Kings of Many Castles (15 page)
Read Kings of Many Castles Online
Authors: Brian Freemantle
“ … By someone we don’t know,” completed Charlie. “Now let’s talk about other things we don’t have, either.”
“We talking Dallas, Texas, November 22, 1963!” demanded Walter Anandale, empty-voiced in disbelief.
“There’s unquestionably another gunman, logically a group,” said Kayley. It had only taken five minutes for him to come up from the basement and for Wendall North and James Scamell to be summoned to Cornell Burton’s embassy office. The ambassador sat to one side.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” decided the president. “Get Ruth out of here.”
“I’ll get on to Donnington right away, tell him the situation’s changed,” said North, moving towards the desk phones.
“Wait!” ordered Anandale. “Let’s talk this through. You think this whole godamned thing’s been a set up, right from the beginning?”
“No,” cautioned Scamell. “What I do think is that quite early on, once we started to negotiate, people saw an opportunity-for what, exactly, I don’t know-and began to plan.”
“What people, whose people?” demanded the Texan. “Yudkin’s? Or the communists? Or Okulov? Who, for Christ’s sake!”
The secretary of state shrugged, helplessly, turning to the FBI Rezident. “I can’t help there, sir. Not yet.”
“Nor can I,” said Kayley.
Anandale turned back to his chief of staff. “We don’t make any more public appearances. I don’t personally meet Okulov or anyone connected with Yudkin. We time a spokesman-issued statement about the hope to continue negotiations an hour after we’re airborne, on our way to Washington. Everyone clear on that?”
“Clear,” echoed Wendall North.
Anandale came back to the FBI man. “You did good, John. I’ll remember that, make sure that the director knows it, too.”
“So Charlie was right!” declared Sir Rupert Dean. He spoke looking at his criticizing deputy. Jocelyn Hamilton remained silent.
A copy of Charlie’s Moscow fax lay before each of the control group.
“The bullet that killed the American still came from George Bendall’s
rifle,” professionally pointed out Jeremy Simpson, the legal advisor.
rifle,” professionally pointed out Jeremy Simpson, the legal advisor.
“And now Bendall’s part of a conspiracy,” said Hamilton, choosing his time. “Our situation’s worse, not better.”
“We don’t know
what
the situation is,” rejected Patrick Pacey. Irritation at the deputy director’s constant carping deepened the permanent redness of the man’s blood pressured face.
what
the situation is,” rejected Patrick Pacey. Irritation at the deputy director’s constant carping deepened the permanent redness of the man’s blood pressured face.
“We know it’s escalated,” insisted Hamilton. “We need to start thinking—planning—proactively.”
“There’s certainly a need to withdraw Muffin for consultation,” conceded Dean, his spectacles working through his hands.
“And for preparing contingency plans, to build up our investigation in Moscow,” insisted Hamilton. “This service-maybe its future—could be decided by the outcome of all this. Since the end of the Cold War and the de-escalation of violence in Northern Ireland it’s been difficult to justify a counter-espionage function apart from becoming even more of an anti-terrorism force. Defining an FBI role is still experimental, it can’t be seen or allowed to fail.”
“Replace Muffin, you mean?” directly accused the heavily moustached Simpson.
“Safeguard the department. And ourselves,” qualified Hamilton.
Olga Ivanova Melnik felt as if she’d been engulfed by a flooded river—the swollen Volga of her Gorky birthplace at the start of the March thaw-swept helplessly along by swirling currents over unseen, snagging rocks. All-or any-of which was totally alien to Olga Melnik’s until now carefully structured and even more carefully disaster-avoided career. She wasn’t, of course, frightened of being sucked down. Olga Melnik wasn’t the sort of person to sink beneath the first ripples of uncertainties. She just needed a momentary
backwater; time briefly to tread water and examine—apportion and equate-everything swamping over her.
backwater; time briefly to tread water and examine—apportion and equate-everything swamping over her.
Olga accepted, objectively, that she should have anticipated Charlie Muffin’s challenges; been readier, even, for the suggestion that Vera Bendall’s death might not have been an accident. She shouldn’t have needed the difference in the size of the Russian-recovered bullets to be pointed out to her, either. Nor been unprepared for the demand about the bullet casings, none of which had been found. The reason was obvious from the chaos and panic at the scene of the crime, there for everyone to see and understand from at least five different television films, but she should have offered the explanation instead of having the admission drawn from her. But perhaps her greatest embarrassment, close to positive humiliation, had been having to admit not knowing the whereabouts of any of George Bendall’s personal papers the initial militia search squad—her officers! —had removed from the Hutorskaya Ulitza apartment. She’d heard Vera Bendall’s eavesdropped claim within an hour of the stupid bitch making it and let more than another twenty-four elapse without even asking about it!
She would have got around to it eventually, she reassured herself; not eventually, almost at once. Tomorrow, certainly. How could she have been expected to cover everything, the smallest details, in such a short time! It was easy for the motherfucking Englishman, getting everything handed to him on a plate, not having to supervise an entire investigation and think about each and every political implication.
Those political implications—every implication-were too great properly to encompass now, this soon. But the escalation made it logical for Leonid Zenin to share this first interrogation of George Bendall. But that was all it was, the escalation, not any inferred criticism of her oversights. How could it be? The confrontation—the rock jarringly awkward question after awkward question from the motherfucking Englishman—in front of the fortunately limited audience in the American embassy basement hadn’t been recorded. So there was no way Zenin could know. Would ever know. But she couldn’t be caught out again: shouldn’t have been caught out at all.
She’d identified Charlie Muffin for-and as-the danger he was from the very beginning. A mistake recognized is another mistake avoided, she reminded herself, calling to mind the appropriate Russian proverb. She felt firm ground underfoot, no longer jostled by conflicting currents.
She’d identified Charlie Muffin for-and as-the danger he was from the very beginning. A mistake recognized is another mistake avoided, she reminded herself, calling to mind the appropriate Russian proverb. She felt firm ground underfoot, no longer jostled by conflicting currents.
She was impatient to begin the interrogation and hoped Zenin wasn’t late, standing close to the window and looking up Gospital’naya Ulitza towards the blue domed church of Saints Peter and Paul, the direction from which she expected him to come. He’d sounded pleased, excited even, during the telephone conversation when he’d told her to wait for him and Olga was curious about the crisis committee meeting. Clearly it had gone better for him than hers had for her.
She almost missed Leonid Zenin when he did appear because she’d been looking for an official car and Zenin was on foot, striding past the small commemoration to Peter the Great’s favorite general, Swiss-born Francois Lefort, who was never to know-and doubtless wouldn’t have liked it if he had—that his was going to be the name given to one of the most infamous prisons in Russian history. Olga decided that the bearded militia commandant looked even more impressive in civilian clothes than he did in uniform and felt a pleasant stir of interest, wondering what the obviously athletic body looked like in neither.
She was well away from the window, to avoid hinting any impatience, when Zenin came urgently into the dusty waiting room, smiling as Olga imagined he smiled during their telephone conversation. Despite the white-coated Nicholai Badim beside him Zenin said, “God, what a place! An incentive never to become ill.”
Affronted, the surgeon-administrator said, “Heroes of the Crimea were treated here!”
“Probably in beds that haven’t been changed since,” said Zenin, briskly careless of offense. “What’s the situation with the prisoner!”
“You can have thirty minutes.”
“I wasn’t asking for a time limit. He’s fully conscious?”
“Yes.”
“And fully comprehending?”
“According to Guerguen Semonvich Agayan.”
“What’s Bendall said?”
“Your officers are with him.”
“I meant to you.”
“He’s responded to our medical questions.”
“Nothing else?”
“We haven’t asked him anything else.”
“It’s about time someone did then.”
The almost overbearing confidence surprised Olga. In official surroundings, only those in which she’d been with him until now, Zenin had always appeared more subdued.
Striving to achieve some of his dismissed authority, the doctor said, “I’ll check with Guerguen Semonvich. Wait for me here.”
Zenin said, “I’ve come directly from the Kremlin. Okulov’s panicking, everyone’s panicking. They’ve doubled the protection around Yudkin. Many more security people at the Pirogov hospital and they’ll have to shift patients out to make room …” He smiled again. “And there’s going to be a presidential commission into the missing KGB stuff. I suggested it at this morning’s meeting: Okulov ordered it on the spot when the conspiracy was confirmed.”
“The one person we’ve got to keep alive is George Bendall. I’ve permanently doubled the guard here.” She had to find a way to tell him about the things missing from the Bendall apartment.
“Nothing’s going to happen to him, believe me,” said Zenin. “What’s it like at the American embassy?”
“I don’t know about stepped up internal security. The American ballistics man claims he’d recognized the difference but was waiting for our material.”
“What’s the excuse from our people at Chagino?”
“They hadn’t got around to it yet.”
“After more than two days!”
“They obviously thought they didn’t have to bother.”
“Log it, for it to be dealt with later.”
“I already have.”
“Is the Englishman crowing?”
Olga hesitated. “Not noticeably,” she answered, honestly. It
would be better if Zenin heard the other embarrassments from her. “He asked about the bullet casings. They were looked for, of course, after the area was cleared. We didn’t find any.”
would be better if Zenin heard the other embarrassments from her. “He asked about the bullet casings. They were looked for, of course, after the area was cleared. We didn’t find any.”
“Would they have been automatically discharged from the rifle?”
“Apparently.”
“We should have recovered some,” complained Zenin.
“Further evidence of the conspiracy. How well planned it’s all been.” She wished that excuse had come to her in the embassy basement.
“Yes,” accepted Zenin, doubtfully.
It
was
an acceptable excuse. “There’s something else. You remember Vera Bendall saying militia officers took away her son’s papers, among his other belongings?”
was
an acceptable excuse. “There’s something else. You remember Vera Bendall saying militia officers took away her son’s papers, among his other belongings?”
“Yes,” said Zenin, cautiously.
“No written material is recorded among what was taken from Bendall’s apartment. I’ve spoken to the squad that went there first, personally, to all three of them. Each insist there weren’t any documents, nothing written down at all.”
“The woman could have been wrong,” Zenin pointed out.
“Or other people could have got to the apartment before our officers.”
“Was there any indications of a search, ahead of them?”
“They said his room was a mess,” Olga replied, honestly again.
“It should be laid before the commission,” agreed Zenin.
Home clear! decided Olga, as the doctor reentered the room.
“Half an hour,” stipulated the man.
“We’ll see how long it takes,” dismissed Zenin.
The walls of the corridor along which they followed the doctor were stained and in places adorned with uncleared graffiti—“fuck” and “hell hole” appeared several times-and narrowed by bed frames, once by two ancient, boat-shaped perambulators and unrecognizable scraps of metal and frame-like pieces of wood.
Zenin said, “This come up from the Crimea, too?”
The doctor ignored him.
Bendall’s ward was identifiable some way off by the phalanx of guards outside it. Olga said, “Do you want to lead the interrogation?”
“You’re the investigating officer, Olga Ivanova. I’ll sit and listen.”
The feeling she experienced surprised Olga. It wasn’t unease. It was, almost sexually, of anticipation. She didn’t normally feel she had to impress a man. “I’d appreciate your input, if you think it’s necessary.”
“It’ll be there, if it is.”
The protective cordon stiffened, respectfully, at their approach, then parted for them to enter. It was an individual ward, further crowded inside by three more militia officers. Recording apparatus was already assembled. Its operator was late standing when they came into the room. The walls were streaked and discolored but there was no graffiti, at least none that was apparent. The sheets matched the grayness of the blankets, though, which also toned with the doubtful color of the bandages helmeting George Bendall’s head and seeming to extend, unbroken, to the dressings trebling the size of the man’s broken shoulder. A half-circular frame kept the bedding off the shattered leg but he was not connected to any monitors, although a catheter tube ran to a container beneath the bed. There was a perfect spider’s web covering the inside of one of the upperpaned windows, complete with its spread-legged creator, and rivulets of long-past rain had tracked top to bottom patterns through the caked grime. The recording apparatus occupied the only table and its technician had the only chair. Militia-discarded cigarettes pebbled the floor. The cubicle stank, not just of cigarettes but of stale bodies. Maybe, thought Olga, indulging herself, patients from the 1850s really had been here.
“We think thirty minutes,” said the psychiatrist.
“I think as long as it takes,” said Zenin.
Olga, concentrating upon the prisoner, saw Bendall’s eyes darting from person to person. When he became aware of her staring at him he abruptly stopped, gazing fixedly up at the ceiling. She said, “Everyone can go now. We need another chair.” The recording technician looked surprised but then shrugged.
The doctor said, “I think I should stay.”
“I’ll stay too,” announced Agayan.
“You won’t,” said Olga.
“No,” agreed Zenin. “Neither of you will. Out!”
“We’ll be directly outside,” insisted Badim.
A chair was chain-passed in from outside by the departing inner squad, one of whom cupped the doctor’s arm. Zenin took the chair and sat just inside the door. Olga realized the militia commandant would not have come into Bendall’s vision: the man would believe she was the only person-the only possible interrogator—in the room. Bendall’s virtually unbroken gaze remained fixed upon the ceiling. Olga glanced up, seeing it was as dirty as everything else.
Looking more towards the recording apparatus Olga said, “George Bendall—alias Georgi Gugin—you are charged with murder and attempted murder. There will be other charges officially proffered at a later date.”
Bendall smiled, turning slightly towards her.
“But you failed,” Olga declared, her tone at once sneering.
The man continued to stare at her, unresponsive.
“The person you killed was an American guard. You’ll still get the death sentence.”
Nothing.
“And we know there are others. They found the perfect idiot in you, didn’t they? That was clever of them.”
A blink. A throat-clearing swallow. The mummified head remained unmoving.
“Your mother’s dead, too. She would have suffered, poor woman.”
There was a spurt of blinking, swallowing. A nearly imperceptible—instantly corrected-head movement towards her.
“The story of your life, isn’t it Georgi? Always failure. Failed father, failed mother, failed son. End result: total, miserable failure.”
“How?” The voice croaked, dry-throated.
Now it was Olga who stayed silent.
“How?”
She allowed her eyes to flick to Zenin. The man was leaning forward with both arms on his knees but not looking directly at her, concentrating entirely upon the words.
“How did she die?”
The crack had been made in the dam; it had to be widened from inside, not out. “Hanged.”
“Shouldn’t have been hanged.”
He’d have lost track of time, believed it to be official punishment. She’d let it go for the moment. “Why not?”
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