Kings of Many Castles Read online

It took several moments for her to focus and when she did there was a brief smile of recognition. She said, “I can’t feel much. There’s some sensation in my shoulder but nothing else. I don’t remember …”

  “There was a shooting,” reminded Anandale. “You’re under a lot of medication.”

  “Am I badly hurt?”

  “We’re going to get you home as soon as we can. Get you better there.”

  “I can’t feel my right arm at all.”

  “It’ll be all right.”

  “When can I go home?”

  “Soon.”

  “I haven’t lost my arm, have I? I’m going to be all right!” Her voice rose, cracking.

  “You’re going to be fine. We’re going to find all the specialists and get everything fixed, I promise.”

  “Why … who … ?”

  “We’ve got the man. It’s all under investigation.”

  “Was anyone else hurt?”

  “The Russian president. Some guards.”

  “They going to be all right?”

  “We don’t know, not yet.”

  The woman’s eyes flickered and drooped and Anandale felt Donnington’s hand upon his arm. As they scuffed out of the room Anandale said, “I didn’t lie. I will find the surgeon to fix her arm.”

  “Yes, Mr. President,” said Donnington.

  Charlie didn’t hurry responding to the internal messages that had finally arrived when he got back from the viewing theater. He first read what had come in from London and checked his e-mail and even then detoured to Donald Morrison’s office, just for the hell of it.

  “I know it’s your assignment,” greeted the MI6 man.

  As Morrison grew older and wiser he wouldn’t be so eager, Charlie thought. “It’s not quite that definite.” The assignment decision had been one of the waiting e-mail messages from Sir Rupert Dean.

  “I’m to assist in any way necessary.” The younger man offered a package. “Everything Vauxhall Cross has got.”

  Charlie took it. “Thanks, for getting it so quickly.”

  “You won’t ask, will you?” anticipated Morrison, sadly.

  “I don’t know,” said Charlie, honestly. “No one can guess which way this will go. It’s better to limit any possible diplomatic damage by keeping it to one service.”

  “I expected them to send in a team.”

  “Limitation, like I said.”

  “I’d like to do something, if I can.”

  “I’ll remember,” promised Charlie, who was still digesting the London edict. It put him as much in the firing line as he would have been on the White House podium with the two presidents. He’d have to be bloody careful—more careful perhaps than he’d ever been—that he didn’t become the fifth casualty.

  Charlie hadn’t bothered to tell Richard Brooking he was on his way. When he arrived the head of chancellery seemed lost in thought behind a desk totally clear of any activity—actually appearing polished—with blotter, pen set and telephones regimented precisely in place.

  “No one knew where you were,” accused the diplomat, abruptly aware of Charlie’s presence.

  “Making enquiries,” said Charlie, unhelpfully. He had no intention of telling the man what he suspected and Anne Abbott had agreed it would be best to wait until the confirmation of the technical analysis.

  “We’ve had Foreign Office instructions from London,” announced Brooking. “We’re formally requesting access …” The man paused, coming to unpleasantness. “ … And you’re to be included.”

  “I’ve been told that independently, from my people,” said Charlie.

  Brooking made obvious his head to toe examination of Charlie. “You’ll have inferred diplomatic status. Do you have another suit? And some half decent shoes?”

  Charlie grimaced. “I’ve got one for weddings and funerals.” “There’s a chance for you to wear it,” scored the other man.

  “We’ve just been officially informed that the American Secret Serviceman has died.”

  “So now it’s murder,” said Charlie, no longer glib.

  “There was another message,” continued Brooking. “A formal offer of investigating cooperation from the Russians. There’s the name of the officer you’re to liaise with. A woman …”

  Charlie’s hand was quite steady as he reached forward for the note that Brooking was proffering but his stomach dipped. Then he looked down and saw the name of Colonel Olga Ivanova Melnik.

  7

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “I offered you a drink,” said Charlie.

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

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

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

  “But always the worst to try to investigate.”

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

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

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

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

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

  “It surely makes our situation easier?”

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

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

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

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

  “I hardly need reminding of that.”

  “You under any pressure?”

  “I could be.”

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

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

  “Then trust me.”

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

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

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

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

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

  “What did you tell her?”

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

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

  “I know.”

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

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

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

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

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

  “I’m not sure.”

  “What do you want?”

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

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

  “Yes,” she accepted, uncertainly.

  “What’s your pressure?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Nothing more sinister?”

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

  Natalia regarded him intently. “About what?”

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

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

  “Are you?” demanded Charlie, pointedly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  Charlie shook his head. “Not without proof.”

  “Thanks for telling me.”

  “Isn’t that the new deal?”

  “Yes.”

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

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

  “I hope so,” said Natalia.

  Both appraised the other in the opening seconds.

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

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

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

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

  “I hope we can work well together?”

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

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

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

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