It was a question that Charlie couldn’t yet answer, although he had a vague, half-formed thought prompted by the fact that none of the uniforms carried regiment or corps crests on their buttons. Once again it was the absence of an article rather than its presence that Charlie considered important: wearing a Sam Browne proved the man wasn’t armed. Would the other officer whom Charlie was sure had been at the scene have been wearing a more practical battle dress, complete with sidearm? There were no markings on the uniform to show the American might have carried a weapon, either. Whoever they’d been and whatever they’d been doing, neither had belonged to a fighting unit. Which narrowed the possibilities.
Miriam Bell lifted and then dropped her shoulders at the Moscow detective’s question. “My only thought is that it could have something to do with a hobby.”
People didn’t bring their hobbies to Yakutskaya then or now, thought Charlie: it was the first slip Miriam had made. Hoping to generate something—anything—Charlie said, “We need more than we’ve got to take this inquiry forward … to take it anywhere.” If he suggested a comparable photographic check against graduation pictures from America’s military academy at West Point she might come back at him with the British counterpart at Sandhurst, so he decided to leave it.
“In view of the media interest, there might be a response if the photographs that Dr. Erzin took today were issued?” suggested Kurshin.
There could, Charlie conceded, be satellite television somewhere in the town, but the Ontario didn’t have CNN, because he’d already checked. So how, apart from monitoring Charlie’s British embassy call during which Cartright had talked of the publicity leak, could Kurshin have learned of the media awareness? Charlie was glad he hadn’t booked a traceable call to Natalia through the hotel switchboard. He wouldn’t attempt to reach her while he was here. And needed to be more careful than he had been the previous night when he next spoke to the Moscow embassy. Charlie looked between the two doctors and said, “The Russian woman had childbirth marks. Is there any way to establish how recent to her death she’d had the baby?”
“It should be possible for a gynecologist,” Novikov said at once.
“It’s a test I intend to make when I get the organs back to Moscow,” said Olga.
“Something else I look forward to receiving from you,” reminded Charlie.
The pathologist nodded but didn’t speak.
“The child could still be alive,” Charlie pointed out. “Conceivably, so could the woman’s partner. There could be an identification if her photograph was published in Moscow.”
“I’ll suggest it,” agreed Lestov.
Charlie doubted that either London or Washington would issue pictures until a reason was found for the two men being where they had been, despite media pressure. But it didn’t hurt to go along with the local homicide chief’s suggestion.
“Now that we’ve agreed on the nationality of the victims, I assume there’ll be no difficulty repatriating the bodies?” said Miriam.
“That’s more a political decision,” avoided the police commander.
“But you won’t object to the release of the bodies?” pressed Charlie, hoping to infer something from the reply.
Before either local man could respond, Olga Erzin said, “I really do need to get all the organs back to Moscow. There’s absolutely no reason for anything to remain here any longer.”
“It has to be the decision of the Executive Council,” said Ryabov.
Awkwardness for awkwardness’s sake? Or something else he couldn’t at that moment fully understand? Charlie’s first thought would have been perverseness, but now he wasn’t totally sure. There would have to have been some local official awareness all that time ago of a tweezer-carrying American and an unarmed English officer being where no other Westerner had been before. And increasingly, as he tried to fit the pieces together, Charlie was getting a nagging feeling that the reason for their presence might be buried locally far more successfully than the bodies had been. Maybe it made sense after all for him to play diplomat and meet some local leaders. He said, “Perhaps we need personally to make the request?”
“That would be best,” agreed Kurshin.
The convoy arrangements definitely established, Charlie lingered for Vitali Novikov when the meeting broke.
The man said, “Thank you, for what you said. Putting it on the record like that.”
“Nothing that wasn’t the truth,” flattered Charlie.
“You’ll want some protection from insects out at the grave tomorrow,” offered Novikov, trying to reciprocate.
“Exactly the sort of local knowledge I do need,” prompted Charlie.
“Have you any arrangements for tonight?” asked the pathologist.
“None,” said Charlie, at once.
“My wife would be very happy for you to join us for dinner.”
“So would I be, to accept.”
Charlie had completely orientated himself and knew they were driving north from the town center. Very quickly the brick houses for crooked people gave way to wooden ones on stilts, securely upright without any subsidence, although the connected streets were haphazardly disjointed, afterthoughts to link places originally erected where the whim took the builder, before roads were considered.
Novikov said, “Certain trades, professions, could get people out of the gulags. A lot of people lied, of course. When they were found out, they were shot: publicly, in front of the original camp from which they’d tried to escape, as a warning to others. Being shot was another way of escaping.”
“Who was it who was exiled here?” asked Charlie, picking up the lead.
“My father.”
“Was he a builder?”
“A doctor. That was even better.”
“And why you became one, too?”
“Yes,” confirmed Novikov, at once. “There aren’t many safe professions, even now. Everything is the mines. Which is slave labor, as it’s always been.”
“How close are they to the town?”
The pathologist shrugged beside him in the car. “The nearest is maybe five or six kilometers.”
“What about prison camps?”
“Much farther away.”
“But prisoners still work the mines?”
“Until they die. Which they still do, very quickly.”
Novikov’s house was immaculate, the wooden lining clearly insulated against the outer wall. Novikov’s family was waiting in the main room, in which a fire flickered from habit rather than need. Marina was plump and rosy-cheeked. Charlie guessed she was about forty, although her hair was completely white. The boys were fair, like their father. They were dressed in what was clearly their best and newest clothes, the woman in a thick blue wool dress, the boys in matching gray trousers and sweaters. Novikov had been sure he would accept the invitation before it was offered, Charlie acknowledged.
Everyone embarrassingly remained standing until Charlie sat, the boys waiting after that for their father’s permission. Charlie estimated Georgi to be about fourteen, Arseni maybe two years younger. Novikov served vodka for himself and Charlie, a purple-colored juice for his family.
Charlie’s interrogation training and techniques had been honed by his new diplomatic environment and he used it all and improvised on top of that. He coaxed the boys into talking about their schooling and their intention to be doctors like their father, and flattered that he’d guessed before being told by Marina that her father had been the qualified architect who built the house.
Charlie described where he lived in Moscow as an ordinary apartment and showed the woman the photographs of herself and Sasha that Natalia had smuggled into his suitcase. During the meal—reindeer steak again—Charlie elaborated stories of police investigations he’d read about or occasionally seen in movies and insisted against Novikov’s protest that he didn’t mind Arseni’s question but that he’d never shot anyone dead. Both boys appeared disappointed. Charlie made a point of repeating several time
s that it had not really been necessary for Moscow to send a pathologist, so complete had Novikov’s examination and conclusions been. “If we solve this case, it will be largely due to your father.”
On their way back to the Ontario Hotel, Charlie said, “You’ve got a fine family.”
“You were very gracious,” said the doctor. “And flattering.”
“Isn’t it going to be largely due to you if I’ve any chance of finding out what this is all about?” asked Charlie, heavily, turning sideways in the car toward the man.
“Probably,” returned Novikov, enigmatically.
“Your father was sentenced to Gulag 98, wasn’t he?”
“Yes. But being a doctor, he was allowed to move into the town almost immediately. He was still responsible for Gulag 98, though. And two more on the other side of Yakutsk.”
“Was Gulag 98 a special prison?” pressed Charlie, discarding that morning’s decision to let things come at Novikov’s pace.
“It was for intellectuals.”
“Were the people in the grave connected with someone who might have been in the camp?”
“It’s possible. But there aren’t any records anymore. Officially the genocide of Yakutskaya never occurred.”
The twinge in Charlie’s feet told him he was missing something, maybe a key to unlock more doors. “Would you take me to surviving camps?”
“It wouldn’t help.”
“It would give us a chance to talk more, at least.”
“I am staying with the woman tomorrow, while she carries out her tests. Maybe after you’ve been to the grave.”
Everyone—even the two local militia officers—was waiting for him in the bar when Charlie entered the hotel. No one accepted his offered drink. Miriam said, “We kept dinner waiting.”
“Decided to eat out,” said Charlie. “Should have told you.”
“Yes,” said Ryabov. “You should.”
Fuck you, thought Charlie. Being an enforced member of a committee wasn’t as much of a problem as he’d feared it might be.
11
The ice grave was a crater in an earthly moonscape and the protective headgear and face masks that everyone wore, in various designs, made them look appropriately like astronauts. The insects rose in a solidly attacking mass. Charlie’s beekeeper’s hat was perfect but he wished he’d taken Novikov’s advice about gloves.
The annoyance at his disappearance the previous night remained, so much so that Charlie suspected they would have left without him if he hadn’t made a point to be first downstairs waiting, and bustled in to take Olga’s place the moment Kurshin arrived. On the way to the burial spot Lestov and Kurshin had talked—the Moscow detective hoping the crime scene produced more than the autopsies appeared to have—ignoring Charlie in the back. He trailed behind, the last in line, as they straggled toward the actual spot, and no one paid any attention to him when he edged away from the huddled-together, mosquito-swatting gathering that assembled to watch Lev Denebin carry out his forensic examination. Charlie positioned himself with the scientist in his immediate line of sight and the others beyond, able to see everything and everyone.
Denebin was better protected against the insects than any of them, helmeted, gauzed, gloved and with his scene-of-crime overalls tightly held at wrists and ankles. Charlie, who admired professionalism, was at once impressed by the Russian. Before getting into the grave, Denebin exposed an entire role of film in advance of pegging its immediate surround, using the markers to secure his tape for detailed exterior measurements ahead of stretching between them a crisscross of tape to section the depression into six designated search areas.
From Novikov’s earlier photographs it was obvious the ongoing thaw had deepened the grave still further from the depth at which the bodies had lain. Although he trod minimally and carefully, Denebin very quickly created an ankle-sucking sludge in places at the bottom of the depression. The forensic expert was painstakingly thorough, gently digging with a small trowel, particular always to sieve the earth back on to the place from which he’d collected it, not allowing any encroachment onto an unsearched, taped-off section.
It was only after watching the Russian probe and sift with total concentration for thirty minutes that Charlie appreciated the complete extent of his dismissal. Denebin appeared unaware and certainly uncaring of Charlie but stood always with his back to the others, for his body to obscure anything he didn’t want them properly to see.
Denebin had his specimen bags in a satchel slung around his neck, returning to a separate compartment whatever he felt it necessary to collect. He retrieved a lot of what looked to Charlie like metal shards and a few pieces of blackened wood. On the third cordoned-off section Charlie was immediately aware of the man’s body tightening and of Denebin more obviously putting his back to the watching group when he straightened with something small enough to hold between his thumb and forefinger. Until then he’d used one bag for several pieces of metal, but this new find got a specimen container of its own.
None of those at the grave edge appeared aware of Denebin’s stiffening, all too distracted by the constant, arm-waving effort to disperse the persistent mosquitoes and midges, despite Kurshin lighting a cordon of ineffective repellent candles. Charlie’s hands and arms were ablaze from bites, but he rigidly held himself against warding them off, not wanting to attract the scientist’s attention.
Within minutes he was glad he’d endured the torture. At the crater’s edge of the fifth section Denebin actually grunted as he stooped abruptly, troweling debris into his agitated sieve. From where Charlie stood the shell casing was obvious, and in the few seconds it took Denebin to bag it, Charlie decided it had not been from a 9mm bullet but a much smaller caliber.
It was turning out to be another good day, Charlie thought, although maybe not for the worried British military attaché, Colonel Gallaway, in faraway Moscow. Not his problem, Charlie decided. His job was to determine the circumstances and, he hoped, establish the facts, not pretty them up. Behind the forensic scientist the rest of the group waved and slapped and Charlie wondered what, apart from insect bites, they were gaining from just standing there.
Quietly, slowly, Charlie eased himself away. It was a moonscape, empty kilometer after empty kilometer of treeless, stunted scrubland. In a few places—other, smaller craters—the rare warmth was making mist that hung, wraithlike. A place of far too many ghosts, thought Charlie: of three in particular, but of hundreds more. But where had Gulag 98 been in which they had been kept, when they had been pitifully alive?
The killings, he supposed, would have been a day very similar to this. Not as warm but summer, the ground softening. Vehicles, although not many: a truck, perhaps. A car. Two at the most, as few witnesses as possible. It would have been during the half-light of day. The killers would have needed to see what they were doing, choose their spot, and the insects had been swarming in the daytime heat, like now, to clog the mouths and throats after the executions. There would have been panic. And fear. A lot of fear. Don’t do this! This is madness! Let’s talk about it! For God’s sake! English voices—hysterical voices—in a land that had never heard English. No time to dig. Get it over with as quickly as possible. Get away. The explosions—there would have been several, from the amount of metal Denebin had collected—would have been deafening. No turning back after that. All argument, all pleas, ended by the explosions. They would have been manacled. Immobilized. Frightened people killing frightened people. But why? What could this desolate, pitiless land of ghosts have or possess to justify the ritual, cold-blooded execution of these three unknown, apparently unmourned people?
Not the land—the place—itself, Charlie decided. It would have been someone who was here, in Gulag 98. Maybe more than one. A group, like he was a reluctant part of a group now, men—maybe women, too—with a secret.
He had to examine that speculation further, justify the reasoning. He’d seen the bodies, each of them naked. Hand and ankle cuff marks, clearly visibl
e. Shattering bullet wounds to the back of the head. But that was all. No sign whatsoever—no bruises or burns or cuts—of torture. And men prepared to kill would have been as prepared to torture if the victims had possessed a secret. So why hadn’t they? Because they didn’t have to, Charlie answered himself. The executioners knew the secret: what there was to gain. But didn’t want to share what was big enough, rewarding enough, to kill for. They’d known each other, victims and killers. Would have used first names when they pleaded, calling upon friendship, acquaintanceship. Charlie was sure he had a picture, but it was misted, much more deeply obscured than the occasionally shrouded expanse across which he was looking, seeking but still not finding what he had expected to see. The foundation marks of buildings, perhaps, even those built on stilts. Certainly evidence of proper graveyards.
He turned, surprised at how far he’d wandered on feet that normally cautioned against such excess. Denebin was clambering from the grave, tidily winding up his marking tapes and retrieving the securing pegs, when Charlie got back to them. He was in time to hear the forensic scientist say, “There’s very little. Too much time has elapsed from the bodies being discovered. Animals have been there, disturbing it all.”
“But there are some things?” questioned Charlie. “I saw you collecting samples.”
“Things I need to look at more closely,” said the scientist, vaguely.
“Do we have to talk about it here!” protested the arm-flailing Miriam. She’d suffered more than anyone, with just chiffon scarves to wrap around her head and face. “I’m being eaten alive. I want to get back to the hotel, clean up.”
“Of course,” agreed the attentive Lestov, at once.
“I’ll need until tomorrow to get any opinion of what I’ve got,” said Denebin, awkwardly.
“We’re meeting Valentin Polyakov in the morning,” reminded Miriam.
“Another busy day then,” said Charlie, brightly. No one acknowledged him, already hurrying back toward the waiting vehicles.
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