She was being seated as he entered. She smiled up as he joined her and said: “So you were checking I didn’t have unwanted company?”
“The alcove where the trough used to be: you were very good.”
“I was trying to impress you.”
“You knew I’d be watching?”
“As I expected you’d choose this restaurant.”
“Let’s hope it lives up to the memories.”
They took their time ordering, Charlie insisting upon celebration beluga.
“Was my call a problem?” asked Charlie.
Natalia shook her head. “We’d finished but I was still in the building, with people around. I had it on mute, so no one heard it.”
“You dumped the phone?”
“After removing the SIM card and the battery,” said Natalia, smiling at the insistence. “And I didn’t dispose of them in the same bins.”
Charlie smiled back at the gentle rebuke. “So how was your first day?”
Natalia sipped her wine, considering her reply. “Not what I expected: not that I knew exactly what to expect. There are six of us. I’m the only woman. I don’t know any of the others: three have been drafted in from St. Petersburg. There’s no chairperson. We each work on a document batch.” She paused. “Does your service operate by naming, with time, date, and location of each encounter, every potentially useful outside contact?”
Did she want a matching contribution with what she was disclosing or was it just a point of comparison? Charlie waited for them to be served before saying: “It’s universal, isn’t it?”
Natalia nodded. “That’s how we have to work. When we come to any outside name with whom Radtsic’s ever had unsupervised contact, particularly British, we’ve got to flag it as well as verbally announcing it around the table for further recognition if the name appears in someone else’s separated document batch.”
“How thick is each individual batch?”
“About a third of a meter.”
“Have you a better idea of how many other groups there are, apart from yours?”
“Approximately a dozen, as far as I can establish. But there’s an equal number, starting tomorrow, to refine the initial results. The lunchtime rumor was that at that stage the flagged names will transfer to computer analysis and comparison.”
“Is that all you have to flag up, Western-particularly British-identities?”
Natalia shook her head. “Repetitive destinations and locations, again concentrated on the West. Vacation spots, stuff like that.”
“The checking and cross-checking will take months,” estimated Charlie.
“I know.”
“How much cross-referencing did your particular group assemble today?”
“Twelve at the end of the day.”
Natalia was talking on the turned spy’s psychological profile, Charlie recognized: once the initial dyke breaches, the tidal wave of disclosures follows. “The analysis won’t take months. It’ll take years, even computerized.”
“How long it’ll take isn’t the point,” said Natalia. “It’s the documentation itself.”
“What about it?” Charlie frowned.
“It’s all duplicated, no originals, although from its font and typeface it was created on a typewriter, not a computer.”
“Just your duplicates or everybody’s?” queried Charlie.
“Everybody’s. Do you understand my point?”
“Elana and Andrei Radtsic were detained less than forty-eight hours ago,” calculated Charlie. “Allowing a generous twelve for the connection to be established between Paris and Moscow, that gives thirty-six hours for the Kremlin to discover Radtsic had gone. What’s your estimate of Radtsic’s combined KGB and FSB service?”
“Nearly thirty years,” responded Natalia, at once.
“We’ve no way of knowing if everything has been duplicated,” cautioned Charlie.
“All the other examining groups are handling copies,” said Natalia.
“Then you’re right,” finally agreed Charlie. “It’s impossible for them to have photocopied a thirty-year archive in just thirty-six hours,”
“So what’s going on?” asked Natalia.
“I don’t know,” replied Charlie. “It’s not our problem. When’s Sasha back?”
“The day after tomorrow.”
“Thursday,” identified Charlie. “Are you working weekends?”
“Of course.”
“I’ll have everything before then. We’ll go for Sunday.”
After several moments, Natalia said: “How?”
“The safest way. I haven’t yet chosen which.”
“Sasha will know it’s not a holiday: that it’s still term time.”
“Don’t say anything to her until Saturday. And only then that it’s a surprise and that the school has agreed. And don’t let her see any of her friends, after you’ve told her.”
“You’ll be with us, won’t you? I won’t be going alone?”
Charlie was unsettled by her complete reliance. “That’s the idea, isn’t it: that at last we’ll all be together?”
“I hope so: hope so very much.”
Charlie wished there weren’t so much uncertainty in her voice. “This is probably the last full time we’ll have together.”
Natalia checked her watch. “I could come back to the hotel for two hours.”
“I’d hoped you could.”
“I want you with me when we go, Charlie: I want to know you’re somewhere close,” she suddenly blurted. “I don’t want it to be just Sasha and me.”
“From Sunday you’re never going to be by yourselves, not ever again.”
It was just after nine when they left the restaurant. In London it was still only six thirty and everyone was still working.
“There’s got to have been a leak.” Monsford was striding up and down in front of the panoramic river view, more angry than nervous. From beside the man’s desk, Rebecca Street had already indicated the sound apparatus was inactive.
“How can there have been a leak?” demanded James Straughan. “Jacobson and Charlie have never met and Jacobson categorically denies he said anything to Halliday, who wasn’t ever involved until the last minute, upon your orders, which were also that Halliday worked blind.”
“It’s not difficult to work out,” calmed Rebecca. “We’re misleading ourselves. Charlie Muffin can’t have had any reason for getting off the Amsterdam plane, apart from distrusting his own shadow. Now he’s got a reason, after the publicity over the seizure of Elana and Andrei. Charlie’s a consummate professional who’s learned and practiced ten times more than anyone ever learns at training school. He’ll have worked out that we’re involved with the two Russian nationals in France at the same time as we’re supposed to be part of the extraction of his wife and child.”
“Elana and Andrei haven’t been identified and there’s been no publicity that Radtsic’s already here!” rejected Monsford, slumping back into his chair.
“People like Charlie Muffin, who trusts no one, can multiply two plus two into the national debt!” argued Rebecca. “What little is publicly known is more than enough to spook Charlie Muffin from coming within a million miles of any of our people.”