Brian Freemantle - Kings of Many Castles

It was like climbing Everest backwards, wearing skis, thought Charlie, who’d never dreamed of risking his feet in such contraptions. “I’ll only be away two days, tops. Donald Morrison’s taking over.”

“I want to see Bendall for myself,” announced Kayley. “It’s the murder of an American that’s going to be the major charge. You’ve had your consular access.”

“He’s Russia’s prisoner,” said Charlie.

“But you’re no official problem?”

Charlie supposed he should have checked legally with Anne Abbott. Richard Brooking never came into his thinking. “None at all.”

Kayley said, “Thanks for that at least.”

Charlie let it go. “Luck with the interview.” He already knew how he would pursue the next meeting with Bendall but had no intention of prompting the American. It was always possible John Kayley might nerve-touch something far more productive than what he’d so far achieved. It would be interesting-although hopefully not ultimately demoralizing-to see.

“I intended to get back, to say goodbye, but we over-ran.”

“OK.” There even seemed to be a distance in the sound of her voice on the telephone.

“I think the Bendall interview is good. It’s on file in the incident room, if you want to access it.”

“OK.”

“Any problems today?”

“No.”

“I’ll only be gone a couple of days.”

“You said.”

“Tell Sasha I love her.”

“Remember what I said about a present.”

“I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

“Keep safe.”

On their way to Sheremet’yevo in the embassy car Anne Abbott said, “I’m back to thinking there’s a dramatic defense.”

“We’re a long way from finding it.”

“You sure the accountants will stand our staying at the Dorchester?”

“By the time they get the bill we’ll have been and gone. They won’t have any alternative.”

“Do you go out of your way to upset people?”

“Do I upset you?”

“You make me laugh. And curious.”

“You ever see Liberace perform?”

Anne exploded into laughter. “I only just know who Liberace was ! What the hell are you talking about?”

“They’ve got his glass piano in the Dorchester bar. It’s pure kitsch. You’ll like it.”

Charlie answered the car phone, on the central reservation beside the driver. Morrison said, “Moscow Radio has disclosed the second gunman. There’s been an official Russian government enquiry; Brooking’s going around in circles. Olga Melnik’s been on, demanding to know if it was us. I told her we hadn’t broken the agreement.”

“Who did it?” asked Anne, when Charlie relayed the conversation.

“Something else on the long list of what we don’t know,” said Charlie.

“It worked letting the British have the second interview,” declared Zenin.

“It was a good idea,” agreed Olga.

It had been his idea for her to cook at his apartment that night and she was nervous because in this ridiculously short time it had become overwhelmingly important to go on impressing him, the unfamiliar need for which made her even more nervous. She’d chosen pasta with clams and mussels and squid-trying for the joke by insisting the Black Sea fish were a Crimean souvenir she’d collected from the hospital the previous day-and he’d seemed to think it funny as well as continuing the Italian theme with Chianti.

“The Englishman’s very good. The woman, too.”

“What did the Defense Ministry say?” asked Olga. The request for anything known about Vasili Gregorevich Isakov and brotherhoods had been made with Zenin’s superior authority to ensure a matchingly authoratitive response.

“That secret societies aren’t permitted in any of the services. I told them that wasn’t the question.”

“What about my-our-interrogating Bendall again?”

“We’ll see if giving the Americans as well as the English their turn is the good idea it’s proved to be so far. The Americans can go ahead of us; we can use whatever they get, when we go again. Waiting will also give us time to hear back from the military. That’s where the conspiracy is, what we’ve got to find.”

“What about the second gunman leak?”

“It was anonymous. A telephone call.”

“Which they reported without trying to check?”

“I’ve got people looking into it.”

He leaned across the table, touching his glass to hers. “The pasta’s wonderful. This is wonderful.”

“I’m glad,” she said, responding to both remarks.

“I haven’t asked you yet if you’re married?”

“I’m not,” she said. She looked around the apartment. “I suppose your wife could be away, although speaking as a trained investigator there isn’t any obvious evidence of anyone else living here.”

“If there was one she could be away,” Zenin agreed, smiling back. “But there isn’t.”

“I’m embarrassed now to have said that! Shit!”

“Don’t be. I’m not.”

Olga thought it couldn’t be happening so soon, so quickly.

Charlie Muffin’s tightly structured timetable-most specifically his intention to get back to Moscow in two days-began to unravel before his first appointment. That was scheduled for ten thirty. He was at Millbank before nine, to set up the various tests and analyses he wanted upon the material he’d brought with him. No longer with an office or any working facility within the building, everything had to go through Sir Rupert Dean’s personal assistant, a dedicated spinster whose christian name remained unknown and who had long ago decreed she should be universally known and addressed simply by her surname-Spence-without the courtesy of Miss. He had to negotiate his way past two junior secretaries to get into her sanctum and having done so reflected-and passingly mourned-the transition from Roedean-accented, experimentally-eager debutantes with legs that went all the way up to their shoulders to unsmiling, business-like practicality from women whose legs looked as if they’d been carved from solid oak by a man with a blunt hatchet. Spence herself needed such support for a granite body formidable enough to have single-handedly repelled a Special Forces invasion of the director-general’s office. The woman listened in intimidating silence to everything Charlie wanted-even asking to ensure he’d finishedbefore bluntly declaring it wasn’t possible in two days. He should have known there were no laboratory resources in the headquartersbuilding: the ballistics people worked from Woolwich Arsenal and she very much doubted psychiatrists and psychologists would drop everything to put him at the top of their lists. It took Charlie thirty wheedling minutes to persuade her personally to try to arrange the mental assessment from the tapes and their transcripts and to dispatch the ballistic and blood samples to their respective testing centres.

“It’s still not possible,” she insisted.

“I’ve heard everything’s possible backed by your authority.”

“And I’ve heard bullshit and how good you are shovelling it.”

But she’d enjoyed it, Charlie decided. “I brought you a souvenir, to thank you in advance.” Charlie took the joke maestroika set from his briefcase doll by doll, identifying each Russian leader depicted in succeeding order of leadership. Whose face would be the next in line, he wondered, reassembling the figures one inside the other.

The smile-finally-broke the professional shell in which she clearly existed within the building, illuminating a surprisingly young face. “Don’t expect two days. But I’ll try to get it done as quickly as I can.”

Still with time to spare before the meeting with Sir Rupert and his advisors, Charlie took his time shuffling along nostalgically familiar corridors to the cafeteria in which he recognized no one and where no one recognized or acknowledged him in return. The coffee was as he remembered, like a long-term alcoholic’s urine sample, and all the riverview tables were occupied. So were those in the middle section. Charlie found an empty, single-seated table near the clattering service entrance. One of its legs were uneven, so the coffee spilled the moment he put it down. Why nostalgia? he demanded. Familiarity perhaps-even to being shunted to the worst table in the room-but there shouldn’t have been the smallest iota of remembered regret. So why was there? Why had he enjoyed the innocent flirtation of being with Anne Abbott in the Liberace-pianoed Dorchester bar the previous night and the cab ride through the flower dazzling Green Park and actually looked at and liked, for the first time, the hump-shouldered statue of Churchill glowering at the parliament buildings? Just remembrance: not nostalgia and certainly not regret. He never thought-reminisced-of any of thisin Moscow. It was a freak of deja vu or something he couldn’t find a better phrase to describe. He had enjoyed being with Anne Abbott the previous night. Not in any silly, dangerous way: not even flirtatious. They’d just made each other laugh and in his case he’d been able to say things, make jokes, without balancing every word for hidden, misunderstood or misconstrued meaning before uttering it. Relaxed, he thought, surprised. Despite the impending encounter and whatever it was in which he was professionally involved in Moscow, for this brief returning moment he felt relaxed. At ease. Would Natalia be feeling that, with his not being in Moscow? Unburdened; briefly, gratefully, unendangered?