Kings of Many Castles (37 page)

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Authors: Brian Freemantle

BOOK: Kings of Many Castles
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“That’s your right,” recognized Natalia.
“I know it is.”
 
Charlie reached his decision-the only one there realistically could have been-long before he got to the American embassy. It was going to be the first time in his never-lose, never-be-beaten life that he’d turned his back on a half-finished operation. And he didn’t give a shit. Integrity was Natalia’s problem, not his. He didn’t care if she was even peripherally, unwittingly, involved: the suspicion was probably an aberration, like so many other bloody stupid things he’d done in the last few days. But he couldn’t take the chance. The only consideration was bridge building: keeping himself and Natalia and Sasha together. And to do that he was prepared to make any compromise and every concession.
Anne Abbott would expect an explanation. Which would be easy. He’d simply lie and insist that Bendall didn’t have a tattoo. Not tell her about Davidov or Agayan at all. Which only left Vladimir Sakov, whom she did know about. Easy again. She was more aware than he was that he had no legal authority to arrest or interrogate the cameraman. He’d tell Anne he’d done the only thing possible, alerting the Russians, and leave it at that. It wasn’t important anymore to impress Anne. Madness to have tried—wanted to-in the first place, to have been flattered by the adventure.
Should he admit it to Natalia? Confess to the madness that it had been and plead her forgiveness: flagellate himself, if that’s what it took? What if she couldn’t forgive him? Consider it his final betrayal, to go with all the rest. Too dangerous a strategy. Safer to say nothing, neither deny nor confirm. It was, after all, only intuition, remarkable though that had been. The next few days-he hoped not the next few weeks—weren’t going to be the best fun he’d ever had but he’d brought the ashes on his own head so he’d have to live
with it. Just as long as Natalia was living it with him.
There was an atmosphere of flatness—of everything being on half power—about the American incident room. John Kayley came odorously from his side office and said, “Tell me you’ve come up with something to keep this investigation on the road.”
“Like what?”
Kayley shook his head, in defeat. “We’re stymied. I’ve got everyone carrying out a total review but we’ve done that already, days ago. Now everything’s under Russian control.”
“Where is Olga?” asked Charlie, looking into the empty office.
“Hasn’t shown. I’ve got calls in. What are your people saying in London?”
“I’m to sit and do nothing, until told otherwise. Yours?”
“I’ve still got a murder and the maiming of the president’s wife, by a person or persons unknown. And until I find who those persons are, my ass is being burned every hour on the hour. Scamell’s gone to the Foreign Ministry, to try diplomatic pressure to get us actively involved but all we’ll get is the runaround. I’m fucked, Charlie. For the first time in my life, I don’t have a lead to follow or a path to take. After the fuck up with the director I thought I was fireproof but not any longer. This could be goodbye John Deke Kayley. So all suggestions will be gratefully received.”
The way to take everything forward-probably solved it allburst upon Charlie with complete clarity. He said, “Sorry, mate. I’m as stymied as you are.”
 
Charlie bypassed both Richard Brooking and Anne Abbott, once more locking himself away in his riverview office and actually standing at the window, running the idea through his mind for problems and finding none. Except one: causing difficulties for Natalia if she was being manipulated in some way, which was as high as he was any longer prepared to consider her being an unwitting inside source. And the danger of which was, after all, why he intended lying to Anne Abbott and doing nothing about what he’d discovered that day.
Turning his back, Charlie reminded himself again, for the first time ever. It irked him, like the nagging, persistent pain from an
abscess that was going to go on hurting until it was lanced. Whatever compromise or concession, he thought in further reminder. His personal difficulty was that giving up had always been the one compromise he’d never been prepared to make. So now was the time to learn. At least he knew himself he could probably have brought everything to a conclusion although examined as closely as he was examining now it wasn’t one hundred percent certain that he and Kayley could have instilled sufficient fear.
Brooking agreed to see Charlie at once and said again how grateful he was when Charlie delivered the death certificate. A complication had arisen with the Russians arguing the embassy was responsible for Vera Bendall’s burial as well but at least in her case they had a certificate. The housing officer was arranging it all. They were hoping Peter Bendall’s plot would be big enough to accommodate two more coffins. With luck they’d manage the interment without the media learning about it.
Anne said it was bad luck that George Bendall hadn’t been tattooed but that it had been worth checking and agreed that they had no jurisdiction whatsoever to investigate Vladimir Sakov. She wondered what Olga would do with the information about Vladimir Sakov and Charlie said he didn’t know but the militia colonel had promised to keep him informed.
“So what’s that leave you to do?” she asked.
“Wait for London’s instructions,” said Charlie.
They were waiting for him on his personal fax machine when he got back to his office. With Bendall—and his killer-dead the enquiry became entirely one between Russia and the United States of America. He was to take no further active part in the investigation, merely to maintain a liaison role to enable the file to be closed when it was satisfactorily concluded.
Now he’d been officially told to turn his back, Charlie recognized. It still irked him because he’d never done that when officially ordered, either.
Charlie called out for Sasha, which he always did if he got home to Lesnaya at a time she would be up, but there was no scurried response. Natalia was sitting in one of the large lounge chairs, facing the door, as if she were waiting.
Charlie said, “I hoped you’d be home.”
“Did you?”
“Where’s Sasha?”
“Sleeping over at Marina’s.”
“She’s only five.” Marina was Sasha’s closest friend at preschool.
“Five and a half. Which is old enough.”
Retreat, Charlie warned himself. “Of course it is. We could go out to dinner if you like.”
“No,”
He’d poured the ashes over his own head, Charlie reminded himself. “I’m getting a drink. Would you like one?”
“No.”
From the drinks tray he said, “London’s told me to stand away from the investigation. Leave everything to the militia and the Americans.”
“Have they?” She shouldn’t have packed the cases waiting in the bedroom because she didn’t want to do it. Now that the moment had come-now that she’d made the plans—Natalia wanted to pull back but knew she couldn’t. Or could she? It was only the cases, really. Couldn’t she hide them in a closet, stay after he’d left the following morning and unpack them?
Charlie sat on the matching couch, close enough to reach out and touch her but not doing so. From the attitude so far it was going to be a long time before he’d be touching her. “How did today go?”
Was it fair to seek his advice? There was no one else-another, finally accepted professional although now cynical reason for changing
her mind—and Charlie had a bat-like protective antenna. “Not the way I expected.”
Better! seized Charlie. “Let’s go through it.”
Natalia did, hesitantly to begin with, and Charlie didn’t once interrupt hoping he’d found the first bridge. When she finally finished he said, “I think you’re right about pressure from Okulov: he’s got to do something to impress Washington to get the treaty he needs for the election. And purging the FSB—which needs purging from what you’ve told me—would be a hell of a way publicly to do it.”
“With the commission, which recommends the purge, the casualty of any battle between the communist-leaning FSB and the existing group in the Kremlin.”
Natalia was right, Charlie accepted. And at risk if the presidential shooting was left to run inconclusively into the ground. So what about his own rock and a hard place, trying to protect Natalia by not using what he knew against endangering her if he did? According to everything she’d told him it had been Natalia—provably, on secretariat tapes and in secretariat notebooks-who had been consistently critical of the FSB from the outset of the official enquiry. With Yuri Trishin, the president’s chief of staff, unpersuaded until today. Which showed Natalia—arguably (although she wasn’t) a disenchanted former KGB officer—the prime instigator of any FSB overhaul. An obvious and unavoidable target. It could also be the unproven, unproveable evidence of Yuri Trishin—never Natalia, even unwittingly-being the internal source to the conspiracy. A new mantra echoed in Charlie’s mind: unproven, unproveable. “I want to talk something through with you again.”
“I want to go on talking about this,” misunderstood Natalia, deciding at the same time that there were several closets in the unused bedrooms in which she could hide the cases until the following day.
“That’s what I
am
thinking about.”
“I’m sorry … I thought …” she stumbled. Shit, shit and double shit! Even Charlie’s frustration cursing was automatic for her.
Good, thought Charlie. She was on the defensive: a footplank if not a bridge. Every little helped so he’d push it as far across the gulf as he could. “Don’t try to think ahead of me.
Talk
with me. What reason was there for Trishin’s u-turn today?”
“Karelin stonewalling, as always.”
“As always,” echoed Charlie, snatching at the response. “He’s stonewalled at every encounter, even sent sacrifices at the beginning.”
“Yes?” Natalia accepted, questioningly.
“Do you remember our conversation about there being an inside source—a leak—for every move in the investigation to be sidetracked or misdirected?”
“Yes?” she questioned again. She couldn’t follow him, see the point towards which he was going.
“Could it have been Trishin:
be
Trishin?”
Natalia’s mind was in a turmoil, too many unconnected thoughts fluttering in a wind-blown paperchase. “Doing what?”
“Using you … manipulating … ?”
“
No!
” Natalia’s mind cleared, the paperchase wind abruptly blowing away the uncertainty. “You didn’t mean using me … manipulating me. You thought it
was
me! Suspected
me
! Imagined I was part of something … !” She was forward in the chair, eyes bulged in outrage.
“No!” frantically denied Charlie, despairing of her psychologytuned intuition. “I’m frightened you’ve been used …”
“I have, haven’t I Charlie? Used for such a very long time!”
“Stop it, Natalia!” he shouted. “Stop this going wrong … getting any worse. I can help … there’s a way …”
She jerked up but having done so didn’t know what to do, thrusting forward but then coming back, to stand over him to stare down contemptuously. “Sasha is staying with Marina’s family because I asked if she could. I didn’t want her to be here tonight. To see. I’d even changed my mind. Was going to try to forget whatever you did with that woman because it could have been a mistake … something you didn’t think about. But you don’t do anything without thinking about it, do you, you bastard! You’re even ready to think I’d cheat on
you
: be prepared to mislead your fucking precious professionalism …”
“Stop it!” Charlie shouted again. “This is stupid … shouldn’t be happening …”
“I’m not part of anything … a conspiracy or a cover up or whatever
else it is your contorted, convoluted mind imagines. You want to know what I’m guilty of! I’m guilty of believing that you could change and love me and trust me and dear God, wasn’t that a mistake! You did it very well, Charlie. You got a posting here and you realized how useful I’d be and you managed to make it work for all this time …”
She was hysterical, beyond immediate reason. “Sit down. Please sit down and listen to me, Natalia. You’re wrong. All the way wrong. Sit down and listen to me:
listen
to what I have to say. What has to be said.”
“I’m leaving, Charlie,” announced Natalia, shaking her head as she walked away. “It’s over. Should never have begun.” She emerged at once from the bedroom with a case in either hand.
“I’m asking you not to leave.” Charlie was standing, his hands out.
“You should learn to trust someone sometime, Charlie. But you never will.”
“Where are you going?”
“An hotel, initially.”
“Which one?”
“Don’t become a nuisance.”
“What about Sasha?”
“What about her?”
“What are you going to tell her?”
“How about the father who didn’t want to see her for the first three years she was born had to go away again?”
“That’s not fair. Or true.”
“Let’s not get into a discussion about fairness or truth.”
“I love you!” Charlie called after her.
Natalia quietly closed the door behind herself.
 
Charlie waited at the British embassy entrance to authorize John Kayley’s admission. The American said: “You look rough. Bad night?”
“Kind of,” said Charlie. Wallowing in a lake of self-pity and Islay malt hadn’t been the best idea. “You mind passing on the cigars for a while?”
“Not if you tell me what I’m here for.”
“Pictures and moving lips.”
Kayley followed the video struggle between Bendall and Vladimir Sakov with the lip-read transcript before him and did the same directly afterwards with the courtroom killing but on this showing Charlie freeze-framed the tattoo comparison between the NTV cameraman and the FBI-collected photograph of Vasili Isakov. Charlie said, “Bendall and Davidov have the same tattoos in the same place. Their bodies are at the Burdenko mortuary but the hospital wants to get rid of them.”
“We need photographs.”
“London’s taken responsibility for Bendall’s body. We might be able to bluff the hospital about Davidov but at the moment the priority is with the living more than the dead, before he gets dead.”
“You’ve done good, Charlie. Damned good. You worked it out to the very end already?”
“Not yet,” Charlie admitted. “But I think I know how to.” Would Natalia ever learn what he’d done, to keep her safe? He already had the list of Moscow hotels to call later, to find out where she was. “How’s this measure for size?”
Once, as Charlie talked, Kayley’s hand strayed to his cigars but the American remembered in time, smiling apologetically. When Charlie finished Kayley said, “We swing a trick like this, I’m permanently in the Bureau’s Hall of Fame and you’re a to-die-for friend for life. But we’ll never get it to work.”
“That mean you don’t want to give it a try?”
“Sure as hell no! But we’ll only get one hit.”
“You think Washington will go for it?”
“The president’s wife was shot, for Christ’s sake! By a bullet meant for him! And you ask if they’ll go for it!”
“You going to ask them, first?”
Kayley snorted the rejection. “It doesn’t work, my tit’s in the ringer for failing. If it does work, I’ll announce it and wait for the presidential congratulations.”
“Officially I’m on watch and listen, no active participation.”
“It’s my call, anyway.”
“And there’s no jurisdiction.”
“Now you’re trying to talk me out of it!”
“Just getting the rules of engagement clear between us,” insisted Charlie. “Like you said, we only get one hit. So where?”
“The station says he’s off sick. I called without saying who I was.”
“Let’s hope he’s not too sick.”
Vladimir Petrovich Sakov didn’t sound too sick but there wasn’t the belligerence there had been in the mess room of the NTV studios. The muffled demand to identify themselves was shouted through the chipped door of the apartment in a crumbling block on Kazakova Ulitza gradually being shaken off its sand-ballasted foundations by the perpetual shuddering traffic of the inner peripherique behind and the reverberating railway line in front. When they said who they were the voice came back stronger. “Fuck off!”
“Relieved it’s us?” Kayley shouted back.
There was no reply.
“We know, Vladimir Petrovich,” said Charlie. “We’ve got all the proof we need, too. We even know about the tattoos.”
Kayley gently pushed Charlie out of the direct firing line through the door, pulling himself to the opposite side. The American said loudly, “You worried? I’d be, if I were you. I’d be shit scared.”
There was still no response from inside.
“I just realized something,” said Charlie. “This railway line is the one on which Vasili Isakov was murdered, further up at Timiryazev, isn’t it? You think they might try that again?”
“Why not?” said Kayley, responding to Charlie’s nodded invitation. “You got away with it well enough last time, didn’t you Vladimir?”
“What’s it like, knowing you’re going to die and that there’s nothing you can do about it?” asked Charlie. “You really must be shit scared.”
“You want your life saved, you open the door, Vlad old buddy,” advised the American. “We’re your only chance, so stop being an asshole.”
The shuffling was audible on the other side.
“We’re waiting,” said Charlie.
“But not for much longer,” added Kayley.
There was the grating of more than one lock being released ahead
of a longer clattering sound. Vladimir Sakov put himself to one side, for a warning view of several meters along the outside corridor, head-nodding them into the room. The long sleeves of the wellpressed blue woollen shirt were buttoned, hiding the body markings, and the jeans were much cleaner than those at his meeting with Charlie at the TV station. The apartment was surprisingly neat and well furnished, in contrast to the outside neglect and there were photographs—one of instant interest was of a much slimmer, younger Sakov in army uniform—but Charlie didn’t get the impression of permanence. The impression he did get was of a very different man from the gut-rot swigging slob of the TV mess room.
Charlie turned at the repeated clattering and saw there was a cat’s cradle of chains criss-crossing the inside of the door. The dead lock and mortise looked new. A Makarov lay on a table which was totally hidden from the outside when the door was open.
Kayley gestured to the handgun and said, “You’re going to need more than that to keep you alive, once everybody knows what we know.”

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