Dead Men Living

32

By chance Charlie had been given the same table in the Minsk Restaurant as before and, as before, Miriam’s arrival in a severely tailored trousers suit caused the same head-swiveling contortions. The suit material was close to matching that of Sir Peter Mason’s, but there wasn’t a fresh rose buttonhole. Charlie stood to greet her, aware of the palpable envy throughout the room but not enjoying it as much as at their last lunch, now with too much else to think about, mostly the homecoming announcement he hadn’t expected. As Miriam sat, he poured the vodka, unasked.

They touched glasses and Miriam said, “I missed you. Which isn’t a pass; I’m better at making them than that. I mean workwise.”

Surprise upon surprise, thought Charlie, not as much surprise, though, as there had been at Natalia’s news. Bewilderment, tinged with suspicion, fit that better. He tried to reassure himself that if Natalia was reverting to the earlier nonsense, she wouldn’t in the first place have created the atmosphere between them by telling him the Russian investigation had been officially ended but insisting she didn’t know the reason.

Upon reflection it even seemed to mesh-although he didn’t know how-with the official runaround he was convinced to be going on in London, again without his knowing how or why. Which elevated this lunch to more than hopefully learning what Miriam might have found out about the German POWs in Yakutsk. Now to complete the circle he had to gauge, if he could, whether America, too, had from the beginning only ever been interested in suppressing instead of solving murders they already knew about. But if it did mesh, itcreated an even bigger mystery: what was the secret so overwhelming, after more than fifty years, that all three involved countries were determined it remain forever concealed? With the delicacy of a man tightrope-walking across a snake pit, Charlie said, “I should have kept in closer touch, but there really was a lot to do. Didn’t you find that in Washington?”

“No,” said Miriam, shortly. Charlie was playing the same old game, she recognized. Did it matter a fuck anymore? Why didn’t she come straight out and tell him she’d been closed down, that she was thoroughly pissed off about it and that from now on she was just going along for the ride without knowing who was driving where? Because she had to know, she answered herself at once. Washington-the cocksucker Kenton Peters in particular, the lapdog bureau director and Nathaniel Brindsley in general-was treating her like a dummy. It didn’t matter a damn what was written on her record, to which she anyway didn’t have access to confirm, she’d still be remembered by those who knew for obediently rolling over and dying. Far better, for her pride and reputation and career, to prove to Brindsley-and anyone else-she could close a case and make them the roll-over dummies doing nothing about it.

Shit, thought Charlie, disappointed. “How long were you there?”

“Coupla days.”

“Useful?”

“Bits and pieces. How about you?”

“Bits and pieces.”

“Who’s going to blink first?” she smiled, letting him know she understood.

Charlie held up the empty vodka carafe toward their passing waiter. Every reason for her to think it would be him, if that’s what she wanted. He could imply a lot of what he’d learned from Natalia to have come from London that she’d know to be true from the coitus conversations with Lestov. “My people have come up with the names of some Germans imprisoned in a camp that existed close to where the bodies were found.”

Necessary for him not to think that was a trade. “So have mine.”

“That why you were recalled to Washington?”

“Yes,” she said, straight-faced.

When the waiter returned with the vodka, they ordered quickly,to get rid of the interruption. To hint his awareness of the real source, Charlie said, “Lestov give you any lead on what the development is?”

“Maybe they’ve identified the Germans, too?”

The first blink, isolated Charlie: identifying went beyond knowing the names. “So we’re all three making progress?”

“Are we?” This was becoming a struggle.

“I think so,” said Charlie. What could he afford to volunteer, to edge her further forward?

“I’m not so sure.”

The moment to convince you, then, thought Charlie. “You think it’s time for us to stop playing silly buggers?”

“It might help. Seems to me we’re almost starting from scratch again. And I thought we’d come to an understanding.”

Blitzkrieg, decided Charlie, the pun intentional. “I thought so, too. We’ve got the Germans. We know who your guy was. Both of them, in fact. And we can make a lot of very informed guesses-not actual proof, I know, but enough to take us a long way forward-so why are we fucking about like this?” He was pleased of the feigned irritation he managed at the end.

Miriam was glad the blintzes arrived, although she’d forgotten she’d ordered them, needing the recovery and the time to assess. She’d heard enough to know he hadn’t been positively closed down, as she had. Point one. He knew about the POWs, which she knew Vadim Lestov hadn’t told him, so London must have another, maybe better, source. Point two. Proof of that better source was his saying he knew who both Americans were, when she’d only been trying to find the name of the one in the grave, which she still didn’t have. Point three and the biggest of all. And if London had that much, they had to be nearer to knowing a damned sight more, which put Charlie-England-way over the horizon. Thank Christ she’d played it this way so far. How to raise the bidding? Appeal to his macho, the male need to boast what was between his legs. She offered her glass, clinking it once more against Charlie’s. “Like I said on the telephone, we’ve got a lot to talk about.”

Somewhere he’d hit a target. But which one? Not the time to stop the bombardment. And the next shot was easy. “You first.”

Fuck, she thought. He was too good-too clever-to try any sortof bluff. She could only play the cards she held. “I think the coincidence is incredible, your being so right at that goddamned press conference.”

Not as good as he’d hoped, but he still believed himself ahead. “I’d liked to have found out earlier. Or rather that London had been quicker. Whom do your people regard the most important?”

Miriam frowned. “Don’t you think it’s Frederich Dollmann? He was the chief secretary in the bunker.”

Charlie felt the slow, warming burn move through him. It still wasn’t an answer, but the middle of the jigsaw was beginning to fill at last. “I’m not making the analysis. London is, as Washington obviously is with you. All I got was the names and a thumbnail sketch of what they’d so far come up with.” Plucking a name at random from the list, Charlie went on, “Our guys seemed to think Werner von Bittrick was important.”

“An aide-de-camp, admittedly,” said Miriam. “But it was Dollmann and Buhle who saw him every day: took the dictation.”

Franz Buhle, completed Charlie, as he filled in a lot more. At least three of the fifteen Germans had spent the last months of the war in daily contact-two of them taking the dictation-with the demented Adolf Hitler, fighting battles already lost with armies that no longer existed: the bunker that the Russians were the first to seize as they were the first to seize Berlin. Forcing the casualness as well as the conversation-but letting his mind run ahead-Charlie said, “Let’s face it, the combined knowledge of everyone who was there would have been astonishing. But to historians-”

“I know the problem,” broke in Miriam, which Charlie had hoped she would. “Why art experts? I could understand practically anyone else except them.” When-or how-was she going to get the American names?

Charlie believed he could understand. Partially, at least. If he was right, it was the conspiracy to beat all conspiracies ever conceived, reducing those of the courts of Rome, Tudor England, the Borgias and Machiavelli to children painting by numbers.

Caught by his silence and her belief in his greater knowledge, Miriam said, “But you can?”

Distantly, virtually thinking aloud, Charlie said, “They wouldn’t have known, would they?”

What were the right words? Miriam thought desperately. Maybe to follow with another question. “Known what?”

“What they were going to find in Yakutsk. Why they were being allowed there,” suggested Charlie, still thinking aloud. “We can’t look at it from today’s perspective. We’ve got to look at it as they would have in Berlin in March or April or May 1945. Total chaos, total confusion. Suddenly to have made available the last support staff around Hitler: people who knew intimately every moment of every day in the last months of one of history’s greatest monsters! People who knew where all the treasures were. That would have been too much to have considered rationally. There was no rationale.”

“But there weren’t any art treasures in the bunker!” protested Miriam.

“You sure of that?” demanded Charlie. “They wouldn’t have been, not then. I’m still not sure now, after half a century.”

Now it was Miriam who remained silent, pushing the blintzes away. Charlie didn’t speak, either, needing to think as much as the woman. Eventually Miriam said, “You’re saying they didn’t go to Yakutsk because of Hitler’s staff?”

“No,” denied Charlie. “They went because of Hitler’s staff. But that’s not what they were taken there for. There was another reason.”

“There couldn’t have been another reason!” protested Miriam, belatedly accepting Charlie’s earlier argument. “To get to the Germans would have been incredible!”

“That was only part of it,” said Charlie. “There has to be more, otherwise none of it makes sense.”

They ate-both duck-but were unaware of what they were eating and neither properly tasted the wine, either, each engrossed in private thoughts, hands and mouths working automatically.

Charlie felt instinctively that he was close, maybe close enough to reach out and touch, but there were still too many bits missing. His mind-his hope-was on Vitali Novikov, who according to Natalia was arriving the following day. All or nothing throbbed through Charlie’s head, like a drumbeat. It wouldn’t-couldn’t-be absolutely nothing, he reassured himself. No matter how desperate, the man wouldn’t have risked a total and outright lie-not someone as aware, as Novikov was, of the return expected for his freedom from theinherited exile of an innocent father. A bargain, in fact, that the doctor himself had volunteered.

Miriam was more confused now than when she’d arrived. Nothing that seemed to make sense to Charlie was even vaguely comprehensible-guessable, even-to her. So he was still out of sight and she couldn’t see a way to catch up. Richard Cartright suddenly came into her mind: Richard Cartright, with the too-ready questions inexplicable then and even more inexplicable now, if London was operating with the sort of harmony Charlie was inferring. Tentatively she said, “How’d you find the attitude in London?”

“Attitude?” queried Charlie.

When the fuck was she going to get a half-useful answer instead of another wrong-position question? “Thought maybe you might have heard something about Peters’s visit, on his way back from here?”

No, she didn’t, Charlie recognized at once, concentrating fully. “It was a pretty big meeting, I gather. There’s a lot of different interests, in London-too many, in my opinion. I didn’t hear in any specific detail how it went with your guy. What playback did you get?”

A way at last to avoid the question! “I didn’t, as such. But I kinda got the impression there was …”-the apparent search for the word wasn’t necessary-“some rivalry in England?”

“How?” Charlie’s demand was as unhelpful as she’d tried to make hers in the beginning.

“I will keep to our agreement,” said Miriam. “And for me I guess it’s easier. It’s been left entirely to me-okay, so my head’s on the block-but at least I don’t have the irritation of someone riding shotgun on me. That’s how mistakes happen.” Cartright had tried to use her as she’d been happy to use him, before realizing that he knew nothing. This was just getting a repayment for what he’d gotten in another way.

Could he risk the guess? No. A guess, even though he was sure of the answer, would change the balance, weighing the scales to her advantage. Not another blitzkrieg. A softening-up salvo, to continue her belief in his superior firepower. There was only one thing she could be missing, apart from the full answer which she clearly hadn’t gotten. He said, “I’ve got both American names and I know wherethe grave is of the one who was really buried in Yakutsk.” And waited.

Miriam said, “Cartright.”

“Personal?”

“Very much so. Carried out badly, too.”

“Your lieutenant was George Timpson. Buried in the American cemetery at Margraten, in Holland. The second American was a Harry Dunne. He survived the war, as far as I know. I’ve no idea if he’s still alive.” Charlie was glad the encounter with Miriam was the first of a busy day and that he’d fought off the embassy ambush earlier that day.

“This come to your people from Washington?”

She shouldn’t need to ask that! “No.”

“Have they been told?”

If they had, she, in turn, would-or should-have been told. So her question manifestly showed that she hadn’t been. No need even to guess now. “Have you been cut out entirely? Or sidelined?”

Abruptly-frighteningly-Miriam felt the emotion flood through her, her eyes briefly blurring. Her recovery was as quick as the near-collapse. He knew too much-was too intuitive-to go on with the charade anymore and in any case she was too tired and dispirited and pissed off and pissed over to try anymore. “Entirely.” Bitterly she added, “You know what that motherfucker Peters told me? He said I was the fall guy. That you were, too. Both of us at the bottom of the heap, to take the shit if it came down. Denies it, of course. But I taped the son-of-a-bitch!” Miriam’s emotions switchbacked again. This time she was suffused by an enormous feeling of relief. “That’s it, Charlie! All of it. I don’t have anything more to tell you. Nothing held back.”

“He use my name? Or was it by inference?”

Miriam considered the question. “By inference, I guess. But you were the only person he could have been referring to.”

“That what you meant about watching my back?”

Miriam looked steadily at Charlie for several moments. “I think Packer was a hit man.”

“I’m sure Packer was a hit man.”

“Who?”

“It wouldn’t have been you,” Charlie said.

“Which only leaves you.”

Charlie decided he didn’t want to go any further. “I still think it was a separate Agency thing. It’s past.”

“I hope. What do you think I should do now?”

“You sleeping with Cartright and Lestov?”

“Yes,” said Miriam at once, totally without embarrassment.

“Tell Lestov you’ve been cut out. And that you don’t know why.” And if Natalia relayed that to him, from Lestov, he might be better able to decide if Natalia was being truthful or troubled by integrity again, decided Charlie.

“What’ll that achieve?”

“There’ll have to be some reaction. Let’s see what it is.”

“What about Cartright?”

Charlie thought about it. “Maybe we should satisfy his curiosity. A name, even. You mind being the messenger in your own special way?”

She sniggered. “It was my decision to begin with, wasn’t it? I guess now it makes you my unpaid pimp.”

Charlie smiled back. “I’ve always accepted that was what people like you and I are, whores and pimps. The professional ones just get treated better.”

Charlie went through all the required motions with Vadim Leonidovich Lestov, talking of assessments and reevaluations and complaining there appeared to be very little progress and even conveyed some irritation at Lestov’s refusal (“There are still facts to be checked before any disclosures can be made”) to hint at the intended Russian announcement. Charlie actually went as far as asking if there was any official Russian impatience, which Lestov countered by asking about London’s attitude after insisting that as far as he was aware Moscow was prepared for the investigation to continue indefinitely. Charlie said he hadn’t detected any London restlessness.

He was back at the embassy an hour before the scheduled meeting with McDowell, Cartright, and Gallaway. He considered passing on to London what he’d learned about the German POWs but decided against it until after the encounter with Vitali Novikov the following day. He limited himself to cabling that the Russians were still refusingto disclose their intended media release and occupied the remainder of the time deep in paper-plane-building reflection. He ended it even more instinctively sure that only one or two doors remained closed against his understanding virtually everything.

Charlie put on a very positive performance in the head of chancellery’s office, guessing at progress in Washington as well as that the impending Russian announcement would be startling but admitting that London had been an entirely unproductive, embarrassing expedition. He was, further conceded Charlie, anxious for whatever input any of them might have.

“Jackson called, from Berlin: some crossed wires with London about your going there,” said the military attache. “He thought you learned a lot?”

“That someone else had been murdered to fill Norrington’s grave,” said Charlie. “We’ll never know who it was.”

“But the Russians did it?” said Cartright.

“They returned a body,” lured Charlie. “I’m not sure they can be blamed for the murder.”

“Who else could have done it?” demanded McDowell.

“There wasn’t any law, order or anything else in Berlin at the time,” said Charlie. “It was a perfect place for a perfect murder. Don’t forget the second officer at Yakutsk. I’m keeping an open mind.”

“Did you tell London that?” asked Cartright.

Charlie shrugged. “No reason to fill their heads with theories I couldn’t substantiate.”

The three other men looked uncomfortably between themselves.

Cartright said, “You’re telling us. Why didn’t you tell them?”

“Because they’ve got to act upon what I tell them, so they need facts, not impressions. There’s no reason why I shouldn’t tell working colleagues something about which they’re not going to act, is there? I’ve got quite a few others I’m keeping to myself, too.”

“Like what?” pressed Cartright.

“It doesn’t matter,” refused Charlie. He only wanted to see how far one red herring would swim.

“What’s the general feeling in London?” asked McDowell.

“I don’t know about a general feeling. I don’t think my own department imagine I’ve got a clue which is why I’m going to surprisethem.” No reason why one red herring shouldn’t be channeled in the right direction.

Vitali Maksimovich Novikov stood slightly apart from his family, as if wishing to disassociate himself from them, his eyes moving toward anyone in uniform. His wife fidgeted tightly with their two sons, string-tied packs of belongings between them. The larger cases had already been loaded. No one talked. The elder boy, Georgi, looked constantly and unblinkingly at the arthritic indicator board. Everyone jumped at the sharp, metallic departure announcement.

Novikov joined his family at last. “Ready?”

Marina nodded, saying nothing. The boys began collecting the packages. Novikov had not put down a bulging briefcase since their arrival at the airport.

As they walked toward the departure ramp, Marina said, “We’re never coming back, are we?”

“Never,” promised Novikov.

“You haven’t forgotten anything?” the woman said, looking at the briefcase.

“Nothing.”

Natalia stared at Charlie, letting the shock show. “Why?” she demanded.

“All I want is a name. They’ll all be on file, won’t they?

“Why?” repeated Natalia, insistently.

“I am not going to trade currency,” said Charlie, equally insistent. “I just want the name of one of the biggest dealers, that’s all. Might be necessary to mislead someone who’s taking an irritating interest in me.”