Brian Freemantle - Kings of Many Castles

“You sure there’s a need for her to remain in protective custody?” Olga was completely prepared for that demand. “Most certainly, if the son had accomplices.”

“But you’ve no objection to my interviewing her?”

“Not as long as the British have no objection.” She paused. “We need to get together … establish some ground rules … don’t we …?”

“Very definitely,” agreed Kayley. It had been a disastrous fucking meeting, achieving nothing. And he was scheduled to talk personally with the director in Washington in less than two hours.

Olga Melnik’s only disappointment was the time it took to get rid of the traces of Kayley’s presence, despite having the ashtray immediately removed and all her office windows opened. She was still reflecting upon the encounter when the courier arrived from the Defense Ministry, with George Bendall’s army record.

At that moment, on the other side of the city, the diplomatic bag for which Charlie was impatiently waiting arrived at the river-bordered British embassy. He wasn’t prepared for the disappointment it contained. If he had been he probably wouldn’t have called Anne Abbott before he began reading.

The forensic evaluation for which Charlie had asked was divided into three parts-factual ballistic, the audio measurement from theTV soundtracks and finally the expert assessment. Impatient though he was-sure though he was-Charlie decided to go through it in its prepared response to get the answers to his questions in the order in which he’d posed them.

The opening section only ran to two pages of little more than flat statistics. Dragunov was the Western identification for the telescope equipped SVD Russian sniper’s rifle introduced into the Soviet army in the late 1960s. Based upon the Kalashnikov AK, to ensure its high degree of accuracy it fired an obsolete but essentially rimmed 7.62mm ball cartridge developed in the early part of the century for the bolt action Mosin-Nagant rifle, which was no longer issued to the Russian military. The SVD was gas operated, semi-automatic and carried a ten round magazine. There was also a commercial version, the Medved, which was usually chambered for a 9mm sports cartridge. Attached were photographs as well as sectioned illustrations detailing specific parts and Charlie at once identified the weapon over which Bendall and the cameraman fought to be the military model.

Anne came in smiling expectantly. “Well?”

“Not there yet,” said Charlie, offering her what he’d already read.

The assessment of sound differences was longer than the opening and more technical. It had been made using both accepted accoustical measurements, the pascal variations of pressure according to newtons per square meter and the measurement of power creating the sound in terms of watts per square meter. The most positive register had been, unsurprisingly, from Moscow’s NTV track. Two shots measured eighteen accoustical ohms, two were twenty and one was twenty-one. From both American stations, NBC and CBS, the highest resonance measured the first two at twenty ohms, one at twenty-eight and two at thirty-three. Canada’s CBS came out at twenty-five, another twenty-six and two at thirty-five. The Canadian tape had needed to be sound enhanced to its maximum to detect the fifth shot, at forty-two.

Unspeaking, Charlie pushed across the desk towards the lawyer each page as he finished it. She shuffled them to one side, although in order, without looking up. Charlie had asked for as complete and as scientific an analysis as possible but he’d expected something beforenow. It had to be in the final summation, he decided, turning to it.

The five shots had been fired in the space of 8.5 seconds, not the slightly longer period he had amateurishly calculated. Using both versions of the Russian weapon, tests had been carried out on two separate British ranges by three Army marksmen, shooting at different times over the comparable distance and elevation of the NTV gantry from the White House podium at life sized models arranged as the presidential group had been. Each had completed firing in 6.75 seconds with positive kills of both presidents and the American First Lady. The figures representing the dead American Secret Serviceman and the Russian security officer were also hit in every test.

The conclusion was that the actual 8.5 seconds were fully consistent with the time it would take for one trained marksman to fire all five shots from the semi-automatic Dragunov. A misleading although understandable layman’s interpretation had been drawn from the sound variations of the shots. It did not, in the opinion of ballistics scientists, indicate the presence of a second gunman firing from different positions. The positional difference was that of the five cameras from the pod from which all the shots had been fired. The sound variations had also been affected by the gunman shifting his stance to take individual aim, the NTV sound boom being the nearest although disengaged from its mute camera and that of the Canadian equipment having been the furthest away.

Charlie waited until Anne Abbott finished. She did so smiling up at him and said, “There goes the defense that was going to make me famous. Bad luck, Charlie.”

“They’re wrong,” he stated.

She frowned at him. “Charlie!”

“The sound differences aren’t from his shifting about on the NTV pod. There wasn’t enough room.”

“That’s not their only scientific finding.”

“It’s the one that’s their mistake.”

“You gave them everything, even the five different camera points to calculate from. You can’t argue with it.”

He could, decided Charlie. And would. “The assumption is that George Bendall is a highly trained marksman.”

“What if he is, or was?”

“He was a television station gofer!”

“Who’d been in the army.” She was disconcerted by the thought that Charlie wouldn’t let go of an opinion even when overwhelmingly proven to be mistaken.

“There’s still a lot we haven’t got from the Russians.” Would he have to admit keeping his suspicion from Natalia to get it?

“Nothing that’s going to affect this analysis,” insisted Anne.

“Wait and see,” said Charlie. Why, he wondered, was it so difficult to admit to the lawyer the possibility of his being wrong? He was relieved at the appearance at the door of Donald Morrison.

“I’ve just been lunched by the CIA,” announced the younger man.

“And?” anticipated Charlie.

“Jordan told the truth about the saltimbocca being good but mostly he lied.”

Olga Melnik decided that George Bendall’s army record, under his assumed Russian name, would form an essential-and convicting-part of the man’s prosecution. He’d served a total of eight years-a much longer period than she’d imagined and something else the stupid mother hadn’t volunteered-two of them in East Germany and eighteen months in Afghanistan. He had been selected for specialist instruction after showing an aptitude for marksmanship in basic training and qualified, on an SVD rifle, as a Grade 1 sniper two years after enlistment. In Afghanistan he was credited with ten confirmed kills and three more had been judged to be most likely his. Four of the confirmed kills were listed as senior ranking leaders of the formative Taliban regime.

The first indication of a possible psychiatric condition emerged during his Afghanistan service. He served six weeks detention, in Kabul, for what was described as a frenzied and unprovoked attack in which the jaw was broken of a fellow member of his own squad. There were three other disciplinary report references to violence,one involving an Afghani, for which he was not imprisoned. He was named as one of four suspects in the fatal shooting of a Russian major, for which another soldier was eventually convicted, and after the investigation he was suspended from the snipers’ detail. He was not reassigned to it. There were nine different charges of excessive drunkeness on two of which, with others, he was accused of drinking diluted diesel from military transporters which caused convulsions that required hospital treatment. He was based in an army camp in Odessa after leaving Afghanistan and it was there that he was finally court-martialed and jailed for six months, preceding his discharge, for the violent robbery of a civilian taxi driver who lost an eye in the attack.