Kings of Many Castles

arrived at Militia headquarters. For once the American wasn’t fumigating the place with his cigar smoke, which was a welcomed relief.

As he passed over the transcripts of that morning’s meeting with Vera Bendall Charlie said, “I’ve included copy tapes, as well.”

There was a stone-faced, head-nod of acceptance from the American, which Charlie interpreted to be continued annoyance at his refusal to let the man in on the interview and thought, fuck you too.

“How did it go?” asked Olga, who’d already listened to her own eavesdropped recording and seen on film Charlie’s warning head shake to the woman who’d gone with him to Lefortovo.

“One or two interesting points,” suggested Charlie.

“Time to start work then!” she said, briskly.

“Exactly,” seized Kayley. “And this isn’t the place or the way.”

Charlie looked at the other man in open surprise. Surely yesterday’s rancor couldn’t have remained as strong as this? Olga just as quickly discerned the American’s irritation, hoping she’d succeeded in making the Englishman its focus.

Charlie said, “You’ve obviously got a point to make?”

“An obvious one,” declared the American. “Maybe the three of us can get on well enough together … maybe not. None of us know yet. But passing around packages like this is ridiculous. We need a centralized operation: an incident room, with trained officers indexing and correlating everything. Computers. Telephones. Access to forensic facilities. Somewhere from which we can all work together, be together. Yesterday all those facilities were flown in from America. And have already been set up in a basement at the U.S. embassy. It’s from there that I am going to head up the American side of the investigation, an American side which will be fully exchanged with both of you. But what I’m suggesting-inviting-is for both of you to join me there, have all your stuff filed there. It’ll happen anyway, under the sharing agreement. But it’ll be in three different locations, with no necessary centralization. This shooting is almost forty-eight hours old and we haven’t got a damned thing properly off the ground yet …” He looked at Olga, smiling at last. “That’s not acriticism, of anything you’ve done. But look …” He swept his hand towards the pile of dossiers in front of Charlie. “He hasn’t had the opportunity to look at any of that yet …” He had to bulldoze them, be even more insistent if necessary. Paul Smith had made it a clear ultimatum when he’d spoken to the FBI director that morning. He had twenty-four hours to get everything on American terms under American control or he caught the direct Washington flight home the following night.

Charlie had recognized Kayley’s point long before the American had got to it, his mind way beyond what the man was saying. The arrangement would suit him perfectly. Through Natalia he had virtually open access to the Russian investigation. And if he had entree to the American facility he was confident he could discover whatever he wanted or needed, even if they didn’t want him to.

Now it was Olga who was stone-faced. “You established all that without telling me-us-what you intended in advance!”

“It’s the way I’m working the American part of the investigation!” repeated Kayley. “I’m inviting you both in, to be part of it. Like we’re supposed to be, all part of the same thing. What do you say, Charlie?”

Yet again Charlie’s mind was way ahead. Less than twenty-four hours earlier, Olga had been trying to drive a wedge between him and the American: how quickly what goes around comes around. “I think it’s a good idea. It is, after all, what we’re supposed to be doing.”

“All those facilities exist here,” insisted Olga.

Charlie was with him, which put her in the inferior bargaining position, calculated Kayley. “You don’t want to come aboard, that’s your decision. Charlie and I will operate out of Novinskii Bul’var, liaise and share everything with you from there. Not perfect but better than what we’re doing at the moment.”

She couldn’t let it happen! They’d combine against her, cut her out. “It’s a resolve to an operational difficulty. I’m prepared to give it a trial. If, for any reason, it doesn’t prove functional we’ll have to come to some other arrangement.”

“Sure we will,” smiled Kayley, allowing Olga her escape. Won! he thought.

“You’re right,” agreed Natalia, looking up from the transcript of Charlie’s interview with Vera Bendall. “It throws up a lot of questions.”

“Most of which I didn’t follow through,” conceded Charlie, self-critically. The day had continued unexpectedly but in Charlie’s opinion far more productively than he’d anticipated. Kayley had used the fact that Charlie supposedly had to catch up with the newly produced information-as they did from his interview with Vera Bendall-to argue their first American embassy assessment should be postponed until the following morning and Charlie had gone along with it because the Russian forensic material, the incomplete KGB dossier and the preliminary medical report upon George Bendall were new, although then he couldn’t have guessed how important he would judge one of them to be.

“When are you going to see her again?”

“Directly after the U.S. embassy meeting. I’ll fix it there with Olga.”

“You really think the embassy arrangements will be practical?”

“Between us we’re covered from two sides. I’ll take my chances getting what I want from America.” At the moment all he wanted was one specific statistic.

From anyone else it would have sounded arrogant but from Charlie it didn’t, thought Natalia. If only her professional trust could cross over to their personal situation. “You think from what Vera Bendall said the KGB were using him-had a use for him?”

Charlie shook his head. “It could be. But it doesn’t fit! You were KGB. Can you imagine them taking on someone like George Bendall!”

“I wasn’t operational,” reminded Natalia. “He could have had his uses because he was unpredictable.”

“Two other things that don’t fit,” itemized Charlie. “How does a drunken, unpredictable misfit like George Bendall, who made a living robbing tourists, suddenly get-and hold-a job in a TV studio? Any job, for that matter?”

“I was going to ask you that. I don’t know.”

“Try the second. George Bendall retained British nationality. How did he get accepted into the Russian army?”

“At the time the Russian army was made up of conscripts and volunteers from fifteen republics of the Soviet Union.”

“The United Kingdom wasn’t one of them.”

“You think it’s linked to what Vera Bendall said about the KGB?”

“The Glavnoye Razvedyvatelnoye Upravleniye is military intelligence,” reminded Charlie. “What influence would the KGB have had?”

“Enough to get him in, if they’d wanted.”

Charlie hesitated at the direct question but decided things were sufficiently relaxed between them now. “Did the instruction come from your ministry for Olga to tell Kayley and I that things were missing from Peter Bendall’s dossier?”

There was no hesitation from Natalia. “No,” she said at once. “It didn’t come from the control group, either. So it’s got to be internal Militia, blame apportioning.”

It was an essential part of their self-imposed personal security that each had their own, independent telephone line into the Lesnaya apartment. Natalia rose hurriedly at the recognizable ring of hers, anxious that it wouldn’t wake Sasha. Natalia’s was the shortest end of the conversation and she spoke with her back to him so Charlie only picked up isolated words.

She remained by the telephone after replacing it, turning to him. “George Bendall’s recovered consciousness. And the guards at Lefortovo found his mother’s body an hour ago. They didn’t take her bra away after she’d spoken with you. She hanged herself with it.”

For once in her life Vera Bendall hadn’t looked away, accepting everything and anything, thought Charlie.