Kings of Many Castles

4

The naming of traitor’s son George Bendall was to bring a very changed world-some changes predictable, some not-to Charlie’s door and for the first time in a permanently precarious life Charlie could rarely, if ever, remember the uncertainty he felt sitting in his river view office awaiting the first approach.

Natalia’s giving him to within thirty minutes the timing of the official announcement ended, as far as Charlie was concerned, the futile pretense of keeping their professional lives entirely separate. Charlie’s argument that morning had been that this attempted assassination needed their personal cooperation, but Natalia had equally insisted there should always be the mitigating defense of their never having colluded, which no tribunal would or could ever accept.

Charlie’s confusion was not being sure where, if anywhere, it left he and Natalia. They both recognized the answer to the problem. It would, quite simply, be for one of them to quit their conflicting jobs. Which wasn’t in any way simple. To both such a sacrifice was unthinkable. There was nothing else Charlie could do. Wanted to do. Was able to do. And he knew-as Natalia knew-that what was already stretched to near breaking point between them would snap beyond repair within weeks of Charlie becoming a house-husband, in title if not in legal fact.

Which put the onus on Natalia, upon whom the onus had far too often and far too heavily already been imposed in their uneven relationship, a burden Charlie readily recognized, just as he recognized her reservations after so much forgiveness and so many allowances.

She’d accepted as professional his first deceit, convincing her when she’d been assigned his KGB debriefer that his phoney operation-wrecking defection to Moscow was genuine. In those first, getting-to-know each other weeks and months she’d have turned himover to face trial as a spy if he hadn’t managed to do so. Their problem-so much, unfairly, Natalia’s problem-was in the direct aftermath. Although he’d maneuvered to avoid her being arrested for professional negligence, his return to London-essential professionally, wrong personally-had been an abandonment because by then they had been in love. Natalia had proved that love by being prepared, just once, to defect herself during an escort assignment to London. Trusted him more than he’d trusted her, despite loving her. He’d watched Natalia at their arranged meeting point but been unable to believe she wasn’t bait-knowing or unknowing-in a repayment trap for the damage he’d caused Moscow. So he’d held back from the rendezvous and let her go, neither of them knowing then that she was pregnant.

It was a virtual miracle that she’d deigned even to acknowledge him-let alone be persuaded there was a second chance of finally being together-when, with the old, defunct KGB records necessarily self-cleansed to protect herself and their daughter and Natalia’s elevating transfer to the ministry, he’d been officially accepted back by a totally unaware and unsuspecting Russian government too overwhelmed by organized crime to match an American FBI presence in the Russian capital.

There could be no blame-no surprise either-for Natalia insufficiently trusting him. He’d done nothing to deserve it. Little, indeed, to deserve Natalia. Which was a long-realized awareness that did nothing to resolve-help even-their escalating problem. Perhaps nothing could.

Charlie’s irresolute reflections were broken by the first of the predictable announcement-prompted arrivals. MI6 station chief Donald Morrison flustered jacketless through the door, scarlet braces over monogrammed shirt, an unevenly torn-off slip of new agency copy in his hand. Offering it to Charlie, the man said, “Have you seen this!”

“I heard about it last night,” said Charlie. “The ambassador knows. London too.”

Morrison stopped abruptly halfway across the room, as if he’d collided with something solid. “How?”

“Contacts in the militia,” avoided Charlie, easily.

“A call would have been appreciated,” complained Morrison, cautiously. He was an enthusiastic, eager-to-please man at least fifteen years Charlie’s junior whom Charlie guessed to have got the sought-after posting through family influence. His predecessor had been part of an inter-agency determination to get Charlie removed from Moscow, badly misjudged Charlie’s thumb-gouging, eye-for-an-eye survival ability and now occupied a travel movements desk at MI6’s Vauxhall Cross administration department. From the wariness with which Morrison had treated him since his arrival-and the immediate reaction now-Charlie suspected Morrison knew of the episode.

Charlie said, “It’s a criminal investigation, more mine that yours under the redefining.”

“It would still have been useful to know about in advance, if I’d got a query from London.”

“Did you?”

Morrison shrugged, his argument defeated.

“So you haven’t lost any credibility,” Charlie pointed out.

“You intend running it as a one man show?”

Charlie hadn’t yet decided how he was going to run anything, only that by the end of a long day there were probably going to be more people running about and getting in each other’s way than in a whorehouse on pay-day when the fleet’s in. Which Charlie philosophically accepted. Initially welcomed in fact. Despite his director-general’s eagerness to control whatever involvement was achievable it was even possible London’s edict would be for a jointly shared investigation, which would provide a sacrificial diversion if one became necessary. Which wasn’t ultimate cynicism. It was an essential, practical rule of what the inexperienced or ignorant referred to as a game but which was not. Nor ever had been. Charlie actually liked the younger man and didn’t want to cause him any disadvantage or harm. He hoped the need wouldn’t arise if Morrison was accorded any part in what was to follow.

“I’ll obviously get a call,” pressed Morrison.

“I don’t know anything more than what was on television this morning,” said Charlie, which was almost true. Lev Maksimovich Yudkin had been described as critical after an operation to removebullets from his abdomen and right lung and Ruth Anandale was stable after having a bullet removed from her right arm near the shoulder. The American president was still at the Pirogov Hospital, where he’d slept overnight. Ben Jennings, the American Secret Serviceman who had been hit, was on a life support machine with a bullet possibly too close to his heart to risk removing. The fifth shot had shattered the leg of a plainclothes Moscow militia officer, Feliks Vasilevich Ivanov, which might possibly need to be amputated. The only additional information, which Natalia had reluctantly provided, was that George Bendall had not regained consciousness after operations to rebuild and pin his left shoulder and leg, both of which had been broken in his fall from the TV gantry.

“It’s not going to be an easy one,” suggested Morrison.

“Very few are,” agreed Charlie. It was like a dance to which he knew every stumbling step, which with his hammer-toed feet wasn’t a good analogy.

“We’re going to have to work together if London orders it,” said Morrison.

“Of course,” said Charlie, in apparent acceptance. He handed the other man a copy of Peter Bendall’s file. “That’s everything my people had. Might be an idea to see what’s in your archives, to make a comparison.”

Morrison smiled a relieved smile. “That’s a good idea. I’ll do that.”

They both turned at Richard Brooking’s arrival. The head of chancellery looked between them and said, “Yes. Of course. You obviously need to be together.”

Why, wondered Charlie, had the diplomat come to him, rather than the other way around with a summons like the previous night? Surely their separation wasn’t going to be as fatuous as worrying about which rooms they met in?

Morrison said, “That’s what I was just saying.”

“You heard from London?” demanded Charlie.

“I’ve been told to seek information,” said Brooking.

“From whom or what?” asked Charlie, impatiently.

“The Foreign Ministry. That’s our channel of communication.”

Who’d simply repeat the official announcement, guessed Charlie. “What about access?”

Brooking shook his head, as if he were denying an accusation. “Nothing like that until we get an official reply from the ministry.”

Needing to ride pillion with this man officially to get to George Bendall was going to be a wearisome pain in the ass, Charlie decided. “What about the Americans?”

Brooking hesitated. “Sir Michael is approaching their ambassador personally.”

“Am I …” started Charlie but stopped. “Are we going to be told what’s said?” It was important to establish ground-rule precedents.

There was another hesitation from the head of chancellery. “It would constitute a diplomatic exchange.”

Charlie’s direct-line telephone jarred into the room, breaking the conversation.

“What do you know, Charlie?” said John Kayley.

“Not enough,” replied Charlie. “What about you?”

“Think we need to get together.”

“Sounds like a good idea. I’ve got a room with a view.”

“I got so much heat I’m getting blisters.”

“Maybe I should come to you?”

“It would look better for me.”

Charlie was glad he’d taken the trouble socially to meet Kayley at various U.S. diplomatic functions, although he was unsure of the man’s by now familiar native American boast to be part Cherokee. It was fortunate, too, that he’d taken so many copies of Bendall’s file. “On my way.”

“Your contact?” enquired Brooking, hopefully, as Charlie replaced the receiver.

“FBI,” said Charlie, shortly.

“You’ll let me know what they say?”

“Not sure if it’ll constitute a diplomatic exchange,” said Charlie, straight faced.

There were several other titular generals in the Kremlin suite with her, although all were male, but Natalia acknowledged hers wasprobably considered the rank wielding the least influence. She wished she hadn’t been included at all. But not as much, she guessed, as the general next to her. Lev Andrevich Lvov had gained his rank in the spetznaz special forces before his transfer to the White House to head the Russian president’s bodyguard detail and still appeared vaguely uncomfortable in civilian clothes. It was an attitude reflected, too, by the man with whom he was drawn slightly apart from the rest of the group around the table. General Dimitri Ivanovich Spassky headed the counter-intelligence directorate of the FSB, the intelligence successor to the KGB.

“I want a complete assessment. I need to be fully prepared for the debate in the Duma,” declared the prime minister, who under a decree issued by the now stricken Russian president assumed the emergency leadership he had, before the communist party resurgence, been predicted to get by democratic election upon Yudkin’s second term retirement. Aleksandr Mikhailevich Okulov was a short, sparse-bodied man who, largely under Yudkin’s patronage, had risen to the rank of premier in the ten years since leaving the St. Petersburg directorate of the KGB. His supporters praised him as the eminence grise of the current government. His detractors preferred the description of lackluster and uninteresting grey man of Russian politics.

The combined concentration in the room was on chief-of-staff Yuri Fedorovich Trishin, a rotund, no longer quickly-smiling man. “It’s still too soon for any proper prognosis. The president’s condition is critical, and likely to remain so for days. There is considerable trauma. Heart massage as well as mouth-to-mouth resuscitation had to be administered in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. There was substantial blood loss, maybe as much as half his body’s capacity. There could be complications with the American president’s wife, bad enough to make amputating her arm necessary …”

“What about prior to that?” Okulov interrupted. “How was it allowed to happen?”

The question was addressed to Lvov who hadn’t broken the fixed stare he’d directed at the chief of staff. Accusingly, Lvov said, “There was too much interference in the security arrangements.”

“By whom?” insisted Okulov, who was still trying to adjust and equate in his mind the full personal possibilities so abruptly thrust upon him by the attempted assassination. He’d already recognized his previous KGB career could be an embarrassment in view of Bendall’s family history.

“The Americans,” said Trishin, quickly. “The Americans made demands and after consultation we complied.”

“Consultations with whom.”

“Lev Maksimovich,” said the plump man, quickly.

Who was too ill-might not even recover-to confirm or deny it, Natalia accepted, realizing she was witnessing a hurriedly conceived survival defense.

“Our own president agreed?” persisted Okulov. It was vital he didn’t make a single mistake.

“With everything,” insisted Trishin.

“Was there no professional argument?” asked the premier-cum-president. He was going to have to work with these men; decide who he could trust and of whom he had to be careful.

“A considerable amount,” said Lvov. Some of the tension had gone out of the man.

“There is documentary proof?” demanded Okulov.

“Yes,” said Lvov.

“Also that the pressure came from Washington?”

“Yes,” said Trishin.

Okulov settled back in his chair, visibly relaxing, looking between Natalia and the FSB counter-intelligence director. “So! What do we know about the gunman?”

Okulov’s KGB background was public knowledge-a target sometimes for attack-but in passing Natalia wondered if the man knew she had also once been a serving officer. In so short a time it was unlikely but it was the sort of preparation automatic for a trained intelligence operative. Ahead of Spassky, she said, “We’re all aware of the reorganization and department divisions of the Komitet Gosudarstvenno Bezopastosti after the events of 1991. That included archives but it would appear that division was incomplete. I have …” she hesitated, bringing duplicated files from her briefcase and distributing them around the conference table of Okulov’s office“ … all that was available from the Interior Ministry files on the defector, Peter Bendall. There is only a two-paragraph reference to the son, at the time he was brought here by his mother. Bendall senior was paid a pension and was responsible to the former KGB until his death. You will see that the records are marked ‘Some Retained.’ Unfortunately I have not had the opportunity to discuss with General Spassky whatever files still presumably held by the Federal Security Service might contain … I hope he can help us with that now …?” She had no alternative, Natalia assured herself. Spassky was one of the old school-proud of his continued membership of the Communist party-and would have tried to bulldoze her into the ground if she hadn’t put the tank trap in his way first. Which she might not have done-not been alerted to do-if Spassky hadn’t studiously avoided her four attempts to reach him before this meeting. The normally vodka-blotched face was redder than normal from what she inferred to be his fury at being anticipated and she decided the tank trap metaphor was appropriate. The iron-grayhaired bear of a man could very easily have physically crushed her and probably would have liked to have done at that precise moment.

In front of Spassky an ashtray was already half-filled with the butts from which succeeding cigarettes had been lit. There was a snatch of what was intended to be a throat-clearing cough that took several moments to subside and when he finally spoke Spassky’s voice was initially threadbare. “We had insufficient time before this meeting … not enough indication from the Interior Ministry,” flustered the man. “The search is being made now.”

Okulov, intent upon identifying scapegoats, at once came back to Natalia, who was surprised at the obviousness of the intelligence general’s confusion.

“The first written, advisory memorandum was personally sent by me to the Lubyanka at 8:33 last night, within an hour of the gunman being identified and after the FSB duty officer informed me there was no senior officer available to talk to me personally,” she responded, quickly again. “That was followed by three more attempted telephone calls and two more memoranda, time-stamped copies of which are attached to what I have already made available.”

“I mean we can’t locate them,” corrected Spassky. “Not in the time we’ve had so far.”

“Are they lost?” pressured Okulov. The woman’s competence made Spassky’s inadequacy even more marked.

“We will have everything available later today,” said Spassky.

“I personally issued the order to round up all known dissidents, extremists and possible terrorists,” reminded Okulov. “Was the name George Bendall on any such list?”

“Not that I am aware of,” said Spassky.

“Not that you’re aware of!” echoed the politician. “Don’t you know!”

“It was not on any list made available to the Interior Ministry,” said Natalia.

“Nor to my service,” insisted General Leonid Sergeevich Zenin, Moscow’s militia commander, entering the discussion for the first time. “I have specifically re-checked, before this meeting.”

“Are you telling me we don’t know anything at all about a man who’s tried-and might even have succeeded-to kill the president of Russia and seriously wounded the wife of the American president!” demanded Okulov, incredulously.

Not a question for her, Natalia decided.

“I have appointed an investigatory team. The senior colonel is by Bendall’s bedside, waiting for him to recover from surgery,” said Zenin, hurriedly responding. “His belongings included a workbook, in the name of Gugin, Vasili Gugin. He was employed, in the name of Gugin, by the NTV television channel. He was a gofer, a messenger who fetched and carried. He got the rifle up to the platform in an equipment bag. The address in the workbook is Hutorskaya Ulitza ….”

“Where did we get his real name?” interrupted Trishin.

“From his mother, at Hutorskaya Ulitza. She uses the name Gugin, too. But has kept her English given name, Vera.”

“She in custody?”

“Of course,” said Zenin. “So far she’s denied knowing anything about what her son was doing or where he got the rifle. It is an SVD sniper’s weapon. It’s being forensically examined, naturally.”

“The mother must have said something more about him!” demanded Okulov.

“He’s been ill … mentally ill but she claims he got better.”

“Do you believe her?”

“It’s far too early to ask my people that.”

Okulov went to the chief of staff. “What about the British?”

“There’s been a formal approach through the Foreign Ministry, for information,” said Trishin.

“The Americans?”

“They want access to Bendall. Full investigative cooperation from everyone involved here.”

“Which we’ll give them. The British too,” decided Okulov. He was contemplatively silent for several minutes. “We have to emerge with unchallengable credibility. There will be maximum liaison between each and every investigatory department …” He smiled across the table. “And you, Natalia Fedova, will coordinate everything …”

Natalia’s first realization was that she’d been made the most vulnerable of them all. Another awareness was that no one had asked-was bothered even-about the other two victims of the shooting.

“The trial must be totally open, a media event,” declared Okulov, who’d insisted upon the chief of staff remaining after dismissing the rest. “I mean what I said about openness with the Americans and the British.”

“Of course.”

“There’s no danger of the Americans refuting the security lapses being their fault?”

“They won’t officially be in court,” Trishin pointed out. “There’ll only have observer status. We’ll have the stage, they won’t. And there really is a lot of confirming paperwork.” This was the man with whom, initially at least, he was going to have to work with more than anyone else. The second realization was that Okulov’s chances of being elected to the presidency was even more uncertain that Yudkin’s had been.

“Good,” accepted the other man, warming to the increasing personal possibilities. “We’ve got to discover a great deal more aboutthis man Bendall or Gugin or whatever he calls himself.”

“Whatever he calls himself isn’t important,” insisted Trishin, rebuilding his own bunker. “He isn’t Russian. He’s British, the son of a spy who was allowed to come here under the protection of an earlier communist government.”

Okulov nodded, smiling, content for the other man to spell out the further personal advantage he’d already isolated. “Which he doubtless represents. We need to know if he’s a supporter of the old ways. Anxious for their return. That could be useful.”

Trishin was encouraged by the direction of the conversation. “I didn’t get the impression from any of the hospital doctors that there’s a possibility of Lev Maksimovich making a full and active recovery, if he survives at all. Which will be a tragedy.”

“A great tragedy,” agreed Okulov, refusing to respond too quickly to the obvious approach.

Bastard, thought Trishin. “Yours will be the mantle to continue the policies you’ve been so closely involved in formulating.”

There’s a power struggle whether Yudkin died or not, accepted Okulov. And he’d need allies who knew the keys to every locked hiding place. “Which I’ll require help to do.”

“The strength of the communists makes this a very uncertain time,” said Trishin, comfortable with platitudes. “It’s important to understand you have my complete trust and loyalty, Aleksandr Mikhailevich”

“That’s good to hear,” said Okulov. “It will be important to have someone like you, Yuri Fedorovich, upon whom I can rely completely.”

“Which you can.”

“You’re quite sure the security lapses can be shown to be those of the Americans?”

“As I’ve just made clear, Alexandr Mikhailevich, you can trust me.”

Until there’s a political reversal, Okulov added, mentally.

John Kayley could very easily have had the native American Cherokee Indian ancestry he frequently-and proudly-claimed. He was saturnine with smooth, black hair. He was also indulgently fat andunconcerned about it. His footwear was neither moccasin nor molded into the shapelessness of Charlie’s Hush Puppies, but the bagged, unpressed canopy of the button-strained suit could have come from a shared reject shop. The windowless office at Novinskij Bul’var was cloyed with the smell of the scented cigars the man smoked and on the table between them was a bottle of single malt already reduced by a third. It wasn’t Islay, Charlie’s favored choice, but he appreciated the gesture.

Kayley patted the Peter Bendall dossier with a pudgy hand and said, “I’m truly grateful for this. Like I told you, there’s a lot of heat but very little to put on the fire.”

“Thanks for this, too,” said Charlie. The American had offered unasked the complete list of the failed security precautions, as well as the hospital update that the president’s wife could lose her arm, which would be permanently impaired even if she didn’t. Charlie liked the fact that the other man wasn’t trying to disguise the exchange as anything more than the same give-to-receive shell game he was playing. It indicated-he hoped-that they were treating each other as professionals. He was still waiting for Kayley to point up the one incongruity that was so far troubling him. He wondered if the other professional omission was an oversight.

Kayley said, “Don’t envy you the son-of-a-bitch still being British.”

“It’s a bastard,” agreed Charlie. He nodded to his glass being topped up. He’d give the other man a little more time.

“You going to get access?”

“Not applied for yet. I expect it will be.”

“We’re asking for it, although I’m not sure of our legality. It’s Russian jurisdiction and prosecution, even though it’s the president’s wife that got hit.”

Kayley was professional, accepted Charlie. “You’ll be allowed participation, though?”

“Limited’s my guess. He’s your national, you stand the better chance.”

“I’m prepared to share, if you are.” Surely Kayley would pick upon on that!

“Deal!” accepted the American, at once.

Perhaps Kayley was testing him. Charlie said, “Peter Bendall passed over a lot of your stuff to the Russians in the late sixties. There’ll be an American dossier on him.”

Kayley nodded, unembarrassed at being reminded of the obvious. “I guess. It would have been CIA, not the Bureau.”

“Available to you now, though?”

“I’ll check it out.”

A professional like Kayley would have done so hours ago. If the American was trying to control the exchange, he’d failed. Charlie decided it was better to continue in the expectation of getting something but not all, which was the level at which he intended to work. “You getting any political playback this soon?” There might be a loose ball to play off against Brooking and Sir Michael Parnell and at the moment it was scraps he was scrabbling for.

“Nothing positive,” said Kayley, shaking his head. “Washington’s not comfortable about the Bureau’s position here, if the communists get their man in.”

Charlie’s feet tweaked. “How’s that?”

“We were accepted here by Yeltsin and the reformers, all part of the fight against crime,” reminded Kayley. “State’s thinking is that we’d be the first to be told to get out if the old regime was reestablished. Guess that would apply to you, too.”

“Yes,” agreed Charlie. “I guess it would.” What the hell sort of spin would that put upon the situation between he and Natalia!

“This could even be our last case. How’s that for a thought?”

“Unsettling,” said Charlie, honestly. About far too many things, he mentally added.

Senior Militia investigator Colonel Olga Ivanova Melnik was an attractive, even beautiful woman and knew it. What she knew even better was how to use it, in every way. She invariably wore civilian clothes instead of uniform, because dresses and skirts and blouses showed off her full-busted, narrow-waisted figure to her best advantage and always allowed distracting cleavage interrogating male suspects. She also adjusted her demeanor to every encounter, bullying when necessary, awkwardly stumbling sometimes to give her interviewees the dangerously misleading impression of their superiorintelligence. It was an attitude strictly reserved for interview rooms. Outside she was a determined, supremely confident woman with an IQ of 175 that had academically taken her up the promotional ladder in balanced proportion to the occasions she’d climbed bedroom stairs with partners carefully selected more for her career advancement than their sexual prowess. Since attaining her detective seniority by the age of thirty-five prowess had taken precedence over influence among those invited to follow her up any stairs.

Olga Ivanova was politically as well as professionally adept and was more aware than anyone caught up in the immediate, twenty-four-hour aftermath of the shooting how totally successful she could emerge from the inquiry. How could she fail to get a conviction when the crime had been committed in front of a world-wide television jury?

It remained essential, of course, for Olga to be the hands-on focus of every facet of the investigation and that initially had obviously been for her to sit-fitfully sleeping in her chair when it was no longer possible to remain awake-just one whisper-hearing meter from George Bendall since his return from the operating theater.

But there hadn’t been a whisper. Anything except the jagged peaks of the heart monitor and the in-out hiss of the ventilator and the silent blood and saline drip and increasingly dark brown filling of the catheter bag. While all the boring, unproductive time, in walking distance away in Lefortovo prison, Vera Bendall, alias Vera Gugin, had sat for virtually the same period unsuspectingly waiting to be broken.

Olga, a strongly featured, prominently-lipped woman, eased out of the no longer comfortable chair and stretched stiffly around the room, as she had several times before. She’d completed her first circuit and was about to begin her easier, cramp-eased second when the chief physician-administrator, Nicholai Badim, thrust into the room, for the first time in many visits uncaring of the noise. With him was an equally attentive pale-skinned, white-blond-haired psychiatrist, Guerguen Semenovich Agayan.

“We’ve got the brain scans,” Agayan announced. “Look.”

Olga did so, although she was unsure what she was supposed to be seeing.

“There!” demanded the surgeon. “At the base there. It’s a hairline linear fracture. And here …” the finger went to a patch darker than the rest of the illustrated brain. “We did a spinal tap as part of the initial exploratory surgery. There’s no blood in the fluid. So that darkening is suberachnoid bruising.”

“What are you telling me?” demanded Olga.

“That he badly hit his head in the fall, in addition to all the other injuries,” said Agayan.

“Is he brain damaged!”

“I won’t know that until he recovers consciousness,” said the psychiatrist.

“But I’m going to sedate him more deeply, to counteract any possibility of epilepsy,” said Badim. “At the moment his medical condition is more important.”

“When’s he likely to recover sufficiently for any sort of interrogation?”

“I’m not going to allow him to open his eyes for at least another twenty-four hours and only then when I see some lessening in the bruising area. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” said Olga. “That’s fine.”