Brian Freemantle - Kings of Many Castles

“I think you’ll want to hear Mr. North,” said the man.

“What!” demanded Anandale, emerging into the outer dressing room.

“Kayley’s got one of the guys involved: the cameraman on thegantry with Bendall. He’s defected and agreed to go before a Grand Jury. Kayley’s on his way with him now.”

For a moment Anandale stood with his head bowed, savoring the moment. Then he looked up, smiling. “I don’t want a single rat to run. The security blackout on this is absolute. Tell Justice I want a Grand Jury empanelled at once, starting today. And I want to see Kayley the moment he hands the guy over.”

It took Charlie less than an hour to locate Natalia’s booking at the Radisson Slavjanskaya Hotel, on Berezhkavskaya naberezhnaya. Having done so he sat uncertainly in his embassy office for a further thirty minutes, finally deciding against a personal encounter, particularly in front of Sasha whom he was sure would be staying there with her.

The longest time of all was spent composing the letter because Charlie always had the greatest difficulty openly expressing personal feelings. Which was probably the root cause of all his problems with Natalia, he acknowledged. He wrote, finally, that he loved her and he loved Sasha and wanted them both back with him at Lesnaya. He was sorry how badly things had collapsed but that it wasn’t irreparable. All they needed to do was to talk: to get the misunderstandings out of the way, the compromises accepted. He was certainly ready to make compromises and hoped she was, too. There also might be another reason for them to speak very shortly. She knew the number at which he’d be waiting.

Charlie took the metro to the Kievskaya stop and was careful entering the foyer, not wanting any accidental meeting. He waited to see the receptionist put the envelope in the pigeonhole for room 46. There was no key displayed, which meant she had to be there.

He was back in the Lesnaya apartment by eight. No message had been left on the answering machine during the time he was away. The telephone didn’t ring during the rest of the night, either.

John Kayley was pouch-eyed, bristle-chinned, and the alwayscrumpled suit in which he’d lived for close to forty-eight hours looked like the dustbin liner a bag lady would have rejected. Around him hung the sourness of curdled cigar odor. Charlie had snatched at the outside line, hope flaring that Kayley’s call from Sheremet’yevo had been Natalia. He again waited at the embassy entrance for the American’s arrival direct from the airport.

When he did get there Charlie said, “Now you’re the one looking rough.”

“But happy,” said Kayley.

The telephone warning had given Charlie time to have the Islay malt and glasses ready. Pouring, Charlie said, “We got all the reasons we want to celebrate?”

Kayley offered his glass towards Charlie’s, to make the toast. As the glasses touched the American said, “You’re not going to believe it: any of it!”

“I’ve heard that a lot of times.”

“Never like this.”

“How much did you get before handing him over?” Charlie was glad the other man appeared to have sickened himself of his scented cigars: the riverview office was becoming clogged by the aromatic residue.

“Enough to get almost the whole of the conspiracy. The Grand Jury should get the rest. What they don’t will come out of the woodwork here once we issue the indictments. It’ll be Christmas wrapped.”

Charlie refilled their glasses, leaving the bottle within easy reach between them. “So what am I not going to believe?”

“It’s a KGB stalwarts’ conspiracy but it’s not a KGB conspiracy. It’s also an FSB wrecking cabal-to rebuild the old style KGBBYthe communist party who see it as their red carpet back into the Kremlin …” Kayley paused. “And who would most probably have got there if you hadn’t got in the way, Charlie.”

“My problem’s not disbelieving,” protested Charlie. “It’s understanding.”

“To understand you’ve got to hear it in sequence,” insisted Kayley. “Be patient. Sakov’s a KGB-now FSB-colonel. Career officer, originally working out of the Third Chief Directorate-responsible for monitoring the armed forces, which the armed forces resent to the point of eliminating anyone they discovered doing itwith two functions. He’s an agent-in-place, a spy within the Russian army, reporting back to Lubyanka anything and everything. The second function is as a spotter, isolating potentially useful and usable people for what was, at the time he was in Afghanistan, the KGB …”

“OK, here’s the first thing I can’t believe because I never could!” broke in Charlie. “I can’t believe any espionage service worthy of the description would isolate Bendall!”

“Usable,” repeated Kayley. “That’s how Bendall was described to Sakov by the Lubynka. Unpredictable, mad, drunk, whatever, he was still the son of a British defector. He had to have a use somehow, somewhere: they’d had him pinned to the board, like a specimen, since childhood. Sakov’s instructions are not to get too close-he says he doesn’t know who the kid’s immediate KGB Control was, within his army unit-but constantly to watch and assess. He doesn’t go for it at first, defector’s son or not, but he does concede one thing. Sober-and under daily training-Bendall’s a hell of a shot, able to take the eye out of the ace every time. And he likes killing, psychotically: in Afghanistan he used to volunteer, always out in front with his hand up. It’s an ability-and a tendency-that gets registered, like everything gets registered: remember what the wise man said about knowledge being power? That’s the watchword every espionage service in the world learned from Russian intelligence …”

“So what do they do with it, as far as Bendall is concerned?”

“File it, of course. We’re talking an old time KGB faction, total control freaks who keep records on everyone. Sakov’s army cover isas a movie and television cameraman. Gives him all the excuses to move around- film -everything and anything he wants. Another of the official divisional propaganda photographers is Vasili Gregorovich Isakov, who likes as often as he can to attach himself to Bendall’s sniper unit …”

“His Control?” anticipated Charlie.

Kayley shook his head. “You know how the saying goes, boys will be girls. Seems that the military record we got was tightened down a lot. According to Sakov, who was there, the only time Bendall showed any stability-became normal-was when he and Isakov were a couple. Bendall didn’t get drunk and he didn’t fight and he hit everything he shot at, right in the middle. But being gay in the military-any military-isn’t a good career move. They weren’t particularly discreet about it and military intelligence just arrived one day, unannounced, and took Isakov away, never to be seen again. Bendall just flaked off the wall. He became virtually suicidal: like an animal, according to Sakov. That’s when he drank diesel fuel and almost died.”

Charlie accepted that he needed the chronology for perspectiveto understand-but he was impatient to get to something he didn’t at least have partial knowledge of. Even without Kayley smoking his office was going to smell like a humidor for days. “So they throw him out?”

“And he continues to freefall. Poor, want-to-be-blind Vera convinces herself he’s stealing Western visitors’ cases at Sheremet’yevo-which he does, occasionally-but Georgi-boy’s bigger income is working as a male hooker around the tourist hotels. And how do we know? Because Russia’s now redesigned and renamed internal security service, the FSB, has an attachment on Bendall’s militia rap sheet and know every time a foreign gay has the balls to file a complaint after waking up from a night of passion to find his wallet and jewellery gone ….”