Dead Men Living

21

The release of the Russian victim’s photograph caused a continuing series of sensations far greater than Charlie had anticipated, although it made perfect something else he had in mind. He hadn’t really expected an identification, either, which was the ultimate phenomenon.

The predictable excitement, from the existing press hysteria, was the publication itself. Despite the written and verbal insistences that all three bodies had been preserved in their ice grave, the first visual proof of just how perfect that preservation had been caused shock not just in Moscow but throughout the West. The New York Times’ caption-“as if she died just hours, not half a century, ago”-was echoed in hundreds of newspapers and on television throughout the world.

It also brought about an unremitting media clamor for photographs of the British and American lieutenants as well as for Charlie and Miriam Bell publicly to be again made available for interviews. The FBI’s inept reason for refusing-that photographic publication or a press conference could possibly interfere with ongoing inquiries-brought an even greater clamor to know what those inquiries were and within twenty-four hours newspapers in America and Europe were speculating with ironic accuracy at a cover-up.

Encouraged by the American president’s already declared insistence that the American was a hero to be given a hero’s burial, the free-reined theorizing spiraled into total fantasy, up to and including-disregarding both the history of the time and the fact that Yakutsk is three thousand miles from Moscow-that it had been a mission to assassinate Stalin to end communism, prevent the division of Europe and stop the Cold War before it began. Germany and France-and Charlie-preferred the suggestion that it had been a joint operation to rescue Princess Anastasia from imprisonment in one of the Yakutskaya gulags after escaping the Ekaterinburg slaughter of the Imperial Russianfamily in April 1918. Claimed former gulag inmates recounted stories of a beautiful woman with black hair to her waist, living in moonscaped isolation in her own crenellated, barbed-wire-enclosed dacha guarded by watch towers and an elite Cossack troop.

Brighton Beach, on New Jersey’s Atlantic coast, is a ghetto of Russian emigres, although demographically the majority are Ukrainian by birth or ancestry. They also represent the broad spectrum of Russian mafia in the United States. It was from the Beach-the waterfront avenue itself-that the first claim came from a man insisting the victim was his mother’s sister, with whom they’d lost contact after leaving her the custodian of priceless heirlooms, including a selection of icons for which he now sought reward or compensation from the Russian government. The virtually immediate FBI location of a three-page rap sheet for fraud, criminal deception and larceny didn’t prevent a day of headlines in the nearby New York newspapers.

There were three similar deception attempts in Moscow, two of which drew heavily upon the Anastasia invention, the third stretching it with the assertion that the victim was the secret daughter of Rasputin. Each demanded money, always in dollars, for their stories and family photographs, all of which were faded and blurred and none anything like the dead woman even before scientific examination.

Charlie made his own very personal contribution to the media frenzy on the third day, deciding it might be physically dangerous to delay any longer, although he hadn’t again picked up Henry Packer despite walking far more than he normally did and always going through a series of cut-out detours to get back to Lesnaya, pointless though that belated caution might be.

On the morning of that third day he got to his office early, wanting Packer still to be at the National Hotel. The series of quickly dialed and even more quickly disconnected telephone calls only took thirty minutes and Packer was actually breakfasting in the hotel dining room when the anonymously alerted Moscow-based international press corps descended, en masse.

Such was Packer’s reaction and the momentum of the Yakutsk mystery so self-perpetuating that the entire-and continuing-confrontation ran on television almost in its entirety during the course of the day and what was cut was easily filled in from the blazonednewspaper headlines and Charlie’s various conversations with Miriam and Natalia.

The dining room corner into which Packer had protectively placed himself became instead a trap from which he couldn’t escape through the solid pack of journalists and cameras, and most of the television footage actually showed him wide eyed, like an animal in a snare.

Charlie’s calls had identified Packer as an American State Department official on a secret mission to Moscow personally to explain to the Russian president the mystery of Yakutsk. Packer visibly cowered under the welter of questions, at first doing nothing but shake his head. When he did speak-in a surprisingly high-pitched New England voice-he appeared to confirm the suggestion. In his panic he babbled about speaking with Washington, too late remembering his pipeline engineer cover, which fell apart when he said he couldn’t remember the Russian company he’d come to Moscow to see. When his panic worsened, he tried to force his way through the wall of people confronting him and when they wouldn’t move lashed out, physically trying to fight his way through. At first that was panicked, but when he was shoved in return he openly tried to catch one thrusting reporter with an upward blow to the chin with the heel of his hand, which, if it had connected-which it didn’t, because of the madhouse scene-would have snapped the man’s neck. He chopped and jabbed several more times, very professionally, but again because of the jostling just one cameraman was hurt, a rib broken, because the knuckled punch again missed the fatal heart spot.

At least six reporters and cameramen went down with Packer when he fell, struggling, and he was gouging his way out of the melee when the militia arrived. At the police station, according to newspapers and later confirmed by Miriam, Packer first claimed diplomatic immunity, which immediately involved the embassy, and then claimed he was the victim of assault. Miriam told Charlie it took less than an hour for the State Department in Washington to disclaim any knowledge of the man and insist he in no way qualified for any immunity. It was midafternoon, according to Natalia, before Vadim Lestov got to Militia Post 23 to question Packer about Yakutsk. Fully recovered, the man insisted he knew nothing whatsoever about the television and newspaper stories running by then, nor why theyshould have imagined he did. Just as doggedly he maintained he’d come speculatively to Moscow as a pipeline engineer but had not yet been able to make contact with any oil exploration companies. He now demanded to leave the country immediately.

The colonel in charge of Militia Post 23 consulted with the Foreign Ministry after a junior counselor from the American embassy talked of an irritating diplomatic incident and Packer’s visa was revoked. Packer’s luggage being collected from the National Hotel by a second counselor, who also paid the man’s bill, would have been clue enough for the waiting press pack, even without the telephone calls from Militia Post 23 police on the media payroll. Packer arrived at Sheremet’yevo airport in an embassy car to another press ambush, which provided more footage of Packer fleeing across the concourse, knocking two people over as he ran.

It was when Charlie was assuring Miriam that evening he had no idea how the press had discovered Packer’s presence-reminding her she’d told him the man had returned with Kenton Peters-that he learned of Washington’s disavowal: “The goddamned embassy’s in an uproar: the ambassador didn’t know what to do.” Charlie guessed it had been a badly conceived, independent CIA operation, which was the explanation he later put to Natalia. When he put the suggestion to Sir Rupert Dean, the director-general said, “You really think so?”

“You saw the way he fought on television.”

“And he definitely had you under surveillance?”

“Definitely,” insisted Charlie. “I think it should be officially logged.”

“So do I. And it will be. And I’ll ask Washington for an explanation, through the Foreign Office. It’ll all be denials and claims of misunderstanding, of course.” There was a pause. “You think you’ve removed the danger?”

“The publicity will have frightened Peters.” I hope, thought Charlie.

“Wonder how the Moscow press got on to him?”

“No idea,” said Charlie.

The confirmed recognition of the woman in the Yakutsk grave came on the fourth day after the publication of her photograph and literallyrelegated the Henry Packer fiasco to a one-day wonder. The identification came from a man who walked into the offices of the English-language Moscow News, which with admirable journalistic initiative obtained what they believed to be everything it was conceivably possible to get from Fyodor Ivanovich Belous before contacting either their local militia station or the Interior Ministry. And in addition to what Belous had to tell, which upon analysis was quite meager, the well-documented background ensured a story that within a further twenty-four hours brought the announcement of movie intentions from a leading Hollywood studio. One of the photographs Belous produced of his mother, Raisa, even appeared to show her in the same white shirt, dark jacket and skirt she had been wearing when her body had been found.

Belous’s story was of never having known either his father or mother. His entire knowledge of them had come from his now-dead maternal grandparents, who had brought him up in Moscow, where he had lived his entire life, mostly as a clerk in the central division office of the Communist Party and latterly as a bookkeeper at the Moskva Hotel.

His father, Ivan, had died in 1943, just days before the end of the Germans’ nine-hundred-day siege of Leningrad. His mother had fled, unaware of being pregnant, one week before the siege began in September 1943. She had worked in the curators’ department at Tsarskoe Selo, the “Tsar’s Village” of five spectacular palaces established on the outskirts of St. Petersburg by its founder, Peter the Great. Raisa Belous’s particular responsibility had been the palace of Catherine the Great. It had been her job to organize the rescue convoy to Moscow of as much of the Catherine palace treasure as she could, in advance of the Nazi army and its Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg fur die Besetzten Gebiete, named after Alfred Rosenberg, who in 1940 had been personally appointed by Hitler to confiscate, loot or steal every work of art from Nazi-occupied territory for the world’s most complete museum Hitler planned for his Linz birthplace.

It was a matter of historical record that the Catherine Palace had housed one of the world’s greatest but now lost art treasures, the Amber Room presented to Peter the Great in 1711 by the Prussian warrior-king, Friedrich Wilhelm. And that Hitler had personally orderedthat the twenty-one honey-yellow amber panels, four gold-framed with jeweled landscapes picked out in Florentine mosaic, the others carved in flower and fruit motif, should be restored to their original splendor in East Prussia’s Konigsberg Castle in what he intended to be his personal study.

According to Belous’s grandparents, his mother’s greatest regret had been her failure to strip the three-hundred-year-old amber from the Catherine Palace walls to prevent it from falling into the hands of the Nazi E.R.R. looters. As it was, for what she had saved, Raisa Belous was made a Hero of the Soviet Union by Stalin. It was to let as many people know-not just in Moscow but in the West-that his mother had been such a heroine that he had approached an English-language publication.

As well as the photograph of his mother dressed in what she had been found in the Yakutsk grave, Belous produced four others, one of her standing in the middle of the Amber Room showing it in the dazzling glory that earned it a nineteenth century British ambassador’s description as the eighth wonder of the world. There was also the official notification of his mother’s death, which he now didn’t understand and wanted explained.

It was recorded as having occurred in Berlin in early April 1945. Raisa Belous had died, according to the notice, in an antipersonnel mine explosion.

“Which will have caused severe facial injuries,” predicted Charlie, during one of the twice-daily telephone conversations he maintained with London.

“I think you should come out of Moscow: pick up things here,” said Sir Rupert Dean.

“I want to speak to Belous myself,” avoided Charlie. “And there’s Gulag 98.”

The inmate register of which, building up the impression of a momentum, landed on Natalia’s desk the following day.

It was one of a batch of ten, all former camps in the immediate vicinity of Yakutsk itself, and was one of the few to have been divided between male and female prisoners. The batch brought to fifty-three the number through which Petr Pavlovich Travin was supervising the search-already extended since the emergence of Fyodor Belous-for anyone whose history hinted German, English or American connections or art or antique links.

The Gulag 98 records were among the largest and certainly the most complete so far delivered, the main dossier running to three hundred pages, annexed to which were the personal files of what, from the dates, appeared to be the last inmates sentenced before the camp’s 1953 destruction. Only the names remained, in faded sepia-brown ink, of the original thirty artists, writers and teachers who with little more than their frostbitten hands had built the original camp in 1932. Five were registered as having died during the construction. Against the names of all-and the majority who had followed in the subsequent nineteen and a half years-were listed unspecified crimes against the state. Fifteen years appeared to be the minimum sentence, thirty the maximum. Hard labor, within the dozens of mines, was mandatory. Without exception, permanent exile followed every jail sentence.

Charlie and Natalia had exhaustively researched the discovery. The year of the coins found on Norrington and the April 1945 dates for the Berlin burial provided a year-long time frame for Natalia to work within. From that period she gleaned the names of fifty-five men and thirty-seven women whose records-spanning a range of art, art history and academic professorship-suggested people or occupations that might have been sufficient to lure the three murder victims to Yakutsk. Among the men were fifteen whose names and details identified them as German. There were no personal records for any of those fifteen, nor any reason for their imprisonment. Each was simply described as being of “special category.” Twelve were marked as having died before the closure of the camp. The location to which the other three had been transferred was not given.

Following the step-by-step preparation she had gone through with Charlie, Natalia delayed sending the Gulag 98 dossier to the man who was still her official deputy, needing to copy what she considered relevant sections. With the rest she sent a note, duplicated to everyone involved, reminding him the concentration upon anyone with fine art or antique expertise was now even more important in view of Raisa Belous’s history. Because it was also a connected part of the necessary further undermining of Viktor Romanovich Viskov and Petr Pavlovich Travin, she ambiguously worded her agreement toLestov sharing with the British and American investigators that afternoon’s interview with Fyodor Belous as if it were the homicide colonel’s idea rather than hers, curious if Charlie would again be proved right.

He was.

To Viskov’s anticipated, within-the-hour objection, copied to the same circulation list to which she had also sent hers, was attached the minutes of their very first coordinating meeting, at which Dmitri Nikulin had specifically forbidden such cooperation. Viskov’s memo demanded an explanation for her disregarding the instruction of the presidential aide.

Natalia’s rebuttal was even quicker than Viskov’s to her: she’d had it already prepared, complete with her marked version of the same initial meeting. Dmitri Borisovich Nikulin had also specifically ordered that everything should be done to discover the undisclosed progress of the two Western investigators, which they might be able to estimate by carefully monitoring a shared interview with someone whose story was already public knowledge. Unable to prevent the bubble of uncertainty, Natalia wrote that she regarded the intervention of the deputy interior minister even more counterproductive than his brief cancellation of the gulag search. As the authority of Dmitri Borisovich had been invoked in both their exchanges, she was, of course, prepared to defer to his judgment, but unless she heard from the president’s chief of staff she intended the shared encounter with Belous to go ahead as planned.

No intervention came from Nikulin.

Charlie’s invitation to the Interior Ministry, personally telephoned by Lestov, was the prearranged signal that Natalia had won another battle. It would not be difficult for him seemingly to let something slip, apparently to show Lestov to be making all the right moves. Charlie wondered if out of it all he’d be able to extract a little in return. He expected to, because he hadn’t wasted the intervening, personally unproductive days. He’d read quite a lot about specific war history.

Charlie Muffin was a diligent reader of body language, too, and believed there was initially a lot to be learned in the first few near-wordless moments of the encounter with Vadim Lestov. Charlie’simmediate impression was of the Russian colonel himself. Charlie knew from Natalia there had been further recognition from Dmitri Nikulin for Lestov achieving an identification by releasing Raisa Belous’s photograph. The change in Lestov was practically visible, as if he had grown in stature, filling out, becoming taller. There was nothing left of the earlier, close-to-overwhelmed reserve in the official surroundings of the ministry. Instead there was a smiled greeting, without any stammer, and tea-although no vodka-and the easy acceptance of Charlie’s congratulation at the quick discovery of Raisa Belous, without any acknowledgment that the picture-release idea had been Charlie’s. The Russian even wore a newer suit that didn’t shine with wear at the elbows.

Fyodor Ivanovich Belous’s did. The striped jacket had once been part of a long-ago-divided suit and the gray trousers were bagged and shapeless. But here again there was no awkwardness and, remembering the Moscow News details of the man’s Communist Party past, Charlie guessed the confidence lingered from Belous once having been part-albeit a very small cog-of the ruling machine. The handshake was firm, the eye contact direct through rimless spectacles. When Lestov complained, mildly, at Belous telling his story first to a media outlet, Belous at once said he’d explained his reason for doing that in the article and Charlie further guessed the man’s imperiousness would have exceeded his position in a mourned regime Belous would clearly have welcomed back. Charlie also suspected Belous’s going to a newspaper had as much to do with a personal protest against the supposed and resented new order as it did with establishing his unknown mother’s reputation.

There was a stenographer at a side table and Lestov carefully took the man through what, at the first telling, was virtually a repetition of his newspaper account. Belous also produced the originals of his now-much-copied souvenir photographs, along with Raisa Belous’s award citation.

“That’s all I can tell you,” concluded the man.

“Let’s see,” said Lestov.

The homicide colonel’s questioning was thorough although unimaginative and Charlie decided the man would make an excellent support deputy for Natalia; the lateral thinking might come with timeand encouragement. Belous was discomfited conceding that his mother’s personal belongings had been disposed of after her death-refusing to use the word sold when Lestov talked of jewelry and the hero medal itself-and insisted he didn’t know what his grandparents might have done with any letters or documents apart from the medal certificate. Certainly nothing had survived. Belous couldn’t remember any discussion, ever, about his maternal grandparents and had always assumed they’d died before he was born.

“Where did your father’s parents tell you she was buried?” demanded Lestov.

“They didn’t. I mean, they didn’t know. They said there’d just been a notification that she’d been killed.”

“Where?” persisted the Russian detective.

“I don’t know that, either. They never said.”

Charlie deferred to Miriam when Lestov invited them to join the questioning, as always wanting the benefit of everyone else’s input before making his own. And was disappointed, even wondering if Miriam was using the same ploy to hold back for his contribution before making hers.

Charlie took his time, actually repeating some of Lestov’s questions hopefully to lessen the slightest edge of resistance he detected in Belous’s response to the American.

“Your grandparents were extremely proud of your mother?” he asked, edging toward his own agenda.

“Rightfully so,” said Belous. He had wispy, receding hair and the pallor of a permanent indoor worker.

“Indeed,” agreed Charlie, wondering at the defensiveness. “But they were your father’s parents?”

Belous frowned. So did Lestov. Questioningly Belous said, “Yes?”

“Weren’t they proud of a son who died in one of the most heroic episodes of the Great Patriotic War?”

“Of course they were!” replied Belous, indignantly.

“None of your photographs show him with your mother.”

“The newspaper appeal was for information about her, not him.”

“So you do have photographs of them together?”

“Not now.”

“What happened to them?”

“I don’t know. My grandparents showed me some, when they were telling me about my parents. I don’t know what happened to them after my grandparents died.”

“What were they photographs of?” demanded Miriam.

“Their wedding.”

“When was that?”

“June 1941.”

“How many were there?” Charlie bustled in. He didn’t believe parents would dispose of photographs of their son but keep those of their daughter-in-law.

“Four, I think.”

“Doing what?”

The man shrugged. “They were wearing the same clothes in each, so I guess they were all taken at the same time. There was one I remember showing them relaxing; nothing in the background. It was dated June 1940. The other two showed the Catherine Palace behind them, so it had to be Tsarskoe Selo, where they worked.”

“They worked?” seized Charlie. “You hadn’t told us that. What did your father do?”

Belous flushed. “He was the senior restorer at the palace. That’s how they met, when my mother joined the curator’s staff.” The man shifted uncomfortably.

Charlie’s feet gave a psychosomatic twinge, a usual body and mind indicator that he was going in the right direction, even if he didn’t know what the destination might be. Lestov and Miriam sat unmoving, waiting, as if they expected to learn something, too. Cautiously Charlie said, “I think we might have gone too quickly over what you told the Moscow News. And us, earlier. I’d like to make sure I’ve got everything right. Your mother and father worked together at Tsarskoe Selo until the German invasion in 1941. Your mother escaped, rescuing a substantial amount of the Catherine Palace treasures, and your father stayed behind and died just before the siege lifted, in 1943 …?”

“No,” said Belous, shifting again. “The paper got that wrong; made it a better story, I suppose. My father was drafted into the army long before the invasion. He left St. Petersburg-or Leningrad, as it then was-almost immediately after he and my mother married.According to my grandparents, they got married because he was being moved.”

“So where did your father die?” came in Miriam, again.

“They were never quite sure. My mother never showed them the official notice. They thought it was somewhere near the Polish border, Lvov in the Ukraine or on the other side, near Lublin.”

“You told us your grandparents virtually brought you up by themselves, after your mother came to Moscow?” probed Charlie, hoping Miriam wouldn’t interrupt again too quickly.

“I believe so. I can’t remember my mother.”

“Not ever having been with you?”

“No.”

“What age would you have been when they told you about her and your father?”

“I’m not sure. Seven, eight, nine-something around that age.”

“Is that when you saw the photographs of your mother and father together?”

“That would have been the first time, I suppose, yes.”

Charlie was intrigued at the man’s apparent selective memory. This was turning out to be a far different encounter than he’d imagined. “They were proud of her? Talked about her a lot?”

“Yes.” Belous relaxed slightly.

“When they told you about her for the first time, did they tell you she was away a lot?” Charlie was aware of the other man relaxing further. So what had made him tense?

“She had an important job, they said.”

“Doing what?” demanded Lestov.

“They never told me.”

“You don’t have any photographs of your mother in any sort of uniform?” Belous was lying, Charlie knew. To have told her bereaved son what his mother had done would have been the first thing proud grandparents would have done.

“No.”

“What about your father? Any photographs of him in his army uniform?”

Belous hesitated. “It looked like a uniform in the pictures in Tsarskoe Selo. I’m not sure.”

He was, Charlie decided. “Weren’t you ever told what army group or unit he was in?”

Belous shrugged. “He was killed at a battlefront. He must have been a soldier, mustn’t he?”

No, thought Charlie, who from his previous days’ study and the emerging attitude of Fyodor Belous believed he had a good idea of the wartime employment of both the man’s parents. The outside bits of the jigsaw were beginning to fit, but the center of the picture remained blank. He was curious if Miriam and Lestov thought the same. “You were seventeen when your grandparents died, within a month of each other?” said Charlie, picking up on what had been established in Lestov’s earlier questioning.

“Yes,” said the man.

“And you lived all that time in an apartment at Ulitza Kirova?”

“Yes.”

“They’re impressive apartments. Big,” said Charlie, who’d specifically gone there on his way to the ministry. “Your grandfather must have been an influential man: a Party worker like yourself, perhaps?”

Belous stared back warily, unspeaking for several moments. “It was allocated to my mother as a reward for what she did in Leningrad. They were allowed to keep it, after she died and was honored. Why is this important?”

“We’re trying to discover how and why your mother was murdered,” reminded Charlie. “Everything’s important. Tell us about things you remember in the apartment. Were there pictures, prints, on the walls. Ornaments around the place?”

“I don’t understand that question!” protested the man.

“Your mother worked in the palace of Catherine the Great: enjoyed things of rare beauty,” said Charlie, whose reading had extended to studying the illustrated masterpiece catalogue. “I would have expected her to try to decorate such a special apartment with things of special beauty.”

“You are suggesting my mother stole things!”

“Not at all,” lied Charlie. “Anything from the Catherine Palace would have been too well known, too well documented, for anyone to have kept them in Russia. Your mother would not have beenhonored as she was if there had been the slightest doubt about her honesty.”

Belous regarded him doubtfully. “There were some pictures, I suppose. A few ornaments. Nothing I remember particularly.”

Back to the selective memory, Charlie recognized. “Do you still have any of them?”

“No,” said the man, too quickly.

“They were sold?” demanded Charlie, directly.

“I don’t know.”

“If they weren’t sold, you’d still have them, wouldn’t you?”

“I don’t remember. They just weren’t there, after my grandfather died.”

“Not even the medal, about which they were particularly proud?”

“No.”

Charlie leaned forward, picking up the citation, caught by a sudden thought, hoping but not expecting to find what he did. “Your mother got to Moscow with everything she saved from the palace in late 1941?”

“Yes,” said the son, swallowing.

“And was made a hero of the Soviet Union for doing it.”

“That’s what the citation says.”

“No, it doesn’t,” corrected Charlie. “It’s for ‘Special Services to the Soviet Union.’ And is dated December 1944. That would have been almost four years after she saved what she did from the palace, wouldn’t it?”

“If those are the dates,” conceded the man. “Things take a long time to get done in a bureaucracy. Particularly in wartime.”

There would have been treasures, Charlie knew. Maybe from the Catherine Palace or from what-and where-Raisa did for the remainder of the war, after 1941: maybe even small works of other people’s and other countries’ art. How much and how many would have been hoarded by Raisa Belous and gradually disposed of by this man over the years, for a few rubles-kopeks, maybe? Even a prized medal, which Charlie now doubted she’d gotten for what she’d done at Leningrad but for a far greater contribution afterward.

Belous was looking fixedly at him, apprehensively. The man hadn’t gone to an English-language newspaper to honor his mother.He would have demanded to be paid. Probably had been. And by some of the foreign correspondents he’d spoken to, as well. There wasn’t anything to be gained, challenging the man. Charlie recognized he’d gotten all he wanted. It had, in fact, been a far more productive afternoon than he’d expected. He hoped Lestov had, as well. It was as much for the Russian’s benefit-and ultimately Natalia’s — as it was for him. His curiosity about Miriam could wait. Charlie said, “Thank you. It’s been very helpful.”

Belous blinked, surprised. “You think you can find who killed my mother from what I’ve told you?”

Belous would have been prompted by the Moscow News. Charlie guessed; maybe by some of the Western correspondents, too. “Not by itself. But it’s added a lot to what we already know.”

“What was she doing at Yakutsk, with the officers?”

“That’s one of the things we don’t yet know,” said Charlie. But I’m getting closer by the day, he thought.

Natalia was for once already at Lesnaya when Charlie got home. Sasha was bathed and settled in bed and his Islay and glass were set out in readiness.

Natalia said, “We’ve got Gulag 98. As well as a lot of other obvious possibilities.”

Charlie sipped his whiskey, knowing she hadn’t finished, enjoying her excitement.

“Guess who was sent there, as well as the fifteen Germans?” she demanded.

“Who?” asked Charlie, dutifully.

“Larisa Yaklovich Krotkov. Who was on the curators’ staff at Tsarskoe Selo. The complete staff list still exists. I ran a comparison with the names at Gulag 98. And there she was!”

Charlie stopped drinking. “What was she jailed for?”

“Assisting the enemy.”

“Any details?” Coincidence, or another piece of the jigsaw?

“Not so far.”

“We can use it,” insisted Charlie. “You can use it.”

“How?”

“You’ve sent the Gulag 98 file on to Travin?”

She nodded. “In this afternoon’s consignment. But how can Lestovbe shown to discover it when he’s not examining the camp material?”

Until this moment it had been a problem Charlie hadn’t known how to overcome, but now he did. “Did Lestov pick up on the interview with Fyodor Belous?”

“You made it clear enough. He’s having Belous’s place raided tonight, to see if there’s anything the man hasn’t already sold. And Raisa was Trophy Brigade. So was her husband, from the very beginning.”

“One thing at a time,” said Charlie. “Have Lestov do what you’ve already done, run a check on all the curator staff at Tsarskoe Selo, which he could logically do after today’s interview. It’ll throw up Larisa Krotkov’s imprisonment. And where she served it.”

“Yes,” agreed Natalia, distantly. “That’ll do it, won’t it?”

“It’s them or you,” urged Charlie, knowing her difficulty. “Them or us.”

“I know.”

“Arrange a personal meeting with Nikulin, include Lestov, for him to get the credit,” advised Charlie. “But you make the direct accusation, against Viskov and Travin.”

“I know that, too,” said Natalia. “And I’m as frightened as hell.”

There wasn’t the hiss-voiced fury of Kenton Peters’s first telephone calls, a loss of control Boyce had never before known. Now the anger was in the frustrated determination to find out how Henry Packer had been exposed.

“Only you and I knew he was still in Moscow. And neither of us made the calls,” said Boyce. It was Cartright who’d discovered the anonymous contacts. “And there wasn’t any way Charlie Muffin could avoid recognizing him, after the amount of television coverage.”

“Still damned impudent of Dean to put what he did in the exchanges.”

“It would have been wrong for me to intervene.”

“I quite understand,” said Peters. “I don’t know or understand how, but the information must have come from a Russian source.”

“From which it follows that Moscow has more than we suspected or guessed about Raisa Belous and Yakutsk,” suggested Boyce.

“I’ll not give up,” insisted Peters. “I’ll go on until I do find out.”

“We both will. But shouldn’t we move on a little?”

“I don’t like Norrington being identified,” said Kenton Peters, taking the suggestion.

“I’m not letting it be made public,” assured Boyce.

“I’m surprised the Russians allowed the photograph to be published, to let Raisa Belous be identified,” continued Peters. “I’ve always said they’re the uncertainty, didn’t I? This and Packer confirm it.”

“You didn’t know your president was going to make his hero announcement until it was too late,” gently reminded Boyce.

“What the president did will never occur again,” said Peters. “He knows just how annoyed I am about that. I’ve told him enough to understand what the effect could be. He’s terrified.”

“I was merely pointing out that oversights can happen. And we can hardly remind Moscow, can we? We’re not supposed to know.”

Unable to move his mind for long from what came close to being the first embarrassment of his career, Kenton Peters said, “The Agency lost a good man in Packer. He’s useless now that he’s been so publicly identified.”

Boyce said, “We’ll have to put on hold any move against Muffin for the time being. Nothing too close.”

“I’ve asked for someone else to be selected,” disclosed Peters. “Muffin’s an uncertainty and you know I don’t like uncertainties.”