Why did she waste so much time-endanger so much-maintaining her obstructive integrity pretensions, Natalia asked herself, acknowledging the expertise. “What’s your reading?”
“Immediate sanitizing, because of what’s in them?” suggested Charlie. “Maybe about George particularly. It’s clumsy but it’s predictable panic. There’s the excuse that the KGB isn’t any longer the KGB, which it was when Bendall defected. Things do get misplaced in reorganization.” It wouldn’t help by reminding her that she’d destroyed his KGB dossier and sanitized her own of any original connection with him.
“Nothing more sinister?”
Charlie hesitated. She was being open with him at last and his offering something in exchange would show he was keeping his side of an unspoken bargain. “You had any technical discussion with anyone?”
Natalia regarded him intently. “About what?”
“I’ve got the soundtrack from four different television films covering the presidential arrival, as well as that of NTV,” disclosed Charlie. “CNN were mute, remember. They’re being scientifically tested now in London but I’ve carried out my own rough timing. According to my count five shots were fired in a time gap of nine point two seconds. That’s very sharp sharp-shooting.”
“We’re getting George Bendall’s army records.”
“Are you?” demanded Charlie, pointedly.
“We’ve asked for George Bendall’s-or Georgi Gugin’s-army records,” qualified Natalia.
“I’m particularly interested in what they’ll say about his marksmanship.”
“Or lack of it,” accepted Natalia. “I was frightened enough tobegin with. Now you’ve really scared me. I preferred the mentally unstable loner.”
“Where’s the mentally unstable loner get a sniper’s rifle, which it very clearly was from the television pictures?” There was something else to check, he realized. It didn’t fit this conversation.
“Mosow-Russia-is awash with weaponry. You can buy a gun and ammunition for it in street underpasses. We can’t even look after our nuclear arsenals!”
“Basic Kalashnikovs and Makarovs. Not something specialized like this.”
“Do you intend saying anything tomorrow to Olga Melnik?”
Charlie shook his head. “Not without proof.”
“Thanks for telling me.”
“Isn’t that the new deal?”
“Yes.”
That night they did make love but for each of them it was more a duty than spontaneous passion and it wasn’t good.
Charlie said, “We can get that back, too.”
“I hope so,” said Natalia.
Both appraised the other in the opening seconds.
Charlie hadn’t expected Senior Investigating Colonel Olga Ivanova Melnik to be somewhere in her mid-thirties, which had to indicate a special ability he wouldn’t have guessed at from the Vera Bendall transcript he’d read the previous night. He thought the cleavage interesting but a little too obvious: the unsecured button on her shirt didn’t fit the pressed neatness of the perfectly tailored grey checked suit or the pristine orderliness of the high windowed, everything-in-its-proper-place office. And in any case the spider’s web tightrope of his current high wire act with Natalia didn’t allow any extramarital temptations. The cleared desk reminded him of that of Richard Brooking, who’d delivered the standard lecture on diplomatic conformity before he’d left the embassy that morning. The head of chancellery had been very pissed off at his ignoring the diplomatic dress code but Charlie didn’t regard today’s encounter as a fancy dress party. With luck it might be his first opportunity to start working properly.
Olga was disoriented, although she didn’t allow any outward sign. Moscow was a prestige posting and Charles Edward Muffin had been knowingly accepted in Moscow as an FBI equivalent, a specifically chosen British contribution-like that of America-against Russia’s virtually uncontrollable organized crime. From his physical appearance she wouldn’t have believed the flop-haired, overweight man sitting opposite contributing anything more than a few kopeks to a charity rummage sale for down-and-outs for a suit to replace the sagged and pocket-bulged jacket and trousers and raft-like suede shoes that he was wearing now.
“Would you prefer English?” she offered, speaking it with little accent in a deep, oiled voice.
“Thanks but it’s not necessary,” Charlie replied, in Russian.
“I hope we can work well together?”
“I hope so too,” said Charlie. Her territory, her speed. Until he chose otherwise.
She pushed across the uncluttered desk what was supposed to be his first copy of the Vera Bendall interview. “It’s very preliminary.” The discomfort at having this shambling man judge her was worse than it had been with Leonid Zenin.
He matched her offering with the heavier MI5 dossier. “All we have on Peter Bendall. Nothing on the son.” He was not supposed to know Vera Bendall was in Lefortovo, he reminded himself “My embassy was told today the official application for consular access has been granted.” The information had been the only useful outcome of that morning’s encounter with Brooking.
“The man was injured in the fall. It’s not yet clear when he’ll be well enough to be interviewed.” There was obviously a diplomatic necessity for this charade but very little practical benefit, apart from hopefully recovering from the Vera Bendall debacle with an unsuspected transcript of this encounter. It was important to establish her supremacy on tape.
“The application extends to the family,” persisted Charlie. “As far as we are aware Vera Bendall, like her son, hasn’t applied for Russian citizenship.” Charlie nodded to the Russian folder, already knowing the answer. “I presume her address is there?”
Olga looked steadily across her sterile desk. “She is in protective custody.”
“Protected from whom?” asked Charlie.
“People who might take it upon themselves to exact revenge upon the mother of a man who shot their president.”
“So she hasn’t taken citizenship?” persisted Charlie.
It would be wrong to underestimate this shaman’s monster, decided Olga, who had no religion but in whom was imbued the inherent Russian respect for witchcraft and Holy Men who could cast spells. “There is no trace of her having done so. Certainly not of it being granted.”
Gently does it, thought Charlie. “I’m sure my embassy-my government-will appreciate that protection …”
“Thank you,” intruded Olga, caught out by Charlie’s inviting pause.
“ … Which of course in no way prevents our officially agreed access. I-and others from the embassy-can easily come to wherever she’s being protectively held. Where is that, by the way?”
The criticizingly dismissive inference of her empty interview would be unavoidable on this transcript! “As I said, my initial interrogation is only very preliminary.”
“Interrogation?” echoed Charlie. “You suspect she’s in some way involved?”
Damn the man, thought Olga. He really did have a witchdoctor’s split tongue. “It’s too early yet to decide who might or might not be involved.” She paused, reluctant to correct herself. “I meant my questioning has only just begun.”
“We are cooperating fully, aren’t we?” coaxed Charlie.
“Yes,” agreed Olga, tightly, apprehensive of how Charlie Muffin could juggle such simple words but anticipating that he would.
“If we’re sharing there’s no order of priority?”
“It’s become a murder enquiry,” fought Olga. “Russian legislation must take precedence.”
“I’m not an international lawyer,” said Charlie. “It’s something I’ll leave to our legal attache to handle through diplomatic channels. Under such international scrutiny we shouldn’t go beyond our boundaries, should we?”
Olga wished the motherfucker wouldn’t keep inviting her opinion, to turn against her. Why oppose him? There was enormous international scrutiny under which the claim that Vera Bendall required protective custody might become even more transparent than it was now. In Lefortovo Vera Bendall was very positively her prisoner, whose every encounter and movement she could control. And totally monitor. It was conceivable some indication of Vera Bendall’s innocence or complicity might emerge if Britons were allowed access, access every minute and word of which could be taped and possibly even filmed. If there was something to be learned, she’d learn it, learn, too, from what the British offered whether their cooperation was genuine. And if the encounter was as unproductive as hers, there couldn’t be any criticism-internally or externally-of what now lay on the desk between her and Charlie Muffin, like a taunt. Better apparently to concede-be persuaded, at least-to an unimportant audience of one than to a much wider and more influential theater. “Don’t misunderstand me. I wasn’t arguing priorities. As far as I’m concerned there’s no reason whatsoever why you-and others from your embassy-shouldn’t see the woman.”