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interrogation to determine whether the man might have been suborned and actually
be
a security risk. The contradiction against his being so was that Stout was blatantly too stupid. The caveat to that dismissal came just as quickly. Unless, that is, Stout was the eminently qualified buffoon to conceal the person reducing the embassy to a security farce. That led inevitably to the question overhanging all others: What the fuck was going on?

    Both William Hoskins and Paul Jameson wore campaign ribbons. Both had the backbones of career soldiers and Charlie abandoned any resistance to the word “sir” as verbal punctuation. They told him that because of their blank CCTV screens they’d taken turns to make short patrol walks, although not as far as where the body was found. For just two men to maintain any sort of proper security was virtually impossible without closed circuit television, particularly when the majority of the embassy’s outside illumination went off at midnight. There were no automaticallytriggered movement or body-heat activated burglar lights. Ground sensors sounded an audible alarm by tread or passing movement, with no visual screen display. There had been nothing on the night of the body discovery that sounded like a pistol or automatic weapon report.
    “Which we would certainly have recognized,” offered Hoskins, the plumper of the two ex-soldiers.
    “Even below the rest of the noise that there was that night,” added the mustached Jameson.
    “Below what noise that night?” quoted back Charlie.
    Hoskins shrugged, dismissively. “There was a lot of noise around midnight. An altercation among a birthday party group, something like that, farther along the embankment.”
    Charlie let the despairing frustration pass. “How much farther along the embankment?”
    There was another dismissive shrug. “A hundred, hundred and fifty yards. Quite close to the pontoon. A bunch of guys trying to throw someone in the river.”
    “How do you know it was something like a birthday party and that someone was being threatened with being thrown into the river?” asked Charlie, sure he already knew the answer.
    The two men looked at each other. “We went along to check it out; make sure it wasn’t going to be a problem that might involve the embassy,” said Jameson. “That’s our job, making sure the embassy doesn’t get caught up in any trouble.”
    “Yes.” Charlie sighed, as Stout reentered the room. “That’s what your job is.”
    “I don’t understand it,” complained Stout, intruding into the meeting.
    “Let me guess,” offered Charlie, wearily. “The log for the night of the murder isn’t in the file where it should be?”
    Stout nodded, in agreement. “There are some other days that are missing, too.”
    “Nights and days when the CCTV didn’t work?” suggested Charlie.
    “How did you know?”
    “It’s a knack I have,” said Charlie.
    His meeting with the two nighttime guards over, Charlie insisted on being taken to the electrical control box governing the embassy’s CCTV cameras, his stomach lurching at the immediate discovery of at least twenty other control terminals forming part of the same bank.
    “The Russian electricians had access to this box?”
    “Of course. They had to have.”
    “For how long?”
    “An hour. Maybe a little longer.”
    “Who was here, monitoring them?”
    “I was,” replied Stout, his voice lifting at being able at last to respond positively.
    “Here, all the time?”
    Stout gave another of his now familiar hesitations. “Apart from the times I went with the other Russian to check the CCTV screens, to confirm that they were operating normally again.”
    “Leaving the other man working on the terminals here all by himself?”
    “I couldn’t split myself in half to be in two places at the same time, could I?”
    “No, I don’t suppose you could,” agreed Charlie.

4
    Charlie’s escape from his scourging frustration at the embassy security