Dead Men Living

As if aware of the reflection, Freeman said, “That Nazi business really was a hell of a bluff.”

“Thanks.”

“It was that, wasn’t it? A bluff, I mean, like you told Miriam it was.”

“Absolutely.” Or were they groping more than he believed? If they were, he’d already achieved all there was to achieve, misdirecting sufficiently and disclosing nothing he shouldn’t have disclosed.

“You really can’t take it-anything-any further?”

“Everything I’ve got is there,” said Charlie.

“I’ll get something to you,” promised Miriam.

“With whatever there might be from Washington,” added Freeman.

“That’s about it, then,” accepted Charlie. There wouldn’t be the expected happy hour invitation today.

“We’ll keep in touch,” insisted Freeman.

Freeman had to accompany Charlie to be officially signed past embassy security. As they walked, Charlie said, “You want to tell me about that?”

Freeman said, “I’m sorry. They made the rules.”

“Which were?”

“That’s how they wanted it done.”

“What are their names?”

“I can’t tell you, Charlie.”

“And you expect me to cooperate!”

“How do you think I feel?”

“I don’t know, Saul. How do you feel?”

“Like a prime cunt.”

“That’s about right,” said Charlie. “I’m sorry for you.”

“I’m sorry for myself.” The man straightened as he walked, as if trying physically to cast off the episode. Actually smiling, which he hadn’t done so far, he said, “Dick Cartright tells me a girl I introduced him to is related to the one you’re with. Isn’t that a fantastic coincidence?”

“Fantastic,” agreed Charlie, without a pause. Sometimes gossip and an inferior man’s need to boast was a wonderful thing.

“I’ve never known arrogance like it!” protested Kenton Peters, who hadn’t from anyone who knew who he was. The appalled indignation echoed over the line from the embassy’s secure communications bunker.

“That’s appalling,” sympathized James Boyce. “But you’ve no doubt there is something he’s keeping back, not telling London?”

“None.”

“It can’t be about there being a second officer. I’ve seen what he sent today. It’s there.”

“Our people haven’t. So he hasn’t shared it.”

“So you could be right that he’s got the connection. Is it time to eliminate him?”

There was silence from Moscow. Then Peters said, “I’ll leave everything in place. We’ll take him anytime, when it suits us. Maximum effect.”

“I’m not happy,” complained Boyce.

“Neither am I.”

“Damned nuisance.”

“Yes.”

17

Natalia recognized that with the open support-at the moment, at least-of Dmitri Borisovitch Nikulin and the now totally shared guidance of Charlie Muffin, she potentially held a very sharp two-edged sword. The importance was properly using it against the attacks of the deputy interior minister and his acolyte, not falling upon it herself. Which made Charlie, whom she could easily believe a reincarnation of Machiavelli, the more important: the one from whom she had to learn.

It was certainly Charlie’s survival plan for her that, although incomplete, sounded feasibly straightforward when he sketched it out in the botanical gardens but less certain when she was alone, as she was now, back in her echoing ministry office, knowing that Petr Travin, two doors along their shared corridor, and Viktor Viskov, on the floor above, were plotting her overthrow with equal determination.

Lead, Charlie had insisted: that was the way for her to remain ahead, from the front, not by following from behind. And she’d substantially increased her lead, she knew. The Moscow homicide detective had performed far better than she’d expected at his departure press conference from Yakutsk-Natalia made a note to congratulate the man-and her unattributed statement accusing the Yakutskaya authorities of inexplicable obstruction had chimed perfectly with it. The overseas digest of the foreign press frenzy-circulated to Viskov as well as to her-from the Foreign Ministry showed it quoted favorably by every major print and network television outlet in America, Canada and England, as well as being widely reported throughout Europe.

Leading from the front did, of course, expose her back to be stabbed. The cynicism actually surprised Natalia. More Charlie’s mind-set than hers. Maybe the way she had to think-try to think-if she could in the future. No question of trying, she told herself atonce. There was Sasha, always Sasha. Natalia had been too long alone ever, completely, to lose her most deeply rooted fear of all, of being alone again.

Which wasn’t a consideration of the moment, she decided, rising positively from her desk. The consideration of the moment was continuing to follow Charlie’s script (“mountains can be made from bureaucratic bullshit”), which she’d already initiated by a telephone call to the Lubyanka. Now that had to be followed immediately by the personal visit, because everything had to be in sequence. She made a point of announcing to her secretariat that she was going out but not saying where-happy for the gossip if not the positively offered information to permeate along the corridor-and used the metro instead of an official car and driver, by which and through whom she could have been quickly traced.

She got off at the Bolshoi station, preferring to walk the rest of the way, seeing as she crossed the final square that the briefly removed glowering statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky, the founder of the Soviet intelligence service, had been replaced in front of its yellow-washed headquarters building while so many other, less despised reminders of communism had been removed.

Fyodor Lyulin, the chief archivist to whom she had already spoken, was obediently waiting. He was a bespectacled, anxious-to-please and unexpectedly young man apprehensive at personally being sought out by someone of Natalia’s rank and authority, which immediately registered with her as an advantage, alien though it was for her to bully. Something else she perhaps had to learn.

Lyulin believed there were records of Yakutskaya, nervously pointing out that it was all too long ago for him to have had anything personally to do with them and certainly for which he had no responsibility, apart from their being somewhere in the intelligence service archives. He did not know if they were complete-indeed, even where they might be kept-but he would, of course, search at once.

The man twitched more than blinked at Natalia’s demand for details of gulags for the ten years between 1935 and 1945. “I’ve no way of estimating at the moment, of course, but that could conceivably run into tens-hundreds-of thousands. They might not be indexed. In any chronological order. Material often isn’t, from that period.”

Better than she could have hoped, thought Natalia. “I want whatever exists-all of it. Don’t worry about indexing or chronology. As they’re found I want them shipped immediately to me at the ministry.”

“Just located and sent to you?” pedantically qualified the relaxing archivist, seeing an insuperable job becoming comparatively easy.

“That’s all,” agreed Natalia. “Until I tell you to stop.”

“Going through so much could be a monumental task for anyone, for a team of people,” cautioned the relieved man.

“I am organizing that. It’s a survey that has to be made.”

“The instruction will be confirmed in writing?” requested Lyulin, protectively.