artwork appeared comparable.
Sir Peter Mason was an intimidatingly large man, immaculate in the sort of waistcoated dark pinstripe, complete with fresh rose buttonhole, that Charlie imagined the man would have worn every day of his working life in Whitehall and couldn’t bear to abandon in retirement. The virgin white shirt was hard-collared, the tie Charlie guessed to be the Carlton Club, although he wasn’t sure. There was scarcely any gray in the long, polished black hair, the advantage of either remarkable genes or an equally remarkable, dye-adept barber. The face was so pink and smooth it could have been genes. The man only just managed to stop himself from checking Charlie’s arrival timekeeping. He remained seated behind the sort of desk Charliecould believe permanent secretaries had made from the plans of aircraft carrier flight decks. There was no offer of a handshake. As well as several oils, the study was festooned with photographs of Sir Peter Mason with every world political leader Charlie could remember and some he couldn’t. There didn’t appear to be any of Mason in military uniform, though. The man said, “I talked to Sir Matthew, after your call. This is a dreadful business.”
“You’ll understand, then, why I need your help,” said Charlie.
“Of course, although I’m not sure I did at first last night. Or what I’ll be able to give you today.” Mason was leaning intently forward on his desk, one hand cupped protectively over the other. “Looked out what might help, but I’d like to hear as much as there is from you first.”
A man accustomed always to power and obedience, Charlie recognized: velvet-covered condescension. Charlie said, “You remember Simon Norrington?”
“Of course. Wonderful man as well as being superb at his job. First-rate mind.” The voice was measured, carefully modulated. There was a nod in the direction of the oil paintings. “Would have appreciated his opinion of some of these.”
“And George Timpson?”
The former civil service supremo frowned, creasing an uncreased forehead. “Not so well. American, wasn’t he?”
“An art expert, like Norrington. Colonel Parnell described them as friends?”
“They were,” said the large man. He lounged back at his desk, hands deep in his pockets. “Timpson had very bad eyesight, as I remember, although it didn’t seem to affect his work. Had no idea they were the two referred to in the newspapers. With the Russian woman all the fuss has been about, weren’t they?”
Instead of answering, Charlie offered Novikov’s grainy, insect-blurred photographs of the bodies in the grave and then the better, more professionally taken ones after the recovery from Yakutsk. Mason physically shuddered and said, “Horrible! How much else have you been able to discover so far?”
Mason listened to Charlie’s now almost automatic recitation, gazing down at the photographs, occasionally shaking his head in apparentdisbelief. He looked up inquiringly at the end of Charlie’s account, ensuring it was over before saying, “Now tell me how I can help. Which I will, of course, in any way I can.”
“The month of May 1945,” identified Charlie. “Norrington went into the eastern sector of Berlin, with a squad, to check intelligence that Goering had an art cache somewhere in the Air Ministry?”
Mason frowned. “It was a very long time ago for a recollection as definite as that. I certainly remember the Goering information: it was thought to be very reliable. And exciting.”
“But not Simon being sent to check it?”
“He would have been the most obvious choice, with the expertise and the languages, but I don’t specifically recollect it, no. There was so much happening. Or not happening. You’ve no idea what Berlin-Germany-was like: no administration, no utilities. Total devastation.”
“So I keep being told,” said Charlie, covering the sigh. “Colonel Parnell was in Munich virtually all of May. And Norrington doesn’t seem to have come back from the Russian sector. He can’t remember about the squad, either. But he is sure there was a message: maybe a reason why Norrington stayed there. Perhaps, even,
Mason slowly shook his head. “That doesn’t mean anything to me-nothing that I can recall. Except that it wouldn’t have been anything to do with Yakutsk. We were assigned to Germany. It would have needed Supreme Allied Command authorization to have gone into Russia ….” The man hesitated, shaking his head. “Not even sure that would have been sufficient.”
“Don’t tell me it was impossible for Norrington and Timpson to be where they were found!” pleaded Charlie.
“None of this makes sense!”
“I keep being told that, too. You said you’d looked something out, to help.”
Mason groped into an unseen drawer at his side of the desk, taking out a faded brown leather-covered pocketbook. “Kept my wartime diaries: a log, really. This is ’45.” He finished the sentence looking down as he fingered left-handedly through the pages, exclaimed, “Ah!” and went back to turn the pages more slowly. “May, you say?”
“Yes,” confirmed Charlie, hopefully.
“Went to Hamburg on May sixth. Got back into Berlin on the twenty-eighth.” He looked up, smiling with what looked to be natural teeth. “And here it is!” He looked down again, to quote verbatim “‘May 2. Simon. Goering. Strong Louvre possibility.’”
“That’s all?” pressed Charlie, disappointed.
“No!” said the man, triumphantly, “‘May 5. Goering unsubstantiated. Squad back.’”
“Squad back?” echoed Charlie. “What about Simon Norrington?”
Mason offered the sepia-brown pages. “I didn’t make a note. Doesn’t look to have been my decision. I usually put in a lot more detail, for my fuller reports later.”
“Colonel Parnell issued the order. Just before he went to Munich,” confirmed Charlie. “So both of you were away?”
“There was still a support staff running the office,” stressed Mason. “Organized it myself. Anything that came in while we were away would have been automatically and immediately passed on to headquarters. Parnell was a stickler for records; insisted that we were trying to restore the art heritage of Europe. Which we were, of course. Had every damned telephone call logged.” He waved the leather-covered diary again. “That’s why I kept this. Parnell had to know where everyone was, what they were doing, every minute of the day.” He smiled again, confidently. “So you don’t have a problem! You go to War Office records and you’ll get every scrap of paperwork that ever passed through our unit. Including any message from Norrington, even if it was telephoned. You’ll know
“We’ve already done that, sir,” disclosed Charlie. “There are no records covering Norrington during May. Not until his body was returned.”
For a very long time Sir Peter Mason regarded Charlie over the huge desk. Then he said, “Do you know what I did, after the war?”
“I understand you were a permanent secretary at the Foreign Office,” ventured Charlie.
“Then you’ll know that these have been destroyed,” said Charlie, bluntly.
“That is impossible. It cannot be done.”
“It has been done. So it is possible.”
“What are you suggesting?”
“I don’t know enough to suggest anything,” admitted Charlie, honestly. “All I can tell you is that files that should still be in existence-as you believe they should still exist-have disappeared.”
“Government files go automatically into the Public Records Office at Kew after a prescribed period of time,” insisted the expert. “Even if the release time is extended beyond the normal fifty-year period, it is noted at Kew. Has there been the proper check?”
“I understand so,” said Charlie, who truly didn’t.
“An illegal act has been committed, if they’ve been tampered with. Or unless a special exclusion or extension-of-release order has been imposed.”
“They no longer exist,” insisted Charlie. He really was wasting his time. There wasn’t any reason to delay his Moscow return.
Sir Peter Mason lapsed into renewed silence. “Do you imagine you’ll ever fully get to the bottom of it
