Burt let his gaze rest on Logan for a moment, and paused to indicate the importance of what he was he going to say.
“Listen again, Logan. All of you,” he said. He swept his gaze now around the table. “If we include that as a possibility, if Vladimir brings in the Russians, their activity will be visible on the streets. Yes? And that will draw others in, from our own side. So we’ll have the agency and God knows who else crawling all over this. We need to keep it tight. Just us. Just Cougar. This must be deeply personal. It’s about a relationship, a once cruelly intimate relationship between Anna and Vladimir.”
He looked at her without expression. This was not how Burt had ever behaved with her. It was not like Burt to be anything but strenuously sensitive in the matters of her past. But now his tone of voice was almost crude, as if he wanted to sting her.
Where is he leading with this? she thought. What is the purpose?
“It’s between Anna and Vladimir now,” Burt repeated. “Under our protection, of course. That way it’s controllable. Savvy?”
He looked at Logan in particular. Logan nodded without agreement, but Burt wasn’t finished. “Once we let this operation out of our own control, we lose our momentum,” he said. “It’s vital we all understand this now. We don’t just lose our grasp on the operation, which is a company matter—Cougar’s. We will also most likely lose Mikhail. Why? They’re all waiting out there to pounce on Mikhail. To be blunt, Mikhail represents a huge victory for whoever gets him, and victory means money, government contracts, expansion, Cougar’s expansion. Mikhail is the bottom line—he is on the profit side in the profit-and-loss account. Mikhail means power. I intend Mikhail to be Cougar’s asset and Cougar’s alone. We’re the biggest game in town right now, and all the rest of them want a place at the high table.”
There was a stunned silence around the room. Mikhail had suddenly been presented as a balance sheet item, rather than a figure of national importance to America’s security.
It was Dupont who broke the silence. He spoke in the soft, rumbling tone of voice he used in matters of urgency.
“Because we don’t want Vladimir to bring in his own people by informing the Russian intelligence services here,” he said carefully, “and because we don’t want the agency responding to their subsequent presence on the streets, that doesn’t mean it’s not an option for Vladimir.”
Anna sensed for the first time that what Burt wanted was interfering with the facts. She was reminded, chillingly, of Adrian. When people got in Adrian’s way, Finn had once said, he ignored them, as if they and what they represented didn’t exist. But there was something else too in Burt’s behaviour that she couldn’t detect, which sent off an alarm in her mind. Burt wasn’t like Adrian. Be wary, an inner voice told her. Be wary of the man who behaves out of character.
In the deeper recesses of her mind, she sensed that Burt was weaving some landscape of deceit, against which the truth, when it came, would be starkly illuminated. There was some purpose behind Burt’s almost nonsensical denial of his cohort’s objections.
But she thrust her instincts away, unable to comprehend them, whether through tiredness, from the intrusive presence of others in the meeting, or simply from the need to think in the present rather than listen to her inner voices. In her logical mind, she analysed and understood the competitiveness that Burt was trying to inspire in his team. But it was an unfamiliar form of competition to her. It was more of a competitive hunger engendered against the rival powers of Cougar within America’s own intelligence community, than against Russia. How many fronts was Burt fighting on?
“And if that happens,” Burt continued, ignoring Dupont’s considered interjection, “if other firms like Cougar get in on this, then they’ll interfere. And that will simply have the effect of putting more distance between us and Mikhail than ever. We don’t want Mikhail developing into some common asset. The more competing interests there are on the ground, the greater the risk of blowing the whole thing. And then, like as not, nobody will win the prize. It is therefore a matter of national security to keep it to ourselves.”
It was Logan who volubly refused to accept Burt’s thesis.
“But that doesn’t mean it won’t happen,” Logan insisted again, his voice betraying exasperation that now bordered on incredulity. “We have to plan for Vladimir informing the Russians that he’s met Anna, even if he doesn’t. It’s madness not to!” He was looking aghast at Burt, as if unable to comprehend that Burt didn’t see, or was ignoring, this simple fact.
There was now visible confusion fluttering around the table at Burt’s wilful disregard of the most likely outcome of Anna’s meeting with Vladimir. And once again she heard the voices inside. Confusion is the aim. But for a second time, she ignored her better instincts.
Burt was now looking amiably around the long table. Marcie was staring down at her hands to avoid meeting his eye in this confrontation; Anna flickered her eyes in acknowledgement of nothing. Bob Dupont was silently fidgeting with a pencil. For a moment the scene reminded Anna of a set of courtiers in the presence of an omnipotent but mad king.
Only the dark-eyed Salvador remained still, contained in himself and apparently unaffected by Burt’s disruption of clear thinking. Whoever he was, Anna thought, he was either too far on the inside to be troubled by Burt’s curious and illogical insistence on his point, or he was observing Burt from a different position than the rest of them, a position that derived from knowledge.
As Burt rested his gaze on Logan once again, Anna felt she saw a challenge.
“Logan?”
“Burt,” Logan said, giving no ground.
There was a tense silence as Burt seemed to be gauging Logan’s opposition. But then Burt relaxed again, allowing a broad grin to spread across his face.
“Anna,” he said, and glanced down the table at her as if she were the last resort of sanity in the room. “Why don’t you give your opinion. You are the mind and heart of the operation in so many ways. Will Vladimir go to his chief? Will he really reveal that he’s met you—at this stage? Tell us what you think.”
She thought for a moment, but only in order to appear to be giving Burt some vestige of support through her opposition to him.
“Not out of personal choice—no, he won’t,” she said carefully. “You’re right about that, Burt.” But that was all the meat she could throw Burt in the circumstances. “Vladimir would rather keep it to himself, I’m sure. But don’t forget, he’ll be afraid as well. So I think we can assume he will make a report, formally or not,” she said.
“Why?”
“Because it’s less of a risk for him than concealing it,” she said. “He’ll weigh it up, see the risk attached to concealment, and then go to his boss. That’s my opinion, and it’s based on knowing a little about the way his mind works, as well as what any intelligence officer would do in the circumstances. He’ll be uncertain whether the meeting between us was under surveillance by his own people. So he won’t take the risk.”
Burt’s grin faded, and Anna saw the showman that was Burt by its very absence. She saw the ruthless core of him, the powerful ambition that had propelled him through life in the guise of good humour. Burt, like Adrian, hated to be denied. But Burt was not Adrian.
He continued to look at her, willing her on, his face an open invitation to her to spread enlightenment. She felt she had said enough, that her words were already excessive. But she nevertheless felt driven onwards, unable to listen to the voices that were telling her to stop now, to wait, not to be led by Burt. For one thing was certain. He was leading her—them?—somewhere that was too obscure for her to see clearly.