Kings of Many Castles cm-13

by Brian Freemantle

  “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 ….”

  “The militia are in on it?” clarified Charlie.

  “Just wait until I get to the cast list,” confirmed the American, topping up their glasses again. “Now we get to the broader picture. The president of the United States gets some domestic difficulties and needs a diversion. The president of Russia doesn’t look as ifhe’ll make second term unless he gets a big one. A marriage made in heaven. But the Kommunisticheskaya Partiya Rossiiskoi Federatsii see an even greater potential. The American secretary of state commutes back and forth forever, dangling a treaty banning the U.S. Nuclear Missile Defense System. An American presidential visit was trailed for months, time enough to organize the assassination of two world leaders, ensure a communist reentry into the Kremlin and wreck, to and for the communist benefit, all Russia’s intelligence organizational reforms. Everything goes back as it was before 1991, with Gorbachov a blip in Russia’s history and Yeltsin the joke he always was …”

  “That’s not a broader picture,” complained Charlie. “That’s a panoramic screen.”

  “Sit back and listen to the coup of the century,” promised Kayley. “Colonel Sakov’s out of the army by now. Working for NTV-still the ideal posting to roam with a TV identification where he wouldn’t be permitted otherwise-and where Vasili Gregorovich Isakov is chief cameraman and delighted to help an old army photographer colleague.”

  “But Sakov thinking there isn’t a coincidence?”

  “It isn’t a coincidence,” agreed Kayley. “As chief cameraman Isakov gets all the plum assignments and has even better access to places. He’s singled out for positive FSB approach to become a source before the treaty shuttling starts. When it does our conspirators find a very different use for the guy.”

  “When do I get names?” demanded Charlie, finally giving way to the impatience.

  “Two that Sakov positively knows are Nikolai Ivliyev and Aleksandr Kashva, both Communist Party deputies in the Duma. But there’ll be more when the shit hits the fan,” set out the American. “The Lubyanka traditionalists are General Gennardi Nikolaevich Mittell, first deputy director of the FSB, and General Boris Andrevich Lvov, commander of the presidential protection division. Real jewel in the crown-keeping them in front of every turn in the investigation-is Militia General Leonid Sergeevich Zenin: he’s the bearded guy in court. And Sakov also told me that although he’s not sure he thinks Pavl Filitov is in there. Zenin told him it wasFilitov, not anyone in the Justice Ministry, who rejected a murder investigation into the death of Vera Bendall. And you already know about Agayan. How’s that for having a king in every castle?”

  “In theory, unbeatable,” said Charlie. Mittel was the deputy with whom Natalia clashed on the first day of the commission hearings, he remembered. “How was it supposed to work?”

  “Did work, almost completely,” insisted Kayley. “Sakov stages an accidental encounter with Bendall, who’s cruising his favorite hotel, the National. During the reminiscences, Sakov drops the fact that Vasili Isakov is the chief cameraman at NTV. The tearful reunion takes place that same night. Isakov’s got a lot of pull: it’s easy to get the long-lost Bendall the gofers job. It’s happy families again. The conspiracy need is to get Bendall under some sort of manipulative control. He starts to settle down again but Sakov suggests to Isakov that his boyfriend will benefit from seeing a psychiatrist. Enter Guerguen Agayan, Mr. Mind Bender himself from the Serbsky Institute. In less time that it takes to say labotomy, they’ve got their Pavlov dog …”

  “Who’s planning all this?” broke in Charlie.

  “Sakov isn’t clear on that. He thinks there’s a group, a committee, in the Duma. Mittel’s the liaison, with Lvov-who’s supposed to keep the president alive! — ready to supply the route details when the time comes. But let’s get back in sequence …”

  “Sorry.”

  “Sakov says they can’t believe their luck when the presidential summit is announced, knowing they’re going to get the top prize. It’s the signal to press the well-prepared button on Bendall, by killing Isakov …”

  “Who killed him?” interrupted Charlie, again.

  “Sakov says he doesn’t know but I think he does. Maybe it was Sakov himself. He was certainly involved, admits to being with them both the night Isakov died. Bendall is distraught-inconsolable, which is what he’s supposed to be. Agayan starts putting in the fix. Convinces Bendall, whom he can apparently make jump through hoops, that Isakov was murdered on the orders of the president, Lev Yudkin. Sakov works hard to cover his ass here: claims not to know where Bendall got the rifle but I can’t see how it could have beenanyone but him. To know so much about everything else and have a blank here doesn’t make sense. He also says he doesn’t know how Agayan kept the pressure up on Bendall but that doesn’t square with me either. Like I said, a lot of the gaps are going to be filled by the Grand Jury and the outcome back here. He certainly doesn’t denybecause he can’t-knowing that Bendall was going to shoot, because his job was to kill Bendall afterwards, as we know and can prove: Sakov says that had he got Bendall over the edge but he’d survived, the intention was for the waiting Lvov to shoot him on the ground. But that Lvov couldn’t, because of the delay of the fight alerting everyone to what was happening.”

  “Now it’s all falling apart around them?” accepted Charlie, adding to their glasses.

  “Panic time, because of what Sakov’s said during the fight,” agreed Kayley. “But these guys are resilient. They know from Lvov, who’s right there literally on top of Bendall, that the guy’s unconscious. By the time he comes round in Burdenko after surgery, Agayan is there, authorized to surgeon-administrator Badim’s satisfaction by General Leonid Zenin, in over-all charge of the militia investigation …”

  “Why doesn’t Agayan kill him?”

  “Sakov says he doesn’t know how Agayan managed it-it’ll certainly be a hard question for Badim-but no one else at the hospital apart from Agayan was ever totally alone with Bendall. If Bendall died we’d have demanded an autopsy. Agayan would ha
ve put himself in the frame, slipping him some unauthorized drug. And obviously he couldn’t do it in front of Badim or the nurses or the guards. It was just always too busy.”

  “Jesus!” said Charlie. “And we thought only Sakov would be shitting himselfl”

  “I told you Agayan was Mr. Mind Bender. The way Sakov understands it Agayan convinces Bendall he’s got a second chance of revenge against Lev Yudkin, in public. By making the exposing declaration he was trying in court when Davidov shot him …”

  “Now there’s a lot of questions here,” stopped Charlie. “Bendall knows Sakov tried to kill him.”

  “Because all along, according to Agayan, Sakov was in on the plotto kill Isakov. Which he was! But Agayan convinced the poor bastard that Sakov was working for the Kremlin, under Yudkin’s orders! That was going to be part of the courtroom denunciation.”

  “Which gets us to Davidov. How’s he get into the picture?”

  “Panoramic screen,” corrected Kayley, smiling. “According to Sakov a KGB department unaffected by the supposed reforms and still maintained within the FSB is the Executive Action Department-Department V-to organize and carry out assassinations. Davidov served in it. He was simply ordered by Deputy Director Mittel to carry out the killing. Davidov was heading for a particular door because he’d been told his escape was arranged: actually there was another shooter outside-probably one of the gunmen who shot at the presidential group outside the White House-waiting to take Davidov out. But the militiaman put him down first.”

  Charlie shook his head. “Davidov had the same tattoo. I saw it!”

  “It’s not an arrow between two lines: it’s supposed to be a bullet, in the barrel of a gun. It’s traditional for marksmen, in Russian army sniper units, marks them out as an elite. Which I remember you getting close to unscrambling. Davidov was a sniper, although Sakov doesn’t remember him being a contemporary of Bendalls. He must have been ‘spotted’ by someone and brought into Department V when he left the army. His KGB records are lifted, along with everything else that was taken, probably to be embarrassingly ‘found’ when he’s identified from his army records.”

  “Isakov and Sakov were both cameramen,” challenged Charlie.

  “It was a love symbol for Isakov, when he and Bendall were together in the army. Made them elite-special-together. It was Agayan who insisted Sakov have it done, to make him part of the group-a blood brother-when they all got together at the TV station. Sakov had all the other shit put on his arms to make him one of the boys in the army: his father was actually a career office, a major in the KGB. It was Agayan who guided Sakov organizing their special evenings, drinking and singing that wailing song, which again was some fraternity crap they went in for in Afghanistan.”

  Charlie was glad he had more Islay malt in the office closet. The bottle they were drinking was almost empty. “Mittel lifted all the missing records and files, totally to incriminate the FSB?”

  “Every one, he and whoever else he’s working with at the Lubyanka,” agreed Kayley.

  “Making it-and Viktor Karelin’s chairmanship-look ridiculous?”

  “Karelin could never have survived.”

  “Neither could Okulov,” recognized Charlie, remembering the recommendations of Natalia’s official enquiry. “Whatever the outcome of the commission-or whether Okulov accepted its findings or not-there would have been no way Okulov could have convinced anybody the assassinations weren’t orchestrated with the help of old KGB friends, to get his presidency confirmed. It would have been a walk-over for the communists.”

  “Even with their problems with the commission, it was a brilliant game plan,” said Kayley, emptying the last of the bottle between them. “The communists win by a landslide, Okulov, Karelin and reforms vanish into oblivion and the communists regain the Kremlin and hold the Duma. Gennardi Mittel gets the chairmanship of the FSB and Leonid Zenin transfers as his deputy. Vladimir Sakov goes back into the fold, his field life over, to become chairman of whatever FSB Directorate he wants and Boris Lvov is appointed head of the militia. And finally Washington is given the stiff middle finger to its Son of Star Wars treaty in the hope of making things awkward for the American president, even if he’s not killed.”

  Charlie heard the other man out but said at once, “What problems with the presidential commission?”

  “Mittel apparently persuaded Karelin to let him represent the FSB, so he could really stir the shit. But the chairperson was a fiesty gal who sent him packing and insisted on Karelin appearing personally. And Zenin expected to get the commission chairmanship: imagine that as a destructive duo!”

  Fiesty gal, picked out Charlie. Natalia was still in danger if the Grand Jury hearing didn’t evidentially produce everything Kayley had just told him. “They’ll run, make some move when they know Sakov’s gone!”

  Kayley looked curiously at the bottom of his empty glass. “Anticipated it!” he said, triumphantly. “Mittel was Sakov’s direct contact. I had Sakov call him-recording it, obviously-to say he wasgoing out of town. Got Mittel on tape ordering him-a supposed television cameraman, don’t forget! — to stay in Moscow and wait to be told what to do next, that everything was under control. Sakov comes from Gorkiy: that’s where they’ll be looking for the next few days, not Washington.”

  “How quickly will the Grand Jury return the indictments?”

  “Sakov’s the only witness. It only took me about four hours to get what I’ve told you.”

  “What’s the route then?”

  Kayley shrugged. “Anandale talks to Okulov direct, to fix their simultaneous prime slot television appearances, giving Okulov time to brief Karelin to get everyone in the bag first. And you know the best bit?”

  “What?”

  “Okulov gets his sweeping election victory when the communists are exposed. And Anandale gets the sons-of-bitches that maimed his wife, maybe even the actual guys from Department V who pulled the trigger. But without having to suspend or cancel America’s missile defense system, which guarantees his second term, too. Ain’t that the prettiest thing?”

  “And you?”

  “I was called by the president into the Oval Office and with the acting head of the FBI and Wendall North as witnesses got told I could choose whatever internal Bureau division I want. You really have got me into the Hall of Fame, Charlie.”

  “You’re welcome.” It might have been by proxy but he’d maintain the never lose, never be beaten philosophy. He got the second bottle from the corner cupboard.

  “All we’ve got to do is keep up the frustrated act over the next few days,” said Kayley.

  “It’ll be a walk in the park,” insisted Charlie. Who did he have to walk with? he wondered.

  “That’s what both the American and the Englishman are saying?”

  “According to Kayley, American newspapers are openly saying that it’s a conspiracy between Okulov and his old friends,” said Olga.

  “What about official investigation?” asked Zenin.

  “They say there’s nothing positive they can do, they’re waiting for the result of the commission, like we are.” Olga cleared the table while Zenin carried the remains of their dinner wine into the lounge.

  “I’ve been talking to people,” said Zenin. “There’s no way Okulov or Karelin can survive.”

  “Do you think a change of government will affect us personally?”

  “Who knows?” smiled Zenin.

  Olga sat at Zenin’s feet, her arm looped over his knees, her wine glass in her other hand. “Can I ask you something?”

  “What?”

  “You’re not unhappy, are you: not thinking things aren’t working out between us?”

  “Of course not! Things are working out! Why do you think they’re not?”

  “In the last few days you’ve just seemed … I don’t know … distant, I suppose.”

  “A man can’t make love every night!”

  “I didn’t mean that.”

  “I’ve been consider
ing a lot of options: trying to find a way to move forward. I want to get it over with. Finished.”

  “It will be, soon,” said Olga, emptily.

  Charlie waited four days before going to the Radisson Slavjanskaya hotel again, carefully allowing two hours from the end of Sasha’s schoolday. The immediate anger would have gone by now. He certainly wouldn’t lose his temper-he had nothing to lose his temper about-and hoped Natalia wouldn’t, either, certainly not in front of Sasha. If Natalia insisted, he’d even keep it a telephone conversation, although he’d have more chance of persuading her if they could meet, face to face. Alternatively she might agree briefly to leave Sasha in the room, so they could talk in the hotel lounge or bar, although he thought that unlikely. He didn’t want to leave Sasha alone in a hotel bedroom himself, no matter how briefly.

  Charlie found the house phone in a corner of the foyer, glad it was an enclosed booth. The man who answered in room 46 said Charlie must have the wrong extension: he was a computer technician from Kiev who’d only arrived that morning. The receptionisttold him Natalia Fedova and the little girl had booked out the previous day, without leaving a forwarding address.

  Back at Lesnaya Charlie walked aimlessly around the echoing rooms, as he had every night since Natalia left. That night, though, he stopped in Sasha’s room, properly seeing for the first time that there were still things of Sasha’s that Natalia hadn’t taken, particularly toys. Then he saw that the doll he’d bought back from London was there but the previous, forgotten sister with the droopy eye wasn’t.

  27

  The perfectly coordinated seizures were filmed, to be shown directly before the simultaneous telecasts by both presidents. Anandale personally pressured Okulov during his alerting telephone call after the Grand Jury indictments for FBI agents to be visibly present at each arrest, which took place at four A.M. At each, doors were jackhammered off their hinges. Everyone named by Sakov was confronted before they could get out of bed. John Kayley, who was with the loyal FSB officers who took deputy chairman Gennardi Mittel into custody, was identified during the president’s address to the nation as the officer who had broken the case. Olga Melnik was taken manacled from the apartment with Zenin and held for a week before being released. The detentions were announced-simultaneously again-five hours before the televised appearance of the two leaders, and in mid-afternoon Petr Tikunov, the communist party presidential candidate, put a gun into his mouth and pulled the trigger. In his broadcast Anandale spoke of a plot that could have destabilized world peace, which was now strengthened and more secure because of the cooperation between two great nations. Okulov even more grandiosely talked of Russia being pulled back from reentering the dark ages and of a cancer being excised from an organization and a political party which sought to subvert the new Russian democracy.He echoed Anandale’s insistence on a strengthening between the two countries and said he was looking forward to officially becoming Russia’s leader in the forthcoming elections. Neither referred to a missile defense treaty.