Now it was Irena who paused, arranging her words. “He told me he was going to do a deal. That he held all the cards and that they didn’t have any alternative but to agree to whatever he asked.” The woman gave another humorless laugh. “But they did have an alternative, didn’t they?”
Avoid the word blackmail, Charlie warned himself. “Ivan was going to deal, bargain, to keep you both comfortable, for the rest of your lives after you got married?”
“Yes,”
“Because he’d learned something politically sensational?”
“Yes.”
“But he didn’t tell you what?”
“No.”
Charlie was unsure which or what to offer next from his mental selection. “Neither the KGB nor the FSB ever discovered you and Ivan were together, for all these years?”
Irena shifted, uncomfortably. “No, they never did.”
“You never lived together? Had the same address?”
Irena stared into her empty brandy glass. “We were going to, of course, after we got married. Ivan said that to do so before wouldn’t be safe: that we’d compromise ourselves if we set up home together.”
She was lying-lying badly-and Charlie was sure he knew why. “Ivan was already married, wasn’t he, Irena?”
“Only on paper. There were no children. It was over years ago, before Cairo even.”
“His wife wasn’t in Cairo with him, was she? She was kept back here, in Moscow. And again when he was in Afghanistan.” Unless husband and wife were both KGB, it had been standard KGB operational procedure to hold spouses hostage in Russia against overseas defection. In the case of husband and wife, their children were detained under the guise of receiving a better education than would have normally been available.
“No. She was always here.”
“Which was why you couldn’t visit him, when he was repatriated from Afghanistan, wasn’t it? It was his wife who was able to visit and his wife to whom he went home when he was finally and fully recovered?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know if she’s been hurt, killed even, after Ivan was murdered?” Whoever killed him would have torn apart the house or apartment in which they’d lived.
The hoarse-voiced woman sniggered. “The first mistake in your grand deduction! She died, two months ago. She’d had cancer for years. That’s why Ivan wouldn’t divorce her. . abandon her, even though we’d been together in every other way for so long. He was a good man: intended to make sure she was comfortable from the money he was going to get.”
Could a potential blackmailer be a good man? If Ivan had stayed with a terminally ill wife and undergone all the misfortune than he and his mistress had suffered? “But officially, on all the records and registers, Ivan’s address is where his wife lived?”
Irena nodded, not speaking.
“So you must have it, Irena! Whatever it was that Ivan found among the raw files and smuggled out of the Lubyanka, knowing its significance. Yours was the obvious-the only-place where it could be hidden.”
Irena began to cry at last but soundlessly, without any sobs, tears just coursing down her face, oddly spreading out to wash completely over her scarred left cheek.
“You know more, Irena,” directly challenged Charlie. “And I need more, properly to understand. If I don’t, everything else you’ve told me is meaningless.”
28
Charlie believed he now understood a lot of Irena’s topsy-turvy behavior but just as quickly-and positively-decided it would be a bad mistake openly to challenge her further. If he was right-as he was sure he was-the prize, incomplete though it might be, was very close now.
“I think we are beginning to understand each other?” he started out, cautiously.
Irena shrugged, not replying.
Not a good start. “You do trust me, don’t you?”
With another shrug she said: “Having got this far I don’t think I’ve got any other option.”
Minimally encouraging, but only just, Charlie thought: but he hoped she realized how accurate she was. “Certainly there’s no one else who guarantees your safety as I do. But is that all you set out to achieve, Irena, apart from getting those who killed Ivan? Or is there something more?”
She had finally begun looking fully at him but now she turned away. It was difficult to tell, because of her skin discoloration, but Charlie thought she was blushing. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“It’s not a criticism,” Charlie said, taking a chance.
“I still don’t know what you mean.”
The advantage was slipping away from him. “Ivan was good, wasn’t he? Apart from his expertise in languages he was a very good, very competent, intelligence officer?”
“Everything would have been different, better, if he hadn’t been hurt as he was in Afghanistan: losing his arm and having to undergo so many operations.”
“I know that,” sympathized Charlie. “You-and Ivan-had more bad luck than most people suffer. But as good as he was, Ivan misjudged things at the end, didn’t he?”
“Do you think I don’t realize that now!” she flared.
It wasn’t the best opening but he had to take it. “Of course I understand that you recognize it now. And I’m glad you have. Ivan couldn’t by himself do what he thought he could, no matter how good he was. You most certainly couldn’t, not all alone as you are. You’ve done the right thing-the safest thing-coming to me. And I really do understand.”
“I’m embarrassed,” she said, suddenly. “Embarrassed and ashamed.”
“Why should you feel either?” said Charlie, soothingly. She was definitely flushed. It wouldn’t-or needn’t-be long now.
“It was the people who killed Ivan who should have to pay, no one else.”
He had to steer everything the way he wanted: in her reluctance, Irena was making things more awkward than they needed to be. “How much was Ivan going to ask for?”
“I don’t know,” admitted Irena. “A lot, I think, because of how sensational he thought it was. He had the key: knew the full story.”
“How much were you going to ask, if you’d got to them instead of coming to me?”
She looked away again. “Do you despise me-think I’m a fool-for imagining I could take over: get the money that Ivan believed he could to set us up, as he thought he could?”
“I’m not going to risk the trust I hope I’ve now got with you by lying,” said Charlie. “I don’t despise you, for imagining you could still do a deal for enough money to get you out of where and how you are here, now. Particularly having lost Ivan. But I do think you were foolish, believing that you could succeed where Ivan failed. And you don’t have to feel embarrassed or ashamed in hoping that I’ll pay for whatever information it is that you’re hiding. There! You didn’t even have to ask me.”
“Could you. . can you. . I mean-”
“I know what you mean,” cut off Charlie. “And I won’t lie to you about that, either. I don’t know if-or how much-money I might be able to arrange for you because I don’t know what you’ve got to sell. But I will make you a promise-and you know I keep my promises-that if it is as sensational as Ivan insisted it to be, I will do my best to get you as much as I can.”
“Thank you,” she said, clearly uncomfortable despite Charlie’s insistence that she had no reasons to be. “Thank you very much.”
So far so good, thought Charlie: correct analysis all the way. He had to ensure it went on. “Now I’ve got to see what it was Ivan found and hid with you, haven’t I?”
It was yet another of the Brezhnev-era apartments that still disfigure Moscow like the last decaying teeth in an old man’s mouth, yellowed and black-stained by neglect. The vestibule stank of piss and shit and the graffiti-daubed elevator was out of order, doubtless rusted and clogged by more of both. The graffiti, and lavatory use continued up the stairs and apart from the normal protest from his feet Charlie was glad he only had to climb three flights. The inside of Irena’s apartment was in total contrast to its exterior. The entrance hall gleamed from its obvious constant polishing, as did the living room table and chairs and glass cabinet that displayed its prized foreign travel collection of wine and cocktail glasses.