“Sounds good,” agreed the president.
“Doesn’t help the atmosphere,” suggested North.
“There isn’t any atmosphere to be helped, not anymore.”
It remained essential to both sides that there was no suggestion of an irreparable collapse but now wasn’t the moment to start talking of diplomacy and compromise, North decided. “I’ve spoken personally to the four orthopedic surgeons specializing in brachial plexus injuries recommended by Max Donnington. He’s made up complete case notes, together with the X-rays. We’re shipping it all back today …. And we’re also flying Ben Jennings’s body home.”
“What’s arranged?”
“Marines pallbearers from the embassy here taking the coffin to the plane. Honor guard at Andrews.”
“Is he married?”
North nodded. “Two kids, both at college.”
“I should write personally.”
“I’ve already made up a draft.”
“What about the vice president attending the funeral?”
“It would look right.”
“Fix it.”
9
Vera Bendall’s shoes were laced so Charlie presumed her bra had been returned as well, although she was shapeless beneath a badly knitted cardigan. The gray-streaked hair was straggled, no more than finger combed, and there was no make-up. There was a dirt smudgebeneath her chin and her hands were soiled, blackly dirt-rimmed beneath the odd nail that hadn’t already been bitten to the quick. Despite the laces, Vera scuffed into the interview room, stoop-shouldered, burdened by the unknown fears of whatever was going to happen to her next. She stopped apprehensively as Charlie stood, then gnawed in embarrassment at her lower lip when he held out the one remaining chair.
“Sorry,” she said, quickly.
“You don’t have to be frightened,” said Anne Abbott, in English. “We’re from the embassy.”
“Please help me,” pleaded the woman, at once.
“We’ll try,” promised Anne. “That’s why we’re here.”
“We’d like you to help us, too,” said Charlie. Vera Bendall had responded in English, so he did as well. He held out the small pocket recorder. “We’re going to tape everything. Is that OK?”
She shrugged at the continued politeness. “I suppose.”
Charlie hadn’t bothered to look for the most likely position of the Russian equipment, although he’d shaken his head to stop the horrified lawyer bursting out aloud at the conditions inside Lefortovo while they’d waited for Vera to be brought to them. If the standard fish-eye-lensed camera was mounted somewhere in the overhead light surround, which was normal, the warning would probably have been picked up. It was a starkly functional room, entirely bare except for the center table and three stiff-backed wooden chairs. The door was metal, with a circular peephole. There was a summoning button set into the wall. It was strangely, almost disconcertingly, quiet, as if the room had been soundproofed against either internal or external noise. There was a prison smell, though-urine, sour food, unwashed bodies, decay-to which Charlie thought Vera was probably contributing.
“Tell us about George,” prompted Charlie. He had to guard against showing he knew of Olga Melnik’s first abortive interview or of the possibly improved second, which Natalia had shown him the previous evening, with other material the Russian investigator had not so far made available. It was going to be interesting to see how adept a questioner Anne Abbott turned out to be.
Vera Bendall’s pent-up denials of anything her son had plannedor done came in a babbled rush of protested innocence and uncaring admission of a totally dysfunctional relationship between mother and son but virtually everything she’d told Olga Melnik was included. The regular Tuesday and Thursday routine emerged in answer to a question from Anne.
“How did you feel about being in Russia?” explored Charlie, gently. “Did you hate it as much as George?”
“Not as much.”
“But you didn’t like it?”
“I’ve adjusted, after all this time. No alternative.”
“You were a schoolteacher, in England?” remembered Charlie, from the English records.
“Yes.”
“Were you forced to quit after Peter defected?”
“No.”
“Why did you follow Peter?” came in Anne.
“I was his wife. It was my duty.”
“He abandoned you. You and George?” persisted the other woman.
There was the familiar listless shrug. “I thought it was the right thing to do.”
“George was only five?” picked up Charlie. Would Sasha hate being uprooted from Russia if the need ever arose?
“Not quite. Four and a half.”
“So he knew virtually nothing of England; had no comparison against life here?”
Vera frowned, considering the question. “That’s right.”
“Why did he grow up to hate it?” said Anne, following Charlie’s direction.
The faded woman didn’t answer at once. “Peter and I, I suppose.”
“I don’t understand,” said Charlie.
“We didn’t get on, after I came here. Argued a lot about how much better it would have been if I hadn’t come. I was close to George then. Not like it was later … he used to take my side … that’s how it always seemed to be, how I remember it. George and me against Peter … every day ….” She trailed off, seemingly in bitter memories.
“There were stories … suggestions … in England that Peter wanted to return …?”
“I wanted to. With George.”
“What about Peter?”
“Maybe. I’m not sure.”
“Why didn’t you and George go back?”
“They wouldn’t let us.”
“They?” Charlie was dominating the questioning now, Anne silent beside him.
“The people Peter worked for?”
“The KGB?”
“Yes.”
Charlie’s bunched-up feet twitched. He’d spent more than an hour the previous night hunched over the recorder Natalia had protectively carried in-and out-of the Lubyanka, as surprised as she had been not just at getting past the reception area without being searched-prepared to insist upon the authority of the acting president-but also that Spassky’s office hadn’t been equipped with a “white noise” baffler to prevent tapes unknowingly being made. His instinct-as well as another foot spasm-told him the gaps in Peter Bendall’s KGB files hadn’t occurred accidentally. “Did Peter tell you that you couldn’t go back to England? Or was it one of the Russians he worked for?”
“Peter.”
Charlie instantly recognized the hesitation in her voice. He had to tiptoe, an inch at a time. “Only ever Peter?”
“As I told the Russian detective colonel, sometimes in the last few years Peter worked from home, at Hutorskaya Ulitza. The arguments got really bad around that time: that was when George was sixteen or seventeen. He said he didn’t believe what Peter was saying and that he was keeping us prisoner. Once one of the people who came to see Peter took George into the room with them.”
She looked at the water carafe alongside the tape and unasked Charlie poured for her.
“Did George tell you what went on in the room?”
“He said the man told him there were things he had to do but that he wouldn’t do them.”
“What things?”
“He didn’t tell me.”
“Didn’t you ask him?”
“No.”
Charlie felt a burn of frustration at Vera Bendall’s constant, look-away acceptance of everything and anything that happened to her. “What did he say?”
“He said he wasn’t weak, like Peter. That they were going to be surprised.”
“Peter had been in the room?” persisted Charlie.
“Yes.”
“So he would have heard whatever it was?”
“I suppose.”
“Didn’t you ask him?” said Anne.
“He said it was none of my business. That it was too late and that if I hadn’t wanted to be here I shouldn’t have followed him.”
Would this be how his relationship with Natalia would finally-so disastrously-implode if she took Sasha away from Russia to live with him somewhere in the West, Charlie wondered again. No, he decided, just as quickly. The circumstances were far too different for there to be any conceivable comparison. “Did George accept it?”