Dead Men Living

all?”

“At this precise moment I doubt it,” admitted Charlie, honest again and hating the admission. “Everything has been dispersed between too many separate departments here in England and is compounded by supposedly shared but in fact quite separate and conflicting investigations by America and Russia.”

“In May 1945, we received a body with Simon Norrington’s identification from the Russian authorities in Berlin,” stated Mason, more to himself than to Charlie. “The three in Yakutsk-and whoever it was in Berlin-were killed by Russians. Who else could it have been?”

“The Russians have evidence of another British officer having been present,” declared Charlie, flatly.

“The present British government knows this?”

“Yes.”

“What evidence?”

“A bullet from a British gun. A button forensically proven to be from a British battle-dress uniform.”

“That, potentially, is appalling! Unthinkable! You should have told me about this last night …. I still have friends in government: people I could have spoken to … got a better understanding …”

Careless of his desperation showing, Charlie said, “Don’t you rememberanything about Norrington around that month?”

“His death, that’s all. Suddenly being told by the Russians that they had his body and were returning it.”

“Wasn’t any inquiry made about the circumstances? Colonel Parnell says your unit only ever lost two people during its entire existence.”

“Of course,” said the older man. “I do recall discussing that very fully with Parnell, obviously. It went higher, to headquarters, for them to use their authority to demand an explanation. All we got back was that his body had been found, by a Russian patrol, with no evidence of how he’d been killed.”

What, Charlie wondered, had been the explanation given to the Americans for the death of the man they’d believed to be George Timpson? “Is it conceivable Norrington would have gone to Russia without telling anyone?”

“Totally inconceivable!” insisted the other man. “Okay, we were an irregular unit and maybe did things in an irregular way. But as I said, Parnell was a stickler and everyone followed his rules if they didn’t necessarily strictly follow army regulations to the letter. For Norrington to have decided, off his own bat, to go to Yakutsk would have amounted to desertion! And how could he have gone, of his own accord? There were only military flights, in and out of both Berlin airports. And those flights were checked, by nationals of whichever country the plane belonged to. The one fact I am positive about is that the only way Norrington and Timpson would have got to Yakutsk would have been as prisoners of the Russians. Who were then prepared to murder to cover up what they had done ….” The man paused at a new awareness. “Is there a phony grave in Berlin for Timpson?”

“An American war cemetery in the Netherlands.”

“Why on earth isn’t the government-America, too-demanding an explanation?”

“The possible embarrassment of a second involved Briton.”

“Rubbish. Preposterous rubbish,” rejected the man. “By 1945 there were millions of British handguns all over the place. And tens of millions of uniform bits and pieces. And it doesn’t matter whether there were one or two British officers. The unalterable, unchallengeable fact has to be they were prisoners of the Russians, withoutwhom they wouldn’t have been there in the first place ….” He paused, close to being breathless. “Instead of inventing conspiracies and spying missions and possible international embarrassments, has anyone thought that even if there was a second British officer his body might be somewhere else in another unmarked, unknown grave?”

“I don’t believe they have,” conceded Charlie. He certainly hadn’t, until now. Which he should have. A second body in a second grave would make nonsense of a lot of his theories and arguments so far. It could even, he further conceded, refute a Russian accusation.

“Suggest it!” insisted Mason. “At the same time as suggesting an explanation is demanded from the Russians for what’s clearly cold-blooded murder!”

Charlie said, “I appreciate the time you’ve given me. It’s been very useful: put forward different perspectives.”

“I don’t at all like the sound of how this is being handled,” said the other man. “You’ve got my number. Anything else comes up you think I might be able to help you with, you let me know. You’ve no idea what the Russians were like in Berlin.”

“Colonel Parnell tried to give me some idea.”

Mason shook his head dismissively. “You had to be there, truly to believe it.” There was a further, more vehement head shake. “And I can’t believe how this is being treated now.”

When Charlie phoned from a public kiosk in the center of East Dereham, Sir Rupert Dean insisted it should be a full meeting, not confined just to the two of them.

In Moscow Dmitri Nikulin announced the same decision and Natalia traveled to the White House in the same car as Colonel Vadim Lestov. She was curious at the strange harshness there had been in the presidential chief of staffs voice when he’d summoned them, apprehensive of what it might mean.

“You’re sure you seized everything Belous had hidden?” demanded the tall, austere man.

“After finding what we did, we virtually stripped the apartment,” assured the militia colonel. “There’s absolutely nothing more.”

“Where is it now?” Nikulin appeared distracted, looking around his huge office as if he expected to see it laid out for inspection.

“All in my personal office safe.”

“Fyodor Belous?”

“In custody, in Lefortovo. Held on suspicion of theft,” said Natalia.

Nikulin said, “The NKVD accreditation is the most important.”

“It’s with everything else,” guaranteed Lestov.

“I want you, personally, to bring it to me today,” ordered Nikulin. He hesitated, looking away from them, his mouth moving in apparent rehearsal for what he was about to say. Then, coming back to them, he said, “As of today, this moment, the investigation into the Yakutsk murders and the apparent disappearance of Larisa Krotkov is ended. Neither of you will take any further active part and certainly make no contribution.” He looked directly at Lestov. “You will appear to continue working with the American and the Englishman, to monitor everything they do or might discover, until such time as they announce the case unsolvable. At that time we’ll devise a public announcement, which at this stage isn’t something that has to be considered.”

Natalia broke the stunned silence that followed, stumbling to arrange her own words. “But we surely need-”

“There will be no professional reflection upon either of you,” interrupted the presidential aide, misunderstanding. “In fact, both your records will be personally endorsed, by me, that your investigation has been exemplary and the confirmation of your promotion, Vadim Leonidovich, will also be endorsed with presidential approval.”

“We have already issued a statement of a potential breakthrough, hinting at Tsarskoe Selo,” reminded Lestov, uncomfortable that it had been his idea.

“Which we can easily make it to be,” said Nikulin, another decision already made. “We can produce everything else you found in Belous’s apartment and disclose it as art she saved from being plundered by the Nazis: continue building Raisa Belous into a heroine, which she was. And we’ll keep the man silent by using his fear of security organizations. Tell him if he as much as speaks to the press again he’ll spend the rest of his life in a Yakutskaya labor camp.”

“Are we to be told why and how Raisa Belous became a heroine? Larisa Krotkov, too, presumably?” demanded Natalia, her thoughts in order now.

Once more Nikulin hesitated. “They were both instrumental in one of the greatest-ever services to the Motherland, which continued to benefit for decades. But which will never, ever be revealed.”

“When?” demanded Aleksandr Andreevich Kurshin.