Kings of Many Castles cm-13

by Brian Freemantle

  Trishin sat trying to anticipate towards which abyss he was being prodded. Unable to, he reluctantly said, “Yes.”

  “And there’s also the undertaking, personally announced by the acting president, to make public the findings of this enquiry?”

  “Yes,” agreed Trishin again, even more entangled.

  It was going better than she’d hoped but it would be wrong for her to read too much too soon into their confusion. She went back to Karelin. “One of your first remarks to us was to deny emphatically any FSB part in an assassination conspiracy?” Natalia thought some of the stiffness had gone from the nondescript man.

  Karelin said, “Which I just as emphatically repeat.”

  “And which will be set out very specifically in our conclusions, all of which are to be made fully public,” said Natalia. That hadn’t been agreed-discussed even-and she waited for Trishin’s challenge, but it didn’t come. Having allowed the wait, Natalia went on, “Aren’t we limiting ourselves by only discussing an assassination conspiracy?”

  “I’m not sure what you’re talking about,” complained Karelin.

  Natalia could see her way now-actually realizing there was something positive to learn-and was not in a hurry, the longer she strung it out the further Filitov and Trishin would be stranded. “Public, international perception,” said Natalia.

  “I still don’t understand,” protested Karelin, who believed he did but was unwilling to risk a mistake.

  “There has been considerable ill feeling between us and the Americans over some aspects of the overall investigation,” reminded Natalia. “It’s reflected-clearly through informed and official leaksin the highly critical media attacks in the American press. You have been remarkably open with us, conceding that the FSB has been seriously embarrassed. Wouldn’t you agree, Viktor Ivanovich, that such an honest admission exposes you and your service to international media accusation-speculation at the very least-of complicity?”

  “An accusation I am totally refuting!” insisted Karelin. She was right, he admitted to himself.

  Natalia abruptly switched back to Trishin, intercepting as she did so the look of concern passing between the men on either side of her. “Denied or not, it is the sort of hostile analysis the international media will make and against which it is necessary for the FSB to guard, wouldn’t you agree, Yuri Fedorovich?”

  “Not if the denials were made strongly enough,” tried the politician.

  “Are you, Viktor Ivanovich, prepared to take that chance with the reputation of your organisation at stake?” demanded Natalia, moving between the intelligence chairman and the chief of staff before switching to the prosecutor. “Are you, Yuri Fedorvich?” She had them! Boxed and tied with ribbon.

  “Isn’t this escalating out of proportion?” said Filitov, recognizing how totally their intended isolation of Natalia had been thrown back at them.

  “Answer your own question,” Natalia returned at once. “Outside militia participation will show the FSB and its chairman willing to be totally transparent, to international opinion and judgment. Prove it has nothing to hide.” It wouldn’t prove anything of the sort-the FSB, like its predecessor, were adept enough to conceal anything they didn’t want found out-but that wasn’t the point. At that precise moment the point was justifying any sort of outside monitor.

  “It’s a convincing argument,” said Karelin. “I’m glad it’s been made.”

  “And I’m personally glad you’ve acknowledged it,” said Natalia.Neither Filitov nor Trishin would be so happy with the secretariat transcripts now. She wondered how much more benefit there was to be achieved.

  Karelin lifted and let drop the no longer agitated hand that still held the proposal for militia involvement. “And I appreciate the courtesy. And the consideration.” There was even, finally, a fleeting smile.

  “You have no problem with the idea?”

  “I need to consider it further. Which I will do keeping your arguments very much in mind, Natalia Fedova.”

  “You said one of the uncovered problems has already been dealt with?” prompted Natalia.

  “Colonel Spassky was held responsible for the internal security breach,” disclosed Karelin. “He has been dismissed and a new directorate chairman appointed to instigate an entirely redesigned system. It is conceivable that during that reorganization there might emerge some further information on the interference itself.”

  Natalia acknowledged that Spassky had to be the most likely and available scapegoat. That had been the ineffectual man’s role from the very beginning. “You left yesterday to carry out a Registry search for us?”

  “None of the names from the Ministry of Defense with which I was supplied appear on any Registry or Archive documents of the current FSB or the KGB which preceded it,” said Karelin, formally.

  “That would seem to bring to an end any further assistance you might be able to give us?” said Trishin.

  “Does it?” came in Natalia, sharply. “The identity of any who might be involved could be among material intentionally removed as part of the conspiracy, couldn’t it?”

  “Most certainly, if any of them were part of it,” agreed Karelin.

  Everything had to end on her personal terms, decided Natalia, or perhaps more essentially to her personal benefit. “We’ve no other witnesses, unless you can suggest anyone else.”

  “There’s no one,” confirmed Karelin, at once.

  “At the moment the FSB is inextricably-and inescapably-linked with a very carefully planned treason because of which it can only be discredited,” Natalia spelled out.

  “Until we prove otherwise,” said Karelin.

  There it was, the top-to-bottom investigations Karelin hadn’t d closed and into which he wouldn’t for a moment admit outside in vestigators! “Such very careful planning wouldn’t have been possible by disaffected personnel abruptly dismissed your service?”

  “I don’t think so,” agreed Karelin.

  “Could there be factions still within the FSB that might want to discredit you personally and the organization as a whole?”

  “If there are, they will be discovered,” insisted Karelin, in further confirmation of the undisclosed purge.

  “Can you suggest to us who-or what-else might be responsible?” asked Trishin, anxious to restore himself.

  “Not at this moment,” said Karelin. “I’m discounting a foreign intelligence service. One could not have infiltrated to this degree.”

  “I’ve used the word discredit,” reminded Natalia. “If this conspiracy isn’t totally explained and the conspirators-all the conspirators-brought to justice, couldn’t we be talking about the destruction of the FSB? Certainly about the need for yet another but more complete restructuring?”

  “All of these difficulties have been realized and are being acted upon,” assured Karelin.

  The unbreachable confidence was wavering, thought Natalia. “They are also difficulties that we will necessarily have to recognize, in our report to the acting president.”

  “Are you warning me you believe the FSB is actively connected with this outrage!” demanded Karelin.

  “I’m certainly not!” said Filitov.

  “I am advising you of the evidence-and the observations-with which we have to work,” said Natalia. “With the hope of further contact and cooperation between us.”

  Charlie judged it so far to be a day more confusing than most-too many of which had already been confusing enough-couldn’t see how it was going to get any better and wished now he hadn’t responded to instinct by returning to Fadeeva Ulitza instead of going back to Burdenko Hospital with the lawyers, defense psychiatrists and Donald Morrison. The initial uncertainty was the concierge’sdisclosure of the arrival at Boris Davidov’s abandoned apartment, within an hour of his having been there the previous night, of an FSB squad. According to the caretaker they’d asked similar questions to everyone else and appeared to be trying to locate the man, which they wouldn’t have had to do if he was
still a serving officer but certainly would if he’d served in the past and needed to be removed from awkward questioning. Another perhaps far more feasible thought-countered only by Charlie’s impression of Bendall’s reaction-was that the FSB had joined the game of musical chairs and were chasing each of the fifteen names, in the footsteps of the FBI and the militia.

  To test that possibility Charlie went directly from Fadeeva Ulitza to the American embassy and was further frustrated. Nowhere, in any of the FBI reports, was there a reference to their overlapping with either the intelligence or police service. Of the fifteen, eight-including Davidov-were logged as being not immediately traceable but with enquiries continuing. Two were serving prison sentences and another had died four years earlier, shot by the militia in an attempted armed robbery in an Arbat jewellery store. Three were working for security firms offering protection to Western businessmen in Moscow from organized mafia and the last was an instructor in the gymnasium at the Balchug Kempinski hotel. None of the security men nor the gym instructor remembered Georgi Gugin as serving with them in the army, despite the television and newspaper pictures. Nothing of the militia efforts to trace the fifteen was yet logged on the centralized system.

  John Kayley came down into the incident room from the upstairs embassy as Charlie finished his fruitless computer scroll. The American was in shirtsleeves dark with sweat across his shoulders and beneath his arms.

  Kayley said, “You want to guess how many Secret Servicemen we got coming here with the president?”

  “No,” refused Charlie.

  “Seventy-five! They hear a sound louder than a sparrow’s fart they’ll open fire and there’ll be another massacre.”

  “You part of it?”

  Kayley shook his head. “I got a court hearing to attend and exsoldiers to find.”

  “How’s it going?”

  Kayley gestured to Charlie’s blank computer screen. “What you see is what we got. Which so far is fuck all. You all set for tomorrow?”

  “Short of just about everything I’d like,” said Charlie, honestly.

  “You think we’re ever going to get it?” asked Kayley, kindling one of his cigars into a perfumed cloud.

  Charlie considered for several minutes before he replied. “No,” he said, confronting the doubt properly for the first time. “I don’t think from the way it’s going at the moment that we stand a chance in hell.”

  Charlie’s seriousness appeared to concentrate Kayley’s mind. “And I believe you’re probably right. I don’t think we are, either.” Thank Christ, he thought, for the Teflon protection of Paul Smith’s over-reactive e-mail.

  Charlie seized upon Anne Abbott’s unexpected, car phone requests for a preparing, pre-hearing review-eager for a sounding board after the brief exchange with Kayley-without waiting for Morrison’s return to the incident room. Arkadi Noskov was already tightly wedged into the largest available chair-which would have enveloped anyone else-in Anne’s embassy office, vodka glass contentedly resting on his tablecloth of a beard. Charlie accepted the offered scotch, even though it was a mix. Anne wasn’t drinking.

  “So how’d it go?” Charlie asked.

  “It would have been better if you’d been there,” said Anne.

  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?”