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hopefully, as Charlie replaced the receiver.
    “FBI,” said Charlie, shortly.
    “You’ll let me know what they say?”
    “Not sure if it’ll constitute a diplomatic exchange,” said Charlie, straight faced.
     
    There were several other titular generals in the Kremlin suite with her, although all were male, but Natalia acknowledged hers was
probably considered the rank wielding the least influence. She wished she hadn’t been included at all. But not as much, she guessed, as the general next to her. Lev Andrevich Lvov had gained his rank in the spetznaz special forces before his transfer to the White House to head the Russian president’s bodyguard detail and still appeared vaguely uncomfortable in civilian clothes. It was an attitude reflected, too, by the man with whom he was drawn slightly apart from the rest of the group around the table. General Dimitri Ivanovich Spassky headed the counter-intelligence directorate of the FSB, the intelligence successor to the KGB.
    “I want a complete assessment. I need to be fully prepared for the debate in the Duma,” declared the prime minister, who under a decree issued by the now stricken Russian president assumed the emergency leadership he had, before the communist party resurgence, been predicted to get by democratic election upon Yudkin’s second term retirement. Aleksandr Mikhailevich Okulov was a short, sparse-bodied man who, largely under Yudkin’s patronage, had risen to the rank of premier in the ten years since leaving the St. Petersburg directorate of the KGB. His supporters praised him as the eminence grise of the current government. His detractors preferred the description of lackluster and uninteresting grey man of Russian politics.
    The combined concentration in the room was on chief-of-staff Yuri Fedorovich Trishin, a rotund, no longer quickly-smiling man. “It’s still too soon for any proper prognosis. The president’s condition is critical, and likely to remain so for days. There is considerable trauma. Heart massage as well as mouth-to-mouth resuscitation had to be administered in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. There was substantial blood loss, maybe as much as half his body’s capacity. There could be complications with the American president’s wife, bad enough to make amputating her arm necessary …”
    “What about prior to that?” Okulov interrupted. “How was it allowed to happen?”
    The question was addressed to Lvov who hadn’t broken the fixed stare he’d directed at the chief of staff. Accusingly, Lvov said, “There was too much interference in the security arrangements.”

    “By whom?” insisted Okulov, who was still trying to adjust and equate in his mind the full personal possibilities so abruptly thrust upon him by the attempted assassination. He’d already recognized his previous KGB career could be an embarrassment in view of Bendall’s family history.
    “The Americans,” said Trishin, quickly. “The Americans made demands and after consultation we complied.”
    “Consultations with whom.”
    “Lev Maksimovich,” said the plump man, quickly.
    Who was too ill—might not even recover—to confirm or deny it, Natalia accepted, realizing she was witnessing a hurriedly conceived survival defense.
    “Our own president agreed?” persisted Okulov. It was vital he didn’t make a single mistake.
    “With everything,” insisted Trishin.
    “Was there no professional argument?” asked the premier-cum-president. He was going to have to work with these men; decide who he could trust and of whom he had to be careful.
    “A considerable amount,” said Lvov. Some of the tension had gone out of the man.
    “There is documentary proof?” demanded Okulov.
    “Yes,” said Lvov.
    “Also that the pressure came from Washington?”
    “Yes,” said Trishin.
    Okulov settled back in his chair, visibly relaxing, looking between Natalia and the FSB counter-intelligence director. “So! What do we know about the