Bomb Grade Read Free Page A

his fascination with the river to produce a brief, functional smile when Dean listed Jeremy Simpson as the department’s legal advisor. The red-faced man emerged last, as political officer Patrick Pacey.
    Charlie’s mind was way beyond the Director-General’s staccato delivery. Whatever this meeting was about, it certainly had nothing to do with his dismissal or enforced early retirement. What then?
    The Director-General made another ineffective foray into the pushed aside file, abandoning the search as quickly as he had begun it to rotate his spectacles. Closer, Charlie saw one of the earpieces was padded with surgical tape for comfort. Tapping them against the discarded dossier, Dean said, ‘We’re in times of change.’
    â€˜Yes, sir’
    â€˜You think you can change?’
    â€˜Yes, sir.’ Into a pumpkin if I have to, Charlie thought.
    â€˜How would you feel about living permanently abroad?’
    â€˜Where, exactly?’
    â€˜Moscow.’
    Natalia Nikandrova Fedova rarely thought about him any more. When she’d finally accepted he was going to go on failing her it had been a positive effort to keep him out of her mind but it had become easier as the months passed. But it was unavoidable today. Natalia smiled, the sadness of the past dimming her all-absorbing love of the present, as she watched Sasha whoop and scream with the excitement of opening each new birthday gift. Maybe he didn’t know about Sasha. Natalia had convinced herself she’d found the way to tell him; made up her mind he would understand because he was so very good at the business they were both in – the best she’d ever known, far better than she could have ever been – and hated him for not suddenly arriving, unannounced, as she had sometimes fantasized he would. It shouldn’t have needed a child to bring him back if he’d loved her.
    The KGB had still existed, although uncertainly, when she’d tried to reach him: if she hadn’t headed its First Chief Directorate it would have been impossible for her to have tried at all. It didn’t exist any more: not, at least, by name or with the omnipotence with which it had once operated. But his service did and there would still be regulations against his coming to Moscow. But knowing him as well as she believed she did, Natalia knew regulations would not have stopped him. So if she had reached him there was only one conclusion: he didn’t want to see her again. Ever. And wasn’t interested in his child. She’d made a mistake, like she’d made a mistake with the first man to let her down, which she’d compounded by marrying him. Not a good comparison, she told herself, as she had on many previous memory trips. Her second trusting attempt had for all the obvious impossible barriers stopped short of marriage, although that had once been another fantasy, and had most certainly not been the disaster of the first. She had Sasha around whom her life revolved and with whom she was complete, without the need for anyone or anything else.
    Or was she?
    As if on cue, Aleksai Popov came into the Leninskaya apartment, the brightly wrapped package high above his head for the game Sasha recognized at once, leaping and jumping around his legs in the futile attempt to reach it before he knelt, solemnly to offer it to her.
    It was a battery-operated cat that waddled and emitted a purring growl and got the biggest scream so far from Sasha who, unprompted, threw her arms around the man for the thank-you kiss.
    Popov disentangled himself to come up to Natalia, kissing her lightly on the cheek: they were still very careful in front of the child.
    â€˜That was far too expensive,’ she said. It would have come from one of the Western-goods shops.
    â€˜I love her. Think of her as mine.’
    Natalia was unsure whether or not to be glad of the remark. Sasha hadn’t asked any questions yet but it wouldn’t be much