Dead Men Living

22

Again it was the absence of anything positive or worthwhile that confirmed for Charlie a suspicion he didn’t need proved any further. It wasn’t even the fault-or obstruction-of the other three with whom he’d yet again gathered in the military attache’s office. They were as much puppets as he was intended-chosen-to be. The difference was they didn’t know how their strings were being pulled. Charlie did and was thoroughly pissed off at the realization. Withhis feet, dancing was a dirty word anyway; it was equally forbidden when he was the puppet.

“My people can’t trace anything on a Lieutenant Simon Norrington, either by name or by the army serial number his family gave,” apologized Gallaway. “Nor any cross-reference to a Raisa Belous. Whatever existed must have been destroyed.”

“What about an art squad?” persisted Charlie, as a test, already knowing that one existed.

“I only filed that request yesterday,” said the attache. “I’m still waiting.”

“So am I,” said Cartright. “So far I haven’t even had an acknowledgment. As far as I know, SIS didn’t have an interest.”

From that morning’s conversation with London, Charlie knew Sir Rupert Dean was also still waiting for a reply to his inquiry, made even earlier. The director-general hadn’t argued with Charlie’s open accusation that they were being played with by every other interested government ministry and department. Instead he’d told Charlie he wanted him back in London by the end of the week.

“It’s put a lot of extra pressure on me,” complained Raymond McDowell. “The biggest continuing diplomatic dispute between Germany and Russia is stolen or disputed wartime art, even after all these years. I’ve averaged four cables a day from London since Raisa Belous was identified. So’s the ambassador.”

“I thought everyone was supposed to be fighting a war after 1939,” said Gallaway.

The limited military attache probably did, accepted Charlie. He decided to excuse himself as soon as possible from this aimless discussion. He wanted to be at the end of a telephone if Natalia called. There was even more to talk about after Dean’s week’s-end ultimatum.

McDowell said, “The Nazi treasure looting was more efficiently organized than the Final Solution. There was even a connection, of sorts. Hitler considered the people of Eastern Europe subhuman. He didn’t intend just to eradicate the Jewish race. Eastern Europeans were to go, too; become a vast slave resource while the Germans expanded eastwards to take over their countries. Anything of any cultural, artistic or historical significance was seized by Alfred Rosenberg’s E.R.R. organization: entire museums, libraries. And notjust by them. Goering, whose favorite was nudes, had Hitler’s permission to take whatever he wanted from occupied countries for an art gallery that was to be as big as Hitler’s, in Linz. Hitler had the plan and model of it with him when he committed suicide in the Berlin bunker; the speciality was to have been heroic Aryan portraits and sculptures. Himmler, Bormann, and von Ribbentrop each had their art squads; von Ribbentrop took every Renaissance painting he could lay his hands on in Italy. He had his own art-scavenging battalion, with three companies from it working exclusively for him in Russia alone ….”

Charlie began to concentrate, looking at the lecturing head of chancellery with sudden interest. It obviously all came from London and the detail was surprising. Maybe even more surprising was that the Foreign Office clearly considered it necessary to provide such an intense briefing. Calling upon his own specific, self-imposed modern history lesson, hopefully to encourage the diplomat further, Charlie said, “And the Soviet Union had the sort of Trophy Brigades that Ivan and Raisa Belous belonged to, with every front line regiment. The Soviet Trophy Brigades virtually trawled the countries-Germany particularly-when the war turned against Hitler. The almost obscene irony is that the Nazis made it easy for them: they’d stolen and got a lot of it conveniently together, for the Russians simply to pick up. Germany has officially listed something like three hundred thousand heritage treasures Russia refuses to give back. Moscow claims they’re war reparation.”

Gallaway snorted a laugh. “How can anyone argue the legality of that?”

“London did. And Washington,” deflated McDowell. “America’s OSS formed a special Art Loss Looting Investigation Unit. President Truman personally signed the order to ship two hundred European paintings to America, to go on touring exhibition. The intention was to hold on to them until Germany made its financial reparation. The paintings were only returned after American and European academics and art historians pointed out that America could be accused of the same cultural rape as the Nazis …”

Not all take and no give, thought Charlie; not a wasted morning, either! He hadn’t known of the existence of an American unit. But the FBI would. From which it logically followed that Miriam Bellwould, too. It had been almost forty-eight hours since Raisa Belous had been named and her art connection established. Time enough to have had the photograph Miriam had recovered from the body-and more recent ones of the corpse itself-checked through OSS archives. It might, even, account for the woman’s seemingly casual questioning of Fyodor Belous the previous afternoon and why, for the first time, she hadn’t wanted to talk things through after leaving the Russian ministry. If she already knew who her victim was-what he had been doing, even-all she would have needed to do was sit and listen during the meeting with Belous to ensure nothing emerged to endanger Washington’s cover-up. In fact, thought Charlie, warming to his speculation, it all made perfect sense of that intended cover-up and what he’d guessed to be the runaround to which he was being subjected. Still encouraging, he said to McDowell, “You’re remarkably well informed.”

“So are you,” challenged the man.

“Homework, here, after the Moscow News account,” said Charlie, more or less honestly. “I didn’t learn all you appear to have.”

“I asked for as much guidance as possible,” admitted McDowell.

“The Foreign Office suddenly seems to have a lot of information available,” suggested Charlie.

McDowell made an uncertain gesture. “It’s a sensitive area, particularly after all that business with Switzerland and Holocaust gold and bank accounts of Jewish concentration camp victims.”

“That’s spreading the net a bit wide, isn’t it?” questioned Cartright. “I can hardly imagine there was art treasure or looted Nazi gold in the prison colonies of Yakutsk!”

Charlie suddenly realized from the previous night’s conversation with Natalia what could have been there and was irritated for not thinking of it sooner. Natalia had even shown the way! Maybe, at last, there were a few pieces becoming clearer for the center of the jigsaw. There was actually an immediate direction-and reason-for his taking up the investigation away from Moscow as soon as possible, although not immediately to London. He’d already considered Berlin the place to go: where, hopefully, something no matter how small might have been overlooked.

He said, “It occurred to any of you we’re being jerked around in one bloody great cover-up?”

“Ours is not to reason why,” irritatingly cliched Gallaway. “We’ve got to obey orders.”

Charlie said, “I’d like to think that if I got shot in the back of the head, somebody, somewhere, someday, would try to find out why. Orders or no orders.”

Just the sort of cocky bloody-mindedness Gerald Williams had warned him to look out for, Cartright recognized. And by which his career could be badly affected-ruined-involved as he now was in this damned affair. And then there was that currency speculation business that the gorgeous and willing Irena had told him about. Definitely things he needed to talk about with Williams. Maybe even with his own department, too. Gallaway was right. If there was a cover-up there was a good reason, and it wasn’t their business here-certainly not Charlie Muffin’s-to question it.

The only sound in the White House suite of Dmitri Borisovich Nikulin was the faintest rustle as the president’s chief of staff turned the pages of what Natalia had placed before him thirty minutes earlier. Now she sat unmoving, outwardly in complete control, inwardly in turmoil. She knew-had known for months-that this moment was inevitable. But it had seemed so much easier-foolproof-talking it through with Charlie at Lesnaya than it did now, making the accusation to one of the most influential members of the Russian government about a deputy minister in that same government. The fact that the accusation was true-only this last, hopefully decisive device connived-wasn’t a reassurance. Nikulin had only moved Travin sideways. What if the presidential aide was a friend of Viktor Romanovich Viskov? Or Viskov had a protector even more influential and powerful than Nikulin?

Beside her, Colonel Vadim Lestov sat similarly statued, no longer awed or ill-at-ease in such baroque surroundings, although Natalia had no doubt he was as inwardly agitated by the sudden awareness of what she had directly involved him in.

Lestov had easily and professionally followed Natalia’s lead, not needing anything more than the initial prompt to make the same intriguing discovery about the Yakutsk jailing of a former Catherine Palace curator employee. But only Natalia’s insistence that there wereother, previous circumstances of which he was unaware stopped the man from positively arguing her determined conclusion. It had been an impromptu gesture to show Lestov her memorandum recommending his official appointment as her deputy. She hoped ambition-and of being in Nikulin’s presence, only a few meters from the president himself-would prevent the man from voicing any further doubt.

The chief of staff looked up at last, pushing the folder slightly away from him.

“You’ve no doubt it has been deliberately withheld?” demanded the harsh-featured, emotionless man.

“None whatsoever,” said Natalia, pleased with the strength of her own voice.

“There is no proof.”

“Of course not,” she accepted, at once. “I’m asking you to judge it with what you know to have happened since this began. It’s been a campaign of positive, personal obstruction. A permanent vendetta against me. The inquiry itself-the need to protect this government, which was your specific instruction-has been totally and consistently disregarded.” Natalia gestured sideways. “Everything positive we have suggested has been opposed, to erode my authority; the camp search, which from Colonel Lestov’s discovery is proved to have been essential, needed your order to be reintroduced, after its arbitrary cancellation ….” She hesitated, at a prepared accusation. “I actually wonder to which government or country the deputy minister and Petr Pavlovich, who still holds the title of my deputy, are giving their true allegiance.”

“That’s an astonishing allegation!” protested Nikulin, genuinely shocked.

“And one I do not make lightly,” said Natalia. She felt numb, striving to keep control. “I do not believe it’s possible to continue this investigation-to achieve everything it’s necessary to achieve-under these conditions. Which is why I am making this a formal, official complaint.”

Nikulin stared down at the closed folder on his desk for several moments before coming up to Lestov. “Do you feel yourself to have been positively obstructed?”

Natalia felt a fresh jump of apprehension.

“I do not know all the circumstances that have been referred to …” the homicide detective began to hedge.

“Have you had any contact from Petr Pavlovich about Gulag 98?” broke in Natalia.

“No,” said Lestov.

The presidential aide said, “What contact has there been between yourself and Petr Pavlovich?”

“We speak daily,” confirmed Lestov.

“Who calls whom?” seized Natalia, knowing the answer.

“I call him.”

“He has never initiated an approach?” queried Nikulin.

“Not since the rearrangement of responsibility.”

Without explanation Nikulin picked up the telephone, dialing the number himself. It wasn’t until he began to speak that Natalia realized he’d called the deputy interior minister. Natalia’s emotions switchbacked. Momentarily her mind blanked, refusing any thought. Then she heard how Nikulin was speaking and gauged that he was favoring her against the man. Nikulin said nothing about her or her accusation, instead asking about the progress of the investigation and particularly the assembly and search of camp records. And from Nikulin’s next question accepted that, in his determination still to denigrate the idea, Viktor Viskov must have continued to belittle its purpose.

“It’s being carried out, though?” Nikulin was saying. Viskov must have assured him that it was because the chief of staff next said, “Completely up to date? That’s good.”

Nikulin redialed immediately. The conversation with Petr Pavlovich Travin was virtually a repetition of that with the deputy minister, except for Nikulin demanding a second time to be assured that there was no backlog in the prison file examination.

Nikulin replaced the telephone for the second time and Natalia waited, hopefully. With creaking formality the man said, “I’m sure you’re very busy, as I am. Thank you for bringing the matter to my attention.”

Natalia’s numbness wasn’t as bad, but it was still there.

Gerald Williams had always been sure he’d win. It had been his strategy that had been wrong. Which he’d recognized and adjusted. He’d never imagined that in front of embassy witnesses the arrogant bastard would openly infer his intention to question or disobey a definite instruction. Or, better still, boast of currency speculation, a virtual admission of the blatant robbery he was so determined to expose. He’d found the Achilles’ heel in Charlie Muffin’s ridiculous shoes, the weakness with which, finally, he’d bring the man down.

The ideal, mused Williams-the absolute, orgasmic ultimate-would be for the man to be arrested in the act by the Russian authorities.

Williams sat transfixed at his office desk at which he had just concluded his telephone conversation with Richard Cartright, consumed by the idea.

It was a very different and exciting strategy indeed. And such a perfect one. So excited was he by it that on his way home he abandoned his usual train to stop at a Westminster wine bar to buy himself a small glass of sparkling wine, savoring it as if it had been an 1890 Roederer Cristal.

By coincidence there were two other real champagne celebrations that night, both separate and both in Moscow.

“I had lunch with him,” said Boyce.

“And?”

“He complained about the wine, which was Lafite. God, he’s insufferable!”

“I wasn’t asking about the wine.”

“He said we were worrying too much.”

Peters sighed. “You know what I’d like to do?”

“Yes,” said Boyce. “And I’d like to help you do it.”

“Maybe we should and stop thinking of Muffin,” reflected Peters.