Parnell pursed his lips, squinting down at the picture. “Could be the Pergamon Museum, which contains the fantastic Greek altar: it’s the most impressive building in the entire Museumsinsel complex.”
“But isn’t that in what was East Berlin?” pressed Charlie, the mistake intentional. This really was like trying to sieve mud in search of a gold nugget.
“The actual partition hadn’t happened then, but it would certainly have been in that part of the city the Russians controlled and later occupied. Explains the two Russian women, I suppose.”
“Simon and the others would have had to be there by invitation? Have permission, certainly?”
“Without a doubt,” agreed Parnell, at once. “So it must have been very early. Almost from the first days they occupied the east of the city the Russians established patrols, checking everyone, turning people back even though officially they had no right. Always amazed me how the rest of the Allies seemed surprised by everything the Russians did afterwards. I thought from the beginning their intention was to take Berlin entirely, which they would have done if it hadn’t been for the airlift.”
“Sir Matthew let me read your letter of condolence about Simon, to his father?”
“Never enough right words to say what you properly mean,” complained the old man.
“In your letter you said Simon’s body was returned by the Russians? I don’t understand what he was doing there, if the Russians were turning non-Russians back.”
“You’ve got to understand the chaos that was there, even after the supposed surrender. It was total. Not everyone got turned back-just those that couldn’t satisfy the intercepting patrols. And Simon was unique in our section, had Russian as well as German. And enough charm to use either language to talk himself into and out of anything.I gave him the assignment to go into the eastern part, as well as all the accreditation I could think of.”
It was coming! Slowly, awkwardly, but it was coming. “When was that?”
The old man shrugged. “Difficult to be precise, to a date. First day or two of May, something like that.”
“Was there still fighting in Berlin then?”
“Not in the way I think you mean, but a lot of shooting, certainly. Mostly in the Russian sector. Hate to sound like the Nazi propaganda machine, but the Russians really were subhuman the way they took their revenge.”
“Wasn’t it dangerous for Norrington to go in?”
“He was an Allied officer with all the necessary accreditation and authorization. Officially he had the right. He was a very confident young man. And I sent all these in the picture in with him, although as I said I didn’t know anything about the Americans or the Russian women being there, too. Can’t understand that.”
“What was the assignment?”
“Because of the way the Russians were behaving, there was a huge exodus of people from what became East Berlin, everyone trying to justify their right to stay in the west. You’ve heard what an art rapist Goering was, literally looting museums by the trainload?”
Charlie nodded.
“There was intelligence, from three separate sources, that Goering had an enormous amount of art he hadn’t been able to ship to Car-inhall, his hunting estate north of Berlin, stored in the basement of the Air Ministry. I sent Simon and his group to see if it was true.”
“On May first or second?” pressed Charlie.
“As far as I can recall. It was certainly very early in the month.”
“How soon after May first or second did you hear from Simon Norrington?”
The myopic man shook his head. “I’m not sure I did, personally. There was some communication, as far as I remember, although it’s difficult to be precise after all this time. Something about his following up some information, as far as I recall. I had other search groups, in Munich and Hamburg. But all the message exchanges will be in ministry records. Ours was regarded as an important unit, which iswhy I’ll never understand why they kept us so short of staff. Records were important, though. Everything was kept, filed. I insisted on that, even though we had to keep a pretty loose command, by the very nature of the job, here, there and everywhere. I was actually off base, in Munich, for most of May. That’s when the message came from headquarters that Simon’s body had been found, terribly injured.”
“Do you remember the date?” asked Charlie.
Parnell shook his head. “It’ll all be in War Office records. You need to look them up.”
“Yes,” said Charlie, not bothering to explain the disappearance to the older man. “Do you remember how his body was returned?”
Parnell frowned at the question, offering more sherry, to which Charlie shook his head. “Of course I do. Star of my unit; only lost two during the entire war, and him when the bloody thing was officially over. The body was in a coffin. Damned awful thing, too. Changed it, of course. At once. The injuries were terrible …” The old man shuddered. “Wouldn’t have known a thing, thank God.”
“What about belongings?”
“Not as much as I would have expected. Decided at the time the bastard Russians had stolen a lot of stuff. Money, certainly. I clearly remember there wasn’t any money. Suppose we were lucky to get back what we did.”
“Uniform?”
Parnell shook his head. “There wouldn’t have been anything left, after the injuries he suffered. It was a shroud ….” The old man stopped in abrupt realization. “But it wasn’t Simon, was it?”
“No.” Charlie had decided it was easier for the man to speak as he had been doing.
“So the body I saw … with Simon’s things …. was someone else!”
“Yes.”
“Do you know who?”
“No. I don’t expect we ever will.”
“Bodies were easy to come by,” remembered the former soldier, with an unexpected hardness that surprised Charlie. “Was it simply a body? Or someone killed specially?”
The question surprised Charlie even more. “Killed specially, I would think.”
“Like Simon, in …?”
“Yakutsk,” supplied Charlie. “Yes, killed specially.” He straightened, refusing the maudlin drift. “There are some things that trouble me. Simon Norrington went into East Berlin on the first or second day of May? There’s a message you didn’t personally receive about his following up something there, and the next, at the end of the month, is that he’s been killed?”
“That’s as I remember it.”
“What about the squad that went into the east with him at the beginning of May?”
Parnell frowned. “I can’t properly remember, as I say. I wasn’t there. There was something about their coming back, but I can’t recall whether Simon was with them or not. Obviously he wasn’t.”
“Wasn’t there a need to keep in closer touch than that?”
“Apart from myself and one or two other officers, we were one of those gypsy units, chosen for a particular expertise-in this case a knowledge of art-and an investigatory ability. That’s why, officially, we came under the aegis of the Military Police and why there were so many civilian police officers seconded to us. It took me and other professional officers a long time to get used to it. In the end-certainly by the time we got to Berlin-there was an odd pride at being regarded as cowboys: it all went with the camaraderie of winning the war and of being part of a special unit.” He got to his feet, with difficulty, and went to a carefully arranged photographic display on a wall too far away for Charlie to have focused from where he sat. There was a startlingly clean square against the age-darkened wallpaper when Parnell took the photograph down to carry back to Charlie. “There we all are,” he said, proudly. “All thought we were pretty special then. Recovered a hell of a lot of stuff. Not enough, of course, but far more than we expected.”
The old man gazed nostalgically down at the photograph before handing it to Charlie. “There was a halfhearted attempt to keep in touch afterwards, but as I said, most of them were enlisted policemen, from all over the co
untry, so it could never have really worked. It got down to exchanging Christmas cards and then gradually that stopped ….” There was another nostalgic pause. “As far as I know, Peter and I are the only two of the original team still alive.”
Parnell finally offered the print to Charlie. It was one of thosevaguely self-conscious group photographs, the officers in the foreground, the unit behind them. Parnell himself and Norrington were in the front, with two other officers flanking them. The five men whom Charlie recognized from the Berlin picture were lined behind. There were a further five whom he didn’t. Charlie said, “Which one’s Peter?”
The old man pointed to a saturnine, unsmiling man seated next to him in the picture. “Sir Peter Mason. Seconded to us from the Foreign Office because what we were doing had all sorts of political dimensions, trying to decide who owned what art, that sort of thing. Ended up a permanent secretary. We kept in touch for a while, but it drifted off, like these things do.”
“But he’s still alive?”
“He was three months ago. Saw him on television, Newsnight: something about loss of sovereignty in the European Union, like it always is.”
“What was he, in your unit?”
“Second-in-command, I suppose. Kind of self-appointed, actually, but he was a very able administrator. Incredibly hardworking.”
“Would he have been the person Norrington would have dealt with in May, when you were in Munich?”
“Possibly. Difficult to remember after all this time. I really think you’d stand more chance going back through the War Office records.”
“Of course,” avoided Charlie, again.
“What happened?” demanded the old man, abruptly. “To Simon, I mean. And the poor bugger who ended up in his grave. What was it all about?”
“That’s what we’re trying to find out.”
Parnell shook his head. “Murdered. Unbelievable.”
“You told me you knew Timpson?”
“Wonderful man. Not as personable as Simon, but they got on very well together. Timpson had the most terrible eyesight, but it didn’t seem to get in his way doing what he did. He and Simon were great friends. Always thought Simon had a great admiration for George: thought George was better at what he did than he was himself.”
“What about Dunne? Was he an art expert, too?”
Parnell shook his head. “Political adviser, like Peter. God knows why everyone thought it was so important to be politically correct: that was a phrase even then. He and Peter palled up, like Simon and George, as far as I remember. Can’t actually recall the going of them.”
Charlie said, “You’ve been very helpful.”
“Like to think it would help find whoever killed Simon,” said the former soldier. “How on earth could he and Timpson have been where they really were, in the middle of Russia?” Before Charlie could respond, Parnell said, in sudden awareness, “Whatever Simon said while I was in Munich would probably give you a clue, would it?”
“Yes,” agreed Charlie. “It probably would.”
Vadim Leonidovich Lestov was a clever man becoming cleverer with each passing day and had known from the moment of the first discovery how most quickly to break Fyodor Belous, a fervent Party zealot well aware-until now perhaps even an admirer-of how information could be extracted from an unwilling informer.
Lestov simply left the man in total, soundless isolation to feed off his own fear throughout the first night of his detention and most of the following day. Belous was also denied food or water or lavatory facilities, which made the interview distasteful because Belous had shit himself at least twice by the time he was led into the interview cell. Already laid out on the table between them were some prints, a small, single-framed icon, the oil portrait of a woman, what appeared to be a gold-framed religious triptych missing its third panel, a single gold-framed pastoral scene picked out in precious stones, two rings, both set with heavy red stones, and a ribbon-suspended medal. There were also four photographs. The first showed Raisa Belous at what was obviously an official ceremony, the medal on her chest. The second was of the woman alone, in front of the Catherine Palace. The third was of her with a blond woman featured in the first picture. And the last showed Raisa yet again with the woman and the American who had been found in the grave in Yakutsk. The American and the blond woman had their arms around each other, laughing, and Raisa appeared to be looking on approvingly.
The display was set out to face Belous when he sat down, whichhe did uncomfortably. Further to demean the man, Lestov exaggerated his disgust at the smell.
Belous said, “You can’t do this to me!” His voice was hoarse from dehydration.
“I am doing it,” Lestov pointed out, logically. “And I will go on, as long as it suits me.” He splayed his hand over what was set out on the table. “You’re obviously a thief. A burglar.”
“You know they’re my mother’s things.”
“Not if I want to jail you for ten, fifteen years I don’t. A thief, from a church or a museum.”
“They’re my mother’s!” repeated the man, whimpering.
“You recognize anyone in that first photograph, apart from her? I think I do. I think the man with the heavy mustache was most often known as Joseph Stalin. And the balding man next to him wearing glasses is Lavrenty Beria, who headed Stalin’s secret police, the NKVD. You recognize them, Fyodor Ivanovich?”
“It was when she was acknowledged as a hero of the Soviet Union.” He briefly touched the medal. “My grandparents told me.”
Lestov picked up the jeweled pictures. “Do you know where this was from?”
“The Catherine Palace. Part of the Amber Room.”
“Was there more?” persisted Lestov.
“I think there was. My grandparents sold things, to survive.”
“What have you sold?”
“Nothing!”
“Liar!”
The stinking man touched the two rings. “Just some jewelry, like this.”
“Do you know who the man is, in the picture with your mother and the other woman?”
“The American from the grave?”
Lestov nodded. “Why did you keep these things?”
“I thought I could sell them-the pictures, I mean. I wanted the American to be identified before I approached the American reporters who came to me after the Moscow News story. I was going to say I’d discovered all this: sell them the photographs and see if there was a reward for the Amber Room stuff that everyone wrote about after my mother was identified.”
Lestov decided it was too pitiful to challenge. “There would have been some papers, documents, belonging to your mother?”
“Beria tried to gain power after Stalin died. Was purged. My grandparents were frightened: destroyed everything they thought might dangerously connect them to the man.”
“So your mother was NKVD?”
“I think so. That’s what it was known as then, wasn’t it?”
“Do you know who the woman is, with the American and your mother? Did your grandparents ever tell you a name?”
“No.”
“You’re in serious trouble, Fyodor Ivanovich. If I discover you’re still lying, I shall be very angry.”
“I don’t know anything more! Please give me something to drink. Let me clean myself. This isn’t right!”
Lestov shook his head. “I’m going to let you live in your own shit so that you can think extremely hard to make sure you haven’t forgotten to tell me all that you know.”
“Please!” wailed the man.
“This is how people were treated all the time in the old days-that time you admire so much. Enjoy it while you can.”
Marina Novikov stood with the official notification in her hand, her eyes too blurred to read it again. She said, “I never imagined this day would come.”
“Neither did I,” said the doctor.
“I’m frightened.”
“So am I,” admitted Novikov.
Marina looked around the ro
om. “My father built this house. It’s still the best in Yakutsk.”
“Then it’ll be easy to sell.”
“What will Moscow be like? Big, I expect. Difficult to understand at first.”
“But we will,” promised Novikov.
“I’m frightened,” she repeated.
“We’ve got the boys out,” said Novikov. “They won’t have to live the lives that we’ve had to.”
“No,” she accepted. “That’s what’s important. Do you think your side of the bargain with the Englishman will be enough?”
“We’ve got the official notice!” insisted the man, actually taking it from her.
“What if what you have isn’t enough and it’s canceled?” she asked.
Novikov shook his head in refusal against her doubt, but he didn’t reply.
30
The instruction had been for Charlie not to be late and he’d set out from London before the early morning rush hour, although not to comply with Sir Peter Mason’s autocratic demand. After his even earlier telephone conversation with Natalia, in a three-hour-time-difference Moscow, Charlie’s impression was of events closing in upon him in ever-constricting circles without his being able to orchestrate the process, and it was always necessary for Charlie to be the one with the baton in his hand. Which was why, driving unhurriedly and still constantly checking his mirror through the low Norfolk countryside, he wasn’t happy. And why he needed the time properly to analyze what he and Natalia had discussed to rearrange the score to his own tune, not that of the other players.
Unquestionably to Charlie’s benefit was the virtually speed-of-light granting of Moscow residency for Vitali Novikov and his family, which would bring them into the city and the already-provided apartment in the next two or three days. Even more unquestionable was that he had to be ready and waiting when the Yakutsk doctor arrived, finally to learn what the man knew about the murders.
If anything.
That nagging, persistent uncertainty was Charlie’s primary concern, as it had been from the first, initially unexplained approach from the thin, intense man. Charlie accepted with Novikov that he was in an all-or-nothing situation: all if the doctor had enough to unravel the riddles, nothing if he’d fallen for the desperate bluff of an innocent exile who’d greatly exaggerated his knowledge of a long-ago-eradicated camp and its special prisoners. The only thing hecould do-had ever been able to do-was call that bluff, if that’s what it was.
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