Dead Men Living

“I thought I could sell them-the pictures, I mean. I wanted the American to be identified before I approached the American reporters who came to me after the Moscow News story. I was going to say I’d discovered all this: sell them the photographs and see if there was a reward for the Amber Room stuff that everyone wrote about after my mother was identified.”

Lestov decided it was too pitiful to challenge. “There would have been some papers, documents, belonging to your mother?”

“Beria tried to gain power after Stalin died. Was purged. My grandparents were frightened: destroyed everything they thought might dangerously connect them to the man.”

“So your mother was NKVD?”

“I think so. That’s what it was known as then, wasn’t it?”

“Do you know who the woman is, with the American and your mother? Did your grandparents ever tell you a name?”

“No.”

“You’re in serious trouble, Fyodor Ivanovich. If I discover you’re still lying, I shall be very angry.”

“I don’t know anything more! Please give me something to drink. Let me clean myself. This isn’t right!”

Lestov shook his head. “I’m going to let you live in your own shit so that you can think extremely hard to make sure you haven’t forgotten to tell me all that you know.”

“Please!” wailed the man.

“This is how people were treated all the time in the old days-that time you admire so much. Enjoy it while you can.”

Marina Novikov stood with the official notification in her hand, her eyes too blurred to read it again. She said, “I never imagined this day would come.”

“Neither did I,” said the doctor.

“I’m frightened.”

“So am I,” admitted Novikov.

Marina looked around the room. “My father built this house. It’s still the best in Yakutsk.”

“Then it’ll be easy to sell.”

“What will Moscow be like? Big, I expect. Difficult to understand at first.”

“But we will,” promised Novikov.

“I’m frightened,” she repeated.

“We’ve got the boys out,” said Novikov. “They won’t have to live the lives that we’ve had to.”

“No,” she accepted. “That’s what’s important. Do you think your side of the bargain with the Englishman will be enough?”

“We’ve got the official notice!” insisted the man, actually taking it from her.

“What if what you have isn’t enough and it’s canceled?” she asked.

Novikov shook his head in refusal against her doubt, but he didn’t reply.

30

The instruction had been for Charlie not to be late and he’d set out from London before the early morning rush hour, although not to comply with Sir Peter Mason’s autocratic demand. After his even earlier telephone conversation with Natalia, in a three-hour-time-difference Moscow, Charlie’s impression was of events closing in upon him in ever-constricting circles without his being able to orchestrate the process, and it was always necessary for Charlie to be the one with the baton in his hand. Which was why, driving unhurriedly and still constantly checking his mirror through the low Norfolk countryside, he wasn’t happy. And why he needed the time properly to analyze what he and Natalia had discussed to rearrange the score to his own tune, not that of the other players.

Unquestionably to Charlie’s benefit was the virtually speed-of-light granting of Moscow residency for Vitali Novikov and his family, which would bring them into the city and the already-provided apartment in the next two or three days. Even more unquestionable was that he had to be ready and waiting when the Yakutsk doctor arrived, finally to learn what the man knew about the murders.

If anything.

That nagging, persistent uncertainty was Charlie’s primary concern, as it had been from the first, initially unexplained approach from the thin, intense man. Charlie accepted with Novikov that he was in an all-or-nothing situation: all if the doctor had enough to unravel the riddles, nothing if he’d fallen for the desperate bluff of an innocent exile who’d greatly exaggerated his knowledge of a long-ago-eradicated camp and its special prisoners. The only thing hecould do-had ever been able to do-was call that bluff, if that’s what it was.

Which meant delaying his going on to Washington to try to find out if an American named Harry Dunne was still alive and had a nugget or two to contribute. In addition to trying equally hard to discover, either there or in London, the obvious although unknown importance of fifteen Germans imprisoned in the very last month of the war in a barely living hell on earth.

Was a shortcut possible with the Germans? Charlie knew-although she wasn’t aware of his knowing-that Miriam Bell had the fifteen names when she’d gone back to Washington; was prepared, even, to believe her return might well have been connected with that identification. She could, after all, easily have gotten the FBI in Washington to make the inquiry on her behalf. But Charlie, who’d objectively seen similarities between himself and the American, gauged Miriam Bell’s ambition to be such that, like him, it was always necessary for her to do things herself rather than rely upon others.

Could he trick her into disclosing whatever she’d found out, if indeed she’d discovered anything? He could certainly try. She’d even been anxious for him to get back to Moscow. And given a warning he hadn’t really needed, about watching his back. He had Timpson’s name as well as that of Hank Dunne: more than sufficient to bargain with. It was certainly something to consider, at least until all the greater uncertainties about Vitali Novikov were resolved.

Letting the reflection run, Charlie acknowledged the very practical argument, beyond anything the Yakutsk doctor might or might not have, for his going back to Moscow immediately. According to Natalia that morning, Nikulin’s threat to go public about a second British officer had been prompted by Charlie’s unspecified London recall and continued absence. Which made it possible to delay any public announcement by going back. Charlie reckoned he certainly knew enough from Natalia to invent a plausibly fictitious reason for the London return; he could even infuse something in the negotiations with Miriam for her to pillow talk about to Vadim Lestov to keep all the balls juggling in the air. Perhaps not as difficult to orchestrate to his own personally composed tune as he’d initially thought.

What about, even, an entirely different concert? Convinced as hewas that he and his fighting-to-survive department were being buggered about by their own gods on high, Charlie abruptly wondered what or who might fall out of the woodwork if Russia did disclose the presence of a second British officer. His not being in Moscow at the time of any announcement would avoid any personal or departmental blame. All he had to do was not warn the director-general of his prior knowledge. At once the counterargument presented itself. If he didn’t give the easily explained warning, he could stand accused-almost inevitably by Gerald Williams, another unresolved problem-of not being properly on top of the Moscow end of the investigation, whether he was physically there or not. Not an alternative, then.

He definitely had to go back, Charlie accepted, as he began picking up the signs to East Dereham. But without the intended American detour on the way, quickly to get upon the rostrum, baton in hand. And now with the score set out more clearly in front of him than it had been at this journey’s beginning.

The estate of Sir Peter Mason, a former government mandarin of Her Britannic Majesty, was minuscule by comparison to that of Sir Matthew Norrington but still impressive to someone born in a terraced council house, which Charlie had been. The period of its construction, which favored a confusing mix of towers and castellated battlements, was indeterminate, but Charlie had the impression that it was far more recent than the Hampshire mansion, and the grounds didn’t have their grazing herds, but even to Charlie’s Philistine eye the paintings and