Dead Men Living

He stood, breathing in deeply, offering his hand to bring her up with him, and began slowly wandering the path toward the hothouses. And as they walked, Charlie told Natalia all he knew or thought he knew: even, toward the end, his director-general’s now-ignored insistence that he offer as little as possible to gain as much as he could, until a reason was established for the English lieutenant being in Yakutsk.

“Miriam Bell’s right. You are a sneaky son-of-a-bitch.”

“Do you still have sufficient authority to try to find the records of Gulag 98?” demanded Charlie.

“It would have been Beria’s time. The NKVD,” Natalia recalled, talking as much to herself as to Charlie. “It’s said that for more than a layered mile beneath the Lubyanka there’s a virtual city beneath a city stretching as far as Red Square and the Kremlin and PloshchadSverdlova, under the Bolshoi: Stalin had his own railway system, to move around it. One entire level is occupied by archives, hundreds of millions of them. Yakutskaya was one of the biggest secrets, so records might have been destroyed, as they were in Yakutsk itself. But we won’t know that until we look.”

“Don’t be specific,” warned Charlie. “A general inquiry about camps is an obvious extension of the inquiry: something you’d be expected to do. Isolating a specific camp at the very beginning wouldn’t be, unless the information came from your own people.”

“Charlie!” she protested, pained.

“If we’re not going to take chances, we’re not going to take chances,” he said, offering Charlie Muffin logic. “Channel everything through you. You’ll know what you’re looking for. Dump the rest on Travin. Drown him. Nikulin is your secret weapon-so secret that he doesn’t know it.”

“You’re going to have to spell this out for me step by step!” protested Natalia.

“You’ll understand every little skirmish,” promised Charlie.

“Recognize something?” she demanded, stopping abruptly where they were.

Charlie gazed around the huge glassed building with its giant, roof-sized fern leaves, realizing for the first time they’d actually gone into one of the houses. “No,” he conceded.

“It’s the same one you walked me to when you admitted your defection was phony and that you’d lied,” identified Natalia. “It was right here you told me you were going to abandon me and go back to London.”

The recollection-and the remorse-was immediate. Charlie said, “I came back. And this time I’m not abandoning you.”

“No,” accepted Natalia. “It’s a good feeling.”

Going personally to the American embassy, leaving the protection of his own territory for the uncertainty of theirs, was as conscious a psychological act as dressing to be despised and therefore underrated, despite Miriam Bell’s suspicion. Charlie didn’t expect an identity for the murdered American to be freely offered if it had already been found, but he’d sense the nuance if there had been progress. There were other considerations, too. The FBI quarters at Ulitza Chaykovskovowere far more extensive and certainly more luxurious than his badger’s hole in which more than three people at any one time risked suffocation, and the American embassy mess extended happy hour to two and on occasions three. There was no drink price concession at all at the British bar. Charlie suspected Gerald Williams.

It had been Miriam’s number he’d called from the Lesnaya apartment before leaving to meet Natalia, and the Americans were waiting for him, easily accommodated in Saul Freeman’s office. It was little more than a passing impression that Miriam had showered and washed her hair and tried makeup on a face showing scarcely any sign of the Yakutsk ravages. His immediate concentration was upon two men already in the room, against a far wall almost as if they were not part of the intended gather. Charlie looked curiously, invitingly, to Freeman, who instead of introductions said, “Coupla guys from State. Just sitting in.”

The elder, white-haired man was clear-skinned and tight-bodied and beak-nosed, which, combined with the length at which he wore his hair, gave him a patrician appearance. It was the second man who held Charlie’s attention. He was slightly built and unobtrusively dressed in muted gray and sat completely unmoving. What registered most was washed-out blue eyes that never blinked. In Charlie’s experience men with no name who didn’t blink either wore six-guns in Western movies or ear protectors on practice ranges, where he’d never been able to stop blinking. And this man didn’t look at all like an actor.

Determinedly Charlie said, “Hi. Charlie Muffin.”

The two men nodded back but didn’t speak.

Freeman said, “Must be good to get back?”

“Great,” said Charlie. And waited.

“Good of you to come,” said Freeman.

“We’re all working together, aren’t we?” Charlie spoke looking at the two silent strangers, able to see Miriam at the same time. She was subdued, unsmiling.

“Like to think so,” agreed the FBI chief.

“So would I,” said Charlie.

“Everything escalated while you were away. It’s been a media circus. The president’s responded with an executive order demanding answers. Plans an Arlington burial.”

“Very impressive.”

Freeman shifted, seemingly uncomfortable. “Thought it might be useful to talk through everything we’ve got.”

Who thought? wondered Charlie. “I’d like to hear that, too.” He took from his pocket a much-edited and sometimes altered version of the account he’d earlier sent to London. “That’s all I’ve got together at the moment.”

Freeman’s forced bonhomie faltered at being outmaneuvered. His eyes flickered to the men against the wall.

Miriam said, “I’m afraid I haven’t worked as fast as you. All we’ve done is talk it through in very general terms.”

Charlie estimated it had been a full five minutes since the blue-eyed man had blinked. He wondered if he could make him now. He said, “Okay, so let’s talk. It was clearly a combined intelligence mission. Records of American military intelligence, G2, are stored at Adelphi, Maryland. With the urgency and authority of an executive order, you’ll have accessed them by now, so I’d appreciate knowing the result of that. It’s too soon, obviously, to have got your own photographs of your body, but you’re quite clearly geared up to run graduation checks at West Point. What sort of time frame are you running on that? You have a Rapid Physiognomy Comparison facility at Bureau headquarters, don’t you? It shouldn’t take long, if you use that. I’d be interested in your theories about the missing articles, against what was left on the bodies. We’ve quite a lot to talk about, in fact, haven’t we?”

The stranger didn’t blink but Freeman did, looking even more obviously at the Washington visitors. He said, “You’ve covered quite a lot of ground there.”

“I thought that’s what we had to do,” said Charlie. “What’s come out of Adelphi?”

“Nothing so far,” said Freeman.

“But you’re checking there, so you’ve already decided it was intelligence,” accepted Charlie, smiling at the unintentional admission. “That’s something, I suppose. Means you’re already wondering, as I am, how two officers could disappear like they obviously did, for so long. So you’ll be organizing a records search of your CIA forerunner, the Office of Strategic Services …?” He gestured to his specially prepared report, lying unread and untouched on Freeman’sdesk. “You’ll see we’re carrying out those sort of inquiries in London. I’d appreciate your letting me have your results as soon as possible, as you’ll see I’ve promised to let you have ours …?”

“Yes, of course,” said Freeman.

“What’s the State Department guidance about possible embarrassment?’ he asked, directly addressing the two unspeaking men.

“That’s the big question,” tried Freeman. “What was our guy-your guy, too-doing there in the first place?”

Which wasn’t even an attempt to answer the question, Charlie acknowledged. An executive order from the president himself was certainly important enough for someone to have traveled all the way from Washington. But it was a very long way to come to sit and say nothing-practically like a performance in a B-movie. Unless they did know and their participation was turning into a damage-limitation exercise better planned than his at Yakutsk.