the former satellites are acceptable because those former satellites are much easier to anticipate, politically. This is not the case in the countries that once formed the Soviet Union and now comprise the Commonwealth. Not
Tudin was the only man in the chamber whose face was no longer expressionless. The look directed towards Natalia was one of pure and open hatred, and she guessed that behind those hooded, veined eyes he was already planning to initiate whatever scheme he had in mind against her in revenge for such public humiliation.
‘I am sure every one of us in this room is grateful for the political insight,’ Tudin said. The words strained out from him, as if he had difficulty in speaking, not from breathlessness but from some restriction in his throat.
It was pitiful sarcasm and Natalia contemptuously ignored it. ‘I sought an assurance from you, about time.’
‘Which I said was impossible to give.’ There was the quickest of glances down into the room, and Natalia guessed at brief eye contact with Khrenin: it had certainly been to Khrenin’s side of the table.
She didn’t try to follow the look. Instead she allowed another moment of silence. When she spoke again, Natalia looked out into the room. ‘Then I think I have arbitrarily to impose one. As I said in my opening remarks, these conferences are to be regularly established. I propose they should be at three-monthly intervals …’ She went back to look directly at Tudin. ‘In three months I want to hear from you and your subordinate deputies that networks exist in every former republic which once comprised the Soviet Union.’
Tudin’s entrapment was complete and he knew it. He wasn’t able to speak, just to nod.
‘If, in the interim, you come to believe you cannot fulfil that schedule I expect you to advise me. In any event, I would like weekly progress reports.’ Natalia did not think she had left any avenue for escape or evasion: three months was an impossible time-frame and Tudin was going to be racked twenty-four hours a day even to attempt it, before finally having, in the recordable written form she had stipulated, to admit he had failed. And still she wasn’t finished with the man.
Once more Natalia turned back to the other men assembled in front of her. While none of them was betraying any readable reaction, Natalia believed she could discern a respectful wariness from some of them: maybe even fear. ‘We have considered the immediate past, and to an extent what we hope to create, to make our reorganization complete. To give all of you an indication of how full I want the exchange of information to be at future conferences like this, I want briefly to talk of an active operation I have already initiated, among certain overseas
She watched several of the division chiefs prepare to take notes.
‘Some years ago, I was involved in a specific operation to identify a member of the British external service,’ continued the woman. ‘For reasons that do not concern this conference, the operation was not a complete success. But recently I consulted the file to remind myself of it, because of official appointments that have been made in the British SIS, MI5 and the American Central Intelligence Agency. Learning from the mistakes of that earlier failed attempt, I have ordered London and Washington to create the most definitive and exhaustive records in all the past and recent history of this Directorate, not just upon the Director-Generals and Director of the British and American organizations, but upon as many division heads and active serving officers as it is possible to identify …’
Natalia looked briefly sideways, to Tudin. He was sitting with his mouth slightly open and staring not at the table before him but at some spot on the floor beyond. Natalia’s impression was of someone absolutely stunned. To account for the brief attention upon her deputy, she said: ‘I have initiated the programme in those two countries because of the recently announced appointments to which I have referred and because
Natalia stared around the room, beginning to feel the strain of her performance. ‘Any questions?’
No one spoke.
She’d done it! Natalia decided, exultantly. She’d devastatingly reversed any threat from Fyodor Tudin, virtually making his future in the Directorate impossible. And she had evolved a foolproof way to locate Charlie Muffin by openly using the entire resources of the Russian Federation’s intelligence service. Indulging herself, Natalia decided she had managed the sort of Machiavellian manipulation of which Charlie himself would have been proud. Abruptly, quite unprompted, the sort of recollection she had been seeking for so long came with that idle reflection. It was incomplete and hazy but she was sure it could be important: a long-ago conversation, when he had been here in Moscow. Something about his having a bedridden mother, who at that time would be missing the regular visits he made. He’d talked about the home she was in: described something particular about the part of England where it was situated. But what, she asked herself, desperately: a half-memory wasn’t any good. No good at all.
Within an hour of returning to her office, the satisfaction at defeating Tudin and the hope that the long- sought recollection was coming at last were washed away by a new and far more immediate crisis.
Natalia realized that the tempo at which the demand was channelled to her was clearly speeded by the official enquiry she had earlier made at Mytninskaya, coupled obviously with her rank: the delay, from the initial approach, was less than two days, which for Russia was amazingly fast.
What she expected was to be told by an aide that Eduard had finally tried to find her at the old apartment. She was even beginning to consider how to react to an approach she had already decided she did not want, so that in her distracted surprise she echoed what the secretariat aide had really said. ‘The Militia!’
‘From headquarters, at Petrovka,’ confirmed the man. ‘The message says it’s urgent.’
Because of the monitor he had established, Fyodor Tudin also learned very fast of the Militia enquiry, within an hour of Natalia being told. He’d already decided in the brief but stomach-opening interval since their public confrontation that the only way to save himself was to destroy Natalia Nikandrova Fedova before she succeeded in destroying him, which she had come close to doing that day.
Actually squeezing his eyes shut, he thought: dear God – or whoever it is who controls people’s destinies – let this be the way to defeat her.
Twenty-eight
Gower awoke within thirty minutes of his usual time, pleased at the apparent recovery from jetlag. As he made instant coffee, he planned his day: he’d climb Coal Hill to explore the drops there, revisit the Forbidden City to get the necessary places marked indelibly in his mind, and in the afternoon pick a route to take him past the Taoist temple where the routine to bring Jeremy Snow to the embassy had to begin.
Begin today? Gower sat with his elbows on the narrow kitchen table, both hands around his cup, considering his own question. It was still too soon. He hadn’t yet visited two of the three places with which he had to familiarize himself. And there was that much-repeated insistence from his last, unnamed teacher always to set up an escape route before ever thinking of beginning anything. At that moment he hadn’t started to consider how he and the priest were going to get out. But what was there to consider? There was only one conceivable way: by air. So there were air guides to be consulted, reservations to be made, routes to be chosen.
Ridiculous, then, to think of leaving a signal and filling a drop today. It would have to be spread over several days, at least. Certainly a week. Not a delay of nervous reluctance, Gower assured himself: anything but. It was a professionally required period in which to work properly to guarantee the demands imposed from London and from
