Kings of Many Castles Read online

  “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 conducting an 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 sup
ervise 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 the TV 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 before now. 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.