Dead Men Living

decision and action to be shown to be the right one.”

There was momentary silence both at the cynicism and the outburst.

“But checks are being made in the Foreign Ministry?” persisted Nikulin.

One of Suslov’s advisers came quickly forward, whispering in the deputy minister’s ear. Suslov frowned, regretting the apparent prompt. “Yes.”

“And also through the records of my ministry,” offered Viskov, anxious to recover. “If this does escalate, it’s important that everything is seen to have been done properly, in the correct order.”

“Quite so.” Nikulin smiled bleakly.

“Which was surely what we agreed at my suggestion a few moments ago,” capped Natalia. “Which brings us to the next political consideration. What do we do about London and Washington?”

“Should we do anything, this early?” questioned Viskov, following Nikulin’s lead of seeking an opinion rather than advancing one.

“Let’s take the worst scenario, that an American and an English officer were murdered, together with a Russian woman,” suggested Nikulin. “It would have happened too long ago for that in itself to be a difficulty for the present government, whatever the circumstances of their being in what was, during and after the war, a closed- to-outsiders Stalin gulag complex. Our concentration has got to be how we handle it now. It’s essential we appear totally open, with nothing to hide. And we don’t have anything to hide ….” The thin man hesitated, nodding in private agreement with himself. “It is going to be a difficult crime to solve, after such a long time. Almostcertainly impossible. There’ll be mistakes. Problems. What’s important is keeping us beyond all criticism for those problems ….” He paused in further reflection. “It would help if they turned out to be spies, of course.”

Natalia listened intently, frowning, anxious to anticipate the point toward which the presidential adviser was moving.

“We have an extremely backward but volatile republic, suspicious of foreigners-with perhaps the exception of Canada, with which they have some joint ventures-with Russia at the top of the hate list. They’re going to resent the need for us to be involved, maybe even intentionally make it awkward for whoever we send there ….” The man paused, at a moment of rare commitment. “We need insurance. And I think that insurance could very definitely be to involve London and Washington at this stage. To go as far as inviting them to send investigators at the same time as we send ours ….”

Logically-inevitably-that would be Charlie, Natalia accepted once more. What would Charlie’s insurance be? It would have to be her if they were to survive together, Natalia admitted. So much for avoiding a conflict of interest. She’d still try to avoid it happening, for as long as possible.

“At the same time?” echoed Viskov, rhetorically, wanting Nikulin to recognize his understanding of what the man was saying.

Nikulin gave another bleak smile, unoffended at the interruption. “Problems-difficulties-of an investigation by their own people into a fifty-year-old murder of an Englishman and an American would be their problems and difficulties, not ours, wouldn’t they?”

“Absolutely!” agreed Suslov, smiling, too.

Nikulin looked directly at Natalia. “I want you to choose your team extremely carefully. And brief them even more carefully. The investigation will fail. It can’t do otherwise. The failure must be shown to be that of the English and Americans, not us. The agenda for our people must be to make the foreigners provably responsible for every error.” The smile came again, at a perfectly devised strategy. Still directly addressing Natalia, he said, “You have any difficulty-argument-with that?”

“None whatsoever,” lied Natalia.

Mikhail Suslov said, “Washington and London will have to be officially told through my ministry. I’ll do it immediately.”

“This is a boring game!” protested Sasha.

“We got three planes right across the room!” said Charlie. The distance from one end of the main salon to the other was much farther than the corridor wall from his empty office desk.

“Your planes and you threw them,” reminded the child. “Mine crashed.”

“All your home schoolwork done?”

“Everything I had to do.”

She’d made pictures of a dog and a horse and chosen their initial letters without his help. “How about a story?”

“We could watch television,” Sasha suggested instead. “American cartoons. It helps me to learn the words.”

Charlie and Natalia wanted Sasha to be bilingual and spent half an hour each evening talking only English. He wasn’t sure of the benefit of the satellite programs and words like POW and WHAM and BLAM, but he didn’t want to lose Sasha’s enthusiasm. “Only while I get supper.”

“Baked beans!” she said, in English.

They were a novelty-unavailable in Moscow-and Sasha’s latest favorite, which Charlie got through the embassy commissary. He turned on the wide-screen set in the smaller room and insisted she sit properly in a chair several feet away, vaguely remembering a warning about X ray or some sort of ray that could harm children sitting too close.

“Can I have it on a tray, on my lap?”

“No.”

“Please!”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“It’s not a proper way to eat.”

“Ley used to let me!” said Sasha.

Ley was the closest Sasha had ever been able to get to the given name of Alexei Popov, Natalia’s deputy, whom she’d planned to marry until Charlie’s exposure of the man as a Mafia-linked member of the nuclear-smuggling organization manipulating her and the rank he held within the ministry. By unspoken- although in Charlie’s opinion, unnecessary-agreement he and Natalia never referred betweenthemselves to the man who had contributed to another layer of Natalia’s too-miserable life. But very occasionally, like now when she wasn’t getting her own way, Sasha followed her child’s instinct and experimented. Charlie said, “He might have done. I’m not.”

“Where is Ley?”

“Gone.”

“Gone where?”

Wherever someone goes who gets shot point-blank and full in the face with a 9mm bullet, thought Charlie, remembering the final moments of the ambush in which Popov had tried to kill him. He said, “Away.”

“Is he coming back?”

“No.”

“Never, ever?”

“Never, ever. So you’ll eat properly, at the table in the kitchen.” He set her place, complete with a proper napkin, and timed the beans and toast to be ready when the cartoon program finished. He sat opposite while she ate. Beyond the child the nearly full bottle of Islay malt stood out on the drinks tray like a beacon, but Charlie ignored it, even though technically it was happy hour. There were a lot of unimagined changes in being a father.

“Shall we try to speak English?”

“If you’d like,” said Charlie, pleased it was her suggestion, which was how he and Natalia always tried to make it.

“How long will Mummy be?”

She inverted the verb, but for a child of Sasha’s age it was conversationally very good. “She didn’t know. She’s going to phone to tell us.”