Dead Men Living

5

Natalia was not late, but everyone else was already there. Viktor Romanovich Viskov even had his jacket off and collar unbuttoned, and she felt a fresh twitch of anxiety at the thought that the deputy interior minister trying to depose her might have already started an undermining attack in her absence. The room had gone ominously, expectantly quiet at her entry.

Only Dmitri Nikulin gave any formal greeting. Viskov, a squat, stone-faced and professional long-term survivor in the oxygen-starved near-summit of Russian government, remained expressionless. Which Natalia expected. She supposed she should also have expected only the curt, grave-faced nod from Mikhail Suslov, confronted as the man appeared to be, after only four months as deputy foreign minister, with an international situation of potentially enormous proportion.

For herself Natalia accepted that the international perception of Russia was of an out-of-legal-control country dominated by organized crime, which too much of it was, and that of anyone in the room she could be made to appear the person most closely connected to that failure and to that embarrassment.

Which didn’t end that simply. There was the fact that Yakutsk was three thousand miles from Moscow, the capital of a time-warped, antagonistic, near-independent republic and that the murders appeared to have been committed decades ago.

All and every problem of which was compounded by the meeting being convened in the sixth-floor White House suite of Dmitri BorisovichNikulin, chief of staff of the president, whose own quarters were farther along the linking corridor on the same level, a constant although unneeded reminder of the echelon at which the matter was being considered from the outset.

“We seem to have an extremely serious problem,” opened Nikulin. He was a thin, gaunt man who invariably appeared to invite an opinion from the people to whom he was speaking before offering one himself.

“On the face of it,” agreed Suslov, cautiously.

“We hardly know enough yet to make any sort of judgment,” qualified Viskov, just as carefully. Quickly, however, he added, “What is essential today is that we ensure from the very beginning that we are properly prepared, particularly that any investigation is totally successful.” He spoke looking directly at Natalia.

“The obvious first essential,” encouraged Nikulin. “It’s difficult from what we’ve received so far to judge what it is that we might be investigating.”

“It will have to be officers from here,” pressed Viskov, still looking at Natalia. “I think we should hear your thoughts, Natalia Nikandrova.”

The invitation should have come from the presidential adviser, gauged Natalia. The cadaverous man didn’t appear offended.

“We can of course do that,” said Natalia. “But Yakutskaya has a great deal of autonomy. Have we been asked-invited-to take over whatever investigation is going on there?” She had to remain focused, not allow any private distractions. Why now, this soon? she thought, in familiar litany. Why ever?

Suslov was one of the new, not-yet-forty, university-educated Russian reformers impatient for changes too long promised. He nodded approvingly at the woman’s political awareness. “Not in as many words. It’s inferred, from the very fact of our being informed. It’s a good qualification, Natalia Nikandrova.”

Not the praise of someone involved in a plot before her arrival, Natalia thought, relieved. Deciding the diplomatic road the one to take, she said, “So at the moment we have no right even to go there. I don’t consider we can proceed on the basis of inference.”

“It’s a valid point,” congratulated Nikulin. “We have to ensure our participation is officially requested.”

“And that cooperation is guaranteed,” persisted Natalia. “It would be unfortunate if investigators from here were blamed for mistakes not of their making.” She allowed her mind briefly to go sideways. An investigation seemingly involving a murdered Englishman: without question Charlie’s sort of crime, according to the remit of his posting. So added to the danger of their living together was now going to be the constant conflict of interest she’d determined not to allow. She felt constricted, as if a band were physically tightening around her chest. She’d be hopelessly compromised if they were discovered; it scarcely mattered anymore whether they were occupying the same apartment or not. Her dismissal and his expulsion would be inevitable. And she’d meant what she’d said about being a true Russian with a Russian’s umbilical link to her country. Abandoning it to go to live in London really would be the ultimate, unthinkable sacrifice. She supposed it came down to how much she loved Charlie. Maybe more. Maybe it was how much she truly felt she could trust him.

There wasn’t actually an expression, but Viskov’s features had tightened at apparently being outargued. “I’m not suggesting we go uninvited. But to believe we won’t be is naive ….” He paused, yet again addressing Natalia more than Nikulin. “Which I find surprising for someone whose paramount function is properly considering the political implications of criminal investigations. Perhaps, for that reason, it should be her deputy-who is, after all, a trained investigator in his own right-who supervises everything on a day-to-day basis.”

Colonel Petr Pavlovich Travin had been Viskov’s personal choice, appointed without any reference to her, the most positive indication of an intended, almost old-time purge. Natalia said, “And I, in turn, am surprised that Viktor Romanovich, a politician, considers the political implications-surely the reason for this initial meeting-to be secondary. They are, in my opinion, no way secondary. They are the first priority ….” She hesitated, abruptly aware of another, so far unrealized practical difficulty, just as quickly recognizing how to overcome it at the same time as hopefully defusing Viskov’s attack. “Of course, the proper Russian investigatory team is of the utmost importance. And of course my deputy shall have day-to-day responsibility.”

She saw the tightness go from Viskov’s face at his imagining he had won the exchange.

Nikulin appeared aware of the tension between them and said, “I think we’ve sufficiently covered that point. Every indication is that it’s a wartime situation. Do we have any archival records of American or British presence there?”

“What archival records?” demanded Suslov, who sometimes overstressed his contempt for the Communist past. “Russia has no accurate history for the past seventy years. Not in any ministry file or, I wouldn’t think, any intelligence or militia agency. Everything has been sanitized and corrected and improved, after every event, for each decision and action to be shown to be the right one.”

There was momentary silence both at the cynicism and the outburst.

“But checks are being made in the Foreign Ministry?” persisted Nikulin.

One of Suslov’s advisers came quickly forward, whispering in the deputy minister’s ear. Suslov frowned, regretting the apparent prompt. “Yes.”

“And also through the records of my ministry,” offered Viskov, anxious to recover. “If this does escalate, it’s important that everything is seen to have been done properly, in the correct order.”

“Quite so.” Nikulin smiled bleakly.

“Which was surely what we agreed at my suggestion a few moments ago,” capped Natalia. “Which brings us to the next political consideration. What do we do about London and Washington?”

“Should we do anything, this early?” questioned Viskov, following Nikulin’s lead of seeking an opinion rather than advancing one.

“Let’s take the worst scenario, that an American and an English officer were murdered, together with a Russian woman,” suggested Nikulin. “It would have happened too long ago for that in itself to be a difficulty for the present government, whatever the circumstances of their being in what was, during and after the war, a closed-to-outsiders Stalin gulag complex. Our concentration has got to be how we handle it now. It’s essential we appear totally open, with nothing to hide. And we don’t have anything to hide ….” The thin man hesitated, nodding in private agreement with himself. “It is going to be a difficult crime to solve, after such a long time. Almostcertainly impossible. There’ll be mistakes. Problems. What’s important is keeping us beyond all criticism for those problems ….” He paused in further reflection. “It would help if they turned out to be spies, of course.”

Natalia listened intently, frowning, anxious to anticipate the point toward which the presidential adviser was moving.

“We have an extremely backward but volatile republic, suspicious of foreigners-with perhaps the exception of Canada, with which they have some joint ventures-with Russia at the top of the hate list. They’re going to resent the need for us to be involved, maybe even intentionally make it awkward for whoever we send there ….” The man paused, at a moment of rare commitment. “We need insurance. And I think that insurance could very definitely be to involve London and Washington at this stage. To go as far as inviting them to send investigators at the same time as we send ours ….”

Logically-inevitably-that would be Charlie, Natalia accepted once more. What would Charlie’s insurance be? It would have to be her if they were to survive together, Natalia admitted. So much for avoiding a conflict of interest. She’d still try to avoid it happening, for as long as possible.

“At the same time?” echoed Viskov, rhetorically, wanting Nikulin to recognize his understanding of what the man was saying.

Nikulin gave another bleak smile, unoffended at the interruption. “Problems-difficulties-of an investigation by their own people into a fifty-year-old murder of an Englishman and an American would be their problems and difficulties, not ours, wouldn’t they?”

“Absolutely!” agreed Suslov, smiling, too.

Nikulin looked directly at Natalia. “I want you to choose your team extremely carefully. And brief them even more carefully. The investigation will fail. It can’t do otherwise. The failure must be shown to be that of the English and Americans, not us. The agenda for our people must be to make the foreigners provably responsible for every error.” The smile came again, at a perfectly devised strategy. Still directly addressing Natalia, he said, “You have any difficulty-argument-with that?”

“None whatsoever,” lied Natalia.

Mikhail Suslov said, “Washington and London will have to be officially told through my ministry. I’ll do it immediately.”

“This is a boring game!” protested Sasha.

“We got three planes right across the room!” said Charlie. The distance from one end of the main salon to the other was much farther than the corridor wall from his empty office desk.

“Your planes and you threw them,” reminded the child. “Mine crashed.”

“All your home schoolwork done?”

“Everything I had to do.”

She’d made pictures of a dog and a horse and chosen their initial letters without his help. “How about a story?”

“We could watch television,” Sasha suggested instead. “American cartoons. It helps me to learn the words.”

Charlie and Natalia wanted Sasha to be bilingual and spent half an hour each evening talking only English. He wasn’t sure of the benefit of the satellite programs and words like POW and WHAM and BLAM, but he didn’t want to lose Sasha’s enthusiasm. “Only while I get supper.”

“Baked beans!” she said, in English.

They were a novelty-unavailable in Moscow-and Sasha’s latest favorite, which Charlie got through the embassy commissary. He turned on the wide-screen set in the smaller room and insisted she sit properly in a chair several feet away, vaguely remembering a warning about X ray or some sort of ray that could harm children sitting too close.

“Can I have it on a tray, on my lap?”

“No.”

“Please!”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“It’s not a proper way to eat.”

“Ley used to let me!” said Sasha.

Ley was the closest Sasha had ever been able to get to the given name of Alexei Popov, Natalia’s deputy, whom she’d planned to marry until Charlie’s exposure of the man as a Mafia-linked member of the nuclear-smuggling organization manipulating her and the rank he held within the ministry. By unspoken-although in Charlie’s opinion, unnecessary-agreement he and Natalia never referred betweenthemselves to the man who had contributed to another layer of Natalia’s too-miserable life. But very occasionally, like now when she wasn’t getting her own way, Sasha followed her child’s instinct and experimented. Charlie said, “He might have done. I’m not.”

“Where is Ley?”

“Gone.”

“Gone where?”

Wherever someone goes who gets shot point-blank and full in the face with a 9mm bullet, thought Charlie, remembering the final moments of the ambush in which Popov had tried to kill him. He said, “Away.”

“Is he coming back?”

“No.”

“Never, ever?”

“Never, ever. So you’ll eat properly, at the table in the kitchen.” He set her place, complete with a proper napkin, and timed the beans and toast to be ready when the cartoon program finished. He sat opposite while she ate. Beyond the child the nearly full bottle of Islay malt stood out on the drinks tray like a beacon, but Charlie ignored it, even though technically it was happy hour. There were a lot of unimagined changes in being a father.

“Shall we try to speak English?”

“If you’d like,” said Charlie, pleased it was her suggestion, which was how he and Natalia always tried to make it.

“How long will Mummy be?”

She inverted the verb, but for a child of Sasha’s age it was conversationally very good. “She didn’t know. She’s going to phone to tell us.”

“Are you going to bathe me?”

Another first, by himself, accepted Charlie. “Yes.”

“All right,” said Sasha, gravely, as if giving permission, which Charlie supposed she was.

The downstairs buzzer sounded, making them both jump by its unexpectedness. Not Natalia, thought Charlie at once. She’d promised to phone, and in any case she had her own key. The grandiose apartment had been an effective part of his cover as a crooked entrepreneur and all the nuclear ringleaders had been either arrested or killed. But a lot of the minnow men, the gofers and the fetchers,would have gotten through the net and there had always been at the back of Charlie’s mind the awareness that some might know this address. Might know, too, that he was the person who’d destroyed everything. But they wouldn’t come at him like this: not ring the bell. Easier-better-just to wait outside, hit him when he arrived or left.

“Mummy?” asked Sasha, when the bell went again.

“I don’t think so,” said Charlie. He could legally carry a gun in Moscow, but didn’t. He’d have liked the comfort of a weapon now, even though he wasn’t very good: never able to keep his eyes open at the moment of firing. Or keep the kick from hurting his wrist, even though he adopted the correct, hand-supporting shooting crouch. He hadn’t been the person to shoot Popov as Popov was preparing to shoot him.

“I’ll go,” said Sasha, brightly.

“No!” said Charlie, too sharply. “Stay and wipe your mouth. I’ll see who it is.” The downstairs door could be forced, even if he didn’t operate the admission button, but it was very thick and heavy and wouldn’t be easy. And there were two bolts and a crossbar as well as a chain, from the previous protection, on the apartment door which was practically as strong as that five floors below. He wasn’t reassured. It had been downright fucking stupid to have let himself be trapped like this-like this with Sasha, of all things! — without any means of protection or escape. The bell sounded a third time as he reached the microphone.

“Yes?”

“I was about to give up on you.” It was a woman’s voice.

“Who is this?”

“Irena, Natalia’s sister.”

“Hello,” he said to the woman who’d called immediately after Natalia, earlier. “I wasn’t expecting you.”

“You said it would be all right to call ’round, so I decided to at once.”

Charlie pressed the release button and opened the apartment door in readiness. Sasha came to the door and, when he told her who was coming up the stairs, said, “I like Aunt Irena. She brings me presents.”

Irena was in Western clothes: loafers, Levi’s jeans and a designerversion of a fleecy-lined pilot’s jacket. She picked Sasha up, kissed her and carried her laughing into the apartment. Immediately inside, she gave Sasha a Donald Duck that climbed quacking up a cord by some mechanism triggered by it being pulled sharply downward. The child began to retreat, giggling delightedly, then stopped and said, “Thank you,” and kissed the woman again. She looked to Charlie for approval. Charlie nodded.

Irena turned at last to Charlie. “So you’re my sister’s new partner ^!”

Charlie accepted that he was, as far as Irena was concerned, but didn’t like the question: it inferred there’d been a lot. He didn’t know, in fact, whether there had been or not. It wasn’t something he and Natalia had felt the need to discuss. “Yes,” he said, simply.

“And English!” said Irena, in the same language, which she spoke well. “The embassy? Or business here?”

“Something in between,” avoided Charlie.

“Daddy was just going to bath me,” announced Sasha. “Now you can help.”

Daddy, Charlie seized at once. Until that moment she hadn’t made any attempt at a name, not even a guess at Charlie, which they’d decided to allow if she’d tried.

Irena seized it, too. “Daddy?”

“If I can be,” said Charlie. He wasn’t enjoying the encounter.

“Why don’t I bathe you myself-and read you a story-while Daddy gets me a drink?” suggested the woman.

Charlie decided he liked the way the title sounded. He was glad, too, that Irena had taken over bathtime duties: he was learning how to be a father at roughly the same pace as Sasha was mastering basic spoken English. “There’s most things,” he invited.

“Scotch. Water back.”

Very American vernacular, thought Charlie, amused. He took Islay scotch as well, pouring both straight, setting out her water glass separately and putting ice in a bucket for her to add herself, to avoid it melting to dilute the drink. For someone who until that moment had been a total stranger, Irena-Irena Seminova Modin, Charlie remembered, from the McDonald’s conversation-seemed very adept at appearing an old friend. It probably had something to do with being a stewardess. Long-haul, he recalled: Australia as well America.

There was a lot of splashing and laughing from the bathroom. Sasha was in her nightdress, warm and fresh-smelling, when she ran in to kiss him good night. She announced, “Aunt Irena is going to tell me a story. Girls only, but you can come in to say good night later,” and ran out again, giggling.

Irena emerged ten minutes later pulling her sweater down about her and said, “I got splashed.”

Charlie wondered what had happened to the flying jacket. Irena was far bigger-busted than her sister and seemed proud of it, from the tightness of the sweater. He said, “What’s this girls-only all about?”

Irena smiled, taking the large, enveloping chair beside the couch on which Charlie sat. “She said she wanted to have a secret, so I told her to make one up.”

Charlie indicated the drink, pouring a second for himself. Irena added just one ice cube, properly sipping the water separately, and Charlie decided there was nothing wrong with a pretension if it was carried out confidently enough. Irena was doing fairly well.

“How long have you and Natalia been together?”

“A while,” said Charlie, evasively.

The woman was looking around the apartment. “And isn’t she the lucky one. Sasha said princesses lived here once and I believe her. You must be either very important or very rich or both.”

“There’s a lot of opportunities in Moscow now.” Charlie decided that apart from an obvious facial resemblance Irena was different in every way from Natalia. He preferred Natalia’s natural darkness to Irena’s blond-highlighted hair and if he was making a direct comparison-which he was-he thought Natalia’s figure was better, too. Irena verged upon the voluptuous and seemed to want to, from the tightness of the second-skin jeans as well as the sweater.

“I know someone from the American embassy trade division,” Irena declared. “Saul Freeman. You know him?”

“Of him,” said Charlie, cautiously. Saul Freeman headed the FBI’s station at the U.S. embassy. It had been the Bureau’s success in getting a man based in Moscow-and the dominance and Western crime links of the Russian mafia-that had been instrumental in Charlie’s appointment. Freeman was a balding New York bachelor who shared with the British embassy’s matchingly single MI6 resident,Richard Cartright, the apparent ambition to screw every woman in Moscow. Natalia wouldn’t be happy at Irena finding them together and most certainly not at Irena knowing someone with a Bureau function from another Western embassy. “How’d you meet Saul?”

“He was on my flight, about six months ago.” She grinned. “Not by choice. It was the only plane available.” She looked around the apartment again. “But his place doesn’t come within a million miles of this.”

Cautiously Charlie said, “You seeing each other?”

Irena grimaced again, pulling down the corners of her mouth. “We went out to dinner once or twice.”

“But?”

“He didn’t make me laugh. And he counts.”

“Counts?”

“In a notebook. Writes down what he spends, when he spends it.”

“You’re joking!”

“I told you, there was nothing to laugh about. I think you’d make me laugh, though. What do you think?”

“I think I know someone who’d think he was terrific making a note of his expenditure,” said Charlie, refusing the flagrant invitation.

“She’d be disappointed. He makes love by number, too. Hup, one two three, hup, one two three ….”

Charlie laughed, because he was expected to, curious just the same. Genuine free spirit? Or something else? He shouldn’t kid himself it was anything else.

“It’s a man.”

“Maybe that’s his real interest. He tried to explore.”

Time to call a halt, Charlie decided. “I’ll check Sasha. Say good night.”

“She’s okay.”

“I’ll still check.” Sasha was asleep, the Donald Duck string around her wrist. Charlie gently disentangled it and put it on the bedside table. Sasha snuffled but didn’t wake up. When he returned to the smaller sitting room, Irena had moved from the chair to the couch upon which Charlie had earlier sat. He momentarily considered the chair but went back to his original seat, although wedging himself in the corner farthest from the woman and half turning toward her.

Irena swiveled toward him, one leg crooked onto the seat, smilingover the separating gap. “I won’t bite. Not unless I’m asked.”

“Good.” What the hell was this all about? Careful against misinterpretation, he warned himself.

“What’s Natalia told you about me?” demanded Irena.

“Very little.”

“She hasn’t told me anything about you, either. So why don’t you?”

“Ask Natalia.”

“Why so shy?”

“I don’t want to bore you, like Saul seems to have done.”

“I don’t think you would.”

He lifted the bottle. Irena nodded. Once, thought Charlie, this might even have been fun. “How do you know I don’t keep an account book?”

“I’m usually good at judging men. Saul was a mistake.”

So what was Irena? A prick teaser or a pubic scalp collector? One was potentially as dangerous as the other, quite apart from the embassy connection. That wasn’t a danger, now that it was over. And he wasn’t interested in-didn’t want to answer-either of the other questions. “Maybe this is a mistake.”

“What?” The smile was quite open now.

“I think you are a very exciting woman. Beautiful,” said Charlie, who believed, without conceit, that he’d perfected sincere-sounding dishonesty into an art form. “At any other time I would have liked to have played these word games-every other sort of game-for a very long time. But I’m with your sister, whom I love. As I love Sasha. We’re wrongly met: wrong time, wrong circumstances. Lost opportunities ….” Jesus! thought Charlie. There should have been violin music for that last bit. “So it’s got to be just friends. Okay?”

Before Irena could answer, the telephone jarred into the room and Charlie thought, saved by the bell, and was right. He replaced the receiver and said, “Natalia’s on her way home.”

“No,” said Irena.

“No what?” frowned Charlie, momentarily lost.

“No, it’s not okay.”

Fuck you, thought Charlie. At once he corrected himself. No, I won’t, despite the obvious offer.

There is an elite group of men who observe with what can best be described as tolerance the comings and goings of political parties in what are described as democratic elections in the countries of the West. Invariably the word secretary appears somewhere in their title, which conveys totally the wrong impression of their absolute power and unparalleled influence, a misconception they foster because these are men who, if it were possible, would choose physically to be as invisible as they metaphorically are. It is they who, irrespective of briefly passing governments and electorally promised policies, ensure the stable passage of their respective countries through life’s stormy seas. Each is known personally to and operates with the other in a structure without name or written rules or constitution. It is enough that they know, which they do instinctively, without the need to explain to one another. They discuss.

Such a man was Kenton Peters, an urbane, cultured American aristocrat of such independent means that his salary always went automatically to charity, a man who joined the American State Department during the Nixon administration, which he felt never would have ended as it did had he been in control, and who was the first person an incoming secretary of state asked to see, upon arrival at Foggy Bottom, unaware that Peters had approved his appointment before it had been offered.

Another was James Boyce, whose family was traceable to the restoration of the English monarchy, which one or other of its members had loyally served ever since. Boyce himself had entered the British Foreign Office, of which he was now permanent secretary, during the late premiership of Edward Heath. Of all this special elite, throughout Europe and North America, Kenton Peters was the one with whom James Boyce preferred to operate-work would have been quite the wrong word-when the occasion demanded. It was Boyce who decided the Yakutsk murders were such a demanding occasion and made contact with Peters within an hour of the Russian message arriving at the Foreign Office.

“This is something we never expected,” opened Boyce. “Bit of a damned nuisance, all ’round.”

“Nothing we can’t handle.”

“Of course not.”

“How do you intend handling it, from your end?” asked the American.

“Involve every intelligence department we’ve got, to create the maximum confusion. And insist I have access to everything, so I know at all times what’s going on and how to misguide, if necessary.”

“You think we might have to stage a diversion?”

“Such as?” questioned Boyce.

“If anyone were to get too close and have to die, it could be blamed on the Russians or people in Yakutsk, couldn’t it?”

“I don’t think there’s the remotest chance of anyone getting close, but it’s certainly something we should consider.”

“Your person in Moscow disposable?”

“They’re all disposable.”

“I could move someone in from here to do it-someone nobody knows, with no provable attachment to an agency or government,” offered Peters.

“Let’s make contingency plans,” agreed Boyce.

“And keep in touch?”

“Absolutely.”

“How?” shouted Natalia, knowing she was taking out on Charlie all the fears and frustrations of the meeting she’d just left but unable to separate them from the shock of finding Irena calmly sipping whiskey with him when she’d gotten home. And then having to sit through an hour of frigid conversation before it had been possible to get rid of the woman.

“You gave her the bloody number. And the address!” Charlie shouted back. “She rang and said she had something for Sasha and I told her to bring it around sometime. I didn’t expect her to come right away.”

She had given Irena the number, Natalia remembered. “Did you tell her you were attached to the embassy?”

“Not directly. I let her think it was something to do with joint venture trading.” He wouldn’t tell Natalia that Irena knew Saul Freeman.

“I’m sorry,” apologized Natalia. “I’m …” She stopped. “I’m not being a very nice person at the moment, am I?”

“No,” answered Charlie, honestly. “But you’re allowed. The adjustment is bigger for you than it is for me. And obviously you’ve got a lot of work pressure.” He waited hopefully but she didn’t respond.