Kings of Many Castles

7

It didn’t begin confrontationally. Charlie actually set out to achieve the opposite-to convince her it was ridiculous for them not to discuss the case-by announcing he had brought Peter Bendall’s records back to Lesnaya for her to read and was encouraged when Natalia said she had Vera Bendall’s initial interview for him. She already knew about the meeting Charlie had the following day with Olga Melnik and said the FBI Rezident was also scheduled to meet the senior investigating colonel.

They’d established a routine of undivided, shared time with Sasha whenever it was possible, and the two dossiers remained unread on a lounge table for the hour they spent taking her slowly through an early reader book and discussing what Sasha referred to as going to grown up school. It wasn’t until Natalia went to bathe and settle their daughter that Charlie got to the Vera Bendall interview. He read it twice before setting it aside, slouched with the second Islay malt resting on his chest, his mind more upon Natalia than upon what he’d just read.

He couldn’t make any judgment on that evening’s fifteen-minute conversation so far-although she had given him a head start identifying Peter Bendall the previous night-but he was encouraged by Natalia’s apparently changed attitude. And not just professionally. That, for once, was a secondary consideration. The first need was for their personal erosion to stop. There’d been no thought of sex-thoughts of sex didn’t seem to occur too often to either of them anymore-but he knew Natalia hadn’t been asleep when he’d got into bed the previous night. Not something to challenge her with; he had to be careful not to challenge her about anything while he remained uncertain.

Charlie lifted his glass in invitation when Natalia emerged fromSasha’s bedroom. Natalia shook her head, taking the chair on the far side of the low lounge table. For several moments she stared down at Peter Bendall’s waiting dossier and Charlie wondered if the seeming reluctance to pick it up was the final hesitation at committing herself. Wrong to say anything-to speak at all-he told himself. It was obviously much thicker than the interview and took Natalia longer to read. While she did, he made himself a third drink. That was almost gone, too, by the time she put the manila folder back on the separating table.

“Nothing about the son, apart from his existence,” she said.

“The mother’s disappointing, too, don’t you think?” The question went beyond wanting to keep the conversation going. Natalia was amazingly intuitive, one of the best debriefers he’d ever encountered and he wanted her professional opinion.

She nodded. “I’ve also listened to the actual recording. I don’t get the impression she was lying, holding anything back. But then again I’ve known some very clever liars.” Natalia got up and poured herself a glass of the Volnay Charlie had opened for dinner.

“I offered you a drink,” said Charlie.

“Half an hour ago. I didn’t want one then. Now I do.” Why had she snapped like that! “And no, I wasn’t referring to you as a liar, when we first met.”

Back off, thought Charlie. “So most likely George Bendall’s a mentally unstable loner that no one knows anything about.” In no way did he think himself a hypocrite. At the moment all he had was a suspicion about the sound of the gunshots. If it was confirmed, he’d tell her.

“Not the first high profile murderer to be just that, a total nonentity seeking his fifteen seconds or minutes of fame.”

“But always the worst to try to investigate.”

Natalia shrugged but said nothing. Why did it have to be so difficult for her to reach a compromise when their jobs overlapped! Because of the past: always the past which she could never completely forget no matter how hard she tried or how much she loved him. Charlie was making a very obvious effort. Couldn’t she-shouldn’t she-try harder?

Charlie didn’t want to lose the flow. “We’re talking?”

“Total cooperation is the instruction. You’d have got the transcript from Olga Ivanova tomorrow.”

“Would you have shown it to me, if it hadn’t been officially ordered?”

“Hardly the disclosure of the century, is it?” This wasn’t helping.

“It surely makes our situation easier?”

Natalia shrugged again. “I don’t know. Basically it doesn’t change anything, does it?”

The confrontation had to come, sooner or later. It might as well be now. “Things aren’t going to change, Natalia. This is it, the best it’s going to get. I don’t know anything more I can do to make it better for us … between us. What I do know is that I don’t want everything to collapse and I think it is collapsing …”

“Meaning the concessions have to come from me!” Their relationship was crumbling. And it probably was more her fault than Charlie’s.

“I’m not asking you to make any concessions. I’m asking you to acknowledge the reality … and the difficulty … of our being together.”

“I hardly need reminding of that.”

“You under any pressure?”

“I could be.”

“Don’t close me out as you have been closing me out.”

The same argument, Natalia recognized: the same persuasive logic. And it was logical: Charlie was a better street fighter than she could ever be. “I know you’re right.”

“Then trust me.”

Natalia allowed the pause. “That’s what I’ve got to do.”

“I won’t let you down. I did before but I won’t again.”

“It’s not just the two of us anymore. There’s so much else that could go wrong. Sasha says they’ve been talking at school, about what parents do. Two kids said their fathers were in the militia.”

“What did she say?” Big problems could easily come from innocuous innocence.

“She didn’t know. That’s how the conversation came up. She asked me.”

“What did you tell her?”

“That we both worked in big offices, which will do for now. What are we going to tell her when she gets older?”

Charlie wished he had an easy answer: any answer that might come anywhere close to satisfying Natalia. It was ineffective and the last thing Charlie had ever been was ineffective. “We’ve got more important personal questions to answer.”

“I know.”

“It’s not the jobs. It’s the effect of them, perhaps. But not the jobs themselves …” He sniggered, in sudden realization. “We’ve come the full circle, haven’t we? I screwed everything up the first time, by not being totally able to trust you-which was my terrible mistake-and now you can’t trust me …”

“So now it’s my mistake!” she pounced at once, regretting the words as they were uttered.

“No, darling,” insisted Charlie, patiently. “You’re justified. I wasn’t.”

Charlie filled the silence by refilling her glass, which she surrendered without protest. He thought about a fourth whisky but decided to change to wine himself. As he sat down again Natalia said, “You think there’s still a chance we can make it work?”

“Yes,” he said at once. When she didn’t respond, he said, “What do you think?”

“I’m not sure.”

“What do you want?”

“I want it very much. But I’m frightened there’s too much in the way.”

“Let’s move it out of the way!” urged Charlie.

“Yes,” she accepted, uncertainly.

“What’s your pressure?”

“I’ve got to coordinate all the Russian agencies. Make everything work.”

“The rock and the hard place,” Charlie recognized. “Their successes are theirs, their failures are yours.”

“Something like that.” Should she tell him the old KGB files were missing?

“You’re going to need my help, need someone to bounce theories off. I shouldn’t have to say it but I guess I do. I won’t take anyadvantage, put you-us-at risk in any way.” For once in Charlie’s life-probably the first time in Charlie’s life-it wasn’t a promise embroidered in easily expandable elastic.

“The FSB can’t find Peter Bendall’s records,” blurted Natalia.

Charlie shook his head in professional refusal. “It would have been an ongoing, current file: assessments, surveillance, psychological profile not just of him but of his wife and son. It’s the starting point for any investigation into George Bendall.”

Why did she waste so much time-endanger so much-maintaining her obstructive integrity pretensions, Natalia asked herself, acknowledging the expertise. “What’s your reading?”

“Immediate sanitizing, because of what’s in them?” suggested Charlie. “Maybe about George particularly. It’s clumsy but it’s predictable panic. There’s the excuse that the KGB isn’t any longer the KGB, which it was when Bendall defected. Things do get misplaced in reorganization.” It wouldn’t help by reminding her that she’d destroyed his KGB dossier and sanitized her own of any original connection with him.

“Nothing more sinister?”

Charlie hesitated. She was being open with him at last and his offering something in exchange would show he was keeping his side of an unspoken bargain. “You had any technical discussion with anyone?”

Natalia regarded him intently. “About what?”

“I’ve got the soundtrack from four different television films covering the presidential arrival, as well as that of NTV,” disclosed Charlie. “CNN were mute, remember. They’re being scientifically tested now in London but I’ve carried out my own rough timing. According to my count five shots were fired in a time gap of nine point two seconds. That’s very sharp sharp-shooting.”

“We’re getting George Bendall’s army records.”

“Are you?” demanded Charlie, pointedly.

“We’ve asked for George Bendall’s-or Georgi Gugin’s-army records,” qualified Natalia.

“I’m particularly interested in what they’ll say about his marksmanship.”

“Or lack of it,” accepted Natalia. “I was frightened enough tobegin with. Now you’ve really scared me. I preferred the mentally unstable loner.”

“Where’s the mentally unstable loner get a sniper’s rifle, which it very clearly was from the television pictures?” There was something else to check, he realized. It didn’t fit this conversation.

“Mosow-Russia-is awash with weaponry. You can buy a gun and ammunition for it in street underpasses. We can’t even look after our nuclear arsenals!”

“Basic Kalashnikovs and Makarovs. Not something specialized like this.”

“Do you intend saying anything tomorrow to Olga Melnik?”

Charlie shook his head. “Not without proof.”

“Thanks for telling me.”

“Isn’t that the new deal?”

“Yes.”

That night they did make love but for each of them it was more a duty than spontaneous passion and it wasn’t good.

Charlie said, “We can get that back, too.”

“I hope so,” said Natalia.

Both appraised the other in the opening seconds.

Charlie hadn’t expected Senior Investigating Colonel Olga Ivanova Melnik to be somewhere in her mid-thirties, which had to indicate a special ability he wouldn’t have guessed at from the Vera Bendall transcript he’d read the previous night. He thought the cleavage interesting but a little too obvious: the unsecured button on her shirt didn’t fit the pressed neatness of the perfectly tailored grey checked suit or the pristine orderliness of the high windowed, everything-in-its-proper-place office. And in any case the spider’s web tightrope of his current high wire act with Natalia didn’t allow any extramarital temptations. The cleared desk reminded him of that of Richard Brooking, who’d delivered the standard lecture on diplomatic conformity before he’d left the embassy that morning. The head of chancellery had been very pissed off at his ignoring the diplomatic dress code but Charlie didn’t regard today’s encounter as a fancy dress party. With luck it might be his first opportunity to start working properly.

Olga was disoriented, although she didn’t allow any outward sign. Moscow was a prestige posting and Charles Edward Muffin had been knowingly accepted in Moscow as an FBI equivalent, a specifically chosen British contribution-like that of America-against Russia’s virtually uncontrollable organized crime. From his physical appearance she wouldn’t have believed the flop-haired, overweight man sitting opposite contributing anything more than a few kopeks to a charity rummage sale for down-and-outs for a suit to replace the sagged and pocket-bulged jacket and trousers and raft-like suede shoes that he was wearing now.

“Would you prefer English?” she offered, speaking it with little accent in a deep, oiled voice.

“Thanks but it’s not necessary,” Charlie replied, in Russian.

“I hope we can work well together?”

“I hope so too,” said Charlie. Her territory, her speed. Until he chose otherwise.

She pushed across the uncluttered desk what was supposed to be his first copy of the Vera Bendall interview. “It’s very preliminary.” The discomfort at having this shambling man judge her was worse than it had been with Leonid Zenin.

He matched her offering with the heavier MI5 dossier. “All we have on Peter Bendall. Nothing on the son.” He was not supposed to know Vera Bendall was in Lefortovo, he reminded himself “My embassy was told today the official application for consular access has been granted.” The information had been the only useful outcome of that morning’s encounter with Brooking.

“The man was injured in the fall. It’s not yet clear when he’ll be well enough to be interviewed.” There was obviously a diplomatic necessity for this charade but very little practical benefit, apart from hopefully recovering from the Vera Bendall debacle with an unsuspected transcript of this encounter. It was important to establish her supremacy on tape.

“The application extends to the family,” persisted Charlie. “As far as we are aware Vera Bendall, like her son, hasn’t applied for Russian citizenship.” Charlie nodded to the Russian folder, already knowing the answer. “I presume her address is there?”

Olga looked steadily across her sterile desk. “She is in protective custody.”

“Protected from whom?” asked Charlie.

“People who might take it upon themselves to exact revenge upon the mother of a man who shot their president.”

“So she hasn’t taken citizenship?” persisted Charlie.

It would be wrong to underestimate this shaman’s monster, decided Olga, who had no religion but in whom was imbued the inherent Russian respect for witchcraft and Holy Men who could cast spells. “There is no trace of her having done so. Certainly not of it being granted.”

Gently does it, thought Charlie. “I’m sure my embassy-my government-will appreciate that protection …”

“Thank you,” intruded Olga, caught out by Charlie’s inviting pause.

“ … Which of course in no way prevents our officially agreed access. I-and others from the embassy-can easily come to wherever she’s being protectively held. Where is that, by the way?”

The criticizingly dismissive inference of her empty interview would be unavoidable on this transcript! “As I said, my initial interrogation is only very preliminary.”

“Interrogation?” echoed Charlie. “You suspect she’s in some way involved?”

Damn the man, thought Olga. He really did have a witchdoctor’s split tongue. “It’s too early yet to decide who might or might not be involved.” She paused, reluctant to correct herself. “I meant my questioning has only just begun.”

“We are cooperating fully, aren’t we?” coaxed Charlie.

“Yes,” agreed Olga, tightly, apprehensive of how Charlie Muffin could juggle such simple words but anticipating that he would.

“If we’re sharing there’s no order of priority?”

“It’s become a murder enquiry,” fought Olga. “Russian legislation must take precedence.”

“I’m not an international lawyer,” said Charlie. “It’s something I’ll leave to our legal attache to handle through diplomatic channels. Under such international scrutiny we shouldn’t go beyond our boundaries, should we?”

Olga wished the motherfucker wouldn’t keep inviting her opinion, to turn against her. Why oppose him? There was enormous international scrutiny under which the claim that Vera Bendall required protective custody might become even more transparent than it was now. In Lefortovo Vera Bendall was very positively her prisoner, whose every encounter and movement she could control. And totally monitor. It was conceivable some indication of Vera Bendall’s innocence or complicity might emerge if Britons were allowed access, access every minute and word of which could be taped and possibly even filmed. If there was something to be learned, she’d learn it, learn, too, from what the British offered whether their cooperation was genuine. And if the encounter was as unproductive as hers, there couldn’t be any criticism-internally or externally-of what now lay on the desk between her and Charlie Muffin, like a taunt. Better apparently to concede-be persuaded, at least-to an unimportant audience of one than to a much wider and more influential theater. “Don’t misunderstand me. I wasn’t arguing priorities. As far as I’m concerned there’s no reason whatsoever why you-and others from your embassy-shouldn’t see the woman.”

Charlie hadn’t expected the turnaround so quickly, hadn’t, in fact, expected it at all. “You haven’t told me where she is.”

He had a rat-trap, forget-nothing mind, acknowledged Olga. “Lefortovo.”

How many had gone into “protective custody” in that bleak, icily-walled fortress never to emerge and certainly never for a moment to be protected? The first transcript was that of an already cowed, frightened woman. By now Vera Bendall would be terrified to the point of the insanity she was suggesting for her son. “That’s conveniently central. Tomorrow would be good.”

It gave her more than sufficient time. “Eleven?”

“Fine,” smiled Charlie. “I could come here directly afterwards, to discuss anything that emerges.”

“All right,” agreed Olga, doubtfully, thrown off balance by the offer.

“None of the witnesses are in protective custody, are they?”

He was playing with her, his cat to her mouse! “No. Their statements are being translated.”

“I’d prefer them in the original.”

“Available tomorrow.”

“Excellent! I can collect them after I’ve seen Vera Bendall.”

“Yes.” This was going to read even worse than it sounded.

“What’s the progress of the forensic examination?”

“Just that, in progress. Therefore incomplete.” The satisfaction of the refusal was out of proportion to its effect: it was something she’d have to surrender eventually.

“Not available tomorrow?”

“I doubt it.”

“We haven’t talked about any positive lines of enquiry.”

“It’s too early to establish any.”

“I suppose the most important thing we haven’t talked about is the official record that would have been maintained upon Peter Bendall, throughout his time here. That would have included information upon the son, as he grew up.”

Olga thought it was like being stripped naked in a Siberian winter. “That would be classified.”

The already prepared excuse for their apparent loss? wondered Charlie. “You have officially asked for them, though?”

“Every investigatory procedure befitting the crime has been implemented,” insisted Olga, regretting the formal pomposity the moment she began to speak but too angrily frustrated to find other words.

“That’s encouraging to hear,” said Charlie. “My embassy will feel that, too. On a personal level I’m sure we’re going to work together extremely well.”

I’m not, thought the woman.

As he was escorted from the building, Charlie decided that Olga Ivanova Melnik was not as good as she imagined herself to be. Perhaps that was why she found the need to have difficulty with blouse buttons. The hidden recording Charlie was sure would have been taken wouldn’t do much for her, either.

Burt Jordan was already waiting at their reserved table when Donald Morrison entered the Arleccino, waving to attract the MI6 man’s attention when he came in off Druzhinnikovskaya Ulitza.

“Sorry I’m late,” apologized Morrison. “Couldn’t get a taxi. Somehow it seemed easier when we were at the old embassy.”

“But now you’ve got air con,” smiled the CIA Rezident. He was a small, compact man made to look permanently doleful by the heavy moustache allowed to droop at either end. He gestured around the restaurant. “Italian OK for you?”

“Fine. I haven’t been here before.”

“The saltimbocca alla Romana’s the speciality.” Jordan poured Valpolicella. “I figured it far better to get together like this, undisturbed. The embassy’s a fucking mad house. How about yours?”

“Pretty calm, considering.” It was unthinkable to tell the other man the virtually non-existent role to which he’d been relegated. He’d accepted the American’s invitation in the hope of learning something with which to impress Charlie Muffin and get involved.

“It’s good everyone’s pulling with the same stroke.”

“I guess it is.”

“I get anything, it’s yours.”

“Likewise.”

When the waiter arrived they both ordered the saltimbocca. Jordan held up the still half full bottle and ordered another.

Jordan said, “So what have you got?”

Morrison shrugged. “Very little. You’ve already got the counter-intelligence stuff from Charlie. It was all internal-even the jail escape-so Bendall was their headache, not ours. When the rumors began that he wanted to come home the instructions to our man here then was to find him and help him back. If he’d had anything worthwhile from working with the KGB here we could have negotiated a little remission in the sentence he would still have had to serve. We couldn’t get a lead. We even had some stories planted in newspapers here when the press got freer after 1991, hinting as much as we could. He never made contact.”

“The KGB wouldn’t have risked him with anything sensitive. They never treated defectors-even foreign nationals who’d worked for them-well or with any respect.”

“Stranger things have happened,” cliched Morrison. “What about you?”

Jordan shook his head. “The Bureau made it a big operation. Thestuff he leaked was from America, mostly Los Alamos. But as far as they discovered Bendall wasn’t part of any cell. He was a solitary spy, a ‘walk in’ to the Soviet embassy in London, passing on stuff he received from us.”

“What about when he got here?”

“Nothing,” said Jordan. “There’d been the Bureau investigation by then, showing he’d worked alone. We didn’t try to find him.”

“You know,” said Morrison. “Despite all the panic and chaos, when it comes down to it there’s not a lot we’re going to be able to do.”

“We’ve still got to make the motions, though. That’s why I thought we should meet like this. My word, about sharing anything I get.”

“Mine too,” said Morrison, enthusiastically. “Well met.”

“It’s murder now, Vera. The death penalty.”

“Yes.”

The acceptance was flat, totally without emotion. Olga Melnik had hoped for more, a collapse even. They were in the same room with the same flowers and there was tea again, with cake. The record light flickered on the unobtrusive tape machine.

“Drink your tea.”

The woman did as she was told, gnawing at a cake between noisy sips. “Can I have my underwear back? And my shoes? It’s really not comfortable without them.”

“It’s regulations,” refused Olga. “What have you remembered?”

“Tuesdays and Thursdays.”

“What about Tuesdays and Thursdays?”

“Those were the nights he seemed to stay out most often. Occasionally others, but mostly Tuesdays and Thursdays.”

Better, thought Olga, hopefully. “You must have asked him about those nights?”

“I told you, he got angry.”

“Particularly angry when you asked him about those nights?”

“I think so.”

“He never told you, not once? Not even a word? Or a name?”

“No.”

“What about the name of the doctor?”

“I can’t remember.”

“What did you talk about, when he was home?”

“We didn’t, much. We watched television. Sometimes the programs he’d worked on. He made models.”

“Models of what?”

“Cars. Boats. Planes. Things that moved. He liked things that moved.”

“How did he make them? From wood or what?”

“Wood, sometimes, wood that he carved. And kits. The sort that children have.”

“I don’t remember the people who searched your apartment finding any models. It wasn’t in their report.”

“He broke them, as soon as he finished them. Said they were useless to him.”

“What other hobbies did he have?”

“None.”

“What about guns?” She had to improve on the original questioning.

“No … I told you …”

“Did he ever go shooting?”

“He doesn’t have a gun.”

“He could have borrowed one.”

“I don’t know.”

“You are remembering things, aren’t you?”

“I’m trying.”

“Some other people are coming to see you.”

“What other people!” pleaded Vera, immediately alarmed.

“From the British embassy. They want to help, like I want to help. That’s why you’re here, safe from people who might want to hurt you for what you son has done.” It was imperative to get that on record, after the debacle with Charlie Muffin. She hadn’t just underestimated the man, she’d even more badly miscalculated the collaboration that would be imposed upon her.

“Will you be here, with them?”

“No.”

The woman looked down at her sagging bosoms. “Can I have myunderwear back, when they come? And the laces for my shoes?”

“Yes. But you will go on thinking, remembering, won’t you?”

“I’ll try.”

Olga hurried from the prison warning herself that it scarcely provided a lead but it certainly justified going through the statements of the people and acquaintances with whom George Bendall had worked at NTV. And if there was no reference to something-anything-the man regularly did on Tuesday and Thursday nights, they’d all have to be re-interviewed and specifically asked.

“You had no right-no authority-to arrange access to the mother without reference to me!” protested Richard Brooking. “It should have been done diplomatically, through channels. You were specifically warned by Sir Michael himself!”

“Dick,” said Charlie, intentionally using the name abbreviation for its ambiguity. “That’s debatable and I’m not interested in debating it. I’m interested in finding out why a British national apparently tried to kill two presidents and when an opportunity presents itself, like it did today, then I’m going to take it without first asking your permission. You want to protest that to London, then go ahead. And while you’re doing it, ask them how they feel about another British national-albeit one who’s lived here for years-being banged up in a Stalin-era prison without charge.”

“That’s certainly questionable,” agreed Anne Abbott.

“I thought you told me it was for her own protection.”

“Bollocks,” rejected Charlie.

Brooking looked embarrassedly to Anne, who smiled and said, “That’s what I think, too.”

“I’m not sure it would be proper for me to accompany you to a prison,” said the diplomat.

“Don’t then,” accepted Charlie, relieved.

“It probably would be better left to us at this preliminary stage,” agreed Anne.

“Thanks for the support,” said Charlie, as they made their way along the corridor towards his office.

“Things are difficult enough without dicks like Richard Brooking,” said the lawyer.

Charlie thought that it just might be that he and Anne Abbott were birds of a feather, which would be a welcome change from being surrounded by either vultures or cuckoos.

The information-starved international media thronged Petr Tikunov’s press conference at the Duma. The Communist Party presidential candidate, a burly, beetle-browed man whose campaign managers tried to avoid facial comparison with Brezhnev, said that irrespective of any current investigation the new government he would be leading after the forthcoming elections would institute the most searching and thorough enquiry into the outrage.