Brian Freemantle - Kings of Many Castles

“It surely makes our situation easier?”

Natalia shrugged again. “I don’t know. Basically it doesn’t change anything, does it?”

The confrontation had to come, sooner or later. It might as well be now. “Things aren’t going to change, Natalia. This is it, the best it’s going to get. I don’t know anything more I can do to make it better for us … between us. What I do know is that I don’t want everything to collapse and I think it is collapsing …”

“Meaning the concessions have to come from me!” Their relationship was crumbling. And it probably was more her fault than Charlie’s.

“I’m not asking you to make any concessions. I’m asking you to acknowledge the reality … and the difficulty … of our being together.”

“I hardly need reminding of that.”

“You under any pressure?”

“I could be.”

“Don’t close me out as you have been closing me out.”

The same argument, Natalia recognized: the same persuasive logic. And it was logical: Charlie was a better street fighter than she could ever be. “I know you’re right.”

“Then trust me.”

Natalia allowed the pause. “That’s what I’ve got to do.”

“I won’t let you down. I did before but I won’t again.”

“It’s not just the two of us anymore. There’s so much else that could go wrong. Sasha says they’ve been talking at school, about what parents do. Two kids said their fathers were in the militia.”

“What did she say?” Big problems could easily come from innocuous innocence.

“She didn’t know. That’s how the conversation came up. She asked me.”

“What did you tell her?”

“That we both worked in big offices, which will do for now. What are we going to tell her when she gets older?”

Charlie wished he had an easy answer: any answer that might come anywhere close to satisfying Natalia. It was ineffective and the last thing Charlie had ever been was ineffective. “We’ve got more important personal questions to answer.”

“I know.”

“It’s not the jobs. It’s the effect of them, perhaps. But not the jobs themselves …” He sniggered, in sudden realization. “We’ve come the full circle, haven’t we? I screwed everything up the first time, by not being totally able to trust you-which was my terrible mistake-and now you can’t trust me …”

“So now it’s my mistake!” she pounced at once, regretting the words as they were uttered.

“No, darling,” insisted Charlie, patiently. “You’re justified. I wasn’t.”

Charlie filled the silence by refilling her glass, which she surrendered without protest. He thought about a fourth whisky but decided to change to wine himself. As he sat down again Natalia said, “You think there’s still a chance we can make it work?”

“Yes,” he said at once. When she didn’t respond, he said, “What do you think?”

“I’m not sure.”

“What do you want? ”

“I want it very much. But I’m frightened there’s too much in the way.”

“Let’s move it out of the way!” urged Charlie.

“Yes,” she accepted, uncertainly.

“What’s your pressure?”

“I’ve got to coordinate all the Russian agencies. Make everything work.”

“The rock and the hard place,” Charlie recognized. “Their successes are theirs, their failures are yours.”

“Something like that.” Should she tell him the old KGB files were missing?

“You’re going to need my help, need someone to bounce theories off. I shouldn’t have to say it but I guess I do. I won’t take anyadvantage, put you-us-at risk in any way.” For once in Charlie’s life-probably the first time in Charlie’s life-it wasn’t a promise embroidered in easily expandable elastic.

“The FSB can’t find Peter Bendall’s records,” blurted Natalia.

Charlie shook his head in professional refusal. “It would have been an ongoing, current file: assessments, surveillance, psychological profile not just of him but of his wife and son. It’s the starting point for any investigation into George Bendall.”

Why did she waste so much time-endanger so much-maintaining her obstructive integrity pretensions, Natalia asked herself, acknowledging the expertise. “What’s your reading?”

“Immediate sanitizing, because of what’s in them?” suggested Charlie. “Maybe about George particularly. It’s clumsy but it’s predictable panic. There’s the excuse that the KGB isn’t any longer the KGB, which it was when Bendall defected. Things do get misplaced in reorganization.” It wouldn’t help by reminding her that she’d destroyed his KGB dossier and sanitized her own of any original connection with him.

“Nothing more sinister?”

Charlie hesitated. She was being open with him at last and his offering something in exchange would show he was keeping his side of an unspoken bargain. “You had any technical discussion with anyone?”

Natalia regarded him intently. “About what?”

“I’ve got the soundtrack from four different television films covering the presidential arrival, as well as that of NTV,” disclosed Charlie. “CNN were mute, remember. They’re being scientifically tested now in London but I’ve carried out my own rough timing. According to my count five shots were fired in a time gap of nine point two seconds. That’s very sharp sharp-shooting.”

“We’re getting George Bendall’s army records.”

“Are you?” demanded Charlie, pointedly.

“We’ve asked for George Bendall’s-or Georgi Gugin’s-army records,” qualified Natalia.

“I’m particularly interested in what they’ll say about his marksmanship.”

“Or lack of it,” accepted Natalia. “I was frightened enough tobegin with. Now you’ve really scared me. I preferred the mentally unstable loner.”

“Where’s the mentally unstable loner get a sniper’s rifle, which it very clearly was from the television pictures?” There was something else to check, he realized. It didn’t fit this conversation.

“Mosow-Russia-is awash with weaponry. You can buy a gun and ammunition for it in street underpasses. We can’t even look after our nuclear arsenals!”

“Basic Kalashnikovs and Makarovs. Not something specialized like this.”

“Do you intend saying anything tomorrow to Olga Melnik?”

Charlie shook his head. “Not without proof.”

“Thanks for telling me.”

“Isn’t that the new deal?”

“Yes.”

That night they did make love but for each of them it was more a duty than spontaneous passion and it wasn’t good.

Charlie said, “We can get that back, too.”

“I hope so,” said Natalia.

Both appraised the other in the opening seconds.

Charlie hadn’t expected Senior Investigating Colonel Olga Ivanova Melnik to be somewhere in her mid-thirties, which had to indicate a special ability he wouldn’t have guessed at from the Vera Bendall transcript he’d read the previous night. He thought the cleavage interesting but a little too obvious: the unsecured button on her shirt didn’t fit the pressed neatness of the perfectly tailored grey checked suit or the pristine orderliness of the high windowed, everything-in-its-proper-place office. And in any case the spider’s web tightrope of his current high wire act with Natalia didn’t allow any extramarital temptations. The cleared desk reminded him of that of Richard Brooking, who’d delivered the standard lecture on diplomatic conformity before he’d left the embassy that morning. The head of chancellery had been very pissed off at his ignoring the diplomatic dress code but Charlie didn’t regard today’s encounter as a fancy dress party. With luck it might be his first opportunity to start working properly.