Brian Freemantle - Kings of Many Castles

“Tell us about George,” prompted Charlie. He had to guard against showing he knew of Olga Melnik’s first abortive interview or of the possibly improved second, which Natalia had shown him the previous evening, with other material the Russian investigator had not so far made available. It was going to be interesting to see how adept a questioner Anne Abbott turned out to be.

Vera Bendall’s pent-up denials of anything her son had plannedor done came in a babbled rush of protested innocence and uncaring admission of a totally dysfunctional relationship between mother and son but virtually everything she’d told Olga Melnik was included. The regular Tuesday and Thursday routine emerged in answer to a question from Anne.

“How did you feel about being in Russia?” explored Charlie, gently. “Did you hate it as much as George?”

“Not as much.”

“But you didn’t like it?”

“I’ve adjusted, after all this time. No alternative.”

“You were a schoolteacher, in England?” remembered Charlie, from the English records.

“Yes.”

“Were you forced to quit after Peter defected?”

“No.”

“Why did you follow Peter?” came in Anne.

“I was his wife. It was my duty.”

“He abandoned you. You and George?” persisted the other woman.

There was the familiar listless shrug. “I thought it was the right thing to do.”

“George was only five?” picked up Charlie. Would Sasha hate being uprooted from Russia if the need ever arose?

“Not quite. Four and a half.”

“So he knew virtually nothing of England; had no comparison against life here?”

Vera frowned, considering the question. “That’s right.”

“Why did he grow up to hate it?” said Anne, following Charlie’s direction.

The faded woman didn’t answer at once. “Peter and I, I suppose.”

“I don’t understand,” said Charlie.

“We didn’t get on, after I came here. Argued a lot about how much better it would have been if I hadn’t come. I was close to George then. Not like it was later … he used to take my side … that’s how it always seemed to be, how I remember it. George and me against Peter … every day ….” She trailed off, seemingly in bitter memories.

“There were stories … suggestions … in England that Peter wanted to return …?”

“I wanted to. With George.”

“What about Peter?”

“Maybe. I’m not sure.”

“Why didn’t you and George go back?”

“They wouldn’t let us.”

“They?” Charlie was dominating the questioning now, Anne silent beside him.

“The people Peter worked for?”

“The KGB?”

“Yes.”

Charlie’s bunched-up feet twitched. He’d spent more than an hour the previous night hunched over the recorder Natalia had protectively carried in-and out-of the Lubyanka, as surprised as she had been not just at getting past the reception area without being searched-prepared to insist upon the authority of the acting president-but also that Spassky’s office hadn’t been equipped with a “white noise” baffler to prevent tapes unknowingly being made. His instinct-as well as another foot spasm-told him the gaps in Peter Bendall’s KGB files hadn’t occurred accidentally. “Did Peter tell you that you couldn’t go back to England? Or was it one of the Russians he worked for?”

“Peter.”

Charlie instantly recognized the hesitation in her voice. He had to tiptoe, an inch at a time. “Only ever Peter?”

“As I told the Russian detective colonel, sometimes in the last few years Peter worked from home, at Hutorskaya Ulitza. The arguments got really bad around that time: that was when George was sixteen or seventeen. He said he didn’t believe what Peter was saying and that he was keeping us prisoner. Once one of the people who came to see Peter took George into the room with them.”

She looked at the water carafe alongside the tape and unasked Charlie poured for her.

“Did George tell you what went on in the room?”

“He said the man told him there were things he had to do but that he wouldn’t do them.”

“What things?”

“He didn’t tell me.”

“Didn’t you ask him?”

“No.”

Charlie felt a burn of frustration at Vera Bendall’s constant, look-away acceptance of everything and anything that happened to her. “What did he say?”

“He said he wasn’t weak, like Peter. That they were going to be surprised.”

“Peter had been in the room?” persisted Charlie.

“Yes.”

“So he would have heard whatever it was?”

“I suppose.”

“Didn’t you ask him?” said Anne.

“He said it was none of my business. That it was too late and that if I hadn’t wanted to be here I shouldn’t have followed him.”

Would this be how his relationship with Natalia would finally-so disastrously-implode if she took Sasha away from Russia to live with him somewhere in the West, Charlie wondered again. No, he decided, just as quickly. The circumstances were far too different for there to be any conceivable comparison. “Did George accept it?”

The fatalistic shrug came again. “That was when the trouble started.”

“What trouble?” asked the lawyer.

“Not going to classes … the beginning of the drinking … he was in an accident, in a stolen car. He wasn’t charged with the theft because he couldn’t drive. He started to use the Russian name around that time. Insisted I call him Georgi …”

“Used a Russian name but didn’t like Russia?” queried Charlie, despite already knowing the answer: it was a logical question the eavesdroppers would expect to be asked.

“He said he didn’t want to be known as George Bendall anymore.”

“The behavior began suddenly?” pressed Anne.

“As I remember it.”

“You must have thought about it, the reason I mean?”

Vera smiled, faintly. “I did. I think in some silly way he thoughtif he misbehaved badly enough he’d get thrown out … expelled from the country.”

“Did you challenge him about it?”

“Not directly. I think I said once that it wouldn’t work, that he’d just end up with a criminal record. He said he didn’t know what I was talking about. That he didn’t care anyway.”

“Was there any more contact between him and the KGB people who came to Hutorskaya Ulitza?”

She nodded. “The same man came back. Peter didn’t go into the room with them this time. Then others came and took him to a psychiatrist and for a while he got better, although he started to spend a lot of time away … not bothering to come home, I mean …”

“Who was the psychiatrist, Vera?”

“I never knew.”

“But you knew he was seeing a psychiatrist?”

“Peter told me. He said it was best. That I’d given birth to an idiot and that it was my fault.”

“Did George continue behaving himself?”

“I don’t know. He would have been about eighteen then. He joined the army. After that we hardly saw him at all.”

Charlie went to speak but suddenly remembered he wasn’t supposed to know about the man’s military record. “How long was he in the army?”

“A long time. He didn’t contact me-it was always me, never ever Peter-for years at a time, two years was the longest. I don’t believe he wrote more than ten letters, the whole time. When he did it was to ask for money. For a long time, towards the end, I thought he was probably dead. Then there was a letter from a prison in Odessa. He said he was being kicked out of the army. One day he just turned up.”

“Was Peter still alive?”

“Yes.”

“What did he say?”

“Accepted it. He wasn’t well by then.”

“Did the KGB still come?”