“Why on earth isn’t the government—America, too—demanding an explanation?”
“The possible embarrassment of a second involved Briton.”
“Rubbish. Preposterous rubbish,” rejected the man. “By 1945 there were millions of British handguns all over the place. And tens of millions of uniform bits and pieces. And it doesn’t matter whether there were one or two British officers. The unalterable, unchallengeable fact has to be they were prisoners of the Russians, without whom they wouldn’t have been there in the first place … .” He paused, close to being breathless. “Instead of inventing conspiracies and spying missions and possible international embarrassments, has anyone thought that even if there was a second British officer his body might be somewhere else in another unmarked, unknown grave?”
“I don’t believe they have,” conceded Charlie. He certainly hadn’t, until now. Which he should have. A second body in a second grave would make nonsense of a lot of his theories and arguments so far. It could even, he further conceded, refute a Russian accusation.
“Suggest it!” insisted Mason. “At the same time as suggesting an explanation is demanded from the Russians for what’s clearly cold-blooded murder!”
Charlie said, “I appreciate the time you’ve given me. It’s been very useful: put forward different perspectives.”
“I don’t at all like the sound of how this is being handled,” said the other man. “You’ve got my number. Anything else comes up you think I might be able to help you with, you let me know. You’ve no idea what the Russians were like in Berlin.”
“Colonel Parnell tried to give me some idea.”
Mason shook his head dismissively. “You had to be there, truly to believe it.” There was a further, more vehement head shake. “And I can’t believe how this is being treated now.”
When Charlie phoned from a public kiosk in the center of East Dereham, Sir Rupert Dean insisted it should be a full meeting, not confined just to the two of them.
In Moscow Dmitri Nikulin announced the same decision and Natalia traveled to the White House in the same car as Colonel Vadim Lestov. She was curious at the strange harshness there had been in the presidential chief of staffs voice when he’d summoned them, apprehensive of what it might mean.
“You’re sure you seized everything Belous had hidden?” demanded the tall, austere man.
“After finding what we did, we virtually stripped the apartment,” assured the militia colonel. “There’s absolutely nothing more.”
“Where is it now?” Nikulin appeared distracted, looking around his huge office as if he expected to see it laid out for inspection.
“All in my personal office safe.”
“Fyodor Belous?”
“In custody, in Lefortovo. Held on suspicion of theft,” said Natalia.
Nikulin said, “The NKVD accreditation is the most important.”
“It’s with everything else,” guaranteed Lestov.
“I want you, personally, to bring it to me today,” ordered Nikulin. He hesitated, looking away from them, his mouth moving in apparent rehearsal for what he was about to say. Then, coming back to them, he said, “As of today, this moment, the investigation into the Yakutsk murders and the apparent disappearance of Larisa Krotkov is ended. Neither of you will take any further active part and certainly make no contribution.” He looked directly at Lestov. “You will appear to continue working with the American and the Englishman, to monitor everything they do or might discover, until such time as they announce the case unsolvable. At that time we’ll devise a public announcement, which at this stage isn’t something that has to be considered.”
Natalia broke the stunned silence that followed, stumbling to arrange her own words. “But we surely need—”
“There will be no professional reflection upon either of you,” interrupted the presidential aide, misunderstanding. “In fact, both your records will be personally endorsed, by me, that your investigation has been exemplary and the confirmation of your promotion, Vadim Leonidovich, will also be endorsed with presidential approval.”
“We have already issued a statement of a potential breakthrough, hinting at Tsarskoe Selo,” reminded Lestov, uncomfortable that it had been his idea.
“Which we can easily make it to be,” said Nikulin, another decision already made. “We can produce everything else you found in Belous’s apartment and disclose it as art she saved from being plundered by the Nazis: continue building Raisa Belous into a heroine, which she was. And we’ll keep the man silent by using his fear of security organizations. Tell him if he as much as speaks to the press again he’ll spend the rest of his life in a Yakutskaya labor camp.”
“Are we to be told why and how Raisa Belous became a heroine? Larisa Krotkov, too, presumably?” demanded Natalia, her thoughts in order now.
Once more Nikulin hesitated. “They were both instrumental in one of the greatest-ever services to the Motherland, which continued to benefit for decades. But which will never, ever be revealed.”
“When?” demanded Aleksandr Andreevich Kurshin.
“Immediately,” said Vitali Novikov. “Everything’s fixed.”
“Full citizenship … residency permission … ?” groped Kurshin.
“Everything.”
“But you never said … talked about it,” complained the local homicide detective. “I would have expected … ?”
“You know how many times I applied before. I thought I’d be refused again,” said the doctor, close to the truth.
It was midafternoon in the mortuary laboratory and Kurshin had already consumed one flask of vodka, squinting to focus and to understand. Befuddled, he said, “You’ll be gone! Forever!”
“I shall miss you, too, old friend.”
Kurshin came awkwardly forward, arms outstretched, and the two men bear-hugged. Novikov felt his boyhood friend shaking.
Kurshin said, “A farewell drink?”
“Of course,” accepted Novikov. “Several.” He had a lot to celebrate. Everything, in fact.
31
“A total waste of time, in fact?” judged Gerald Williams, wearily predictable, the moment Charlie stopped talking.
“No,” denied Charlie. “There was no way of our knowing, until I’d spoken to all three, what there might have been. Which made it essential that I come back to do it.” Charlie, who’d never had to hold up a wetted finger to gauge which way the wind was blowing, discerned a changed attitude in everyone in the conference room. During the last confrontation, only days ago, Sir Rupert Dean himself had intervened to remind the constant attacker that he’d ordered the withdrawal.
“And having spoken to them, you learned nothing!”
“No.” Charlie was forced to admit.
“So there hasn’t been the slightest step forward?” persisted the committed finance director.
Because Williams’s attitude was so predictable, Charlie had withheld Sir Peter Mason’s alternative theory about a second officer, to which the fat man’s reaction was for the first time slower.
It was the director-general who said, “That would certainly be a total rejection of any Russian claim. Put us in the driving seat, perhaps?”
“More than that,” encouraged Charlie, who’d prepared his second presentation during the drive back to London more interested in the maximum benefit than in its absolute accuracy. “As I’ve already told you, I believe the accusation of a second British officer is what’s being threatened by the Russians. If we, in advance—today, even—made the demand for a Russian explanation, we’d completely preempt them.” He’d only spent a few minutes—five at the most—with Sir Rupert Dean before coming into the conference room, but it had been enough to detect the man’s misgivings at previously allowing so much to be withheld from the people now ranged around the table against him. It was therefore the director-general—upon whom above all others his future in Moscow depended—that Charlie was the most anxious to convince or reassure. Or both.
�
�Unless they know more about another officer than we do,” countered Patrick Pacey. “In which case we’d be admitting a spying mission in advance of being accused of it.” The political officer shook his head. “It’s too risky a strategy and there’s a lot of other people who’d agree with me, I’m sure.”
“Which brings us back, as we are always brought back, to how little has been achieved during this entire mishandled investigation,” Williams said.
“The opinion is not mine,” conceded Charlie, unhappy at what sounded like an excuse. “It was suggested, most strongly, by Sir Peter Mason. Who was the permanent secretary to the Foreign Office.”
“A long time ago,” deflated Pacey. “The Cold War eyeball-to-eyeball confrontations are things of the past.”
“Perhaps unfortunately, as far as our future is concerned,” remarked Jeremy Simpson. “I accept all the political arguments, but speaking as a lawyer there’s a lot in the cliché of attack being the best form of defense.”
Charlie at once saw the opportunity further to allay the director-general’s discomfort. “Sir Peter also insisted that it is impossible—his word—for Simon Norrington’s records to have disappeared. According to him it’s an inviolable Whitehall regulation that everything is transferred to Kew. Even if something is withheld for reasons of sensitivity, the fact that it is being withheld is publicly noted.”
“Are you suggesting there’s been positive obstruction?” demanded Dean, sharply.
What everyone else would believe to be outrage Charlie recognized as the man’s relief at his committee having belatedly put in front of them a lot of what he and Charlie had earlier kept to themselves. “I’m telling you the opinion of someone who knows the system,” Charlie said, following the older man’s lead. So unproductive had the interviews with the three men been that the latitude Dean had allowed did seem pointless now. It irked Charlie to have to agree, even only to himself, with Gerald Williams’s assessment.
“It’s most definitely something to be raised at the next meeting of the Intelligence Committee,” acknowledged the political officer.
“If it is positively being withheld or has been destroyed against the government’s procedural rules, then there is something extremely serious to hide,” the deputy director-general, Jocelyn Hamilton, began to warn.
Before he could continue, the finance director quickly intruded, “Which means there is a very severe embarrassment. And that we can’t risk demanding explanations from Russia. So here we are again, in a full circle and back to where we began. Precisely nowhere, with nothing.”
Charlie realized he very definitely wasn’t getting the support he’d become used to, especially from Jeremy Simpson. He wondered if Dean was going to pick up on the suggestion of internal obstruction by pointing out how disastrously failure could affect the future of the entire department, but when no guidance came, Charlie decided against putting it forward himself. Instead, deciding it might be an occasion to keep his head as low as possible behind the parapet, Charlie said, “Wouldn’t we still be able to get an indication of that by posing the question at the next combined meeting of the involved agencies?”
“Presenting yourself as our representative at Downing Street now?” goaded Williams, overeager.
“No,” rejected Charlie, at once. “Presenting myself as the field officer most directly involved and therefore most in need of positive guidance.”
“You’ve already been given all the positive guidance that should be necessary,” came in Hamilton, aggressively. “You’re surely not suggesting obstruction from us!”
Oh, to have had sufficient proof to reply as he’d like to have, thought Charlie, looking directly at Gerald Williams. He said, “Of course not. I’m simply reflecting the views of a highly experienced civil servant who found what I told him inexplicable.” Enough, Charlie determined: if the director-general wasn’t going to present the doubt outright, then Charlie certainly shouldn’t. The conclusion had to be that Dean had changed his mind.
Hamilton said, “Don’t we have another problem to consider? What are we to do about Sir Matthew Norrington’s ultimatum?”
“With just ten days of it to go, the first thing to accept, here and now, is that there’s no chance whatsoever of our being able to meet it,” suggested Williams.
“Shouldn’t we wait for the ten days to elapse before conceding it?” questioned Simpson.
“I don’t think there’s any point in wasting any more time,” said Williams. “I propose we start making contingency plans at once.”
“An excellent idea,” enthused Simpson, happy for his antipathy to show at last toward the financial director. “Let’s hear what yours are, Gerald, so that we can talk them through to get ideas of our own.”
“I’m suggesting the need for serious discussion, not offering formulated proposals.” Williams flushed. “It’s only been an hour since we’ve been told of the ultimatum.” A staged pause. “And that our part of the investigation is totally stalemated.”
“So you don’t yet have any positive ideas?” persisted the lawyer.
Williams’s redness remained at his awareness of being mocked. “Let’s hope you can find things so amusing in a few days’ time,” he said, stiffly.
“In a few days’ time we could know all about everything, wondering even why it was such a mystery at all,” said Simpson.
“At the same time as standing over there at the window, watching pigs fly over the river,” Williams came back.
“Ten days really is a very short period of time, so let’s not waste it,” said the director-general, stopping the exchange and the meeting.
In his office, immediately afterward, the director-general said, “That wasn’t very good.”
“Give me the ten days!” urged Charlie. “Make that your deadline, too, for letting me work as we’ve agreed.”
“I don’t want it to go on that long,” insisted the older man. “Before the ten days are up I want some idea, at the very least, what the hell’s going on.” Dean paused. Then he said, “You did very well last time. This time it doesn’t seem to be working out as it should. In fact, it doesn’t seem to be working out at all.”
Charlie was tempted to buy a dewy-eyed giraffe bigger than Sasha herself but remembered Natalia’s injunction not to try too hard, as well as realizing he’d have to take an additional passenger seat to get it back to Moscow. He settled for its more easily transported baby, which was still awkward hand-lugged. He bought Natalia a white and yellow gold love bracelet with a key to lock it permanently on her wrist.
Miriam Bell insisted they had a lot to talk about when he called from the hotel and Lestov said he was interested in hearing what progress Charlie’s London visit had achieved and agreed to a meeting for the following day without offering anything about the enigmatic press release that Charlie finally went through the pretense of asking about. Charlie thought he detected an uncertainty in the man’s voice, so much so he called Miriam back. She said the son-of-a-bitch had been avoiding her for the past three days, a problem the Russian had probably contracted from him. Charlie thought her suggested get-together the following day, ahead of that already agreed with the Russian, was a good idea.
Charlie didn’t call Natalia because the Interior Ministry number would be logged on his hotel bill, which had to be submitted with his expenses to Gerald Williams, determining on his way to the airport that the situation with the finance director was something that had to be resolved although still not knowing how. After today Charlie wasn’t even sure of the confidence of the rest of the group, particularly Jocelyn Hamilton.
All or nothing, he thought again, his mind fixing on the meeting with Vitali Maksimovich Novikov.
“We still need to know what the Russians have got,” reminded Kenton Peters.
“They’re hardly going to do anything about whatever it is they think they’ve got when they dig deeper, are they?” questioned Boyce, in return.
“Don’t like frayed ends,” said the A
merican. “But you’re quite confident now, as far as Britain is concerned?”
“Totally.”
“So we just let it all seep away into the sand?”
“Wasn’t that the intention from the beginning?”
“Not often it works out exactly right, though.”
“Kenton!” said Boyce, in London. “How many times in your very distinguished career has anything not gone exactly as you intended, from the very start?”
In Washington the American chuckled into the telephone, enjoying the flattery. “There’s always a first time. I didn’t want this—of all things!—to be it. Things got too close at times, because of that damned man Muffin.”
“But not close enough. But you’re right about Muffin. No need to dispose of him as we intended, but I think he should be put out to grass. I’ll see to it.”
“You were the one under the real pressure, James,” commiserated the other man, returning the mutual appreciation.
“But you who personally intervened when it was necessary,” said Boyce.
“Only too pleased to help,” assured Peters. “It’s been a useful exercise.”
“But not one I’m anxious to repeat too soon.”
The American laughed more positively. “I suppose we can look back on this as our own very special meltdown, like the Russians had Chernobyl?”
Boyce laughed with him. “Without any contaminating fallout. As you came to me last time, I thought I’d come to you to wrap it all up?”
“Make a weekend of it: we can go down to Virginia,” suggested the American.
“Wonderful. I’d like that.”
“You get a call from Charlie that he’s on his way back?”
“No!”
Miriam felt Cartright turn toward her in the darkness and was glad she hadn’t told him earlier. It might have distracted him from the main reason he was in bed with her. On balance he was better than Lestov—enjoyed longer foreplay, as she did—but she still intended to end it soon. It was one of several decisions she’d made. The most important was to manipulate the now-established one-to-one association with Nathaniel Brindsley to get a transfer somewhere more civilized than Moscow. This episode had soured Russia for her. It was still instinctive, though, for her to go on picking and probing, right now to decide if Cartright was lying about not having heard from Charlie, to prepare herself for the following day’s lunch. “I asked him what sort of trip he’d had and he said pretty good—that there were a lot of things to talk about.”
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