Kings of Many Castles

Natalia was right, Charlie accepted. And at risk if the presidential shooting was left to run inconclusively into the ground. So what about his own rock and a hard place, trying to protect Natalia by not using what he knew against endangering her if he did? According to everything she’d told him it had been Natalia-provably, on secretariat tapes and in secretariat notebooks-who had been consistently critical of the FSB from the outset of the official enquiry. With Yuri Trishin, the president’s chief of staff, unpersuaded until today. Which showed Natalia- arguably (although she wasn’t) a disenchanted former KGB officer-the prime instigator of any FSB overhaul. An obvious and unavoidable target. It could also be the unproven, unproveable evidence of Yuri Trishin-never Natalia, even unwittingly-being the internal source to the conspiracy. A new mantra echoed in Charlie’s mind: unproven, unproveable. “I want to talk something through with you again.”

“I want to go on talking about this,” misunderstood Natalia, deciding at the same time that there were several closets in the unused bedrooms in which she could hide the cases until the following day.

“That’s what I am thinking about.”

“I’m sorry … I thought …” she stumbled. Shit, shit and double shit! Even Charlie’s frustration cursing was automatic for her.

Good, thought Charlie. She was on the defensive: a footplank if not a bridge. Every little helped so he’d push it as far across the gulf as he could. “Don’t try to think ahead of me. Talk with me. What reason was there for Trishin’s u-turn today?”

“Karelin stonewalling, as always.”

“As always,” echoed Charlie, snatching at the response. “He’s stonewalled at every encounter, even sent sacrifices at the beginning.”

“Yes?” Natalia accepted, questioningly.

“Do you remember our conversation about there being an inside source-a leak-for every move in the investigation to be sidetracked or misdirected?”

“Yes?” she questioned again. She couldn’t follow him, see the point towards which he was going.

“Could it have been Trishin: be Trishin?”

Natalia’s mind was in a turmoil, too many unconnected thoughts fluttering in a wind-blown paperchase. “Doing what?”

“Using you … manipulating …?”

“No!” Natalia’s mind cleared, the paperchase wind abruptly blowing away the uncertainty. “You didn’t mean using me … manipulating me. You thought it was me! Suspected me! Imagined I was part of something …!” She was forward in the chair, eyes bulged in outrage.

“No!” frantically denied Charlie, despairing of her psychologytuned intuition. “I’m frightened you’ve been used …”

“I have, haven’t I Charlie? Used for such a very long time!”

“Stop it, Natalia!” he shouted. “Stop this going wrong … getting any worse. I can help … there’s a way …”

She jerked up but having done so didn’t know what to do, thrusting forward but then coming back, to stand over him to stare down contemptuously. “Sasha is staying with Marina’s family because I asked if she could. I didn’t want her to be here tonight. To see. I’d even changed my mind. Was going to try to forget whatever you did with that woman because it could have been a mistake … something you didn’t think about. But you don’t do anything without thinking about it, do you, you bastard! You’re even ready to think I’d cheat on you: be prepared to mislead your fucking precious professionalism …”

“Stop it!” Charlie shouted again. “This is stupid … shouldn’t be happening …”

“I’m not part of anything … a conspiracy or a cover up or whateverelse it is your contorted, convoluted mind imagines. You want to know what I’m guilty of! I’m guilty of believing that you could change and love me and trust me and dear God, wasn’t that a mistake! You did it very well, Charlie. You got a posting here and you realized how useful I’d be and you managed to make it work for all this time …”

She was hysterical, beyond immediate reason. “Sit down. Please sit down and listen to me, Natalia. You’re wrong. All the way wrong. Sit down and listen to me: listen to what I have to say. What has to be said.”

“I’m leaving, Charlie,” announced Natalia, shaking her head as she walked away. “It’s over. Should never have begun.” She emerged at once from the bedroom with a case in either hand.

“I’m asking you not to leave.” Charlie was standing, his hands out.

“You should learn to trust someone sometime, Charlie. But you never will.”

“Where are you going?”

“An hotel, initially.”

“Which one?”

“Don’t become a nuisance.”

“What about Sasha?”

“What about her?”

“What are you going to tell her?”

“How about the father who didn’t want to see her for the first three years she was born had to go away again?”

“That’s not fair. Or true.”

“Let’s not get into a discussion about fairness or truth.”

“I love you!” Charlie called after her.

Natalia quietly closed the door behind herself.

Charlie waited at the British embassy entrance to authorize John Kayley’s admission. The American said: “You look rough. Bad night?”

“Kind of,” said Charlie. Wallowing in a lake of self-pity and Islay malt hadn’t been the best idea. “You mind passing on the cigars for a while?”

“Not if you tell me what I’m here for.”

“Pictures and moving lips.”

Kayley followed the video struggle between Bendall and Vladimir Sakov with the lip-read transcript before him and did the same directly afterwards with the courtroom killing but on this showing Charlie freeze-framed the tattoo comparison between the NTV cameraman and the FBI-collected photograph of Vasili Isakov. Charlie said, “Bendall and Davidov have the same tattoos in the same place. Their bodies are at the Burdenko mortuary but the hospital wants to get rid of them.”

“We need photographs.”

“London’s taken responsibility for Bendall’s body. We might be able to bluff the hospital about Davidov but at the moment the priority is with the living more than the dead, before he gets dead.”

“You’ve done good, Charlie. Damned good. You worked it out to the very end already?”

“Not yet,” Charlie admitted. “But I think I know how to.” Would Natalia ever learn what he’d done, to keep her safe? He already had the list of Moscow hotels to call later, to find out where she was. “How’s this measure for size?”

Once, as Charlie talked, Kayley’s hand strayed to his cigars but the American remembered in time, smiling apologetically. When Charlie finished Kayley said, “We swing a trick like this, I’m permanently in the Bureau’s Hall of Fame and you’re a to-die-for friend for life. But we’ll never get it to work.”

“That mean you don’t want to give it a try?”

“Sure as hell no! But we’ll only get one hit.”

“You think Washington will go for it?”

“The president’s wife was shot, for Christ’s sake! By a bullet meant for him! And you ask if they’ll go for it!”

“You going to ask them, first?”

Kayley snorted the rejection. “It doesn’t work, my tit’s in the ringer for failing. If it does work, I’ll announce it and wait for the presidential congratulations.”

“Officially I’m on watch and listen, no active participation.”