“We didn’t, much. We watched television. Sometimes the programs he’d worked on. He made models.”
“Models of what?”
“Cars. Boats. Planes. Things that moved. He liked things that moved.”
“How did he make them? From wood or what?”
“Wood, sometimes, wood that he carved. And kits. The sort that children have.”
“I don’t remember the people who searched your apartment finding any models. It wasn’t in their report.”
“He broke them, as soon as he finished them. Said they were useless to him.”
“What other hobbies did he have?”
“None.”
“What about guns?” She had to improve on the original questioning.
“No … I told you …”
“Did he ever go shooting?”
“He doesn’t have a gun.”
“He could have borrowed one.”
“I don’t know.”
“You are remembering things, aren’t you?”
“I’m trying.”
“Some other people are coming to see you.”
“What other people!” pleaded Vera, immediately alarmed.
“From the British embassy. They want to help, like I want to help. That’s why you’re here, safe from people who might want to hurt you for what you son has done.” It was imperative to get that on record, after the debacle with Charlie Muffin. She hadn’t just underestimated the man, she’d even more badly miscalculated the collaboration that would be imposed upon her.
“Will you be here, with them?”
“No.”
The woman looked down at her sagging bosoms. “Can I have myunderwear back, when they come? And the laces for my shoes?”
“Yes. But you will go on thinking, remembering, won’t you?”
“I’ll try.”
Olga hurried from the prison warning herself that it scarcely provided a lead but it certainly justified going through the statements of the people and acquaintances with whom George Bendall had worked at NTV. And if there was no reference to something-anything-the man regularly did on Tuesday and Thursday nights, they’d all have to be re-interviewed and specifically asked.
“You had no right-no authority-to arrange access to the mother without reference to me!” protested Richard Brooking. “It should have been done diplomatically, through channels. You were specifically warned by Sir Michael himself!”
“Dick,” said Charlie, intentionally using the name abbreviation for its ambiguity. “That’s debatable and I’m not interested in debating it. I’m interested in finding out why a British national apparently tried to kill two presidents and when an opportunity presents itself, like it did today, then I’m going to take it without first asking your permission. You want to protest that to London, then go ahead. And while you’re doing it, ask them how they feel about another British national-albeit one who’s lived here for years-being banged up in a Stalin-era prison without charge.”
“That’s certainly questionable,” agreed Anne Abbott.
“I thought you told me it was for her own protection.”
“Bollocks,” rejected Charlie.
Brooking looked embarrassedly to Anne, who smiled and said, “That’s what I think, too.”
“I’m not sure it would be proper for me to accompany you to a prison,” said the diplomat.
“Don’t then,” accepted Charlie, relieved.
“It probably would be better left to us at this preliminary stage,” agreed Anne.
“Thanks for the support,” said Charlie, as they made their way along the corridor towards his office.
“Things are difficult enough without dicks like Richard Brooking,” said the lawyer.
Charlie thought that it just might be that he and Anne Abbott were birds of a feather, which would be a welcome change from being surrounded by either vultures or cuckoos.
The information-starved international media thronged Petr Tikunov’s press conference at the Duma. The Communist Party presidential candidate, a burly, beetle-browed man whose campaign managers tried to avoid facial comparison with Brezhnev, said that irrespective of any current investigation the new government he would be leading after the forthcoming elections would institute the most searching and thorough enquiry into the outrage.
8
It took the authority-and intervention-of Aleksandr Okulov’s office for Natalia to reach the FSB counter-intelligence chief and by the time she did it was to announce the exasperated acting president had ordered her personally to the Lubyanka, which made her as uneasy as it clearly did General Dimitri Spassky.
The only delay when she entered the Russian intelligence headquarters from which she herself had operated for fifteen years was for the security formality of photographing, identification and official authorization. As she followed the required but unnecessary escort across the marbled and pillared hall to the elevator bank Natalia thought that Charlie was probably right that the sole difference between old and new was the name change. Not true, she corrected herself at once. She’d been transferred outside the service, a change she was certainly glad about. Or had been, until now. She’d recognized quickly enough the professional hazards of being appointed the crisis committee’s coordinator but she hadn’t expected to be sucked quite so quickly-and potentially deeply-into such obvious in-fighting. But she was here as the coordinator-the emissary of the acting president, in fact-not as a deputy director of the InteriorMinistry. It put her into a stronger position, despite Spassky’s seniority. It had also been regulations when she worked there that visitors were searched, irrespective of their outside security clearance or whoever’s emissary they were. So things weren’t the same. She hoped her apparent advantage continued.
Natalia smiled at the care the escort took selecting the elevator bank, away from the lifts that went to the twelve basement levels-a subterranean township for the intelligence elite, with shops, roads and even a railway connection to the Kremlin on which Stalin once travelled by special carriage personally to witness the interrogations of purged Central Committee colleagues.
Spassky’s smoke-fumed office overlooked one of the inner prison courtyards in which such victims were finally put out of their agony and Natalia wondered if there was an element of nostalgia in the old-time KGB general’s choice.
He didn’t rise at Natalia’s entry, occupying himself lighting a fresh cigarette and having done so said, “It was unnecessary involving Aleksandr Mikhailevich.”
“You weren’t accepting my calls-as you didn’t yesterday-or returning the messages I left.” There was a recording being made: every Lubyanka office had been equipped within the first week of the invention of audio tape. She was glad-maybe fortunate-that this was such an old office. She still had to be alert to responses that could be edited to Spassky’s advantage and her detriment.
“You mustn’t question my authority here, Natalia Fedova.”
“I am not questioning your authority. I am trying to fulfill the function I was given at yesterday’s meeting.” She’d probably cocooned herself in more protection than she imagined by protesting to Okulov’s secretariat about Spassky’s awkwardness.
“A meeting would have been arranged today.” The man was perspiring as visibly as he had been at the previous meeting but Natalia didn’t think that was the smell competing with the cigarettes. There was the sourness of alcohol, although she’d believed vodka to be odorless. Perhaps the old man was mixing his drinks.
“You promised the Bendall file in twenty-four hours. Twenty-four hours has elapsed. Aleksandr Mikhailevich has to address the Duma this afternoon.”
“There are considerations.”
“What considerations?”
“To whom it is going to be made available.”
“Are you suggesting that the acting president of the Russian Federation-and a former regional director of the KGB! — has insufficient security clearance!”
Spassky’s hands were shaking as he lighted another cigarette. “Of course I’m not!”