Natalia completed the bottle preparation, leaving it to cool until Alexandra awoke. To what would Eduard be dismissed, she asked herself, brutally. Nothing, she knew. No home, no job, no monetary support. Nothing. So he could be one of the destitutes on the streets of Moscow, one of those shuffling, head-bent, sunken-cheeked men whom she drove by each day but never properly saw, or bothered to see, not thinking of them as individual people at all.
Should she agonize about someone who had treated her as badly as Eduard had done: and who would doubtless treat her as badly in the future if they restored contact? It was difficult for her not to. But she didn’t want Eduard intruding into her life any more. Biologically he was her son, maybe. But nothing more. Therefore hardly enough. She had her own territory: her own peace. She was finally settled. She was in charge of an entire Directorate – perhaps the most important Directorate – of the reformed Russian security agency. Untouchable. Secure. There was a quick qualification: untouchable and secure providing she did not give Fyodor Tudin any opportunities. Which she had no intention of doing. And most of all she had Alexandra – always shortened, of course, to Sasha.
A peaceful, settled existence, she determined, letting the reflection run on in a familiar direction. What she didn’t have, she couldn’t have: absolutely impossible. And because it was impossible it was easier to live with than her dilemma over Eduard. Not true, she denied herself once more. Not easier to live with: easier to confront because there was no possibility of her ever seeing Charlie again. The baby murmured and Natalia got the cooled bottle before picking her from the cot to feed.
‘Wonder what Daddy’s doing, Sasha? He’d love you very much, if he knew. Be very proud. I know he’d be proud. He told me once he had always been frightened of having a baby but I don’t think he would be frightened if he knew about you. No one could be frightened of you.’
Natalia looked up from the contented baby, out into the darkening night enveloping Moscow. How would Charlie feel, knowing he had a baby daughter?
John Gower picked up the telephone expectantly on the second ring, smiling in anticipation.
Marcia didn’t make any greeting. She just said: ‘I’m missing you.’
‘I’m missing you, too.’
‘Enough to set up house, so we don’t have to be apart at all when I’m in London?’
Gower hesitated. ‘You win.’
‘It isn’t a game. Or a battle.’
‘I can always kick you out, if we don’t get on.’
‘Who said we’ve decided on your place?’
‘You can always kick me out,’ he said. He had to learn how to be permanently with someone, just as he had to adjust to everything else.
‘How’s the course?’ asked Marcia.
‘OK.’ His pause was longer than before.
‘What sort of course is it?’
Another hesitation. ‘Difficult to define, really. I suppose it’s to see how well I’ve learned everything else.’ Gower wasn’t at all sure that was correct, but it was the best he could offer.
‘What are the people like?’
It was obvious she would expect there to be a classroom group. ‘Odd,’ he said, honestly, giving his personal judgement on his instructor with shuffling shoes.
‘Like them?’
‘Too soon to say.’ He’d done what had occurred to him at the first meeting and was apprehensive now at the outcome. Whatever, he knew he’d made the right decision. ‘How’s it going in Manchester?’
‘I’ve had two invitations to dinner tonight. One guy has a gold tooth and claims he owns a Rolls Royce.’
‘Accepted either?’
‘Do you want me to?’
‘If I said no it would mean I didn’t trust you. As I do trust you, I don’t think it’s my decision.’
‘But do you want me to?’ she persisted.
‘No.’
‘I didn’t think you would. That’s why I refused both.’
It had taken Charlie days of trying to catch the same downward elevator as Julia Robb. She showed no sign of recognition.
‘I’ve been meaning to thank you for the other day.’
For what?’
‘Miller keeps his intercom live, so he can hear what happens in the outside office, doesn’t he? Could have been embarrassing for me. So thanks.’
She gave no confirmation but she did smile, very briefly.
‘I think I owe you a drink,’ pressed Charlie.
‘I thought we’d covered all this already?’
‘For the benefit of the open intercom.’
Julia smiled more broadly. ‘Just for a drink?’
Charlie looked open-faced at the joint personal assistant for both the Director-General and his deputy. ‘What else?’
‘I’ll think about it.’
Sometimes the old tricks were the best, reflected Charlie.
Eight
For long periods – as long as a total of six months on one occasion – Charlie’s mother had retreated from any reality, unreachable in total catatonia. It had all changed with the development of new drugs. Now she was invariably brightly alert, chattering constantly, although the senility was still well advanced. The largely one-sided conversations were confused and disjointed, the names of the men of whom she boasted so proudly more imagined than properly remembered any more. That afternoon she’d identified Charlie’s father by two different names, neither of whom he believed responsible for his conception and twice called him William instead of Charlie. He remained at the nursing home for an hour, leaving with the usual assurance to come again soon, which he repeated at the matron’s office on the way out, without stipulating a positive date: it was automatic for him to avoid creating the most innocent of patterns, even in something as mundane as visiting a bedridden mother suffering Alzheimer’s Disease. It was automatic to check the car park for occupied, waiting vehicles when he left. Abruptly he stopped, just as he immediately afterwards consciously avoided the instinctive pursuit check on the twisted and curved road leading from the home.
He didn’t have to bother any more. He was no longer active: no longer an operational officer who had always to be alert to everything around him, never able properly to relax. Charlie accepted he was effectively retired: like those sad, mentally eroding people he’d just left, sitting motionless in chairs, living in yesterday.
Charlie took the hire car out on to the main road, coming to the big decision of the day, where to have lunch. There was the Stockbridge hotel which didn’t let rooms to the general public ahead of one of Britain’s most exclusive fishing clubs. Or a country pub further on. Or wait until he got to London. A country inn, he decided. He still hadn’t found anywhere he really liked around the new flat in Primrose Hilclass="underline" all wine bars and mobile phones that never rang. Charlie had been much more at home south of the Thames: like an animal, knowing its own warren. Denied him now though, even for a casual return visit to the Pheasant with the best pork pies in London, beer from the wood and Islay malt whisky always available.
Was it still denied him? Hadn’t he already decided he didn’t have to bother, no longer being operational? Yes. No. Confused self-pity, Charlie decided, annoyed. Of course he had to stay away, even for a casual pub visit. There was no doubt – there was proof!. – the Russians had located the Vauxhall flat, in the targeting operation that had included Natalia and which he still didn’t understand: whatever their failed objective and the now much changed circumstances of Moscow, he couldn’t go back.
The inn was alongside the river on which the exclusive club had its rods and which still had some of the best fishing in England, despite – ironically – the pollution of the bankside fish farms breeding trout the size of small whales. The menu insisted the salmon was locally caught so Charlie took a chance. The beer was good – not as good as the Pheasant, but good enough – and he got a seat at an outside table, overlooking the hurrying, insect-swarmed river.