Brian Freemantle - Bomb Grade

‘A rising star,’ assured the FBI Director. ‘Someone of whom you can be rightfully proud.’

‘I am, sir, I am. Mrs Fitzjohn will be particularly gratified to hear it.’ Referring to his wife in the third person and never in public by her christian name was another affectation. ‘Natural that she should be worried, though.’

‘Quite natural,’ agreed Fenby. He’d had reservations posting Kestler to somewhere like Moscow and certainly with the specific nuclear brief, but Fitzjohn had insisted his wife’s nephew get a high-profile assignment.

Fitzjohn demanded a T-bone bleeding from exposure. Fenby ordered his customary salad and a second bottle of water.

‘Mrs Fitzjohn is a little worried, I have to say, about some of the things she’s hearing about Moscow. Lot of crime there: people getting killed.’

Only someone with Fenby’s committed dedication to remaining in power could have greeted that statement with a straight face. ‘I think you can tell Mrs Fitzjohn that I am taking every precaution to ensure James’s safety. Not only that: to ensure his career in the Bureau, too.’ The British approach had been very fortuitous, although Fenby knew very few directors, perhaps only Hoover himself, would have realized every advantage as quickly as he had.

‘I’m extremely grateful to hear that, sir. Extremely grateful.’

Which is what Fenby wanted everyone in positions of power or influence in Washington to be, extremely grateful to him. Like the CIA would be grateful to him if he had to sacrifice the Englishman who had caused them so much embarrassment, all those years ago.

That afternoon he memoed the Bureau’s Scientific Division at Quantico to ensure they had a sufficiently qualified nuclear physicist, if the need for one arose. He didn’t expect there to be, but John Fenby left nothing to chance. Which was why he called Peter Johnson, in London, too.

‘How were lessons?’

‘All right.’

‘What did you learn?’

‘Numbers.’

‘How many?’

‘Can’t remember.’

‘You’re supposed to remember.’

‘Why?’

‘You go to school to make you clever.’

‘Are you clever?’

‘Sometimes.’

‘Why not all the time?’

‘People make mistakes.’

‘Do you make mistakes?’

‘I try not to.’

‘Why?’

‘Because it’s important not to make mistakes.’

‘Do people get angry?’

‘If I make bad mistakes, yes.’

‘Why?’

‘Because it upsets them.’

‘Do you get angry if people make mistakes?’

‘Sometimes.’

‘I’ll try not to make mistakes.’

‘So will I,’ said Natalia, a promise to herself as much as to Sasha.

T he nuclear weaponry leakage from Russia and its former satellites worried Barry Lyneham far more than it worried most other people involved in its attempted prevention and for entirely different reasons.

Lyneham had had a good and fortunate career, virtually unblemished by any serious errors and certainly none he hadn’t been able to disguise or dump on someone else, and he’d seen his Moscow appointment as the FBI section head as the smooth glide to contented, well-pensioned retirement for which the Florida condo with the boat slip at the back had already been bought, with the game-rigged cruiser ready for delivery when he gave the word.

He’d worked out way ahead of anyone else that Moscow was a snip, the best thing that could have happened to him. All right, it was a shitty, bad-weather, nothing-works place to live, somewhere he wouldn’t have even settled his mother-in-law, but that wasn’t the point. The point was that in the eyes and ears and opinion of Washington, Moscow was still the Cold War, high-profile posting that carried with it an automatic Grade 18 – with the fancy title of senior executive officer – with none of the Cold War embarrassment risks now there wasn’t a Cold War any more.

Until the organized crime motherfuckers emerged from the woodwork, that is. And realized the profit trading nuclear shit to every Middle East towel head with ambitions to replace Gary Cooper with a mushroom cloud in their remake of High Noon. Then it had become a whole new ball game altogether, top of the agenda, Director-to-President breakfast-table stuff and there wasn’t anything higher profile than that.

James Kestler’s appointment was another worry for Lyneham, which would have surprised a lot of people if he’d admitted it, which of course he didn’t. On the face of it, the specific, named assignment removed the personal career danger to Lyneham from any foul-up.

Or would have done, if Kestler hadn’t had the pull of being related to the wife of one of the most powerful men, maybe even the most powerful man, in Washington. Which was a bigger bastard than nuclear smuggling as far as Lyneham was concerned. There’d been the predictable crap from Fenby that Kestler was just another FBI agent, like everybody else, and shouldn’t get any special favours. But Lyneham didn’t believe that any more than he believed in virgin birth or that there was good in every man.

And Kestler was just the sort of prematurely promoted smart-assed son-of-a-bitch to screw up. He was only thirty years old, five years out of the academy, and rode so gung-ho into every situation it was inevitable he was going to shoot himself in not just one but both feet. And sooner rather than later, thought Lyneham, only half-listening to the younger man so full of pent-up energy he strode about the office when he talked. Lyneham would have thought the five miles the silly bastard jogged every morning, beside that part of the inner Moscow peripherique close to the US embassy, would have been enough.

‘Sit down, for Christ’s sake. My neck aches following you about’ Being the Speaker’s relation didn’t spare Kestler from being bawled out: Lyneham sometimes got relief from it.

Kestler sat, reluctantly. His left leg kept jigging up and down, as if he were keeping in time with something. ‘So what do you think?’

‘I think the Brits decided it was serious and important enough to appoint their own man, like we did.’

‘But this guy!’ exclaimed Kestler, who glowed with the health he strove so hard to achieve, pink faced and hard bodied. He kept his fair hair in a tight crew cut and wore jeans in the office, like he was doing now, which Lyneham allowed although he knew Edgar J. Hoover, in whose reign he’d joined the Bureau, would have gone apoplectic at the thought. But then Hoover had his own strange way of dressing out of office hours.

Lyneham glanced at the FBI file on Charlie Muffin faxed from Washington that morning. ‘Quite a track record.’

‘Track record! How the hell has he ever survived?’

That was a question that intrigued Lyneham far more than the litany of Charlie’s misdemeanours, what he’d done to the CIA Director heading the list. Any guy who’d hung on – lived, even – through all that had to have a very special respect for his own ass and if he was going to work with Kestler he could be a very useful brake on the idiot’s over-the-top-and-at-’em enthusiasm. Against which clashed the unarguable logic that the guy had to be one hell of an ornery bastard to have taken all the risks he had in the first place. On balance, Lyneham decided the arrival of Charlie Muffin was an additional cause for concern. ‘I guess he’s good.’

‘How close am I going to have to work with him?’

Lyneham gestured to what had come from Washington. ‘In the same sack is what they want.’

‘How do you feel about that? You’re chief here.’

Lyneham shifted uncomfortably at the reminder of ultimate responsibility. ‘We’re talking doomsday and Armageddon, son. If Washington want you joined at the hip, I’ll do the stitching myself.’