Dead Men Living

“You want Georgi and Arseni to live like we’ve had to live?”

“You know I don’t. But there is no other way. No way out.”

“My father was a clever man. A meticulous man.”

“And you’re clever, too, my darling. But I can’t see how Americans or British can help us.”

“I’ll find a way,” repeated the medical examiner, stubbornly. “Even if I have to cheat and lie.”

Gerald Williams examined his idea from as many aspects as he could think of before telephoning his fellow finance director across the river at Vauxhall Cross. His second call was to Richard Cartright in Moscow.

“I thought I should introduce myself, now that our two departments are going to be working together,” said Williams.

7

The phrase that came to Charlie’s mind was phony war, although it didn’t fit because he wasn’t going to allow a war between himself and Natalia, phony or otherwise. They were moving around the apartment, overly attentive upon Sasha, overly polite toward each other, with long periods of silence, as if each were expecting the other to fire the first shot.

It was, however, Natalia who proposed the armistice. “Angry?”

“No.” Charlie was on his second Islay malt of the evening, Sasha already asleep.

“What, then?”

“Disappointed.”

“It had to be this way: from our Foreign Ministry to yours, in London.” She shook her head to the wine he held up.

“I know that. You might just have mentioned something.” Charlie was, in fact, very angry, although not at Natalia. He’d timed the telephone lecture from Sir Rupert Dean at forty minutes, immediately followed by the promised memorandum, and after that there had been the personal visit from Richard Cartright with the insistence that he was sure they were all going to work together perfectly. Towhich Charlie had thought bollocks and said he was just as sure.

“I’ve got so much to mention I doubt I’ll remember it all,” said Natalia, turning his expression.

Charlie looked at her curiously. “Go on.”

“I’m not sure I can do it,” blurted Natalia. “That we can do it: keep secret what we have to. I’ve almost gone mad!” And she still didn’t intend to tell him everything.

“It might have helped to talk.” He was glad he hadn’t told her of Irena’s apparently brief affair with Saul Freeman. Glad, too, that there’d been no personal contact from the woman after that one night, which she’d hinted at when he’d walked her to the street-level door.

“Perhaps. I just wanted to do it this way. Try some separation, so that we couldn’t be professionally accused of anything.”

Charlie smiled at her sadly. “I know I was a shit before. But I’ll make you a solemn promise. I will never, ever, cheat you or use you or expose you to any risk I can possibly avoid. Or put Sasha at any risk.”

Natalia stayed silent for several minutes, changing her mind and pouring her own wine. “I believe you, about us.”

She didn’t, Charlie decided. She wanted to-maybe would come to, in time-but at the moment there was too much to forget. He took Sir Rupert Dean’s fax from his pocket and slid it across the table toward her. “Now it’s official, I suppose we can talk about it.”

She smiled, relieved it had been this easy, reading it slowly, not looking up for several minutes. “Those are all the facts there are?”

“Seems like it.”

“How do you feel about working with the SIS?” she asked, anticipating the answer.

“I don’t like working in groups. Cartright won’t be the only person.”

“It’s an order, Charlie,” said Natalia, at once worried.

“They won’t know that, will they? They might even have their uses.” He sipped his whiskey. “Read up on what I could about Yakutskaya, from the embassy library. Seems a hell of a place. There was an embassy assessment from here, in Stalin’s time, just at the suggestion of the gulags that was marked doubtful because the descriptions weren’t considered humanly possible.”

“Even though Stalin’s been denounced and disgraced, public records stay sanitized,” said Natalia.

“I won’t take a paperback and sun oil.”

Natalia refused the anxious flippancy. “Be careful.”

Charlie waited. When Natalia didn’t continue he said, “Everyone and his dog out to screw me?”

“I won’t let you be exposed to any risk I can possibly anticipate and prevent,” said Natalia, matching his earlier promise.

At once, urgently, Charlie shook his head. “Don’t anticipate for me! Let me anticipate for myself.”

“So you don’t trust me!”

“We’re not talking us!” insisted Charlie, “We’re talking gutter survival. I’ve been there: lived my life there. You haven’t, not operationally. Leave me to watch my own back, until I ask for help. That way there’s no confusion.”

In his opinion she couldn’t do without his help, but he could do without hers, judged Natalia. “There isn’t a score to even, Charlie.”

“I’m not balancing scores,” persisted Charlie, unhappy at her response. “This hasn’t anything to do with your not talking to me before now ….” He waved the London fax still lying between them. “You think the Americans got the same?”

“Positive.”

“So,” Charlie said patiently, although still with some urgency. “We’ve got fifty-year-old unreported, totally unknown murders of apparent English and American officers. We’ve got a hostile, probably obstructive local authority. We’ve got a resented Moscow intrusion. Without doubt someone involved from America. And in effect, I’m working under monitor ….” He paused, trying to imagine anything he’d left out. Unable to, he went on, “Each and every one of whom-with the possible exception of whoever America sends-will be trying to discredit each and everyone else. There’s no way, from a distance of three thousand miles, you could or can anticipate what will be going on. Not in a way to help me ….” He gulped at his whiskey, needing the pause. Who the fuck was going to help him, then? It was the worst possible scenario, a bunch-a committee-of disorganized, fractious, warring people. And committees-working with them, for them, being part of them-ranked on Charlie’s hate list equal to tight shoes, ice in single malt and the need constantlyto justify his expenses. Maybe, even, a little higher than all three.

“I wasn’t thinking of three thousand miles away,” said Natalia, quietly. “I was thinking about back here, in Moscow.”

Charlie drank some more whiskey, matching her seriousness. “I’d be grateful. And need it.”

Maybe she needed it more than him, thought Natalia. “I’m frightened, Charlie. Nothing’s working out as it should.”

“It hasn’t started yet!”

“I’m worried how it’s going to finish.”

Charlie responded before Natalia when Sasha cried out. He was back within minutes from the child’s bedroom, after resettling her. “She had a bad dream.”

“I’m having them, too,” said Natalia. “And they don’t go away when I’m awake.”

It was Charlie’s idea for he and Natalia to test their intuition one against the other by refusing any prior opinion of the Russian group with whom he would be going to Yakutskaya, not even to be told their names. It meant his going to the Interior Ministry totally unprepared, because there hadn’t been the prior contact he’d half expected from the American embassy and Charlie hadn’t called Saul Freeman: there was no benefit-not yet at least-and he certainly didn’t intend conveying even an impression of a joint operation, despite Sir Rupert Dean’s