Gently does it, thought Charlie. “I’m sure my embassy-my government-will appreciate that protection …”
“Thank you,” intruded Olga, caught out by Charlie’s inviting pause.
“ … Which of course in no way prevents our officially agreed access. I-and others from the embassy-can easily come to wherever she’s being protectively held. Where is that, by the way?”
The criticizingly dismissive inference of her empty interview would be unavoidable on this transcript! “As I said, my initial interrogation is only very preliminary.”
“Interrogation?” echoed Charlie. “You suspect she’s in some way involved?”
Damn the man, thought Olga. He really did have a witchdoctor’s split tongue. “It’s too early yet to decide who might or might not be involved.” She paused, reluctant to correct herself. “I meant my questioning has only just begun.”
“We are cooperating fully, aren’t we?” coaxed Charlie.
“Yes,” agreed Olga, tightly, apprehensive of how Charlie Muffin could juggle such simple words but anticipating that he would.
“If we’re sharing there’s no order of priority?”
“It’s become a murder enquiry,” fought Olga. “Russian legislation must take precedence.”
“I’m not an international lawyer,” said Charlie. “It’s something I’ll leave to our legal attache to handle through diplomatic channels. Under such international scrutiny we shouldn’t go beyond our boundaries, should we?”
Olga wished the motherfucker wouldn’t keep inviting her opinion, to turn against her. Why oppose him? There was enormous international scrutiny under which the claim that Vera Bendall required protective custody might become even more transparent than it was now. In Lefortovo Vera Bendall was very positively her prisoner, whose every encounter and movement she could control. And totally monitor. It was conceivable some indication of Vera Bendall’s innocence or complicity might emerge if Britons were allowed access, access every minute and word of which could be taped and possibly even filmed. If there was something to be learned, she’d learn it, learn, too, from what the British offered whether their cooperation was genuine. And if the encounter was as unproductive as hers, there couldn’t be any criticism-internally or externally-of what now lay on the desk between her and Charlie Muffin, like a taunt. Better apparently to concede-be persuaded, at least-to an unimportant audience of one than to a much wider and more influential theater. “Don’t misunderstand me. I wasn’t arguing priorities. As far as I’m concerned there’s no reason whatsoever why you-and others from your embassy-shouldn’t see the woman.”
Charlie hadn’t expected the turnaround so quickly, hadn’t, in fact, expected it at all. “You haven’t told me where she is.”
He had a rat-trap, forget-nothing mind, acknowledged Olga. “Lefortovo.”
How many had gone into “protective custody” in that bleak, icily-walled fortress never to emerge and certainly never for a moment to be protected? The first transcript was that of an already cowed, frightened woman. By now Vera Bendall would be terrified to the point of the insanity she was suggesting for her son. “That’s conveniently central. Tomorrow would be good.”
It gave her more than sufficient time. “Eleven?”
“Fine,” smiled Charlie. “I could come here directly afterwards, to discuss anything that emerges.”
“All right,” agreed Olga, doubtfully, thrown off balance by the offer.
“None of the witnesses are in protective custody, are they?”
He was playing with her, his cat to her mouse! “No. Their statements are being translated.”
“I’d prefer them in the original.”
“Available tomorrow.”
“Excellent! I can collect them after I’ve seen Vera Bendall.”
“Yes.” This was going to read even worse than it sounded.
“What’s the progress of the forensic examination?”
“Just that, in progress. Therefore incomplete.” The satisfaction of the refusal was out of proportion to its effect: it was something she’d have to surrender eventually.
“Not available tomorrow?”
“I doubt it.”
“We haven’t talked about any positive lines of enquiry.”
“It’s too early to establish any.”
“I suppose the most important thing we haven’t talked about is the official record that would have been maintained upon Peter Bendall, throughout his time here. That would have included information upon the son, as he grew up.”
Olga thought it was like being stripped naked in a Siberian winter. “That would be classified.”
The already prepared excuse for their apparent loss? wondered Charlie. “You have officially asked for them, though?”
“Every investigatory procedure befitting the crime has been implemented,” insisted Olga, regretting the formal pomposity the moment she began to speak but too angrily frustrated to find other words.
“That’s encouraging to hear,” said Charlie. “My embassy will feel that, too. On a personal level I’m sure we’re going to work together extremely well.”
I’m not, thought the woman.
As he was escorted from the building, Charlie decided that Olga Ivanova Melnik was not as good as she imagined herself to be. Perhaps that was why she found the need to have difficulty with blouse buttons. The hidden recording Charlie was sure would have been taken wouldn’t do much for her, either.
Burt Jordan was already waiting at their reserved table when Donald Morrison entered the Arleccino, waving to attract the MI6 man’s attention when he came in off Druzhinnikovskaya Ulitza.
“Sorry I’m late,” apologized Morrison. “Couldn’t get a taxi. Somehow it seemed easier when we were at the old embassy.”
“But now you’ve got air con,” smiled the CIA Rezident. He was a small, compact man made to look permanently doleful by the heavy moustache allowed to droop at either end. He gestured around the restaurant. “Italian OK for you?”
“Fine. I haven’t been here before.”
“The saltimbocca alla Romana’s the speciality.” Jordan poured Valpolicella. “I figured it far better to get together like this, undisturbed. The embassy’s a fucking mad house. How about yours?”
“Pretty calm, considering.” It was unthinkable to tell the other man the virtually non-existent role to which he’d been relegated. He’d accepted the American’s invitation in the hope of learning something with which to impress Charlie Muffin and get involved.
“It’s good everyone’s pulling with the same stroke.”
“I guess it is.”
“I get anything, it’s yours.”
“Likewise.”
When the waiter arrived they both ordered the saltimbocca. Jordan held up the still half full bottle and ordered another.
Jordan said, “So what have you got?”
Morrison shrugged. “Very little. You’ve already got the counter-intelligence stuff from Charlie. It was all internal-even the jail escape-so Bendall was their headache, not ours. When the rumors began that he wanted to come home the instructions to our man here then was to find him and help him back. If he’d had anything worthwhile from working with the KGB here we could have negotiated a little remission in the sentence he would still have had to serve. We couldn’t get a lead. We even had some stories planted in newspapers here when the press got freer after 1991, hinting as much as we could. He never made contact.”
“The KGB wouldn’t have risked him with anything sensitive. They never treated defectors-even foreign nationals who’d worked for them-well or with any respect.”
“Stranger things have happened,” cliched Morrison. “What about you?”
Jordan shook his head. “The Bureau made it a big operation. Thestuff he leaked was from America, mostly Los Alamos. But as far as they discovered Bendall wasn’t part of any cell. He was a solitary spy, a ‘walk in’ to the Soviet embassy in London, passing on stuff he received from us.”
“Nothing,” said Jordan. “There’d been the Bureau investigation by then, showing he’d worked alone. We didn’t try to find him.”
“You know,” said Morrison. “Despite all the panic and chaos, when it comes down to it there’s not a lot we’re going to be able to do.”
“We’ve still got to make the motions, though. That’s why I thought we should meet like this. My word, about sharing anything I get.”
“Mine too,” said Morrison, enthusiastically. “Well met.”
“It’s murder now, Vera. The death penalty.”
“Yes.”
The acceptance was flat, totally without emotion. Olga Melnik had hoped for more, a collapse even. They were in the same room with the same flowers and there was tea again, with cake. The record light flickered on the unobtrusive tape machine.
“Drink your tea.”
The woman did as she was told, gnawing at a cake between noisy sips. “Can I have my underwear back? And my shoes? It’s really not comfortable without them.”
“It’s regulations,” refused Olga. “What have you remembered?”
“Tuesdays and Thursdays.”
“What about Tuesdays and Thursdays?”
“Those were the nights he seemed to stay out most often. Occasionally others, but mostly Tuesdays and Thursdays.”
Better, thought Olga, hopefully. “You must have asked him about those nights?”
“I told you, he got angry.”
“Particularly angry when you asked him about those nights?”
“I think so.”
“He never told you, not once? Not even a word? Or a name?”
“No.”
“What about the name of the doctor?”
“I can’t remember.”
“What did you talk about, when he was home?”
“We didn’t, much. We watched television. Sometimes the programs he’d worked on. He made models.”
“Models of what?”
“Cars. Boats. Planes. Things that moved. He liked things that moved.”
“How did he make them? From wood or what?”
“Wood, sometimes, wood that he carved. And kits. The sort that children have.”
“I don’t remember the people who searched your apartment finding any models. It wasn’t in their report.”
“He broke them, as soon as he finished them. Said they were useless to him.”
“What other hobbies did he have?”
“None.”
“What about guns?” She had to improve on the original questioning.
“No … I told you …”
“Did he ever go shooting?”
“He doesn’t have a gun.”
“He could have borrowed one.”
“I don’t know.”
“You are remembering things, aren’t you?”
“I’m trying.”
“Some other people are coming to see you.”
“What other people!” pleaded Vera, immediately alarmed.
“From the British embassy. They want to help, like I want to help. That’s why you’re here, safe from people who might want to hurt you for what you son has done.” It was imperative to get that on record, after the debacle with Charlie Muffin. She hadn’t just underestimated the man, she’d even more badly miscalculated the collaboration that would be imposed upon her.
“Will you be here, with them?”
“No.”
The woman looked down at her sagging bosoms. “Can I have myunderwear back, when they come? And the laces for my shoes?”
“Yes. But you will go on thinking, remembering, won’t you?”
“I’ll try.”
Olga hurried from the prison warning herself that it scarcely provided a lead but it certainly justified going through the statements of the people and acquaintances with whom George Bendall had worked at NTV. And if there was no reference to something-anything-the man regularly did on Tuesday and Thursday nights, they’d all have to be re-interviewed and specifically asked.
“You had no right-no authority-to arrange access to the mother without reference to me!” protested Richard Brooking. “It should have been done diplomatically, through channels. You were specifically warned by Sir Michael himself!”
“Dick,” said Charlie, intentionally using the name abbreviation for its ambiguity. “That’s debatable and I’m not interested in debating it. I’m interested in finding out why a British national apparently tried to kill two presidents and when an opportunity presents itself, like it did today, then I’m going to take it without first asking your permission. You want to protest that to London, then go ahead. And while you’re doing it, ask them how they feel about another British national-albeit one who’s lived here for years-being banged up in a Stalin-era prison without charge.”
“That’s certainly questionable,” agreed Anne Abbott.
“I thought you told me it was for her own protection.”
“Bollocks,” rejected Charlie.
Brooking looked embarrassedly to Anne, who smiled and said, “That’s what I think, too.”
“I’m not sure it would be proper for me to accompany you to a prison,” said the diplomat.
“Don’t then,” accepted Charlie, relieved.
“It probably would be better left to us at this preliminary stage,” agreed Anne.
“Thanks for the support,” said Charlie, as they made their way along the corridor towards his office.
“Things are difficult enough without dicks like Richard Brooking,” said the lawyer.
Charlie thought that it just might be that he and Anne Abbott were birds of a feather, which would be a welcome change from being surrounded by either vultures or cuckoos.
The information-starved international media thronged Petr Tikunov’s press conference at the Duma. The Communist Party presidential candidate, a burly, beetle-browed man whose campaign managers tried to avoid facial comparison with Brezhnev, said that irrespective of any current investigation the new government he would be leading after the forthcoming elections would institute the most searching and thorough enquiry into the outrage.
8
It took the authority-and intervention-of Aleksandr Okulov’s office for Natalia to reach the FSB counter-intelligence chief and by the time she did it was to announce the exasperated acting president had ordered her personally to the Lubyanka, which made her as uneasy as it clearly did General Dimitri Spassky.
The only delay when she entered the Russian intelligence headquarters from which she herself had operated for fifteen years was for the security formality of photographing, identification and official authorization. As she followed the required but unnecessary escort across the marbled and pillared hall to the elevator bank Natalia thought that Charlie was probably right that the sole difference between old and new was the name change. Not true, she corrected herself at once. She’d been transferred outside the service, a change she was certainly glad about. Or had been, until now. She’d recognized quickly enough the professional hazards of being appointed the crisis committee’s coordinator but she hadn’t expected to be sucked quite so quickly-and potentially deeply-into such obvious in-fighting. But she was here as the coordinator-the emissary of the acting president, in fact-not as a deputy director of the InteriorMinistry. It put her into a stronger position, despite Spassky’s seniority. It had also been regulations when she worked there that visitors were searched, irrespective of their outside security clearance or whoever’s emissary they were. So things weren’t the same. She hoped her apparent advantage continued.
Natalia smiled at the care the escort took selecting the elevator bank, away from the lifts that went to the twelve basement levels-a subterranean township for the intelligence elite, with shops, roads and even a railway connection to the Kremlin on which Stalin once travelled by special carriage personally to witness the interrogations of purged Central Committee colleagues.
Spassky’s smoke
-fumed office overlooked one of the inner prison courtyards in which such victims were finally put out of their agony and Natalia wondered if there was an element of nostalgia in the old-time KGB general’s choice.
He didn’t rise at Natalia’s entry, occupying himself lighting a fresh cigarette and having done so said, “It was unnecessary involving Aleksandr Mikhailevich.”
“You weren’t accepting my calls-as you didn’t yesterday-or returning the messages I left.” There was a recording being made: every Lubyanka office had been equipped within the first week of the invention of audio tape. She was glad-maybe fortunate-that this was such an old office. She still had to be alert to responses that could be edited to Spassky’s advantage and her detriment.
“You mustn’t question my authority here, Natalia Fedova.”
“I am not questioning your authority. I am trying to fulfill the function I was given at yesterday’s meeting.” She’d probably cocooned herself in more protection than she imagined by protesting to Okulov’s secretariat about Spassky’s awkwardness.
“A meeting would have been arranged today.” The man was perspiring as visibly as he had been at the previous meeting but Natalia didn’t think that was the smell competing with the cigarettes. There was the sourness of alcohol, although she’d believed vodka to be odorless. Perhaps the old man was mixing his drinks.
“You promised the Bendall file in twenty-four hours. Twenty-four hours has elapsed. Aleksandr Mikhailevich has to address the Duma this afternoon.”
“There are considerations.”
“What considerations?”
“To whom it is going to be made available.”
“Are you suggesting that the acting president of the Russian Federation-and a former regional director of the KGB! — has insufficient security clearance!”
Spassky’s hands were shaking as he lighted another cigarette. “Of course I’m not!”
“Then I don’t understand the objection you’re making.”
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