Brian Freemantle - Kings of Many Castles

“No.”

“Then how do you know?”

“It’s my job to know, the job I was posted here to fulfill.”

“What’s your source?”

“You know I can’t tell you that.” It was an inviolable rule that official diplomats were always separated from provable intelligence activities, and even though Charlie’s function had changed it provided a very important personal protection for him and Natalia within Moscow. And the director-general in London hadn’t pressed to learn his contacts. Observing his own even more inviolable personal rule Charlie already had a prepared escape if Sir Rupert Dean or anyone else ever became too curious or demanding.

“It could be wrong.”

“It’s not.” Charlie belatedly realized that this was the very first time he’d directly acted upon-used-information from Natalia and her intelligence liaison directorship with the Interior Ministry. She hadn’t tried to dissuade him because there was going to be an official announcement the following day but over the last few months he’d become increasingly aware how much of a strain their precarious situation was, far more upon her than him. He’d stopped talking about their getting married or of how easily they could live in England-anywhere in Europe-if their relationship did become known and he was inevitably expelled and she was just as inevitably dismissed her ministry position.

“You’ve told London?”

“Sir Rupert personally. He wants the ambassador informed ahead of the Russian announcement.”

“Yes,” agreed Brooking, briskly.

Pass the problem parcel time, Charlie recognized. “And lawyers.”

“Yes,” complied Brooking again, still brisk, aware of another layer of responsibility avoidance. “Their involvement is obviously essential.”

Brooking’s first telephone call was shorter than the second and Charlie wondered if the lawyer had already been in bed in the apartment block that formed part of the new British diplomatic compound. Charlie was one of a very few still living-because he clearly had to-outside the enclave, once more using as the reason the necessity to distance himself from official diplomacy, although since the post-Cold War re-alignment his was much more an FBI than a counter-intelligence function. Which was why, during his sleepy-voiced conversation with an awakened Sir Rupert Dean in London, the director-general had given the empire-preserving instruction that the embassy-attached MI6 be kept out for as long as possible.

Since that conversation Charlie had decided the delay, twelve hours at the most, would achieve little more than further alienating him from people who were supposed to be colleagues but who viewed him with the distaste that Brooking had evidenced minutes before. But it was a familiar experience for Charlie to find there was shit on every baton he picked up. He couldn’t ever remember actually being part of a relay team but resisting inter-embassy association was a matter of professional necessity as much as self-protecting ostracism. Charlie never had been, nor ever would be, a team player. It made him reliant upon others and a further Charlie Muffin rule was never to rely upon anyone except himself.

An unsettling challenge came at once to mind. What about Natalia? Not a contradiction, he assured himself. He trusted Natalia implicitly and absolutely, trusted her more than she trusted him, with every justifiable reason for her doubt. He relied upon her, too, in equal proportion. But that trust and that reliance was personal, not professional. He would never, of course, have admitted it to anyone-most certainly not to Natalia, who would misunderstand it to be a lack of love, which it wasn’t-but because Charlie Muffin knew himself so completely he acknowledged he’d never accept Natalia’s professional judgment in preference to or above his own.

Sir Michael Parnell entered the room with vaguely hesitant authority. He was a thin man, although not as thin as Peter Bendall appeared in the file photographs, and any further similarity was smothered beneath the fullness of deeply black hair. Like Brooking, the ambassador wore a dinner jacket and black tie and to Charlie,who did not smoke, the cigar aroma smelled the same. Charlie’s protocol-routed request, through Brooking, had been to meet Parnell immediately and he wondered if the man’s initial refusal had been disinterest or the instinctive arms-length distancing of a regretted member of embassy staffing. Probably a combination of both. Moscow was a prestigious appointment and Parnell had only held it for four months and now he was about to confront his worst sleeping or waking nightmare.

Parnell looked undecided between the two men already in the room before settling on Charlie. “Do I really need to hear what this is all about?” The man’s voice was unexpectedly high.

Instead of replying directly, Charlie looked at Brooking and said, “You thought so, didn’t you? You got any second thoughts?”

Parnell’s face stiffened. Brooking colored. The head of chancellery said, “Yes sir, you do.”

“My director-general thought so, too.” He wasn’t going to improve any working relationship with these two men by showing the respect their condescension hadn’t earned, so fuck them. He didn’t want to spend any more time with them than they wanted to spend with him.

“What?” demanded the ambassador.

The lawyer’s arrival delayed Charlie’s reply. So well had he isolated himself against embassy staff contact that there was the briefest moment of surprise, although he was sure he didn’t show it. She was tall for a woman, although not overly so, slim and small busted. If she were publicly to become known in what was to follow Charlie supposed willowy would be the English tabloid description. She wore a severe black suit that Charlie accepted to be her embassy-recognized uniform and he guessed the deeply auburn hair which now hung loose would during the day be more tightly pinned and controlled. She wasn’t wearing make-up, either, apart perhaps from the lightest of lipsticks, and Charlie decided that she had been in bed and probably asleep when Brooking telephoned. She politely greeted the two diplomats by title and name and remained looking enquiringly at Brooking, who hurriedly introduced her to Charlie as Anne Abbott.

“Now I won’t have to repeat myself a third time,” greeted Charlie.Her handshake was firm, confident, and he liked her attitude towards the other two men, respectful of their embassy rank but not deferential. He put her at about thirty-eight, certainly not older.

“What is it?” demanded Parnell again, impatiently.

Neither the ambassador nor the woman openly gave the sort of disbelieving reaction Brooking had shown when Charlie told them, although Parnell at once asked if Charlie were sure and Charlie said he was.

“The nationality is the key,” insisted Anne. “There’s no doubt he’s still British?”

Charlie handed her the London material. “You’ll need to go through everything. It’s Peter Bendall’s entire archive. If he’d taken Russian nationality, it would have been logged. There was a lot of speculation that his refusal to adopt Russian citizenship showed an intention to return to England, despite the sentence he’d still have had to serve …” He looked to the other two men. “I’ve made copies of everything except the seizure video which needs the embassy facilities to duplicate.”

“It’s surely a moot point whether he had or he hadn’t taken citizenship,” challenged Parnell, objectively. “George Bendall is still who he is, the son of a British nuclear defector.”

“Who’s shot a Russian president hopefully about to agree to a Star Wars-banning treaty with America,” picked up Brooking, assessing the diplomatic fall out.