Dead Men Living

him not to buy presents-but they hailed a taxi after about half an hour. They had a nightcap-two, in fact-at the Dorchester Bar, and during the second Miriam said, “You know something?”

“What?”

“I’ve just decided it would spoil things if you and I went to bed together.”

“Yes,” agreed Charlie. “It would.”

“You want to know something else?”

“What?”

“I’ve never felt like that about a guy before. Not sure if it makes you special or what. Special, I think.”

The tribunal lasted a further two days, extended by the determination of everyone involved completely to exonerate themselves. The Foreign Office cited the expense for refusing to recall Raymond McDowell and Colonel John Gallaway from Moscow to recount Charlie’s disparaging conversation, insisting instead upon signed af-fadavits, and Williams produced his carefully amassed examples of unsupported expense claims, which Charlie said he’d already talked about with the director-general, who at once insisted the explanation was totally satisfactory upon his personal authority and forbade any further discussion. Calling Charlie was nothing more than a token gesture to procedure. He said he couldn’t remember the actual disparagement-which the diligent Cartright had produced verbatim, alongside McDowell’s written recollection-but didn’t deny saying any of it. There had been intentionally introduced operational difficulties-to which the investigation of one department upon another had contributed-and he felt his remarks were as justified now as they had been at the time. He was apprehensive that Malcolm Covington might produce a voiceprint of his Waterloo runaround telephone call-sure it was Covington he’d spoken to-but it didn’t happen.

The hearing was impatiently concluded by the middle of the second day. Richard Cartright was assigned to the travel and communications desk at the Vauxball Cross headquarters. Gerald Williams accepted the invitation for early retirement, with his index-linkedpension adjusted to what it would have been had he not left until he was sixty-five. Jocelyn Hamilton and Malcolm Covington had severe reprimands attached to their personnel files.

“All that was ridiculous,” dismissed Sir Rupert. He’d insisted Charlie accompany him from the hearing to his office.

“Totally,” agreed Charlie.

“One has nothing to do-has no effect whatsoever-with the other,” warned the director-general. “I will not, ever again, tolerate your affectation to be the lone vigilante. And don’t patronize me by meekly agreeing. Understand that I mean it.”

“I do,” said Charlie.

“It’s right that I thank you, for what Pacey tells me you’ve achieved for the department. I do so, but reluctantly.”

“Thank you, anyway.”

“Now bugger off back to Moscow.”

It was the first time Miriam Bell had been in the presence of the FBI director, Judge Colin (pronounced Cohlin) Hibbert, who was avuncularly fat and prematurely bald and disappointed at being both. He was also disappointed at the confrontation that had just ended-he hoped-between someone as awesomely influential as Kenton Peters and a woman young enough to be not just his daughter but possibly his granddaughter. He knew from Nathaniel Brindsley that Miriam Bell had told Peters to kiss her ass and from ten years’ previous experience on the bench his verdict was that she’d effectively if not physically made him do just that.

“You were told your participation was over,” Peters continued to argue.

“I had initiated inquiries before I was recalled to be told that,” said Miriam. “They obviously had to be concluded. Not to have done so would have aroused suspicion with the Russians and the British.”

“Concluded very successfully,” contributed Brindsley, who’d enjoyed the spectacle.

“Have you anything else to say?” demanded Peters.

“I consider I have been wrongfully dismissed.”

“I wasn’t aware that you had,” said the State Department man to whom no responsibility ever attached.

“That’s my understanding.”

“A mistake, a misunderstanding, I’m sure,” said Peters, talking to the director.

“I’ll look into it,” promised Hibbert.

“Good!” said Peters. “And I’d like personally to congratulate you, for a brilliant investigation. I think that’s it, isn’t it?”

My bended knees, kiss-ass time, not yours, determined Miriam. “And I’d like to be reassigned.”

“Where?” asked Hibbert.

“Spain, perhaps?” She’d decided that Europe was better than Australia.

“You have it,” promised the director.

“Thank you.” Miriam smiled. “That’s definitely it.” She’d send Charlie a card: make him feel jealous.

39

Kenton Peters stood with his back to the room, legs apart, hands linked behind his back, gazing out toward the British Parliament. He’d come straight from the airport, deputing Boyce’s chauffeur to register him into the Connaught. He was vociferously proud not to suffer jet lag. “You know the difference between England and America?”

“What?” asked Boyce, dutifully.

“Permanence. That’s my impression. Everything here’s permanent: been here for a thousand years, will still be here in another thousand years. Too much in America seems to me to be impermanent: a gust of wind and it’ll all blow away.”

“I thought Washington was supposed to be the re-creation of a Greek city,” said Boyce. The antiquity reverie was a familiar one. Peters claimed to have Founding Fathers ancestry.

“That’s what it is,” said the patrician-featured man. “A copy. Not original. And Greece stopped being great about two thousand years ago.” He sat down in one of the armchairs, the leather of which subsided with a sigh under his weight.

Boyce thought the Greek era had ended long before that but didn’t bother to query it. Instead he said openly, “Not quite as clear-cut as we thought it would be.”

“A readjustment,” suggested the American. “The need was for containment. And we achieved that, didn’t we?”

“I think so.”

“How was Sir Matthew?”

“Persuadable, to the argument of the national better good. It was a family interment: advantage of owning half a county is that he has walls and barred gates to keep out unwelcomed intrusion.”

“Permanence. Tradition,” mused Peters. “I suppose I was lucky all Dunne’s family are dead, like him.”

“So your ceremony can go ahead?” Boyce knew it was to be reassured about the Arlington ceremony that the man had flown in from Washington overnight. Personal attention to the smallest detail was the hallmark of their unique profession.

“You know how it is with these sort of things, no unexpected loose ends?”

“Quite.”

“Mason surprised me.”

“Bloody man. I actually think he believes he was a hero who didn’t do any harm and worked out the deception all by himself. I obviously needed to find out precisely what Muffin knew before having the damned man fired or disposed of, but Mason insisted, without any warning, on talking like he did to impress people who didn’t know the full story and didn’t need to. If he’d left it to me, everything would have been all right. He’s only himself to blame for the humiliation in front of the cabinet secretary and the head of SIS.”

“I reread Dunne’s interrogation transcript. He was full of self-justification, too. Managed to make his