Read Kings of Many Castles Online
Authors: Brian Freemantle
Kings of Many Castles (16 page)
“Didn’t know anything.”
“I thought she did.”
“No!”
“What didn’t she know?” The crack was creaking apart.
“Anything.”
“About what?”
The muscles stood out on Bendall’s jaw, so tightly did he bite his mouth closed.
“Died for nothing then?” Bendall had sealed the crack. And she didn’t know how to prise it open again.
Nothing.
“She knew you hated everything. Didn’t believe you hated her though, after what your father did to her. Bringing her here.”
“Fucking bastard!”
Another weakness in the wall, Olga recognized. “He was the one who should have died, not her.”
There was the faintest of sounds from the doorway, where Zenin shifted in his chair. Bendall gave no indication of hearing anything.
“Should have been him.”
“Did you want to kill him?”
“Yes.” The word hissed out, emotion for the first time.
“Why didn’t you?”
“Didn’t.”
This man was her only hope, thought Olga, the only one who could provide a lead. She had to break him. Trick or tilt the already unbalanced mind, however and whichever way she could. British consular protests were irrelevant, if there was a complaint. All she had to concern herself with was getting a Russian conviction in a Russian court and she could get a confession and evidence any way she liked to achieve that. “Frightened of him, were you?”
“No!” It was a shout. Proper anger.
“Of course you were.”
“No!” He jerked his head around to look directly at her for the
first time, wincing at the pain the movement caused. “Was going to kill him. Died first.”
first time, wincing at the pain the movement caused. “Was going to kill him. Died first.”
Olga shook her head theatrically, disbelievingly. “Why didn’t you get the others to do it, like they killed your mother.” It was convoluted but got her to where she wanted to be.
The eyes upon her noticeably focused, clearing. “What?”
“Why didn’t you get the others in this with you to kill him, like they killed your mother?” repeated Olga.
“You said she was hanged.”
“Not sentenced, by a court. Strangled. Murdered,” invented Olga.
“She didn’t know!” The denial this time wailed from him.
“They thought she did. The court won’t believe you didn’t know they were going to do that. I don’t believe you didn’t know they were going to do that. You’ll be considered an accomplice.”
“No!” Another wail.
“You’re right to be frightened.”
“Not frightened.”
“They’ll try to kill you, if they can.”
“Not
frightened
!”
frightened
!”
“They would kill you, if they could.”
He was looking at the ceiling again, lips tight together.
Mistaken direction. He wasn’t rambling, either. But then why should he? Mentally deranged people didn’t necessarily ramble. Wrong to have started with that preconception. There was sudden noise from the door, a muffled voice. Olga saw the doctor gesticulating from beyond the wall of security men. Zenin turned at it, too, making waving away motions with his hand.
Olga went back to the embalmed man. “The other sniper was a lot better than you, Georgi. Should have practiced more.”
“No one else.”
The words jolted through Olga. She was aware of Zenin coming further forward on his chair, too. She said, “We know there was. Two different rifles, different bullets.”
“Liar!”
Which way to go! “They couldn’t leave it to you. Knew you weren’t good enough to do it by yourself.”
“Not true.”
“You think you’re a good sniper, Georgi?”
“Trained.” For the first time there was an inflection in the man’s voice, a whisper of pride.
Olga thought she saw a pathway. “You killed people before?”
“A lot.”
“How many?”
“A lot.”
“When was that?”
“In the army.”
“Did you train every day when you were in the army?”
“Course I did. Had to.” Now there was a hint of indignation.
“But you’ve been out of the army a long time now, haven’t you?”
Bendall’s face clouded, in an effort to understand. “Good sniper,” he insisted.
“Do you still train every day, now you’re not in the army?”
The smile was knowing, crafty. “Maybe.”
“You do, don’t you?”
Nothing.
“Who with?”
Nothing.
“Where did you get the rifle?”
The smile remained but he didn’t reply.
“Did you fire as quickly on Wednesday as you did when you trained every day in the army? And since?”
“I’m good.”
“Two shots, over eight seconds? That’s not fast, not for a trained marksman.”
“Less than eight seconds.”
Got it with the wrong correction! snatched Olga, triumphantly. She actually looked at the slowly revolving tape spool. “There were five shots, Georgi. Not two. The other man really did do better than you. Hit our president twice. And the American First Lady. You were rubbish.”
“No one else,” He wasn’t blinking anymore; the eyes were positively drooping now.
“We know there was. You know it, too.”
There was fresh outburst from the corridor outside and Olga saw the doctor and the psychiatrist both arguing with the guards outside. She distinctly heard “enough” and “protest” over the barricading heads and shoulders of Bendall’s protectors and this time Zenin stood up and gestured the two men through. Badim flustered into the room, still protesting, and Olga snapped off the recording just before he got to “outrage.”
Zenin blocked the man just inside the door. “Shut up! We’ve stopped. He’s OK.”
“Stalin’s not in the Kremlin anymore, this isn’t a police state.”
“You want to prove that enlightened opinion, doctor, you just go on shouting and yelling and making too much noise. I’ll even give you your own choice of camp at Kolyma.”
The professional anger seeped from Badim like air from a punctured balloon. “This man is still officially in intensive care!”
Olga saw George Bendall’s eyes were shut, not twitching with feigned sleep. The man’s chest rose and fell, evenly.
“Which is precisely where I want him kept,” said Zenin, looking between the two hospital officials. “If anything goes wrong-if he dies under your intensive care-then neither of you will even get a choice of Kolyma camp. You hear me loud and clear?”
The small, stained-coated surgeon-administrator momentarily remained in eyeball to eyeball confrontation, his mouth and throat working with unspoken words. Finally, pitifully, he said, “You proud of what you do?”
“Hardly ever,” said the militia commander. “It’s something that has to be done.”
Zenin led the hurried pace to get out of the hospital, trailing Olga with him. Short-breathed she said, “I was almost there! I could have broken him!”
“‘The only person we’ve got to keep alive is George Bendall,’” Zenin quoted back at her. “You did brilliantly. But we pushed him. Keep him the right side of sanity, we’ll get the others. Push him over, we’ve got what you said he was, a chosen idiot. George Bendall isn’t important. I want the people who manipulated him. The conspirators.”
Minutes, thought Olga, infuriated, in just minutes Bendall would
have given them the lead. “The British are invoking their access agreement tomorrow. I want to see him again, before they do.”
have given them the lead. “The British are invoking their access agreement tomorrow. I want to see him again, before they do.”
“Good idea,” agreed Zenin. They were nearing the exit on to Gospital’naya Ulitza. “I am going back to the Kremlin. They’re waiting.”
“Yes?” she said, curiously.
“We need to talk more. Please wait for me, at headquarters.”
“Of course.”
“I meant what I said, Olga Ivanova. You did brilliantly.”
“I told the militia everything,” said Vladimir Sakov. “I told the Yanks to go to hell. Now I’m telling you. You want to be helped out, I’ll help you.”
A bravado—and vodka-fuelled bully, thought Charlie. But definitely able to fight, from the evidence of the television struggle with George Bendall that the world had watched. The NTV camera room was cluttered with equipment, discarded cups and food containers, cigarette debris and protective outdoor clothing.
Charlie said, “I’ve read what you told the militia.” It had occupied less than one page. The man had been jolted by Bendall, knocking the camera off focus, turned to yell at him and seen the rifle. He’d thought Bendall was going to shoot him and fought him for the gun. No one liked Bendall and Bendall didn’t like anyone in return. He tried not to work with the man.
“So fuck off!” Sakov was lounged in an ancient armchair leaking its stuffing into the rest of the mess, glass in hand, wearing only a sweat-stained singlet hanging over even dirtier jeans. There was a lot more of the crude tattooing along each arm than Charlie had seen on film and Charlie was sure he was right, although he didn’t put the Russian older than thirty-five, despite the near baldness.
He was probably gambling with his front teeth. But Charlie was in no mood to be told to fuck off. He’d ascended floor by floor the former Comecon skyscraper and two smaller towers blocks from which the second gunman could have got an elevated firing position before abandoning the chore to the recognized FBI group outside the fourth possible location. The pain from his feet had reached his knees and was climbing. “You’re not old enough.”
“What?” frowned the man.
“You’re not old enough to have been in a gulag. And those are gulag tattooes, aren’t they?” identified Charlie. “And if you had been you wouldn’t have got this job. Your workbook would have been marked.”
“Smart fucker.” The man lifted a clear, unlabeled bottle Charlie hadn’t seen from beside the chair and added to his glass.
It was the yellow of street-distilled potato vodka, harsher—and stronger—than that sold in shops. All part of the macho image. But the remark was less belligerent. And his teeth were still intact. Charlie said, “Father? Grandfather?”
The man shrugged. “Father.”
“Pretty dramatic testimonial,” said Charlie, in apparent admiration.
“He wasn’t guilty of anything. None of them were.”
Family suffering explained a hostility to authority or officialdom. Continuing the flattery Charlie said, “Still a brave-unusual-thing to do.”
Sakov shrugged, not speaking.
Having eased past the barrier Charlie didn’t want to lose the momentum. “Quite a difference from Georgi. He hated his father.”
“Bastard hated everyone.”
“Can’t imagine that worrying you.”
“It didn’t.”
“Why didn’t you like working with him then?”
“Morose fucker.”
“He drank.”
“Not properly with the rest of us.”
“Not with anyone?”
“Maybe.”
“He did have friends here, didn’t he?” chanced Charlie.
“Vasili Gregorevich, I suppose.” The man made a vague gesture, crossing himself.
A religious gesture? “Vasili Gregorevich who?”
“Isakov,” completed the Russian. “He was a good guy, never understood what it was with him and Gugin. No one did.”
Was, picked out Charlie. “What happened to Vasili Gregorevich?”
Sakov looked surprised at the question. “Dead.”
Charlie felt a stir of satisfaction. “Dead how?”
“An accident. His car got hit by a train on the level crossing near Timiryazev Park. That’s where he lived, near the park.”
Association with George Bendall seemed to bring with it a high mortality rate, reflected Charlie. “When was that?”
“A few months back. Four, five maybe.”
“How’d it happen?”
“Don’t know. Tried to race the train, that’s what they said.”
“Who said?”
“People here. Talk. You know.”
“What did Vasili do here?”
“Senior cameraman, like me. That’s what I am now-why I got the White House position-since Vasili Gregorevich died.”
“They were good friends?”
“Couldn’t understand it,” repeated Sakov. He lifted the bottle again. “You want a drink? Private stuff. Good.”
Charlie had never refused a drink in his life and wasn’t going to now, because it marked his acceptance, but he mentally apologized to his liver. The Russian poured almost three fingers into an already print-smeared tumbler, added yet again to his own and said, “To the witches being kindly ones.”
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