with their reservations, all of which were on the third floor, Charlie’s room directly opposite Miriam’s. The shower worked and despite the promise to the waiting man downstairs Charlie used it and changed, convinced the jacket he’d been wearing retained the odorous trace of his gap-toothed aircraft companion. He took particular care to avoid snagging the mosquito net he’d had shipped in with the special hat and doused the window area with insect spray. The bath had a plug still attached to its chain, so there had been no need for the spare he’d packed, from long experience. Everything he did, however, was automatic, his mind upon the journey from the airport. Yakutsk might as well be on anotherplanet and its inhabitants aliens, but Charlie didn’t have any doubt there were messages and meanings in the curious conversation he’d had with the pathologist. They would still have to come from the man himself: someone clearly as nervous as Novikov could easily be frightened away.
It was an uneasy gathering in the bar below, an uneasiness which Charlie did not have to work too hard to maintain. Vadim Lestov remained Siamese-twin close to an accepting Miriam, while the two local police officers tried hard but seemingly unsuccessfully to ingratiate themselves with Olga Erzin and the forensic scientist. When Charlie joined them, Vitali Novikov was trying to talk to the Moscow pathologist, too. Her patronizing disinterest in the local medical examiner verged upon outright rudeness.
They ate reindeer steaks, which Charlie enjoyed, identifying from its texture the dried turd the man beside him had chewed upon during the incoming flight. The reserve was more noticeable during the meal from Olga and the forensic scientist than from Lestov, although the militia colonel kept himself to one glass of Canadian-imported wine. Miriam tried hard but failed with the other woman and Charlie concentrated determinedly upon Vitali Novikov, holding the man’s total attention with talk of London and Moscow, carefully interspersed with hints of the authority that seemed important to the doctor.
It was Charlie who afterward suggested returning to the bar and its Canadian whiskey, which he considered an unexpected bonus. Everyone except Charlie, who was confident of his capacity, and Olga, who appeared uncaring, continued to limit their alcohol intake, although as the evening progressed Lestov’s stammering became more pronounced.
Using Novikov’s insistence that his wife was expecting him, Charlie broke the evening up, walking with the local pathologist to the lobby where the elevators were.
Charlie said, “Thank you again for being at the airport. I enjoyed our conversation.”
“I did, too,” said Novikov.
“I’m looking forward to starting work tomorrow. I’m going to be relying upon you a great deal. I hope we can learn to work together.”
“That doesn’t seem to be anyone else’s idea.”
“I’m only interested in my own,” said Charlie. “In case you need to contact me at all, I’m in room thirty- seven.”
“I’ll remember that,” promised Novikov.
Charlie rode bemused, silently, to the third floor but made no effort to get into bed. Within fifteen minutes he heard Miriam’s quick footsteps, alone, along the outside corridor and her door open and shut. It was half an hour later when there was a second set of heavier footsteps and another quick opening and closing of the American’s door.
With the six-hour time difference it was still only six in the evening in Moscow, but Charlie failed to get a connection to the embassy when he tried to dial direct. Experimentally Charlie booked the call through the hotel switchboard, where it would be logged. The connection was made immediately. Charlie smiled, not surprised.
Raymond McDowell and Richard Cartright came anxiously on to a conference call together. For the benefit of the suspected eavesdropper, Charlie exaggerated the total cooperation and assured the two men he had made the official request for the return of the body, which had amounted to the only proper conversation that evening with the militia commander.
“Do you imagine any problem with that?” asked McDowell.
“No.”
“When are you meeting the council?”
“Nothing’s been arranged.” Which wasn’t, Charlie had already decided, an oversight. He made up his mind to give the head of chancellery a gift of his special hat if McDowell had personally to come from Moscow.
“What’s it like there?”
“Unusual.”
“London is concerned,” announced Cartright. “The finding of the bodies got leaked, it seems, through Canada, and from there, obviously, to America. There’s a lot of media interest building up.”
“I can imagine,” said Charlie.
“I’ve promised a cable from here tomorrow.”
“I’ll try to give you something.” Charlie hesitated. “If I haven’t come through to you by this time tomorrow, you ring me. Telephone calls out aren’t easy.”
Charlie had just replaced the telephone when the knock came hesitantly at his door.
“I hope you don’t mind,” said the rapidly blinking Novikov.
“Not at all,” said Charlie, opening the door more widely.
Richard Cartright was seeking, not providing, so it was right he crossed the river from the British embassy to the American legation on Ulitza Chaykovskovo, and when Saul Freeman said he liked Chinese food Cartright suggested they simply walk the few blocks to the Peking. It was Freeman who guided the way into the foreign currency section. Cartright deferred to the American’s superior knowledge of a Chinese menu written in Russian, too.
“We heard from Charlie in Yakutsk,” offered Cartright, at once. “Just arrived. Nothing’s started yet.”
“That’s what Miriam told me. Bizarre place, apparently.”
“Thought you might have gone yourself.”
“What about you?” hedged Freeman.
“Would have done in the old days,” agreed Cartright, as if he were volunteering something, seeing a way to follow. “MI5 in England is increasingly taking an FBI, crime-fighting role, so it had to be Charlie.”
The wine-Georgian-was poured without their being asked to taste it. The surprise was that it was drinkable.
“Interesting guy,” said Freeman, which was precisely the reaction Cartright wanted.
“No one at the embassy quite knows how to take him. Lot of experience, apparently. Bit unconventional.” Like the second phone call from Gerald Williams was unconventional, although it was a combined operation and Cartright had checked that the two financial directors were talking to each other in London. Cartright’s unease was not so much keeping an eye on a colleague as personal apprehension at that colleague being as odd and as unpredictable as he was finding Charlie Muffin to be.
“One of our guys died in that nuclear business,” reminded Freeman, although without hostility.
“There were some casualties, although not physical, at our embassy, too,” recalled Cartright, nervously. “You ever go out socially with him, find out what sort of guy he was?”
Freeman shook his head. “Gather he and a gal from our technical department in Washington got close on the nuclear thing, but he doesn’t seem particularly social, apart from the odd drink. Got a hell of an apartment, I understand. Never been there, though.”
“Neither have I.” Cartright decided he was wasting his time. “Got any interesting numbers to swap?”
Freeman smiled. “Got to know a fantastic Aeroflot stewardess.”
“Worth a hello call?”
“Wouldn’t be telling you if she wasn’t. Her name’s Irena.”
“It must be widely known that there was a camp nearby?” pressed Charlie.
“There were so many.”
“How did you remember Gulag 98?”
“My father.”
“You haven’t told anyone else? Not Ryabov or Kurshin?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
