Dead Men Living

Colonel John Parnell had insisted on serving from a decanter, not because it wasn’t any good but because he didn’t like sherry. He didn’t imagine the old man was eating any dinner that night, either.

Charlie remained silent and uncomfortable while the old soldier pored over the photographs Charlie produced of the Yakutsk grave, the bodies inside it, the mortuary shots of the corpses and the group copy of the art-recovery squad he’d obtained in Berlin. There were what appeared to be a lot of wartime photographs in the stark room in which they were sitting, but Charlie hadn’t been able to locate any of the people in whom he was interested from where he was sitting.

It was a long time before Parnell finally looked up. “Incredible. Absolutely incredible.” The voice was frail, like the man himself. He was thin and bald, shrunk with age inside an enveloping cardigan heavily and badly darned at both elbows. “Such a good, fine man. Unbelievable.”

Incredible and unbelievable had been the constant interjection during Charlie’s recitation of yet another edited account of the discovery of Lieutenant Simon Norrington’s body.

“You commanded the unit?” began Charlie, gently. “Know everyone in the Berlin photographs?”

“Only commanded the Britons, although I knew George Timpson and Harry Dunne, who everyone called Hank. But I didn’t know either of the women. You say the dark-haired one at the end was found in the grave with Simon? Incredible!”

“I didn’t know the fraternization was quite that close.”

“Neither did I, to tell you the truth. Us and the Americans, certainly. Good working relationship, for our particular job, but then most of them were only token soldiers: really professional policemen and art experts like Norrington and Timpson and Dunne. Surprised I didn’t hear about the women.”

“So you’ve never seen them before? No idea of their names?”

“Afraid not.”

“When do you think that photograph might have been taken?”

“Right at the very end, obviously. We were always at the sharp end: needed to be there before people and what they stole got dispersed. Difficult enough to track stuff down as it was.”

“Can you recognize the building in the background?”

Parnell pursed his lips, squinting down at the picture. “Could be the Pergamon Museum, which contains the fantastic Greek altar: it’s the most impressive building in the entire Museumsinsel complex.”

“But isn’t that in what was East Berlin?” pressed Charlie, the mistake intentional. This really was like trying to sieve mud in search of a gold nugget.

“The actual partition hadn’t happened then, but it would certainly have been in that part of the city the Russians controlled and later occupied. Explains the two Russian women, I suppose.”

“Simon and the others would have had to be there by invitation? Have permission, certainly?”

“Without a doubt,” agreed Parnell, at once. “So it must have been very early. Almost from the first days they occupied the east of the city the Russians established patrols, checking everyone, turning people back even though officially they had no right. Always amazed me how the rest of the Allies seemed surprised by everything the Russians did afterwards. I thought from the beginning their intention was to take Berlin entirely, which they would have done if it hadn’t been for the airlift.”

“Sir Matthew let me read your letter of condolence about Simon, to his father?”

“Never enough right words to say what you properly mean,” complained the old man.

“In your letter you said Simon’s body was returned by the Russians? I don’t understand what he was doing there, if the Russians were turning non-Russians back.”

“You’ve got to understand the chaos that was there, even after the supposed surrender. It was total. Not everyone got turned back-just those that couldn’t satisfy the intercepting patrols. And Simon was unique in our section, had Russian as well as German. And enough charm to use either language to talk himself into and out of anything.I gave him the assignment to go into the eastern part, as well as all the accreditation I could think of.”

It was coming! Slowly, awkwardly, but it was coming. “When was that?”

The old man shrugged. “Difficult to be precise, to a date. First day or two of May, something like that.”

“Was there still fighting in Berlin then?”

“Not in the way I think you mean, but a lot of shooting, certainly. Mostly in the Russian sector. Hate to sound like the Nazi propaganda machine, but the Russians really were subhuman the way they took their revenge.”

“Wasn’t it dangerous for Norrington to go in?”

“He was an Allied officer with all the necessary accreditation and authorization. Officially he had the right. He was a very confident young man. And I sent all these in the picture in with him, although as I said I didn’t know anything about the Americans or the Russian women being there, too. Can’t understand that.”

“What was the assignment?”

“Because of the way the Russians were behaving, there was a huge exodus of people from what became East Berlin, everyone trying to justify their right to stay in the west. You’ve heard what an art rapist Goering was, literally looting museums by the trainload?”

Charlie nodded.

“There was intelligence, from three separate sources, that Goering had an enormous amount of art he hadn’t been able to ship to Car-inhall, his hunting estate north of Berlin, stored in the basement of the Air Ministry. I sent Simon and his group to see if it was true.”

“On May first or second?” pressed Charlie.

“As far as I can recall. It was certainly very early in the month.”

“How soon after May first or second did you hear from Simon Norrington?”

The myopic man shook his head. “I’m not sure I did, personally. There was some communication, as far as I remember, although it’s difficult to be precise after all this time. Something about his following up some information, as far as I recall. I had other search groups, in Munich and Hamburg. But all the message exchanges will be in ministry records. Ours was regarded as an important unit, which iswhy I’ll never understand why they kept us so short of staff. Records were important, though. Everything was kept, filed. I insisted on that, even though we had to keep a pretty loose command, by the very nature of the job, here, there and everywhere. I was actually off base, in Munich, for most of May. That’s when the message came from headquarters that Simon’s body had been found, terribly injured.”

“Do you remember the date?” asked Charlie.

Parnell shook his head. “It’ll all be in War Office records. You need to look them up.”

“Yes,” said Charlie, not bothering to explain the disappearance to the older man. “Do you remember how his body was returned?”

Parnell frowned at the question, offering more sherry, to which Charlie shook his head. “Of course I do. Star of my unit; only lost two during the entire war, and him when the bloody thing was officially over. The body was in a coffin. Damned awful thing, too. Changed it, of course. At once. The injuries were terrible …” The old man shuddered. “Wouldn’t have known a thing, thank God.”

“What about belongings?”

“Not as much as I would have expected. Decided at the time the bastard Russians had stolen a lot of stuff. Money, certainly. I clearly remember there wasn’t any money. Suppose we were lucky to get back what we did.”

“Uniform?”

Parnell shook his head. “There wouldn’t have been anything left, after the injuries he suffered. It was a shroud ….” The old man stopped in abrupt realization. “But it wasn’t Simon, was it?”

“No.” Charlie had decided it was easier for the man to speak as he had been doing.

“So the body I saw … with Simon’s things …. was someone else!”

“Yes.”

“Do you know who?”

“No. I don’t expect we ever will.”

“Bodies were easy to come by,” remembered the former soldier, with an unexpected hardness that surprised Charlie. “Was it simply a body? Or someone killed specially?”

The question surprised Charlie even more. “Killed specially, I would think.”

“Like Simon, in …?”