Kings of Many Castles

said, my initial interrogation is only very preliminary.”

“Interrogation?” echoed Charlie. “You suspect she’s in some way involved?”

Damn the man, thought Olga. He really did have a witchdoctor’s split tongue. “It’s too early yet to decide who might or might not be involved.” She paused, reluctant to correct herself. “I meant my questioning has only just begun.”

“We are cooperating fully, aren’t we?” coaxed Charlie.

“Yes,” agreed Olga, tightly, apprehensive of how Charlie Muffin could juggle such simple words but anticipating that he would.

“If we’re sharing there’s no order of priority?”

“It’s become a murder enquiry,” fought Olga. “Russian legislation must take precedence.”

“I’m not an international lawyer,” said Charlie. “It’s something I’ll leave to our legal attache to handle through diplomatic channels. Under such international scrutiny we shouldn’t go beyond our boundaries, should we?”

Olga wished the motherfucker wouldn’t keep inviting her opinion, to turn against her. Why oppose him? There was enormous international scrutiny under which the claim that Vera Bendall required protective custody might become even more transparent than it was now. In Lefortovo Vera Bendall was very positively her prisoner, whose every encounter and movement she could control. And totally monitor. It was conceivable some indication of Vera Bendall’s innocence or complicity might emerge if Britons were allowed access, access every minute and word of which could be taped and possibly even filmed. If there was something to be learned, she’d learn it, learn, too, from what the British offered whether their cooperation was genuine. And if the encounter was as unproductive as hers, there couldn’t be any criticism-internally or externally-of what now lay on the desk between her and Charlie Muffin, like a taunt. Better apparently to concede-be persuaded, at least-to an unimportant audience of one than to a much wider and more influential theater. “Don’t misunderstand me. I wasn’t arguing priorities. As far as I’m concerned there’s no reason whatsoever why you-and others from your embassy- shouldn’t see the woman.”

Charlie hadn’t expected the turnaround so quickly, hadn’t, in fact, expected it at all. “You haven’t told me where she is.”

He had a rat-trap, forget-nothing mind, acknowledged Olga. “Lefortovo.”

How many had gone into “protective custody” in that bleak, icily-walled fortress never to emerge and certainly never for a moment to be protected? The first transcript was that of an already cowed, frightened woman. By now Vera Bendall would be terrified to the point of the insanity she was suggesting for her son. “That’s conveniently central. Tomorrow would be good.”

It gave her more than sufficient time. “Eleven?”

“Fine,” smiled Charlie. “I could come here directly afterwards, to discuss anything that emerges.”

“All right,” agreed Olga, doubtfully, thrown off balance by the offer.

“None of the witnesses are in protective custody, are they?”

He was playing with her, his cat to her mouse! “No. Their statements are being translated.”

“I’d prefer them in the original.”

“Available tomorrow.”

“Excellent! I can collect them after I’ve seen Vera Bendall.”

“Yes.” This was going to read even worse than it sounded.

“What’s the progress of the forensic examination?”

“Just that, in progress. Therefore incomplete.” The satisfaction of the refusal was out of proportion to its effect: it was something she’d have to surrender eventually.

“Not available tomorrow?”

“I doubt it.”

“We haven’t talked about any positive lines of enquiry.”

“It’s too early to establish any.”

“I suppose the most important thing we haven’t talked about is the official record that would have been maintained upon Peter Bendall, throughout his time here. That would have included information upon the son, as he grew up.”

Olga thought it was like being stripped naked in a Siberian winter. “That would be classified.”

The already prepared excuse for their apparent loss? wondered Charlie. “You have officially asked for them, though?”

“Every investigatory procedure befitting the crime has been implemented,” insisted Olga, regretting the formal pomposity the moment she began to speak but too angrily frustrated to find other words.

“That’s encouraging to hear,” said Charlie. “My embassy will feel that, too. On a personal level I’m sure we’re going to work together extremely well.”

I’m not, thought the woman.

As he was escorted from the building, Charlie decided that Olga Ivanova Melnik was not as good as she imagined herself to be. Perhaps that was why she found the need to have difficulty with blouse buttons. The hidden recording Charlie was sure would have been taken wouldn’t do much for her, either.

Burt Jordan was already waiting at their reserved table when Donald Morrison entered the Arleccino, waving to attract the MI6 man’s attention when he came in off Druzhinnikovskaya Ulitza.

“Sorry I’m late,” apologized Morrison. “Couldn’t get a taxi. Somehow it seemed easier when we were at the old embassy.”

“But now you’ve got air con,” smiled the CIA Rezident. He was a small, compact man made to look permanently doleful by the heavy moustache allowed to droop at either end. He gestured around the restaurant. “Italian OK for you?”

“Fine. I haven’t been here before.”

“The saltimbocca alla Romana’s the speciality.” Jordan poured Valpolicella. “I figured it far better to get together like this, undisturbed. The embassy’s a fucking mad house. How about yours?”

“Pretty calm, considering.” It was unthinkable to tell the other man the virtually non-existent role to which he’d been relegated. He’d accepted the American’s invitation in the hope of learning something with which to impress Charlie Muffin and get involved.

“It’s good everyone’s pulling with the same stroke.”

“I guess it is.”

“I get anything, it’s yours.”

“Likewise.”

When the waiter arrived they both ordered the saltimbocca. Jordan held up the still half full bottle and ordered another.

Jordan said, “So what have you got?”

Morrison shrugged. “Very little. You’ve already got the counter-intelligence stuff from Charlie. It was all internal-even the jail escape-so Bendall was their headache, not ours. When the rumors began that he wanted to come home the instructions to our man here then was to find him and help him back. If he’d had anything worthwhile from working with the KGB here we could have negotiated a little remission in the sentence he would still have had to serve. We couldn’t get a lead. We even had some stories planted in newspapers here when the press got freer after 1991, hinting as much as we could. He never made contact.”

“The KGB wouldn’t have risked him with anything sensitive. They never treated defectors-even foreign nationals who’d worked for them-well or with any respect.”

“Stranger things have happened,” cliched Morrison. “What about you?”

Jordan shook his head. “The Bureau made it a big operation. Thestuff he leaked was from America, mostly Los Alamos. But as far as they discovered Bendall wasn’t part of any cell. He was a solitary spy, a ‘walk in’ to the Soviet embassy in London, passing on stuff he received from us.”

“What about when he got here?”

“Nothing,” said Jordan. “There’d been the Bureau investigation by then, showing he’d worked alone. We didn’t try to find him.”

“You know,” said Morrison. “Despite all the panic and chaos, when it comes down to it there’s not a lot we’re