“That’s what I think. I also think we made a pretty good team.”
She had asked all the right questions, Charlie acknowledged. “Could be even better with practice.”
“In fact, I was going to suggest buying you a celebration drink but I’ve decided helping Vera Bendall has higher priority.”
“Let’s take a rain check,” agreed Charlie. Stealing an hour drinking with Anne Abbott would have been very pleasant but he supposed he had higher priorities, too.
“It is bad, isn’t it? Worse than you’ve told me?”
Anandale looked down at his wife, one side of her body embalmed beneath her protective tunnel. They’d been married for twenty-two years-happily so despite his resisted temptations-and in their personal life he’d always levelled with her, as she had with him. “The nerves in your arm have been damaged.”
“Is that why I can’t feel it?” Her hair had been lightly brushed and her face washed properly, not with an unguent, so that it didn’t shine anymore but her pallor was still drained a deathly white. There was a saline as well as a plasma drip into her uninjured arm.
“Yes.”
“Will I get the feeling back?”
“There’s going to need to be treatment. We’ve already got the specialists lined up, for when we get back.”
“What sort of treatment?”
“Re-connecting the nerves.”
“The bullet smashed them?”
“Yes.”
“What happens if they can’t be re-connected?”
“We’re going to the best people in the world to ensure that they can be.”
“What if they can’t,” demanded Ruth Anandale, with the persistence of the criminal lawyer she’d been before their marriage.
Anandale hesitated, swallowing. “Then it will be permanent.”
“No feeling at all?”
“No.”
“No use then?”
“No.”
Ruth Anandale didn’t cry. Her face creased, once, as if there had been a spurt of pain but then she lay expressionless although not looking at him. “I broke my leg skating when I was a kid. About twelve, I guess. Even then all I could think about in the hospital was that it would be stiff when it got fixed, so that I’d have to limp-drag it maybe-for the rest of my life.”
“I promise it’ll be fixed.”
“You’ll have to help me, Walt. Help me a lot. I don’t want a body that doesn’t work right … look right …”
“We won’t give up, until we get it fixed.”
“No,” agreed Ruth. “We won’t.”
The Russian Foreign Ministry is within walking distance of the American embassy, which was how Wendall North and the U.S. secretary of state finally completed their journey because Smolenkaja Sennaja Ploscad was gridlocked. The two Russians were waiting in Boris Petrin’s office actually overlooking the traffic-clogged highway.
When North began to apologize for their lateness the foreign minister said, “We saw you, from the window. It’s a perpetual problem.” The floor to ceiling windows were double glazed, smotheringany outside noise, but Petrin still led them deeper into the cavernous room, to where easy chairs and couches were arranged around a dead fireplace. There was an oasis of bottled mineral water and glasses in the middle of a low, glass-topped table. The Americans took the seats toward which the minister gestured and sat, waiting.
Trishin said, “We want formally to express our condolences about your dead security man.” Local television had been dominated by footage of the coffin being loaded aboard the plane at Sheremet’yevo.
North nodded but didn’t speak. Neither did James Scamell.
Petrin said, “I am glad you agreed there was no need for advisers or a secretariat.”
The two Americans remained silent.
“Politically we’ve got to move forward now,” said the Russian chief of staff. “I’m sure you agree with us on that, too?”
“I’m not clear what positive movement there can be in the circumstances,” said Scamell, at last.
“The treaty was ready to be finalized,” insisted Petrin.
“It had reached the final discussion stage,” qualified the secretary of state.
“Easily resolvable points,” argued Petrin.
“That’s not our interpretation,” said North. “Your elected president is alive but incapacitated …”
“ … And Aleksandr Mikhailevich Okulov is the legally acting president, empowered to make and take all presidential decisions under the conventions of the Russian constitution,” interrupted Trishin, formally.
“Pending elections also required under your constitution in the event of that incapacity becoming permanent or the death of the legally incumbent president,” finished the equally well-rehearsed North, just as formally.
“The pending elections are not specially convened,” fought Trishin. “They were already scheduled.”
“A circumstance of convenience,” dismissed Scamall, briefed by the American embassy’s constitutional lawyer. “Our advice is that it would be legally unsafe-as well as unfittingly hasty on the part of both sides-to consider any formal signing in advance of that election.”
There was a visible stiffening from the two Russians.
“What do you consider appropriate?” demanded Trishin, tightly.
“A joint statement regretting what’s happened, with the hope that those still surviving make a full recovery. And an assurance that the incident in no way endangers the treaty negotiations, which will continue,” recited Scamell.
“To defeat the
“I can continue coming here during the lead up to the elections,” offered Scamell. “There will only be one obvious inference.”
“That the treaty will be agreed with us but not with the communists?” completed Trishin.
The scenario was North’s and as he sat listening to it being spelled out he congratulated himself upon how well it suited both sides, although to a greater advantage to America than to Russia.
“We are disappointed,” understated Petrin.
“Nothing is being withdrawn,” insisted North. “Things are merely being postponed, which they should be.”
“What about the joint statement?” queried Trishin.
“Which must
Petrin and the Russian chief of staff looked pointedly between each other. Trishin said, “I believe we see the point.”
“If it is to be a joint statement, carrying the authority of both leaders, it should be made personally, not issued through spokesmen,” demanded Petrin. “We’d consider that essential.”
“There’s the question of security …” North tried but Petrin overrode him.
“There is no question of security!” The man looked around the huge office, empty but for them, as a reminder that it was an unattributable meeting. Completing the unspoken threat he said, “A personal statement, by your president and Aleksandr Mikhailevich, would totally guarantee no premature, ill-judged comments, don’t you agree?”
John Kayley was already waiting in the small conference room adjoining Olga Melnik’s suite when Charlie
