Kings of Many Castles

5

Lefortovo is the embodiment of terror-The Terror-that dominated Russia and its once Soviet Union for most of the twentieth century, initiated there before 1917 but quickly afterwards becoming the experimental laboratory in which was perfected every art and device of bone-crushing, mentally molding State oppression of State opposition.

The Okhrana, the intelligence service that so fatally failed to protect the ineffectual Czar Nicholas II from impending revolution, created it as the prison in which dissent and its advocates were literally snuffed out, like flickering candles. Within its uncleaned,blood-splattered walls the goatee-bearded Feliks Dzerzhinsky, who founded modern Russian intelligence by creating the succeeding Vecheka, installed his torturers and firing squads to maintain Lenin’s rule. He didn’t bother with wall cleaning. Neither did the terrorfuelled intelligence agencies of Stalin-the GPU and the OGPU and the NKVD and NKGB-NKVD and the MVD-MGB and the KGB-that followed, although occasionally spaces were scoured for official plaques proclaiming their chairmen as Heroes of the Soviet Union, psychopaths like Yagoda and Yezhov and Lavrenti Beria, the most psychopathic of them all.

There is an irony that in this glowering, barred-windowed mausoleum for a million-tens of millions-ghosts, such uncertified maniacs could unintentionally have left a psychological legacy making unnecessary their truncheons and electrodes and scalpels and syringes.

Fear is sufficient: fear of those truncheons and electrodes and scalpels and syringes and of the age-blackened gouts on the walls of bare cells without a bed or a lavatory hole or a bucket.

Olga Ivanova Melnik had learned to use that psychology of fear as successfully as she adopted-and adapted-her different questioning techniques. There were no bars at the sun-filled windows of the room into which Vera Bendall was escorted. There wasn’t a desk, either. Easy chairs were arranged around a low table dominated by a display of bright yellow daffodils that had been moved slightly to one side for the tea thermos and cups. A cherry topped the sugar icing of each of the six cupcakes. The tape recorder was very small, unobtrusive.

Olga dismissed the escorts with a jerk of her head and gestured the other woman to a chair directly opposite. Vera Bendall remained just inside the door, terrified eyes flickering around the room. She was a gaunt woman, her uncombed gray hair straggled around a pinched, lined face. There had been no make-up to start with and her eyes were red, from recent crying. Her shoulders briefly heaved, with the closeness of more tears, but she managed to hold back. Although thin she was heavy-breasted and her unsupported bosoms sagged.

“Come in. Sit down,” beckoned Olga, soft-voiced. This wassomeone of the old Soviet, crushed, susceptible, malleable: a show trial puppet. From the preliminary interrogation Olga knew the woman was sixty-one years old.

Vera obediently did as she was told, although hesitantly, scuffing in pressed cardboard shoes from which the laces had been removed. There was a button missing from the badly knitted cardigan and the crumpled black skirt was stained and shiny from wear. The blouse was stained, too.

“They didn’t hurt you?”

Vera shook her head.

“That’s good. Most of them here only know one way of behaving.” On Olga’s instructions the initial arrest interrogator, in a windowless basement cell, had been a towering, brutish-featured militia sergeant in uniform. Olga unscrewed the thermos cap and poured. “Do you have milk?”

“No … thank you, no. Black.” Vera needed two hands to pick up the cup but it still rattled in the saucer, spilling. “I’m sorry … so sorry …” She made a noisy slurping sound in her urgent need to drink.

“Have some cake.” There’d only been one square of bread that morning and a small pitcher of water for the fifteen hours she’d been in custody.

The woman used two hands again, nibbling mouse-like. Her fingertips were puffed and swollen, from constant nail biting.

“You’re here in Moscow-Russia-because of what your husband did. You know that, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“You’re allowed the apartment for the same reason.”

“I know.”

“I want you to tell me all about it. You’ll do that, won’t you?”

“Yes … please … I mean of course.” The voice was frail, like the woman herself. The Russian was heavily accented.

“Would English be better?” asked Olga, who was fluent in that as well as French and Spanish.

“No. I understand. Is he … how …?”

“Hurt, falling from the platform.”

The woman stopped eating. “What …?”

“Why did he do it?” asked Olga, her tone abruptly sharp.

“I don’t know … didn’t know …”

“What about the gun?”

“No! Believe me. I never saw it. Didn’t know.”

“He lives with you?”

“Most of the time.”

“You must know about the gun then?”

“He never had it at home … brought it home.”

“So where did he get it … keep it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Does he have anywhere else to live?”

“He stayed away sometimes … quite a lot, I suppose … I never knew where …” She tried individually picking up the cake crumbs that had fallen on to her greasy skirt.

“Don’t do that! Concentrate on what I am asking!” ordered Olga, sharply again, and the other woman stopped at once.

“Sorry … I am …”

“You must know where he stayed when he wasn’t at home?”

“I didn’t!”

“Didn’t you ask him?”

“He told me it was none of my business. He was always telling me that.”

“Does he have a wife? A girlfriend?”

Vera Bendall shook her head. “He’s not comfortable with women.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. Frightened … doesn’t know how …”

“Does he like boys?”

“Not like that … not how you’re saying …”

“What about friends?”

“I don’t know.”

Olga poured more tea and pushed the cakes towards the woman. “Vera, you promised to help me. Tell me everything. Would you rather talk to the man who questioned you first …?”

“No. Please no,” broke in the woman.

“Then you have to help me, Vera. Do you understand what he’s done?”

“Yes.” The voice was a whisper.

“He shot the president.”

“I saw, on television. What will happen …?”

“He’ll have to be punished.”

“Yes.”

Olga pushed the cakes further towards the other woman. “Let’s think about you.”

“Me?”

“What’s going to happen to you, Vera? You’re not Russian. You live here by permission …”

The woman nodded, dumbly.

“You get a State pension because of what your husband did?”

The shoulders started to heave again.

“I can only help you if you help me. Prove to me you weren’t involved.”

“I’m not … wasn’t …”

“So who are his friends?”

“He’s never told me … no one ever came …”

“But he did have friends?”

“He went out.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know.”

“You asked him?” accused Olga.

“He wouldn’t tell me. Said none of it was my business. Just his.” There was a pause. “Is he badly hurt?”

“Is he political?” demanded Olga.

Vera Bendall shook her head, refusing to answer.

“I could take your apartment away. And your pension. Have you expelled, sent back to England.”

“He wasn’t right!”

Olga needed to pause. “How-what-wasn’t he right?”

The woman hesitated, uncertain. “He hates Russia. Everything.”

“Was he political?” Olga repeated.

“He read a lot of books when he was younger … books about England.”

“Did he go to meetings?”

“He went out. I told you …”

“And he stayed away?”

“Yes.”

“Often?”

“Yes.”

“That wasn’t what you told me earlier?”

Her lips quivered. “I’m sorry … I’m confused.”

They were deviating, Olga realized. “I don’t understand what you mean by saying he wasn’t right?”

“He was in the army, had to be, of course. Went to Afghanistan in the beginning but they wouldn’t let him stay. He had to leave. Sometimes he gets very angry.”

“You mean he’s mad?” demanded Olga, intentionally brutal. It wasn’t such a personally advantageous case if Bendall was mentally ill.

“He loses his temper very easily. Particularly when he drinks.”

“Does he see a doctor? Take medication?”

“He told me he was seeing a doctor recently. Not a medical doctor.”

“Who!”

“I don’t remember a name. I don’t think he told me.”

“Does he drink a lot?”

“Yes.”

“Every day? Every night?”

“I suppose so.”

“Peter, your husband, worked for the KGB when he came to Moscow?”

“Yes.”

“Doing what?”

“He lectured for some years, in a scientific institute. In the last few years he used to read reports … English scientific magazines. Give an opinion about them.”

“From an office in those latter years? Or from your apartment?”

“Both. Mostly from an office near GUM but sometimes from the apartment.”

“So KGB people came to the apartment sometimes?”

“Sometimes.”

“Did George ever meet them?”

“He would have been there when they came.”

“How did George get on with his father?”

“Not very well. They argued.”

“What about?”

“Everything. George said it was Peter’s fault that we were here.”

“What about you and George? How do you get on?”

“Quite well, except for when he gets angry.”

“What does he do when he gets angry?”

“I told you, he fights.”

“You mean he’s violent.”

“Yes.”

“Has he ever hit you?”

“No. I’ve thought he was going to, sometimes. But he hasn’t.”

“Why didn’t your husband take Russian citizenship? He chose communism, after all.”

“No,” denied the faded woman, strength in her voice for the first time. “He didn’t do what he did for political ideology. He was ashamed of what he’d done-helped do-developing the West’s nuclear capability. He gave it away to make things even.”

Olga supposed there was some rationale in the convoluted justification. “But he used a Russian name?”

“No. That was George. He said he didn’t want to have the name Bendall. He chose Gugin.”

“Did George ever fight with his father?”

Vera Bendall looked down into her lap. “Sometimes. In the end George was bigger, stronger, than Peter.”

Olga Melnik had expected more-a lot more-and the irritation was a combination of frustration and disappointment. She couldn’t believe-didn’t want to believe-the Bendalls’ story could be as banal as this. “I’m not satisfied, Vera. Not at all satisfied.”

“Please,” implored the woman. “I’ve answered everything I can. I just don’t know!”

“His friends, Vera. You’ve got to remember who his friends were. He must have said something, sometime. Given you some idea where he went. That’s what you’ve got to remember and tell me … And the name of the doctor?”

Vera Bendall looked down at her drooped breasts. “Can I havemy underwear back … my laces and belt. It’s uncomfortable …”

“You’re not going home, Vera. You’re going to stay here, until you help me properly. Stay downstairs, in the cell that doesn’t have a window … where a lot of other people have stayed, before you …”

“No … please …” begged the woman.

“Think, Vera. You’ve got to think very hard. Remember what I want to know and then tell me.”

Charlie assembled video footage from America’s NBC and CBS, Britain’s BBC, Canada’s CBS and Moscow’s NTV to compare with CNN’s unique and unparalled film. And worked with total concentration to parallel it, second for second, frame by frame. He did so muffled in earphones, stopwatch in hand, well aware even then he was not technically qualified to reach any conclusion. Which, being Charlie, he did. He was right: one hundred and one percent, fuck the doubters, diamond-hard right. The copies-the copies upon copies which Anne Abbott had protested to be illegal-were already in the diplomatic bag on their way to London for the scientifically provable tests Charlie specified but he was already personally sure he didn’t need their confirmation.

What he wasn’t so personally sure about was where in the name of Christ and His dog his conviction complicated an investigation already more than complicated enough.

As totally absorbed and externally soundproofed as he was, Charlie was initially, briefly, unaware of Anne Abbott easing herself beside him, physically starting at her touch on his arm.

“Shit, you frightened me!” admitted Charlie, who didn’t like admitting fear or being startled. He depressed the remote control to stop the transmission as he took off the earphones.

“I’ve been looking for you!”

“What is it?”

Anne frowned at the obvious irritation. “I was hoping for an update.”

“What’s yours?” There hadn’t been any contact messages from Donald Morrison or the head of chancellery when he’d got back from the American embassy.

“I’m to arrange legal representation-be part of whatever is set up-when we’re allowed consular access.”

“Has it been asked for?”

“You didn’t know?”

“No.”

“Brooking’s already made the application. Maybe he had the same trouble finding you as I did.”

“Maybe,” dismissed Charlie.

“You got anything I should know about?”

Friend or foe? wondered Charlie, wearied that he had to pose the question. She’d have to be the first to know, if he were technically proved correct. He explained what he wanted her to listen for in advance of handing over the sound-enhancing earphones and gave her his clipboard and stopwatch, for her to make her own time comparisons.

Anne Abbott stopped after only twenty five minutes-only a third of the time Charlie had taken-and looked to him in astonishment. “You could be right!”

“So?”

“So I don’t know what to say.”

Olga Melnik snapped off the tape recording of her insufficient encounter with Vera Bendall and for several minutes the room was silent apart from the rewind whirr.

General Leonid Zenin said, “No one can be that unknowing. She’s lying.”

“She’s of a type,” balanced Olga. “A permanent victim.”

“You believe her!”

“Not yet.” On the recording her interview had sounded worse-unproductive, unprofessional-than she’d personally admitted it to be at the time.

“What have you done?”

“Asked the military for his army records, particularly medical. And the official reason-the papers-for his discharge. There’s a team at NTV. He must have friends-acquaintances-there.” Olga paused, regarding the tightly-bearded, hard-bodied man with whom she decided it might be pleasurable to ascend bedroom stairs. “Therewas certainly KGB control, after the father defected.”

“Of course there was,” said Zenin, who had told Olga of the emergency committee meeting. “That’s why it doesn’t make sense for Spassky to say they can’t find files. In his time Peter Bendall would have been important.”

There was another silence, longer than the first. Olga said, “You’re surely not …?”

“It’s a question I’m going to ask if records aren’t found,” anticipated Zenin. “Spassky is KGB. Aleksandr Mikhailevich Okulov, already predicted to follow Yudkin as president, is former KGB. And the Federal Security Service-which is responsible for presidential protection-is nothing more than a convenient cosmetic name change, like all the others since Dzerzhinsky.”

Olga felt a stir of unease. “We could be personally destroyed, trying to prove that … by even making the accusation.”

“I wouldn’t be making an accusation,” insisted Zenin. “I’d be asking for an investigation into missing dossiers.”

“Even if we could prove it, it wouldn’t be politically acceptable.”

“It would prevent us, the militia, being accused of any negligence or culpability.”

“I suppose it would,” agreed Olga, although doubtfully.

“What are you going to do about the Bendall woman?”

“Keep her as terrified as she is. She could still have her uses.”

“So could the Britons and the Americans who’ve got to be officially involved.”