Dead Men Living

31

“A total waste of time, in fact?” judged Gerald Williams, wearily predictable, the moment Charlie stopped talking.

“No,” denied Charlie. “There was no way of our knowing, until I’d spoken to all three, what there might have been. Which made it essential that I come back to do it.” Charlie, who’d never had to hold up a wetted finger to gauge which way the wind was blowing, discerned a changed attitude in everyone in the conference room. During the last confrontation, only days ago, Sir Rupert Dean himself had intervened to remind the constant attacker that he’d ordered the withdrawal.

“And having spoken to them, you learned nothing!”

“No.” Charlie was forced to admit.

“So there hasn’t been the slightest step forward?” persisted the committed finance director.

Because Williams’s attitude was so predictable, Charlie had withheld Sir Peter Mason’s alternative theory about a second officer, to which the fat man’s reaction was for the first time slower.

It was the director-general who said, “That would certainly be a total rejection of any Russian claim. Put us in the driving seat, perhaps?”

“More than that,” encouraged Charlie, who’d prepared his second presentation during the drive back to London more interested in the maximum benefit than in its absolute accuracy. “As I’ve already told you, I believe the accusation of a second British officer is what’s being threatened by the Russians. If we, in advance-today, even-made the demand for a Russian explanation, we’d completely preempt them.” He’d only spent a few minutes-five at the most-with Sir Rupert Dean before coming into the conference room, but it had been enough to detect the man’s misgivings at previously allowing so much to be withheld from the people now ranged around the table against him. It was therefore the director-general-upon whom above all others his future in Moscow depended-that Charlie was the most anxious to convince or reassure. Or both.

“Unless they know more about another officer than we do,” countered Patrick Pacey. “In which case we’d be admitting a spying mission in advance of being accused of it.” The political officer shook his head. “It’s too risky a strategy and there’s a lot of other people who’d agree with me, I’m sure.”

“Which brings us back, as we are always brought back, to how little has been achieved during this entire mishandled investigation,” Williams said.

“The opinion is not mine,” conceded Charlie, unhappy at what sounded like an excuse. “It was suggested, most strongly, by Sir Peter Mason. Who was the permanent secretary to the Foreign Office.”

“A long time ago,” deflated Pacey. “The Cold War eyeball-to-eyeball confrontations are things of the past.”

“Perhaps unfortunately, as far as our future is concerned,” remarked Jeremy Simpson. “I accept all the political arguments, butspeaking as a lawyer there’s a lot in the cliche of attack being the best form of defense.”

Charlie at once saw the opportunity further to allay the director-general’s discomfort. “Sir Peter also insisted that it is impossible-his word-for Simon Norrington’s records to have disappeared. According to him it’s an inviolable Whitehall regulation that everything is transferred to Kew. Even if something is withheld for reasons of sensitivity, the fact that it is being withheld is publicly noted.”

“Are you suggesting there’s been positive obstruction?” demanded Dean, sharply.

What everyone else would believe to be outrage Charlie recognized as the man’s relief at his committee having belatedly put in front of them a lot of what he and Charlie had earlier kept to themselves. “I’m telling you the opinion of someone who knows the system,” Charlie said, following the older man’s lead. So unproductive had the interviews with the three men been that the latitude Dean had allowed did seem pointless now. It irked Charlie to have to agree, even only to himself, with Gerald Williams’s assessment.

“It’s most definitely something to be raised at the next meeting of the Intelligence Committee,” acknowledged the political officer.

“If it is positively being withheld or has been destroyed against the government’s procedural rules, then there is something extremely serious to hide,” the deputy director-general, Jocelyn Hamilton, began to warn.

Before he could continue, the finance director quickly intruded, “Which means there is a very severe embarrassment. And that we can’t risk demanding explanations from Russia. So here we are again, in a full circle and back to where we began. Precisely nowhere, with nothing.”

Charlie realized he very definitely wasn’t getting the support he’d become used to, especially from Jeremy Simpson. He wondered if Dean was going to pick up on the suggestion of internal obstruction by pointing out how disastrously failure could affect the future of the entire department, but when no guidance came, Charlie decided against putting it forward himself. Instead, deciding it might be an occasion to keep his head as low as possible behind the parapet, Charlie said, “Wouldn’t we still be able to get an indication of thatby posing the question at the next combined meeting of the involved agencies?”

“Presenting yourself as our representative at Downing Street now?” goaded Williams, overeager.

“No,” rejected Charlie, at once. “Presenting myself as the field officer most directly involved and therefore most in need of positive guidance.”

“You’ve already been given all the positive guidance that should be necessary,” came in Hamilton, aggressively. “You’re surely not suggesting obstruction from us!”

Oh, to have had sufficient proof to reply as he’d like to have, thought Charlie, looking directly at Gerald Williams. He said, “Of course not. I’m simply reflecting the views of a highly experienced civil servant who found what I told him inexplicable.” Enough, Charlie determined: if the director-general wasn’t going to present the doubt outright, then Charlie certainly shouldn’t. The conclusion had to be that Dean had changed his mind.

Hamilton said, “Don’t we have another problem to consider? What are we to do about Sir Matthew Norrington’s ultimatum?”

“With just ten days of it to go, the first thing to accept, here and now, is that there’s no chance whatsoever of our being able to meet it,” suggested Williams.

“Shouldn’t we wait for the ten days to elapse before conceding it?” questioned Simpson.

“I don’t think there’s any point in wasting any more time,” said Williams. “I propose we start making contingency plans at once.”

“An excellent idea,” enthused Simpson, happy for his antipathy to show at last toward the financial director. “Let’s hear what yours are, Gerald, so that we can talk them through to get ideas of our own.”

“I’m suggesting the need for serious discussion, not offering formulated proposals.” Williams flushed. “It’s only been an hour since we’ve been told of the ultimatum.” A staged pause. “And that our part of the investigation is totally stalemated.”

“So you don’t yet have any positive ideas?” persisted the lawyer.

Williams’s redness remained at his awareness of being mocked. “Let’s hope you can find things so amusing in a few days’ time,” he said, stiffly.

“In a few days’ time we could know all about everything, wondering even why it was such a mystery at all,” said Simpson.

“At the same time as standing over there at the window, watching pigs fly over the river,” Williams came back.

“Ten days really is a very short period of time, so let’s not waste it,” said the director-general, stopping the exchange and the meeting.

In his office, immediately afterward, the director-general said, “That wasn’t very good.”

“Give me the ten days!” urged Charlie. “Make that your deadline, too, for letting me work as we’ve agreed.”

“I don’t want it to go on that long,” insisted the older man. “Before the ten days are up I want some idea, at the very least, what the hell’s going on.” Dean paused. Then he said, “You did very well last time. This time it doesn’t seem to be working out as it should. In fact, it doesn’t seem to be working out at all.”

Charlie was tempted to buy a dewy-eyed giraffe bigger than Sasha herself but remembered Natalia’s injunction not to try too hard, as well as realizing he’d have to take an additional passenger seat to get it back to Moscow. He settled for its more easily transported baby, which was still awkward hand-lugged. He bought Natalia a white and yellow gold love bracelet with a key to lock it permanently on her wrist.

Miriam Bell insisted they had a lot to talk about when he called from the hotel and Lestov said he was interested in hearing what progress Charlie’s London visit had achieved and agreed to a meeting for the following day without offering anything about the enigmatic press release that Charlie finally went through the pretense of asking about. Charlie thought he detected an uncertainty in the man’s voice, so much so he called Miriam back. She said the son-of-a-bitch had been avoiding her for the past three days, a problem the Russian had probably contracted from him. Charlie thought her suggested get-together the following day, ahead of that already agreed with the Russian, was a good idea.

Charlie didn’t call Natalia because the Interior Ministry number would be logged on his hotel bill, which had to be submitted with his expenses to Gerald Williams, determining on his way to the airport that the situation with the finance director was something thathad to be resolved although still not knowing how. After today Charlie wasn’t even sure of the confidence of the rest of the group, particularly Jocelyn Hamilton.

All or nothing, he thought again, his mind fixing on the meeting with Vitali Maksimovich Novikov.

“We still need to know what the Russians have got,” reminded Kenton Peters.

“They’re hardly going to do anything about whatever it is they think they’ve got when they dig deeper, are they?” questioned Boyce, in return.

“Don’t like frayed ends,” said the American. “But you’re quite confident now, as far as Britain is concerned?”

“Totally.”

“So we just let it all seep away into the sand?”

“Wasn’t that the intention from the beginning?”

“Not often it works out exactly right, though.”

“Kenton!” said Boyce, in London. “How many times in your very distinguished career has anything not gone exactly as you intended, from the very start?”

In Washington the American chuckled into the telephone, enjoying the flattery. “There’s always a first time. I didn’t want this-of all things! — to be it. Things got too close at times, because of that damned man Muffin.”

“But not close enough. But you’re right about Muffin. No need to dispose of him as we intended, but I think he should be put out to grass. I’ll see to it.”

“You were the one under the real pressure, James,” commiserated the other man, returning the mutual appreciation.

“But you who personally intervened when it was necessary,” said Boyce.

“Only too pleased to help,” assured Peters. “It’s been a useful exercise.”

“But not one I’m anxious to repeat too soon.”

The American laughed more positively. “I suppose we can look back on this as our own very special meltdown, like the Russians had Chernobyl?”

Boyce laughed with him. “Without any contaminating fallout. Asyou came to me last time, I thought I’d come to you to wrap it all up?”

“Make a weekend of it: we can go down to Virginia,” suggested the American.

“Wonderful. I’d like that.”

“You get a call from Charlie that he’s on his way back?”

“No!”

Miriam felt Cartright turn toward her in the darkness and was glad she hadn’t told him earlier. It might have distracted him from the main reason he was in bed with her. On balance he was better than Lestov-enjoyed longer foreplay, as she did-but she still intended to end it soon. It was one of several decisions she’d made. The most important was to manipulate the now-established one-to-one association with Nathaniel Brindsley to get a transfer somewhere more civilized than Moscow. This episode had soured Russia for her. It was still instinctive, though, for her to go on picking and probing, right now to decide if Cartright was lying about not having heard from Charlie, to prepare herself for the following day’s lunch. “I asked him what sort of trip he’d had and he said pretty good-that there were a lot of things to talk about.”

“But not, apparently, to me-a colleague!”

Miriam thought the indignation sounded genuine enough; and although it had lessened, there had been those odd questions about Charlie when she’d first gotten back from Yakutsk. “You two guys have a problem?”

“He’s the one heading for a problem,” said Cartright, unthinking in his bitterness. With convoluted reasoning that defied logic or sense, Cartright was now blaming Charlie for his own mistake of getting involved with Gerald Williams. If he hadn’t avoided Williams’s call late that afternoon, he’d have probably known about the damned man’s return, but he didn’t care. He was sick and tired of the whole damned mess, Charlie most of all.

“What do you mean by that?” questioned Miriam.

“Nothing,” said Cartright, belatedly realizing his indiscretion.

He moved toward her and Miriam responded at once, but her mind wasn’t immediately on what he was doing, pleasant though thehardness of his tongue was. Maybe it was time to make another decision. Several, in fact. She still hadn’t devised a way for Kenton Peters to kiss her ass-which Cartright was close to doing at that moment-without the bastard knowing it was she making him do it.