Brian Freemantle - Kings of Many Castles

Charlie hadn’t considered the political symbolism. Completing it he said, “An agreement that won’t now be reached. Might never be.”

“And what’s left is the mess, our mess, to clear up as best we can,” said Parnell.

“What will the procedure be? Diplomatically, I mean?” asked the woman, practicably.

“In normal circumstances if a British national is arrested for an alleged crime the embassy applies for consular access,” recited the ambassador, formally. “I don’t consider this normal. I’ll want guidance from London.”

“What about legal representation?” Anne persisted.

Parnell shrugged. “That’s usually made available.”

“Are you criminal or civil?” Charlie asked the lawyer.

“Criminal.”

“Recognized under Russian law?” pressed Charlie.

She shook her head. “I’d need guidance, like the ambassador. But I don’t think I’d be accepted in open court as anything more than a qualified observer. I could probably get attachment to a Russian lawyer’s briefing team if London wanted it. What are your instructions?”

“To investigate as much as I can as best I can,” generalized Charlie. He went to the ambassador. “I’d like to be included in any access that’s arranged. My director-general will be contacting you tomorrow.”

“I’ll definitely need Foreign Office guidance for that,” warned Parnell.

“Sir Rupert expected you would,” said Charlie.

The thin man’s head came up sharply at the suspicion of condescension. Charlie stared back, blandly. Remaining fixedly upon Charlie, Parnell said, “It is a mess. I don’t want it made worse by any mistakes from this embassy. I don’t want anything-anything at all-initiated or done without prior reference to me. Is that understood?”

“Perfectly,” said Charlie. Bollocks, he thought.

“Of course,” said Anne, accepting her inclusion in the caution.

As she walked from the head of chancellery’s office with Charlie, leaving the two diplomats composing their alert cable to the Foreign Office in London, she said, “It’s illegal under the Copyright Act to duplicate videos.”

“Let’s not tell anyone we’re going to do it.” Charlie had never told anyone in advance what he was going to do. Or hardly ever afterwards. It was better that way for their propriety, ulcers, general state of health and overall peace of mind.

Charlie’s mind as he emerged into the darkness of a slumbering Moscow night was anything but peaceful. He hadn’t properly started yet and there were already things that worried him, one more obviously than the others. He didn’t even need the warning ache from his talisman feet to tell him all was not right.

“We’ve got everything to consider, to protect ourselves against,” protested Sir Michael Parnell, guiding the discussion.

“I understand what you’re saying,” agreed the about-to-be-promoted head of chancellery.

“We’ve got to be careful.”

“Absolutely.”

“If it gets to consular access, it’ll be you, Richard.”

“I know,” accepted Brooking, uncomfortably.

“That intelligence fellow’s a problem. I know he’s not officially recognized here as such but that’s what he is. Or was. And a confounded nuisance as well, from all the stories I heard before I arrived.”

“He’s caused a lot of problems in the past,” confirmed Brooking.

“I won’t allow him to cause any in the future. If London wants their own investigation, let them send someone from there to do it, separate us from that part of it. We’re going to have enough difficulties as it is.”

“Maybe we shouldn’t ask for someone from London, for precisely that reason?” suggested Brooking.

Parnell allowed a half smile. “What’s your thinking?”

“Muffin’s already got the reputation in London as an uncontrollable troublemaker. Politically and diplomatically we couldn’t be in a more unmapped minefield, with what’s happened. There will be mistakes, no matter how hard we try to anticipate, mistakes we don’t officially want to be associated with.”

Parnell’s smile broadened. “We’ll have to watch the bloody man very carefully, of course.”

“We might actually in the final analysis get rid of him altogether. It’s still an experimental posting, despite his having tricked his way successfully so far.”

“ That would be good!” said Parnell, enthusiastically. There was a pause. “So! What do we tell London?”

“That we’ve inherited another intelligence embarrassment,” insisted Brooking, at once. “Let’s start from the very beginning preparing the way to distance ourselves.”

The eruption was inevitable, the only uncertainty its timing, and Burt Jordan, the CIA station head, and the FBI Rezident, John Kayley-both of whom felt themselves safely beyond the endangered fall-out area-found much to occupy them in the initial file photographs of the shooting while Wendall North outlined the situation he’d just left at the Pirogov Hospital. They were in the chef du protocol ’s office at the American embassy on the Novinskij Bul’var section of the inner ring road, even his desk surrendered by the local diplomat, David Barnett. Barnett considered himself the safest of them all in the aftermath and sat trying to guess when the explosion would occur.

“So that’s it,” concluded North. “A …”

“Total disaster,” completed Jeff Aston, director of the White House Secret Service detail.

“We all know that,” tried North. “The immediate need is to prioritize: evaluate and anticipate.”

“Just how much do we all know to evaluate and anticipate, Wendall?” persisted Aston, who was black, six and a half feet tall, weighed two hundred and twenty-five pounds and had protected two previous presidents before Walter Anandale. “Give us an idea of your prioritizing. How would you assess the fall-out? Would you put a treaty that isn’t going to be signed more or less important than the maiming of the president’s wife? And where would you put the likely death of a Russian president against the possible resurgence of a communist government? And whereabouts in all of it would you put the fact that the shooting was allowed to happen in the first place because that’s something that personally and professionally interests me a hell of a lot ….” Aston had hassled Barnett into including both the CIA and FBI, determined there should be witnesses. They’d already been waiting when the unsuspecting Wendall North arrived from the hospital, making it impossible for him to exclude them.

“I don’t think that’s very constructive, which is what we’ve got to be,” protested North, conscious that he had no defense against the Secret Service chief’s attack.

“Right again, Wendall,” goaded Aston. “But I’m still a little curious about things being destructive. Which it’s my job to prevent … providing, that is, I’m not prevented or obstructed from doing it.”

“There’ll be an enquiry,” said North. He was red-faced and visibly sweating, despite the air-conditioning.

“I’m sure as hell glad to hear that, Wendall. Your office kept all the preparation and planning details for this trip, all the way back to when the negotiations first started? I don’t want you or any of your staff to worry, if you haven’t. We have, in the Secret Service. Every memo, notes of every discussion, telephone logs of every call and what the outcome was. And not just in English. Russian, too. I’ve already cabled Washington for it all to be handed over to counsel. Important, to keep everything intact. You know how these rumors start after something like this, suggestions of things getting lost or tampered with. So if you’ve got any problem finding anything, you just let me know because it’s important that all the facts are established by whoever investigates the worst cockamamy screw-up since God knows when …”