going to be able to do.”
“We’ve still got to make the motions, though. That’s why I thought we should meet like this. My word, about sharing anything I get.”
“Mine too,” said Morrison, enthusiastically. “Well met.”
“It’s murder now, Vera. The death penalty.”
“Yes.”
The acceptance was flat, totally without emotion. Olga Melnik had hoped for more, a collapse even. They were in the same room with the same flowers and there was tea again, with cake. The record light flickered on the unobtrusive tape machine.
“Drink your tea.”
The woman did as she was told, gnawing at a cake between noisy sips. “Can I have my underwear back? And my shoes? It’s really not comfortable without them.”
“It’s regulations,” refused Olga. “What have you remembered?”
“Tuesdays and Thursdays.”
“What about Tuesdays and Thursdays?”
“Those were the nights he seemed to stay out most often. Occasionally others, but mostly Tuesdays and Thursdays.”
Better, thought Olga, hopefully. “You must have asked him about those nights?”
“I told you, he got angry.”
“Particularly angry when you asked him about those nights?”
“I think so.”
“He never told you, not once? Not even a word? Or a name?”
“No.”
“What about the name of the doctor?”
“I can’t remember.”
“What did you talk about, when he was home?”
“We didn’t, much. We watched television. Sometimes the programs he’d worked on. He made models.”
“Models of what?”
“Cars. Boats. Planes. Things that moved. He liked things that moved.”
“How did he make them? From wood or what?”
“Wood, sometimes, wood that he carved. And kits. The sort that children have.”
“I don’t remember the people who searched your apartment finding any models. It wasn’t in their report.”
“He broke them, as soon as he finished them. Said they were useless to him.”
“What other hobbies did he have?”
“None.”
“What about guns?” She had to improve on the original questioning.
“No … I told you …”
“Did he ever go shooting?”
“He doesn’t have a gun.”
“He could have borrowed one.”
“I don’t know.”
“You are remembering things, aren’t you?”
“I’m trying.”
“Some other people are coming to see you.”
“What other people!” pleaded Vera, immediately alarmed.
“From the British embassy. They want to help, like I want to help. That’s why you’re here, safe from people who might want to hurt you for what you son has done.” It was imperative to get that on record, after the debacle with Charlie Muffin. She hadn’t just underestimated the man, she’d even more badly miscalculated the collaboration that would be imposed upon her.
“Will you be here, with them?”
“No.”
The woman looked down at her sagging bosoms. “Can I have myunderwear back, when they come? And the laces for my shoes?”
“Yes. But you will go on thinking, remembering, won’t you?”
“I’ll try.”
Olga hurried from the prison warning herself that it scarcely provided a lead but it certainly justified going through the statements of the people and acquaintances with whom George Bendall had worked at NTV. And if there was no reference to something-anything-the man regularly did on Tuesday and Thursday nights, they’d all have to be re-interviewed and specifically asked.
“You had no right-no authority-to arrange access to the mother without reference to me!” protested Richard Brooking. “It should have been done diplomatically, through channels. You were specifically warned by Sir Michael himself!”
“Dick,” said Charlie, intentionally using the name abbreviation for its ambiguity. “That’s debatable and I’m not interested in debating it. I’m interested in finding out why a British national apparently tried to kill two presidents and when an opportunity presents itself, like it did today, then I’m going to take it without first asking your permission. You want to protest that to London, then go ahead. And while you’re doing it, ask them how they feel about another British national-albeit one who’s lived here for years-being banged up in a Stalin-era prison without charge.”
“That’s certainly questionable,” agreed Anne Abbott.
“I thought you told me it was for her own protection.”
“Bollocks,” rejected Charlie.
Brooking looked embarrassedly to Anne, who smiled and said, “That’s what I think, too.”
“I’m not sure it would be proper for me to accompany you to a prison,” said the diplomat.
“Don’t then,” accepted Charlie, relieved.
“It probably would be better left to us at this preliminary stage,” agreed Anne.
“Thanks for the support,” said Charlie, as they made their way along the corridor towards his office.
“Things are difficult enough without dicks like Richard Brooking,” said the lawyer.
Charlie thought that it just might be that he and Anne Abbott were birds of a feather, which would be a welcome change from being surrounded by either vultures or cuckoos.
The information-starved international media thronged Petr Tikunov’s press conference at the Duma. The Communist Party presidential candidate, a burly, beetle-browed man whose campaign managers tried to avoid facial comparison with Brezhnev, said that irrespective of any current investigation the new government he would be leading after the forthcoming elections would institute the most searching and thorough enquiry into the outrage.
8
It took the authority-and intervention-of Aleksandr Okulov’s office for Natalia to reach the FSB counter- intelligence chief and by the time she did it was to announce the exasperated acting president had ordered her personally to the Lubyanka, which made her as uneasy as it clearly did General Dimitri Spassky.
The only delay when she entered the Russian intelligence headquarters from which she herself had operated for fifteen years was for the security formality of photographing, identification and official authorization. As she followed the required but unnecessary escort across the marbled and pillared hall to the elevator bank Natalia
