“I thought that’s what we had to do,” said Charlie. “What’s come out of Adelphi?”
“Nothing so far,” said Freeman.
“But you’re checking there, so you’ve already decided it
was
intelligence,” accepted Charlie, smiling at the unintentional admission. “That’s something, I suppose. Means you’re already wondering, as I am, how two officers could disappear like they obviously did, for so long. So you’ll be organizing a records search of your CIA forerunner, the Office of Strategic Services … ?” He gestured to his specially prepared report, lying unread and untouched on Freeman’s
desk. “You’ll see we’re carrying out those sort of inquiries in London. I’d appreciate your letting me have your results as soon as possible, as you’ll see I’ve promised to let you have ours … ?”
“Yes, of course,” said Freeman.
“What’s the State Department guidance about possible embarrassment?’ he asked, directly addressing the two unspeaking men.
“That’s the big question,” tried Freeman. “What was our guy—your guy, too—doing there in the first place?”
Which wasn’t even an attempt to answer the question, Charlie acknowledged. An executive order from the president himself was certainly important enough for someone to have traveled all the way from Washington. But it was a very long way to come to sit and say nothing—practically like a performance in a B-movie. Unless they
did
know and their participation was turning into a damage-limitation exercise better planned than his at Yakutsk.
As if aware of the reflection, Freeman said, “That Nazi business really was a hell of a bluff.”
“Thanks.”
“It was that, wasn’t it? A bluff, I mean, like you told Miriam it was.”
“Absolutely.” Or were they groping more than he believed? If they were, he’d already achieved all there was to achieve, misdirecting sufficiently and disclosing nothing he shouldn’t have disclosed.
“You really can’t take it—anything—any further?”
“Everything I’ve got is there,” said Charlie.
“I’ll get something to you,” promised Miriam.
“With whatever there might be from Washington,” added Freeman.
“That’s about it, then,” accepted Charlie. There wouldn’t be the expected happy hour invitation today.
“We’ll keep in touch,” insisted Freeman.
Freeman had to accompany Charlie to be officially signed past embassy security. As they walked, Charlie said, “You want to tell me about that?”
Freeman said, “I’m sorry. They made the rules.”
“Which were?”
“That’s how they wanted it done.”
“What are their names?”
“I can’t tell you, Charlie.”
“And you expect me to cooperate!”
“How do you think I feel?”
“I don’t know, Saul. How do you feel?”
“Like a prime cunt.”
“That’s about right,” said Charlie. “I’m sorry for you.”
“I’m sorry for myself.” The man straightened as he walked, as if trying physically to cast off the episode. Actually smiling, which he hadn’t done so far, he said, “Dick Cartright tells me a girl I introduced him to is related to the one you’re with. Isn’t that a fantastic coincidence?”
“Fantastic,” agreed Charlie, without a pause. Sometimes gossip and an inferior man’s need to boast was a wonderful thing.
“I’ve never known arrogance like it!” protested Kenton Peters, who hadn’t from anyone who knew who he was. The appalled indignation echoed over the line from the embassy’s secure communications bunker.
“That’s appalling,” sympathized James Boyce. “But you’ve no doubt there is something he’s keeping back, not telling London?”
“None.”
“It can’t be about there being a second officer. I’ve seen what he sent today. It’s there.”
“Our people haven’t. So he hasn’t shared it.”
“So you could be right that he’s got the connection. Is it time to eliminate him?”
There was silence from Moscow. Then Peters said, “I’ll leave everything in place. We’ll take him anytime, when it suits us. Maximum effect.”
“I’m not happy,” complained Boyce.
“Neither am I.”
“Damned nuisance.”
“Yes.”
Natalia recognized that with the open support—at the moment, at least—of Dmitri Borisovitch Nikulin and the now totally shared guidance of Charlie Muffin, she potentially held a very sharp two-edged sword. The importance was properly using it against the attacks of the deputy interior minister and his acolyte, not falling upon it herself. Which made Charlie, whom she could easily believe a reincarnation of Machiavelli, the more important: the one from whom she had to learn.
It was certainly Charlie’s survival plan for her that, although incomplete, sounded feasibly straightforward when he sketched it out in the botanical gardens but less certain when she was alone, as she was now, back in her echoing ministry office, knowing that Petr Travin, two doors along their shared corridor, and Viktor Viskov, on the floor above, were plotting her overthrow with equal determination.
Lead, Charlie had insisted: that was the way for her to remain ahead, from the front, not by following from behind. And she’d substantially increased her lead, she knew. The Moscow homicide detective had performed far better than she’d expected at his departure press conference from Yakutsk—Natalia made a note to congratulate the man—and her unattributed statement accusing the Yakutskaya authorities of inexplicable obstruction had chimed perfectly with it. The overseas digest of the foreign press frenzy—circulated to Viskov as well as to her—from the Foreign Ministry showed it quoted favorably by every major print and network television outlet in America, Canada and England, as well as being widely reported throughout Europe.
Leading from the front did, of course, expose her back to be stabbed. The cynicism actually surprised Natalia. More Charlie’s mind-set than hers. Maybe the way she had to think—
try
to think—if she could in the future. No question of trying, she told herself at
once. There was Sasha, always Sasha. Natalia had been too long alone ever, completely, to lose her most deeply rooted fear of all, of being alone again.
Which wasn’t a consideration of the moment, she decided, rising positively from her desk. The consideration of the moment was continuing to follow Charlie’s script (“mountains can be made from bureaucratic bullshit”), which she’d already initiated by a telephone call to the Lubyanka. Now that had to be followed immediately by the personal visit, because everything had to be in sequence. She made a point of announcing to her secretariat that she was going out but not saying where—happy for the gossip if not the positively offered information to permeate along the corridor—and used the metro instead of an official car and driver, by which and through whom she could have been quickly traced.
She got off at the Bolshoi station, preferring to walk the rest of the way, seeing as she crossed the final square that the briefly removed glowering statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky, the founder of the Soviet intelligence service, had been replaced in front of its yellow-washed headquarters building while so many other, less despised reminders of communism had been removed.
Fyodor Lyulin, the chief archivist to whom she had already spoken, was obediently waiting. He was a bespectacled, anxious-to-please and unexpectedly young man apprehensive at personally being sought out by someone of Natalia’s rank and authority, which immediately registered with her as an advantage, alien though it was for her to bully. Something else she perhaps had to learn.
Lyulin believed there were records of Yakutskaya, nervously pointing out that it was all too long ago for him to have had anything personally to do with them and certainly for which he had no responsibility, apart from their being somewhere in the intelligence service archives. He did not know if they were complete—indeed, even where they might be kept—but he would, of course, search at once.
The man twitched more than blinked at Natalia’s demand for details of gulags for the ten years between 1935 and 1945. “I’ve no way of estimating at the moment, of course, but that could conceivably run into tens—hundreds—of thousands. They might not be indexed. In any chronological order. Material often isn’t, from that period.”
Better than she could have hoped, thought Natalia. “I want whatever exists—all of it. Don’t worry about indexing or chronology. As they’re found I want them shipped immediately to me at the ministry.”
“Just located and sent to you?” pedantically qualified the relaxing archivist, seeing an insuperable job becoming comparatively easy.
“That’s all,” agreed Natalia. “Until I tell you to stop.”
“Going through so much could be a monumental task for anyone, for a team of people,” cautioned the relieved man.
“I am organizing that. It’s a survey that has to be made.”
“The instruction will be confirmed in writing?” requested Lyulin, protectively.
“Of course. But I want the search begun at once. It has the highest priority, from the White House itself.”
“I’ll put every available person on it,” undertook Lyulin.
“But supervise it yourself. Nothing must be overlooked. And each camp must be identified in a summary of each shipment, understood?”
“Completely,” assured the man.
There was a benefit Natalia hadn’t anticipated when she got back to the ministry later that afternoon. Dmitri Nikulin’s congratulatory memorandum for the effectiveness of the previous day’s Yakutsk statement was marked as having been copied to the deputy interior minister, which forced a matching note from Viskov within thirty minutes. By which time Natalia was dictating memos of her own.
To the president’s chief of staff she wrote that the reason for the murdered Westerners being in Yakutsk could well lie in the slave colonies that existed in the vicinity at the time of their deaths and that she intended as comprehensive a check as possible of all surviving records at Lubyanka, particularly for any Western prisoners. Her deputy, Petr Travin, would be in personal charge of the search, authorized to employ as many extra staff as necessary for it to be completed as soon as possible.
Her instruction to Travin was for a daily summary, as well as a detailed assessment of the total number of camps that had existed around Yakutsk and for any that had a specific purpose other than simply housing prisoners or exiles. She dictated the authorization that the Lubyanka archivist had asked for and duplicated everything
to everyone—including Viskov—satisfied that she had effectively buried Petr Travin beneath Charlie’s bullshit mountain that hopefully really would become her deputy’s career grave if Camp 98—the records of which she’d sift first—had held someone of linking significance to the dead officers.
Natalia felt better—safer—at the end of the day than she had at its beginning, especially when another memorandum was delivered just as she was leaving.
It had been a good evening. They’d eaten Scotch beef from the embassy commissary and gone through in detail all that Natalia had done that afternoon to overwhelm Petr Pavlovich Travin. Charlie insisted Nikulin’s memo as she’d been leaving the ministry, praising her for making the gulag check, prevented either her deputy or Viktor Viskov from maneuvering an escape. “You’re not just ahead, you’re out of sight.”
“What happens if it’s Petr Pavlovich who comes up with something from one of the
other
camps?” questioned Natalia, still needing to be convinced.
“It was still your idea,” Charlie pointed out. “So it’s still your success, whichever way it goes.”
They went to bed early, Charlie having been awake for almost forty-eight hours, but he wasn’t too tired to make love and it was perfect, as it always was. Afterward they lay side by side, their bodies touching, and Natalia said, “Yakutsk was the first time we’ve been apart—your not being in Mosow—for over a year.”
“I know.”
“I didn’t like it.”
“Neither did I.”
“I hope it doesn’t happen again too often.”
“Me, too.” He hadn’t told her about Sir Rupert Dean’s talk of his being recalled to London and decided not to. Or of the unspeaking men at the American embassy, one trained not to blink. He said, “You hear from Irena while I was away?”
He wasn’t sure, but Charlie thought he felt Natalia stiffen, imperceptibly, beside him in the darkness. She said, “No. Why?”
“No particular reason. You’ve never told me much about her.” There was definitely a stiffness.
“There’s nothing much to tell.”
“Why didn’t you see her, for such a long time?”
“What is it, Charlie?”
“Just curious.” This hadn’t been the right moment, he realized. Or had it?
“She make a pass at you?” demanded Natalia.
“No,” lied Charlie.
There was a long silence. Then Natalia said, “Konstantin left me for Irena.”
Konstantin had been Natalia’s first husband, Charlie remembered. It had been so long since they’d talked about the man that Charlie had forgotten the name. He said, “What happened?”
He felt Natalia shrug. “He was a lecher, like I’ve told you. But he’d never left me before. She always wanted anything I had, from when we were children.”
“How long did it last?”
“Until I divorced him so he could marry her. She didn’t want him then.” She was quiet for several moments. “I’m sorry I’ve been so stupid. About us, I mean.”
“No real harm done.”
“There could have been. I can’t think how awful that would have been.”
“It’s over,” assured Charlie. Irena knowing someone at the British embassy was something else he wouldn’t tell Natalia. Their holding-back roles had been reversed, he realized.
“I’m glad you called,” said Miriam. She really wasn’t sure who was the better lover, Cartright or Lestov. Which wasn’t the most important comparison. Cartright’s usefulness, apart from in bed, was what she could get from his involvement in the case.
“It’s good to have you back.” said Cartright. “It must have been appalling.”
“Known better.”
“How did you get on with Charlie?”
Miriam was surprised Cartright had managed to hold out through dinner and the before-and-after drinks. “Fine. He sure as hell knows how to operate.”
“How’s that?”
“We wouldn’t have gotten on that plane if he hadn’t known how to flash dollars around.”
“He seems adept as making money work,” prompted Cartright.
“But I gave him a ride back, so I guess we’re even. What happened while I was away?”
“Nothing of any consequence. London doesn’t seem to be able to find any trace of our man. Or why he should have been there. How about you?”
“Lots of questions. No answers.”
“You think Charlie’s being straight with you?”
“Don’t you?”
“No. This is a joint operation. Anything I get from London I’m quite prepared to share with you. We do have rather a special relationship, don’t we?”
“Very special,” agreed Miriam, happy in every way with her night’s work.