Dead Men Living

11

The ice grave was a crater in an earthly moonscape and the protective headgear and face masks that everyone wore, in various designs, made them look appropriately like astronauts. The insects rose in a solidly attacking mass. Charlie’s beekeeper’s hat was perfect but he wished he’d taken Novikov’s advice about gloves.

The annoyance at his disappearance the previous night remained, so much so that Charlie suspected they would have left without him if he hadn’t made a point to be first downstairs waiting, and bustled in to take Olga’s place the moment Kurshin arrived. On the way to the burial spot Lestov and Kurshin had talked-the Moscow detective hoping the crime scene produced more than the autopsies appeared to have-ignoring Charlie in the back. He trailed behind, the last in line, as they straggled toward the actual spot, and no one paid any attention to him when he edged away from the huddled-together, mosquito-swatting gathering that assembled to watch Lev Denebin carry out his forensic examination. Charlie positioned himself with the scientist in his immediate line of sight and the others beyond, able to see everything and everyone.

Denebin was better protected against the insects than any of them, helmeted, gauzed, gloved and with his scene-of-crime overalls tightly held at wrists and ankles. Charlie, who admired professionalism, was at once impressed by the Russian. Before getting into the grave, Denebin exposed an entire role of film in advance of pegging its immediate surround, using the markers to secure his tape for detailed exterior measurements ahead of stretching between them a crisscross of tape to section the depression into six designated search areas.

From Novikov’s earlier photographs it was obvious the ongoing thaw had deepened the grave still further from the depth at which the bodies had lain. Although he trod minimally and carefully, Denebin very quickly created an ankle-sucking sludge in places at the bottom of the depression. The forensic expert was painstakingly thorough,gently digging with a small trowel, particular always to sieve the earth back on to the place from which he’d collected it, not allowing any encroachment onto an unsearched, taped-off section.

It was only after watching the Russian probe and sift with total concentration for thirty minutes that Charlie appreciated the complete extent of his dismissal. Denebin appeared unaware and certainly uncaring of Charlie but stood always with his back to the others, for his body to obscure anything he didn’t want them properly to see.

Denebin had his specimen bags in a satchel slung around his neck, returning to a separate compartment whatever he felt it necessary to collect. He retrieved a lot of what looked to Charlie like metal shards and a few pieces of blackened wood. On the third cordoned-off section Charlie was immediately aware of the man’s body tightening and of Denebin more obviously putting his back to the watching group when he straightened with something small enough to hold between his thumb and forefinger. Until then he’d used one bag for several pieces of metal, but this new find got a specimen container of its own.

None of those at the grave edge appeared aware of Denebin’s stiffening, all too distracted by the constant, arm-waving effort to disperse the persistent mosquitoes and midges, despite Kurshin lighting a cordon of ineffective repellent candles. Charlie’s hands and arms were ablaze from bites, but he rigidly held himself against warding them off, not wanting to attract the scientist’s attention.

Within minutes he was glad he’d endured the torture. At the crater’s edge of the fifth section Denebin actually grunted as he stooped abruptly, troweling debris into his agitated sieve. From where Charlie stood the shell casing was obvious, and in the few seconds it took Denebin to bag it, Charlie decided it had not been from a 9mm bullet but a much smaller caliber.

It was turning out to be another good day, Charlie thought, although maybe not for the worried British military attache, Colonel Gallaway, in faraway Moscow. Not his problem, Charlie decided. His job was to determine the circumstances and, he hoped, establish the facts, not pretty them up. Behind the forensic scientist the rest of the group waved and slapped and Charlie wondered what, apart from insect bites, they were gaining from just standing there.

Quietly, slowly, Charlie eased himself away. It was a moonscape,empty kilometer after empty kilometer of treeless, stunted scrubland. In a few places-other, smaller craters-the rare warmth was making mist that hung, wraithlike. A place of far too many ghosts, thought Charlie: of three in particular, but of hundreds more. But where had Gulag 98 been in which they had been kept, when they had been pitifully alive?

The killings, he supposed, would have been a day very similar to this. Not as warm but summer, the ground softening. Vehicles, although not many: a truck, perhaps. A car. Two at the most, as few witnesses as possible. It would have been during the half-light of day. The killers would have needed to see what they were doing, choose their spot, and the insects had been swarming in the daytime heat, like now, to clog the mouths and throats after the executions. There would have been panic. And fear. A lot of fear. Don’t do this! This is madness! Let’s talk about it! For God’s sake! English voices-hysterical voices-in a land that had never heard English. No time to dig. Get it over with as quickly as possible. Get away. The explosions-there would have been several, from the amount of metal Denebin had collected-would have been deafening. No turning back after that. All argument, all pleas, ended by the explosions. They would have been manacled. Immobilized. Frightened people killing frightened people. But why? What could this desolate, pitiless land of ghosts have or possess to justify the ritual, cold-blooded execution of these three unknown, apparently unmourned people?

Not the land-the place-itself, Charlie decided. It would have been someone who was here, in Gulag 98. Maybe more than one. A group, like he was a reluctant part of a group now, men-maybe women, too-with a secret.

He had to examine that speculation further, justify the reasoning. He’d seen the bodies, each of them naked. Hand and ankle cuff marks, clearly visible. Shattering bullet wounds to the back of the head. But that was all. No sign whatsoever-no bruises or burns or cuts-of torture. And men prepared to kill would have been as prepared to torture if the victims had possessed a secret. So why hadn’t they? Because they didn’t have to, Charlie answered himself. The executioners knew the secret: what there was to gain. But didn’t want to share what was big enough, rewarding enough, to kill for. They’d known each other, victims and killers. Would have used firstnames when they pleaded, calling upon friendship, acquaintanceship. Charlie was sure he had a picture, but it was misted, much more deeply obscured than the occasionally shrouded expanse across which he was looking, seeking but still not finding what he had expected to see. The foundation marks of buildings, perhaps, even those built on stilts. Certainly evidence of proper graveyards.

He turned, surprised at how far he’d wandered on feet that normally cautioned against such excess. Denebin was clambering from the grave, tidily winding up his marking tapes and retrieving the securing pegs, when Charlie got back to them. He was in time to hear the forensic scientist say, “There’s very little. Too much time has elapsed from the bodies being discovered. Animals have been there, disturbing it all.”

“But there are some things?” questioned Charlie. “I saw you collecting samples.”

“Things I need to look at more closely,” said the scientist, vaguely.

“Do we have to talk about it here!” protested the arm-flailing Miriam. She’d suffered more than anyone, with just chiffon scarves to wrap around her head and face. “I’m being eaten alive. I want to get back to the hotel, clean up.”

“Of course,” agreed the attentive Lestov, at once.

“I’ll need until tomorrow to get any opinion of what I’ve got,” said Denebin, awkwardly.

“We’re meeting Valentin Polyakov in the morning,” reminded Miriam.

“Another busy day then,” said Charlie, brightly. No one acknowledged him, already hurrying back toward the waiting vehicles.

It had been Novikov’s idea that they meet at the town’s museum, but the man wasn’t there when Kurshin dismissively dropped him off, so Charlie went inside. The museum was far more a monument to Russian persecution of Russian than Charlie had expected, whole rooms given over to photographs and paraphernalia recording the establishment of the vast penal colony. The photographs were almost uniformly of lines of dead-eyed, despair-crushed, barely human figures, the bechained walking dead, men, women and even children. It was from a variety of the pictures that Charlie believed he’d answered one question and gotten a pointer to another.

The gulags were regimented, haphazardly wire-fenced, with corner-placed watchtowers, some tilted like the subsiding buildings of today. There were lists of the minimally subsistence diets upon which the exiles and prisoners had been expected to survive, and occasional names, particularly of political figures purged during and even after the Stalin era. Charlie was intrigued several times to see a photograph of a gaunt-featured man with the same name as the chief minister with whom he had an appointment the following day.

Charlie was standing in front of an exhibition of prison camp equipment-chain-linked manacles, hand and ankle cuffs, actual posts against which prisoners were tied for execution, punishment whips and guard batons-when the tall, thin doctor found him.

“What you expected?” asked Novikov.

“Far more.”

“Still want to go for a drive?”

“As much as ever.”

They were driving north again, Charlie recognized. Deciding after the family encounter it was safe to try to guide the conversation, Charlie said, “What was your father’s supposed crime?”

“Just being a doctor,” said Novikov, simply. “Doctors were regarded as dangerous intellectuals, especially those who weren’t members of the Communist Party, which my father refused to join.” He snorted a laugh. “Being a doctor got him sent here and then saved him. Once he arrived, he only had to live in Gulag 98 for a few months. Even when he was inside, he didn’t have to do any manual labor in the mines. That’s why he trained me. Made me study basic forensics, later. That again was for necessity, to make myself as indispensable as possible. I can’t ever return permanently to Moscow, of course. Anywhere else in Russia, for that matter.”

“Why not?” Charlie frowned.

“The system,” said Novikov. “People sent here were automatically stripped of their citizenship: lost their Russian nationality. So have their descendants. You need established residency in a Russian city to be allowed to leave here and you can only get that by getting away from here to establish residency. Which you can’t do without an internal passport, which none of us is allowed to hold. We’re imprisoned here as effectively as anyone in Stalin’s day.”

“So everyone who ever came here was known: recorded somewhere?”The town was falling away in the semidarkness, more moonscape stretching out in front of them.

Novikov nodded, recognizing the reason for the question. “In theory. Somewhere in Moscow, I suppose.”

“What about here? Were there registers?”

“Again, in theory. Aleksandr Andreevich asked the chief minister after the bodies were found. Polyakov said there weren’t any archives, not any longer. That they’d been destroyed when we got our limited autonomy. And don’t forget millions were sent here. Died here. It would have needed a warehouse as big as Yakutsk itself.”

After the previous day there was no love lost between this man and Olga Erzin. No need, then, to circumvent. “Anything from today’s examination?”

The pathologist shook his head. “She tried to get me to agree that some grazes on the woman’s hands and on the American’s right forearm were defense injuries, where they tried to fight off whoever killed them. But I wouldn’t. It doesn’t fit, with the close range at which they were shot in the back, not the front, of the head. I believe they’re scratches from pitching forward into the grave. Frozen as it was, it would have been like hitting concrete.”

Charlie thought so, too. It led perfectly to one of the questions he believed he’d virtually resolved. “The restraint bruising, to the wrists and ankles? It’s very even, isn’t it? And totally encircling, without any interruption. Normal handcuffs wouldn’t leave a band like that, would they? There’d have been gaps.”

Novikov regarded him curiously. “I suppose so,” he allowed, doubtfully. “There could have been some sideways lividity, joining up the gaps. What’s the significance?”

“In the museum photographs the wrists are completely enclosed by a U-shaped band that goes under the wrists. The encirclement is completed by the straight bar that slots in at the top to be ratcheted down tightly to grip every part of the wrist.”

“I still don’t understand the importance.”

“It would be the sort of prison equipment available at Gulag 98, wouldn’t it?”

“Yes,” Novikov agreed at once. “Of course it would.” Just as quickly he said, “I understand things were found at the grave?”

“What?” demanded Charlie, questioning instead of answering.

“I don’t know,” said the other man. “When he came to collect the woman on their way back, Lestov said Lev Fyodorovich wanted to use what laboratory facilities I have. I had to warn them I didn’t have much.” He hesitated. “I thought you might know what it is he wants to examine or test.”

“Denebin wouldn’t say,” said Charlie, moving easily on to his other query. “Have you managed to establish the weight of the bullets?”

Novikov smiled. “There’s a slight variation between them. The one that killed the Englishman was ten grams, the one I recovered from the American-which was more damage-was just over nine. Does that tell you anything?”

“It might, if there was the third bullet for comparison,” said Charlie. And he was sure there was. The uncertainty was whether Denebin would admit to finding it.

“There!” said Novikov, abruptly pointing through the gloom.

The gulag emerged like a mirage, at first a skeletal outline. It seemed a long time before they were able to distinguish buildings on the left of the approach road from the mine on the right. That was brightly lit, with two descent shaft derricks.

“Gold,” identified Novikov. “There’s three, quite close together. We won’t be able to stop. As it is, my registration will be logged. There are diamond and gold mines about thirty kilometers farther on.”

As they slowed, a straggled line of men emerged from the camp of single-story wooden shacks elevated from the ground. Some had their hands on the shoulders of the man in front. All walked head down, scuffling in jangling ankle manacles, crossing to the mine. They all wore uniforms padded against a cold that didn’t exist. All the guards were armed. One began waving Novikov’s car on urgently.

“Convicts?” queried Charlie.

Novikov nodded. “It will be the afternoon shift. The mines are worked twenty-four hours.”

Charlie was concentrating on the camp. The huts were in regimented lines, five to a line. Charlie counted thirty. There were two control towers like those he’d seen in the photographs in the museum. Charlie frowned, knowing he should be aware of something but unable to decide what. Then he said, “Wire! There’s no wire.”

“There rarely is. Look where we are: what this place is. Where isthere to run? People tried, of course. Still do. They’re never chased. It isn’t worth the effort. The locals find them frozen to death when the snow melts. That’s why run aways are called ‘snow drop.’”

The cemetery was on the far side of the camp, what appeared to be hundreds of lines of uniformed crosses. They were close enough for Charlie to see there were no names, just numbers.

“So this is what it was like?”

“No,” said Novikov. “This is civilized-humane-by comparison.”

Charlie had just finishing spraying the room with insecticide, after another meaningless conversation with the Moscow embassy, when Miriam’s knock came at his door. Charlie thought he kept any reaction from showing when she entered the room, but he wasn’t sure. His own hands and arms were swollen from bites, but the woman’s face was ballooned, hamster-cheeked and bumped and very red, despite whatever cream she’d smeared upon it. There were still isolated globules she hadn’t properly rubbed in.

“Meet the bride of Frankenstein.” Her skin was so stretched it was difficult for her to speak. “You don’t need me to tell you I’m not coming down for dinner tonight.”

“No,” accepted Charlie.

“You’ve been playing quite a game,” she accused. “The consensus is you’re a no-hoper.”

“Everyone’s entitled to an opinion.”

“It’s not mine,” she said. “Saul filled me in before I left Moscow: it’s been fascinating watching you. That’s why I haven’t interfered.”

As fascinating as it’s been watching you, reflected Charlie. “Don’t read too much into it.”

“I’ve come to warn you.”

For a reason, guessed Charlie. “What?”

“Our calls to Moscow are being monitored.”

There’s a clever girl, thought Charlie. “Who told you?”

“Ryabov, trying to get into my pants. They know you’re not getting anywhere.”

It had to be getting pretty crowded inside Miriam’s pants, thought Charlie: there wouldn’t have been room for him even if he’d beeninterested. “How about you? You got anything that gives any sort of lead?”

Miriam started to shake her head but abruptly stopped, wincing at the discomfort. “Lestov says there was something in the grave: that he’ll tell me when he finds out. And I’ll tell you, obviously. The locals haven’t got a clue. They just want to get rid of us. According to Ryabov, the Russians aren’t going to be included in tomorrow’s meeting and he thinks Polyakov is planning what he regards as a coup, but Ryabov doesn’t know what it is.”

She was wrapping up her eagerness very well, Charlie decided. For his own amusement he said, “Not sure I like being used.”

“You haven’t said what you’ve picked up,” prompted the woman.

“A lot of isolated bits, nothing making any sort of sense, any picture,” avoided Charlie. “I need to get back, start putting the picture of the man to work. There are a lot of checks that have got to be made with that. And I don’t just want to get the body and its organs back to London, for our own pathologist. There’s the uniform, too, for forensic tests.”

“I thought you had more,” said the woman, disbelievingly.

“Nothing crystallized yet.”

“We are working together on this, aren’t we, Charlie?” pressed Miriam. “I mean, Washington and London have agreed?”

“What I get, you’ll get. Trust me.”

“That’s what I’ve got to do!” agreed the girl. “Learn to trust you.”

“Perhaps things will pick up tomorrow.”

Miriam said, “I’d like to think so.”

When it did, neither of them was happy.