Kings of Many Castles

could see the yellow and green, antenna-haired MI6 building on the other side of the river. It reminded him to call Donald Morrison sometime that day.

It was not Charlie’s first encounter with the control group and Dean didn’t bother with reintroductions. Instead he said, “We’ve kept ahead until now. So well done, so far. But now it’s all changed. The only thing that isn’t changed is our need to stay ahead.”

“Which is why you’ve been withdrawn,” announced Jocelyn Hamilton, brusquely eager. “We need to know the extent of the conspiracy: how much more deeply we might become involved.”

His adversary, Charlie knew, from the past; there always seemed to be one. As he looked directly to the burly deputy director, Charlie caught the sharp, sideways look from Dean and thought, shot yourself in your stupid mouth, asshole. Charlie said: “I know what we need. At the moment I can’t provide it.”

“Then perhaps you need help, supervision even,” seized Hamilton, at once.

“Perhaps what we all need is to hear what Charlie’s got to tell us before we start offering suggestions,” said Patrick Pacey, irritably.

An ally, Charlie recognized. He remained unspeaking, using the silence against his attacker until Dean came in, supporting him too. “Let’s hear that, Charlie. What is there to add to what you’ve already shipped back, which we’ve all seen?”

“I’m having our own ballisic confirmation, obviously, but it’s already come from the Americans,” said Charlie. “There were definitely two gunmen and it was the second one who hit the Russian president and Ruth Anandale. I believe Vera Bendall was murdered, inside Lefortovo. I’m hoping our pathologists will agree with me on that: the Russian autopsy verdict is that the evidence is inconclusive …”

“ … Why would she have been killed?” broke in Jeremy Simpson, the group’s legal advisor. “The statements you’ve given us don’t read as if she knew anything?”

“I don’t have answers for most of the questions you’re going to ask,” admitted Charlie, reluctantly. “Maybe she did know something but didn’t realize it, had to be silenced before it emerged.”

“Maybe she did know, was part of the conspiracy but hadn’t expected to be put in jail. Committed suicide because she couldn’t withstand the interrogation?” said Hamilton.

“Which would be the worst imaginable scenario,” unnecessarily reminded the permanently red-faced political officer. “Assassin son of a British defector is bad enough: assassin son with British defector’s wife as an accomplice is appalling.”

Charlie shook his head. “Vera Bendall was neither clever nor strong enough to have been actively involved or included. What she knew-if anything-she knew accidentally. Or was killed for an entirely different reason.”

“Prove it, any of it!” demanded the deputy director-general.

“I can’t,” said Charlie. This wasn’t how he’d expected it to be. He was appearing to have reached far too many conclusions upon far too little evidence.

“If Vera Bendall was murdered the conspiracy has in some wayto involve disaffected factions among highly placed Russians with access to Lefortovo,” said Sir Rupert Dean.

“Which points to the FSB, formerly-or alias, even-the KGB, whose files have disappeared,” completed Charlie. He added, “An intelligence service, irrespective of whatever its name is now, that was in the forefront of the 1991 coup against change.”

“We’re going around and around in unresolved circles!” protested Hamilton.

“Maybe that’s the intention,” suggested Charlie. Another “maybe” he recognized, uncomfortably.

Hamilton sighed. “Off we skip down another yellow brick road! I can’t wait to hear this theory!”

In Charlie’s mind everything made sense: was supported by known, established facts. But as he paraded them-analyzed themin his mind he stumbled over too many maybes. “It’s too clumsy. George Bendall is mentally unstable, possibly alcoholic. If the intention was to kill one-possibly two-presidents, no conspiracy group would trust George Bendall to carry it out. Or only allow him just two bullets to do it. Or put him in a position where it was inevitable that he would be seized ….” Charlie paused for breath, wondering if his parting question to Bendal- how were they going to get you away? — had properly registered with the man. There were various expressions on the faces of the men opposite him, none which Charlie judged receptive. Pressing on determinedly, he said, “It was the second gunman who put two bullets into Lev Yudkin. And hit the American First Lady, most likely in mistake for the American president. They didn’t need George Bendall …”

“Except to be caught?” queried the bald, moustached Simpson, following Charlie’s argument.

“Except to be caught,” agreed Charlie.

“Why!” demanded Hamilton. “What for?”

“I don’t know,” Charlie was forced to admit. “To create a confusion, send everyone the wrong way.”

“They’ve certainly succeeded here, if that was the intention!” jeered Hamilton.

Charlie didn’t feel relaxed anymore. He felt exposed-wallowing-and he didn’t like it.

“We’ve all read your hospital interview with the man,” said the director-general, his spectacles moving back and forth between his hands like the preparation for a conjuring trick. “Give us your analysis of that.”

“Again, I’m having it assessed by experts,” assured Charlie, grateful for the escape. “But I think Bendall fits a mold. He comes from a totally dysfunctional family, hates everything and everyone. He’d got a predilection to violence, usually under the influence of drink. The army doesn’t help him; appears-I repeat appears-to make it worse. But there seems to have been a group, a brotherhood to use his word, that admitted him. His first-only-acceptance. They had a song. If you’ve listened yet to the tape I sent, along with the transcript, you heard him humming it. You also heard-and readhim several times use the word ‘special.’ There were a lot of mentally questionable, often drunk, violence-inclined men in beerhalls in Munich from the 1920s onwards who had their own particular song and thought themselves part of a special, select brotherhood ….”

“I don’t believe this …” broke in Hamilton, shaking his head in exaggerated incredulity.

Charlie wasn’t sure that he did anymore. Before he could continue, Simpson said, “Do you think that’s where the conspiracy is, among this so called brotherhood?”

“Yes. And I think I can establish it, in time,” insisted Charlie. “It’s a question I want to put to a psychiatrist or psychologist but I don’t infer that first encounter with Bendall as obstructive, a refusal to talk. He thinks he’s clever: there is often a deceptive cleverness in madness. I believe Bendall imagines he’s playing with me, being cleverer than me, but that he wants to tell me about whoever or whatever it is he was a part of.”

“I’m trying to work it out,” mocked Hamilton. “Are we following the theories of Freud here? Or could it be Jung? Or there again could it be the teachings and crystal ball of Madam Maud, the clairvoyant in a gypsy tent at the bottom of a pier somewhere?”

Jocelyn Hamilton clearly wasn’t aware of the profound Russian belief in clairvoyants and superstition, Charlie decided. Ignoring theridicule, he said, “I’m hoping to get some sort of psychiatric or psychological report within twenty-four hours.”

“We accept a conspiracy,” conceded the director-general, slowly. “There’s forensic proof, at least, of that. It succeeded in removing the Russian president from the political scene, possibly forever, if it didn’t actually kill him. Hurt-in one instance killed-others. Why should a well organized group in any way involve someone as unstable as Bendall who, if you’re right, will eventually expose them? It doesn’t make sense.”

“That’s my point!” pleaded Charlie, only just avoiding the exasperation being obvious. “Not yet it doesn’t make sense, far too little does. It might when the Russians trace Bendall’s army medical records … find evidence of a special group in the units in which Bendall served. And there’s a proper investigation into the death of the NTV cameraman Vasili Isakov.”

“But then again, it might not,” sneered Hamilton.

Every other face remained blank, unconvinced, and unimpressed. Patrick Pacey, whose function as political officer was to liaise with the Home Office and Downing Street, said, “I want a positive answer. Is there any possibility of another Briton being involved in this?”

“I can’t give a positive answer,” apologized Charlie. “I don’t know.”

“Is there any possibility of the mother being found to be involved?”

“I don’t personally believe she was, but again I can’t give a positive answer.” Charlie couldn’t remember any debriefing being as bad, as humiliating, as this.