The skirt rose again. “Why don’t you help me?”
“Both of us or do you have a preference?” asked Charlie.
She shrugged. “I’m a fun person.”
Charlie jerked his head backward. “Your vagina’s been on camera now for close to five full minutes, maybe longer. You look closely you can see the fish-eye lens just above the light switch on the wall opposite you. And my sound system isn’t affected by what will have destroyed yours, once you got inside the embassy. I can’t imagine that you thought you’d get away with it. I even warned you!”
The microphone came away from her groin with a crackle of torn-apart Velcro with the second descent of the skirt. “Motherfucker!”
“Listen,” said Charlie, smiling, and nodding to Harry Fish. At Fish’s press of the replay button the room was filled with the sound of Charlie’s edited version of his earlier telephone conversation with Svetlana Modin, dominated by her voice.
Svetlana Modin: We very much appreciate your calling, Mr. Muffin. I am Svetlana Modin, ORT’s news anchor. We certainly have a lot to discuss about your security chief, Reginald Stout. I can assure you that we at ORT are jealous of our integrity and consider it the cornerstone of our journalism.
Charlie: Why don’t you come to speak to me here, at the embassy? I will see you here in one hour.
Svetlana: Okay! I agree and accept the conditions you set out earlier.
“I’m not suggesting that is precisely how you planned the edit, but it’s pretty close, isn’t it? Screened with the scenes at Sheremyetevo Airport this morning you’d have had another world exclusive, wouldn’t you?”
“You really are a motherfucker, aren’t you?”
“We’ll complete the check, shall we, Harry?”
The second microphone was between the fulsome cups of her bra, black lace to match the suspender belt. Charlie said, “Let’s not fuck about with helping you disconnect it. Just take it off.”
As she did so, quickly buttoning her blouse afterward, Svetlana Modin slumped into the interrogation chair, legs splayed but covered. “What do you want?”
“The name of your informant.”
“You know I won’t do that. I’ve got a much better idea. You give me something, I’ll give you something. If you’re as clever as you’re making yourself out to be, you’ll have the name and I’ll have the exclusive I hope to get. How’s that sound?”
“You were too obvious with the way your framed your questions, from the word go, on the telephone. But I never expected the pussy-peek.”
“You’d be surprised how often it’s worked before.”
Charlie turned to Harry Fish. “You think you could run that part of the film on which Svetlana’s proving herself to be naturally blond?”
Fish made the connection within minutes, beckoning the Russian to the small viewing screen, from which she very quickly looked up. “Very enticing, even if I say so myself. What’s your point?”
“Your international as well as national fame. If I released that footage to all your rival Moscow TV stations, as well as those throughout Europe, America, and Asia, your vagina-even with the necessarily discreet editing-would have phenomenal viewing figures, alongside the edited and unedited tape of our telephone conversation. We’d describe it as evidence of how far-up to and including blackmail and sex, with your invitation to Harry and me to take the first microphone off-you’re prepared to go to get what you want.”
“I’ve got enough to face you down, you bastard!”
“And I’ve got film of your openly offered and freely displayed crotch. Whose face is going to be redder, yours or mine?”
“It was an anonymous caller,” said the woman, tightly.
“Male or female?”
“It sounded male but it was difficult to be sure.”
“Why?”
“It was distorted through a synthesizer.”
“In Russian or in English?”
“Russian.”
“A genuine Russian speaker or with an accent?”
“There was an accent.”
“What sort of accent?”
“The synthesizer made it impossible to guess.”
“Try.”
“I can’t.”
“How soon after the press conference here?”
“An hour; maybe an hour and a half. I’d just gotten back to the studio. I’d told the switchboard to put any calls that referred to the press conference directly through to me. We’d made an appeal for callers, throughout the morning.”
“Tell me-the actual words the caller used.”
Svetlana gave another of her familiar, open-armed gestures. “I can’t remember the exact words!”
“Try,” Charlie said.
“It was something like, ‘I have information about the conference at the British embassy. The man on the far right of the platform, the one who didn’t say anything. He’s been arrested for spying. It’s to do with the listening devices that were found earlier.’ That’s as much as I can remember.”
“You’re lying,” accused Charlie. “That sort of conversation couldn’t have been within a ninety-minute time frame. Stout was still being questioned an hour and a half after the end of the conference.”
“Maybe it was longer than an hour and a half.”
“Doesn’t your recorder have a time counter?”
Svetlana’s face twitched. “I don’t remember the precise timing! There was sufficient time for me to catch the main news bulletin.”
“You went to a lot of trouble when I first called you today, telling me how important integrity and accuracy is to your station. So, set out the sequence in more detail for me. You get an anonymous call from someone whose gender you can’t even identify, because they’re using a synthesizer?”
“I asked him questions.”
“So tell me the first thing he said.”
“It was something like ‘I have information about the murder at the embassy.’ ”
Charlie made as if to speak but didn’t, not immediately. Then he said, “Let’s go back to integrity and accuracy. What did you do to substantiate the information you got from your anonymous caller, before going on air?”
Svetlana looked steadily across the space separating them, her mouth a tight line only broken when she said, “I’m getting very pissed off with this.”
“Don’t, for a single mistaken moment, imagine that I won’t do what I warned you I would if you tried to fuck me about. . as I think you’ve tried to fuck me about ever since we began talking. So you know what we’re going to do, to achieve a lot more a lot quicker. We’re going to stop now. You’re going to go back to the station and you are going to get me the tape you recorded-the original, not a copy. .”-Charlie gestured to the silent Harry Fish-“I know you’ll take a copy, but he’ll know if you’ve doctored it in any way and if you do, I’ll expose you more effectively than you’ve ever exposed yourself before. And you’re going to tell me who you called here at the embassy to confirm Reginald Stout’s detention. Is there anything I’ve said that you don’t understand or need me to explain in more detail?”
Svetlana’s face had been reddening as Charlie talked and now it was blazing. “You shouldn’t talk to me like this. . imagine you can talk to me like this!’
“Noon!” stipulated Charlie. “I’ll be waiting.”
Charlie was halfway back across the courtyard after escorting Svetlana Modin to the gatehouse, having enjoyed her furious gestures to her crew to stop filming her emergence outside, when Harry Fish came hurriedly out of the embassy, waving him back into the building.
“What is it?” demanded Charlie.
“Hear for yourself,” said the electronics expert, bustling Charlie into the elevator to the apartment where the dedicated telephones were recording incoming calls. One of Fish’s technicians was by Charlie’s personal line, and as they entered the room the man depressed the replay button.
The voice, in Russian began: “Charlie! I’ve got. .” before the room reverberated with a deafening roar.