Dead Men Living

not making any accusations against you personally. It’s not the way those bastards on the top floor operate. When you complain to London about me, you also tell them that I’ve got a lot more they’d like to know but I’ve got to get a lot more in exchange.”

Gallaway was gulping for words when his telephone rang. He answered without greeting and just as wordlessly handed it to the head of chancellery. Raymond McDowell’s face contorted into disbelief. “The body’s in the canteen refrigerator! None of the staff will go in to get the food for breakfast!”

“I’m sorry,” apologized Charlie. “I haven’t got ’round to telling you.”

Gerald Williams was right, thought Cartright. This man was practically beyond belief.

Natalia listened intently as Colonel Vadim Lestov recited back to her the statement she’d just dictated to him, knowing even the intonation was important, correcting the detective twice.

“We’re going to issue something similar from here,” she said, finally. She’d spent an hour that morning suggesting the phrasing with the deputy foreign minister, Mikhail Suslov, and a further hour waiting for any correction from their presidential adviser at the White House. Dmitri Nikulin hadn’t called. There was only forty-five minutes before her meeting with Charlie.

“I’m very sorry,” apologized Lestov. “Nothing has gone as it should have, as it was intended.”

“You’re not being held responsible.”

“Why, then, is it you I’m being briefed by, not Colonel Travin?”

“This is political as well as being operational,” said Natalia, cautiously. Politically survivable for whom? she wondered.

16

Belying the appearance of a man who always looked as if he’d crawled out from under an ancient hedge, Charlie Muffin was fastidiously clean: the way he dressed was camouflage for him to be overlooked, hopefully not even seen. Necessarily going back to Lesnaya to shower, shave and change-and even then make a telephone call- delayed him, but Charlie wouldn’t anyway have arrived at the gardens ahead of Natalia.

She had never been operational, walking dark streets and even darker alleys; couldn’t instinctively recognize the difference between shadows and shade, which after so long was second nature to Charlie. Not yet knowing her latest concern, he had to protect her, ensure she was alone. It had been Natalia who’d remembered their old rendezvous, so she’d remember the rules: expect him to check fromsomewhere unseen and know that if he didn’t approach after half an hour he wouldn’t make the meeting, not believing it safe.

She had to be wrong, overreacting, he told himself as he emerged from the Botanicheskiy Sad metro, cloaked by the crowd. This sort of thing had been necessary in the old, paranoid past, but one of the few real changes in Russia-Moscow, particularly-had been the ending of the KGB’s spy-upon-spy internal control. In addition to which officially Natalia was no longer attached to an intelligence organization since her liaison transfer to the Interior Ministry.

His going through the charade of a clandestine meeting, behaving in the ways of that old, obsessive past, was important, though, for what it told him. Natalia was becoming paranoid: overpressured and overstrained trying to live as they were. As they had no alternative but to live. Charlie tried unsuccessfully to recall the Shakespeare quotation about a tangled web he’d had to learn at school, unable to remember if it was the same play that had the phrase about protesteth too much that had occurred to him that morning, confronting the supposedly outraged diplomats and offended intelligence officer. School had been a long time ago, like so much else seemed to be.

But not tradecraft.

Sure of the geography, Charlie eased into the park by the side gate, the one that gave him immediate cover from the arch-roofed hothouse and the branch-skirted gymnosperms. He saw Natalia at once. She was sitting on what he’d taught her to be their marker seat, from which he could isolate the people around her, seeking out the seemingly engrossed newspaper reader on adjoining benches or entwined lovers whose eyes never closed in ecstasy or pet owners whose dogs couldn’t pee anymore.

Dutifully Natalia got up after a few minutes, striding forcefully off toward the rear gate, as if leaving: a never-fail trigger to startle a watcher into movement. Two newspaper readers read on. A third continued dozing. The solitary dog walker went on in the opposite direction. It was too early for lovers. Natalia sat as abruptly as she’d risen, on the seat closest to the first hothouse, not more than five meters from where Charlie stood beneath the tree canopy. The gardens remained tranquil, apart from the entry of a noisy school party of giggling girls who were giggling schoolgirls. Charlie still gave itanother five minutes, smiling toward Natalia as he eventually approached.

He said, “That was nostalgic.”

“I didn’t need the memories.”

“You’d better tell me about it.”

Natalia did, at last, in short, tight sentences, finally holding back nothing, looking away from him most of the time.

Charlie didn’t speak for several moments after she’d finished. “It was ridiculous, stupid, not to have told me from the beginning.”

“I know. Now. I didn’t guess how you’d react at there being an overhang from the Popov affair.”

“There was an official inquiry. You were completely exonerated.”

“Viktor Ivanovich was a member of the tribunal,” she reminded Charlie, in turn. “He obviously didn’t accept the finding.”

“There couldn’t be any other reason?”

“Not that I can think of. And I’ve thought about it a very great deal.”

Charlie raised his hands, warding off apology before he spoke. “You couldn’t have misunderstood?”

“Not after yesterday.”

“Which you seem to have won?”

“This time. I need to go on winning.”

“More than that, even. If they’re trying to destroy you, you’ve got to destroy them.”

“I’m so tired of playing games: our games, their game, anyone’s game!”

“We’re not playing games anymore,” insisted Charlie. “We’re going to fight.”

“With what? I was lucky yesterday-the timing was in my favor-but it was a fluke. If I don’t stay ahead on this every step of the way, I’ll be replaced.”

Charlie lapsed into silence again, immersed in thought. He wouldn’t say it-couldn’t say it-because the resolve had been obvious for a very long time and they’d shaken it to death like two dogs holding on to a single bone, but if Natalia were forced to leave the ministry-to become simply but all-importantly his proper legal wife, Sasha’s mother-all their personal working difficulties wouldbe ended, at a finger snap. But Natalia needed her job, as much as he needed his. Until now-uncertain, unsure now-both their personal lives had been a litany of one disaster imploding upon another. They were only confident about their professional ability and success, clinging to it as a blind man tightly holds his stick to get through each day without colliding with unseen obstacles. He said, “If they want a war, we’ll take it to them.”

Natalia said, “I’ve talked to Lestov. He thinks you had a lot you hadn’t shared. According to the American woman, you’re a sneaky son-of-a-bitch. Her words.” That was an exaggeration, but Natalia had no difficulty with it.

So, thought an unoffended Charlie, was Miriam Bell. “You knew that without being told.”

“Have you got something I can fight with?” demanded Natalia, gazing steadily at him.

Decision time, Charlie recognized: shit or get off the pot. Loyalty to the department? Or loyalty to Natalia? The department had cheated him and been disastrously cheated in return; and they’d cheat him again, if it became expedient to do so. Natalia had never cheated him-tried to even any score-despite the times and the ways he’d failed her. Nor, he thought, would she ever. And was the job as important to him as he’d tried to make out, with his elaborate blind man’s analogy? Charlie was surprised he even needed to pose himself the question.