The last part was further reasoning that Charlie found difficulty with but he didn’t dispute that, either. “Let’s hope I can take him further.”
Kayley said, “I’ve got to go upstairs. There are people who’ll want to hear this.”
“They’re bastards, too!” said Morrison, vehemently, as he and Charlie returned to the main incident room.
“Don’t take it personally,” soothed Charlie. “They’d have tried to fuck me if I hadn’t come up with it.”
“You sure?” demanded Morrison.
“Positive,” said Charlie, who wasn’t but wanted to help the other man.
“Hope I haven’t disturbed your room too much,” said Morrison, when they reached it.
To Charlie it didn’t appear to have been occupied by anyone else. He settled into his place with its convenient foot rest and logged on to his computer to bring himself up to date, scrolling patiently through the alphabetically assembled files, stopping abruptly at the name Vasili Gregorovich Isakov. It had been compiled by three named FBI agents and ran to twelve pages, although it wasn’t the written material that immediately interested Charlie. Three photographs had been scanned on to the disk.
John Kayley was again included with the ambassador and the secretary of state for the satellite link with Washington but only Walter Anandale and his chief of staff were waiting at the White House end. He’d have to wait, Kayley knew, but it was difficult.
“So we’ve got a new game,” opened the president.
“Which we need to play very carefully,” advised James Scamell.
“How?” said Anandale.
“I think you need to come back for Yudkin’s funeral.”
“You serious! There are still guys out there who tried to kill me!”
“As serious as it’s possible to be, Mr. President. Your not attending will be read every which way, all of them bad. One spinwill be that you’re too scared. Another that you’re abandoning Okulov, to be beaten by the communists. Who are, incidentally, demanding an immediate election to confirm an elected president. Then there’s the treaty. There’s growing media speculation that there was a hidden agenda, that we never ever really intended to conclude it and that it was a cosmetic dance to go on until Yudkin got confirmed for a second term.”
Wendall North admired the secretary of state’s diplomacy. Scamell wasn’t talking of Moscow’s media pressure. He would have got from his own people at Foggy Bottom that morning’s Washington Post story of a potential paper trail from oil contract firms finally being followed to Anandale’s election funding. The chief of staff said, “I go along with Jamie’s assessment, Mr. President. We’re in a box here, with only one way out.”
“What’s happening with the investigation, John?” avoided Anandale.
Kayley had risked holding back from either the secretary of state or the ambassador the Russian decision to arraign Bendall, wanting to present it ahead of any official announcement as his personal discovery, despite the breakdown with the Moscow militia. He also explained the ballistic evidence as an exclusive detection of the FBI team he headed. He had to concede the British would be the source of any statement from Bendall from which it might be possible to locate the others in the conspiracy, but did so inferring that Britain needed Bureau manpower and scientific expertise to continue the investigation.
“Find the people who shot Ruth!” picked out the president, instantly.
“If we get the statement the Brits expect,” backtracked Kayley.
“Now we’re getting there!” enthused Anandale.
“I’m giving it to you as it’s come to me,” said Kayley, stressing the impression of urgency at the same time as shielding himself from questions he couldn’t answer. “There’s a lot I need explained further, pieces to fit together.”
“We’ve got things to talk about when I get there, John,” hinted Anandale. To the secretary of state he said, “Is it going to be a State occasion? World leaders?”
“I’d imagine so,” said Scamell.
“Find out,” ordered the president. “Here’s how we’ll run it. I’ll come early, for meetings with the British premier and the French president. Overnight either in London or Paris, so I can be in and out of Moscow from either city the same day as the funeral.”
“You need to meet with Okulov,” insisted Scamell.
“Not to do so would be worse than not going at all,” said North, in continued support.
“I’m not giving anything away for nothing,” said Anandale. “You make it clear, whichever way it’s necessary, that I won’t meet Okulov if their damned investigators don’t come back to the table.” He hesitated. “Everything else stands. I’m out of there the same day, OK?”
“It’s obvious the British are getting through to Bendall,” insisted Olga, taking the Russian copy of the interview tape from the machine on the table between her and Leonid Zenin.
“And we’re getting every word of it,” the militia commander pointed out.
“If we do get a lead to the rest of them, arraigning Bendall will be premature.”
“It’s out of our hands now,” said Zenin. “And it’s not a trial. It’s a public arraignment, for public consumption: the formal laying of the formal charges. The prosecutor can apply for adjournments as long as we ask him.”
“You sure it’s wise, shutting out the British as we’re shutting out the Americans?” pressed Olga. “They’ve obviously got something.”
“Or bluffing.”
Olga shook her head. “I don’t think he was bluffing.”
“We’ll see how their next interview goes,” decided Zenin. “We can easily get back together if it turns out to be really productive.” He was silent for several moments. “In fact it might be an idea if you were actually present, able to see as well as hear for ourselves. We’re going to come out well from this, Olga Ivanova.”
Olga smiled at his automatically talking in the plural, of both of them. “I think we already have.”
“You got it, Charlie!” agreed Anne, excitedly. “An absolute defense to murder! An expert witness, even.”
“I’d still prefer him to be British,” said Charlie. He was distracted by the Isakov file. Like so many other unresolved impressions-frustrations-there was something in it demanding to be seen. But like all the others, he couldn’t see it!
“I’ve filed the diplomatic protest. So’s Noskov, legally.” Anne was disappointed-curious even-at how subdued Charlie was.
“We’re still short of too much else.” He was glad he’d printed off the Isakov material to bring back to the embassy, to go over it further.
“There could be the breakthrough with Bendall if you continue teasing him along as well as you did today. And that could be as early as tomorrow.”
Her ambition was making her over-confidence-or overexpectant-Charlie decided. “Then all our problems will be over. Or just beginning.”
“Misery guts!”
“Realist,” he corrected.
Anne put into its designated order the material Charlie carried into her office thirty minutes earlier and gestured vaguely in the direction of the embassy’s residential apartment block. “The weary end to a long day. You fancy a Happy Hour drink?”
Charlie couldn’t at that moment imagine anything he would have enjoyed more. “No.”
“OK.” Anne showed no offense, no anger at a rebuff, which Charlie hadn’t intended it to be.
That night Natalia came to him in bed and the lovemaking was as uninhibited and passionate as he could ever remember, even from their first, excited, discovery days. Afterwards Natalia said, “I’m sorry, Charlie: sorry for too long being such a shit.”
“We’ve both been shits,” said Charlie and at last felt the overdue and searing guilt.
19
Viktor Ivanovich Karelin was the first intelligence chairman Natalia had ever personally met but the apparent diffidence was so alien to the lower hierarchy with whom she was familiar that she was vaguely disconcerted by it. Which, she acknowledged, she was perhaps supposed to be, although she didn’t get the impression there was any affectation about the self-effacing demeanour. Another interpretation could be that Karelin was so sure of himself and the power he represented that he didn’t feel the need to posture and intimidate.