Kings of Many Castles (18 page)

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Authors: Brian Freemantle

BOOK: Kings of Many Castles
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Bendall didn’t reply but he sniggered.
“You sure they didn’t know?” pressed Charlie. “You got punished a lot.”
“Didn’t understand.”
“What didn’t they understand, Georgi?” He didn’t like his English name, Charlie remembered.
“Didn’t understand.”
“Were you tricking them in the army … pretending …?” suggested Anne.
“Didn’t know.”
“That was clever,” said Anne, persuasively. “Good to stay together afterwards, too, when you left the army.”
“Meeting old friends … old comrades … every Tuesday and Thursday?” added Charlie. He was conscious of Brooking frowning in bewilderment between himself and Anne.
“Comrades,” said Bendall.
“Not at first, though,” prompted Charlie, recalling Vera Bendall’s account. “You didn’t meet up with them at first when you left the army, did you?”
The wailing hum rose and fell.
“Was that your song, what you sang when you were all together?” asked Anne.
It stopped, abruptly.
“Tell us the words, Georgi? It does have words, doesn’t it?” Fifteen minutes left, Charlie saw. He checked that their recorder was revolving smoothly.
“No one knows.”
No one knows what? thought Charlie, desperately. “Secret, like the brotherhood?” he guessed.
Bendall smiled. “Special.”
“You were, weren’t you Georgi?” said Anne. “A special person in a special group … special, secret group that noone knew about.”
“Shan’t tell you.”
“Did you swear an oath, Georgi?” asked Charlie. “Promise to be loyal to each other … protect each other?”
Bendall smiled but didn’t speak.
He said that it was right. That he had to,
remembered Charlie. Bendall’s words when he was struggling for possession of the gun, according to Vladimir Sakov. “Was that what you were doing when you shot at the president, protecting the brotherhood?”
Bendall’s face clouded. “Had to.”
“Why did you have to?” pressed Anne. “What was the president going to do to hurt you and your friends?”
“I knew.”
“Tell us what you knew,” urged Anne.
“Right to do it.”
Even the same words, isolated Charlie. “Who told you that?”
“Someone who helped.”
“
Who
helped you?”
“Friend.”
“How many shots did you fire?” Another of Charlie’s reasons for going first to the U.S. embassy had been to discover how many cartridges had remained in the rifle’s ten-round magazine when it had been recovered, an obvious questions he was irritated at himself for not finding out earlier that it had been empty when it had been picked up after the fall.
“All of them.” The man’s eyes were becoming heavy.
“How many’s that?”
“Two.”
“Only two?”
“Special bullets. All they had.”
“Who’s ‘they’ Georgi?” came in Anne.
“Special,” said the man again.
He wasn’t referring to the cartridges, Charlie decided. “They’ll be very proud of you.”
“Yes.”
“Are you proud of them, to be one of the brotherhood?” asked Anne.
The smile was of a satisfied, proud man. He didn’t speak. Brooking was sitting back in his chair, legs extended full length in front of him, mind obviously elsewhere. Probably up his ass, thought Charlie.
“It’s good to belong to something: a proper-special-family, isn’t it?” coaxed Charlie.
The eyes closed, didn’t open.
“Georgi!” said Charlie, sharply. “Who are we? Why are we here?”
The eyes flickered open, although slowly. “Not going to tell you anything.”
“If I’m going to help defend you, you’ve got to tell me things I have to know,” said Anne, urgently.
“Too tired.”
“There’s a lot more time, as much time as you need,” said Anne. “All we need. We’ll come back again. For as long as it takes.”
Charlie didn’t totally believe Bendall was too tired to go on, but there was no way-no time because he was already aware of the doctors at the door-it could be challenged. Nor should it be. Over a life-time which seemed to begin when people had dinosaurs for pets Charlie believed he’d perfected an untrained ability to outpsychologize most psychologists. And the amateur Freudian diagnosis—even with the essential Freudian sexuality—encompassed wombs, although not physical ones, family dysfunction and surrogates, with generous outlets for mentally disturbed violence and an already beer-hall tested philosophy of foot-stamping marching songs and a lot of alcohol. Bendall had performed as much as he intended. And had unquestionably given away more than he wanted or imagined he had. It was important to leave Bendall thinking he’d controlled the encounter but with an eroding worm of doubt. “After you did it, how were they going to get you away, get you back safely among them?”
There was no obvious physical reaction but Charlie was sure Bendall wasn’t asleep and had heard him.
“Thank you, for being properly considerate,” said the waiting Badim, when they emerged. “I don’t after all think there’s anything officially to complain about.”
“This is probably the first of several sessions,” said Charlie. “One visit obviously isn’t enough.”
“I suppose not,” said Agayan, walking with them back through the cluttered corridors.
“You typed his blood when he was admitted, of course?”
“Of course,” confirmed Badim. “He needed transfusions. It’s AB.”
“Were there any other tests?”
Badim’s head came around sharply. “The only concern was to find the right blood group, for a safe transfusion.”
“You’ve still got some of the sample?”
“Yes?”
“Could we have some, now?”
Badim stopped. “Why?”
“We want to test for alcohol.” That was sufficient for the man to know, thought Charlie.
“It could be tested here.”
“And I’d appreciate a copy of those tests, just as I’m sure you’d like to know the result of our analysis. Which I’ll guarantee, for comparison.”
“I’m not sure I’m authorized.”
“It’s a medical request. I understood you to be the surgeon-administrator, the responsible authority?”
“I am!” said the easily offended man.
“A sample wouldn’t need any specific control. We could wait,” said Charlie, wanting to stop short of the heavily guarded vestibule. “And you know our authority is from the Kremlin.”
For several moments the man hovered, uncertainly. Then he gestured them into a room about two meters further along the corridor which they were never to know was from where Olga Melnik had the previous day gazed down upon the approach of her new lover. Agayan walked away with the other Russian.
Immediately inside Brooking said, “This has all been absurd, a total waste of time. The man is obviously mentally unwell. That will have to be the plea!”
“Obviously,” agreed Charlie. There was no way it could have been anticipated they’d be in this room so it wouldn’t be wired or cameraed but he still looked intently around.
Ignoring the diplomat, Anne said, “I told you we were a good team, didn’t I?”
“And I agreed,” reminded Charlie.
“What do you mean?” demanded Brooking.
“Just technical stuff,” said Charlie.
“I want a copy of that tape, to take with us to London,” said the
lawyer. “It probably won’t be admissable in court but I want a psychiatric assessment.”
“So do I,” said Charlie.
“It’s much less of an embarrassment to the government if he’s certifiably insane, someone not mentally responsible for his actions,” offered Brooking. “That and the fact that he has lived here for twenty-six years.”
Charlie had to force himself to talk to the man. “Luck all the way along the line.”
Mikhail Badim reentered the room alone carrying a phial in his outstretched hand. “We’re testing for alcohol, too.”
“A comparison is essential, for an empirical result,” accepted Charlie. He was contributing more towards a mitigating defense than to the continuing investigation, but then that was the primary purpose of today’s interview.
In the car on the way back to the embassy Anne said to the diplomat, “Do you feel there’s any reason for you to come with us, for the next meeting?”
“Not at all,” said Brooking, hurriedly. “I think I fulfilled everything I had to do in today’s visit. I thought it all went very well, despite the unfortunate fellow’s obvious madness.”
“Very well indeed,” echoed Charlie.
 
Walter Anandale ended the urging of both Wendall North and the secretary of state for a diplomatic compromise by rejecting their suggestions in preference to his own, which didn’t include acting Russian president Aleksandr Okulov, and just as curtly ordered them to fix it.
Jeff Aston, the now unquestionably-obeyed head of presidential security, insisted they needed a highway-cleared, intersection-controlled route from the embassy to the hospital but gave the embassy as the return destination in the demand to the GIA traffic police. The Secret Service chief also insisted upon being in total media charge, once more restricting the still picture and television coverage of Anandale’s meeting with the Russian leader to American White House cameramen. It also guaranteed his being in total control
of their release, which was to be timed to give the impression that the American leader, his wife and entourage were still in Moscow when the intention was for them to be already high over the Atlantic, on their way to Washington.
The American president spent the first thirty minutes at the Pirogov hospital being reassured beyond the already promised reassurance from Admiral Donnington and a support group of Russian physicians that Ruth Anandale was sufficiently fit and recovered to be medevacced back to America. Only then did he go, completely encircled by agents and with the towering Aston by his side to the other wing of the hospital where North and Aston had spent those same thirty minutes hurriedly arranging the photocall with the Russian president’s protection squad.
Lev Maksimovich Yudkin was fully conscious, although still attached to drip-feeds and line-waving monitors-which made for fittingly dramatic pictures—but too weak for any conversation, which was not the intention anyway. Anandale was, however, posed as if they were in discussion as well as solicitously standing by the man’s bedside. It only took fifteen minutes.
As they made their way back to the American-commandeered wing James Scamell said, “This is going to be interpreted as a snub to Okulov.”
“Fix it with the statement we’re going to issue,” demanded Anandale. “Abrupt departure for urgent medical treatment for the First Lady … no time for official farewells apart from seeing the president whose recovery we’re delighted about …” He looked sideways at the secretary of state. “And your staying here-plus the unattributable briefings you’ll give-establishes that everything’s still on track.”
“You know what we’ve just shown by being allowed in like that?” demanded Aston, rhetorically. “That Russian security is godamned awful and that they haven’t learned a thing. Even you, Mr. President, shouldn’t have been allowed in. I wouldn’t have permitted it, if the situation had been reversed.”
Unseen, behind the president’s back, Wendall North gave the Secret Service chief the stiff middle finger.
In his wife’s room Anandale said, “We’re going home.”
“To get my arm fixed?” said the woman.
“To get your arm fixed,” agreed Anandale.
 
Olga Melnik had already heard the Russian tape but went through the pretense of reading the transcript Charlie took back to the embassy incident room, together with his original recording to become part of the evidence collection. While she did-with John Kayley in his room absorbing it for the first time—Charlie studied the autopsy report on Vera Bendall.
He skipped the normal medical introduction, although noting that the woman was described as generally under-nourished, eager for the specific findings. The cricord cartilage of the larynx had been crushed but the odontoid peg of the second cervical vertabrae was intact, which it would not have been if she had succeeded in properly hanging herself. There were three lesions in the neck caused by the support metal breaking through the left bra cup. There was pre-death bruising to her shoulder blades and to the back of the head, which the pathologist attributed to the back of her body hitting the cell door, presumably in her death throes or in the agony of strangulation. No photographs had been taken of the body before it was removed but according to the prison guards’ reports the woman had been virtually in a sitting position, with her back against the door. There were mortuary photographs of the body, naked, showing strangulation bruising completely encircling the neck. There was bruising on the finger endings of both hands which the medical examiner suggested were caused by the woman’s instinctive efforts to loosen the ligature in the final moments before death. The pathologist described as lividity the discoloration to Vera Bendall’s knees and thigh and to both buttocks, all of which was clearly visible on other post mortem photographs. In the opinion of the Russian pathologist the medical evidence was as consistent with a choking person’s failed, last minute change of mind when an attempted suicide hanging went wrong as it was with any suggestion of foul play, which made it too inconclusive for either definitive finding.

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