Kings of Many Castles Page 10

  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 just done … 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.”

  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 smudge beneath her chin and her hands were soiled, blackly dirt-rimmed beneath the odd nail that hadn’t already b
een 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 planned or 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 thought if 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?”