Kings of Many Castles

8

It took the authority-and intervention-of Aleksandr Okulov’s office for Natalia to reach the FSB counter-intelligence chief and by the time she did it was to announce the exasperated acting president had ordered her personally to the Lubyanka, which made her as uneasy as it clearly did General Dimitri Spassky.

The only delay when she entered the Russian intelligence headquarters from which she herself had operated for fifteen years was for the security formality of photographing, identification and official authorization. As she followed the required but unnecessary escort across the marbled and pillared hall to the elevator bank Natalia thought that Charlie was probably right that the sole difference between old and new was the name change. Not true, she corrected herself at once. She’d been transferred outside the service, a change she was certainly glad about. Or had been, until now. She’d recognized quickly enough the professional hazards of being appointed the crisis committee’s coordinator but she hadn’t expected to be sucked quite so quickly-and potentially deeply-into such obvious in-fighting. But she was here as the coordinator-the emissary of the acting president, in fact-not as a deputy director of the InteriorMinistry. It put her into a stronger position, despite Spassky’s seniority. It had also been regulations when she worked there that visitors were searched, irrespective of their outside security clearance or whoever’s emissary they were. So things weren’t the same. She hoped her apparent advantage continued.

Natalia smiled at the care the escort took selecting the elevator bank, away from the lifts that went to the twelve basement levels-a subterranean township for the intelligence elite, with shops, roads and even a railway connection to the Kremlin on which Stalin once travelled by special carriage personally to witness the interrogations of purged Central Committee colleagues.

Spassky’s smoke-fumed office overlooked one of the inner prison courtyards in which such victims were finally put out of their agony and Natalia wondered if there was an element of nostalgia in the old-time KGB general’s choice.

He didn’t rise at Natalia’s entry, occupying himself lighting a fresh cigarette and having done so said, “It was unnecessary involving Aleksandr Mikhailevich.”

“You weren’t accepting my calls-as you didn’t yesterday-or returning the messages I left.” There was a recording being made: every Lubyanka office had been equipped within the first week of the invention of audio tape. She was glad-maybe fortunate-that this was such an old office. She still had to be alert to responses that could be edited to Spassky’s advantage and her detriment.

“You mustn’t question my authority here, Natalia Fedova.”

“I am not questioning your authority. I am trying to fulfill the function I was given at yesterday’s meeting.” She’d probably cocooned herself in more protection than she imagined by protesting to Okulov’s secretariat about Spassky’s awkwardness.

“A meeting would have been arranged today.” The man was perspiring as visibly as he had been at the previous meeting but Natalia didn’t think that was the smell competing with the cigarettes. There was the sourness of alcohol, although she’d believed vodka to be odorless. Perhaps the old man was mixing his drinks.

“You promised the Bendall file in twenty-four hours. Twenty-four hours has elapsed. Aleksandr Mikhailevich has to address the Duma this afternoon.”

“There are considerations.”

“What considerations?”

“To whom it is going to be made available.”

“Are you suggesting that the acting president of the Russian Federation-and a former regional director of the KGB! — has insufficient security clearance!”

Spassky’s hands were shaking as he lighted another cigarette. “Of course I’m not!”

“Then I don’t understand the objection you’re making.”

“It’s not an objection.”

“Have you found the Peter Bendall file!”

“Yes.”

Too quick, gauged Natalia. What was she missing! “The complete file, covering everything he did after arriving here from the United Kingdom up to the time he died, to include his family?”

The hesitation of the bloated general was indicative. “That is what I am trying to establish.”

“How!”

“Having the names of Bendall’s case officers cross-referenced.”

Spassky was an anachronism, the last stumbling dinosaur of an otherwise extinct species to whom it was instinctive to lie and evade. She supposed she should be grateful but she was abruptly determined not to be crushed when he finally fell. “Dimitri Ivanovich! Cross-referencing case officers on a Control that spread over thirty years could take another thirty years! You have three hours in which to provide our acting president with each and every recorded detail of George Bendall!”

“There is very little,” finally conceded Spassky.

She had to guard against hurrying, Natalia recognized, in growing understanding. “The son is mentioned in the father’s records?”

“Occasionally.”

“Over what period?”

“Early.”

“What do you mean by early?”

“When the family were first reunited here.”

“How regularly?” There was a forgotten satisfaction at conductingan interrogation-being so sure of herself in an interrogation-after so long.

Spassky spilled butts on to his already burn-scarred desk stubbing out the existing cigarette. For once he did not attempt instantly to light another. “Every month or two I suppose.”

“What sort of details?”

“Progress at school … assessments at assimilation …”

“Is it a complete stop or just interruptions?”

“Interr …” began Spassky before jerking to a stop, too late realizing he’d fallen into the easiest of interrogation traps, a question asked with the inference of the answer already known.

“They have been tampered with,” accused Natalia, openly.

“They are incomplete,” tried Spassky. “They were in disarray. The missing sections will be found.”

“Not in time.”

“I can let you have everything we have, up until the time the boy was maybe fifteen or sixteen.”

“Not let me have,” corrected Natalia, at once. “They are to be sent under FSB seal, by FSB courier, direct to Aleksandr Mikhailevich Okulov in the Kremlin.” It was fitting, she supposed, that she should exercise such paranoid self-protection in the Lubyanka. “Please do it now, to avoid wasting any more time.”

While Spassky made a flurry of telephone calls, culminating in his personally signing the dispatch note, Natalia sat comparatively relaxed reflecting how glad she was that there was now a sensible exchange between herself and Charlie. Refusing an over-interpretation, she supposed Charlie could have been right the previous night at omissions being caused by the chaos of reorganization. But just as quickly she remembered what he’d also said, about the Bendall family file being actively maintained until the defector’s death, only two years earlier.

“It’s the fault of Archives!” insisted Spassky, as the door closed behind the courier.

“You are ultimately responsible for internal security.” Which she had, without too much difficulty, evaded long before Spassky’s appointment, by cleansing the records of any reference to herself and Charlie Muffin.

“The missing sections could be found,” suggested Spassky, more in hope than conviction.

“Or they could not.” The man was introducing his own doubts now.

“It’s the primary responsibility of Archives,” persisted the man, his mind blocked by one defense.

There was no purpose in her staying any longer. “Has this meeting been recorded, Dimitri Ivanovich?”

“No,” denied the man at once, concentrating upon another cigarette. “Why should you imagine it would be.”

“It was once regular procedure.”

“It isn’t any longer.” He smiled, in recollection. “A lot of memories, at being back?”

“None,” insisted Natalia. She was, in fact, very eager to leave.

There was the ritual exchange of supposed information-together with the ritual offer and refusal of English-and another mutual appraisal.

Physically John Kayley was quite different from Charlie Muffin-much heavier, darker-skinned and with surprisingly long and thick jet-black hair-but Olga Melnik felt a similarity beyond the carelessness of the sagged suit and crumpled, yesterday’s shirt. She was determined against letting this meeting get away from her, as it had done that morning with the Englishman, and felt more confident after the second encounter with Vera Bendall. The brief initial search of the statements of those who’d known George Bendall-or Georgi Gugin-at NTV had failed to discover any significance from his mother’s Tuesday and Thursday recollection.

Kayley was as caught as Charlie had been by the woman’s comparative youthfulness against the seniority of her rank and for the same reason. His first impression was that it wasn’t going to be as easy maneuvring himself into the command role the president was insisting upon and which he’d initially chauvinistically hoped possible when he’d learned the Russian side of the investigation was being headed by a woman. He made a mental note to avoid hinting the sexism, although he wondered in passing if the cleavage valley was being offered for exploration.

“I’d welcome a brief run down in advance of reading what you’ve given me,” he said.

“Bendall himself isn’t yet recovered sufficiently to be interviewed,” responded Olga, much better rehearsed the second time. “There are the two interviews I’ve so far conducted with the mother, who’s in protective custody. She was evasive in the first. She began to break in the second, this morning. I don’t believe Bendall could have done this alone. I think there’s something significant in what you’ll see about his regularly doing something on Tuesday and Thursday …”

“Meetings, do you think?”

“The mother made a point of mentioning it.”

“You think she’s involved?” He took out a packet of his scented cigars. “You mind?”

Olga did, but shook her head. “Perhaps not directly involved. But I think she knows more than she’s telling me at the moment.” Olga now had a very definite intention not just how to control this interview but how, from now on, to handle this bizarre troika. She was actually gratefu-just-that the fortunately separate encounter with the Englishman had gone against her. She was alert now to what she might be up against and had had time completely to evaluate her situation. She had, she acknowledged, become arrogant, judging everyone by the inferior, graft-eroded standards all around her in the Militia. Into which, she decided, neither Charles Edward Muffin nor John Deke Kayley fitted. She didn’t have the slightest doubt that both considered themselves superior-better able, better experienced, better resourced-to supervise the investigation. She wasn’t frightened to compete with either in a one-to-one contest. With the Kremlin insistence upon total transparency, her undermining difficulties would come if the two Westerners combined to take side against her. Her answer-her protection as well as hopefully her advantage-was to play one off against the other to prevent such a combination.

“There would have been archives, on the father.”

“Being assembled.”

Kayley frowned, openly. “Still?”

“I’m expecting them later today.”

“What about all the witnesses?”

Olga nodded towards the mini-barrier of stacked files between them. “All there. Nothing that connects with anything the mother said.” The smell of the strange cigars made her feel vaguely nauseous.

“We’d also like the rifle, for forensic examination.”

“It’s still under tests here. You’ll obviously get the full report.”

“We’d still like physically to see the weapon. And there are the extracted bullets?”

“We’d also like to see the bullets that you have,” countered Olga. Time to get a little harder, judged Kayley. “With our Secret Serviceman’s death, we’ve got an American murdered within Russian jurisdiction by someone who appears still to be British?”

She couldn’t see the point of stating the obvious but she could turn it back upon the man. “Complicated,” she encouraged.

“Objectively-and quite obviously we always have to remain objective-the greater crime, the actual killing, is of an American.” It was going far better than he’d imagined it might.

She shouldn’t make it too easy. “It’s good our three governments have agreed such total cooperation.”

“But we have to decide upon a working structure,” seized Kayley.

“The purpose of this meeting,” announced Olga.

Was she jerking his chain? “How do you see us working operationally?”

She had to be extremely careful of the recording. “Together, I suppose.”

“Charlie Muffin isn’t here.”

Charlie, not Charles, she noted. It was understandable that they’d know each other, but how well, how friendly? “Things still have to be organized, established.”

“When are you seeing him?”

Olga hesitated, in apparent surprise. “I already have, this morning. The British have been granted consular access. That includes the mother, of course.”

Now the hesitation was Kayley’s, tilted momentarily off balance. “In view of what you’ve told me, ahead of my being able to read any of this, I need to talk to her.”

“Of course,” accepted Olga. “But I suppose now there’s a diplomatic consideration. The purpose of consular access is primarily protection, which is after all why I placed her in custody. But she’s not been charged with any crime: can’t be, from anything we’ve got so far …”

“Are you denying me access!” demanded Kayley, overly forceful.

“Of course not! I’m simply suggesting there needs additionally to be some diplomatic consultations … I suppose between your two embassies … or maybe just with Charlie ….” She shrugged. “The sort of problems we’re going to encounter …” She was losing her apprehension of the American. He was going to be far easier to manipulate than the Englishman, although for once she hoped there wasn’t a need for that manipulation to become physical. He probably smelled like his cigars.

“You sure there’s a need for her to remain in protective custody?” Olga was completely prepared for that demand. “Most certainly, if the son had accomplices.”

“But you’ve no objection to my interviewing her?”

“Not as long as the British have no objection.” She paused. “We need to get together … establish some ground rules … don’t we …?”

“Very definitely,” agreed Kayley. It had been a disastrous fucking meeting, achieving nothing. And he was scheduled to talk personally with the director in Washington in less than two hours.

Olga Melnik’s only disappointment was the time it took to get rid of the traces of Kayley’s presence, despite having the ashtray immediately removed and all her office windows opened. She was still reflecting upon the encounter when the courier arrived from the Defense Ministry, with George Bendall’s army record.

At that moment, on the other side of the city, the diplomatic bag for which Charlie was impatiently waiting arrived at the river-bordered British embassy. He wasn’t prepared for the disappointment it contained. If he had been he probably wouldn’t have called Anne Abbott before he began reading.

The forensic evaluation for which Charlie had asked was divided into three parts-factual ballistic, the audio measurement from theTV soundtracks and finally the expert assessment. Impatient though he was-sure though he was-Charlie decided to go through it in its prepared response to get the answers to his questions in the order in which he’d posed them.

The opening section only ran to two pages of little more than flat statistics. Dragunov was the Western identification for the telescope equipped SVD Russian sniper’s rifle introduced into the Soviet army in the late 1960s. Based upon the Kalashnikov AK, to ensure its high degree of accuracy it fired an obsolete but essentially rimmed 7.62mm ball cartridge developed in the early part of the century for the bolt action Mosin-Nagant rifle, which was no longer issued to the Russian military. The SVD was gas operated, semi-automatic and carried a ten round magazine. There was also a commercial version, the Medved, which was usually chambered for a 9mm sports cartridge. Attached were photographs as well as sectioned illustrations detailing specific parts and Charlie at once identified the weapon over which Bendall and the cameraman fought to be the military model.

Anne came in smiling expectantly. “Well?”

“Not there yet,” said Charlie, offering her what he’d already read.

The assessment of sound differences was longer than the opening and more technical. It had been made using both accepted accoustical measurements, the pascal variations of pressure according to newtons per square meter and the measurement of power creating the sound in terms of watts per square meter. The most positive register had been, unsurprisingly, from Moscow’s NTV track. Two shots measured eighteen accoustical ohms, two were twenty and one was twenty-one. From both American stations, NBC and CBS, the highest resonance measured the first two at twenty ohms, one at twenty-eight and two at thirty-three. Canada’s CBS came out at twenty-five, another twenty-six and two at thirty-five. The Canadian tape had needed to be sound enhanced to its maximum to detect the fifth shot, at forty-two.

Unspeaking, Charlie pushed across the desk towards the lawyer each page as he finished it. She shuffled them to one side, although in order, without looking up. Charlie had asked for as complete and as scientific an analysis as possible but he’d expected something beforenow. It had to be in the final summation, he decided, turning to it.

The five shots had been fired in the space of 8.5 seconds, not the slightly longer period he had amateurishly calculated. Using both versions of the Russian weapon, tests had been carried out on two separate British ranges by three Army marksmen, shooting at different times over the comparable distance and elevation of the NTV gantry from the White House podium at life sized models arranged as the presidential group had been. Each had completed firing in 6.75 seconds with positive kills of both presidents and the American First Lady. The figures representing the dead American Secret Serviceman and the Russian security officer were also hit in every test.

The conclusion was that the actual 8.5 seconds were fully consistent with the time it would take for one trained marksman to fire all five shots from the semi-automatic Dragunov. A misleading although understandable layman’s interpretation had been drawn from the sound variations of the shots. It did not, in the opinion of ballistics scientists, indicate the presence of a second gunman firing from different positions. The positional difference was that of the five cameras from the pod from which all the shots had been fired. The sound variations had also been affected by the gunman shifting his stance to take individual aim, the NTV sound boom being the nearest although disengaged from its mute camera and that of the Canadian equipment having been the furthest away.

Charlie waited until Anne Abbott finished. She did so smiling up at him and said, “There goes the defense that was going to make me famous. Bad luck, Charlie.”

“They’re wrong,” he stated.

She frowned at him. “Charlie!”

“The sound differences aren’t from his shifting about on the NTV pod. There wasn’t enough room.”

“That’s not their only scientific finding.”

“It’s the one that’s their mistake.”

“You gave them everything, even the five different camera points to calculate from. You can’t argue with it.”

He could, decided Charlie. And would. “The assumption is that George Bendall is a highly trained marksman.”

“What if he is, or was?”

“He was a television station gofer!”

“Who’d been in the army.” She was disconcerted by the thought that Charlie wouldn’t let go of an opinion even when overwhelmingly proven to be mistaken.

“There’s still a lot we haven’t got from the Russians.” Would he have to admit keeping his suspicion from Natalia to get it?

“Nothing that’s going to affect this analysis,” insisted Anne.

“Wait and see,” said Charlie. Why, he wondered, was it so difficult to admit to the lawyer the possibility of his being wrong? He was relieved at the appearance at the door of Donald Morrison.

“I’ve just been lunched by the CIA,” announced the younger man.

“And?” anticipated Charlie.

“Jordan told the truth about the saltimbocca being good but mostly he lied.”

Olga Melnik decided that George Bendall’s army record, under his assumed Russian name, would form an essential-and convicting-part of the man’s prosecution. He’d served a total of eight years-a much longer period than she’d imagined and something else the stupid mother hadn’t volunteered-two of them in East Germany and eighteen months in Afghanistan. He had been selected for specialist instruction after showing an aptitude for marksmanship in basic training and qualified, on an SVD rifle, as a Grade 1 sniper two years after enlistment. In Afghanistan he was credited with ten confirmed kills and three more had been judged to be most likely his. Four of the confirmed kills were listed as senior ranking leaders of the formative Taliban regime.

The first indication of a possible psychiatric condition emerged during his Afghanistan service. He served six weeks detention, in Kabul, for what was described as a frenzied and unprovoked attack in which the jaw was broken of a fellow member of his own squad. There were three other disciplinary report references to violence,one involving an Afghani, for which he was not imprisoned. He was named as one of four suspects in the fatal shooting of a Russian major, for which another soldier was eventually convicted, and after the investigation he was suspended from the snipers’ detail. He was not reassigned to it. There were nine different charges of excessive drunkeness on two of which, with others, he was accused of drinking diluted diesel from military transporters which caused convulsions that required hospital treatment. He was based in an army camp in Odessa after leaving Afghanistan and it was there that he was finally court-martialed and jailed for six months, preceding his discharge, for the violent robbery of a civilian taxi driver who lost an eye in the attack.

Olga had just given orders for the multiple duplication of the dossier when Leonid Zenin called on the internal line from his office on the floor above. “The FSB can’t find all the references to George Bendall in his father’s KGB file. Looks as if there’s a lot missing.”

“A prosecution will hardly need it, from what I’ve just got from the army. Bendall’s a raving drunken lunatic.”

“That’s not really the point though, is it?”

“No,” agreed Olga, remembering their earlier conversation. “What are you going to do?”

“How’s it going with the British and the Americans?” queried Zenin, not replying.

“Well enough.” Olga felt a stir of uncertainty.

“Have they asked for KGB material?”

“Yes.”

“The orders are to cooperate fully. They should be told why we-or rather the KGB replacement-aren’t able to provide it.”

But she’d be the identifiable person telling them, Olga realized, uncomfortably.

“You’re right, Charlie. It’s a hell of a view!” Beyond the embankment the summer sun was striking diamonds off the Moskva, churned by follow-my-leader pleasure boats.

“Did you manage to catch Okulov’s Duma statement on TV?” Reciprocating the American’s hospitality of the previous day, Charlie had Islay malt on the desk between them.

“I thought Petr Tikunov chewed him up and spat out the bits he didn’t want.”

That was Charlie’s impression, too. “It was a pretty obvious inference that the security relaxations were imposed from Washington.”

“He won’t have made any friends with that.”

“That your diplomatic playback?”

The American shook his head. “Personal view. You?”

“Not yet.”

“Met the Russian gal this afternoon.”

Moving towards it, guessed Charlie. Would Kayley play his hand any cleverer than Burt Jordan had, with Morrison? It had been stupid of the man to lie that the Agency hadn’t tried to find Peter Bendall after his defection. What had amounted virtually to a joint operation would obviously remain on British file. Charlie said, “What do you think?”

“Attractive. Nice tits.”

“Professionally?”

“Difficult to judge, from one meeting. We agreed we need a working structure.”

“She suggest anything?”

“No. Gave me a whole bunch of stuff. Guess she gave you the same, when you met?”

“I hope so.”

“Thought the second meeting with the mother was better than the first?” suggested Kayley.

Not bad, Charlie conceded. Should he admit to not having seen it or play the bluff? “What did Olga think?”

“That there might be something in it.” The director had burned his ass for having so little to report about his conversation with the Russian colonel. It had been wise to hold back about the British access.

“You agree with her?”

“Difficult to say until I’ve gone through everything. You haven’t told me what you think.”

Time to try an ace, Charlie decided. “I’m keeping an open mind until I see her myself.”

“That’s best.”

“I think so.”

“Tomorrow, right?”

Correct on timing, wrong on tactics, gauged Charlie. “Right.”

“It’s good we’re like that,” said Kayley, extending a hand with his forefinger over his index digit.

“You’ll get it all,” promised Charlie.

“How’s about me coming along with you?”

That was practically desperate! “It’s British consular access! Diplomatic! I’m only being allowed in under protest.” It hardly qualified as diplomatic without Richard Brooking. But Kayley wouldn’t know that.

“You any idea what sort of pressure I’m under with the goddamned president sitting on my lap!”

“I told you, you’ll get it all. I can’t do more than that.”

“I was looking for a favor.”

Charlie recognized the inherent threat. “I’m going directly from the mother to Olga. Why don’t we establish the working structure then?”

“I’m disappointed, Charlie.”

Which was exactly what Colonel Olga Melnik intended the man to be, Charlie guessed.

Walter Anandale snapped off the remote control, blanking the screen upon which they’d watched the entire replay of Aleksandr Okulov’s parliamentary appearance and said, “That’s made me personally responsible for the whole fucking thing, including the maiming of my own wife, for Christ’s sake!”

“That would be an extreme interpretation,” said Wendall North, uncomfortable at the reappearance of security lapses he’d hoped safely swept behind him.

“We got people at home looking for extremes. You know that!”

“It certainly wasn’t necessary,” retreated the chief of staff.

“You get on to that guy … what’s …?”

“Trishin,” helped the other man. Why did the president have such a problem with that name?

“Trishin. And you let him know I don’t like what his guy’s justdone … that I don’t like it at all … And then you get on to our public affairs people and tell them to start lobbying, not just among the media travelling with us but back home in Washington, too. I want it countered … Okulov wants to play dirty pool he’s going to get his knuckles crunched …”

“We could suggest it’s the Russians trying to get out from under, which it is,” proposed North.

“Sounds good,” agreed the president.

“Doesn’t help the atmosphere,” suggested North.

“There isn’t any atmosphere to be helped, not anymore.”

It remained essential to both sides that there was no suggestion of an irreparable collapse but now wasn’t the moment to start talking of diplomacy and compromise, North decided. “I’ve spoken personally to the four orthopedic surgeons specializing in brachial plexus injuries recommended by Max Donnington. He’s made up complete case notes, together with the X-rays. We’re shipping it all back today …. And we’re also flying Ben Jennings’s body home.”

“What’s arranged?”

“Marines pallbearers from the embassy here taking the coffin to the plane. Honor guard at Andrews.”

“Is he married?”

North nodded. “Two kids, both at college.”

“I should write personally.”

“I’ve already made up a draft.”

“What about the vice president attending the funeral?”

“It would look right.”

“Fix it.”