Kings of Many Castles

“How much time do you think you’ve got?”

“None,” Sakov finally conceded.

“I don’t think so either,” agreed Kayley.

“Don’t call me Vlad old buddy anymore.”

“I won’t,” promised the American.

Ruth Anandale had her good hand to her face, sobbing, and it was a mistake to reach out for the useless one because she screamed hysterically, “Dont! Stop it! Don’t touch it: it’s dead!”

“There’s progress all the time,” insisted Anandale, a worn out assurance. “The moment there’s a breakthrough, we’ll have it. I told you you’d get better and you will. I promise!”

“Stop it, Walt. Stop it! Stop it! Stop it! I’m a freak, always going to be a freak. Can’t dress anymore as I want. Swim as I want and ride as I want and play tennis like I want. I can’t even cut my own fucking food anymore or drive a car anymore. Or write my name anymore. A freak, Wait! What’s it like to be married to a fucking freak!”

It had been Max Donnington’s suggestion to be discreetly in the background when Anandale told his wife that the two European brachial plexus specialists had unanimously agreed with the American surgeons that there was no treatment or surgery possible to restore any use to Ruth Anandale’s arm. The admiral came quickly forward, already prepared. “Come on, Ruth. Take these, they’ll make it easier …”

Ruth Anandale was calm when she looked up at the man. “These aren’t the pills-the tranquilizer-I need, Max. What about some pills to make it really easy?”

Anandale remained for another hour in the private quarters of the White House, waiting until his wife finally fell asleep and when he was sure she had and wouldn’t hear he said to Donnington, “You think we’ve got an additional problem?”

“Unquestionably. Trauma of some sort was inevitable. The only uncertainty was the degree.”

“Does this degree needs specialist treatment, too?”

“I think it would be wrong not to consider psychiatry. As I told you before, your wife is going to need all the help she can get.”

Anandale looked up irritably at the butler’s hesitant entry. “I told you I was off limits.”

“I think you’ll want to hear Mr. North,” said the man.

“What!” demanded Anandale, emerging into the outer dressing room.

“Kayley’s got one of the guys involved: the cameraman on thegantry with Bendall. He’s defected and agreed to go before a Grand Jury. Kayley’s on his way with him now.”

For a moment Anandale stood with his head bowed, savoring the moment. Then he looked up, smiling. “I don’t want a single rat to run. The security blackout on this is absolute. Tell Justice I want a Grand Jury empanelled at once, starting today. And I want to see Kayley the moment he hands the guy over.”

It took Charlie less than an hour to locate Natalia’s booking at the Radisson Slavjanskaya Hotel, on Berezhkavskaya naberezhnaya. Having done so he sat uncertainly in his embassy office for a further thirty minutes, finally deciding against a personal encounter, particularly in front of Sasha whom he was sure would be staying there with her.

The longest time of all was spent composing the letter because Charlie always had the greatest difficulty openly expressing personal feelings. Which was probably the root cause of all his problems with Natalia, he acknowledged. He wrote, finally, that he loved her and he loved Sasha and wanted them both back with him at Lesnaya. He was sorry how badly things had collapsed but that it wasn’t irreparable. All they needed to do was to talk: to get the misunderstandings out of the way, the compromises accepted. He was certainly ready to make compromises and hoped she was, too. There also might be another reason for them to speak very shortly. She knew the number at which he’d be waiting.

Charlie took the metro to the Kievskaya stop and was careful entering the foyer, not wanting any accidental meeting. He waited to see the receptionist put the envelope in the pigeonhole for room 46. There was no key displayed, which meant she had to be there.

He was back in the Lesnaya apartment by eight. No message had been left on the answering machine during the time he was away. The telephone didn’t ring during the rest of the night, either.

26

John Kayley was pouch-eyed, bristle-chinned, and the alwayscrumpled suit in which he’d lived for close to forty-eight hours looked like the dustbin liner a bag lady would have rejected. Around him hung the sourness of curdled cigar odor. Charlie had snatched at the outside line, hope flaring that Kayley’s call from Sheremet’yevo had been Natalia. He again waited at the embassy entrance for the American’s arrival direct from the airport.

When he did get there Charlie said, “Now you’re the one looking rough.”

“But happy,” said Kayley.

The telephone warning had given Charlie time to have the Islay malt and glasses ready. Pouring, Charlie said, “We got all the reasons we want to celebrate?”

Kayley offered his glass towards Charlie’s, to make the toast. As the glasses touched the American said, “You’re not going to believe it: any of it!”

“I’ve heard that a lot of times.”

“Never like this.”

“How much did you get before handing him over?” Charlie was glad the other man appeared to have sickened himself of his scented cigars: the riverview office was becoming clogged by the aromatic residue.

“Enough to get almost the whole of the conspiracy. The Grand Jury should get the rest. What they don’t will come out of the woodwork here once we issue the indictments. It’ll be Christmas wrapped.”

Charlie refilled their glasses, leaving the bottle within easy reach between them. “So what am I not going to believe?”

“It’s a KGB stalwarts’ conspiracy but it’s not a KGB conspiracy. It’s also an FSB wrecking cabal-to rebuild the old style KGBBYthe communist party who see it as their red carpet back into the Kremlin …” Kayley paused. “And who would most probably have got there if you hadn’t got in the way, Charlie.”

“My problem’s not disbelieving,” protested Charlie. “It’s understanding.”

“To understand you’ve got to hear it in sequence,” insisted Kayley. “Be patient. Sakov’s a KGB-now FSB- colonel. Career officer, originally working out of the Third Chief Directorate-responsible for monitoring the armed forces, which the armed forces resent to the point of eliminating anyone they discovered doing itwith two functions. He’s an agent-in-place, a spy within the Russian army, reporting back to Lubyanka anything and everything. The second function is as a spotter, isolating potentially useful and usable people for what was, at the time he was in Afghanistan, the KGB …”

“OK, here’s the first thing I can’t believe because I never could!” broke in Charlie. “I can’t believe any espionage service worthy of the description would isolate Bendall!”

“Usable,” repeated Kayley. “That’s how Bendall was described to Sakov by the Lubynka. Unpredictable, mad, drunk, whatever, he was still the son of a British defector. He had to have a use somehow, somewhere: they’d had him pinned to the board, like a specimen, since childhood. Sakov’s instructions are not to get too close-he says he doesn’t know who the kid’s immediate KGB Control was, within his army unit- but constantly to watch and assess. He doesn’t go for it at first, defector’s son or not, but he does concede one thing. Sober-and under daily training-Bendall’s a hell of a shot, able to take the eye out of the ace every time. And he likes killing, psychotically: in Afghanistan he used to volunteer, always out in front with his hand up. It’s an ability-and a tendency-that gets registered, like everything gets registered: remember what the wise man said about knowledge being power? That’s the watchword every espionage service in the world learned from Russian intelligence …”

“So what do they do with it, as far as Bendall is concerned?”

“File it, of course. We’re talking an old time KGB faction, total control freaks who