Dead Men Living

“Yes,” she said again.

“To save me time, could you give them a call to see where Lieutenant George Timpson is buried?”

“Could it help with our problem over the three missing visits?” she asked, anxiously.

“It very well could,” said Charlie, smoothly. “I like to know about visits to Timpson’s grave, too.”

The clerk only had to hold for the time it took the Americanofficial to check his Arlington, Virginia, register alphabetically. Lieutenant George Timpson had been killed, according to the file, on the same day as Simon Norrington and was supposedly buried in Plot 42 in the American cemetery at Margraten, in the Netherlands. Into the telephone the woman said, “No. We don’t understand it here, either. Of course I’ll let you know.”

She put the telephone down and said to Charlie, “They don’t have any supporting dockets for the five visits to Timpson’s grave, either. This is incredible.”

“Something like that,” agreed Charlie.

She nodded to the telephone. “You won’t tell anyone I did that, will you?”

“I won’t if you won’t.”

When Charlie got back to the Kempinski, Lieutenant Colonel Rupert Jackson was in the foyer and Charlie decided he’d already learned more from the man’s presence than the military attache was going to discover from waiting so patiently.

Charlie parted from the military attache after an hour and two malts, insisting he was flying directly back to Moscow, and used the public telephones in the lobby to avoid the switchboard. Natalia answered at once, expectantly, hearing Charlie through to the end before bringing him up to date.

“I agree with Lestov,” said Charlie. “Two people at the same time from Tsarskoe Selo can’t be a coincidence. What’s her name?”

Charlie’s hesitation at being told lasted so long that Natalia thought they’d been disconnected, calling his name. Charlie said, “Larisa Krotkov is the woman next to Timpson in the photograph I’ve got in front of me right now.”

Now it was Natalia’s turn to remain silent for several moments. “What about the statement Lestov suggested?”

“Make it!” said Charlie. “It’s true, isn’t it? But have Lestov get back to Tsarskoe Selo, for anything they might have about her.”

“He’s already doing that. This make anything clearer to you?”

“Not yet. What about Novikov and his family?” Could the lead come from whatever the doctor knew?

“Shouldn’t take any time at all. I’ve approved his application.”

“Sufficient for me to go to London, though?” He was still unsurewhether it would be necessary to go to America, so he decided against mentioning it.

He was glad he had when Natalia said, “But not for any longer than necessary, remember?”

The director-general was just as quick personally answering his direct line and, like Natalia, let Charlie talk without interruption.

“That’s preposterous.”

“It fits.”

“Prove it.”

“Allow me to.”

27

Sir Rupert Dean’s Hampstead house adjoined the heath and had an expansive garden of its own, adding to the intended country impression. As he walked up the long, low hedge-lined path, Charlie saw a woman wearing a shapeless gardening hat and gloves among a jungle of large-leafed greenery in a conservatory attached to the right of the house. It was she who answered the door, a trowel still in her hand. The hair beneath the hat was gray and a face that had never known makeup was unlined and tranquil. She smiled as if he were an old friend.

“He’s expecting you,” she said, when Charlie identified himself. Appearing aware of the trowel, she said, “Repotting xerophytes. They’re not as hardy as everyone thinks they are, you know; you need to be careful.”

“I wouldn’t know. I don’t have a garden,” said Charlie, following her into the house. He wondered if she’d have any use for the now-redundant beekeeper’s hat.

The room to which she directed Charlie was a true bibliophile’s library. Every available space was shelved from floor to ceiling, but there was no obvious order to their packed-together, one-on-top-of-the-other contents, books of every size hodgepodged unevenly together,waiting to be read or reread, not assembled for wall decoration. Others overflowed onto the floor, forming tiny battlements. Dean sat beneath a bright reading lamp in front of a dead fireplace, its emptiness unsurprisingly filled with a profusion of still more greenery. The book was bastard- sized, the cover print original German.

The disheveled former university professor nodded Charlie toward a chair on the opposite side of the fireplace. On a table alongside was a cloth-covered plate. Dean said, “You won’t have eaten. Jane made sandwiches.”

“That’s very kind,” said Charlie. They were cheese and pickle.

“Her idea, not mine,” said the director-general. “It’s scotch, isn’t it?”

Charlie saw that was what Dean was drinking. “Thank you.”

“I won’t say ‘Cheers,’” refused Dean. “I’m not sure we’ve got anything to be cheerful about.”

“Probably not,” said Charlie.

“I don’t want a full summation,” ordered the older man. “That can wait until tomorrow. I want an explanation for what you told me on the telephone.”

“The department has been set up: all of us,” repeated Charlie. “We’ve never been expected to solve or discover anything-”

“We were told from the outset there would be a cover-up, if it turned out to be embarrassing,” stopped Dean.

“They know what the embarrassment is!” insisted Charlie. “Have from the beginning: not from the finding of the bodies but long before then. And it has been covered up, for God knows how long. The Yakutsk grave was an inconvenience, something never expected to happen. There has had to be the appearance of an investigation, particularly because of all the publicity. But not the sort we thought there was. What we’ve been doing-I’ve been doing-is proving whether or not the cover-up is going to hold-”

The director-general raised his hand. “Stop! Who are ‘they’?”

“I don’t know,” admitted Charlie. “A government department, ministry, but I don’t know which one.”

“Our own people?”

“That’s what I believe. As I believe the moment we find somethingtaking us where we’re not supposed to go, they’ll clean it up before we get there.”

“America?”

“Has to be involved, too,” picked up Charlie. “Again, I don’t know how. Or again, which department or agency.”

“You basing this entirely on some missing cemetery records?”

Charlie offered the Berlin group photograph he’d been allowed to copy at the Document Center. “You’ll recognize the man on the left as the American found in Yakutsk. His name was George Timpson. His phony grave is in a Dutch cemetery. I don’t know why the Netherlands; I was told there aren’t any American war cemeteries in Berlin. Timpson is supposed to have died the same day as Norrington. All evidence of five visits to Timpson’s grave has disappeared, just like those to Norrington.”

“There could be a far more reasonable explanation a lot different-totally different- from what you’re drawing. Don’t forget the number of departments and ministries who’ve got a hand in this.”

“I’m not forgetting that for a moment!” said Charlie, urgently.