C harlie hadn’t expected the one-to-one session with the Director-General before going in front of the full committee. Or that it would carry over into Rupert Dean’s private dining room with lunch and the best Margaux Charlie had ever tasted.
Charlie decided things were very definitely on an upswing, which he wanted to continue because he had a lot to achieve. Dean’s remark that he’d done better than they could have hoped caused Charlie to work out for the first time that he’d only been in Moscow for three months. It seemed months longer and Charlie realized it had begun as an unconscious impression even on his way in from the airport and in everything that had happened since. London appeared strange, somewhere new and unfamiliar, a place he’d visited a long time ago and didn’t properly remember any more. And brighter, a clean, freshly washed brightness that made the grass and the trees positively green compared to the grimed buildings and threadbare open spaces of the Russian capital, green only in its designated parks. It showed, Charlie supposed, that he was doing what he’d been told, adjusting to Moscow being his home.
The reality of that wasn’t as inviting as it had been the last time he’d been on the seventh floor of this Embankment building. At least he’d returned to congratulations and not the threatened summary dismissal, although the Director-General made an unspecified reference to embassy difficulties, which Charlie tried to turn into his protest about Bowyer. He didn’t, obviously, do so by naming the man. Or even by making a positive complaint because he had no proof, but if Bowyer’s instructions hadn’t come from the man himself the Director-General would certainly have had to know and approve the internal spying. Instead, Charlie talked in generalities of embassy supervision and of uncertainty about chains of command superseding diplomatic seniority. And ended wondering if he’d generalized too much because instead of being as positive as he’d previously been on their telephone links the Director-General merely said it would be interesting to expand the problems with the committee.
Charlie didn’t get any better guidance on the operational suggestion he intended to push as hard as he could that afternoon. There was, in fact, a total lack of reaction. Dean was neither openly surprised nor outrightly dismissive, again called it interesting and said in his hurried voice that he looked forward to hearing the opinion of the full group about that, too.
All of whom were waiting, in the same seats as before, when he followed Dean into the office-linked conference room. Today the bald but moustached Jeremy Simpson was staring directly at him instead of at the river, which Charlie took as another sign of approval, like the smiles that came with all the nods from everyone except Gerald Williams, who gazed at him tight-faced and slightly flushed. Charlie pointedly smiled at the man, curious how much higher the colour would go before the end of the afternoon.
‘I think we’re all agreed the Moscow posting is working extremely satisfactorily,’ began the Director-General, to assenting movements from everyone apart from the financial director.
Peter Johnson tapped his dossier, as if bringing the encounter to order, and said, ‘Aren’t you interpreting a lot from the GCHQ voice pick-up?’
Proving time again, Charlie recognized: and he had to impress them probably more than he’d ever before impressed a control body. ‘There’s a positive reference to “the Zajazd Karczma”. Which is Polish, not Russian. It’s an hotel in Warsaw. I’ve been there. On the GCHQ tape there are two references to Napoleon: in fact the full name of the hotel is Zajazd Karczma Napoleonska. It’s supposed to be an historical fact that Napoleon stayed there en route to Moscow with his Grand Army. The first reference is garbled, apart from “Napoleon’s room”. The second is also incomplete – “… this Napoleon would have won
…” I think it was a joking remark: they’d just carried out the biggest nuclear robbery ever and they knew it. Whoever it was – which will be provable, timing the photographic frames to the voice recordings – was showing off: releasing the tension. I think the full phrase would have been something like “ if or had he had this Napoleon would have won…” Poland is the shortest route from Russia into the West: according to the Germans, it’s been used before to transit nuclear material. And there are over two hundred kilos still missing from the Pizhma robbery.’
‘The assumption seemed sufficient to alert the Polish and German authorities,’ supported Dean.
Dean hadn’t told him that earlier. Charlie hoped Jurgen Balg was properly appreciative of the six-hour head start he’d given the man, to get in first.
‘Why should we ignore the Russian belief that the plutonium is still in the Moscow area?’ challenged Williams.
‘You’ve already got my arguments for that,’ said Charlie, gesturing to the dossiers before each man, undecided whether or not to disclose the Arab buyer/French middleman claim from the Yatisyna interrogation. ‘It has no value in Moscow. The West is the market place.’
‘Why?’ persisted Williams, the opposition prepared. ‘Why can’t the buying and selling be done in Moscow?’
It was the obvious introduction for his new operational suggestion, but the time wasn’t right: he had to convince them more, about everything else, even confuse their thinking slightly, if he could. ‘The buying and selling is done in Moscow! And in St Petersburg and in a lot of other cities and former republics as well! Buying and selling but for delivery in the West. That’s the way the system works.’
‘What system?’
Williams had prepared himself, Charlie acknowledged. ‘The system that previous investigations have established.’
‘Nothing’s carved in stone. This robbery is different; bigger than any other. Why can’t it be moved differently from anything in the past?’
‘No reason whatsoever.’ Charlie didn’t like having to concede the admission and not because of the enmity between himself and the other man. He was agreeing that he could be wrong and he didn’t want anyone apart from Williams – whom he knew he could never convince – to believe he could be wrong about anything. ‘But from what we know about Warsaw, the probabilities are that it’s being taken – or more likely been taken – out along an established route.’
‘ Think we know about Warsaw,’ disputed Williams. ‘I’m not prepared to be as easily persuaded. Nor should anyone else.’
‘Several of us might be,’ suggested Dean, mildly.
‘What have the Polish authorities come back with?’ questioned Williams.
‘Nothing,’ conceded the Director-General.
‘And the Germans?’
‘Nothing,’ the man repeated.
‘While the Russians, following standard police investigatory procedure, have recovered several kilos and made arrests!’ said Williams.
Standard investigatory procedure he’d urged upon them, reflected Charlie. There wasn’t any benefit in pointing that out: it would look as if he was boasting – and in some desperation – because he was being out-argued by Williams. And he was being out-argued. He’d have to do very much better than this to carry the other men with him. ‘You already know what I feel about that: that I believe what was found in Moscow was a false trail.’
‘Deliberately laid?’ queried the Director-General.
‘I believe so, by those who carried out the successful robbery at Pizhma.’
‘So they knew in advance of the attempt at Kirs?’ said Simpson.
‘They had to,’ argued Charlie. ‘It’s inconceivable there would be two robberies on the same night from the same plant.’
‘Why couldn’t it have been a deliberate decoy, two separate acts of the same planned robbery?’ demanded Williams, ineptly.
‘One of those arrested inside the plant was the leader of the biggest Mafia group in the area. If the decoy had been deliberate, those taken at Kirs would have been disposable, street-level people,’ said Charlie, watching Williams’ colour rise. It was another obvious moment to talk of the Yatisyna interrogation but still he held back.
‘So one crime group, with inside knowledge of another, set that other Family up. Using their further inside knowledge of the nuclear installation itself?’ set out the Director-General.
‘That’s my assessment,’ agreed Charlie.
‘Why would they have had to have inside knowledge of the plant itself?’ asked Patrick Pacey. ‘Knowing an entry attempt was being made would have been sufficient, surely?’
Charlie shook his head. ‘They had to know the material was being moved, because of the decommissioning. And how and when and at what times it was being transported. Whoever it was at Pizhma knew it was being taken to them. All they had to do was wait and intercept it at Pizhma.’
‘Someone with a very special inside knowledge, then?’ pressed Dean.
‘Very special,’ accepted Charlie. It wasn’t a speculative road down which he wanted to go. He had no intention of offering what he believed to be the significance of akrashena: of even disclosing the importance of the word. It would seem disjointed, but Natalia’s interrogation would provide the deflection. He said, finally, ‘Those who went into Kirs believed they had several buyers already established. The arrested local Mafia leader claims to have met an Arab and a Frenchman in a Moscow club.’ He’d have to get a name from Natalia, he thought, remembering the episode with Hillary Jamieson.
There were frowned looks from the Director-General and Johnson and Williams shuffled through his documents, confirming Charlie’s impression the bundle consisted of everything he’d sent from Moscow. Williams said, ‘We haven’t been told of this!’
‘I only learned about it an hour before I left Moscow,’ lied Charlie.
‘What’s the Russian response to it?’ asked the legal advisor.
It was probably the best chance he’d get to bring the FBI into the discussion and maybe understand some of the Director-General’s enigmatic remarks, which was something else the man had refused to enlarge upon during their lunch. ‘I don’t know, now that I’m excluded because of what the Americans leaked.’
Charlie was curious at the look that passed between the Director-General and his deputy, before Dean spoke. ‘Which brings us to the reason for this meeting and the principle reason for your recall. Our level of protest.’
It’s not my principle reason, thought Charlie. He hadn’t scored sufficiently against Williams’ sniping but there didn’t seem any purpose in delaying any further: there certainly wasn’t any purpose in discussing a protest he didn’t want made. ‘I don’t see how we can argue against it. I’ve not officially been given any reason: not officially told my cooperation has been withdrawn. And we’ve got to accept that we were only ever admitted to what the Russians chose to include us. I don’t believe we’ve arguable grounds for complaint.’
‘You mean you don’t want us to protest?’ frowned the deputy Director.
Charlie breathed in deeply, readying himself: for the moment the FBI mystery had to remain unresolved. He looked to each of the men facing him, once more assessing Williams’ colour. ‘No, I don’t,’ he agreed, simply.
‘What?’
The demand came from Pacey, but everyone else was regarding Charlie with matching astonishment.
‘What the Russians initially offered appeared precisely the sort of liaison we hoped to achieve,’ allowed Charlie, cautiously. ‘But there was always a strong, underlying resentment. The American leak gave a focus for that resentment, until now I believe the Russians think sharing with us was a mistake…’
‘Are you admitting you haven’t established what you actually advised us you had?’ tried Williams, anxious not to miss any imagined opportunity.
‘The arrangement always made us dependent upon the Russians,’ said Charlie. ‘They needed us – or the Americans, to be more accurate – because of the satellite. But we had no control or practical participation in what they did or how they used whatever they got from us. We were just sources, nothing else…’
‘You weren’t supposed to be anything else!’ interrupted Wiliams, triumphantly. ‘You were specifically forbidden to seek or attempt anything else.’
‘Always Russian jurisdiction,’ reminded Simpson, reluctant though he was to support the financial controller.
‘Depending on the size of the weapon, enough plutonium has been stolen and is still unrecovered to manufacture at least forty nuclear devices,’ reminded Charlie. ‘If Moscow always leads and we always have to follow there will be other robberies as big, maybe even bigger. Russian silos and storage plants aren’t controlled. Police who aren’t totally corrupt are woefully inefficient, ineffectual and operate with antiquated methods and equipment. We have to get some agreement – an arrangement – to be proactive. It isn’t a question of national pride and nit-picking jurisdiction. It’s a question of stopping madmen – or the Mafia or warring Latin American drug cartels, all of which could easily afford the asking price – getting as many atomic devices as they want…’ Charlie hesitated, wanting them to assimilate every word, but before he could continue the eager Williams cut across him once more.
‘And Charlie Muffin has a way to stop it all!’ The attempted sarcasm was too blatantly hostile and both Dean and Pacey frowned at the man.
Here we go, thought Charlie. ‘No. Not all. Maybe only a very small percentage: maybe none at all. What I do think is that I could infiltrate the business, to a degree. I want to try to isolate the big traders, in Moscow. And their contacts at the plants and their negotiating middlemen in Europe and their buyers…’ Charlie looked directly to the legal director. ‘You’ve already confirmed law doesn’t even exist in Russia to assemble the sort of criminal intelligence I’m talking about: criminal intelligence we could supply to Moscow, to preserve that all-important jurisdiction. But perhaps more essentially criminal intelligence we could use ourselves and share with other countries outside Russia, which is, after all, where the trade really operates… where the real danger really is.’
‘How?’ prompted Dean, simply, knowing already.
‘By setting myself up in Moscow as a no-questions-asked broker, a dealer in anything and everything. There are dozens of such middlemen all over Russia already, a lot of them from the West. The Germans have mounted sting operations, although in Germany to retain their legal authority. Why can’t we? And take it one stage further, by setting ourselves up at source?’
‘You seriously think it would be possible?’ demanded Peter Johnson.
‘Yes,’ insisted Charlie. ‘Easily possible. In Moscow crime rules, not the law. It’s wide open: flaunted. If I didn’t believe I could infiltrate in some worthwhile way I wouldn’t be suggesting it.’ He shrugged. ‘And if I don’t we can kill it off as an idea that didn’t work. At least we would have tried something positive.’ And I might have satisfied a lot of personal as well as professional uncertainties, he thought.
‘Aren’t you overlooking the personal risk?’ demanded the thin-featured deputy Director.
‘Not at all,’ assured Charlie, even more insistent. ‘I’d need protection. Every one of the traders I’m talking about has his own guards: I wouldn’t be taken seriously if I didn’t have the same. Which Moscow could provide. It would represent their participation. I’m suggesting a joint operation, not usurping or overriding Russian authority.’ The nightclub confrontation had convinced Charlie how essential spetznaz would be if he persuaded these still-unconvinced men. The reflection made him think of Hillary. She’d awoken in Lesnaya without any of the first-morning-after awkwardness and made love and then breakfast as if there had been a lot of mornings-after. Charlie hoped there would be. Which wasn’t just a personal anticipation. He’d need her in what he was trying to get agreed today, if it worked out successfully.
‘What would all this cost?’ asked Williams, his face relaxing slightly in expectation.
He’d have to go for broke, Charlie knew. ‘The expense would be substantial. To fit the part I would need an impressive car, something like a Mercedes or BMW: vehicles like that are virtually tools of the trade, like having bodyguards. A Russian, not just as one of those bodyguard but as a chauffeur. An office. And I’d need to trade, in whatever I’m asked to buy or sell, to establish credibility. The department would have to be my supplier and buyer, but there’d be a financial loss: the need would always be to do the deal, not make a profit.’
‘It would cost thousands – tens of thousands even – and take months without the slightest guarantee of your ever being approached to broker any nuclear deal,’ objected Williams. ‘All we’d end up with is a warehouse full of stolen or black-market goods.’
The vehemence had gone out of the other man’s voice, judged Charlie, curiously: that last remark had been an observation, not a challenge. ‘It’s worked in Germany. In America the FBI have frequently trapped criminals – up to and including the Mafia – with exactly the sort of phoney-front operation I’m proposing. We’ve even done it ourselves, before our role was expanded. The cost would be extremely high. But I’m not suggesting we run it for months. We give it a reasonable period.’
‘There’s certainly precedents,’ encouraged Dean. ‘The problem I have with it is that it could only be done with Moscow’s cooperation. And the reason you were brought back is that they’ve withdrawn just that.’
The most difficult barrier to get around, Charlie acknowledged. ‘I’ve been rejected from a working group dealing with a specific situation at a specific level. This proposal would have to come officially and formally from here, not from me in Moscow. And if it comes from London it would obviously have to be in the same way and at the same level as you proposed my going there in the first place.’ Which he knew, from Natalia, had been to a level of the Foreign Ministry higher than her. But one to which she now appeared to have access. Which, by carefully rehearsing her, opened another channel of persuasion.
‘Going over the heads of the people you’ve been dealing with?’ accepted Johnson. ‘Which would surely increase the resentment you’ve already talked about.’
I hope so, thought Charlie; that was the major object of the exercise, although not the one he wanted them to believe. He said, ‘If those people are involved at all it will only be peripherally. So their resentment won’t matter.’
‘What has this proposal got to do with what we should really be discussing: the theft of enough plutonium to make God knows how many weapons?’ demanded Pacey.
‘Nothing, in any practical way of getting it back,’ admitted Charlie. ‘But then again, maybe a lot. The Russians are insisting what was stolen at Pizhma is still in Russia and can be retrieved. I’m not as convinced. But I’d like to be proven wrong: what I’m suggesting might just give me a lead.’
There was a shocked silence. Pacey said, finally, ‘You really think it’s already out?’
‘I think it’s a strong possibility,’ said Charlie. ‘I’m looking beyond Pizhma: looking to stop a robbery of that sort of size being repeated. Pizhma, surely, was enough!’
‘Dear God!’ said Johnson, hollow-voiced.
‘Which is a further argument – the strongest argument – to put to Moscow for their agreeing to what I’m suggesting,’ added Charlie.
‘Are the police really as corrupt as you say they are?’ asked the deputy Director, stronger voiced.
‘I think so.’
‘Then there’s the risk of the Mafias you want to infiltrate learning the whole thing is phoney?’
‘It’s a risk,’ conceded Charlie, uneasy with another admission. ‘But again, making the approach as I’ve suggested should restrict the knowledge to a limited number of people.’
‘Has anyone thought the information that enabled the Pizhma robbery could have come from the Kirs interception operation?’ demanded Jeremy Simpson.
I don’t think, I know, thought Charlie. ‘It’s a strong possibility. But it would be impossible to narrow it down. There were at least four hundred spetznaz and Militia personnel involved. Not all of them knew precisely what they were assembled for, although there was some hurried exercises. All the officers and NCOs certainly would have been aware of it.’
‘You are officially accredited to the British embassy,’ reminded Patrick Pacey. ‘I’m not comfortable politically with someone with diplomatic status setting himself up as a conduit for crime, even if it’s known about and approved by the Russian government.’
‘During the time I would be running the operation, I wouldn’t work from the embassy,’ insisted Charlie. ‘If you remember, my argument for having outside accommodation was because I might have to mix with criminals.’
‘Which means you wouldn’t be under embassy supervision,’ said Johnson.
It couldn’t have been better if it had been rehearsed, thought Charlie: it was even the word he’d used to the Director-General. ‘ Am I under embassy supervision?’
‘There has been a complaint from the Head of Chancellery,’ disclosed Pacey, the political officer.
‘I’d like to know what sort of complaint?’
‘Insubordination.’
‘Made on the day the nuclear theft became public?’ asked Charlie, expectantly.
‘Yes.’
‘I was responding to specific instructions,’ defended Charlie, cautiously, wanting the discussion to run as long as possible for him to gain as much as possible. ‘There was an urgency…’ Abruptly, in mid-sentence, Charlie didn’t continue about the time-saving benefit of giving Sir William Wilkes a written account, which was a weak part of his argument anyway. Instead, recalling his impression walking from the ambassador’s office with Bowyer, Charlie switched to concentrate specifically on time. ‘The ambassador still had several hours before the Prime Minister spoke to the House.’
It was the over-anxious Williams who responded too quickly, the ammunition for his intended attacks already set out before him and believing he’d found his next ambush. Looking up from his hurriedly consulted papers, the financial chief said, ‘Not according to the Head of Chancellery’s message…’
‘… Timed at what?’ broke in Charlie, tensed for a reluctant apology if he had been wrong the previous day.
‘Eleven in the morning, precisely,’ said Williams, smiling in anticipated satisfaction. ‘Four and a half hours, for a statement of the magnitude that the Prime Minister had to make, was totally insufficient for the Foreign Office to brief Downing Street in the detail required.’
Charlie looked around the assembled men, thinking again how much redder Williams’ already pink face was likely to become, conscious of Dean’s second frowned look at the man. He’d been lucky, Charlie accepted: hugely, wonderfully lucky in a way he’d never imagined possible. ‘I quite agree,’ he began, mildly. ‘But it would be if it’s Moscow time, three hours ahead of London. Which it will be because it’s customary – and I’m sure that custom hasn’t changed, even though our role has – to use local times on messages. So eleven Moscow time is only eight in the morning, here in London.’ He shook his head, verging on the theatrical. ‘But that creates more questions than answers. You see, I didn’t get back to the embassy until twelve-thirty Moscow time. The ambassador wasn’t even there. He was still being briefed at the Foreign Ministry…’ Charlie looked around the group, imposing the silence. ‘… So how could the Head of Chancellery complain about my insubordination in communicating direct to London instead of speaking to the ambassador first a full hour and a half before I got back to the embassy with anything to talk about?’ Gotcha! thought Charlie, although he wasn’t sure who it was in London he’d caught out, just that he’d hung Bowyer and Saxon out to dry.
Williams’ face was sunset red. None of the others looked comfortable, apart from Rupert Dean who didn’t appear discomfited at all.
‘Was the ambassador told everything when you eventually did see him?’ pressed Johnson.
Charlie did not immediately reply, uncaring if his new silence was inferred as guilt. ‘I gave the ambassador everything I transmitted to London. Bowyer was with me when I did it.’
‘Withholding nothing?’ persisted the deputy.
Again Charlie paused. This could be the moment the sky fell in on him but there was no turning back now: this was, after all, why he’d sat for half an hour after yesterday’s confrontation in the ambassador’s study, totally fabricating five folios of apparent intelligence about the Pizhma robbery before finally marking it ‘Withheld from ambassador’ and putting it into his desk drawer. Looking steadily at the deputy Director, spacing his words, Charlie said, ‘I don’t think I need remind anyone in this room of the reaction when the robbery became public knowledge: of the near hysteria that’s still going on. Throughout the Western embassies in Moscow there was a great deal of speculation, which tended to get out of hand, exaggeration piling upon hyperbole. I do not see my function to be that of spreading rumours and false intelligence. The opposite, in fact. That is why I separated information I considered unreliable. I did not want to mislead anyone here or the ambassador in Moscow…’ All the time Charlie held Johnson’s attention in the totally hushed room. ‘I kept that separated unreliable information in my embassy office to prevent rumour and gossip wrongly influencing anything the ambassador or his Head of Chancellery might communicate to London…’ His pauses were becoming practically cliche, as well as the words. ‘… Strangely – obviously one of those odd coincidences – “withheld” was the very word I wrote on the rumour analysis, to remind myself that it shouldn’t be used in any assessment…’ The final pause. ‘So no, I did not withhold anything from the ambassador that he should have seen. Only what he shouldn’t have been confused by.’
For the men whose lives had been refrigerated throughout the Cold War the atmosphere inside the conference room became glacial. Again there was a long-held look between Rupert Dean and his deputy, beside whom Williams remained puce-faced. Pacey look confused and Simpson appeared irritated.
‘I think there’s been a misunderstanding,’ suggested Dean, easily, still looking directly at Johnson. ‘A mistake, even. You were quite right, sifting the wheat from the chaff. And you were responding as instructed, by me. Which I shall tell Moscow.’
And which the man could just as easily have told him during their earlier lunch, instead of making the nebulous remark about embassy difficulties, Charlie realized, abruptly. Not even that! If Dean knew what the complaint had been – which he clearly did – there had been no need for it to be discussed at all. The man could simply have resolved it with Moscow, like he’d just undertaken to do. Charlie, too often the shuttlecock in too many bureaucratic games, accepted he’d been used again. For some reason Dean had wanted an audience, which presumably he would have manipulated if Gerald Williams and Peter Johnson hadn’t tripped over their own tongues. Charlie conceded there was a lot of speculation in that analysis but it fitted to Charlie’s satisfaction. Certainly it explained Dean’s inexplicable refusal to discuss anything in detail at lunch.
‘Perhaps we could go back to discussing…?’ started Charlie but stopped at the entry into the room of Henry Bates.
The man leaned too closely to the Director-General for Charlie to hear the exchange, offering a single sheet of paper at the same time. Dean scanned it, then looked at Charlie. ‘Agayans was arrested at a Moscow road block this morning. Shelapin has also been arrested. Another three of the plutonium canisters stolen from Pizhma were found with him.’ The man paused and then said, ‘I think we’d best adjourn to see if you can learn anything further.’
‘It’s all coming together!’ said Popov. He was at his favourite window spot at Natalia’s office but looking at her. As well as repeated praise for her interrogation of Lev Yatisyna, there had also been a commendation relayed to Popov by Dmitri Fomin at the meeting they’d just left.
‘Personal acknowledgment for both of us from the White House!’ smiled Natalia.
‘Well deserved, in your case,’ said Popov.
‘And yours,’ said Natalia, enjoying his admiration. He’d called her questioning brilliant at the meeting, when the tape had been played in front of everybody.
‘Well over ten kilos recovered now,’ said Popov.
‘I’ll interrogate both Agayans and Shelapin, of course,’ Natalia decided. She didn’t expect either to be as easy as it had so far been with Yatisyna, but now they had both Family leaders she could bounce one against the other, with Yatisyna in between.
‘You’re going to have to handle it very carefully.’
‘I can do it.’ The confidence was quickly balanced by the recollection of Charlie’s criticism. ‘There’s been a proper forensic examination, particularly on the canisters?’
‘They were marked, as having come from Kirs. The numbering tallied with that listed on the train manifest.’
‘What about fingerprints?’
Popov shrugged. ‘Ask Gusev. He’s in charge of the ground operation.’
‘I want to hit them both hard, with as much evidence as I can.’ Natalia wanted the interrogation of the two Moscow gang leaders to be as quickly productive as it had been with Yatisyna.
‘The Englishman will be proven wrong, if we get it all back in Moscow,’ said Popov.
‘According to Yatisyna there was at least one Arab buyer for what they expected to get out of the plant,’ reminded Natalia.
‘But we’re blocking it!’
It was a debatable point but Natalia didn’t intend presenting the argument. ‘We can do that if I break Shelapin.’
‘I expected Muffin to try to contact me. He’ll obviously know from the American he’s been excluded.’
‘How much longer will the American be allowed in?’ It wasn’t ignoring Charlie’s advice. She wanted to be prepared in advance for any committee debate that included a minister or the presidential aide.
Popov shook his head. ‘I personally don’t think there’s any usefulness in continuing the arrangement. He just sat and listened today.’
‘It might be better to go on with it until everything is recovered.’
The man smiled, shaking his head at her. ‘Think about it!’ he demanded. ‘Spy satellites miles high sounded impressive, but apart from making the identification of the lorries and the car easier and quicker it did virtually nothing to help the investigation.’
Natalia held back from reminding the man how much was still missing.