Charlie judged it so far to be a day more confusing than most-too many of which had already been confusing enough-couldn’t see how it was going to get any better and wished now he hadn’t responded to instinct by returning to Fadeeva Ulitza instead of going back to Burdenko Hospital with the lawyers, defense psychiatrists and Donald Morrison. The initial uncertainty was the concierge’sdisclosure of the arrival at Boris Davidov’s abandoned apartment, within an hour of his having been there the previous night, of an FSB squad. According to the caretaker they’d asked similar questions to everyone else and appeared to be trying to locate the man, which they wouldn’t have had to do if he was still a serving officer but certainly would if he’d served in the past and needed to be removed from awkward questioning. Another perhaps far more feasible thought-countered only by Charlie’s impression of Bendall’s reaction-was that the FSB had joined the game of musical chairs and were chasing each of the fifteen names, in the footsteps of the FBI and the militia.
To test that possibility Charlie went directly from Fadeeva Ulitza to the American embassy and was further frustrated. Nowhere, in any of the FBI reports, was there a reference to their overlapping with either the intelligence or police service. Of the fifteen, eight-including Davidov-were logged as being not immediately traceable but with enquiries continuing. Two were serving prison sentences and another had died four years earlier, shot by the militia in an attempted armed robbery in an Arbat jewellery store. Three were working for security firms offering protection to Western businessmen in Moscow from organized mafia and the last was an instructor in the gymnasium at the Balchug Kempinski hotel. None of the security men nor the gym instructor remembered Georgi Gugin as serving with them in the army, despite the television and newspaper pictures. Nothing of the militia efforts to trace the fifteen was yet logged on the centralized system.
John Kayley came down into the incident room from the upstairs embassy as Charlie finished his fruitless computer scroll. The American was in shirtsleeves dark with sweat across his shoulders and beneath his arms.
Kayley said, “You want to guess how many Secret Servicemen we got coming here with the president?”
“No,” refused Charlie.
“Seventy-five! They hear a sound louder than a sparrow’s fart they’ll open fire and there’ll be another massacre.”
“You part of it?”
Kayley shook his head. “I got a court hearing to attend and exsoldiers to find.”
“How’s it going?”
Kayley gestured to Charlie’s blank computer screen. “What you see is what we got. Which so far is fuck all. You all set for tomorrow?”
“Short of just about everything I’d like,” said Charlie, honestly.
“You think we’re ever going to get it?” asked Kayley, kindling one of his cigars into a perfumed cloud.
Charlie considered for several minutes before he replied. “No,” he said, confronting the doubt properly for the first time. “I don’t think from the way it’s going at the moment that we stand a chance in hell.”
Charlie’s seriousness appeared to concentrate Kayley’s mind. “And I believe you’re probably right. I don’t think we are, either.” Thank Christ, he thought, for the Teflon protection of Paul Smith’s over-reactive e-mail.
Charlie seized upon Anne Abbott’s unexpected, car phone requests for a preparing, pre-hearing review-eager for a sounding board after the brief exchange with Kayley-without waiting for Morrison’s return to the incident room. Arkadi Noskov was already tightly wedged into the largest available chair-which would have enveloped anyone else-in Anne’s embassy office, vodka glass contentedly resting on his tablecloth of a beard. Charlie accepted the offered scotch, even though it was a mix. Anne wasn’t drinking.
“So how’d it go?” Charlie asked.
“It would have been better if you’d been there,” said Anne.
Charlie detected the edge to her voice. “I’m sorry?” he queried.
“So are we,” she said. “Bendall went through the routine with our psychiatrists but said he wouldn’t cooperate with anything else if you weren’t there. Which you weren’t.”
A serious oversight, acknowledged Charlie. It really was spiralling into a totally fucked up day. The refusal wouldn’t do anything to restore Donald Morrison’s confidence, either. Charlie said, “You really think he had any intention of saying anything today?”
“We’re never going to know, are we?”
“What about the psychiatrists?”
“He was impeccable,” replied the deep-voiced lawyer. “His behavior virtually amounts to proof of his sanity, without our needing to be professionally told.”
“Is that what the psychiatrists did say, that he was fit to plead?” demanded Charlie.
“They’ve promised qualifications in their written assessment but they’re unanimous on the deciding factor, that he’s mentally capable of understanding a criminal charge,” said Noskov.
“And that he’s mentally aware of what he’s done, capable of distinguishing between right and wrong,” finished Anne.
“What are the qualifications?” said Charlie.
“Delusory, to the point of severe fantacism,” Anne set out. “Fluctuating schizophrenic paranoia, susceptible to mental manipulation.”
“What’s that give us?” asked Charlie.
“At best, psychiatric mumbo jumbo for a plea of mitigation,” said the Russian lawyer, cynically. “And we’ve got the intended charges.”
“Which are?”
“Conspiracy to murder, murder, membership of a terrorist organization, terrorism, espionage and discharging a weapon with intent to endanger or take life,” enumerated Noskov.
“Espionage?” isolated Charlie, curiously.
“They’ve trawled through the statute book and will probably come up with some they haven’t got to yet,” said Noskov, with continued cynicism. “Don’t forget it’s only the initial, legally required arraignment. The prosecution will formally lay the charges, I’ll formally enter a plea of not guilty to each and that’ll be that for the next ten or twenty or however many custodial remands the prosecution ask for.”
“Perhaps,” said Anne, offering their individual bottles to each man for refills.
“What’s that mean?” questioned Charlie.
“Bendall’s demanding to address the court,” she said. “When we told him tomorrow wasn’t the time or the place he threatened to dismiss us and defend himself.” She hesitated. “That’s when we could have done with you most, to calm him down.”
Charlie accepted the persistent criticism. “We’re here to review. Let’s do just that, assemble what we’ve got.”
“Or rather what we
On his way to Protocnyj pereulok Charlie had believed he had everything neatly compartmented in his mind but almost as soon as he began to talk the doubt arose. The undoubted conspiracy was brilliantly conceived by people with sufficient power, influence and knowledge to penetrate KGB-era material and come literally within a hair’s breadth of a sniper’s rifle sight to assassinating two presidents. As it was, they’d killed one and by a fluke of an instinctive movement maimed the wife of another. Anne cut in, impressively advocatorial, when Charlie talked of a brotherhood and listed what they’d believed he’d extracted from Bendall about it, even managing a passing imitation of the man’s wailing dirge.
“Delusory, to the point of severe fantacism,” she reminded. “And that’s from our
“We’ve got an irrefutable defense to murder,” said Noskov. “The rest only just helps with a mitigating defence on the evidence of mental instability.”
“He’d have believed it, though, wouldn’t he?” said Charlie, slowly. “Someone who was easily deluded, retreated into fantasy in preference to his own shitty existence, would grab at the blood brother nonsense.”
“Where’s that take us?” asked Anne.
Charlie didn’t know but his feet throbbed, which was a good sign. “What are the inconsistencies! The things
