It also brought about an unremitting media clamor for photographs of the British and American lieutenants as well as for Charlie and Miriam Bell publicly to be again made available for interviews. The FBI’s inept reason for refusing—that photographic publication or a press conference could possibly interfere with ongoing inquiries—brought an even greater clamor to know what those inquiries were and within twenty-four hours newspapers in America and Europe were speculating with ironic accuracy at a cover-up.
Encouraged by the American president’s already declared insistence that the American was a hero to be given a hero’s burial, the free-reined theorizing spiraled into total fantasy, up to and including—disregarding both the history of the time and the fact that Yakutsk is three thousand miles from Moscow—that it had been a mission to assassinate Stalin to end communism, prevent the division of Europe and stop the Cold War before it began. Germany and France—and Charlie—preferred the suggestion that it had been a joint operation to rescue Princess Anastasia from imprisonment in one of the Yakutskaya gulags after escaping the Ekaterinburg slaughter of the Imperial Russian family in April 1918. Claimed former gulag inmates recounted stories of a beautiful woman with black hair to her waist, living in moonscaped isolation in her own crenellated, barbed-wire-enclosed dacha guarded by watch towers and an elite Cossack troop.
Brighton Beach, on New Jersey’s Atlantic coast, is a ghetto of Russian émigrés, although demographically the majority are Ukrainian by birth or ancestry. They also represent the broad spectrum of Russian mafia in the United States. It was from the Beach—the waterfront avenue itself—that the first claim came from a man insisting the victim was his mother’s sister, with whom they’d lost contact after leaving her the custodian of priceless heirlooms, including a selection of icons for which he now sought reward or compensation from the Russian government. The virtually immediate FBI location of a three-page rap sheet for fraud, criminal deception and larceny didn’t prevent a day of headlines in the nearby New York newspapers.
There were three similar deception attempts in Moscow, two of which drew heavily upon the Anastasia invention, the third stretching it with the assertion that the victim was the secret daughter of Rasputin. Each demanded money, always in dollars, for their stories and family photographs, all of which were faded and blurred and none anything like the dead woman even before scientific examination.
Charlie made his own very personal contribution to the media frenzy on the third day, deciding it might be physically dangerous to delay any longer, although he hadn’t again picked up Henry Packer despite walking far more than he normally did and always going through a series of cut-out detours to get back to Lesnaya, pointless though that belated caution might be.
On the morning of that third day he got to his office early, wanting Packer still to be at the National Hotel. The series of quickly dialed and even more quickly disconnected telephone calls only took thirty minutes and Packer was actually breakfasting in the hotel dining room when the anonymously alerted Moscow-based international press corps descended, en masse.
Such was Packer’s reaction and the momentum of the Yakutsk mystery so self-perpetuating that the entire—and continuing—confrontation ran on television almost in its entirety during the course of the day and what was cut was easily filled in from the blazoned newspaper headlines and Charlie’s various conversations with Miriam and Natalia.
The dining room corner into which Packer had protectively placed himself became instead a trap from which he couldn’t escape through the solid pack of journalists and cameras, and most of the television footage actually showed him wide eyed, like an animal in a snare.
Charlie’s calls had identified Packer as an American State Department official on a secret mission to Moscow personally to explain to the Russian president the mystery of Yakutsk. Packer visibly cowered under the welter of questions, at first doing nothing but shake his head. When he did speak—in a surprisingly high-pitched New England voice—he appeared to confirm the suggestion. In his panic he babbled about speaking with Washington, too late remembering his pipeline engineer cover, which fell apart when he said he couldn’t remember the Russian company he’d come to Moscow to see. When his panic worsened, he tried to force his way through the wall of people confronting him and when they wouldn’t move lashed out, physically trying to fight his way through. At first that was panicked, but when he was shoved in return he openly tried to catch one thrusting reporter with an upward blow to the chin with the heel of his hand, which, if it had connected—which it didn’t, because of the madhouse scene—would have snapped the man’s neck. He chopped and jabbed several more times, very professionally, but again because of the jostling just one cameraman was hurt, a rib broken, because the knuckled punch again missed the fatal heart spot.
At least six reporters and cameramen went down with Packer when he fell, struggling, and he was gouging his way out of the melee when the militia arrived. At the police station, according to newspapers and later confirmed by Miriam, Packer first claimed diplomatic immunity, which immediately involved the embassy, and then claimed he was the victim of assault. Miriam told Charlie it took less than an hour for the State Department in Washington to disclaim any knowledge of the man and insist he in no way qualified for any immunity. It was midafternoon, according to Natalia, before Vadim Lestov got to Militia Post 23 to question Packer about Yakutsk. Fully recovered, the man insisted he knew nothing whatsoever about the television and newspaper stories running by then, nor why they should have imagined he did. Just as doggedly he maintained he’d come speculatively to Moscow as a pipeline engineer but had not yet been able to make contact with any oil exploration companies. He now demanded to leave the country immediately.
The colonel in charge of Militia Post 23 consulted with the Foreign Ministry after a junior counselor from the American embassy talked of an irritating diplomatic incident and Packer’s visa was revoked. Packer’s luggage being collected from the National Hotel by a second counselor, who also paid the man’s bill, would have been clue enough for the waiting press pack, even without the telephone calls from Militia Post 23 police on the media payroll. Packer arrived at Sheremet’yevo airport in an embassy car to another press ambush, which provided more footage of Packer fleeing across the concourse, knocking two people over as he ran.
It was when Charlie was assuring Miriam that evening he had no idea how the press had discovered Packer’s presence—reminding her she’d told him the man had returned with Kenton Peters—that he learned of Washington’s disavowal: “The goddamned embassy’s in an uproar: the ambassador didn’t know what to do.” Charlie guessed it had been a badly conceived, independent CIA operation, which was the explanation he later put to Natalia. When he put the suggestion to Sir Rupert Dean, the director-general said, “You really think so?”
“You saw the way he fought on television.”
“And he definitely had you under surveillance?”
“Definitely,” insisted Charlie. “I think it should be officially logged.”
“So do I. And it will be. And I’ll ask Washington for an explanation, through the Foreign Office. It’ll all be denials and claims of misunderstanding, of course.” There was a pause. “You think you’ve removed the danger?”
“The publicity will have frightened Peters.” I hope, thought Charlie.
“Wonder how the Moscow press got on to him?”
“No idea,” said Charlie.
The confirmed recognition of the woman in the Yakutsk grave came on the fourth day after the publication of her photograph and literally relegated the Henry Packer fiasco to a one-day wonder. The identification came from a man who walked into the offices of the English-language Moscow News, which with admirable journalistic initiative obtained what they believed to be everything it was conceivably possible to get from Fyodor Ivanovich Belous before contacting either their local militia station or the Interior Ministry. And in addition to what Belous had to tell, which upon analysi
s was quite meager, the well-documented background ensured a story that within a further twenty-four hours brought the announcement of movie intentions from a leading Hollywood studio. One of the photographs Belous produced of his mother, Raisa, even appeared to show her in the same white shirt, dark jacket and skirt she had been wearing when her body had been found.
Belous’s story was of never having known either his father or mother. His entire knowledge of them had come from his now-dead maternal grandparents, who had brought him up in Moscow, where he had lived his entire life, mostly as a clerk in the central division office of the Communist Party and latterly as a bookkeeper at the Moskva Hotel.
His father, Ivan, had died in 1943, just days before the end of the Germans’ nine-hundred-day siege of Leningrad. His mother had fled, unaware of being pregnant, one week before the siege began in September 1943. She had worked in the curators’ department at Tsarskoe Selo, the “Tsar’s Village” of five spectacular palaces established on the outskirts of St. Petersburg by its founder, Peter the Great. Raisa Belous’s particular responsibility had been the palace of Catherine the Great. It had been her job to organize the rescue convoy to Moscow of as much of the Catherine palace treasure as she could, in advance of the Nazi army and its Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg fur die Besetzten Gebiete, named after Alfred Rosenberg, who in 1940 had been personally appointed by Hitler to confiscate, loot or steal every work of art from Nazi-occupied territory for the world’s most complete museum Hitler planned for his Linz birthplace.
It was a matter of historical record that the Catherine Palace had housed one of the world’s greatest but now lost art treasures, the Amber Room presented to Peter the Great in 1711 by the Prussian warrior-king, Friedrich Wilhelm. And that Hitler had personally ordered that the twenty-one honey-yellow amber panels, four gold-framed with jeweled landscapes picked out in Florentine mosaic, the others carved in flower and fruit motif, should be restored to their original splendor in East Prussia’s Königsberg Castle in what he intended to be his personal study.
According to Belous’s grandparents, his mother’s greatest regret had been her failure to strip the three-hundred-year-old amber from the Catherine Palace walls to prevent it from falling into the hands of the Nazi E.R.R. looters. As it was, for what she had saved, Raisa Belous was made a Hero of the Soviet Union by Stalin. It was to let as many people know—not just in Moscow but in the West—that his mother had been such a heroine that he had approached an English-language publication.
As well as the photograph of his mother dressed in what she had been found in the Yakutsk grave, Belous produced four others, one of her standing in the middle of the Amber Room showing it in the dazzling glory that earned it a nineteenth century British ambassador’s description as the eighth wonder of the world. There was also the official notification of his mother’s death, which he now didn’t understand and wanted explained.
It was recorded as having occurred in Berlin in early April 1945. Raisa Belous had died, according to the notice, in an antipersonnel mine explosion.
“Which will have caused severe facial injuries,” predicted Charlie, during one of the twice-daily telephone conversations he maintained with London.
“I think you should come out of Moscow: pick up things here,” said Sir Rupert Dean.
“I want to speak to Belous myself,” avoided Charlie. “And there’s Gulag 98.”
The inmate register of which, building up the impression of a momentum, landed on Natalia’s desk the following day.
It was one of a batch of ten, all former camps in the immediate vicinity of Yakutsk itself, and was one of the few to have been divided between male and female prisoners. The batch brought to fifty-three the number through which Petr Pavlovich Travin was supervising the search—already extended since the emergence of Fyodor Belous—for anyone whose history hinted German, English or American connections or art or antique links.
The Gulag 98 records were among the largest and certainly the most complete so far delivered, the main dossier running to three hundred pages, annexed to which were the personal files of what, from the dates, appeared to be the last inmates sentenced before the camp’s 1953 destruction. Only the names remained, in faded sepia-brown ink, of the original thirty artists, writers and teachers who with little more than their frostbitten hands had built the original camp in 1932. Five were registered as having died during the construction. Against the names of all—and the majority who had followed in the subsequent nineteen and a half years—were listed unspecified crimes against the state. Fifteen years appeared to be the minimum sentence, thirty the maximum. Hard labor, within the dozens of mines, was mandatory. Without exception, permanent exile followed every jail sentence.
Charlie and Natalia had exhaustively researched the discovery. The year of the coins found on Norrington and the April 1945 dates for the Berlin burial provided a year-long time frame for Natalia to work within. From that period she gleaned the names of fifty-five men and thirty-seven women whose records—spanning a range of art, art history and academic professorship—suggested people or occupations that might have been sufficient to lure the three murder victims to Yakutsk. Among the men were fifteen whose names and details identified them as German. There were no personal records for any of those fifteen, nor any reason for their imprisonment. Each was simply described as being of “special category.” Twelve were marked as having died before the closure of the camp. The location to which the other three had been transferred was not given.
Following the step-by-step preparation she had gone through with Charlie, Natalia delayed sending the Gulag 98 dossier to the man who was still her official deputy, needing to copy what she considered relevant sections. With the rest she sent a note, duplicated to everyone involved, reminding him the concentration upon anyone with fine art or antique expertise was now even more important in view of Raisa Belous’s history. Because it was also a connected part of the necessary further undermining of Viktor Romanovich Viskov and Petr Pavlovich Travin, she ambiguously worded her agreement to Lestov sharing with the British and American investigators that afternoon’s interview with Fyodor Belous as if it were the homicide colonel’s idea rather than hers, curious if Charlie would again be proved right.
He was.
To Viskov’s anticipated, within-the-hour objection, copied to the same circulation list to which she had also sent hers, was attached the minutes of their very first coordinating meeting, at which Dmitri Nikulin had specifically forbidden such cooperation. Viskov’s memo demanded an explanation for her disregarding the instruction of the presidential aide.
Natalia’s rebuttal was even quicker than Viskov’s to her: she’d had it already prepared, complete with her marked version of the same initial meeting. Dmitri Borisovich Nikulin had also specifically ordered that everything should be done to discover the undisclosed progress of the two Western investigators, which they might be able to estimate by carefully monitoring a shared interview with someone whose story was already public knowledge. Unable to prevent the bubble of uncertainty, Natalia wrote that she regarded the intervention of the deputy interior minister even more counterproductive than his brief cancellation of the gulag search. As the authority of Dmitri Borisovich had been invoked in both their exchanges, she was, of course, prepared to defer to his judgment, but unless she heard from the president’s chief of staff she intended the shared encounter with Belous to go ahead as planned.
No intervention came from Nikulin.
Charlie’s invitation to the Interior Ministry, personally telephoned by Lestov, was the prearranged signal that Natalia had won another battle. It would not be difficult for him seemingly to let something slip, apparently to show Lestov to be making all the right moves. Charlie wondered if out of it all he’d be able to extract a little in return. He expected to, because he hadn’t wasted the intervening, personally unproductive days. He’d read quite a lot about specific war history.
Charlie Muffin was a diligent reader of b
ody language, too, and believed there was initially a lot to be learned in the first few near-wordless moments of the encounter with Vadim Lestov. Charlie’s immediate impression was of the Russian colonel himself. Charlie knew from Natalia there had been further recognition from Dmitri Nikulin for Lestov achieving an identification by releasing Raisa Belous’s photograph. The change in Lestov was practically visible, as if he had grown in stature, filling out, becoming taller. There was nothing left of the earlier, close-to-overwhelmed reserve in the official surroundings of the ministry. Instead there was a smiled greeting, without any stammer, and tea—although no vodka—and the easy acceptance of Charlie’s congratulation at the quick discovery of Raisa Belous, without any acknowledgment that the picture-release idea had been Charlie’s. The Russian even wore a newer suit that didn’t shine with wear at the elbows.
Fyodor Ivanovich Belous’s did. The striped jacket had once been part of a long-ago-divided suit and the gray trousers were bagged and shapeless. But here again there was no awkwardness and, remembering the Moscow News details of the man’s Communist Party past, Charlie guessed the confidence lingered from Belous once having been part—albeit a very small cog—of the ruling machine. The handshake was firm, the eye contact direct through rimless spectacles. When Lestov complained, mildly, at Belous telling his story first to a media outlet, Belous at once said he’d explained his reason for doing that in the article and Charlie further guessed the man’s imperiousness would have exceeded his position in a mourned regime Belous would clearly have welcomed back. Charlie also suspected Belous’s going to a newspaper had as much to do with a personal protest against the supposed and resented new order as it did with establishing his unknown mother’s reputation.
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