Brian Freemantle - Kings of Many Castles

“Can I send you other tapes?”

“I’d like you to. I’ve never worked like this before: as I said, it’s interesting. And remember something else I told you. Let him think he’s superior: cleverer. You going to find that difficult?”

“Not at all,” said Charlie. “I’ve been doing that all my life.”

The pathologist was wearing a clean laboratory coat but it was again at least two sizes too small. Geoffrey Robertson gave the same answer as the psychiatrist when asked about thiopentone but promised to get a definitive assessment from a pharmacologist if Charlie sent back from Moscow George Bendall’s complete medication list.

“Can’t understand the point of it being done,” said the man.

“That is the point of it being done,” said Charlie. “For people not to be able to understand why. And it’s working brilliantly.”

With the need-minimally productive though it turned out-for a second meeting with the pathologist Charlie had put back for an hour his appointment with the ballistics expert at the Woolwich Arsenal. But he was still late and knew at once from the man’s demeanor that Archibald Snelling had fantasized for the further delayed thirty minutes about the toothbrushed lavatory cleaning sentence he would have imposed in a much mourned earlier army career. From the man’s disapproving, top to toe and sideways examination, Charlie guessed his appearance would probably have got him denied the toothbrush and that he would have had to scour with his bare hands, if not his own toothbrush. Snelling had to be almost two meters tall and although there was a slight stomach sag in the parade ground rigidity his voice retained the come-to-attention bark. Into the man’s office, which actually did overlook a parade ground, came the occasional and distant sound of a weapon being discharged. The only chair available was straight-backed and wooden-seated and Charlie turned and sat with one arm crooked over its rear rail, just for the hell of it. Snelling was sitting to attention, shoulders squared, ramrod straight.

“You got something more to tell me!” demanded Snelling, at once.

“I’d hoped you’d have something to tell me,” retorted Charlie. The aggressiveness was an abrupt contrast with the attempted helpfulness of the other specialists that day but then, remembered Charlie, he had shown the man-or his colleagues-to be lacking. Charlie was more irritated than offended; he certainly wasn’t intimidated.

“I don’t understand,” complained the man.

“I don’t, either,” said Charlie. “It might help if you explained in more detail what the problem is.”

“You don’t have another Dragunov? Photographs?”

Charlie’s feet twitched, in aching unison. Slowly he said, “Why would you expect me to have another Dragunov?”

Color began to prick out on the man’s already red face. “You’re still only considering two rifles: the one recovered from the arrested man and the unknown, different caliber Medved?”

“Yes.”

“Let’s go into the workshop.”

It was a march more than a walk along a connecting corridor and Charlie’s feet hurt with the effort of keeping up. It was a long room, with what was obviously a firing range leading off to the right, some with unmarked targets, others with bullet-recoverable butts for analyses and comparison. Deeper into the room were benches equipped with vices and calibrating machinery and enhancing cameras. Snelling led past it all to the far end, where there were the sort of backlighted viewing screens against which X-rays are normally examined. Upon the entire bank were clipped what Charlie realized, when he got closer, to be the hugely enlarged photographs of the bullets recovered from the Moscow victims. Closer still he saw each was identified against the victim’s name. Separated by a gap was what were marked to be pictures of bullets test fired from Bendall’s gun by the American ballistics team.

“We’re not interested in the 9mm bullets, from the Medved,” dismissed Snelling, a blackboard pointer now in his hand. “This …” he tapped the third print “is the bullet recovered, according to your notes, from American Secret Serviceman Jennings. This …” the pointer went farther to the right “is from the Russian security man, Ivanov. And these …” Snelling moved over the division, to the American prints “are pictures described to me asbeing three separate test firings, from the SVD recovered from the gunman, George Bendall …?”

“Yes?” said Charlie.

“The SVD bullet from Ivanov is a better comparison than that from Jennings, although there’s still just enough,” said the ballistics expert. “Look at them. There’s no marking. But look at the American test firings. See it!” The pointer tapped impatiently. “There’s a groove line, on every one. You know was rifling is?”

Charlie did but he said, “No.”

Snelling sighed. “The barrels of rifles-particularly snipers’ rifles-are bored like the thread of a screw. It increases accuracy and velocity. There’s a fault, a snag, in the rifling of the SVD you say was used by George Bendall. Any bullet fired from it would be scored, like these three pictures of the American test firings show them to be identifiably marked.”

“But the bullets that hit Jennings and Ivanov are not?”

“There’s substantial impact damage,” qualified Snelling. “But they don’t appear to be from the photographs with which I’ve been provided.”

“So they weren’t fired by George Bendall?”

“I’ll go as far as saying that in my professional opinion it’s highly unlikely.”

Anne Abbott was again waiting in the bar when Charlie got back, late, to the Dorchester. “What would you say if I told you the bullets that killed Ben Jennings and cost Feliks Ivanov his leg weren’t fired by George Bendall?” demanded Charlie.

“I’d say holy shit and then I’d ask you to convince me.”

In Moscow the American embassy incident room quieted at John Kayley’s entry. Kayley said, “The president has accepted the resignation of Paul Smith as Bureau Director.”

“Will it be enough?” queried someone in the room.

“As far as I know there isn’t anything else.”

Sir Rupert Dean said, “Are you telling us George Bendall didn’t shoot anybody!”

It was the first interruption since Charlie had started to speak fifteen minutes earlier in the riverview conference room at Millbank and he was enjoying the unqualified attention. Even Jocelyn Hamilton hadn’t found anything to attack. Charlie said: “In the opinion of one ballistics expert, with fifteen years of specific forensic experience matching bullets with guns, it is highly unlikely from the photographs he’s seen that the two bullets thought to have come from Bendall’s rifle were in fact fired from it. He’s now submitted what he examined to two other specialists, for their independent assessment. He also wants to examine the physical evidence: all the recovered bullets and Bendall’s rifle. Until he’s able to do that, he says he can’t be categorical.”

“Will the Russians release them?” demanded Hamilton, at last.

“I won’t know that until I get back,” said Charlie. “At the moment they’re in the incident room at the American embassy. It could be that their ballistics people have come to the same opinion and carried out the tests our man wants to conduct. Reached a definitive conclusion, in fact.”

“You had this overnight, known about it for fifteen hours!” protested Hamilton. “What’s wrong with the telephone!”

“All sorts of things if the call’s made to the wrong place and number,” said Charlie, savoring being able to puncture the man’s attempts so easily. “I spoke to Morrison at our embassy, on a secure line, first thing this morning. Got him to check what’s been made generally available by the Americans on the incident room computers, which are supposed to hold all the evidence we have. It’s convenient our two embassies are so close. It didn’t take him long tocome back to me, again on our own secure line. There was nothing about this, as of an hour ago. So if the American have picked it up, they’re not sharing it.”