Natalia used her private line to dial Charlie’s direct embassy number, anxious for his reassurance, wincing when she finally got his voice mail. She didn’t leave a message.
She was sitting contemplatively at her desk when the announcement came from Nikulin’s office that the afternoon’s meeting was being extended, as requested by the deputy interior minister. Natalia was sure she had sufficient evidence to confront those trying to destroy her, but following Charlie’s dictum, she wished she had more. It wasn’t until Lestov’s arrival that she considered she had it. Still a long way to go, but the route was better lit.
At Miriam Bell’s entrance at least twenty male heads turned at the same time, as if attached to the same wire. Charlie sat facing the door of the Metropole Hotel’s Minsk Restaurant and didn’t have to make the effort but thought he might have, just for the fun of it, if he’d had to. Charlie wasn’t sure if the smile was all for him or had to be shared with her awareness of the effect she knew she was having throughout the room.
He said, “You ever get into any trouble you couldn’t handle?”
“I hope I don’t with you.” She wore a shimmering green silk trouser suit over a white silk blouse and he didn’t think there was a bra. Her hair was bobbed much shorter than in Yakutsk and all the swelling had gone from her face.
“I don’t mix business with pleasure.”
“I still believe what I said on the plane, that you would if it wasnecessary, and I could be sad you don’t think it’s necessary now,” she said, nodding acceptance to the vodka he offered from the carafe already on the table. “But that wasn’t what I meant, which I think you knew. So we really do need to have this lunch, don’t we?”
As they touched glasses, Charlie said, “Who the fuck were the Men of Stone?”
Miriam shook her head in matching incredulity. “The old guy’s name was Peters. Don’t know his first name. Never got one at all for the second one. Peters only dealt with the ambassador, who decreed every wish was our-and anybody else’s-command. I guess State Department, God and presidential executive order is a pretty powerful combination.”
“The younger one wasn’t State,” insisted Charlie, positively. “I’ve met people like him before: recognize them as a type.”
“Peter’s bodyguard,” identified Miriam. “Saul says State was taking seriously all the kidnapping and killing that happens here in Moscow.”
Bodyguards got in the way of trouble or caused it, decided Charlie: they didn’t sit in on what might-but hadn’t been-sensitive debriefings. “Peters really that important?”
“You wouldn’t believe how the ambassador and head of chancellery and Freeman were shitting themselves. Practically a hygiene problem.”
“Why the act?”
“The way he is, apparently. Although I don’t know how Saul knows.”
Miriam’s responses were too ingenuous to be prepared, but his warning feet were throbbing to the beat of drums. “Where are they now?”
“Gone.”
“Quite an experience.” Was it over? he wondered.
“Haven’t we got other things to talk about?” demanded Miriam.
“Could be,” encouraged Charlie.
“We’re working against each other, Charlie! Which doesn’t make any sense. You made it very clear in Yakutsk you don’t like company. I didn’t set out to do any deals, either. It’s going to be my tit in the wringer if this goes wrong. However it goes wrong.”
Charlie poured more vodka for both of them and said, “Let’sorder, after a speech like that.” When they had-Miriam with hurried disinterest-he said, “Wrong like failing to solve it or wrong like Peters would judge to be wrong?”
Her smile this time was ruefully admiring, at Charlie’s perception. “We got a knee-jerk president, with ratings in free fall. Without talking to anyone except his own reflection in the mirror, to get the wet eyes right, he declares an unknown, wrong-place lieutenant to be a national hero whose death will be avenged. And then has to be told the reason for his very own Superman being where he was could be a monumental, fucked-up embarrassment, even after all these years. And that he’s tied the rock around his own neck and could be dragged down by it faster than he was already dropping.”
Charlie exhausted the vodka with the arrival of their caviar and ordered another carafe. “So if the reason for your guy being in Yakutsk doesn’t qualify for the Arlington Cemetery burial, it’ll be interred with him to remain the great unsolved mystery?”
“It is going to be Arlington,” confirmed Miriam.
“Did Peters stop in England on his way here?” asked Charlie. It looked as if London and Washington were thinking with a single mind, London with perhaps more reason, if he was right about a second Briton being involved. He’d never liked being part of diplomatic house-tidying: the dirt always had a habit of bulging the carpet under which it was swept.
“According to Saul, he wanted to get as much as he could here first,” said Miriam. “He’s doing it on his way back.”
“Seems like it’s all being settled at a much higher level than us.”
Miriam shook her head. “According to Saul, who’s busy digging himself out from under, Peters didn’t like your meeting. Doesn’t think you told the whole truth and nothing but the truth. And sometimes-too many times-what gets fixed at the top fucks up on its way down because no one has the full game plan. Won’t want to play it, even. Especially someone who doesn’t like working in tandem in the first place.”
“This approach your idea or Peters, via Saul?”
“Mine.” She waited for her trout to be served. Not looking at him-squirting lemon onto her fish-she said, “You think that scrap left in the trouser band label is enough to identify your guy?”
Charlie laughed outright. “Why didn’t you call me a sneaky bastard?”
“I just have. I wanted to choose my time to trade.”
“What’ve you got?”
“A photograph. Or rather a piece of a photograph, like it’s been cut in half because he didn’t want the other piece. He’s in uniform, in front of a building that could be a bank or a college: it’s very big. He’s with a girl. She’s maybe thirty. Blond. There’s nothing written on it to say who she is or where it was taken.”
“You make a copy before it went to Washington?”
“I back up everything,” negotiated Miriam. “I have your word about the trouser label?”
“My word,” promised Charlie.
Miriam took the copy from her purse and slid it across the table to him, with the supposed duplicate of her Yakutsk report to Washington. Charlie pocketed the envelope but studied the picture for several moments before putting that away.
“You think there’s enough of the background for your people to identify?”
“They hope so.”
“I watched you pretty carefully when you went through the clothes,” said Charlie, curiously.
“Like I watched you,” reminded Miriam. She put her hand to her waist. “There was a small pocket, just here. For tickets or small change, I guess. The picture must have been important to him. It was all by itself in a little plastic wallet.”
“Anything else?”
“You were right about the spectacles, which you can see he’s wearing in the photograph. According to our laboratory guys in Washington, he suffered severe astigmatism: particularly bad unequal cornea curvature. Whatever he did or knew, he was in uniform for a very special reason.”
“What about the tweezers and the magnifying glass?”
“Tweezers are medical. There’s no maker’s mark, which is a bastard, but our forensic guys think the magnifying glass was custom-made by optical specialists.”
They both finished eating at the same time and for several momentslooked steadily at each other across the table.