Brian Freemantle - Kings of Many Castles

They struggled for the weapon, torn at like a bone between two dogs. Each was yelling, snarling, kicking at the other but the words were lost because the witnessing CNN camera was mute, the commentary-a pointless, even inadequate description of what was obvious on screen-coming from the monitors in the ground-based American scanner. But the shouting would probably have been inaudible anyway beneath the roar of an escort helicopter which abruptly descended to within two meters of the pod, its downdraft threatening to blow both men off their narrow perch. It spun the tripod-mounted Russian camera wildly, smashing it once into itsoperator hard enough to teeter him against the edge of the guardrail and almost enabled the gunman to reclaim his rifle. The cameraman used his faltering hold to pull himself back to safety but the pummelling rotors tossed them around the platform more than the battle for the gun. At last the cameraman’s hair was dislodged; that of the other man was an enclosing mask around his face.

A safety-belted marksman swung out of the helicopter into a practised crouch on to the port strut, his sniper’s rifle moving smoothly to his shoulder, and for the briefest moment the brawling men paused, both looking upwards, and for the first time the American commentary made a contribution, reporting that from the Russian helicopter was being amplified an instruction for the two men to separate. The cameraman made as if to do so but immediately snatched for the disputed rifle when the berserk man began turning the barrel towards him. Above, the sniper sighted and abandoned the clear shot, sighted and lifted his rifle again in arm-jerking frustration.

Three men were climbing the gantry by now, the second two with Makarov hand-guns already out, making it difficult for them to pull themselves up the ladder rails. Both paused, trying for the unimpeded shot the sniper couldn’t get from above but like the airborne marksman neither was able to distinguish between the locked-together fighters.

It was the first climbing Russian who ended it in what was practically an anti-climax. When his head became level with the pod floor the Russian simply reached up and jerked the younger man’s feet from beneath him. For a moment he appeared to be supported entirely by his hold on his rifle. Then he crashed on both knees to the metal floor-his head thrown back, mouth wide, in an unheard cry of agony-finally releasing his hold upon the weapon. At once the leading security officer caught the back of the crumpled man’s shirt and hauled him bodily through the gantry fence. For the briefest moment he was suspended, grabbing out for the cameraman then snatching to hold on to the platform edge before falling, arms and legs flailing, the fifteen meters to the ground where he was immediately lost beneath a scrum of other, waiting, security people.

Aware of the uniqueness of his pictures the CNN director had not switched cameras. Now he did, recapping with instant replayfrom the moment of the first blood splash. Charlie’s initial impression was of the American First Lady bending to help the collapsed Russian leader, but she fell away from the man and Charlie realized she, too, had been hit. It was impossible to gauge how badly because everyone on the dais was instantly engulfed by security and the cameras were live here, so it was possible to hear the screams of fear and disorganized, unthinking panic, all the rehearsals for just such an eventuality forgotten, Russians and Americans jostling in total confusion. The one preparation that did operate smoothly was the instant arrival of the waiting-in-readiness ambulances, although their paramedics were delayed stretchering the victims into them by the crush of so obviously failed protection.

The siren-howling, militia-escorted journey to the Pirogov Hospital on Leninskaya Prospekt was this time along the centrally reserved carriageways and was recorded virtually throughout by the specially-installed cameras. An American reporter outside the hospital brought the coverage up to date, although the station kept cutting back to the TV gantry fight.

Few details had so far been made available, the reporter said. It was known that the Russian president, Lev Maksimovich Yudkin, was the most seriously hurt, with two separate wounds to the upper chest. He was currently undergoing surgery. So was America’s First Lady, Ruth Anandale. Her injuries were not believed to be life-threatening. Her operation was being conducted by the surgeon and medical staff who routinely travelled with the President on overseas trips, although some Russian doctors and staff were assisting. The reporter understood that two other people had been hurt in the shooting, one an American Secret Service officer.

Charlie stayed until the last minute, flicking between local Moscow channels and the superior coverage of the American network and its fluke-of-positioning scoop, knowing precisely how long it would take him to get to the kindergarten to collect Sasha, to which he’d already agreed with Natalia before the attempted assassination. Their daughter greeted him with a model of a cardboard house puffed with cotton wool to represent snow for which she’d got a red star that reminded Charlie of those that still adorned the Kremlin towers. Sasha said it was a present for her mother but Charlie couldshare if he wanted. Charlie said he’d like to. He took the backroads to Lesnaya, sure the more direct main roads would still be blocked-maybe even pointlessly sealed off-by militia and Federal Security Service officers frantically pretending to fulfill the role they’d already so badly failed to perform. Don’t be a smart ass, he told himself: there but for the grace of God and all that. Professionally able to guess just how much buck-passing and shit-shovelling there’d be, Charlie was caught by the mundane comparison of his meandering home on a school run with a chattering five year old beside him. There was no answering machine message from Natalia when he got to the apartment. CNN was still showing their extraordinary footage. The only update from the Pirogov Hospital reporter was that the American president had arrived and was waiting for his wife to emerge from surgery. It was difficult to see anything of the ground level of the hospital because of the hedge of Secret Servicemen.

It was almost nine o’clock, Sasha long ago bathed and asleep, before Natalia got to the apartment. She was sagged by tiredness and strain. The tone in which she said his name halted his automatically moving towards the waiting bottles, to make her the reviving drink.

“What?” he said, turning back to her.

“The gunman’s name is George Bendall,” she said, flatly. “His father was Peter Bendall, who defected from Britain nearly thirty years ago.”

“Oh fuck!” said Charlie.

The adrenaline-surged panic was over. There were only two other men with the American president in the hurriedly-assigned office which still had the jacket of its normal occupant hanging from the inside door hook. The man’s discarded salami sandwiches were in the waste bin. In the outside corridor the Secret Servicemen formed a solid, shoulder-to-shoulder wall.

“She’s over the first hurdle,” said Wendall North. “That’s good.”

“She’s come through immediate surgery,” qualified Anandale, who’d returned from the recovery room minutes before and was still in shirtsleeves after taking off his sterilized gown. “If it doesn’t work she’ll lose the arm. And there’s going to be a lot of shock.”

“It’ll work,” said the chief of staff, locked into empty reassurance.

“It sure as hell better,” said Anandale, just as emptily. He was a big man, tall and heavily built. The Texas accent was very pronounced. “We need to get her out of here: back to America. The conditions here are Stone Age.”