like that ridiculous press conference of yours. Even too willing to go along with you instead of his own force and use public telephones. Our own monitoring at Petrovka fouled up and we were frightened he’d taken some calls we didn’t know about. It was easier just to get him out of the way and for Guzov to take over, although he wasn’t much better: I had to suggest that your phony blood samples be tested for DNA.
Charlie: And you decided to take me over?
Irena: Twenty years of planning was all going wrong! I had to get back in complete control. And I was, with a double bluff that would have worked if I hadn’t had to let you take that fucking shrine to avoid your becoming suspicious.
Charlie: Tell me about the car crash on the embankment.
Irena: I was getting desperate, because I wasn’t able to take you over. I thought your people would withdraw you if you didn’t actually get killed; put in someone else less awkward. The Venables woman, hopefully.
Charlie: But I stayed and you were running out of options.
Irena: The only one left was for me to get personally involved.
Charlie: With your only weakness, the shrine. Which I brought here because I knew we’d never get Oskin’s body here and wanted to leave you with something.
Irena: My last hope was that you might have packed it in your case. I arranged for it to be searched. If it had been there, the whole operation would still have worked. The shrine would have been seized and I, the grieving woman, couldn’t have lived here in Britain without my memories, could I?
Charlie: But it wasn’t in the case.
Irena: I still had one last fail-safe. You wouldn’t have gotten Ivan’s precious body back, even if you’d tried. I’d made sure of that. All I had to do was get that fucking shrine back, destroy it to stop your discovering it was a fake, and maintain the grieving-woman shit and demand to go back to Moscow to mourn.
Charlie: And from the Lubyanka, through Lvov, you’d have led Washington and London along whatever paths you wanted them to follow. You’d have ruled the world.
Irena: Not the entire world but America and England would have been enough.
Charlie: You’ll get everything we agreed but I’d imagine you’ll have to properly work for both Washington and London a lot more now.
Irena: I think I’d like the plastic surgery to fix the scarring.
Charlie: How were you burned?
Irena: It was Stepan with me in the restaurant that night. We were celebrating hooking Washington and looking forward to how it would all work out. We stayed lovers, all the time, right up to last week. Marina is a front to satisfy the American need for celebrity: all part of the game plan for a game that isn’t ever going to be played.
The recording clicked off. Charlie broke the following silence. “I’d like to go back to London now. I’m sure no one has any objection.”
“You can come with me,” offered the Director-General.
