Dead Men Living

Russian investigation had been officially ended but insisting she didn’t know the reason.

Upon reflection it even seemed to mesh-although he didn’t know how-with the official runaround he was convinced to be going on in London, again without his knowing how or why. Which elevated this lunch to more than hopefully learning what Miriam might have found out about the German POWs in Yakutsk. Now to complete the circle he had to gauge, if he could, whether America, too, had from the beginning only ever been interested in suppressing instead of solving murders they already knew about. But if it did mesh, itcreated an even bigger mystery: what was the secret so overwhelming, after more than fifty years, that all three involved countries were determined it remain forever concealed? With the delicacy of a man tightrope-walking across a snake pit, Charlie said, “I should have kept in closer touch, but there really was a lot to do. Didn’t you find that in Washington?”

“No,” said Miriam, shortly. Charlie was playing the same old game, she recognized. Did it matter a fuck anymore? Why didn’t she come straight out and tell him she’d been closed down, that she was thoroughly pissed off about it and that from now on she was just going along for the ride without knowing who was driving where? Because she had to know, she answered herself at once. Washington-the cocksucker Kenton Peters in particular, the lapdog bureau director and Nathaniel Brindsley in general-was treating her like a dummy. It didn’t matter a damn what was written on her record, to which she anyway didn’t have access to confirm, she’d still be remembered by those who knew for obediently rolling over and dying. Far better, for her pride and reputation and career, to prove to Brindsley-and anyone else-she could close a case and make them the roll- over dummies doing nothing about it.

Shit, thought Charlie, disappointed. “How long were you there?”

“Coupla days.”

“Useful?”

“Bits and pieces. How about you?”

“Bits and pieces.”

“Who’s going to blink first?” she smiled, letting him know she understood.

Charlie held up the empty vodka carafe toward their passing waiter. Every reason for her to think it would be him, if that’s what she wanted. He could imply a lot of what he’d learned from Natalia to have come from London that she’d know to be true from the coitus conversations with Lestov. “My people have come up with the names of some Germans imprisoned in a camp that existed close to where the bodies were found.”

Necessary for him not to think that was a trade. “So have mine.”

“That why you were recalled to Washington?”

“Yes,” she said, straight-faced.

When the waiter returned with the vodka, they ordered quickly,to get rid of the interruption. To hint his awareness of the real source, Charlie said, “Lestov give you any lead on what the development is?”

“Maybe they’ve identified the Germans, too?”

The first blink, isolated Charlie: identifying went beyond knowing the names. “So we’re all three making progress?”

“Are we?” This was becoming a struggle.

“I think so,” said Charlie. What could he afford to volunteer, to edge her further forward?

“I’m not so sure.”

The moment to convince you, then, thought Charlie. “You think it’s time for us to stop playing silly buggers?”

“It might help. Seems to me we’re almost starting from scratch again. And I thought we’d come to an understanding.”

Blitzkrieg, decided Charlie, the pun intentional. “I thought so, too. We’ve got the Germans. We know who your guy was. Both of them, in fact. And we can make a lot of very informed guesses-not actual proof, I know, but enough to take us a long way forward-so why are we fucking about like this?” He was pleased of the feigned irritation he managed at the end.

Miriam was glad the blintzes arrived, although she’d forgotten she’d ordered them, needing the recovery and the time to assess. She’d heard enough to know he hadn’t been positively closed down, as she had. Point one. He knew about the POWs, which she knew Vadim Lestov hadn’t told him, so London must have another, maybe better, source. Point two. Proof of that better source was his saying he knew who both Americans were, when she’d only been trying to find the name of the one in the grave, which she still didn’t have. Point three and the biggest of all. And if London had that much, they had to be nearer to knowing a damned sight more, which put Charlie-England-way over the horizon. Thank Christ she’d played it this way so far. How to raise the bidding? Appeal to his macho, the male need to boast what was between his legs. She offered her glass, clinking it once more against Charlie’s. “Like I said on the telephone, we’ve got a lot to talk about.”

Somewhere he’d hit a target. But which one? Not the time to stop the bombardment. And the next shot was easy. “You first.”

Fuck, she thought. He was too good-too clever-to try any sortof bluff. She could only play the cards she held. “I think the coincidence is incredible, your being so right at that goddamned press conference.”

Not as good as he’d hoped, but he still believed himself ahead. “I’d liked to have found out earlier. Or rather that London had been quicker. Whom do your people regard the most important?”

Miriam frowned. “Don’t you think it’s Frederich Dollmann? He was the chief secretary in the bunker.”

Charlie felt the slow, warming burn move through him. It still wasn’t an answer, but the middle of the jigsaw was beginning to fill at last. “I’m not making the analysis. London is, as Washington obviously is with you. All I got was the names and a thumbnail sketch of what they’d so far come up with.” Plucking a name at random from the list, Charlie went on, “Our guys seemed to think Werner von Bittrick was important.”

“An aide-de-camp, admittedly,” said Miriam. “But it was Dollmann and Buhle who saw him every day: took the dictation.”

Franz Buhle, completed Charlie, as he filled in a lot more. At least three of the fifteen Germans had spent the last months of the war in daily contact-two of them taking the dictation-with the demented Adolf Hitler, fighting battles already lost with armies that no longer existed: the bunker that the Russians were the first to seize as they were the first to seize Berlin. Forcing the casualness as well as the conversation-but letting his mind run ahead- Charlie said, “Let’s face it, the combined knowledge of everyone who was there would have been astonishing. But to historians-”

“I know the problem,” broke in Miriam, which Charlie had hoped she would. “Why art experts? I could understand practically anyone else except them.” When-or how-was she going to get the American names?

Charlie believed he could understand. Partially, at least. If he was right, it was the conspiracy to beat all conspiracies ever conceived, reducing those of the courts of Rome, Tudor England, the Borgias and Machiavelli to children painting by numbers.

Caught by his silence and her belief in his greater knowledge, Miriam said, “But you can?”

Distantly, virtually thinking aloud, Charlie said, “They wouldn’t have known, would they?”

What were the right words? Miriam thought desperately. Maybe to follow with another question. “Known what?”

“What they were going to find in Yakutsk. Why they were being allowed there,” suggested Charlie, still thinking aloud. “We can’t look at it from today’s perspective. We’ve got to look at it as they would have in Berlin in March or April or May 1945. Total chaos, total confusion. Suddenly to have made available the last support staff around Hitler: people who knew intimately every moment of every day in the last months of one of history’s greatest monsters! People who knew where all the treasures were. That would have been too much to have considered rationally. There was no rationale.”

“But there weren’t any art treasures in the bunker!” protested Miriam.

“You sure of that?” demanded Charlie. “They wouldn’t have been, not then. I’m still not sure now, after half a century.”

Now it was Miriam who remained silent, pushing the blintzes away. Charlie didn’t speak, either, needing to think as much as the woman. Eventually Miriam said, “You’re saying they didn’t go to Yakutsk because of Hitler’s staff?”

“No,” denied Charlie. “They went because of Hitler’s staff. But that’s not what they were taken there for. There was another reason.”

“There couldn’t have been another reason!” protested Miriam, belatedly accepting Charlie’s earlier argument.