the treaty. There’s growing media speculation that there was a hidden agenda, that we never ever really intended to conclude it and that it was a cosmetic dance to go on until Yudkin got confirmed for a second term.”
Wendall North admired the secretary of state’s diplomacy. Scamell wasn’t talking of Moscow’s media pressure. He would have got from his own people at Foggy Bottom that morning’s
“What’s happening with the investigation, John?” avoided Anandale.
Kayley had risked holding back from either the secretary of state or the ambassador the Russian decision to arraign Bendall, wanting to present it ahead of any official announcement as his personal discovery, despite the breakdown with the Moscow militia. He also explained the ballistic evidence as an exclusive detection of the FBI team he headed. He had to concede the British would be the source of any statement from Bendall from which it might be possible to locate the others in the conspiracy, but did so inferring that Britain needed Bureau manpower and scientific expertise to continue the investigation.
“
“If we get the statement the Brits expect,” backtracked Kayley.
“Now we’re getting there!” enthused Anandale.
“I’m giving it to you as it’s come to me,” said Kayley, stressing the impression of urgency at the same time as shielding himself from questions he couldn’t answer. “There’s a lot I need explained further, pieces to fit together.”
“We’ve got things to talk about when I get there, John,” hinted Anandale. To the secretary of state he said, “Is it going to be a State occasion? World leaders?”
“I’d imagine so,” said Scamell.
“Find out,” ordered the president. “Here’s how we’ll run it. I’ll come early, for meetings with the British premier and the French president. Overnight either in London or Paris, so I can be in and out of Moscow from either city the same day as the funeral.”
“You need to meet with Okulov,” insisted Scamell.
“Not to do so would be worse than not going at all,” said North, in continued support.
“I’m not giving anything away for nothing,” said Anandale. “You make it clear, whichever way it’s necessary, that I won’t meet Okulov if their damned investigators don’t come back to the table.” He hesitated. “Everything else stands. I’m out of there the same day, OK?”
“It’s obvious the British are getting through to Bendall,” insisted Olga, taking the Russian copy of the interview tape from the machine on the table between her and Leonid Zenin.
“And we’re getting every word of it,” the militia commander pointed out.
“If we do get a lead to the rest of them, arraigning Bendall will be premature.”
“It’s out of our hands now,” said Zenin. “And it’s not a trial. It’s a public arraignment, for public consumption: the formal laying of the formal charges. The prosecutor can apply for adjournments as long as we ask him.”
“You sure it’s wise, shutting out the British as we’re shutting out the Americans?” pressed Olga. “They’ve obviously got something.”
“Or bluffing.”
Olga shook her head. “I don’t think he was bluffing.”
“We’ll see how their next interview goes,” decided Zenin. “We can easily get back together if it turns out to be really productive.” He was silent for several moments. “In fact it might be an idea if you were actually present, able to see as well as hear for ourselves. We’re going to come out well from this, Olga Ivanova.”
Olga smiled at his automatically talking in the plural, of both of them. “I think we already have.”
“You got it, Charlie!” agreed Anne, excitedly. “An absolute defense to murder! An expert witness, even.”
“I’d still prefer him to be British,” said Charlie. He was distracted by the Isakov file. Like so many other unresolved impressions-frustrations-there was something in it demanding to be seen. But like all the others, he couldn’t see it!
“I’ve filed the diplomatic protest. So’s Noskov, legally.” Anne was disappointed-curious even-at how subdued Charlie was.
“We’re still short of too much else.” He was glad he’d printed off the Isakov material to bring back to the embassy, to go over it further.
“There could be the breakthrough with Bendall if you continue teasing him along as well as you did today. And that could be as early as tomorrow.”
Her ambition was making her over-confidence-or overexpectant-Charlie decided. “Then all our problems will be over. Or just beginning.”
“Misery guts!”
“Realist,” he corrected.
Anne put into its designated order the material Charlie carried into her office thirty minutes earlier and gestured vaguely in the direction of the embassy’s residential apartment block. “The weary end to a long day. You fancy a Happy Hour drink?”
Charlie couldn’t at that moment imagine anything he would have enjoyed more. “No.”
“OK.” Anne showed no offense, no anger at a rebuff, which Charlie hadn’t intended it to be.
That night Natalia came to him in bed and the lovemaking was as uninhibited and passionate as he could ever remember, even from their first, excited, discovery days. Afterwards Natalia said, “I’m sorry, Charlie: sorry for too long being such a shit.”
“We’ve both been shits,” said Charlie and at last felt the overdue and searing guilt.
19
Viktor Ivanovich Karelin was the first intelligence chairman Natalia had ever personally met but the apparent diffidence was so alien to the lower hierarchy with whom she was familiar that she was vaguely disconcerted by it. Which, she acknowledged, she was perhaps supposed to be, although she didn’t get the impression there was any affectation about the self-effacing demeanour. Another interpretation could be that Karelin was so sure of himself and the power he represented that he didn’t feel the need to posture and intimidate.
“Thank you for returning to us so quickly,” greeted Natalia. What would the man have managed to achieve in thirty-six hours compared to what their president-endorsed demand to the Defense Ministry had generated in less than twelve, five of those with the previous night intervening? It would be important for her-the tribunal-not to appear to try to trap the man.
“You stressed the urgency,” reminded Karelin.
“We’re indeed anxious to hear what you have to tell us,” said Filitov, stilted in his eagerness to get himself on the ever-kept record.
“There has clearly been considerable, malicious interference-possibly destruction-of a substantial proportion of archival material concerning Peter Bendall and his family,” admitted Karelin, at once. “I have instituted an enquiry, the results of which I will make fully available to this commission when it is completed.”
Honesty or yet further prevarication? She was the trained interrogator, Natalia reminded herself. “This malicious interference? Is it indiscriminate, consistent with the haphazard pilfering by disgruntled former personnel, about which we talked earlier? Or is there a pattern?”
A smile wisped across Karelin’s face. “There is unquestionably a pattern.”
Had the smile been admiration or something else? Having been specific Natalia intentionally generalized. “Help us with that.”
“No material whatsoever remains for what would have been the last five years of Peter Bendall’s life.”
“And the son?”
