Kings of Many Castles (22 page)

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Authors: Brian Freemantle

BOOK: Kings of Many Castles
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“Have I said something awkward?”
“I’m sorry,” apologized Charlie. “My mind went off at a tangent.”
“I could practically see the cogs moving. Want to talk about it?”
“No!”
“Sorry!”
“No, I am,” said Charlie. “That was rude.”
“You’re quite a mystery man at the embassy, you know?”
Charlie felt a stir of concern. “That’s what I’m supposed to be.”
“Story is that you’ve got an apartment in what used to be a royal palace?”
“A minor grand duke was supposed to have lived there before the revolution.” He had to stop this: divert it.
“Is there such a thing as a
minor
grand duke!”
“It’s diplomatically better for me to be physically separate from the embassy.”
“Morrison doesn’t live outside the compound.”
“I’m officially recognized by the Russian government, like Kayley and the FBI. Morrison’s accreditation is as a diplomat.” It was getting threadbare.
Anne frowned. “You lost me on the logic of that. There doesn’t seem to be any.”
Charlie gestured for the waiter to clear their plates, needing the interruption. She shook her head against anything more and so did Charlie. He said, “Is this the Anne Abbott courtroom technique?”
“You offended?”
“No.”
“What then?”
“Curious, at the interest.” With luck the joking flirtation of the previous evening might just be the diversion.
She smiled. “I like to get to know as much as I can about people I work with, particularly when it’s as close as we seem to be thrown together.
That’s
an Anne Abbott technique.”
“What you see is what you get,” said Charlie, inwardly cringing at the B-movie dialogue.
“Now I’m curious. It’ll be interesting to find out.”
They walked back towards the Brompton Road along Beauchamp Place, pausing to window shop after Anne said she could use the extra time in London to restock her wardrobe, reminding Charlie he’d have a longer opportunity to buy Sasha’s promised present. And something for Natalia, too, despite her insistence that she didn’t want anything. Anne walked easily, familiarly, with her arm looped through his, pleasantly close. Natalia wasn’t tactile like that: too long by herself, caring for herself, he guessed. Charlie halted determinedly at the main road, demanding a taxi. It was Anne who suggested the brandy nightcap, which became several. There were only stools at the bar, which brought them close together again. Charlie didn’t try to move away. Neither did Anne.
She said, “I ever tell you my philosphy about sex?”
“No.”
“It’s the obvious-logical-progression of friendship.”
“What about love?”
“That’s different. That’s letting things go too far.”
“Very free spirited,” said Charlie. With whom had she philosophied in Moscow? he wondered.
“I don’t want any more brandy.”
“OK.”
“Do you?”
“No.”
“Time to go to bed then?”
They stayed close together walking to the elevators and got a car to themselves and kissed and Charlie enjoyed the uncommitting, uninvolving excitement of it, shutting his mind to everything except the woman he was holding and who was holding him back without any resisting stiffness or over-her-shoulder hesitation. They went to his room because it was the nearest along the shared corridor but there was no first-time urgency, which heightened the pleasure. They undressed each other, savouring the unhurriedness of it and when Charlie was naked she held him at arm’s length and giggled that he looked better without his clothes and his feet were a revelation all of their own and Charlie held Anne the same way and said he liked everything he saw, without any qualification. They led each other, matched each other, her preference, his preference and burst together and Charlie didn’t allow himself the surprise that he was able to do it-all of it-so quickly again.
Anne said, “I won! The second time I had a multiple orgasm.”
“That’s a whole new definition of friendship,” said Charlie, still breathing heavily.
“That’s all it is though, ultimate friendship. No confusion.”
“It’ll be the only thing that isn’t confusing so far,” said Charlie.
 
“So it was meant for me?” said Walter Anandale. The White House showing of the slow motion TV film of the shooting had been delayed until that night because of the time the president had spent at the conveniently close Walter Reed Army Medical Center on Washington’s Georgia Avenue, to which Ruth Anandale had been
immediately admitted. Secretary of State James Scamell was the only cabinet member absent from the meeting.
“I don’t think there can be any doubt, sir,” said Wendall North.
“She took my bullet,” said Anandale, more to himself than anyone else in the room.
Wendall North decided against pointing out that the intercession had been totally accidental. “Yes, sir, she did.”
“Wouldn’t that have been a hell of a coup, wiping out both presidents at the same time!”
“Unthinkable,” said Defense Secretary Wilfred Pinkton.
“We any closer to understanding it?”
FBI Director Paul Smith shifted uncomfortably at the anticipated question. “We’re running the investigation, just like you ordered, Mr. President. The incident room’s ours, totally under our supervision at
our
embassy. Bendall had some kind of relapse when Kayley was interrogating him today. Everything had to be suspended.”
“That isn’t an answer to my question!”
“We don’t so far know who else is in the conspiracy.”
“I want ass kicked, Paul. I want each and every son of a bitch involved in this either in the chair or behind bars for the next hundred years and I’m disappointed you’re not telling me you’re there already. You tell Kayley from me I don’t care how it’s done. Just do it!”
It was three A.M. Moscow time when Paul Smith’s e-mail, couched in even stronger terms, was taken by the director’s personal assistant to the communication section of the FBI’s Pennsylvania Avenue headquarters.
“Ass-burning time,” the man told the transmissions operator. “Make sure it’s not yours.” The remark, only marginally misquoting the president, was intended as a joke. It didn’t become one.
Two address lists had been defined in Microsft Outlook for the Russian investigation. “Kayley” was the back-channel, eyes-only route for information and messages restricted to the Bureau Rezident, not to be shared under any circumstances. “Kayley+” was the block address automatically distributing Washington traffic to Olga Melnik and Charlie Muffin, to maintain the impression of complete cooperation.
The FBI operator was new, being introduced into the job on the normally less stressful evening shift. It was the first personal director’s message he’d ever handled and he agreed with the assistant that it was very much ass-burning. In his nervousness he clicked the cursor on Kayley+.
Paul Smith’s do-whatever-it-takes instruction was waiting in Olga Melnik’s e-mail box when she arrived in the incident room that morning, intentionally earlier than usual in her determination to confront John Kayley. Obeying Zenin’s telephone instructions she called Donald Morrison before leaving the American embassy.
The time difference also benefited Charlie Muffin, in reverse. It was still only seven in the morning, London time, when he got the call from Morrison. Charlie awakened instantly and his interrupting questions finally awoke Anne Abbott beside him. Still sleepily voiced, she said, “What is it?”
“If I knew-understood it—I’d tell you,” said Charlie.
Charlie Muffin’s reception was very different from the previous day. Within minutes of his beginning to speak at the reconvened meeting even Jocelyn Hamilton straightened from his overly-theatrical, shoulder-slumped affectation and hunched as attentively as everyone to the tape of George Bendall’s collapse. Charlie finished with the verbatim transcript of the FBI director’s cable that Morrison had relayed that morning. No one spoke, unwilling to offer an opening opinion. It was the director-general who did, finally.
Sir Rupert Dean said, “No! They quite simply
wouldn’t
have tried to drug him! It’s inconceivable!”
“Kayley’s under enormous pressure,” said Charlie.
“I don’t think it’s inconceivable,” said Patrick Pacey. “‘All and every investigatory means,’” he quoted, from the bureau director’s misdirected e-mail. “‘Earlier and explicit orders … clear understandings
from the highest level …’ There’s very obviously been instructions we don’t know about that fits what could have happened in Burdenko hospital …”
“At the moment it’s only an unidentified although possible puncture mark on Bendall’s arm, which has no medical explanation or purpose to be there,” cautioned Charlie. “There’s no proof it was an unauthorized, invasive injection until they get the results of the blood tests.”
“Where, legally, does that leave us—the United Kingdom?” asked the subdued deputy director.
Jeremy Simpson hunched uncertain shoulders. “Totally uninvolved, particularly with Charlie here in London, which probably turns out to be very fortunate. Going beyond that, if it’s true, legally—technically—it constitutes a physical assault upon George Bendall. That’s according to our law and as Bendall, again technically, is still a British subject I suppose there are grounds for us to protest. But I don’t see any practical purpose in our doing that. I don’t know what it qualifies as in Russia, even if there’s any competent statute. But is that what we should be talking about? If the Americans have done this, it surely blows any honest cooperation-any cooperation honest or even limited-completely out of the water?”
“Absolutely,” quickly agreed Hamilton, gratefully seizing the lawyer’s lead.
“But it doesn’t affect a legal prosecution for murder, does it?” argued the director-general, just as quickly.
“It might affect Bendall’s ability—competence—to plead if the damage is permanent,” said Simpson. “It could, possibly, be part of a defense plea in court.”
That had been Anne’s first reaction, as they lay side by side immediately after the telephone call from Donald Morrison in Moscow. Charlie decided against saying anything, despite the fact that Anne was known to be back in London for consultations.
“What’s the Russian response?” asked Dean.
“I don’t know, not yet,” said Charlie. “Olga Melnik told Morrison she’d been withdrawn from the incident room-which means from the American embassy-for discussions. It wasn’t clear with whom.”
“What did you tell him to do?” asked Hamilton.
“To get to the incident room as quickly as possible. Find out everything he can. I’m calling him there later. If there’s anything he doesn’t want picked up on the American monitor, he’ll go back to our embassy after we’ve initially talked and we’ll speak on a secure line from there.”
“The Americans are monitoring our calls!” demanded Hamilton.
Everyone in the room looked at the man in varying degrees of surprise. Charlie said, “Of course they are! I’d do the same, in their circumstances.”
The deputy flushed and shook his head but said nothing more.
Pacey said, “Sir Michael Parnell’s guidance from Moscow was that it was a serious diplomatic breach if it were proved we were responsible for the second gunman leak but that they’d been embarrassed as it is by the accusation. What’s happened since diminishes the leak problem, I suppose, although that was public and this isn’t.”
“Yet,” qualified Charlie, in another caution. “But what’s happened now helps us. I wasn’t responsible for the leak. So a denial would have been the truth. After today’s developments-the FBI director’s cable in particularly-the leak looks far more likely to have come from America.”
“If Parnell wants to be told what to do, tell him to deny it in the strongest terms,” said Dean, almost impatiently. “Which America will do about this injection business, of course. What’s the chances of the Russians suspending their part in the supposed cooperation?”
Charlie accepted he’d be able to answer that better after he’d spoken to Natalia, which it was now essential he do, despite yesterday’s insistence that he shouldn’t. After a lifetime of professional truth paring, convenient deception and ingenuous, open-faced lying, Charlie didn’t have the slightest doubt he could smother any guiltcertainly over a three thousand mile telephone link-but at that moment he was surprised, disappointed even, that there was no self-recrimination about the previous night’s unfaithfulness. There hadn’t been any awakening with Anne beside him that morning, either, and certainly she’d exemplified her own unique philosophy, doing nothing, saying nothing, to make their being together anything but totally unremarkable. Morrison’s telephone call had been the
only conversation at breakfast. To his parting arrangement to meet at the bar that evening she’d smilingly queried whether it was intended only to be a friendly drink and he’d asked what else it could be and seriously she’d said, “Nothing, remember?” There hadn’t been any embarrassing pretence of kissed farewells or lingering hand touching, either. So why didn’t he feel any shame or guilt, if he loved Natalia as much as he was always telling her—and himselfthat he did? Because it wasn’t any more than Anne’s special philosophy. He wasn’t going to pretend to fall in love with Anne and she wasn’t going to pretend to fall in love with him. Each knew where they stood or-perhaps more appositely—exactly where things lay. No confusion. No problems. A perfect unencumbering, unendangering ultimate friendship.
Finally addressing the question, Charlie said, “I don’t know about positive suspension. They might, although by cutting themselves off they’d be cutting themselves out … .” The speculation thrust into his mind but he chose not to introduce it until he’d thought more fully about it. “I guess things will remain in limbo until the results of the tests for any non-prescribed drug.”
“So I ask again,” said Hamilton. “Where does that leave us?”
“In a reasonably good position, as Charlie’s already pointed out,” suggested Pacey, the political manipulator. “It’s not our argument; it’s for the Russians and the Americans to fight out. Hopefully we could work between both camps, if there is a positive split.”
“That’s how I see it,” agreed Charlie.
“When did you plan to go back?” asked Pacey.
“Tomorrow, hopefully. As soon as I’ve seen the psychiatrist.”
“Wouldn’t there be an advantage in keeping out of it for a little while longer?”
Charlie very positively shook his head. “We’ve got a murder conspiracy to uncover … understand. This is yet another side-track I don’t want to go down.”
“I think you’re right,” said Dean.
Simpson said, “Quite apart from whether or not Bendall was drugged, where can we go if his collapse is irrecoverable?”
“That’s what’s worrying me most of all,” conceded Charlie. “Probably nowhere.” Which was, he decided, the side-track down
which he
did
want to go. And a journey upon which he had already been far too long—and far too effectively-prevented from taking. But he thought, at last, that he could see some signposts.
 
Leonid Zenin collected the coincidences like unwelcomed souvenirs. The car taking him to the Kremlin swept past the White House on Krasnopresnenskaya naberezhnaya at precisely the time of the shooting eight days earlier and entered the ancient citadel by the most traditional “pine grove” Borovitskiye Gate through which the security detachments had so vainly argued would have brought both presidents to an arrival ceremony in a totally safe inner courtyard. Zenin didn’t hurry crossing the square, gazing around at the easily patrolled castellated ramparts and gated internal labyrinth, acknowledging how utterly protected everyone would have been. Hindsight instead of foresight. Some had it, some didn’t. What, he wondered, would be shown today?
Those summoned had been personally selected by Aleksandr Okulov, primarily to exclude not just General Dimitri Spassky but to keep any awareness of the gathering from the suspected FSB. Yuri Trishin, who’d adeptly adjusted to being chief of staff to the emergency president, was automatically included. The Foreign Minister, Boris Petrin, was an essential figure hurriedly added because of the overnight developments and Federal Prosecutor Pavl Yakovlevich Filitov was there for the same reason. Zenin and Natalia guaranteed both the complete, liaising knowledge as well as the necessary continuity of the investigation.
Okulov was the last to enter the suite which came close to overwhelming the small number assembled, despite being only an anteroom to the much larger main chamber, and Natalia’s immediate impression was how much more physically confident Okulov appeared to have become in such a short time, no longer the shadowy eminence
grise
but the positively striding-imperious almost-man very definitely to be seen, determined to be judged, in black and white leadership terms. He even seemed to dominate the baroque, echoing surroundings. Confirming that perception the short, hard-bodied man said, “Things have come to light in the last twenty-four hours that need to be discussed to decide the future of the shooting
investigation …” He looked to Zenin. “ … General?”
Zenin had been given no indication of how many would be attending and had copied twice as many transcripts of the FBI director’s message as were necessary. It took him slightly longer to distribute them around the table than to disclose the discovery of the possible but unauthorized injection mark on Bendall’s arm.
Filitov, a white-haired, pedantic lawyer, came up from his e-mail print-out and said, “This is outrageous-verging on the hysterical—but the puncture mark is only a
possibility
, according to what I’ve understood you to say. We need to be absolutely sure.”
Zenin made a deferring head movement towards Okulov. “If there’s a positive pharmacology result from the tests during this meeting, I shall be informed.”
Okulov, still smarting from what he considered the personal insult of Walter Anandale leaving—virtually fleeing-the country without any contact, said, “Whatever the outcome of the medical tests, where does this leave any future cooperation?”
“That’s a political decision, far beyond my responsibility,” said Zenin. “What I would ask this meeting to confirm is my immediate decision that under no circumstances can Bendall be seen without our people being present, in the same room. He’s our prisoner, under our arrest. The British have the right of diplomatic access but there’s no legal requirement for the Americans to see him again.”
Physically an even more charismatic figure than the emerging Okulov and also someone extremely sure of himself, judged Natalia. With everything predicated by personal as much as professional considerations, she said, “It was an American who died.”
“And the man who killed him will be tried by full and open judicial process, not according to the cowboy justice obvious in this Washington message,” seized an unexpectedly outspoken Filitov.
“Which is exactly what this message is!” agreed Okulov. “An invitation to cowboy justice: lynch law. Or whatever the FBI contingent here—an FBI in this country at our invitation and permission—arrogantly considers they can do.”
Natalia at once saw beyond the remark. Charlie was in Moscow because of the FBI presence. If the Americans were expelled, his remaining was thrown into doubt. Which took the decision about
their continuing future … Natalia stopped the thought, finishing it differently from how it began. It didn’t take any decision about her and Charlie out of her hands. Rather it thrust it forward,
for
her to decide. Her choice-her avoided, refused, head-in-the-sand choice—would be whether to go with him if he were ordered to leave. Or stay. It was important for her to remain objective, to concentrate upon the immediate positive rather than the negative of an uncertain future. “How tight is the security that Bendall’s been under since the moment of his arrest, the moment of his hospitalization, in fact?”
All attention switched to her, Zenin’s most curious of them all. The closely bearded police chief said, “Total. I thought that’s been made clear?”
“To the extent of a detailed log being kept of everyone-including doctors—who’ve had access to him?”
Zenin said, “Of course,” but Natalia thought she detected a whisper of doubt.
“Everyone listed—including doctors and hospital staff-are being questioned?”
“Of course,” said Zenin, again.
“What’s your point?” demanded the Federal prosecutor.
“Premature, unsubstantiated reaction, which I thought you’d already warned against,” said Natalia. “I accept there is strong circumstantial evidence against the Americans. But look at the timing of their director’s instructions-twelve hours
after
their encounter with Bendall and the discovery of an apparent puncture wound in the man’s arm. Let’s not accept the obvious. I want to be sure we don’t overrespond to be proved wrong, at some later date. There’s been very little practical progress so far in the murder and conspiracy investigation.”

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