Brian Freemantle - Kings of Many Castles

Charlie detected the edge to her voice. “I’m sorry?” he queried.

“So are we,” she said. “Bendall went through the routine with our psychiatrists but said he wouldn’t cooperate with anything else if you weren’t there. Which you weren’t.”

A serious oversight, acknowledged Charlie. It really was spiralling into a totally fucked up day. The refusal wouldn’t do anything to restore Donald Morrison’s confidence, either. Charlie said, “You really think he had any intention of saying anything today?”

“We’re never going to know, are we?”

“What about the psychiatrists?”

“He was impeccable,” replied the deep-voiced lawyer. “His behavior virtually amounts to proof of his sanity, without our needing to be professionally told.”

“Is that what the psychiatrists did say, that he was fit to plead?” demanded Charlie.

“They’ve promised qualifications in their written assessment but they’re unanimous on the deciding factor, that he’s mentally capable of understanding a criminal charge,” said Noskov.

“And that he’s mentally aware of what he’s done, capable of distinguishing between right and wrong,” finished Anne.

“What are the qualifications?” said Charlie.

“Delusory, to the point of severe fantacism,” Anne set out. “Fluctuating schizophrenic paranoia, susceptible to mental manipulation.”

“What’s that give us?” asked Charlie.

“At best, psychiatric mumbo jumbo for a plea of mitigation,” said the Russian lawyer, cynically. “And we’ve got the intended charges.”

“Which are?”

“Conspiracy to murder, murder, membership of a terrorist organization, terrorism, espionage and discharging a weapon with intent to endanger or take life,” enumerated Noskov.

“Espionage?” isolated Charlie, curiously.

“They’ve trawled through the statute book and will probably come up with some they haven’t got to yet,” said Noskov, with continued cynicism. “Don’t forget it’s only the initial, legally required arraignment. The prosecution will formally lay the charges, I’ll formally enter a plea of not guilty to each and that’ll be that for the next ten or twenty or however many custodial remands the prosecution ask for.”

“Perhaps,” said Anne, offering their individual bottles to each man for refills.

“What’s that mean?” questioned Charlie.

“Bendall’s demanding to address the court,” she said. “When we told him tomorrow wasn’t the time or the place he threatened to dismiss us and defend himself.” She hesitated. “That’s when we could have done with you most, to calm him down.”

Charlie accepted the persistent criticism. “We’re here to review. Let’s do just that, assemble what we’ve got.”

“Or rather what we haven’t got,” said Anne. “Give us your analysis against ours.”

On his way to Protocnyj pereulok Charlie had believed he had everything neatly compartmented in his mind but almost as soon as he began to talk the doubt arose. The undoubted conspiracy was brilliantly conceived by people with sufficient power, influence and knowledge to penetrate KGB-era material and come literally within a hair’s breadth of a sniper’s rifle sight to assassinating two presidents. As it was, they’d killed one and by a fluke of an instinctive movement maimed the wife of another. Anne cut in, impressively advocatorial, when Charlie talked of a brotherhood and listed what they’d believed he’d extracted from Bendall about it, even managing a passing imitation of the man’s wailing dirge.

“Delusory, to the point of severe fantacism,” she reminded. “And that’s from our own experts! OK, we know from the number of shots fired and the different caliber of the bullets that there was a conspiracy but any half decent prosecution with a television film like they’ve got will cut us to pieces if we start talking of stupid bonding songs and blood brothers.”

“We’ve got an irrefutable defense to murder,” said Noskov. “The rest only just helps with a mitigating defence on the evidence of mental instability.”

“He’d have believed it, though, wouldn’t he?” said Charlie, slowly. “Someone who was easily deluded, retreated into fantasy in preference to his own shitty existence, would grab at the blood brother nonsense.”

“Where’s that take us?” asked Anne.

Charlie didn’t know but his feet throbbed, which was a good sign. “What are the inconsistencies! The things that don’t fit?”

“Most if it,” said Anne, despairingly.

“No!” refused Charlie. “Let’s go through it again, to find what doesn’t fit. Unarguable facts. It’s brilliantly … No!” Charlie stopped himself. “It’s a professionally conceived operation, the sort of assassination that would have needed the expertise of an organization trained and equipped to carry out authorized killings …”

“The FSB and before them the KGB,” interrupted Anne.

“And before them all the rest,” agreed Charlie. “We know from the different calibration of the two different rifles that there were two different marksmen, each capable of firing a total of five shots in under eight seconds. Professional marksmanship but not professional planning. If it had been truly professional, the rifles would have at least been of the same caliber …”

“An inconsistency,” recognized Noskov.

“Let’s mark it,” Charlie agreed. “Now let’s look at all the others. George Bendall, a dysfunctional, mentally unstable-but mentally malleable-man who was long ago trained as a marksman. A third rifle but only two bullets, because they know he can’t hit the intended targets and if he hits anyone else-which he fortunately didn’t-it doesn’t matter. Purpose? The dupe who is intended to take the blame. His cowed, frightened mother who doesn’t appear to know anything, yet is murdered in a jail for which the organization with the capability to commit assassination is responsible. And his apparent-his only -best friend, also possibly murdered in what was made to look like an accident on a level crossing. Anything I’ve missed out?”

“Bendall’s mystery pentathol injection,” reminded Anne.

“OK, let’s add that,” accepted Charlie. “Anything else?”

“Orkulov and the KGB,” said Noskov, simply. “Where’s that slot in?”

“It doesn’t, if its successor service is involved; whatever the changes, they rarely shaft their own …” Charlie hesitated again, remembering the number of times he’d been strung out to dry. “Not often, anyway.”

“Okulov appointed a presidential commission into the FSB,” argued Anne.

“After the shooting and with the finger pointing at them and him,” said Charlie. “Politically he didn’t have any alternative.” Into his mind’s eye came the two taunting photographs of Vasili Gregorovich Isakov: what the fuck was it he couldn’t see! With everything else so fragmented this discussion wouldn’t be taken forward by his getting the prints from his office and inviting the lawyers’ examination. “Is that it?”

Both lawyers nodded their heads.

“So what’s there that shouldn’t be?”

“Like I said, most of it,” remarked Anne.

“That’s not helping,” threw back Charlie, balancing her earlier criticism.

“You know the impression I’m increasingly getting?” invited Anne.

Both men looked at her, waiting.

“I don’t find it difficult to imagine that there’s someone on the inside of this investigation manipulating the whole bloody lot of us, just as they manipulated George Bendall.”

There was a long silence.

“One of the conspirators?” said Noskov, finally.