She would have got around to it eventually, she reassured herself; not eventually, almost at once. Tomorrow, certainly. How could she have been expected to cover everything, the smallest details, in such a short time! It was easy for the motherfucking Englishman, getting everything handed to him on a plate, not having to supervise an entire investigation and think about each and every political implication.
Those political implications-every implication-were too great properly to encompass now, this soon. But the escalation made it logical for Leonid Zenin to share this first interrogation of George Bendall. But that was all it was, the escalation, not any inferred criticism of her oversights. How could it be? The confrontation-the rock jarringly awkward question after awkward question from the motherfucking Englishman-in front of the fortunately limited audience in the American embassy basement hadn’t been recorded. So there was no way Zenin could know. Would ever know. But she couldn’t be caught out again: shouldn’t have been caught out at all.She’d identified Charlie Muffin for-and as-the danger he was from the very beginning. A mistake recognized is another mistake avoided, she reminded herself, calling to mind the appropriate Russian proverb. She felt firm ground underfoot, no longer jostled by conflicting currents.
She was impatient to begin the interrogation and hoped Zenin wasn’t late, standing close to the window and looking up Gospital’naya Ulitza towards the blue domed church of Saints Peter and Paul, the direction from which she expected him to come. He’d sounded pleased, excited even, during the telephone conversation when he’d told her to wait for him and Olga was curious about the crisis committee meeting. Clearly it had gone better for him than hers had for her.
She almost missed Leonid Zenin when he did appear because she’d been looking for an official car and Zenin was on foot, striding past the small commemoration to Peter the Great’s favorite general, Swiss-born Francois Lefort, who was never to know-and doubtless wouldn’t have liked it if he had-that his was going to be the name given to one of the most infamous prisons in Russian history. Olga decided that the bearded militia commandant looked even more impressive in civilian clothes than he did in uniform and felt a pleasant stir of interest, wondering what the obviously athletic body looked like in neither.
She was well away from the window, to avoid hinting any impatience, when Zenin came urgently into the dusty waiting room, smiling as Olga imagined he smiled during their telephone conversation. Despite the white-coated Nicholai Badim beside him Zenin said, “God, what a place! An incentive never to become ill.”
Affronted, the surgeon-administrator said, “Heroes of the Crimea were treated here!”
“Probably in beds that haven’t been changed since,” said Zenin, briskly careless of offense. “What’s the situation with the prisoner!”
“You can have thirty minutes.”
“I wasn’t asking for a time limit. He’s fully conscious?”
“Yes.”
“And fully comprehending?”
“According to Guerguen Semonvich Agayan.”
“What’s Bendall said?”
“Your officers are with him.”
“I meant to you.”
“He’s responded to our medical questions.”
“Nothing else?”
“We haven’t asked him anything else.”
“It’s about time someone did then.”
The almost overbearing confidence surprised Olga. In official surroundings, only those in which she’d been with him until now, Zenin had always appeared more subdued.
Striving to achieve some of his dismissed authority, the doctor said, “I’ll check with Guerguen Semonvich. Wait for me here.”
Zenin said, “I’ve come directly from the Kremlin. Okulov’s panicking, everyone’s panicking. They’ve doubled the protection around Yudkin. Many more security people at the Pirogov hospital and they’ll have to shift patients out to make room …” He smiled again. “And there’s going to be a presidential commission into the missing KGB stuff. I suggested it at this morning’s meeting: Okulov ordered it on the spot when the conspiracy was confirmed.”
“The one person we’ve got to keep alive is George Bendall. I’ve permanently doubled the guard here.” She had to find a way to tell him about the things missing from the Bendall apartment.
“Nothing’s going to happen to him, believe me,” said Zenin. “What’s it like at the American embassy?”
“I don’t know about stepped up internal security. The American ballistics man claims he’d recognized the difference but was waiting for our material.”
“What’s the excuse from our people at Chagino?”
“They hadn’t got around to it yet.”
“After more than two days!”
“They obviously thought they didn’t have to bother.”
“Log it, for it to be dealt with later.”
“I already have.”
“Is the Englishman crowing?”
Olga hesitated. “Not noticeably,” she answered, honestly. Itwould be better if Zenin heard the other embarrassments from her. “He asked about the bullet casings. They were looked for, of course, after the area was cleared. We didn’t find any.”
“Would they have been automatically discharged from the rifle?”
“Apparently.”
“We should have recovered some,” complained Zenin.
“Further evidence of the conspiracy. How well planned it’s all been.” She wished that excuse had come to her in the embassy basement.
“Yes,” accepted Zenin, doubtfully.
It was an acceptable excuse. “There’s something else. You remember Vera Bendall saying militia officers took away her son’s papers, among his other belongings?”
“Yes,” said Zenin, cautiously.
“No written material is recorded among what was taken from Bendall’s apartment. I’ve spoken to the squad that went there first, personally, to all three of them. Each insist there weren’t any documents, nothing written down at all.”
“The woman could have been wrong,” Zenin pointed out.
“Or other people could have got to the apartment before our officers.”
“Was there any indications of a search, ahead of them?”
“They said his room was a mess,” Olga replied, honestly again.
“It should be laid before the commission,” agreed Zenin.
Home clear! decided Olga, as the doctor reentered the room.
“Half an hour,” stipulated the man.
“We’ll see how long it takes,” dismissed Zenin.
The walls of the corridor along which they followed the doctor were stained and in places adorned with uncleared graffiti-“fuck” and “hell hole” appeared several times-and narrowed by bed frames, once by two ancient, boat-shaped perambulators and unrecognizable scraps of metal and frame-like pieces of wood.
Zenin said, “This come up from the Crimea, too?”
The doctor ignored him.
Bendall’s ward was identifiable some way off by the phalanx of guards outside it. Olga said, “Do you want to lead the interrogation?”
“You’re the investigating officer, Olga Ivanova. I’ll sit and listen.”
The feeling she experienced surprised Olga. It wasn’t unease. It was, almost sexually, of anticipation. She didn’t normally feel she had to impress a man. “I’d appreciate your input, if you think it’s necessary.”
“It’ll be there, if it is.”
The protective cordon stiffened, respectfully, at their approach, then parted for them to enter. It was an individual ward, further crowded inside by three more militia officers. Recording apparatus was already assembled. Its operator was late standing when they came into the room. The walls were streaked and discolored but there was no graffiti, at least none that was apparent. The sheets matched the grayness of the blankets, though, which also toned with the doubtful color of the bandages helmeting George Bendall’s head and seeming to extend, unbroken, to the dressings trebling the size of the man’s broken shoulder. A half-circular frame kept the bedding off the shattered leg but he was not connected to any monitors, although a catheter tube ran to a container beneath the bed. There was a perfect spider’s web covering the inside of one of the upperpaned windows, complete with its spread-legged creator, and rivulets of long-past rain had tracked top to bottom patterns through the caked grime. The recording apparatus occupied the only table and its technician had the only chair. Militia-discarded cigarettes pebbled the floor. The cubicle stank, not just of cigarettes but of stale bodies. Maybe, thought Olga, indulging herself, patients from the 1850s really had been here.