Brian Freemantle - Kings of Many Castles

“I don’t think there can be any doubt, sir,” said Wendall North.

“She took my bullet,” said Anandale, more to himself than anyone else in the room.

Wendall North decided against pointing out that the intercession had been totally accidental. “Yes, sir, she did.”

“Wouldn’t that have been a hell of a coup, wiping out both presidents at the same time!”

“Unthinkable,” said Defense Secretary Wilfred Pinkton.

“We any closer to understanding it?”

FBI Director Paul Smith shifted uncomfortably at the anticipated question. “We’re running the investigation, just like you ordered, Mr. President. The incident room’s ours, totally under our supervision at our embassy. Bendall had some kind of relapse when Kayley was interrogating him today. Everything had to be suspended.”

“That isn’t an answer to my question!”

“We don’t so far know who else is in the conspiracy.”

“I want ass kicked, Paul. I want each and every son of a bitch involved in this either in the chair or behind bars for the next hundred years and I’m disappointed you’re not telling me you’re there already. You tell Kayley from me I don’t care how it’s done. Just do it!”

It was three A.M. Moscow time when Paul Smith’s e-mail, couched in even stronger terms, was taken by the director’s personal assistant to the communication section of the FBI’s Pennsylvania Avenue headquarters.

“Ass-burning time,” the man told the transmissions operator. “Make sure it’s not yours.” The remark, only marginally misquoting the president, was intended as a joke. It didn’t become one.

Two address lists had been defined in Microsft Outlook for the Russian investigation. “Kayley” was the back-channel, eyes-only route for information and messages restricted to the Bureau Rezident, not to be shared under any circumstances. “Kayley+” was the block address automatically distributing Washington traffic to Olga Melnik and Charlie Muffin, to maintain the impression of complete cooperation.

The FBI operator was new, being introduced into the job on the normally less stressful evening shift. It was the first personal director’s message he’d ever handled and he agreed with the assistant that it was very much ass-burning. In his nervousness he clicked the cursor on Kayley+.

Paul Smith’s do-whatever-it-takes instruction was waiting in Olga Melnik’s e-mail box when she arrived in the incident room that morning, intentionally earlier than usual in her determination to confront John Kayley. Obeying Zenin’s telephone instructions she called Donald Morrison before leaving the American embassy.

The time difference also benefited Charlie Muffin, in reverse. It was still only seven in the morning, London time, when he got the call from Morrison. Charlie awakened instantly and his interrupting questions finally awoke Anne Abbott beside him. Still sleepily voiced, she said, “What is it?”

“If I knew-understood it-I’d tell you,” said Charlie.

Charlie Muffin’s reception was very different from the previous day. Within minutes of his beginning to speak at the reconvened meeting even Jocelyn Hamilton straightened from his overly-theatrical, shoulder-slumped affectation and hunched as attentively as everyone to the tape of George Bendall’s collapse. Charlie finished with the verbatim transcript of the FBI director’s cable that Morrison had relayed that morning. No one spoke, unwilling to offer an opening opinion. It was the director-general who did, finally.

Sir Rupert Dean said, “No! They quite simply wouldn’t have tried to drug him! It’s inconceivable!”

“Kayley’s under enormous pressure,” said Charlie.

“I don’t think it’s inconceivable,” said Patrick Pacey. “‘All and every investigatory means,’” he quoted, from the bureau director’s misdirected e-mail. “‘Earlier and explicit orders … clear understandingsfrom the highest level …’ There’s very obviously been instructions we don’t know about that fits what could have happened in Burdenko hospital …”

“At the moment it’s only an unidentified although possible puncture mark on Bendall’s arm, which has no medical explanation or purpose to be there,” cautioned Charlie. “There’s no proof it was an unauthorized, invasive injection until they get the results of the blood tests.”

“Where, legally, does that leave us-the United Kingdom?” asked the subdued deputy director.

Jeremy Simpson hunched uncertain shoulders. “Totally uninvolved, particularly with Charlie here in London, which probably turns out to be very fortunate. Going beyond that, if it’s true, legally-technically-it constitutes a physical assault upon George Bendall. That’s according to our law and as Bendall, again technically, is still a British subject I suppose there are grounds for us to protest. But I don’t see any practical purpose in our doing that. I don’t know what it qualifies as in Russia, even if there’s any competent statute. But is that what we should be talking about? If the Americans have done this, it surely blows any honest cooperation-any cooperation honest or even limited-completely out of the water?”

“Absolutely,” quickly agreed Hamilton, gratefully seizing the lawyer’s lead.

“But it doesn’t affect a legal prosecution for murder, does it?” argued the director-general, just as quickly.

“It might affect Bendall’s ability-competence-to plead if the damage is permanent,” said Simpson. “It could, possibly, be part of a defense plea in court.”

That had been Anne’s first reaction, as they lay side by side immediately after the telephone call from Donald Morrison in Moscow. Charlie decided against saying anything, despite the fact that Anne was known to be back in London for consultations.

“What’s the Russian response?” asked Dean.

“I don’t know, not yet,” said Charlie. “Olga Melnik told Morrison she’d been withdrawn from the incident room-which means from the American embassy-for discussions. It wasn’t clear with whom.”

“What did you tell him to do?” asked Hamilton.

“To get to the incident room as quickly as possible. Find out everything he can. I’m calling him there later. If there’s anything he doesn’t want picked up on the American monitor, he’ll go back to our embassy after we’ve initially talked and we’ll speak on a secure line from there.”

“The Americans are monitoring our calls!” demanded Hamilton.

Everyone in the room looked at the man in varying degrees of surprise. Charlie said, “Of course they are! I’d do the same, in their circumstances.”

The deputy flushed and shook his head but said nothing more.

Pacey said, “Sir Michael Parnell’s guidance from Moscow was that it was a serious diplomatic breach if it were proved we were responsible for the second gunman leak but that they’d been embarrassed as it is by the accusation. What’s happened since diminishes the leak problem, I suppose, although that was public and this isn’t.”

“Yet,” qualified Charlie, in another caution. “But what’s happened now helps us. I wasn’t responsible for the leak. So a denial would have been the truth. After today’s developments-the FBI director’s cable in particularly-the leak looks far more likely to have come from America.”

“If Parnell wants to be told what to do, tell him to deny it in the strongest terms,” said Dean, almost impatiently. “Which America will do about this injection business, of course. What’s the chances of the Russians suspending their part in the supposed cooperation?”

Charlie accepted he’d be able to answer that better after he’d spoken to Natalia, which it was now essential he do, despite yesterday’s insistence that he shouldn’t. After a lifetime of professional truth paring, convenient deception and ingenuous, open-faced lying, Charlie didn’t have the slightest doubt he could smother any guiltcertainly over a three thousand mile telephone link-but at that moment he was surprised, disappointed even, that there was no self-recrimination about the previous night’s unfaithfulness. There hadn’t been any awakening with Anne beside him that morning, either, and certainly she’d exemplified her own unique philosophy, doing nothing, saying nothing, to make their being together anything but totally unremarkable. Morrison’s telephone call had been theonly conversation at breakfast. To his parting arrangement to meet at the bar that evening she’d smilingly queried whether it was intended only to be a friendly drink and he’d asked what else it could be and seriously she’d said, “Nothing, remember?” There hadn’t been any embarrassing pretence of kissed farewells or lingering hand touching, either. So why didn’t he feel any shame or guilt, if he loved Natalia as much as he was always telling her-and himselfthat he did? Because it wasn’t any more than Anne’s special philosophy. He wasn’t going to pretend to fall in love with Anne and she wasn’t going to pretend to fall in love with him. Each knew where they stood or-perhaps more appositely-exactly where things lay. No confusion. No problems. A perfect unencumbering, unendangering ultimate friendship.