It took a long time for Aleksandr Kurshin to answer his telephone, and when he did his voice was still thick from vodka and it took several more minutes for the homicide detective to recognize to whom and about what he was talking.
“Who are they?” Kurshin demanded finally, his voice still slurred.
“That’s the point,” said Novikov. “Everything and anything that might have identified them has been taken. We don’t know who they are. And there’s no way we’re ever going to find out.”
Yakutsk is six hours ahead of Moscow time, so it was still only midday when the telephone exchanges from the far side of Siberia percolated down through the Foreign Ministry to the interior minister’s secretariat and eventually to Natalia. She made only brief interjections and afterward sat without moving, even though the demand for her to attend was immediate. This could be the problem-the potential disaster-she’d prayed would never arise.
“I’m going to be late,” she told Charlie, who answered the telephone on the first ring.
“What time?” He’d thought it might have been London, although telephones were normally reserved for emergencies. The sum total of his activity that day and too many before it had been to create a delta-winged paper plane that flew completely across his office, through the open door and almost reached the far wall of the outside corridor. There’d been four improvements from that morning’s prototype: it all had to do with the tilt of the wings.
“I don’t know. Can you pick Sasha up from the creche?”
“Sure. Something big?”
“I’ll call when I have some idea of a time,” refused Natalia, ignoring the question.
“I love you,” he said, but Natalia had already replaced the telephone.
When it rang again, within minutes, he snatched it up, smiling, expecting it to be Natalia again. But it wasn’t.
5
Natalia was not late, but everyone else was already there. Viktor Romanovich Viskov even had his jacket off and collar unbuttoned, and she felt a fresh twitch of anxiety at the thought that the deputy interior minister trying to depose her might have already started an undermining attack in her absence. The room had gone ominously, expectantly quiet at her entry.
Only Dmitri Nikulin gave any formal greeting. Viskov, a squat, stone-faced and professional long-term survivor in the oxygen-starved near-summit of Russian government, remained expressionless. Which Natalia expected. She supposed she should also have expected only the curt, grave-faced nod from Mikhail Suslov, confronted as the man appeared to be, after only four months as deputy foreign minister, with an international situation of potentially enormous proportion.
For herself Natalia accepted that the international perception of Russia was of an out-of-legal-control country dominated by organized crime, which too much of it was, and that of anyone in the room she could be made to appear the person most closely connected to that failure and to that embarrassment.
Which didn’t end that simply. There was the fact that Yakutsk was three thousand miles from Moscow, the capital of a time-warped, antagonistic, near-independent republic and that the murders appeared to have been committed decades ago.
All and every problem of which was compounded by the meeting being convened in the sixth-floor White House suite of Dmitri BorisovichNikulin, chief of staff of the president, whose own quarters were farther along the linking corridor on the same level, a constant although unneeded reminder of the echelon at which the matter was being considered from the outset.
“We seem to have an extremely serious problem,” opened Nikulin. He was a thin, gaunt man who invariably appeared to invite an opinion from the people to whom he was speaking before offering one himself.
“On the face of it,” agreed Suslov, cautiously.
“We hardly know enough yet to make any sort of judgment,” qualified Viskov, just as carefully. Quickly, however, he added, “What is essential today is that we ensure from the very beginning that we are properly prepared, particularly that any investigation is totally successful.” He spoke looking directly at Natalia.
“The obvious first essential,” encouraged Nikulin. “It’s difficult from what we’ve received so far to judge what it is that we might be investigating.”
“It will have to be officers from here,” pressed Viskov, still looking at Natalia. “I think we should hear your thoughts, Natalia Nikandrova.”
The invitation should have come from the presidential adviser, gauged Natalia. The cadaverous man didn’t appear offended.
“We can of course do that,” said Natalia. “But Yakutskaya has a great deal of autonomy. Have we been asked-invited-to take over whatever investigation is going on there?” She had to remain focused, not allow any private distractions. Why now, this soon? she thought, in familiar litany. Why ever?
Suslov was one of the new, not-yet-forty, university-educated Russian reformers impatient for changes too long promised. He nodded approvingly at the woman’s political awareness. “Not in as many words. It’s inferred, from the very fact of our being informed. It’s a good qualification, Natalia Nikandrova.”
Not the praise of someone involved in a plot before her arrival, Natalia thought, relieved. Deciding the diplomatic road the one to take, she said, “So at the moment we have no right even to go there. I don’t consider we can proceed on the basis of inference.”
“It’s a valid point,” congratulated Nikulin. “We have to ensure our participation is officially requested.”
“And that cooperation is guaranteed,” persisted Natalia. “It would be unfortunate if investigators from here were blamed for mistakes not of their making.” She allowed her mind briefly to go sideways. An investigation seemingly involving a murdered Englishman: without question Charlie’s sort of crime, according to the remit of his posting. So added to the danger of their living together was now going to be the constant conflict of interest she’d determined not to allow. She felt constricted, as if a band were physically tightening around her chest. She’d be hopelessly compromised if they were discovered; it scarcely mattered anymore whether they were occupying the same apartment or not. Her dismissal and his expulsion would be inevitable. And she’d meant what she’d said about being a true Russian with a Russian’s umbilical link to her country. Abandoning it to go to live in London really would be the ultimate, unthinkable sacrifice. She supposed it came down to how much she loved Charlie. Maybe more. Maybe it was how much she truly felt she could trust him.
There wasn’t actually an expression, but Viskov’s features had tightened at apparently being outargued. “I’m not suggesting we go uninvited. But to believe we won’t be is naive ….” He paused, yet again addressing Natalia more than Nikulin. “Which I find surprising for someone whose paramount function is properly considering the political implications of criminal investigations. Perhaps, for that reason, it should be her deputy-who is, after all, a trained investigator in his own right-who supervises everything on a day-to-day basis.”
Colonel Petr Pavlovich Travin had been Viskov’s personal choice, appointed without any reference to her, the most positive indication of an intended, almost old-time purge. Natalia said, “And I, in turn, am surprised that Viktor Romanovich, a politician, considers the political implications-surely the reason for this initial meeting-to be secondary. They are, in my opinion, no way secondary. They are the first priority ….” She hesitated, abruptly aware of another, so far unrealized practical difficulty, just as quickly recognizing how to overcome it at the same time as hopefully defusing Viskov’s attack. “Of course, the proper Russian investigatory team is of the utmost importance. And of course my deputy shall have day-to-day responsibility.”
She saw the tightness go from Viskov’s face at his imagining he had won the exchange.
Nikulin appeared aware of the tension between them and said, “I think we’ve sufficiently covered that point. Every indication is that it’s a wartime situation. Do we have any archival records of American or British presence there?”
“What archival records?” demanded Suslov, who sometimes overstressed his contempt for the Communist past. “Russia has no accurate history for the past seventy years. Not in any ministry file or, I wouldn’t think, any intelligence or militia agency. Everything has been sanitized and corrected and improved, after every event, for each
