Kings of Many Castles

9

Vera Bendall’s shoes were laced so Charlie presumed her bra had been returned as well, although she was shapeless beneath a badly knitted cardigan. The gray-streaked hair was straggled, no more than finger combed, and there was no make-up. There was a dirt smudgebeneath her chin and her hands were soiled, blackly dirt-rimmed beneath the odd nail that hadn’t already been bitten to the quick. Despite the laces, Vera scuffed into the interview room, stoop-shouldered, burdened by the unknown fears of whatever was going to happen to her next. She stopped apprehensively as Charlie stood, then gnawed in embarrassment at her lower lip when he held out the one remaining chair.

“Sorry,” she said, quickly.

“You don’t have to be frightened,” said Anne Abbott, in English. “We’re from the embassy.”

“Please help me,” pleaded the woman, at once.

“We’ll try,” promised Anne. “That’s why we’re here.”

“We’d like you to help us, too,” said Charlie. Vera Bendall had responded in English, so he did as well. He held out the small pocket recorder. “We’re going to tape everything. Is that OK?”

She shrugged at the continued politeness. “I suppose.”

Charlie hadn’t bothered to look for the most likely position of the Russian equipment, although he’d shaken his head to stop the horrified lawyer bursting out aloud at the conditions inside Lefortovo while they’d waited for Vera to be brought to them. If the standard fish-eye-lensed camera was mounted somewhere in the overhead light surround, which was normal, the warning would probably have been picked up. It was a starkly functional room, entirely bare except for the center table and three stiff-backed wooden chairs. The door was metal, with a circular peephole. There was a summoning button set into the wall. It was strangely, almost disconcertingly, quiet, as if the room had been soundproofed against either internal or external noise. There was a prison smell, though-urine, sour food, unwashed bodies, decay-to which Charlie thought Vera was probably contributing.

“Tell us about George,” prompted Charlie. He had to guard against showing he knew of Olga Melnik’s first abortive interview or of the possibly improved second, which Natalia had shown him the previous evening, with other material the Russian investigator had not so far made available. It was going to be interesting to see how adept a questioner Anne Abbott turned out to be.

Vera Bendall’s pent-up denials of anything her son had plannedor done came in a babbled rush of protested innocence and uncaring admission of a totally dysfunctional relationship between mother and son but virtually everything she’d told Olga Melnik was included. The regular Tuesday and Thursday routine emerged in answer to a question from Anne.

“How did you feel about being in Russia?” explored Charlie, gently. “Did you hate it as much as George?”

“Not as much.”

“But you didn’t like it?”

“I’ve adjusted, after all this time. No alternative.”

“You were a schoolteacher, in England?” remembered Charlie, from the English records.

“Yes.”

“Were you forced to quit after Peter defected?”

“No.”

“Why did you follow Peter?” came in Anne.

“I was his wife. It was my duty.”

“He abandoned you. You and George?” persisted the other woman.

There was the familiar listless shrug. “I thought it was the right thing to do.”

“George was only five?” picked up Charlie. Would Sasha hate being uprooted from Russia if the need ever arose?

“Not quite. Four and a half.”

“So he knew virtually nothing of England; had no comparison against life here?”

Vera frowned, considering the question. “That’s right.”

“Why did he grow up to hate it?” said Anne, following Charlie’s direction.

The faded woman didn’t answer at once. “Peter and I, I suppose.”

“I don’t understand,” said Charlie.

“We didn’t get on, after I came here. Argued a lot about how much better it would have been if I hadn’t come. I was close to George then. Not like it was later … he used to take my side … that’s how it always seemed to be, how I remember it. George and me against Peter … every day ….” She trailed off, seemingly in bitter memories.

“There were stories … suggestions … in England that Peter wanted to return …?”

“I wanted to. With George.”

“What about Peter?”

“Maybe. I’m not sure.”

“Why didn’t you and George go back?”

“They wouldn’t let us.”

“They?” Charlie was dominating the questioning now, Anne silent beside him.

“The people Peter worked for?”

“The KGB?”

“Yes.”

Charlie’s bunched-up feet twitched. He’d spent more than an hour the previous night hunched over the recorder Natalia had protectively carried in-and out-of the Lubyanka, as surprised as she had been not just at getting past the reception area without being searched-prepared to insist upon the authority of the acting president-but also that Spassky’s office hadn’t been equipped with a “white noise” baffler to prevent tapes unknowingly being made. His instinct-as well as another foot spasm-told him the gaps in Peter Bendall’s KGB files hadn’t occurred accidentally. “Did Peter tell you that you couldn’t go back to England? Or was it one of the Russians he worked for?”

“Peter.”

Charlie instantly recognized the hesitation in her voice. He had to tiptoe, an inch at a time. “Only ever Peter?”

“As I told the Russian detective colonel, sometimes in the last few years Peter worked from home, at Hutorskaya Ulitza. The arguments got really bad around that time: that was when George was sixteen or seventeen. He said he didn’t believe what Peter was saying and that he was keeping us prisoner. Once one of the people who came to see Peter took George into the room with them.”

She looked at the water carafe alongside the tape and unasked Charlie poured for her.

“Did George tell you what went on in the room?”

“He said the man told him there were things he had to do but that he wouldn’t do them.”

“What things?”

“He didn’t tell me.”

“Didn’t you ask him?”

“No.”

Charlie felt a burn of frustration at Vera Bendall’s constant, look-away acceptance of everything and anything that happened to her. “What did he say?”

“He said he wasn’t weak, like Peter. That they were going to be surprised.”

“Peter had been in the room?” persisted Charlie.

“Yes.”

“So he would have heard whatever it was?”

“I suppose.”

“Didn’t you ask him?” said Anne.

“He said it was none of my business. That it was too late and that if I hadn’t wanted to be here I shouldn’t have followed him.”

Would this be how his relationship with Natalia would finally-so disastrously-implode if she took Sasha away from Russia to live with him somewhere in the West, Charlie wondered again. No, he decided, just as quickly. The circumstances were far too different for there to be any conceivable comparison. “Did George accept it?”

The fatalistic shrug came again. “That was when the trouble started.”

“What trouble?” asked the lawyer.

“Not going to classes … the beginning of the drinking … he was in an accident, in a stolen car. He wasn’t charged with the theft because he couldn’t drive. He started to use the Russian name around that time. Insisted I call him Georgi …”

“Used a Russian name but didn’t like Russia?” queried Charlie, despite already knowing the answer: it was a logical question the eavesdroppers would expect to be asked.

“He said he didn’t want to be known as George Bendall anymore.”

“The behavior began suddenly?” pressed Anne.

“As I remember it.”

“You must have thought about it, the reason I mean?”

Vera smiled, faintly. “I did. I think in some silly way he thoughtif he misbehaved badly enough he’d get thrown out … expelled from the country.”

“Did you challenge him about it?”

“Not directly. I think I said once that it wouldn’t work, that he’d just end up with a criminal record. He said he didn’t know what I was talking about. That he didn’t care anyway.”

“Was there any more contact between him and the KGB people who came to Hutorskaya Ulitza?”

She nodded. “The same man came back. Peter didn’t go into the room with them this time. Then others came and took him to a psychiatrist and for a while he got better, although he started to spend a lot of time away … not bothering to come home, I mean …”

“Who was the psychiatrist, Vera?”

“I never knew.”

“But you knew he was seeing a psychiatrist?”

“Peter told me. He said it was best. That I’d given birth to an idiot and that it was my fault.”

“Did George continue behaving himself?”

“I don’t know. He would have been about eighteen then. He joined the army. After that we hardly saw him at all.”

Charlie went to speak but suddenly remembered he wasn’t supposed to know about the man’s military record. “How long was he in the army?”

“A long time. He didn’t contact me-it was always me, never ever Peter-for years at a time, two years was the longest. I don’t believe he wrote more than ten letters, the whole time. When he did it was to ask for money. For a long time, towards the end, I thought he was probably dead. Then there was a letter from a prison in Odessa. He said he was being kicked out of the army. One day he just turned up.”

“Was Peter still alive?”

“Yes.”

“What did he say?”

“Accepted it. He wasn’t well by then.”

“Did the KGB still come?”

“Hardly ever.”

“Did George ever meet any of the KGB people again, after coming out of the army?”

“I don’t remember.”

“What work did he do, after he came out of the army?”

“He didn’t, not for a long time.”

“How could he pay you to live at Hutorskaya Ulitza?” asked Anne.

“He didn’t.”

“He was still drinking?”

“Worse than ever, after the army. Every day. All day.”

“Did you give him the money to buy it?”

The woman shook her head, positively. “There wasn’t any. Not for drink. After Peter died, all I got was a 3,420 ruble-a-month pension.”

She could count it to the last kopek, thought Charlie, less than sixteen pounds a month. “How did he get money to drink?”

“Stealing. He used to go out to Sheremet‘yevo and steal suitcases from tourists. And the same at the railway stations, at the Kiev and Kazan departure terminals and at the central passenger bureau at Komsomol’skaya. There was always a lot of Western things at the apartment. I asked him not to because if he got caught we’d be thrown out of the apartment ….” She briefly trapped her lower lip between her teeth again. “That’ll definitely happen now, won’t it? The detective colonel said it could.”

“I don’t know,” admitted Charlie, who thought it probably would. Hurriedly he went on, “Did he stop?”

She nodded. “Just under a years ago, when he started work at the television station.”

“How did that happen?”

“I never knew how or why it happened, but George stopped stealing ever so suddenly. It was a long time before he told me he was seeing a doctor, a friend, who was helping him. I don’t remember his name but I know you’ll want to know it. I’ll try. I’ll really try.”

“What about the job?”

“He said he’d met someone who’d helped him. I thought it might be the doctor.”

Charlie felt a flare of hope. Don’t rush, he cautioned himself. “Was he still drinking heavily?”

“I don’t know about at work. Certainly at home. There were always bottles.”

“What did he earn?”

“I don’t know.”

It should be easy enough to find out from the station. “But it was certainly enough to keep bottles at home?”

“It seemed to be.”

“Who was the person he’d met who helped him get the job?”

“He never told me.”

“Do you think it could have been the person he went out to meet on Tuesdays and Thursdays: perhaps stayed with on the times he didn’t come home?” asked Anne.

“It could have been.”

“Do you think this person worked at the TV stations, too?”

“It would have made sense, wouldn’t it?”

“Was it a man? Or a woman?”

“I don’t know. He didn’t have girlfriends. It would most likely have been a man, I think.”

“What were the names of the people who came from the KGB to see Peter?”

“They didn’t have names … not names that they were introduced by. Peter never told me.”

“Not ever?” demanded Charlie, disbelievingly.

“Not ever.”

“What about Peter’s papers after he died?” said Charlie, asking the question as it came to him. “Did Peter keep a diary … a journal … letters …?”

“A diary. And other things. He was always writing.”

Charlie was aware of Anne stirring beside him. He said, “What happened to it?”

“Taken,” said Vera, shortly. “The day he died people came … they had security bureau identification. They collected up everything and said it would be returned when they’d finished with it.”

“Was it?”

“No.”

“Did you have the name of anyone to call … to ask …?”

“No.”

“Have you asked for Peter’s things back?”

“I didn’t want to upset anyone. I wouldn’t be able to get another apartment … I can’t survive without the pension …”

“Did George keep a diary … have things written down?”

“Maybe. He didn’t let me go into his room. The militia searched the apartment when they came … brought me here … I don’t know what they took … no one’s told me.”

Natalia hadn’t mentioned anything about George Bendall’s personal property taken from the apartment. Olga Melnik certainly hadn’t, either. “I’ll find out,” promised Charlie.

“Get me out of here. Please,” the old woman suddenly blurted. “I haven’t done anything wrong. I’m in a cell. There’s no toilet … nowhere to wash.”

“I will,” promised the lawyer. “You shouldn’t be kept like this.”

Charlie wished Anne hadn’t been so positive.

“Now! Can I come with you now!”

“It’ll have to be an official release. I have to arrange it,” said the lawyer.

The older woman’s face crumpled. “I don’t know what else to tell you … what else I can do. I don’t know anything that will help.”

“I will do everything I can, as quickly as I can,” said Anne.

Vera Bendall’s lips quivered and her eyes flooded. “Don’t abandon me … please don’t do that.”

“We won’t,” assured the lawyer.

Anne Abbott held back until they stepped through the prison gates. As they did she breathed out, theatrically, and said, “Jesus Christ! I don’t think I’ve ever been in such a terrifying place in my life!”

“That’s what it’s supposed to be,” said Charlie.

“You really believe there was a tape recording being made of us?”

“And a film.”

“Jesus!” repeated the woman.

“Welcome to Russia.”

“There’s no justification for her being there.”

“No,” agreed Charlie.

“Do you think Sir Michael would agree to her being held somewhere within the embassy?”

Charlie looked sideways in disbelief at the woman. “I wouldn’t think so for a minute.”

“She’s British.”

“The wife of a defecting spy-after whom she fled-and the mother of a murderer. Vera Bendall’s going to be kept at the end of a very long barge pole,” reminded Charlie. “The ambassador-and London-will want as little to do with her as possible.”

“So much for compassion.”

“So much for hard assed political reality.”

“We’ve got to find somewhere better than that place.”

“Good luck.”

“How do you think it went, overall?”

She didn’t yet know all that he did and he couldn’t tell her, Charlie realized. “Overall we managed to raise more questions than we’ve got answers for.” And there were more he still had to ask.

“That’s what I think. I also think we made a pretty good team.”

She had asked all the right questions, Charlie acknowledged. “Could be even better with practice.”

“In fact, I was going to suggest buying you a celebration drink but I’ve decided helping Vera Bendall has higher priority.”

“Let’s take a rain check,” agreed Charlie. Stealing an hour drinking with Anne Abbott would have been very pleasant but he supposed he had higher priorities, too.

“It is bad, isn’t it? Worse than you’ve told me?”

Anandale looked down at his wife, one side of her body embalmed beneath her protective tunnel. They’d been married for twenty-two years-happily so despite his resisted temptations-and in their personal life he’d always levelled with her, as she had with him. “The nerves in your arm have been damaged.”

“Is that why I can’t feel it?” Her hair had been lightly brushed and her face washed properly, not with an unguent, so that it didn’t shine anymore but her pallor was still drained a deathly white. There was a saline as well as a plasma drip into her uninjured arm.

“Yes.”

“Will I get the feeling back?”

“There’s going to need to be treatment. We’ve already got the specialists lined up, for when we get back.”

“What sort of treatment?”

“Re-connecting the nerves.”

“The bullet smashed them?”

“Yes.”

“What happens if they can’t be re-connected?”

“We’re going to the best people in the world to ensure that they can be.”

“What if they can’t,” demanded Ruth Anandale, with the persistence of the criminal lawyer she’d been before their marriage.

Anandale hesitated, swallowing. “Then it will be permanent.”

“No feeling at all?”

“No.”

“No use then?”

“No.”

Ruth Anandale didn’t cry. Her face creased, once, as if there had been a spurt of pain but then she lay expressionless although not looking at him. “I broke my leg skating when I was a kid. About twelve, I guess. Even then all I could think about in the hospital was that it would be stiff when it got fixed, so that I’d have to limp-drag it maybe-for the rest of my life.”

“I promise it’ll be fixed.”

“You’ll have to help me, Walt. Help me a lot. I don’t want a body that doesn’t work right … look right …”

“We won’t give up, until we get it fixed.”

“No,” agreed Ruth. “We won’t.”

The Russian Foreign Ministry is within walking distance of the American embassy, which was how Wendall North and the U.S. secretary of state finally completed their journey because Smolenkaja Sennaja Ploscad was gridlocked. The two Russians were waiting in Boris Petrin’s office actually overlooking the traffic-clogged highway.

When North began to apologize for their lateness the foreign minister said, “We saw you, from the window. It’s a perpetual problem.” The floor to ceiling windows were double glazed, smotheringany outside noise, but Petrin still led them deeper into the cavernous room, to where easy chairs and couches were arranged around a dead fireplace. There was an oasis of bottled mineral water and glasses in the middle of a low, glass-topped table. The Americans took the seats toward which the minister gestured and sat, waiting.

Trishin said, “We want formally to express our condolences about your dead security man.” Local television had been dominated by footage of the coffin being loaded aboard the plane at Sheremet’yevo.

North nodded but didn’t speak. Neither did James Scamell.

Petrin said, “I am glad you agreed there was no need for advisers or a secretariat.”

The two Americans remained silent.

“Politically we’ve got to move forward now,” said the Russian chief of staff. “I’m sure you agree with us on that, too?”

“I’m not clear what positive movement there can be in the circumstances,” said Scamell, at last.

“The treaty was ready to be finalized,” insisted Petrin.

“It had reached the final discussion stage,” qualified the secretary of state.

“Easily resolvable points,” argued Petrin.

“That’s not our interpretation,” said North. “Your elected president is alive but incapacitated …”

“ … And Aleksandr Mikhailevich Okulov is the legally acting president, empowered to make and take all presidential decisions under the conventions of the Russian constitution,” interrupted Trishin, formally.

“Pending elections also required under your constitution in the event of that incapacity becoming permanent or the death of the legally incumbent president,” finished the equally well-rehearsed North, just as formally.

“The pending elections are not specially convened,” fought Trishin. “They were already scheduled.”

“A circumstance of convenience,” dismissed Scamall, briefed by the American embassy’s constitutional lawyer. “Our advice is that it would be legally unsafe-as well as unfittingly hasty on the part of both sides-to consider any formal signing in advance of that election.”

There was a visible stiffening from the two Russians.

“What do you consider appropriate?” demanded Trishin, tightly.

“A joint statement regretting what’s happened, with the hope that those still surviving make a full recovery. And an assurance that the incident in no way endangers the treaty negotiations, which will continue,” recited Scamell.

“To defeat the Kommunisticheskaja Partiya Rossiiskoi Federalsii there has to be a signed treaty,” insisted Petrin. “That’s been our understanding-our agreement-from the beginning.”

“I can continue coming here during the lead up to the elections,” offered Scamell. “There will only be one obvious inference.”

“That the treaty will be agreed with us but not with the communists?” completed Trishin.

The scenario was North’s and as he sat listening to it being spelled out he congratulated himself upon how well it suited both sides, although to a greater advantage to America than to Russia.

“We are disappointed,” understated Petrin.

“Nothing is being withdrawn,” insisted North. “Things are merely being postponed, which they should be.”

“What about the joint statement?” queried Trishin.

“Which must be a joint statement,” North said heavily and at once. “Strictly agreed between us, with no premature, unexpected announcements. I am giving you the American undertaking here and now that there will not be anything independent from us.”

Petrin and the Russian chief of staff looked pointedly between each other. Trishin said, “I believe we see the point.”

“If it is to be a joint statement, carrying the authority of both leaders, it should be made personally, not issued through spokesmen,” demanded Petrin. “We’d consider that essential.”

“There’s the question of security …” North tried but Petrin overrode him.

“There is no question of security!” The man looked around the huge office, empty but for them, as a reminder that it was an unattributable meeting. Completing the unspoken threat he said, “A personal statement, by your president and Aleksandr Mikhailevich, would totally guarantee no premature, ill-judged comments, don’t you agree?”

John Kayley was already waiting in the small conference room adjoining Olga Melnik’s suite when Charlie arrived at Militia headquarters. For once the American wasn’t fumigating the place with his cigar smoke, which was a welcomed relief.

As he passed over the transcripts of that morning’s meeting with Vera Bendall Charlie said, “I’ve included copy tapes, as well.”

There was a stone-faced, head-nod of acceptance from the American, which Charlie interpreted to be continued annoyance at his refusal to let the man in on the interview and thought, fuck you too.

“How did it go?” asked Olga, who’d already listened to her own eavesdropped recording and seen on film Charlie’s warning head shake to the woman who’d gone with him to Lefortovo.

“One or two interesting points,” suggested Charlie.

“Time to start work then!” she said, briskly.

“Exactly,” seized Kayley. “And this isn’t the place or the way.”

Charlie looked at the other man in open surprise. Surely yesterday’s rancor couldn’t have remained as strong as this? Olga just as quickly discerned the American’s irritation, hoping she’d succeeded in making the Englishman its focus.

Charlie said, “You’ve obviously got a point to make?”

“An obvious one,” declared the American. “Maybe the three of us can get on well enough together … maybe not. None of us know yet. But passing around packages like this is ridiculous. We need a centralized operation: an incident room, with trained officers indexing and correlating everything. Computers. Telephones. Access to forensic facilities. Somewhere from which we can all work together, be together. Yesterday all those facilities were flown in from America. And have already been set up in a basement at the U.S. embassy. It’s from there that I am going to head up the American side of the investigation, an American side which will be fully exchanged with both of you. But what I’m suggesting-inviting-is for both of you to join me there, have all your stuff filed there. It’ll happen anyway, under the sharing agreement. But it’ll be in three different locations, with no necessary centralization. This shooting is almost forty-eight hours old and we haven’t got a damned thing properly off the ground yet …” He looked at Olga, smiling at last. “That’s not acriticism, of anything you’ve done. But look …” He swept his hand towards the pile of dossiers in front of Charlie. “He hasn’t had the opportunity to look at any of that yet …” He had to bulldoze them, be even more insistent if necessary. Paul Smith had made it a clear ultimatum when he’d spoken to the FBI director that morning. He had twenty-four hours to get everything on American terms under American control or he caught the direct Washington flight home the following night.

Charlie had recognized Kayley’s point long before the American had got to it, his mind way beyond what the man was saying. The arrangement would suit him perfectly. Through Natalia he had virtually open access to the Russian investigation. And if he had entree to the American facility he was confident he could discover whatever he wanted or needed, even if they didn’t want him to.

Now it was Olga who was stone-faced. “You established all that without telling me-us-what you intended in advance!”

“It’s the way I’m working the American part of the investigation!” repeated Kayley. “I’m inviting you both in, to be part of it. Like we’re supposed to be, all part of the same thing. What do you say, Charlie?”

Yet again Charlie’s mind was way ahead. Less than twenty-four hours earlier, Olga had been trying to drive a wedge between him and the American: how quickly what goes around comes around. “I think it’s a good idea. It is, after all, what we’re supposed to be doing.”

“All those facilities exist here,” insisted Olga.

Charlie was with him, which put her in the inferior bargaining position, calculated Kayley. “You don’t want to come aboard, that’s your decision. Charlie and I will operate out of Novinskii Bul’var, liaise and share everything with you from there. Not perfect but better than what we’re doing at the moment.”

She couldn’t let it happen! They’d combine against her, cut her out. “It’s a resolve to an operational difficulty. I’m prepared to give it a trial. If, for any reason, it doesn’t prove functional we’ll have to come to some other arrangement.”

“Sure we will,” smiled Kayley, allowing Olga her escape. Won! he thought.

“You’re right,” agreed Natalia, looking up from the transcript of Charlie’s interview with Vera Bendall. “It throws up a lot of questions.”

“Most of which I didn’t follow through,” conceded Charlie, self-critically. The day had continued unexpectedly but in Charlie’s opinion far more productively than he’d anticipated. Kayley had used the fact that Charlie supposedly had to catch up with the newly produced information-as they did from his interview with Vera Bendall-to argue their first American embassy assessment should be postponed until the following morning and Charlie had gone along with it because the Russian forensic material, the incomplete KGB dossier and the preliminary medical report upon George Bendall were new, although then he couldn’t have guessed how important he would judge one of them to be.

“When are you going to see her again?”

“Directly after the U.S. embassy meeting. I’ll fix it there with Olga.”

“You really think the embassy arrangements will be practical?”

“Between us we’re covered from two sides. I’ll take my chances getting what I want from America.” At the moment all he wanted was one specific statistic.

From anyone else it would have sounded arrogant but from Charlie it didn’t, thought Natalia. If only her professional trust could cross over to their personal situation. “You think from what Vera Bendall said the KGB were using him-had a use for him?”

Charlie shook his head. “It could be. But it doesn’t fit! You were KGB. Can you imagine them taking on someone like George Bendall!”

“I wasn’t operational,” reminded Natalia. “He could have had his uses because he was unpredictable.”

“Two other things that don’t fit,” itemized Charlie. “How does a drunken, unpredictable misfit like George Bendall, who made a living robbing tourists, suddenly get-and hold-a job in a TV studio? Any job, for that matter?”

“I was going to ask you that. I don’t know.”

“Try the second. George Bendall retained British nationality. How did he get accepted into the Russian army?”

“At the time the Russian army was made up of conscripts and volunteers from fifteen republics of the Soviet Union.”

“The United Kingdom wasn’t one of them.”

“You think it’s linked to what Vera Bendall said about the KGB?”

“The Glavnoye Razvedyvatelnoye Upravleniye is military intelligence,” reminded Charlie. “What influence would the KGB have had?”

“Enough to get him in, if they’d wanted.”

Charlie hesitated at the direct question but decided things were sufficiently relaxed between them now. “Did the instruction come from your ministry for Olga to tell Kayley and I that things were missing from Peter Bendall’s dossier?”

There was no hesitation from Natalia. “No,” she said at once. “It didn’t come from the control group, either. So it’s got to be internal Militia, blame apportioning.”

It was an essential part of their self-imposed personal security that each had their own, independent telephone line into the Lesnaya apartment. Natalia rose hurriedly at the recognizable ring of hers, anxious that it wouldn’t wake Sasha. Natalia’s was the shortest end of the conversation and she spoke with her back to him so Charlie only picked up isolated words.

She remained by the telephone after replacing it, turning to him. “George Bendall’s recovered consciousness. And the guards at Lefortovo found his mother’s body an hour ago. They didn’t take her bra away after she’d spoken with you. She hanged herself with it.”

For once in her life Vera Bendall hadn’t looked away, accepting everything and anything, thought Charlie.