The victim was male, five feet eight inches tall, weighing 164 pounds, and was aged between forty-five and fifty. The left arm had been surgically amputated between ten and fifteen years earlier. He had been killed by a shot in the back of the head from a Makarov pistol, its bullet made to flatten on impact, to destroy all facial and dental features. He had also been tortured, and the fingers of his surviving right hand had been burned by acid to remove all fingerprints. All makers’ names had been removed from his Russian-manufactured clothing: a brown, polyester mass-produced suit, a blue shirt, and a red-and-black-striped tie. The lace-up shoes, which were well worn and also of Russian manufacture, were brown. All the suit pockets had been emptied. There was a red birthmark, affected by the acid burning, on the right hand, and the little finger of that hand had been distorted, possibly since childhood, by what forensic pathologists believed to be frostbite. In the past, again possibly in his childhood, the man has undergone an appendix operation. There had been traces of a barbiturate in the man’s blood.
“Let’s start the questioning,” invited Charlie.
There was an immediate burst of inaudible shouted questions, which Charlie had to again subdue by shouting louder and standing to gesture the noise down. Shielding his own microphone, Robertson said, “This is a farce, a waste of time.”
Needing his amplification, Charlie still had to yell. “This is going to be canceled right now if everyone doesn’t start behaving sensibly!”
A woman in the third row gestured for a handheld microphone, identified herself from The New York Times, and said, “Are you treating this as an assassination?”
Charlie deferred to Robertson, who appeared startled. Leaning hesitantly forward he said, “It is certainly one avenue of inquiry.”
“So the man could have been an informer-a Russian spy-pursued into the embassy by Russian security officers?” seized the woman, refusing to surrender the microphone.
To Charlie’s gesture, Pavel said, “We have been officially assured there is absolutely no involvement of any State security organization, so that is untrue.”
“You would be, wouldn’t you?” said the persistent woman, to isolated sniggers at the mockery.
“There is also no involvement of any British intelligence organization,” came in Charlie, to help Pavel.
“We’d be told that, too, wouldn’t we; have been told that already,” said a man in heavily accented English-an Italian, Charlie guessed-who reached across from his seat directly behind the woman to take the microphone.
“Nothing can be ruled in or out of the investigation until we get the victim’s identity,” said Charlie.
“So it is a possibility-a strong possibility-that it is an intelligence assassination?” persisted an NBC reporter from the middle of the hall.
“Nothing has been ruled in or out,” repeated Charlie, identifying Bundy next to the questioner, relieved at the comparative order that had finally settled. There’d be a publicity benefit from the inevitable concentration upon an intelligence-organized assassination.
As the thought came to Charlie another woman, this time from the London Times, demanded, “Which British intelligence organization do you, Mr. Robertson, and Mr. Stout represent?”
“That is not a question that will be addressed,” refused Robertson, without any prompting from Charlie.
“Why not?” pressed the woman.
“Next question,” insisted Robertson.
“MI6 or MI5?” came a shouted question, not needing amplification.
“Next question,” repeated Robertson.
Charlie had to listen intently to his own earpiece for the translation from German of the question. “What other lines of inquiry are you pursuing, apart from it being a State-approved killing of which, comparatively recently, there is evidence of the Russian authorities being prepared to sanction?”
After a momentary hiatus, Pavel said, “Regrettably, there is a great deal of organized crime in Russia, particularly in Moscow. Assassination of this sort is a very common method of settling gangland feud and disputes.”
“How many others have there been in the grounds of the British embassy?” immediately demanded the German, to more mocking laughter.
“None,” quieted Charlie. “But it would be a very effective way of misdirecting an investigation along the espionage lines that appears to be the media preference.”
“What’s your preference?” asked the determined German.
“I have none,” responded Charlie. “With my colleagues I am conducting this investigation with an open mind, with no preconceived impressions or theories.”
There was more disbelieving laughter, which brought a heavy sigh and a pointed sideways look from Robertson. Charlie was happy for the next question to move away from the espionage fixation, a demand for more evidence of the murder having been committed within the embassy grounds, which enabled him to expand upon the supposed discovery of part of a 9mm Makarov bullet and the score mark on the outside wall of the hall in which they now sat, which inevitably brought the question of how the killers and their victim got into the embassy grounds unseen.
“The killers weren’t unseen,” snatched Charlie, seeing the first opportunity to stage manage the event as he wanted. “Despite a partial malfunction of the entrance security cameras, the actual moment of the murder, by a number of men, was indistinctly recorded. The images are being scientifically enhanced and the hope is that such enhancement will be sufficient to identify the killers, although from the position in which the victim is shown, on his knees, no recovery of his features will be possible.”
The hall erupted into a far noisier outburst than any previously and it took Charlie a full five minutes to once more subdue the babble sufficiently to continue. The most obvious and frequent demand was for the CCTV and stills from it to be released for publication, which Charlie refused with the easy escape that as the film was in the process of being sharpened, hopefully to form the core evidence in a prosecution, any release was legally impossible. He refused, too, any verbal description of those featured on the loop, apart from saying that all appeared to be male. He-as well as Robertson and Pavel-were able to avoid any demands that didn’t serve their purpose by refusing to let the questioning go beyond the actual murder, despite determined and repeated attempts to get a response to the bugging. Charlie was, however, selective in his refusals, alert to whatever maximized his chances of getting that one essential, victim-identifying response.
When no opportunity presented itself after almost another hour, during which the predictable insistences expanded into the recurring possibility of the victim being a Russian intelligence officer killed at the point of an intended defection, Charlie decided to bait his own manufactured hook.
To a question that had been phrased in varying forms at least three times before-how endangered were relations between the United Kingdom and the Russian Federation-Charlie replied, “The successful conclusion of this investigation, toward which we are moving, ensures there is no risk whatsoever to that relationship.”
“What successful conclusion?” insisted the original questioner from The New York Times. “You’re asking for help: that doesn’t convince me you’re anywhere close to solving this!”
“I have already told you why we cannot release the surviving images on the CCTV film,” said Charlie. “You will surely understand and accept that there is other evidence we cannot make publicly available. We might be able to come some way towards providing more-making arrests even-once we have named the victim.”