Kings of Many Castles Read online

  “The two bombs were Chechen,” reminded North, uncomfortably.

  “That’s your job, Wendall. I’ve got a personal interest in knowing everything about whoever organized it and why. I don’t give a damn about Russian jurisdiction or hurt feelings. And I want to know how people who were supposed to be protecting me—and my wife-let a guy with a godamned gun within kewpie doll shooting range of us.”

  “Yes, sir,” said North.

  “My wife might die,” said the president, in near conversation with himself. “Someone’s going to pay for that, pay for it personally. You hear me, Wendall?”

  “Yes, Mr. President, I hear you.”

  In Washington CIA Director Jack Grech personally took the call from FBI Director Paul Smith.

  Grech said, “We got a lot of problems here.”

  “You going over to head things up personally?” asked Smith.

  “I need to speak to people first,” evaded Grech. All the Secret Service precautions were based upon Agency—and Russian—advice, leaving the Agency in the clear.

  Paul Smith decided an FBI director could do himself a lot of political good riding in with the cavalry, particularly when the gunman was already in custody. Smith said, “I think I’ll start making plans.”

  “I guess I should, too,” said Grech.

  3

  Charlie Muffin’s office in the new British embassy on Protocnyj Pereulok was in complete contrast to the cobwebbed broom cupboard he’d been dismissively allocated in the old legation on Morisa Toreza, actually with an unobstructed view over the Smolenskaya embankment to the Moskva river and with a separate annex for direct, security-cleared telephone, e-mail and fascimile links to his London riverside headquarters at Millbank. He even had his own coffee percolator. Peter Bendall’s complete me—together with separately wired photographs—had already been faxed through by the time Charlie arrived at the night-shrouded complex, carrying the video of the gantry struggle he’d recorded himself before leaving the Lesnaya Ulitza apartment. He was only three-quarters through the archive material when the querulous call came from Richard Brooking, the head of chancellery.

  “This had better be justified.”

  “It is.”

  “We’re on the coffee.”

  “Pass the mints and decanter around a second time.”

  The man sighed. “How long?”

  “Fifteen minutes. Have you told the ambassador?”

  There was another sigh. “I need to be sure there’s a crisis first.”

  “Your decision,” said Charlie, who hadn’t given the diplomat the reason for breaking into his dinner party over an open telephone line from Lesnaya.

  “Don’t you forget that. My office. Thirty minutes.”

  Charlie finished reading in fifteen and spent the remainder of the time studying the fading photographs of one of Britain’s most infamous post-war traitors. Peter Bendall had been a skeletally-thin man whose narrow face was dominated by a prow of a nose upon which balanced thick-lensed, round-framed spectacles. Every Old Bailey trial, family and official government picture portrayed a fastidiously although cheaply dressed, aloofly-featured man bearing no similarity whatsoever to the fanatically staring, mop-haired figure who’d now been seen by every television owner in the world struggling in mid-air for possession of a sniper’s rifle.

  Brooking, a fleshy, overweight man assured an ambassadorial promotion on his next posting, was still wearing his dinner jacket and black tie when Charlie got to the man’s office suite. He tried—but failed—to heighten the unspoken rebuke at having his evening interrupted by the contempt with which he regarded Charlie’s shoe-spread, crumpled appearance. Charlie wondered if the man had told his guests to wait until his return. Around the man still hung a miasma of cigars.

  “So what is it!” demanded Brooking, impatiently.

  “Today’s gunman is British, the son of a defector,” announced Charlie. The theatricality was unnecessary—he should have warned Brooking during their internal telephone conversation earlier—but pompous assholes like Brooking had always irritated Charlie and he never had been able to resist the deflating pin-prick.

  Brooking did visibly deflate. He shook his head, refusing the information, and several times said “No” as if to convince himself he’d mishead.

  “George Bendall,” insisted Charlie. “Son of Peter Bendall, an Aldermaston physicist who escaped from Wormwood Scrubs in 1970 after serving only two of a forty year sentence for betraying to the Russians over the previous fifteen years every British nuclear development, a lot of which was shared with America.”

  “Oh my God!” moaned Brooking.

  Charlie hefted what had come from London. “Virtually nothing on George Bendall, who was only two when his father got caught. Brought to Moscow by his mother three years after his father arrived. She skipped sideways through Austria from what was purported to be a holiday in France using the same escape route as her husband. Gave the stiff finger to British counter-intelligence who were supposed to be watching her because hubby was rumored to have changed his mind and wanted to come back.”

  Brooking’s recovery was as visible as his earlier collapse. “Why didn’t you tell me this from the beginning!”

  “It wasn’t a secure line.”

  The man frowned. “Has this been officially announced by the Russians?”

  “No.”

  “Then how do you know?”

  “It’s my job to know, the job I was posted here to fulfill.”

  “What’s your source?”

  “You know I can’t tell you that.” It was an inviolable rule that official diplomats were always separated from provable intelligence activities, and even though Charlie’s function had changed it provided a very important personal protection for him and Natalia within Moscow. And the director-general in London hadn’t pressed to learn his contacts. Observing his own even more inviolable personal rule Charlie already had a prepared escape if Sir Rupert Dean or anyone else ever became too curious or demanding.

  “It could be wrong.”

  “It’s not.” Charlie belatedly realized that this was the very first time he’d directly acted upon—used—information from Natalia and her intelligence liaison directorship with the Interior Ministry. She hadn’t tried to dissuade him because there was going to be an official announcement the following day but over the last few months he’d become increasingly aware how much of a strain their precarious situation was, far more upon her than him. He’d stopped talking about their getting married or of how easily they could live in England—anywhere in Europe—if their relationship did become known and he was inevitably expelled and she was just as inevitably dismissed her ministry position.

  “You’ve told London?”

  “Sir Rupert personally. He wants the ambassador informed ahead of the Russian announcement.”

  “Yes,” agreed Brooking, briskly.

  Pass the problem parcel time, Charlie recognized. “And lawyers.”

  “Yes,” complied Brooking again, still brisk, aware of another layer of responsibility avoidance. “Their involvement is obviously essential.”

  Brooking’s first telephone call was shorter than the second and Charlie wondered if the lawyer had already been in bed in the apartment block that formed part of the new British diplomatic compound. Charlie was one of a very few still living—because he clearly had to—outside the enclave, once more using as the reason the necessity to distance himself from official diplomacy, although since the post-Cold War re-alignment his was much more an FBI than a counter-intelligence function. Which was why, during his sleepy-voiced conversation with an awakened Sir Rupert Dean in London, the director-general had given the empire-preserving instruction that the embassy-attached MI6 be kept out for as long as possible.

  Since that conversation Charlie had decided the delay, twelve hours at the most, would achieve little more than further alienating him from people who were supposed to be colleagues but who viewed him with the distast
e that Brooking had evidenced minutes before. But it was a familiar experience for Charlie to find there was shit on every baton he picked up. He couldn’t ever remember actually being part of a relay team but resisting inter-embassy association was a matter of professional necessity as much as self-protecting ostracism. Charlie never had been, nor ever would be, a team player. It made him reliant upon others and a further Charlie Muffin rule was never to rely upon anyone except himself.

  An unsettling challenge came at once to mind. What about Natalia? Not a contradiction, he assured himself. He trusted Natalia implicitly and absolutely, trusted her more than she trusted him, with every justifiable reason for her doubt. He relied upon her, too, in equal proportion. But that trust and that reliance was personal, not professional. He would never, of course, have admitted it to anyone—most certainly not to Natalia, who would misunderstand it to be a lack of love, which it wasn’t—but because Charlie Muffin knew himself so completely he acknowledged he’d never accept Natalia’s professional judgment in preference to or above his own.

  Sir Michael Parnell entered the room with vaguely hesitant authority. He was a thin man, although not as thin as Peter Bendall appeared in the file photographs, and any further similarity was smothered beneath the fullness of deeply black hair. Like Brooking, the ambassador wore a dinner jacket and black tie and to Charlie, who did not smoke, the cigar aroma smelled the same. Charlie’s protocol-routed request, through Brooking, had been to meet Parnell immediately and he wondered if the man’s initial refusal had been disinterest or the instinctive arms-length distancing of a regretted member of embassy staffing. Probably a combination of both. Moscow was a prestigious appointment and Parnell had only held it for four months and now he was about to confront his worst sleeping or waking nightmare.

  Parnell looked undecided between the two men already in the room before settling on Charlie. “Do I really need to hear what this is all about?” The man’s voice was unexpectedly high.

  Instead of replying directly, Charlie looked at Brooking and said, “You thought so, didn’t you? You got any second thoughts?”

  Parnell’s face stiffened. Brooking colored. The head of chancellery said, “Yes sir, you do.”

  “My director-general thought so, too.” He wasn’t going to improve any working relationship with these two men by showing the respect their condescension hadn’t earned, so fuck them. He didn’t want to spend any more time with them than they wanted to spend with him.

  “What?” demanded the ambassador.

  The lawyer’s arrival delayed Charlie’s reply. So well had he isolated himself against embassy staff contact that there was the briefest moment of surprise, although he was sure he didn’t show it. She was tall for a woman, although not overly so, slim and small busted. If she were publicly to become known in what was to follow Charlie supposed willowy would be the English tabloid description. She wore a severe black suit that Charlie accepted to be her embassy-recognized uniform and he guessed the deeply auburn hair which now hung loose would during the day be more tightly pinned and controlled. She wasn’t wearing make-up, either, apart perhaps from the lightest of lipsticks, and Charlie decided that she had been in bed and probably asleep when Brooking telephoned. She politely greeted the two diplomats by title and name and remained looking enquiringly at Brooking, who hurriedly introduced her to Charlie as Anne Abbott.

  “Now I won’t have to repeat myself a third time,” greeted Charlie. Her handshake was firm, confident, and he liked her attitude towards the other two men, respectful of their embassy rank but not deferential. He put her at about thirty-eight, certainly not older.

  “What is it?” demanded Parnell again, impatiently.

  Neither the ambassador nor the woman openly gave the sort of disbelieving reaction Brooking had shown when Charlie told them, although Parnell at once asked if Charlie were sure and Charlie said he was.

  “The nationality is the key,” insisted Anne. “There’s no doubt he’s still British?”

  Charlie handed her the London material. “You’ll need to go through everything. It’s Peter Bendall’s entire archive. If he’d taken Russian nationality, it would have been logged. There was a lot of speculation that his refusal to adopt Russian citizenship showed an intention to return to England, despite the sentence he’d still have had to serve …” He looked to the other two men. “I’ve made copies of everything except the seizure video which needs the embassy facilities to duplicate.”

  “It’s surely a moot point whether he had or he hadn’t taken citizenship,” challenged Parnell, objectively. “George Bendall is still who he is, the son of a British nuclear defector.”

  “Who’s shot a Russian president hopefully about to agree to a Star Wars-banning treaty with America,” picked up Brooking, assessing the diplomatic fall out.

  Charlie hadn’t considered the political symbolism. Completing it he said, “An agreement that won’t now be reached. Might never be.”

  “And what’s left is the mess, our mess, to clear up as best we can,” said Parnell.

  “What will the procedure be? Diplomatically, I mean?” asked the woman, practicably.

  “In normal circumstances if a British national is arrested for an alleged crime the embassy applies for consular access,” recited the ambassador, formally. “I don’t consider this normal. I’ll want guidance from London.”

  “What about legal representation?” Anne persisted.

  Parnell shrugged. “That’s usually made available.”

  “Are you criminal or civil?” Charlie asked the lawyer.

  “Criminal.”

  “Recognized under Russian law?” pressed Charlie.

  She shook her head. “I’d need guidance, like the ambassador. But I don’t think I’d be accepted in open court as anything more than a qualified observer. I could probably get attachment to a Russian lawyer’s briefing team if London wanted it. What are your instructions?”

  “To investigate as much as I can as best I can,” generalized Charlie. He went to the ambassador. “I’d like to be included in any access that’s arranged. My director-general will be contacting you tomorrow.”

  “I’ll definitely need Foreign Office guidance for that,” warned Parnell.

  “Sir Rupert expected you would,” said Charlie.

  The thin man’s head came up sharply at the suspicion of condescension. Charlie stared back, blandly. Remaining fixedly upon Charlie, Parnell said, “It is a mess. I don’t want it made worse by any mistakes from this embassy. I don’t want anything-anything at all-initiated or done without prior reference to me. Is that understood?”

  “Perfectly,” said Charlie. Bollocks, he thought.

  “Of course,” said Anne, accepting her inclusion in the caution.

  As she walked from the head of chancellery’s office with Charlie, leaving the two diplomats composing their alert cable to the Foreign Office in London, she said, “It’s illegal under the Copyright Act to duplicate videos.”

  “Let’s not tell anyone we’re going to do it.” Charlie had never told anyone in advance what he was going to do. Or hardly ever afterwards. It was better that way for their propriety, ulcers, general state of health and overall peace of mind.

  Charlie’s mind as he emerged into the darkness of a slumbering Moscow night was anything but peaceful. He hadn’t properly started yet and there were already things that worried him, one more obviously than the others. He didn’t even need the warning ache from his talisman feet to tell him all was not right.

  “We’ve got everything to consider, to protect ourselves against,” protested Sir Michael Parnell, guiding the discussion.

  “I understand what you’re saying,” agreed the about-to-be-promoted head of chancellery.

  “We’ve got to be careful.”

  “Absolutely.”

  “If it gets to consular access, it’ll be you, Richard.”

  “I know,” accepted Brooking, uncomfortably.

  “That intelligence fe
llow’s a problem. I know he’s not officially recognized here as such but that’s what he is. Or was. And a confounded nuisance as well, from all the stories I heard before I arrived.”

  “He’s caused a lot of problems in the past,” confirmed Brooking.

  “I won’t allow him to cause any in the future. If London wants their own investigation, let them send someone from there to do it, separate us from that part of it. We’re going to have enough difficulties as it is.”

  “Maybe we shouldn’t ask for someone from London, for precisely that reason?” suggested Brooking.

  Parnell allowed a half smile. “What’s your thinking?”

  “Muffin’s already got the reputation in London as an uncontrollable troublemaker. Politically and diplomatically we couldn’t be in a more unmapped minefield, with what’s happened. There will be mistakes, no matter how hard we try to anticipate, mistakes we don’t officially want to be associated with.”

  Parnell’s smile broadened. “We’ll have to watch the bloody man very carefully, of course.”

  “We might actually in the final analysis get rid of him altogether. It’s still an experimental posting, despite his having tricked his way successfully so far.”

  “That would be good!” said Parnell, enthusiastically. There was a pause. “So! What do we tell London?”

  “That we’ve inherited another intelligence embarrassment,” insisted Brooking, at once. “Let’s start from the very beginning preparing the way to distance ourselves.”

  The eruption was inevitable, the only uncertainty its timing, and Burt Jordan, the CIA station head, and the FBI Rezident, John Kayley—both of whom felt themselves safely beyond the endangered fall-out area—found much to occupy them in the initial file photographs of the shooting while Wendall North outlined the situation he’d just left at the Pirogov Hospital. They were in the chef du protocol’s office at the American embassy on the Novinskij Bul’var section of the inner ring road, even his desk surrendered by the local diplomat, David Barnett. Barnett considered himself the safest of them all in the aftermath and sat trying to guess when the explosion would occur.