Charlie’s Apprentice

road.’

‘Only narcotics and medicines?’

Kapitsa shook his head. ‘Quite a lot of domestic electrical stuff, mostly German. That will have definitely come through Poland. Clothing, too. Jeans, naturally.’

‘How did the interception happen?’ This wasn’t just potentially dangerous; it could be catastrophic.

‘Luck, like I said. We chose the Serpukhov direction because we heard drug shipments had come by that route before. Put up a road-block five nights ago and they drove straight into it.’ There was a quick, satisfied smile. ‘There were only eight of us: should have been double that at least if we’d known what we were going into. There were twelve of them.’

‘They fought? Resisted?’ Natalia tried to push back the sensation of numbness threatening to engulf her, clouding her reason.

Kapitsa’s smile remained. He shook his head. ‘They weren’t even worried. I was there, in charge. They laughed at me: asked what arrangements were necessary to solve what they called “a little problem”.’

‘They asked?’ pressed Natalia.

The man gave an apologetic shrug. ‘Eduard asked.’

‘Were there weapons?’

‘Enough for a short war. Handguns. Small-arms. A nine-millimetre machine-gun, in the rear vehicle.’ The smile now was sad. ‘There’s enough spare military weaponry to put a gun in every home in Russia. They’re probably there already. But you know what the irony was: they weren’t carrying the guns to oppose the police! They think they can bribe their way out of that sort of difficulty. The guns were to fight any interception by rival gangs.’

Natalia shook her head, disbelievingly. But she couldn’t be overwhelmed: sit there numbed. She had to think: think beyond what she was being told about her own son in this stinking office in this stinking police station. She had to think of Sasha.

‘So you can see my problem?’ invited Kapitsa, hopefully.

Natalia regarded the man with renewed caution, alert for a pitfall. ‘I’m not sure that I do.’

The investigator frowned, disappointed. ‘This is an incredible opportunity for us to show we’re doing our job. One we never thought we’d get …’ The man hesitated, both for another cigarette and for Natalia to respond. When she didn’t he said: ‘But one of the people we have in custody – the organizer, it seems – is your son.’

‘Yes,’ Natalia agreed, slowly. She had to assume Fyodor Tudin would find out: protect herself against how the man might try to use the information.

Kapitsa spread his hands towards her. ‘There must be a way, somehow, to avoid the difficulty.’

Natalia’s first thought was that Kapitsa was seeking a bribe, although not one offered as openly as it had been on the Serpukhov road. Cautiously she asked: ‘What did Eduard say, when you wouldn’t take money?’

Kapitsa didn’t reply at once, recalling in detail. ‘He seemed to think it was the beginning of negotiation at first. Kept smiling, very friendly. That gave us the time to collect the guns. Then he got angry. Not frightened. Angry. Asked me if I had any idea what I was doing, and when I said I did he told me who you were. Said it was a waste of time to make a seizure so why didn’t I save myself a lot of unnecessary trouble, take the road-block down and that would be the end of it. That if I wanted the bribe, I could still have it.’ Kapitsa shook his head. ‘He was carrying $5,000, in notes. Called it his passage money, in case they got stopped. He told me to help myself.’

Definitely not asking her for money, Natalia decided. ‘Which you refused again? Arrested him?’

‘The only reaction to that – from them all, not just Eduard – was shock. Two tried to hit out, but it wasn’t anything like a fight. The others were actually angry at him: they thought he had made a mess of the bribe negotiations. We’ve had to put him in a separate cell.’

‘Here?’

‘Yes.’

‘Can I see him?’ To see him would give her time to try to think what she had to do. She desperately needed time.

Kapitsa hesitated, uncertainly. ‘I thought we might decide how to handle things first.’

‘I’d like to see him,’ she insisted.

The investigator spoke briefly into a telephone almost drowned under a wash of put-aside papers, and as they walked side by side down the corridor said to her: ‘I’m having him put into an interview cell, away from the detention block. It’s not very pleasant. No reason for you to be embarrassed. Or upset.’

‘You really are being most considerate.’ Sasha. That’s who she had to think about, above and beyond everything else. Only Sasha: keeping Sasha safe.

‘I’ve got children,’ said Kapitsa. ‘Two boys. I’m terrified they might go wrong some day.’ There was the familiar shrug. ‘It’s the job, I suppose. Seeing it happen every day.’

The interview room was still in the basement, but sectioned off from the main detention area behind a thick wall into which just one barred communicating door was set. Smell and noise permeated out: to Natalia it sounded like the rumbled shuffling of animals herded together, which she supposed was a fairly accurate description.

There were two solid metal doors on either side of a central corridor, each with a round Judas-hole at head height. The holes were covered from the outside by a swivelling metal plate. Kapitsa led her to the first door directly to their right, nodding as they approached an officer sitting at a bare desk just inside the communicating entrance to the main cell block. At once the man rose, sorting through keys on a large ring attached to a body chain around his waist. As the officer found the right key Kapitsa said: ‘I’ll leave you here. Just call for the officer when you want to come out.’

‘No!’ said Natalia, quickly. ‘I think you should be with me.’

‘What?’ The investigator stood looking at her, face creased in bewilderment.

‘It’s a Militia responsibility: we’re virtually colleagues, as you said.’

‘But …’

‘I think it’s best. It’s what I want.’

The door swung open and Natalia hesitated before pushing forward into the cell. Had she not known it was Eduard, Natalia would not have recognized the man as her son. When she had last seen him his hair had been shorn tight to his skull, making him almost bald. Now it was very long, practically shoulder length, and waved, which she couldn’t remember it being even before the army, when he’d been at university. His face was stubbled, not with an attempt at a beard but where he had been denied shaving material. There was a gold band in his left ear. If he wore an ear-ring there would be more jewellery. She guessed everything else would have been taken away, along with all the other personal possessions, when he was received into the jail. All his clothes, which she supposed he’d been allowed to retain because he had not yet been formally charged, appeared to be from the West: Levi jeans, leather loafers, an expensive-looking leather jacket and a wool shirt, open at the neck.

Eduard was at a table chained to the floor, in the very middle of the room. There were chairs either side of the table, also chained down, but still with some movement, which he was using as much as possible, going back on the rear legs and rocking slightly back and forth, easily confident. He didn’t attempt to get up when his mother entered.

Instead he smiled up from the tilted chair and said: ‘At last! I thought you’d forgotten me!’

Kapitsa gestured politely towards the facing seat, but Natalia didn’t take it. Even from where she stood she could detect the sour smell that she’d earlier got from the main detention block minutes before.

‘It wouldn’t have been difficult to forget you.’

Eduard’s expression faltered, but only slightly. Looking pointedly at the investigator near the door but still addressing Natalia he said: ‘We need to talk. Just the two of us.’

‘I’ve asked him to stay.’

‘Why?’

‘It isn’t going to be a problem.’

Eduard came forward at last, settling his chair. ‘You sure about that?’

‘I think so.’

‘Good!’ he said. The smile came into place.

My flesh and my blood, she remembered. She wished she could feel more: feel anything. Still her flesh and blood. ‘How long have you been back in Moscow?’

‘It must be over a year.’

‘You did not contact me?’