Dead Men Living

29

The telephone was lifted at the first ring. A man’s voice, toneless and nameless, said, “Yes?”

Charlie said, “I understand you’re interested in a Lieutenant Simon Norrington, who died a long time ago a very long way from home.”

“Who is this?”

It would be a dedicated line and number, equipped for instant trace. But there would be no one in place and Charlie had chosen a telephone on the platform of the Euston underground station and estimated it would take them as much as thirty minutes, maybe more, to get anywhere near him. And by then he would have gone, as far as they were concerned, in any of a dozen different directions. “Someone else who’s interested.”

“Are you sure you’ve got the right number?”

Trying to prolong the conversation, to get the trace. All the buttons would have been pressed, everyone mobilized, waiting for the location. Charlie felt a flicker of nostalgia. “You tell me.” Charlie was timing the call: forty-five seconds so far.

“Where did you get this number?”

“It’s been left with quite a few people, hasn’t it?”

“Who gave it to you?”

“Someone who was as interested in Lieutenant Norrington as we are.” The Burbage identity would have only been on the card given to Sir Matthew and then logged personally against the baronet, the contact pseudonym providing an instant trace to the source.

“I meant the name of the person.”

“I know you did.”

“You seem well informed about certain things.”

A full minute, Charlie noted. It would be a mistake to disclose too much tradecraft. He didn’t try to speak over the loudspeaker announcement of a southbound train terminating at the Oval, which would be automatically recorded by the specially equipped telephone and mislead them to the Northern Line. “And about Lieutenant Norrington in particular.”

“I think we need to meet.”

“So did I.” They might just alert a local police station-the transport police, even-for him to be held without explanation until they arrived. He’d allow himself another thirty seconds.

“Shall I come to you?”

“No. I’ll come to you.” They’d imagine he’d made a mistake.

“Where?”

“Somewhere open, obviously.”

“How about Waterloo station?”

“That’s convenient,” said Charlie, for them to imagine another slip.

“How shall I recognize you?”

“Tell me how to recognize you.”

There was a pause. “I’ll wear a light fawn raincoat, unbelted. And I carry a closed umbrella as well as a copy of the Evening Standard in the same hand, the left.”

The old ways were still the best, reflected Charlie, nostalgic again. “Whereabouts on the station?”

“Directly opposite platform fifteen.”

“Time?”

“One o’clock.”

“I won’t be late,” lied Charlie.

“Neither will I.”

Charlie cleaned the receiver, which was sure to be checked for fingerprints, with the handkerchief with which he’d been careful toinsert the coins before briefly returning to ground level to cross to Euston Square for the Circle Line. He made it before his feet began to protest. One o’clock gave them two and a half hours to get into position, which was a lot. A big team, then. A high-alert designation. They’d already be swamping the Nothern Line, imagining from his convenience remark that he would use it to reach Waterloo from Euston.

It was immaterial in which direction he went; the only need now to get away from Euston as quickly as possible. The first train to arrive was heading east and he got on, settling himself for the long, circuitous loop to the south. It was only the beginning, but Charlie was pleased with the way it had gone. He would, obviously, go through it entirely, although he was already sure he’d been speaking to an MI6 section controller. He hoped things were going as well at his own headquarters building on the other side of the Thames. Sir Rupert Dean had promised a team and there were only five obvious Britons from their uniforms in the Berlin photograph. Hopefully it would not be difficult to trace any who might still be alive. Charlie would still have preferred to do it himself-trusting no one but himself to do anything properly-but had deferred to the director-general’s argument that the search and the sources were routine and that this had priority. He checked his watch as the train turned south at Liverpool Street: a third of the way in twelve minutes, faster than he’d estimated. Some would already be at Waterloo by now, getting into position, gaining vantage points, borrowing uniforms, parking off-duty taxis that would never ply for hire. How many more, Charlie wondered, were doomed to a day’s travel up and down the Northern Line? And how many more than that would spend an even more frustrating day sitting on each of the intermediary stations between Edgeware and Morden, mentally promising themselves, if they ever discovered his name, the pleasure of slowly castrating with a blunt and rusty penknife the bastard who’d caused them such misery?

Even with the necessary change at the Embankment, Charlie still reached Waterloo with an hour and three-quarters to spare before the appointment he had no intention of keeping. He ambled easily along the concourse, establishing from the indicator board that trains from platform 15 served local suburban stations. Equally casually he bought himself a ticket to Windsor and on his way to the first-floorstation bar purchased a selection of that day’s newspapers. He had to drink standing at the bar for fifteen minutes before a table became vacant at the panoramic window overlooking the concourse itself, immediately checking adjoining tables with the same view for anyone as prepared as himself for a long wait. There wasn’t anyone.

Charlie worked his way through three disappointingly blended scotches, four newspapers-all of which kept the mystery Russian announcement on their front pages-and was sure he’d definitely identified a yellow-jacketed cleaner sweeping the same stretch of the concourse, a station attendant who didn’t seem to know the answer to anyone’s question and a shuffling, bottle-clutching wino as the immediate watchers by twelve forty-five, when the fawn-raincoated man with the Evening Standard and a tightly furled umbrella in his left hand actually emerged from platform 15 on an arriving train and began studiously studying the display board. Almost at once the uniformed station attendant passed close and the sweeper chose a patch by the adjoining platform 14 and Charlie thought again that standards were definitely dropping.

The waiting man’s impatience showed almost at once in constant attention to his watch and head-twisted checks to the station clock. Charlie remained where he was until one-fifteen, abandoning his newspapers when he moved. As he went across to the designated platform, he wondered if the easily spotted group had ever learned the old adage that the most successful way to follow was to be in front. He went on to platform 15 without pausing, settling himself in the rear car to see each person coming onto the platform to board the train after him. Neither the man in the fawn raincoat nor the others he’d isolated did, which he hadn’t really expected so soon. At Vauxhall he explained to the ticket collector he’d changed his mind about going to Windsor and made his way unhurriedly toward the antennae-haired edifice by the river at Vauxhall Cross to get into position himself. He had to wait two hours on an embankment bench, sympathizing afresh with those who would still be buried underground, before he saw the raincoated man coming from the direction of the station. The Waterloo sweeper was with him, but they weren’t talking. Neither looked happy. The two others he’d identified were in the first of two returning taxis.

“So our colleagues across the river are running a rival operation,”accepted Sir Rupert Dean, an hour later. “And you were right. Well done.”

“There’s certainly an operation,” agreed Charlie. “I’d like to know what its purpose is.”

“It’s another blank wall with your names,” said the director-general. “Norrington’s unit was nominally military police: all of your five were, in fact, seconded from civilian forces. Every one of them is dead ….” He paused. “And as far as we know are in their proper graves. I guess that only leaves you with your Americans: and we know that one of them is dead, too, don’t we?”

Charlie felt a sink of disappointment, which almost at once became embarrassment, at his having to concede an oversight so quickly after being congratulated. “Maybe not,” he said. “I left one out. John Parnell wasn’t on my list. He was Norrington’s commanding officer who wrote the letter of condolence. A colonel.”

It took two hours to locate a Colonel John Wesley Parnell on the retired officers’ list, with an address in Rye, in Sussex. The quivering-voiced man answered the phone himself and said if it was important of course he’d see Charlie that night. He’d enjoy the company but apologized for not being able to offer dinner. Charlie said he wouldn’t think of imposing.

As Charlie headed south across the river yet again, this time in the rented car and slowed by evening rush-hour traffic, he thought happily that when you’re on a roll you’re on a roll and it was one of the better feelings. He probably wouldn’t have time to call Natalia, but she’d know there was a working reason, would be pleased to hear tomorrow that at long last there seemed to be some movement. As he had going to and from Sir Matthew Norrington’s Hampshire estate, Charlie drove constantly checking his rearview mirror for any obviously following cars. There weren’t any. Would Henry Packer have been replaced in Moscow? Charlie’s being in London meant Natalia and Sasha were safe, he realized, relieved.

It was a small house, its only attribute, in daylight, a partial view of the distant sea from what had to be the last road from which it would have been possible, the final stop of a lonely widower to genteel poverty. Charlie guessed the grandfather clock with the sticky, heartbeat tick in the hall and a few pieces of silver and engraved glass inthe open-fronted cabinet were all there was left to sell and thought of Fyodor Belous in Moscow. Charlie guessed, too, that the rugs that covered most of the furniture were to hide the splits and escape of their stuffing. It wouldn’t have been difficult to make a prosecution for gross indecency against the anally intrusive chair upon which he was sitting, with some twisted difficulty. Charlie was taking only token sips of the supermarket sherry retired Colonel John Parnell had insisted on serving from a decanter, not because it wasn’t any good but because he didn’t like sherry. He didn’t imagine the old man was eating any dinner that night, either.

Charlie remained silent and uncomfortable while the old soldier pored over the photographs Charlie produced of the Yakutsk grave, the bodies inside it, the mortuary shots of the corpses and the group copy of the art-recovery squad he’d obtained in Berlin. There were what appeared to be a lot of wartime photographs in the stark room in which they were sitting, but Charlie hadn’t been able to locate any of the people in whom he was interested from where he was sitting.

It was a long time before Parnell finally looked up. “Incredible. Absolutely incredible.” The voice was frail, like the man himself. He was thin and bald, shrunk with age inside an enveloping cardigan heavily and badly darned at both elbows. “Such a good, fine man. Unbelievable.”

Incredible and unbelievable had been the constant interjection during Charlie’s recitation of yet another edited account of the discovery of Lieutenant Simon Norrington’s body.

“You commanded the unit?” began Charlie, gently. “Know everyone in the Berlin photographs?”

“Only commanded the Britons, although I knew George Timpson and Harry Dunne, who everyone called Hank. But I didn’t know either of the women. You say the dark-haired one at the end was found in the grave with Simon? Incredible!”

“I didn’t know the fraternization was quite that close.”

“Neither did I, to tell you the truth. Us and the Americans, certainly. Good working relationship, for our particular job, but then most of them were only token soldiers: really professional policemen and art experts like Norrington and Timpson and Dunne. Surprised I didn’t hear about the women.”

“So you’ve never seen them before? No idea of their names?”

“Afraid not.”

“When do you think that photograph might have been taken?”

“Right at the very end, obviously. We were always at the sharp end: needed to be there before people and what they stole got dispersed. Difficult enough to track stuff down as it was.”

“Can you recognize the building in the background?”

Parnell pursed his lips, squinting down at the picture. “Could be the Pergamon Museum, which contains the fantastic Greek altar: it’s the most impressive building in the entire Museumsinsel complex.”

“But isn’t that in what was East Berlin?” pressed Charlie, the mistake intentional. This really was like trying to sieve mud in search of a gold nugget.

“The actual partition hadn’t happened then, but it would certainly have been in that part of the city the Russians controlled and later occupied. Explains the two Russian women, I suppose.”

“Simon and the others would have had to be there by invitation? Have permission, certainly?”

“Without a doubt,” agreed Parnell, at once. “So it must have been very early. Almost from the first days they occupied the east of the city the Russians established patrols, checking everyone, turning people back even though officially they had no right. Always amazed me how the rest of the Allies seemed surprised by everything the Russians did afterwards. I thought from the beginning their intention was to take Berlin entirely, which they would have done if it hadn’t been for the airlift.”

“Sir Matthew let me read your letter of condolence about Simon, to his father?”

“Never enough right words to say what you properly mean,” complained the old man.

“In your letter you said Simon’s body was returned by the Russians? I don’t understand what he was doing there, if the Russians were turning non-Russians back.”

“You’ve got to understand the chaos that was there, even after the supposed surrender. It was total. Not everyone got turned back-just those that couldn’t satisfy the intercepting patrols. And Simon was unique in our section, had Russian as well as German. And enough charm to use either language to talk himself into and out of anything.I gave him the assignment to go into the eastern part, as well as all the accreditation I could think of.”

It was coming! Slowly, awkwardly, but it was coming. “When was that?”

The old man shrugged. “Difficult to be precise, to a date. First day or two of May, something like that.”

“Was there still fighting in Berlin then?”

“Not in the way I think you mean, but a lot of shooting, certainly. Mostly in the Russian sector. Hate to sound like the Nazi propaganda machine, but the Russians really were subhuman the way they took their revenge.”

“Wasn’t it dangerous for Norrington to go in?”

“He was an Allied officer with all the necessary accreditation and authorization. Officially he had the right. He was a very confident young man. And I sent all these in the picture in with him, although as I said I didn’t know anything about the Americans or the Russian women being there, too. Can’t understand that.”

“What was the assignment?”

“Because of the way the Russians were behaving, there was a huge exodus of people from what became East Berlin, everyone trying to justify their right to stay in the west. You’ve heard what an art rapist Goering was, literally looting museums by the trainload?”

Charlie nodded.

“There was intelligence, from three separate sources, that Goering had an enormous amount of art he hadn’t been able to ship to Car-inhall, his hunting estate north of Berlin, stored in the basement of the Air Ministry. I sent Simon and his group to see if it was true.”

“On May first or second?” pressed Charlie.

“As far as I can recall. It was certainly very early in the month.”

“How soon after May first or second did you hear from Simon Norrington?”

The myopic man shook his head. “I’m not sure I did, personally. There was some communication, as far as I remember, although it’s difficult to be precise after all this time. Something about his following up some information, as far as I recall. I had other search groups, in Munich and Hamburg. But all the message exchanges will be in ministry records. Ours was regarded as an important unit, which iswhy I’ll never understand why they kept us so short of staff. Records were important, though. Everything was kept, filed. I insisted on that, even though we had to keep a pretty loose command, by the very nature of the job, here, there and everywhere. I was actually off base, in Munich, for most of May. That’s when the message came from headquarters that Simon’s body had been found, terribly injured.”

“Do you remember the date?” asked Charlie.

Parnell shook his head. “It’ll all be in War Office records. You need to look them up.”

“Yes,” said Charlie, not bothering to explain the disappearance to the older man. “Do you remember how his body was returned?”

Parnell frowned at the question, offering more sherry, to which Charlie shook his head. “Of course I do. Star of my unit; only lost two during the entire war, and him when the bloody thing was officially over. The body was in a coffin. Damned awful thing, too. Changed it, of course. At once. The injuries were terrible …” The old man shuddered. “Wouldn’t have known a thing, thank God.”

“What about belongings?”

“Not as much as I would have expected. Decided at the time the bastard Russians had stolen a lot of stuff. Money, certainly. I clearly remember there wasn’t any money. Suppose we were lucky to get back what we did.”

“Uniform?”

Parnell shook his head. “There wouldn’t have been anything left, after the injuries he suffered. It was a shroud ….” The old man stopped in abrupt realization. “But it wasn’t Simon, was it?”

“No.” Charlie had decided it was easier for the man to speak as he had been doing.

“So the body I saw … with Simon’s things …. was someone else!”

“Yes.”

“Do you know who?”

“No. I don’t expect we ever will.”

“Bodies were easy to come by,” remembered the former soldier, with an unexpected hardness that surprised Charlie. “Was it simply a body? Or someone killed specially?”

The question surprised Charlie even more. “Killed specially, I would think.”

“Like Simon, in …?”

“Yakutsk,” supplied Charlie. “Yes, killed specially.” He straightened, refusing the maudlin drift. “There are some things that trouble me. Simon Norrington went into East Berlin on the first or second day of May? There’s a message you didn’t personally receive about his following up something there, and the next, at the end of the month, is that he’s been killed?”

“That’s as I remember it.”

“What about the squad that went into the east with him at the beginning of May?”

Parnell frowned. “I can’t properly remember, as I say. I wasn’t there. There was something about their coming back, but I can’t recall whether Simon was with them or not. Obviously he wasn’t.”

“Wasn’t there a need to keep in closer touch than that?”

“Apart from myself and one or two other officers, we were one of those gypsy units, chosen for a particular expertise-in this case a knowledge of art-and an investigatory ability. That’s why, officially, we came under the aegis of the Military Police and why there were so many civilian police officers seconded to us. It took me and other professional officers a long time to get used to it. In the end-certainly by the time we got to Berlin-there was an odd pride at being regarded as cowboys: it all went with the camaraderie of winning the war and of being part of a special unit.” He got to his feet, with difficulty, and went to a carefully arranged photographic display on a wall too far away for Charlie to have focused from where he sat. There was a startlingly clean square against the age-darkened wallpaper when Parnell took the photograph down to carry back to Charlie. “There we all are,” he said, proudly. “All thought we were pretty special then. Recovered a hell of a lot of stuff. Not enough, of course, but far more than we expected.”

The old man gazed nostalgically down at the photograph before handing it to Charlie. “There was a halfhearted attempt to keep in touch afterwards, but as I said, most of them were enlisted policemen, from all over the country, so it could never have really worked. It got down to exchanging Christmas cards and then gradually that stopped ….” There was another nostalgic pause. “As far as I know, Peter and I are the only two of the original team still alive.”

Parnell finally offered the print to Charlie. It was one of thosevaguely self-conscious group photographs, the officers in the foreground, the unit behind them. Parnell himself and Norrington were in the front, with two other officers flanking them. The five men whom Charlie recognized from the Berlin picture were lined behind. There were a further five whom he didn’t. Charlie said, “Which one’s Peter?”

The old man pointed to a saturnine, unsmiling man seated next to him in the picture. “Sir Peter Mason. Seconded to us from the Foreign Office because what we were doing had all sorts of political dimensions, trying to decide who owned what art, that sort of thing. Ended up a permanent secretary. We kept in touch for a while, but it drifted off, like these things do.”

“But he’s still alive?”

“He was three months ago. Saw him on television, Newsnight: something about loss of sovereignty in the European Union, like it always is.”

“What was he, in your unit?”

“Second-in-command, I suppose. Kind of self-appointed, actually, but he was a very able administrator. Incredibly hardworking.”

“Would he have been the person Norrington would have dealt with in May, when you were in Munich?”

“Possibly. Difficult to remember after all this time. I really think you’d stand more chance going back through the War Office records.”

“Of course,” avoided Charlie, again.

“What happened?” demanded the old man, abruptly. “To Simon, I mean. And the poor bugger who ended up in his grave. What was it all about?”

“That’s what we’re trying to find out.”

Parnell shook his head. “Murdered. Unbelievable.”

“You told me you knew Timpson?”

“Wonderful man. Not as personable as Simon, but they got on very well together. Timpson had the most terrible eyesight, but it didn’t seem to get in his way doing what he did. He and Simon were great friends. Always thought Simon had a great admiration for George: thought George was better at what he did than he was himself.”

“What about Dunne? Was he an art expert, too?”

Parnell shook his head. “Political adviser, like Peter. God knows why everyone thought it was so important to be politically correct: that was a phrase even then. He and Peter palled up, like Simon and George, as far as I remember. Can’t actually recall the going of them.”

Charlie said, “You’ve been very helpful.”

“Like to think it would help find whoever killed Simon,” said the former soldier. “How on earth could he and Timpson have been where they really were, in the middle of Russia?” Before Charlie could respond, Parnell said, in sudden awareness, “Whatever Simon said while I was in Munich would probably give you a clue, would it?”

“Yes,” agreed Charlie. “It probably would.”

Vadim Leonidovich Lestov was a clever man becoming cleverer with each passing day and had known from the moment of the first discovery how most quickly to break Fyodor Belous, a fervent Party zealot well aware-until now perhaps even an admirer-of how information could be extracted from an unwilling informer.

Lestov simply left the man in total, soundless isolation to feed off his own fear throughout the first night of his detention and most of the following day. Belous was also denied food or water or lavatory facilities, which made the interview distasteful because Belous had shit himself at least twice by the time he was led into the interview cell. Already laid out on the table between them were some prints, a small, single-framed icon, the oil portrait of a woman, what appeared to be a gold-framed religious triptych missing its third panel, a single gold-framed pastoral scene picked out in precious stones, two rings, both set with heavy red stones, and a ribbon-suspended medal. There were also four photographs. The first showed Raisa Belous at what was obviously an official ceremony, the medal on her chest. The second was of the woman alone, in front of the Catherine Palace. The third was of her with a blond woman featured in the first picture. And the last showed Raisa yet again with the woman and the American who had been found in the grave in Yakutsk. The American and the blond woman had their arms around each other, laughing, and Raisa appeared to be looking on approvingly.

The display was set out to face Belous when he sat down, whichhe did uncomfortably. Further to demean the man, Lestov exaggerated his disgust at the smell.

Belous said, “You can’t do this to me!” His voice was hoarse from dehydration.

“I am doing it,” Lestov pointed out, logically. “And I will go on, as long as it suits me.” He splayed his hand over what was set out on the table. “You’re obviously a thief. A burglar.”

“You know they’re my mother’s things.”

“Not if I want to jail you for ten, fifteen years I don’t. A thief, from a church or a museum.”

“They’re my mother’s!” repeated the man, whimpering.

“You recognize anyone in that first photograph, apart from her? I think I do. I think the man with the heavy mustache was most often known as Joseph Stalin. And the balding man next to him wearing glasses is Lavrenty Beria, who headed Stalin’s secret police, the NKVD. You recognize them, Fyodor Ivanovich?”

“It was when she was acknowledged as a hero of the Soviet Union.” He briefly touched the medal. “My grandparents told me.”

Lestov picked up the jeweled pictures. “Do you know where this was from?”

“The Catherine Palace. Part of the Amber Room.”

“Was there more?” persisted Lestov.

“I think there was. My grandparents sold things, to survive.”

“What have you sold?”

“Nothing!”

“Liar!”

The stinking man touched the two rings. “Just some jewelry, like this.”

“Do you know who the man is, in the picture with your mother and the other woman?”

“The American from the grave?”

Lestov nodded. “Why did you keep these things?”

“I thought I could sell them-the pictures, I mean. I wanted the American to be identified before I approached the American reporters who came to me after the Moscow News story. I was going to say I’d discovered all this: sell them the photographs and see if there was a reward for the Amber Room stuff that everyone wrote about after my mother was identified.”

Lestov decided it was too pitiful to challenge. “There would have been some papers, documents, belonging to your mother?”

“Beria tried to gain power after Stalin died. Was purged. My grandparents were frightened: destroyed everything they thought might dangerously connect them to the man.”

“So your mother was NKVD?”

“I think so. That’s what it was known as then, wasn’t it?”

“Do you know who the woman is, with the American and your mother? Did your grandparents ever tell you a name?”

“No.”

“You’re in serious trouble, Fyodor Ivanovich. If I discover you’re still lying, I shall be very angry.”

“I don’t know anything more! Please give me something to drink. Let me clean myself. This isn’t right!”

Lestov shook his head. “I’m going to let you live in your own shit so that you can think extremely hard to make sure you haven’t forgotten to tell me all that you know.”

“Please!” wailed the man.

“This is how people were treated all the time in the old days-that time you admire so much. Enjoy it while you can.”

Marina Novikov stood with the official notification in her hand, her eyes too blurred to read it again. She said, “I never imagined this day would come.”

“Neither did I,” said the doctor.

“I’m frightened.”

“So am I,” admitted Novikov.

Marina looked around the room. “My father built this house. It’s still the best in Yakutsk.”

“Then it’ll be easy to sell.”

“What will Moscow be like? Big, I expect. Difficult to understand at first.”

“But we will,” promised Novikov.

“I’m frightened,” she repeated.

“We’ve got the boys out,” said Novikov. “They won’t have to live the lives that we’ve had to.”

“No,” she accepted. “That’s what’s important. Do you think your side of the bargain with the Englishman will be enough?”

“We’ve got the official notice!” insisted the man, actually taking it from her.

“What if what you have isn’t enough and it’s canceled?” she asked.

Novikov shook his head in refusal against her doubt, but he didn’t reply.