Brian Freemantle - Kings of Many Castles

“What’s Max Donnington say?” asked the chief of staff. North had expected the White House surgeon, a commissioned admiral, to come up from the resuscitation room with the president. The navy physician had to be concerned about Ruth Anandale’s recovery not to have done so.

“He doesn’t want her moved, not even to the embassy. He’s bringing in some sterilisation equipment and more staff, to clean up the room that she’s in. Liaise with him, Wendall. I want the bestequipped air ambulance brought in, ready the moment it’s possible to move her.”

James Scamell decided it was time to move the discussion on to practicalities. “I’ve spoken with the foreign ministry people who’ve arrived: Boris Petrin himself. It’s touch and go whether Yudkin’s going to make it.”

Anandale was a consummate politician and it only took him seconds to refocus his mind. He nodded at the most obvious inference from the Secretary of State’s remark. “Goodbye to a second term reelection for Lev Maksimovich.”

“There’s temporary provision but not a proper successor in waiting,” said Scamell.

“What about the communist party candidate?”

“Petr Tikunov,” identified Scamell. “A popular deputy in the Duma. The communists are well organized-better than Yudkin, even-and there’s a huge number of people who’ve come to think that communism wasn’t such a bad way of life after all. At street level everyone had some sort of job and some sort of income.”

“Where’s that leave us?” demanded Anandale, his reasoning in perfect synch with the circumstances.

“With a need to readjust,” replied North, eager to get back into the discussion. He was an intense, quickly-blinking man anxious to share the president’s reelection and the rarified atmosphere of being at the epicenter of World events.

“Easily possible,” picked up Scamell. “No treaty’s been signed; can’t be now. We’ve still got our Star Wars preparations which we’re sure as hell going to need if Yudkin dies and is succeeded by the opposition.”

“The peacemaker becomes the iron man,” headlined North. He decided to wait until there was a more positive prognosis about Ruth Anandale’s recovery before hinting at the huge sympathy vote that could be manipulated.

There was another silence.

Anandale said, “We know who the son of a bitch is who did it?”

“The two bombs were Chechen,” reminded North, uncomfortably.

“That’s your job, Wendall. I’ve got a personal interest in knowing everything about whoever organized it and why. I don’t give a damn about Russian jurisdiction or hurt feelings. And I want to know how people who were supposed to be protecting me-and my wife-let a guy with a godamned gun within kewpie doll shooting range of us.”

“Yes, sir,” said North.

“My wife might die,” said the president, in near conversation with himself. “Someone’s going to pay for that, pay for it personally. You hear me, Wendall?”

“Yes, Mr. President, I hear you.”

In Washington CIA Director Jack Grech personally took the call from FBI Director Paul Smith.

Grech said, “We got a lot of problems here.”

“You going over to head things up personally?” asked Smith.

“I need to speak to people first,” evaded Grech. All the Secret Service precautions were based upon Agency-and Russian-advice, leaving the Agency in the clear.

Paul Smith decided an FBI director could do himself a lot of political good riding in with the cavalry, particularly when the gunman was already in custody. Smith said, “I think I’ll start making plans.”

“I guess I should, too,” said Grech.

Charlie Muffin’s office in the new British embassy on Protocnyj Pereulok was in complete contrast to the cobwebbed broom cupboard he’d been dismissively allocated in the old legation on Morisa Toreza, actually with an unobstructed view over the Smolenskaya embankment to the Moskva river and with a separate annex for direct, security-cleared telephone, e-mail and fascimile links to his London riverside headquarters at Millbank. He even had his own coffee percolator. Peter Bendall’s complete me-together with separately wired photographs-had already been faxed through by the time Charlie arrived at the night-shrouded complex, carrying the video of the gantry struggle he’d recorded himself before leaving the Lesnaya Ulitza apartment. He was only three-quarters through the archive material when the querulous call came from Richard Brooking, the head of chancellery.

“This had better be justified.”

“It is.”

“We’re on the coffee.”

“Pass the mints and decanter around a second time.”

The man sighed. “How long?”

“Fifteen minutes. Have you told the ambassador?”

There was another sigh. “I need to be sure there’s a crisis first.”

“Your decision,” said Charlie, who hadn’t given the diplomat the reason for breaking into his dinner party over an open telephone line from Lesnaya.

“Don’t you forget that. My office. Thirty minutes.”

Charlie finished reading in fifteen and spent the remainder of the time studying the fading photographs of one of Britain’s most infamous post-war traitors. Peter Bendall had been a skeletally-thin man whose narrow face was dominated by a prow of a nose upon which balanced thick-lensed, round-framed spectacles. Every OldBailey trial, family and official government picture portrayed a fastidiously although cheaply dressed, aloofly-featured man bearing no similarity whatsoever to the fanatically staring, mop-haired figure who’d now been seen by every television owner in the world struggling in mid-air for possession of a sniper’s rifle.

Brooking, a fleshy, overweight man assured an ambassadorial promotion on his next posting, was still wearing his dinner jacket and black tie when Charlie got to the man’s office suite. He tried-but failed-to heighten the unspoken rebuke at having his evening interrupted by the contempt with which he regarded Charlie’s shoe-spread, crumpled appearance. Charlie wondered if the man had told his guests to wait until his return. Around the man still hung a miasma of cigars.

“So what is it!” demanded Brooking, impatiently.

“Today’s gunman is British, the son of a defector,” announced Charlie. The theatricality was unnecessary-he should have warned Brooking during their internal telephone conversation earlier-but pompous assholes like Brooking had always irritated Charlie and he never had been able to resist the deflating pin-prick.

Brooking did visibly deflate. He shook his head, refusing the information, and several times said “No” as if to convince himself he’d mishead.

“George Bendall,” insisted Charlie. “Son of Peter Bendall, an Aldermaston physicist who escaped from Wormwood Scrubs in 1970 after serving only two of a forty year sentence for betraying to the Russians over the previous fifteen years every British nuclear development, a lot of which was shared with America.”

“Oh my God!” moaned Brooking.

Charlie hefted what had come from London. “Virtually nothing on George Bendall, who was only two when his father got caught. Brought to Moscow by his mother three years after his father arrived. She skipped sideways through Austria from what was purported to be a holiday in France using the same escape route as her husband. Gave the stiff finger to British counter-intelligence who were supposed to be watching her because hubby was rumored to have changed his mind and wanted to come back.”

Brooking’s recovery was as visible as his earlier collapse. “Why didn’t you tell me this from the beginning!”

“It wasn’t a secure line.”

The man frowned. “Has this been officially announced by the Russians?”