Dead Men Living cm-12

by Brian Freemantle

  “The instruction will be confirmed in writing?” requested Lyulin, protectively.

  “Of course. But I want the search begun at once. It has the highest priority, from the White House itself.”

  “I’ll put every available person on it,” undertook Lyulin.

  “But supervise it yourself. Nothing must be overlooked. And each camp must be identified in a summary of each shipment, understood?”

  “Completely,” assured the man.

  There was a benefit Natalia hadn’t anticipated when she got back to the ministry later that afternoon. Dmitri Nikulin’s congratulatory memorandum for the effectiveness of the previous day’s Yakutsk statement was marked as having been copied to the deputy interior minister, which forced a matching note from Viskov within thirty minutes. By which time Natalia was dictating memos of her own.

  To the president’s chief of staff she wrote that the reason for the murdered Westerners being in Yakutsk could well lie in the slave colonies that existed in the vicinity at the time of their deaths and that she intended as comprehensive a check as possible of all surviving records at Lubyanka, particularly for any Western prisoners. Her deputy, Petr Travin, would be in personal charge of the search, authorized to employ as many extra staff as necessary for it to be completed as soon as possible.

  Her instruction to Travin was for a daily summary, as well as a detailed assessment of the total number of camps that had existed around Yakutsk and for any that had a specific purpose other than simply housing prisoners or exiles. She dictated the authorization that the Lubyanka archivist had asked for and duplicated everythingto everyone-including Viskov-satisfied that she had effectively buried Petr Travin beneath Charlie’s bullshit mountain that hopefully really would become her deputy’s career grave if Camp 98-the records of which she’d sift first-had held someone of linking significance to the dead officers.

  Natalia felt better-safer-at the end of the day than she had at its beginning, especially when another memorandum was delivered just as she was leaving.

  It had been a good evening. They’d eaten Scotch beef from the embassy commissary and gone through in detail all that Natalia had done that afternoon to overwhelm Petr Pavlovich Travin. Charlie insisted Nikulin’s memo as she’d been leaving the ministry, praising her for making the gulag check, prevented either her deputy or Viktor Viskov from maneuvering an escape. “You’re not just ahead, you’re out of sight.”

  “What happens if it’s Petr Pavlovich who comes up with something from one of the other camps?” questioned Natalia, still needing to be convinced.

  “It was still your idea,” Charlie pointed out. “So it’s still your success, whichever way it goes.”

  They went to bed early, Charlie having been awake for almost forty-eight hours, but he wasn’t too tired to make love and it was perfect, as it always was. Afterward they lay side by side, their bodies touching, and Natalia said, “Yakutsk was the first time we’ve been apart-your not being in Mosow-for over a year.”

  “I know.”

  “I didn’t like it.”

  “Neither did I.”

  “I hope it doesn’t happen again too often.”

  “Me, too.” He hadn’t told her about Sir Rupert Dean’s talk of his being recalled to London and decided not to. Or of the unspeaking men at the American embassy, one trained not to blink. He said, “You hear from Irena while I was away?”

  He wasn’t sure, but Charlie thought he felt Natalia stiffen, imperceptibly, beside him in the darkness. She said, “No. Why?”

  “No particular reason. You’ve never told me much about her.” There was definitely a stiffness.

  “There’s nothing much to tell.”

  “Why didn’t you see her, for such a long time?”

  “What is it, Charlie?”

  “Just curious.” This hadn’t been the right moment, he realized. Or had it?

  “She make a pass at you?” demanded Natalia.

  “No,” lied Charlie.

  There was a long silence. Then Natalia said, “Konstantin left me for Irena.”

  Konstantin had been Natalia’s first husband, Charlie remembered. It had been so long since they’d talked about the man that Charlie had forgotten the name. He said, “What happened?”

  He felt Natalia shrug. “He was a lecher, like I’ve told you. But he’d never left me before. She always wanted anything I had, from when we were children.”

  “How long did it last?”

  “Until I divorced him so he could marry her. She didn’t want him then.” She was quiet for several moments. “I’m sorry I’ve been so stupid. About us, I mean.”

  “No real harm done.”

  “There could have been. I can’t think how awful that would have been.”

  “It’s over,” assured Charlie. Irena knowing someone at the British embassy was something else he wouldn’t tell Natalia. Their holding-back roles had been reversed, he realized.

  “I’m glad you called,” said Miriam. She really wasn’t sure who was the better lover, Cartright or Lestov. Which wasn’t the most important comparison. Cartright’s usefulness, apart from in bed, was what she could get from his involvement in the case.

  “It’s good to have you back.” said Cartright. “It must have been appalling.”

  “Known better.”

  “How did you get on with Charlie?”

  Miriam was surprised Cartright had managed to hold out through dinner and the before-and-after drinks. “Fine. He sure as hell knows how to operate.”

  “How’s that?”

  “We wouldn’t have gotten on that plane if he hadn’t known how to flash dollars around.”

  “He seems adept as making money work,” prompted Cartright.

  “But I gave him a ride back, so I guess we’re even. What happened while I was away?”

  “Nothing of any consequence. London doesn’t seem to be able to find any trace of our man. Or why he should have been there. How about you?”

  “Lots of questions. No answers.”

  “You think Charlie’s being straight with you?”

  “Don’t you?”

  “No. This is a joint operation. Anything I get from London I’m quite prepared to share with you. We do have rather a special relationship, don’t we?”

  “Very special,” agreed Miriam, happy in every way with her night’s work.

  18

  The first shipment from the Lubyanka archives-yellowing, crumbling folders and box files, mostly handwritten and detailing five camps, none Gulag 98-was waiting for Natalia when she arrived at the ministry the following morning.

  So, too, were all the replies from Petr Pavlovich Travin to her previous day’s flurry of messages, although none from the deputy foreign minister.

  Travin’s overall response-to complain of insufficient staff and inadequate funds temporarily to employ the extra people necessary for such a mammoth task-was precisely what Charlie had predicted, but Natalia felt a flicker of uncertainty at the next step. Just as quickly she realized there was no going back.

  She ordered Travin to withdraw clerk and office staff from every militia district station in Moscow and volunteered three of her own secretariat, suggesting that Travin and Viskov match the transferfrom their staff. She proposed that Travin organize a shift system extending until midnight-around the clock, if it became necessary-and in a separate although copied-to-everyone note asked the deputy interior minister to allocate emergency funding for the extra hours’ payment. She reminded her deputy there was a planned meeting that afternoon with the returning Colonel Lestov and suggested they finalize the operation then. Her last message, over which she hesitated longer than any other in the batch she enclosed to him, invited Dmitri Nikulin’s suggestion upon anything she might have overlooked.

  The speed of the deputy interior minister’s return brought the stomach-dropping realization of how carefully Viskov and Travin had set their imagined trap-even to corresponding through Nikulin-and how close she was to
the final confrontation. She wished Charlie would be with her when it came.

  It was to the presidential office that Viktor Viskov’s memorandum was sent, marked copied to her as a matter of courtesy, and Natalia accepted at once that Viskov’s denunciation was intended to be all the more effective by its careful understatement. She was referred to throughout by her cumbersome official title: Interior ministry director of militia and internal security liaison. Nowhere was there a direct condemnation. But to crush her as completely as possible by gaining an overwhelming support as well as an audience, duplicates of the memorandum had also gone to the Finance and Foreign Ministries.

  Viskov wrote that although the Lubyanka search ordered by the liaison director had already begun, it had not been possible for staff there accurately even to estimate the documentation involved. It was certainly well in excess of a hundred thousand, possibly treble that number. None of it was indexed, properly annotated or in any dated order; the history of some camps occupied half a dozen dossiers, others as many as twenty. Virtually the entire archival staff of the intelligence headquarters had been assigned to the recovery, but it would be at least a month, possibly longer, before it would all be finally transferred to the ministry. Even then there was no guarantee everything would be included. The archivist-Natalia assumed it would have been Fyodor Lyulin-had warned the material would eventually occupy several thousand square meters of space. The archivist had been given no indication or guidance by the liaison director concerning what was being hunted but thought it could takeas long as six months, depending on the number of people allocated, for everything to be read-longer if the search was for a specific individual. The lists of names ran into the millions.

  Viskov estimated thirty clerks could be withdrawn from district militia posts to supplement a possible further twenty within the ministry, as suggested by the liaison director. Their working a shift system-even around the clock, as also suggested by the liaison director-for anything up to six months would cost three times the total yearly clerk and secretarial budget of the entire ministry. It would also, of course, mean none of the normal work of those involved could be done, which would require a further period of overtime working, logically a further six months, which would bring the budgetary overspending to four times the salary allocation. A further but very practical problem was that in the ministry building there was insufficient storage space for the files, the first of which had already arrived.

  Such a commitment-in terms of cost, manpower, time and space-was unprecedented in the history of the Moscow militia, the intelligence agencies or the Interior Ministry. Nothing Viskov had so far been told by the liaison director supported such an undertaking; indeed, he was still waiting to learn precisely what was being sought. While in no way criticising the liaison director-nor, even less, questioning its immediate endorsement by the president’s office-Viskov urged serious reconsideration until they were convinced of the need and importance of an operation that quite clearly had not been properly thought through.

  The deputy interior minister proposed that the already arranged meeting with Colonel Vadim Leonidovich Lestov be expanded to the whole committee for the liaison director personally to justify her actions. Until then, and their confirmation by the full committee, he had suspended the archival transfer.

  Natalia read and reread the denunciation, knowing she could not afford to miss a single accusation. It was far more detailed than Charlie had predicted and for some time she felt hollowed-fleetingly, even, angry at Charlie-before gradually forcing the acceptance that Viskov and Travin had fallen into Charlie’s trap, not she into theirs. And that it looked as if this really was the last battle in a sniping war of attrition. She was frightened, which she supposed people werebefore knowingly going into battle. She hoped the very particular rules of engagement devised by herself at Charlie’s direction proved sufficient. They seemed to be, so far, but there was a long way to go.

  Her only real concession would be to admit a total inspection was impractical, and that wasn’t planned as an admission. Everything after that was to lure Viskov on, turning the man’s blind determination back upon himself. And he had been blinded. Or rather unable to see properly, over the bullshit mountain. Possibly the politician’s greatest weakness-despite his attempted insistence to the contrary-was having no alternative but to link Dmitri Nikulin in the attack, because of Nikulin’s endorsement of Natalia. More than a weakness, she corrected: it was a very definite tactical error.

  Natalia used her private line to dial Charlie’s direct embassy number, anxious for his reassurance, wincing when she finally got his voice mail. She didn’t leave a message.

  She was sitting contemplatively at her desk when the announcement came from Nikulin’s office that the afternoon’s meeting was being extended, as requested by the deputy interior minister. Natalia was sure she had sufficient evidence to confront those trying to destroy her, but following Charlie’s dictum, she wished she had more. It wasn’t until Lestov’s arrival that she considered she had it. Still a long way to go, but the route was better lit.

  At Miriam Bell’s entrance at least twenty male heads turned at the same time, as if attached to the same wire. Charlie sat facing the door of the Metropole Hotel’s Minsk Restaurant and didn’t have to make the effort but thought he might have, just for the fun of it, if he’d had to. Charlie wasn’t sure if the smile was all for him or had to be shared with her awareness of the effect she knew she was having throughout the room.

  He said, “You ever get into any trouble you couldn’t handle?”

  “I hope I don’t with you.” She wore a shimmering green silk trouser suit over a white silk blouse and he didn’t think there was a bra. Her hair was bobbed much shorter than in Yakutsk and all the swelling had gone from her face.

  “I don’t mix business with pleasure.”

  “I still believe what I said on the plane, that you would if it wasnecessary, and I could be sad you don’t think it’s necessary now,” she said, nodding acceptance to the vodka he offered from the carafe already on the table. “But that wasn’t what I meant, which I think you knew. So we really do need to have this lunch, don’t we?”

  As they touched glasses, Charlie said, “Who the fuck were the Men of Stone?”

  Miriam shook her head in matching incredulity. “The old guy’s name was Peters. Don’t know his first name. Never got one at all for the second one. Peters only dealt with the ambassador, who decreed every wish was our-and anybody else’s-command. I guess State Department, God and presidential executive order is a pretty powerful combination.”

  “The younger one wasn’t State,” insisted Charlie, positively. “I’ve met people like him before: recognize them as a type.”

  “Peter’s bodyguard,” identified Miriam. “Saul says State was taking seriously all the kidnapping and killing that happens here in Moscow.”

  Bodyguards got in the way of trouble or caused it, decided Charlie: they didn’t sit in on what might-but hadn’t been-sensitive debriefings. “Peters really that important?”

  “You wouldn’t believe how the ambassador and head of chancellery and Freeman were shitting themselves. Practically a hygiene problem.”

  “Why the act?”

  “The way he is, apparently. Although I don’t know how Saul knows.”

  Miriam’s responses were too ingenuous to be prepared, but his warning feet were throbbing to the beat of drums. “Where are they now?”

  “Gone.”

  “Quite an experience.” Was it over? he wondered.

  “Haven’t we got other things to talk about?” demanded Miriam.

  “Could be,” encouraged Charlie.

  “We’re working against each other, Charlie! Which doesn’t make any sense. You made it very clear in Yakutsk you don’t like company. I didn’t set out to do any deals, either. It’s going to be my tit in the wringer if this goes wrong. However it goes wrong.”

  Charlie poured more vodka for both of them and said, “L
et’sorder, after a speech like that.” When they had-Miriam with hurried disinterest-he said, “Wrong like failing to solve it or wrong like Peters would judge to be wrong?”

  Her smile this time was ruefully admiring, at Charlie’s perception. “We got a knee-jerk president, with ratings in free fall. Without talking to anyone except his own reflection in the mirror, to get the wet eyes right, he declares an unknown, wrong-place lieutenant to be a national hero whose death will be avenged. And then has to be told the reason for his very own Superman being where he was could be a monumental, fucked-up embarrassment, even after all these years. And that he’s tied the rock around his own neck and could be dragged down by it faster than he was already dropping.”

  Charlie exhausted the vodka with the arrival of their caviar and ordered another carafe. “So if the reason for your guy being in Yakutsk doesn’t qualify for the Arlington Cemetery burial, it’ll be interred with him to remain the great unsolved mystery?”

  “It is going to be Arlington,” confirmed Miriam.

  “Did Peters stop in England on his way here?” asked Charlie. It looked as if London and Washington were thinking with a single mind, London with perhaps more reason, if he was right about a second Briton being involved. He’d never liked being part of diplomatic house-tidying: the dirt always had a habit of bulging the carpet under which it was swept.

  “According to Saul, he wanted to get as much as he could here first,” said Miriam. “He’s doing it on his way back.”

  “Seems like it’s all being settled at a much higher level than us.”

  Miriam shook her head. “According to Saul, who’s busy digging himself out from under, Peters didn’t like your meeting. Doesn’t think you told the whole truth and nothing but the truth. And sometimes-too many times-what gets fixed at the top fucks up on its way down because no one has the full game plan. Won’t want to play it, even. Especially someone who doesn’t like working in tandem in the first place.”