Dead Men Living

me.”

The financial director’s face mottled at the awareness of being mocked, but before he could speak Jocelyn Hamilton said, “We’ve heard through the Foreign Office that the FBI has been on from the American embassy in Moscow, wanting to speak to you.”

“She’s been on to Cartright, too,” hurried in Williams, determined that nothing should be left out.

“So it could be a breakthrough,” finished the deputy director-general. “If it’s that important, perhaps this is a mistimed visit?”

“I ordered the recall,” reminded Dean.

“It will be easy enough for me to return Miriam Bell’s call from here, later,” said Charlie. It wasn’t Miriam Bell’s style to chase like this. So she was panicking. So, too, were the Foreign Office and MI6. Everyone running around like chickens with their heads cut off. But who was wielding the ax?

“Considering your apparent belief that another English officer was involved, you seem remarkably relaxed,” suggested Hamilton.

“That, above all else, is what we need to discuss,” said Patrick Pacey, the political officer.

“Perhaps we’d get a more comprehensive picture if we let Charlie talk without so much interruption,” proposed the director-general.

“A comprehensive picture would be very welcomed, if it’s at all possible,” said Williams, overstressing the condescension.

Fuck you, like you want so badly to fuck me, thought Charlie. While he sat, waiting, he decided that although he scarcely needed any preparation, the previous night’s never-happened encounter with the director-general had been more than a useful rehearsal, sifting in his mind the gold nuggets to keep back from the obscuring silt. Reminded by the same conversation, Charlie decided that so many organizations, agencies and people were involved that there was absolutely no risk of his inadvertently even hinting at his very specialsource. Abruptly, disconcertingly, Charlie was seized by the thought that he’d missed something, failed to realize or recognize something that he should have. The men at the table began to shift impatiently-Jeremy Simpson very obviously looking questioningly at the political officer-and Charlie tried to push the unsettling impression aside but only partially succeeded. He had to force the intended ridicule. “I thought I’d wait to make sure the finance director had finished.”

Gerald Williams’s face flooded red. Before the man could speak, Dean said tightly, “I think we’re all waiting,” and Charlie acknowledged he’d gone too far. He still thought, Fuck it.

Then he thought bullshit baffles brains and set out his encapsulation in what appeared great detail, beginning chronologically, from the reindeer herder’s discovery of the bodies. He went through the first and second autopsies, itemizing what had-and had not-been found in the grave and on the bodies. He gave a lot of time to the entrapping press conference-conscious of Gerald Williams’s smirk at the admission of being tricked-to illustrate the animosity between Yakutskaya and Russia. He talked of Gulag 98 being a special prison, although keeping back his first nugget, the names of the fifteen German prisoners who had been there in 1945. Neither did he say anything about his full discovery from the Document Center in Berlin. And he didn’t disclose the name of the dead American as George Timpson. With their art-connected background the presence of Raisa Belous and Simon Norrington had in some way to be linked to looted Nazi art treasure, a suggestion Charlie offered with the reminder that Raisa had belonged to the specially formed Russian Trophy Brigade that matched and at times exceeded the Nazis in Moscow’s indiscriminate art rape of Europe. The injuries to the skeleton in the Berlin grave proved, Charlie insisted, that the man had been killed to provide the identity for Simon Norrington, from dog tags and personal items stripped at Yakutsk and put on the Berlin body: the face of the victim had been destroyed beyond recognition, all teeth smashed and no finger ends-and therefore no possible fingerprints-left.

“Killed to order?” demanded Jeremy Simpson, the prescient lawyer. “Are you suggesting Norrington was killed to order? A far-reaching, carefully calculated conspiracy?”

“It fits,” asserted Charlie, unworried by the obvious disbelief from everyone in the room, even shared maybe by Sir Rupert himself. What concerned Charlie more was the still persistent, intrusive feeling of having overlooked something!

“Stuff and nonsense!” sneered Williams, who never swore. Addressing the lawyer, Williams said, “Is there anything we’ve been told this morning that you’d be prepared to argue in a court and expect to be taken seriously?”

“I’d like better proof,” conceded Simpson, uncomfortable at being Charlie’s critic instead of his defender. Pedantically he said, “Your main premise that there was another Englishman at the murder scene is the apparent finding in the grave of a button from a British officer’s battle-dress uniform, as well as a torn-out label and British- caliber bullet? But we don’t definitely know about the button; that’s based on a remark the Yakutsk pathologist thinks he overheard the Russian forensic scientist make when the man was using his laboratory facilities?”

“Yes,” said Charlie, accepting it to be his weakest evasion but with no way of telling them how he knew the button to exist.

“What on earth does a Yakutsk medical examiner know about an English officer’s battle dress or its fastenings?” demanded Hamilton.

“Absolutely nothing!” snatched Charlie. “Which is why he couldn’t have misheard or imagined the remark! Moscow knew it was an apparent British officer before sending their forensic expert. Who would, obviously, have been chosen for knowledge beyond his particular discipline. He would have known what a British uniform-and its buttons-looked like!” On second thought, maybe it wasn’t as weak as it had initially sounded. The rehearsal really had been useful.

“I think the suggestion is absurd,” rejected Williams. “Does the report of the Berlin pathologist state that the body in Norrington’s grave was murdered?” This really was going far better than he could have hoped, Williams thought. The man was being made to look ridiculous.

“No,” admitted Charlie. “That would be impossible, after so long.”

“So it’s purely your interpretation!” sneered Williams.

“The body was chosen to be that of Simon Norrington-had theman’s identity planted on it,” Charlie pointed out. If Gerald Williams hadn’t existed, he would have had to be invented; the man’s unthinking determination to oppose and argue with everything was taking all their minds from any awkward questions. Most importantly Charlie was able so far to avoid volunteering anything new.

“You think it could have been the Russians who tampered with the visitors’ records at the cemetery?” asked Patrick Pacey.

It could, even, have been possible, Charlie accepted, but he had to be careful with the reply. “The Russians took Berlin-totally controlled it, initially-and were responsible, I suppose, for the burials during those early days. But the Four Powers were in control when the Allied cemetery was created.” If there’d been colored ribbons and a stake tall enough, he could have led everyone a merry dance around the maypole. He was aware of the director-general regarding him quizzically.

“I don’t consider there’s anything to support the idea of another British officer being involved in this,” insisted the political officer, siding with Williams. “I expected a lot more from this meeting.”

“So did I,” said Hamilton.

“In fact,” said Williams, recognizing his support, “I think you should go back to Moscow as soon as possible, pick up whatever crumbs drop from the table of others and leave us to reach far more sensible and acceptable conclusions than you’re offering.”

Charlie gazed unspeaking at the fat man for several seconds, aware at last what had been nagging him, the feeling at once relief more than apprehension. Quietly, almost humbly, he said, “There are some more inquiries I want to make here first.”

“Which I’ve approved,” came in the director-general quickly, ahead of any opposing argument. “There’s certainly the need to speak again to Sir Matthew Norrington.”

“Isn’t the more immediate urgency finding out what the FBI in Moscow wants, as well as what this latest Russian declaration is all about?” demanded Hamilton.

Charlie was almost sad at the adjournment, so well did he consider the encounter to have been going, but it gave him time fully to consider Gerald Williams’s slip. The assertion to Sir Rupert Dean the previous night that Williams’s participation was entirely financial was unarguable. How, then, could Williams have known that