Kings of Many Castles

by Brian Freemantle

  “A comparison is essential, for an empirical result,” accepted Charlie. He was contributing more towards a mitigating defense than to the continuing investigation, but then that was the primary purpose of today’s interview.

  In the car on the way back to the embassy Anne said to the diplomat, “Do you feel there’s any reason for you to come with us, for the next meeting?”

  “Not at all,” said Brooking, hurriedly. “I think I fulfilled everything I had to do in today’s visit. I thought it all went very well, despite the unfortunate fellow’s obvious madness.”

  “Very well indeed,” echoed Charlie.

  Walter Anandale ended the urging of both Wendall North and the secretary of state for a diplomatic compromise by rejecting their suggestions in preference to his own, which didn’t include acting Russian president Aleksandr Okulov, and just as curtly ordered them to fix it.

  Jeff Aston, the now unquestionably-obeyed head of presidential security, insisted they needed a highway-cleared, intersection-controlled route from the embassy to the hospital but gave the embassy as the return destination in the demand to the GIA traffic police. The Secret Service chief also insisted upon being in total media charge, once more restricting the still picture and television coverage of Anandale’s meeting with the Russian leader to American White House cameramen. It also guaranteed his being in total control of their release, which was to be timed to give the impression that the American leader, his wife and entourage were still in Moscow when the intention was for them to be already high over the Atlantic, on their way to Washington.

  The American president spent the first thirty minutes at the Pirogov hospital being reassured beyond the already promised reassurance from Admiral Donnington and a support group of Russian physicians that Ruth Anandale was sufficiently fit and recovered to be medevacced back to America. Only then did he go, completely encircled by agents and with the towering Aston by his side to the other wing of the hospital where North and Aston had spent those same thirty minutes hurriedly arranging the photocall with the Russian president’s protection squad.

  Lev Maksimovich Yudkin was fully conscious, although still attached to drip-feeds and line-waving monitors-which made for fittingly dramatic pictures—but too weak for any conversation, which was not the intention anyway. Anandale was, however, posed as if they were in discussion as well as solicitously standing by the man’s bedside. It only took fifteen minutes.

  As they made their way back to the American-commandeered wing James Scamell said, “This is going to be interpreted as a snub to Okulov.”

  “Fix it with the statement we’re going to issue,” demanded Anandale. “Abrupt departure for urgent medical treatment for the First Lady … no time for official farewells apart from seeing the president whose recovery we’re delighted about …” He looked sideways at the secretary of state. “And your staying here-plus the unattributable briefings you’ll give-establishes that everything’s still on track.”

  “You know what we’ve just shown by being allowed in like that?” demanded Aston, rhetorically. “That Russian security is godamned awful and that they haven’t learned a thing. Even you, Mr. President, shouldn’t have been allowed in. I wouldn’t have permitted it, if the situation had been reversed.”

  Unseen, behind the president’s back, Wendall North gave the Secret Service chief the stiff middle finger.

  In his wife’s room Anandale said, “We’re going home.”

  “To get my arm fixed?” said the woman.

  “To get your arm fixed,” agreed Anandale.

  Olga Melnik had already heard the Russian tape but went through the pretense of reading the transcript Charlie took back to the embassy incident room, together with his original recording to become part of the evidence collection. While she did-with John Kayley in his room absorbing it for the first time—Charlie studied the autopsy report on Vera Bendall.

  He skipped the normal medical introduction, although noting that the woman was described as generally under-nourished, eager for the specific findings. The cricord cartilage of the larynx had been crushed but the odontoid peg of the second cervical vertabrae was intact, which it would not have been if she had succeeded in properly hanging herself. There were three lesions in the neck caused by the support metal breaking through the left bra cup. There was pre-death bruising to her shoulder blades and to the back of the head, which the pathologist attributed to the back of her body hitting the cell door, presumably in her death throes or in the agony of strangulation. No photographs had been taken of the body before it was removed but according to the prison guards’ reports the woman had been virtually in a sitting position, with her back against the door. There were mortuary photographs of the body, naked, showing strangulation bruising completely encircling the neck. There was bruising on the finger endings of both hands which the medical examiner suggested were caused by the woman’s instinctive efforts to loosen the ligature in the final moments before death. The pathologist described as lividity the discoloration to Vera Bendall’s knees and thigh and to both buttocks, all of which was clearly visible on other post mortem photographs. In the opinion of the Russian pathologist the medical evidence was as consistent with a choking person’s failed, last minute change of mind when an attempted suicide hanging went wrong as it was with any suggestion of foul play, which made it too inconclusive for either definitive finding.

  “But not for me,” declared Charlie, carrying the report out into the larger room as Kayley and Olga emerged from theirs.

  “I think I hear you,” welcomed Kayley.

  “And I’ve heard John’s opinion,” continued Olga.

  There was an inherent moment of reluctance, not actually at sharing but at the worry of not knowing how it would be interpreted and acted upon by people whose minds worked so much differently from his. This was a static evaluation of something that had to be carried on, Charlie reminded himself. Which Kayley had obviously already decided. “As the pathologist remarks, there unfortunately aren’t any photographs of Vera Bendall in the position in which she actually died. Three guards-and the prison doctor-have sworn statements that she choked herself, by twisting her bra around her throat, attaching it to the cell’s protruding locking mechanism and then dropping in the expectation of breaking her neck. Which wasn’t ever possible. We know the precise measurements of the lock, from the ground, is only a meter. Her neck didn’t break, couldn’t have broken. She was suspended-according to what the guards’ evidence suggest-with her legs and buttocks virtually against the ground, slowly to suffocate …”

  “Which is what the pathologist describes,” broke in Olga, playing Devil’s Advocate.

  “There are too many things that don’t click together,” came back Charlie. “Lividity is after death bruising, when the blood puddles at the lowest possible point in the body, where it’s no longer being pumped because the heart’s stopped. Medically—provably—Vera Bendall has blood puddling in both knees and both buttocks. She can’t have died in two positions. She either died on her knees. Or on her back, which accounts for the much more substantial blood collection in her buttocks …” Charlie offered the series of mortuary photographs showing the continuous, unbroken pre-death bruising around Vera Bendall’s throat. “That marking isn’t possible if she half-suspended herself, with her back against the door and her calves and buttocks against the ground. The strangulation line would have been continuous in the front but not at the back: her weight would have kept the ligature away from the nape of her neck, leaving it unmarked. Vera Bendall was choked to death from behind, on her knees, her neck totally encircled from behind until she died. The bruising to her head and shoulders came from her struggling against the knees, pressed hard up against her, of her killer like the bruising to her fingers came from trying to prise the ligature away. She was held like that, throttled on her knees, long enough for the blood to begin to puddle in the front. Which it did even more obviously in these pictures when she was turned on to her back and t
he bra attached to the door lock.”

  Olga turned to Kayley. The American said, “I didn’t get the total neck encirclement. It makes it even stronger.”

  “I want to take all the autopsy material back to England, get independent pathology opinions,” said Charlie, talking to the American. “You doing the same?”

  Kayley nodded, lighting one of his aromatic cigars. “You want to tell us about England?”

  Charlie wasn’t aware of any air extractors in the main room, feeling the passive fumes at the back of his throat. “Consultation, with my directorate. Bullshit bureaucracy. The usual stuff. You’re both set up here: no need. I’m not.”

  There was obvious disbelief on the faces of both Olga Melnik and John Kayley. Charlie humped his shoulders, exaggeratedly. “That’s all it is. There isn’t anything more.” He was glad of the precaution of taking his packed case to Protocnyj Pereulok that morning: he had hoped to go back to Lesnaya to say goodbye again to Natalia and Sasha but this was taking longer than he expected.

  The American matched Charlie’s shrug, exhaling a wobbling smoke ring at the same time. “If you say so, Charlie.”

  “I say so.” Why the fuck didn’t anyone believe him when he was actually being honest!

  Kayley made a flag of the transcript Charlie had just delivered. “You sure as hell got under his skin.”

  “Opened some doors, maybe,” allowed Charlie. To Olga he said, “Is there anything on the Isakov death at Timiryazev?”

  “Accepted—until now—as an accident,” replied the woman. “All I’ve been able to get so far is the basic militia report. It’s an ungated crossing. His car stalled, straddling the line. Hit by the Kalininin express so hard it virtually broke in half …”

  “Autopsy?” interrupted Charlie.

  Olga shook her head. “And of course he’s been buried. I’ll apply for his exhumation.”

  “What about a military record?”

  “The detailed request has gone to the Ministry of Defense.”

  “And an organization … a brotherhood …?” pressed Charlie. He’d definitely run out of time to get back to Lesnaya.

  “That too, as soon as we find, if we can find, whatever service Vasili Isakov was in.”

  “I bumped into a lot of your guys checking vantage points for the second gunman?” Charlie told Kayley. “There were more of them than me so I left them to it.”

  “Four possible high rises, the tallest the Comecon building,” recounted Kayley, wearily. “They even checked the Ukraina Hotel across the river. Between the most obvious buildings there’s a total of forty-two positions, eight more if you want to include the almost impossible hanging-out-of-the-window points. No one heard anything, saw anything, although most were looking from their windows at the presidential arrival. No shell casings found by my guys or handed in, before they asked. Two more high rises that could conceivably have been used. They’re being checked because everything’s being checked.”

  It was like climbing Everest backwards, wearing skis, thought Charlie, who’d never dreamed of risking his feet in such contraptions. “I’ll only be away two days, tops. Donald Morrison’s taking over.”

  “I want to see Bendall for myself,” announced Kayley. “It’s the murder of an American that’s going to be the major charge. You’ve had your consular access.”

  “He’s Russia’s prisoner,” said Charlie.

  “But you’re no official problem?”

  Charlie supposed he should have checked legally with Anne Abbott. Richard Brooking never came into his thinking. “None at all.”

  Kayley said, “Thanks for that at least.”

  Charlie let it go. “Luck with the interview.” He already knew how he would pursue the next meeting with Bendall but had no intention of prompting the American. It was always possible John Kayley might nerve-touch something far more productive than what he’d so far achieved. It would be interesting—although hopefully not ultimately demoralizing-to see.

  “I intended to get back, to say goodbye, but we over-ran.”

  “OK.” There even seemed to be a distance in the sound of her voice on the telephone.

  “I think the Bendall interview is good. It’s on file in the incident room, if you want to access it.”

  “OK.”

  “Any problems today?”

  “No.”

  “I’ll only be gone a couple of days.”

  “You said.”

  “Tell Sasha I love her.”

  “Remember what I said about a present.”

  “I love you.”

  “I love you, too.”

  “Keep safe.”

  On their way to Sheremet’yevo in the embassy car Anne Abbott said, “I’m back to thinking there’s a dramatic defense.”

  “We’re a long way from finding it.”

  “You sure the accountants will stand our staying at the Dorchester?”

  “By the time they get the bill we’ll have been and gone. They won’t have any alternative.”

  “Do you go out of your way to upset people?”

  “Do I upset you?”

  “You make me laugh. And curious.”

  “You ever see Liberace perform?”

  Anne exploded into laughter. “I only just know who Liberace was! What the hell are you talking about?”

  “They’ve got his glass piano in the Dorchester bar. It’s pure kitsch. You’ll like it.”

  Charlie answered the car phone, on the central reservation beside the driver. Morrison said, “Moscow Radio has disclosed the second gunman. There’s been an official Russian government enquiry; Brooking’s going around in circles. Olga Melnik’s been on, demanding to know if it was us. I told her we hadn’t broken the agreement.”

  “Who did it?” asked Anne, when Charlie relayed the conversation.

  “Something else on the long list of what we don’t know,” said Charlie.

  “It worked letting the British have the second interview,” declared Zenin.

  “It was a good idea,” agreed Olga.

  It had been his idea for her to cook at his apartment that night and she was nervous because in this ridiculously short time it had become overwhelmingly important to go on impressing him, the unfamiliar need for which made her even more nervous. She’d chosen pasta with clams and mussels and squid—trying for the joke by insisting the Black Sea fish were a Crimean souvenir she’d collected from the hospital the previous day-and he’d seemed to think it funny as well as continuing the Italian theme with Chianti.

  “The Englishman’s very good. The woman, too.”

  “What did the Defense Ministry say?” asked Olga. The request for anything known about Vasili Gregorevich Isakov and brotherhoods had been made with Zenin’s superior authority to ensure a matchingly authoratitive response.

  “That secret societies aren’t permitted in any of the services. I told them that wasn’t the question.”

  “What about my—our—interrogating Bendall again?”

  “We’ll see if giving the Americans as well as the English their turn is the good idea it’s proved to be so far. The Americans can go ahead of us; we can use whatever they get, when we go again. Waiting will also give us time to hear back from the military. That’s where the conspiracy is, what we’ve got to find.”

  “What about the second gunman leak?”

  “It was anonymous. A telephone call.”

  “Which they reported without trying to check?”

  “I’ve got people looking into it.”

  He leaned across the table, touching his glass to hers. “The pasta’s wonderful. This is wonderful.”

  “I’m glad,” she said, responding to both remarks.

  “I haven’t asked you yet if you’re married?”

  “I’m not,” she said. She looked around the apartment. “I suppose your wife could be away, although speaking as a trained investigator there isn’t any obvious evidence of anyone else living here.”

  “If there was one s
he could be away,” Zenin agreed, smiling back. “But there isn’t.”

  “I’m embarrassed now to have said that! Shit!”

  “Don’t be. I’m not.”

  Olga thought it couldn’t be happening so soon, so quickly.

  13

  Charlie Muffin’s tightly structured timetable—most specifically his intention to get back to Moscow in two days-began to unravel before his first appointment. That was scheduled for ten thirty. He was at Millbank before nine, to set up the various tests and analyses he wanted upon the material he’d brought with him. No longer with an office or any working facility within the building, everything had to go through Sir Rupert Dean’s personal assistant, a dedicated spinster whose christian name remained unknown and who had long ago decreed she should be universally known and addressed simply by her surname—Spence—without the courtesy of Miss. He had to negotiate his way past two junior secretaries to get into her sanctum and having done so reflected-and passingly mourned-the transition from Roedean-accented, experimentally-eager debutantes with legs that went all the way up to their shoulders to unsmiling, business-like practicality from women whose legs looked as if they’d been carved from solid oak by a man with a blunt hatchet. Spence herself needed such support for a granite body formidable enough to have single-handedly repelled a Special Forces invasion of the director-general’s office. The woman listened in intimidating silence to everything Charlie wanted-even asking to ensure he’d finishedbefore bluntly declaring it wasn’t possible in two days. He should have known there were no laboratory resources in the headquarters building: the ballistics people worked from Woolwich Arsenal and she very much doubted psychiatrists and psychologists would drop everything to put him at the top of their lists. It took Charlie thirty wheedling minutes to persuade her personally to try to arrange the mental assessment from the tapes and their transcripts and to dispatch the ballistic and blood samples to their respective testing centres.