“Doesn’t help your being there instead of here,” said the younger man.
“You denied it, of course?”
“No one believes me.” There was a pause. “It wasn’t you, was it, Charlie?”
“Thanks a fucking lot!” It most certainly didn’t help his being in London.
“You’d have asked the same question.”
It was true, Charlie conceded. “What else?”
“Isakov’s exhumation is scheduled for tomorrow. I’ll go, as our representative.”
There wasn’t a lot of purpose but Charlie supposed it was necessary. “What about Bendall’s medical records: psychiatric particularly?”
“Colonel Melnik says they haven’t heard back from the Defense Ministry.”
This was a wasted call, Charlie decided. “That it?”
“Brooking said he wanted to talk to you if you called.”
That would be an even greater waste of time. “Don’t tell him I called.”
“You haven’t told me what’s happening back there?”
“Not enough,” said Charlie.
“Anything more you want me to do?”
“Keep safe.”
Charlie asked for-and got-John Kayley first when he telephoned the U.S. embassy incident room and at once initiated the conversation about the second gunman, arguing the only beneficiary could be the FSB.
“It’s a possibility,” allowed the American. The reluctance was palpable.
“A damned sight more likely than me-or you-doing it,” insisted Charlie.
“You left out Olga,” accused Kayley.
“What’s she say?”
“That she was the one who insisted it be withheld.”
A carosel of denials, thought Charlie. “What’s new?”
“Technical guys came up with something,” said Kayley. “Got hold of a complete TV film of the presidents and their ladies from the moment they got out of the Cadillac until Yudkin got hit. They slowed it, virtually frame by frame. At that degree of slow motion you can see that Ruth Anandale moved-instinctively I guess-as Yudkin was shot. That movement put her in front of Anandale himself. She took the bullet which would otherwise have hit the president. Killed him, maybe. It was just a fluke that it didn’t.”
“Who have you told?” anticipated Charlie.
“You. Olga. Washington, obviously.”
As a leak test it was a pretty poor effort, Charlie decided. “When are you seeing Bendall?”
“Later today.”
“I might be here longer than two days.”
“You going to tell me what you’re there for?”
“I already did.”
“Yeah.”
“I’d better speak to Olga.”
Kayley brought her to his telephone rather than transferring the call. Charlie listened for the echo of the recording device but didn’t detect it. He couldn’t hear anything of Kayley in the background, either. Olga listened with matching, unspoken disbelief to his denial of the leak and to his FSB suggestion. Before he was halfway through Charlie asked himself why he was bothering and then abruptly realized there was an expanded question that should have occurred to him long before now. The awareness took away the pointlessness of establishing contact.
“Anyone Bendall knew-who might have been part of the group-failed to turn up at the television station?”
“No.”
“Anything else?”
“You know of the exhumation?”
“Yes.”
“What else were you expecting?”
“It was a general question,” sighed Charlie.
“No, there’s nothing else to tell you.”
“I won’t bother to repeat what I told John.”
“No,” the woman accepted.
The blinds were down and the lights were out, Charlie recognized. “What more do we know about Vasili Isakov?”
“I’ve got people on it. Nothing yet.”
“I’ll call again tomorrow. See how John’s interview with Bendall went.”
“Yes.” The Russian put down the telephone without saying goodbye. When Charlie got back to the upper floor Spence said the interrupted meeting had been further postponed until the following day, although Sir Rupert was available if there was anything he should know from Charlie’s contact with Moscow.
“There isn’t,” said Charlie, dejectedly.
Burt Jordan was with Kayley. So was the embassy lawyer, whose name was Modin and whose Jewish grandparents had fled from Kurybyshev to escape the Stalinist pogroms. On their way to the ward, after the security check, Nicholai Badim said that Bendall seemed greatly improved from the previous day and Guerguen Agayan agreed. Knowing of Charlie’s earlier confrontation Kayley had insisted Olga phone ahead and the inner security guards left the room unasked. There were chairs already waiting. The tunnel support was still over Bendall’s legs but the bed had been raised, propping the man up into a near sitting position. The lawyer identified the three of them more for the recording than for Bendall’s information.
Kayley said, “Good to hear you’re feeling better.”
Bendall smiled but didn’t reply.
Kayley took a pack of Kent cigarettes from a sagging jacket pocket and said, “You want a smoke?”
“I don’t,” said Bendall. The voice was far stronger than it had been on any previous recording.
“I won’t then.”
Jordan said, “Why’d you try to kill the American president, George?”
“My name is Georgi.”
“Why’d you try to kill the American president, Georgi?”
“Reasons.”
“What reasons?”
“Good reasons.”
“We’d like to hear them,” said Kayley.
“None of your business.”
“It is, Georgi,” said the FBI man. “The president’s wife got hit but we think you really tried to kill him. That’s what you did, didn’t you? Aimed to kill the American president.”
Bendall smiled again but didn’t reply.
“You know you were set up?” said Jordan. “You were meant to get caught while the other guy got away.”
“There was no one else.”
“You only had two cartridges. There were five shots.”
“Liar.”
From his briefcase Kayley took a copy of that day’s Trud, which led with the disclosure of the second gunman and held it up for the man to read. Bendall frowned but said nothing.
“Why are you frowning, Georgi,” Jordan demanded. “Didn’t you know there was a second shooter?”
“It’s a fake,” said the bandaged man.
Kayley swapped Trud for Moskovskaya Pravda, Izvestiya and Nezavisimaya Gazeta, all three dominated by the same coverage, and laid them out side by side on the bed in front of the man. “We’ll have a television brought in. You can watch your own network. It’s their lead story, too.”
“Not true.”
“They really made a fool out of you, didn’t they?” said Jordan. “Jesus, how they must be laughing!”
“I don’t want to talk to you anymore.”
“Can’t understand why you’re taking the rap for people who set you up like this,” said Kayley. “They’re not doing anything to help you.”
“Need to think.”
“Let’s think it through together,” said Kayley.
Bendall began to hum the wailing dirge.
“That song got words?” asked Jordan.
The man hummed on, appearing oblivious of them.
“It’ll help you if you tell us about the others,” said Kayley.
“Comrades,” said Bendall.
“Comrades who deserted you, cheated you,” said Kayley.
“No! Go away!”
“Tell us what we want to know and we’ll go away,” said Jordan.
“GO AWAY!”
The roared demand was so unexpected that all three Americans actually jumped and there was a scuffed arrival of the two doctors a
t the door. Bendall screamed it again and tried to lash out at Jordan with his uninjured arm. He missed but swept the tape recorder off the bedside table, laughing when the cassette hood broke as it hit the floor. He threw his head back and shouted “GO AWAY” over and over again, breaking the words occasionally with a cackling laugh. He finally stopped shouting, exhausted, and when he did thehysterical laughter turned to tears. They streamed, unchecked, down his face and his nose ran, too.
Agayan hurried in from the doorway, pushing past the lawyer. “What did you do to him …! Say to him?”
“We didn’t do anything,” said Kayley, defensively. “Just tried to get answers to some questions.”
“Go away,” mumbled Bendall, his voice a hoarse whisper.
“Yes, go away,” agreed the psychiatrist. “This is bad.”
Badim had his fingers at Bendall’s wrist, checking his pulse. “Bad,” he echoed.
In the car on their way back to the embassy Jordan said, “We hit a nerve.”
“And maybe broke it,” said Kayley.
“It’s being overemphasized,” insisted Charlie.
“For what reason?” demanded Natalia.
“To create precisely the situation that’s arisen: to spread suspicion and distrust among us.” The way to prevent any official curiosity about Natalia’s dedicated Interior Ministry telephone number appearing on his hotel bill was to pay it-and then destroy it-himself. It would only represent a temporary out-of-pocket expense.
“So we’re back to KGB-of FSB-disinformation?”
“Doesn’t it fit better than anything else?”
Natalia didn’t reply for several moments and when she did it wasn’t an answer. “The leak’s been added to the presidential enquiry remit.”
“We’ll be OK!”
“We’ll be found out.”
“I’m not able to get back as soon as I thought I would.”
“How long?”
“Three, maybe four days.”
“Don’t call me direct again, like this. It could be traced.”
“You haven’t told me if there’s anything new.”
“Bendall had a mental collapse when he was with the Americans.”
Why had she waited until now to tell him! Because her personal concerns were overwhelming her professionalism, he answered himself. Forcing the calmness, Charlie said, “He’s all we’ve got!”
“We all know that.”
“What do the psychiatrists say?”
“They haven’t been able to talk to him properly yet.”
“There’ll be a tape. That’s the system we’re working with here.”
“The transcript hasn’t got up to my level yet.”
“And you haven’t got a prognosis, of his condition?”
“I told you, psychiatrists haven’t been able to talk to him yet! Medically he seems OK.”
“I’ll call …” began Charlie but Natalia said, “I told you I don’t want you to.”
“I’ll see you in a few days.”
“Yes.”
“Tell Sasha I’m sorry about the circus. We’ll go next weekend.”
“Yes,” she said again, almost uninterestedly.
For several moments Charlie sat hunched on his hotel bed, reaction colliding with reaction. What the fuck had Little Big-Foot-in-the Mouth said to tip Bendall over the edge! More importantly, what was needed to pull him back? And at this moment he couldn’t … Yes, he could. Kayley had told him about the intended meeting. Again Charlie got at once through to Donald Morrison.
“You heard how Kayley’s meeting with Bendall went? He told me earlier it was to be this afternoon.”
“Not a word.”
“I’m having all the meetings analyzed, by people here. So I need not just a transcript but a copy tape. Can you chase Kayley up, get one shipped over in the diplomatic bag?”
“As quickly as I can,” promised Morrison.
“If not quicker,” encouraged Charlie. He actually thought it was the MI6 man coming back to him when his phone rang five minutes later.
Instead Anne Abbott said, “How’s your day been?”
“You don’t want to know about it,” said Charlie, his mind not fully on the woman.
“I do, Charlie. I’ve got to know about everything, remember?”
14
Leonid Zenin insisted they personally confirm the extent of George Bendall’s collapse by going to Burdenko hospital which Olga had intended to do anyway. She was irritated at not having initiated the suggestion ahead of the man it was becoming practically automatic-or did she regard it as essential? — to try to impress as much out as in bed. Among the ground floor and ward level security men there was a discernible foot-shuffling uncertainty that they were in some way going to be blamed which Zenin did nothing to allay by sweeping autocratically past both contingents, shaking his head against any verbal explanation from either group. The warned-in-advance Nicholai Badim and Guerguen Agayan were waiting outside Bendall’s room.
“There’s no purpose in going in,” said Badim. “There’s a room along the corridor …”
“We came here to see for ourselves,” said Zenin.
“There’s nothing to see! Do!” protested the doctor.
“Please open the door; let us in.”
It wasn’t a request and Olga felt a sexual flicker at the authority. She said, “There were some sounds, like scuffling, on our dedicated tape?”
“Your people got to the door before I did. I understand he was trying to hit one of the Americans … lashing out at them.”
“You mean he was fighting them off?” asked Zenin, at once.
“No one was watching, even from outside,” said the doctor. “He was wildly out of control by the time I got here. My impressions was that he was trying to hit-to hurt-the nearest person.”
Zenin put himself closest to the deeply snoring, comatose man. “Difficult to believe someone as heavily bandaged as this would even think of trying to hit out at anyone.”
“Think is the operative word,” said Agayan. “Bendall wasn’t thinking. He was reacting.”
“To what?” demanded Olga. The tape was permanently revolving and she wanted to be featured on it as much as possible.
Agayan shook his head. “To something he didn’t want to confront.”
“By tomorrow I want to know what, in your considered, analytical opinion, went wrong today,” insisted Zenin.
“That sort of opinion is not possible overnight.”
“Do you really need reminding of the importance of this! Of everything connected with it!”
“Of course not!” protested Agayan, in matching indignation.
“Good!” said Zenin. The smile was a lip-withdrawn grimace. “So you’ll know how essential it is to help us, in every way you can. And I look forward to getting that help by tomorrow ….” He looked to Badim. “What’s wrong with him medically? Is he unconscious?”
“Deeply sedated. He had to be quietened.”
Olga said, “Could he be rational again when he comes around?”
“I don’t consider he’s ever been totally rational,” intruded Agayan, bringing both militia officers around to him at once.
“He’s said things we’ve believed to be important, things we’re trying to work on, work out,” said Olga. “Are you telling us it could all well be fantasy!”
“Quite easily,” said the psychiatrist. “He might well not even remember what he did.”
“Every taped conversation indicates that he knows perfectly well what he did,” rejected Zenin.
“In your judgment, perhaps.” said Agayan. “Your judgment isn’t necessarily mine.”
A smile at the psychiatrist’s refusal to be intimidated was flickering at the corners of Nicholai Badim’s mouth. It was out-matched by another of Zenin’s teeth-baring grimaces.
“I knew it wouldn’t take you long to help with a diagnosis,” said the militia commander.
“We can X-ray an arm, to find a break,”
patronized Agayan. “We can brain-scan a hemorrhage or a tumor, because they’re physicalmanifestations; we can visually see the problem, on a screen. We can’t photograph-visually see-mental illness. We can conduct outward observations and attempt verbal analysis and try to fit our conclusions into general and wide guidelines and every time we do it we know those guidelines are far too general and far too wide and that we could be wrong by a margin of one hundred percent. Precisely because I know the level and importance of what I’m being asked to do I don’t want to be wrong by a margin of one hundred percent. That’s why you’re going to have to wait for my opinion of this man’s mental condition and health. If you think anything he’s said gives you something to follow up, follow it up. But don’t expect it to materialize. If it does, you’re lucky. If it doesn’t, you’ve encountered the problem I meet every day of my life. The day you start solving a one hundred percent of all crime, I’ll be hoping to reach a twenty-five percent success rate with my patients.”
The only sound in the room was the sonorous rumble of George Bendall’s drugged breathing.
Trying to come to the aid of her lover, Olga said, “When will you be able to give us a firm diagnosis?”
The man shrugged, shaking his head at the same time. “I don’t know. I haven’t been able to get past you people for a proper conversation yet.”
“He said he understood me, when I charged him,” remembered Olga.
“He might equally have said he knew how to land a space vehicle to the moon if you’d asked him,” said Agayan.
“You both told me he was medically and mentally able to be interviewed; charged even!” Olga accused the two doctors.
It was the psychiatrist who continued to answer. “At the time we agreed that, we both considered he was. Today he suffered a mental collapse. Which proves everything I’ve tried to make clear to you, about reaching mental opinions.”
“When will the sedation wear off?” asked Zenin.
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