“I tried to get it delayed,” disclosed Natalia.
“Why?” Charlie frowned.
The expression remained as she talked, although more in guilt at his disbelieving her—and at setting the test she was at that moment passing—than at anything else. Charlie was glad Natalia would never know he’d doubted her. He said, “Nikulin was right. Whatever brought about the American decision won’t be influenced by the art announcement: that was only bait in the first place. All that’s going to happen is America refusing to bite and a lot of renewed publicity.”
Natalia offered the log back to Charlie. “You were relying on that, weren’t you?”
“Yes,” he admitted.
“What now?”
“I don’t know,” Charlie forced himself to admit. And then, in a rush and without warning, he thought he did. He had sufficient about the mystery English officer, at least, and most of it allowed the pieces to fit.
“What?” demanded Natalia, seeing the expression on Charlie’s face.
Instead of immediately answering, Charlie flicked the television
back to the permanently running CNN, leaning forward intently to study the pictures of what had been recovered from Belous. And then he told Natalia.
“Are you sure?”
“Positive.” He looked down at the log of Novikov’s father and said, “And it
was
here, all the time!”
Charlie’s satisfaction ebbed by the following day. Sitting in his shoebox office, surrounded by a squadron of reflectively folded paper airplanes, Charlie acknowledged reluctantly that Natalia was right. His conclusion—even more positively confirmed by examining in detail the Tsarskoe Selo treasure catalogue of Catherine the Great’s palace—didn’t explain America
and
Russia quite independently closing the investigation down.
And there was only one way to try to prove what he now did know. With no guarantee that he’d succeed and, after Henry Packer, possibly physically dangerous. If he made the attempt and it went wrong by just one millimeter—even excluding the Packer-type risk—he’d be dismissed and withdrawn from Moscow. On top of which he couldn’t discuss it with the director-general, who couldn’t possibly condone it, even if the man’s personal support hadn’t been wavering as much as Charlie knew it was. So he’d be totally disregarding—defying!—the department and going off station without authority, which was very definitely a firing offense.
But what choice did he have? It was the only way forward, it did fit sufficiently for him to be sure of at least part and there was Kenton Peters on tape describing him as a fall guy, if one was necessary. So he was damned if he went solo and damned if he didn’t. He refused to think about being dead.
Charlie forced his mind from the negative to the positive. It was physically possible to fly to England and back in one day, leaving on the first morning plane and returning on the last at night. So he’d
only be away for twelve hours at the most and it wouldn’t be difficult to give London an excuse in advance for his absence from the embassy. The newspaper coverage of the art recovery—particularly the speculation that Fyodor Belous was guiding the authorities to more treasure, possibly even the Amber Room—had been enormous, but Charlie already knew from Natalia there wasn’t going to be anything more London might panic about, so that wasn’t a bar to his going. What else? An ally, he decided, now that he and Miriam had resolved their personal war. She’d been described as a fall guy, too. It would require slight adjustment to his dislike of being dependent on someone else, but Charlie Muffin’s rules of engagement were always adjustable to suit his needs and at that moment he judged his need to be quite extreme.
The positive fell far short of outweighing the negative, but there was a balance of sorts. And he took as an omen the fact that when he inquired there was availability on both the outgoing and incoming British Airways flights the following day. He made reservations and then set about establishing the cover for his absence. Which would be easy. He could use the art recovery. Charlie was later to remember the startled look with which Richard Cartright greeted him when he entered the MI6 man’s office.
“I don’t like this,” objected the military attaché at once, looking to Raymond McDowell for support.
“Neither do I,” agreed the head of chancellery.
“Do you think I do?” demanded Richard Cartright. “They’re my instructions, from London!”
“Why?” asked Gallaway. They were in the military attaché’s office and theatrically the man got up and locked the door.
Cartright’s relief, at being told officially by his own department to assess Charlie Muffin’s investigation, was limited: it had briefly been shattered by the scruffy man’s arrival in his office an hour earlier, which Cartright had at first thought, frightened, to be a confrontation. Since then he’d tried to rationalize what there was to work from and realized how limited that was, too. Apart from the contempt with which Charlie Muffin had dismissed his superiors on his return from London, everything else remained totally unsupported, mostly bedroom
tittle-tattle. But what increased Cartright’s unease was being asked, in the authorizing message from his operational officer that morning, if the man had boasted of making misleading telephone calls during his London recall or had ever referred to someone named Lionel Burbage. A confused Cartright was still awaiting clarification on that.
His explanation prepared for the inevitable question from one or the other of them, Cartright said, “I didn’t like his attitude, when he came back: behaving as if what we’re all supposed to be doing wasn’t important. I asked London if anything had happened there to sort the whole business out. When they asked me why, I told them.” Seeing the look on the faces of the other two men, Cartright added, “I don’t consider that disloyal. I see it as self-protection, for us all.” He looked pointedly at McDowell. “You forgotten what happened to your predecessor?”
“Muffin certainly hasn’t tried very hard to be a team player,” conceded the diplomat.
“And from what I gather, he caused Jackson some embarrassment in Berlin. Me, too, for that matter,” joined in Gallaway. “I had the ministry on, demanding to know why I wasn’t aware of his going there. Looked a bit of a bloody fool having to admit he hadn’t told me, after I’d already assured them we were working well together.”
“Which is another joke, this time on us,” insisted Cartright. “He came to see me this morning. Said he thought there might be something in this Russian statement and, when I asked him what, said he couldn’t tell me until he’d looked into it properly.”
“You think we should tell London?” asked Gallaway, at once.
“I’m certainly going to cover myself,” said Cartright. “Nothing specific because I can’t be. Just an advisory, that there might be something. That’s what he said he was doing.”
“Probably a good idea for us all to do the same,” said McDowell. He paused. “I suppose it’s true to say he’s treated us all a bit shabbily. But I’m still not sure it justifies an official inquiry.”
“Not by itself, perhaps,” Cartright admitted. “But I think there are things going on in London we don’t know about, which, let’s face it, has been our problem all along, not properly knowing what’s going on. I think what I’ve been asked is part of a far deeper inquiry
into how the investigation has been conducted from the start. As far as we know it’s got nowhere. I, for one, don’t intend having any responsibility for failure off-loaded on me.”
The other two men shifted uncomfortably. Gallaway said, “I understand your point of view.”
McDowell said, “Yes, quite.”
Pleased with the way it was going, Cartright said, “All I’m asking is to be able to say you were with me when he said what he did. And to know you’ll support me if you get asked about it from London direct.”
“It would be the truth, would it?” accepted McDowell. “He
did
say what he did, in front of all three of us. Virtually made a joke of it, in fact. Think maybe I should tell the ambassador, though. Not exactly conducive to the smooth running of the embassy.”
“Probably wise to make our position clear,” said Gallaway.
“Thank you. I’m glad we’re agreed,” said Cartright. He hoped it would go on being this easy. He hoped Irena wasn’t on a long-haul flight. It would be better—more convincing—if he had a Russian with him. He shouldn’t forget Miriam, either.
“I thought we’d stopped all this shit!” protested the American. The reaction from the high-class hookers—imagining unequal competition—to her entry at the Savoy hotel bar was only just subsiding. They had, Charlie remembered, agreed on his role as Miriam’s pimp. It would be a job with career prospects.
“If it goes wrong, you don’t
want
to know about it,” said Charlie. “My plane arrives back at ten, local time. I’ll call you by eleven. If there’s time, I might check in during the day.”
“If it goes right, you’ll know it all by tomorrow night?”
“Enough,” assured Charlie. Once he’d always needed to know it all, he remembered. Another adjustable rule.
“If anyone asks, you’re following up something about this art recovery but haven’t told me what it is?” Miriam clarified.
“That’s all.”
“It’s an odd coincidence.”
“What is?” asked Charlie.
“Richard Cartright’s called. Invited me to dinner.”
“You going?”
“I stalled. Waited to see what you wanted first.”
“What are you going to do?”
Miriam shrugged. “A gal’s got to eat. You never did give me a name, incidently.”
“Orgnev,” supplied Charlie, glad of the reminder. “Arkadi Orgnev. Operates from a pitch near the Buratino Cafe, in the Arbat.”
Charlie spent longer than necessary assuring Sasha that the giraffe’s neck hadn’t been stretched by someone pulling its head, hoping Natalia’s concern-driven anger would have lessened by the time he went back into the living room. It hadn’t.
“You’re trying to convince yourself as much as me,” she accused.
“Don’t you think I have to go?”
“I think it’s madness. You don’t know anyone’s going to try to make you a scapegoat and even if they do you stand more chance of surviving than risking everything, which is what you’re doing. Risking us!”
“I don’t think so.”
“I love you, Charlie. I love you and Sasha loves you and I really do want us to spend the rest of our lives together. But I don’t know how much longer I can go on like this.”
“That’s why I have to go. To get the whole damned thing over. Make us safe.”
“I don’t think we’re ever going to be safe. That’s why it might be better to make a decision about us now. Stop putting it off.”
“No!” refused Charlie. “I’ll get it right and we’ll survive!”
That night they lay stiffly side by side, untouching, and Charlie knew every time he woke up, which he did often, that Natalia was awake, too. She remained stiff even when he tried to kiss her goodbye, only just responding. It meant he spent more time thinking about himself and Natalia on the flight to London than about what he had to do when he got there, but there was time during the drive.
Sir Peter Mason personally opened the door. The man said, “You didn’t ring for an appointment.”
Charlie said, “You might have refused to see me.”
“I still could.”
“But you won’t, will you?”
Despite the totally unexpected intrusion, Sir Peter Mason was as immaculate as he had been at Charlie’s first visit, even to the fresh rose buttonhole, although today’s pinstripe was blue, not gray. The hair was as neatly barbered and in place, too, which made the last detail for which Charlie was looking easy to find, although he would have missed it, as he’d missed it before, if he hadn’t specifically looked. And today’s walk to the library had provided all the confirmation he’d really needed. The man sat easily on the far side of the desk big enough, Charlie reckoned, for a real delta wing, not a paper reproduction, and in the chair in which he’d been placed opposite Charlie tried to appear as relaxed. The man said, “Well, now, how is it you think I can help you further?” There was just the faintest unctuousness.
Charlie curbed the tingling euphoria, knowing the confirmation was only significant to him and that to get the admission he wanted, the conversation to follow—with a man whose entire life had been listening and talking in nuances and doublespeak—had to be the cleverest he himself had ever conducted in a lifetime of nuance and double-speak. “You could give me your own version of what happened at Yakutsk, to compare with the one I have.”
The laugh was of disbelief, the one word stretched in astonishment.
“What?”
“I know,” declared Charlie, hopefully.
The other man’s face was stiff now. “I haven’t the slightest idea what you’re talking about. You’re clearly suffering some mental aberration and I think it best that you leave, before I call the police.” The tone was controlled, unemotional, just mildly irritated.
Could he risk it? wondered Charlie. “That might be an idea. They could take your statement officially.” He decided against completing the threat.
“I’ve asked you to leave.”
The moment to hit hard, judged Charlie. “It was your battle-dress button, wasn’t it? And the casing from your service revolver?”
“This is madness.”
He hadn’t reached for the telephone. Or threatened to call Sir Rupert Dean, to whom he’d referred intimidatingly several times at the previous meeting. “No, Sir Peter. It’s fact. Forensically proven, evidential fact.”
“Which you’ve communicated—discussed—to others?”
The first crack? “Of course,” said Charlie. It wasn’t an actual lie: only the inference that Sir Peter Mason had been connected with it wasn’t true.
“In writing?”
“Yes.”
“Then you’re guilty of libel.”
Not the first crack at all! “Which you’d need to take me into a court of law to prosecute,” said Charlie. “You sure you can afford to appear in court, Sir Peter?”
“More, I’m sure, than you, in every meaning of the word ‘afford.’”
Bullying—pompous—but that was all, assessed Charlie. Still far short. “You haven’t called the police.”
“I’m more interested now in the total extent of your aberration. And your libel.”
That
was a crack, although again not sufficient. Cleverly outtalking him, in fact, Charlie conceded: the bastard was trying to learn how much he knew. “Was Larisa already dead when they found you and brought you back to the camp infirmary?”
“Larisa who?”
“Larisa Krotkov.”
“I’ve never heard of anyone named Larisa Krotkov. Nor do I know what camp you’re referring to.”
There was no euphoria or satisfaction left. Charlie was hot, perspiring, aware he was losing. “Gulag 98.”
“That means nothing to me.”
“What about Raisa?”
“I did not know Raisa Belous.”
The hardest hit he could think of, Charlie decided. “She’s the woman you killed: shot in the back of the head to go first into the
grave, before Simon Norrington and George Timpson were thrown on top.”
Mason actually jerked back in his chair, his face bloodred, eyes bulged, hands no longer cupped but splayed against the desktop to support himself. His mouth moved several times, but there were no immediate words, and when they finally came they were strained, wheezing from the man. “I will see to it that you are prosecuted! Put away! Your life … everything … is over. Finished.”
He’d been within a hairbreadth, Charlie recognized. He’d rocked the man, had him teetering on the edge, but at the last minute Mason had pulled back, turning the near-collapse into apparent outrage. He had to push again, Charlie acknowledged—push with everything else he had to topple the man on the second attempt. The uncertainty was not being sure just how much there really was left.
Charlie said, “I can’t imagine what it must have been like. No one can. Not surprising that you ran like you did: no one could blame you for wanting to get away. Remarkable that you managed to get so far, although not that they didn’t shoot. They had other, more long-term needs for you, of course. As they had for Harry Dunne. Didn’t stop them from shooting Larisa, though, but then she’d served her purpose, hadn’t she … ?” Georgi, he suddenly remembered: how Larisa, in her dying delerium, would have referred by the Russian name to George Timpson, who’d carried the cut-off photograph of them both together. “And Larisa did try to stop George Timpson from getting shot, didn’t she?” he guessed. “Got hit herself doing it … couldn’t be saved …” He nodded to Mason’s hands and the deformed fingers, still splayed on the desk. “Not like your fingers were saved, despite the frostbite. He was a good doctor, wasn’t he? If I hadn’t known he’d had to amputate your earlobe—particularly looked when you opened the door to me today—I wouldn’t have known you’d lost it. I’m sure not many people have, all these years … .”
It didn’t work.
Sir Peter Mason retained his rigidly affronted stance, although his color went and his voice returned to near-normal. “I’ve heard enough—too much—of this absurdity! You’ll leave my house. Immediately. I intend contacting Sir Rupert, at once. To carry out the threats I’ve made, about every report you’ve filed … .” The control
went, at the end. Color abruptly suffused the man’s face again and he roared, crack-voiced, “GET OUT!” and rose, actually pointing toward the door.
And Charlie did.
Charlie drove obliviously, thoughts in free fall, for several miles before the most essential awareness forced its way to the forefront of his mind. How much—how badly—had he lost?
It didn’t matter that Sir Peter Mason, without any doubt in Charlie’s mind, was the murdering second officer or what the obvious implications were of his having been all his life at the heart of British government. He’d failed to get an admission, and the log of a long-dead doctor was insufficient evidence. What about the rest? He needed a jury, Charlie decided: a tribunal, at least. And there was no way he’d get that now. Mason would have an explanation, no matter how thin.
The man
would
complain to the director-general. Probably to a lot of other people, as well. There wasn’t a defense against confronting Mason, but Charlie needed to get his explanation—and what little was left—to Sir Rupert Dean first. What was initially indefensible was his being unofficially in England at all, which he knew and the consequences of which he had to accept. By the end of the day he’d doubtless have had confirmed what he already knew them to be, so he could wait until then to call Natalia. Would she give up everything and bring Sasha to live in London? Or would she look upon it as the obvious breaking point that she’d virtually declared during last night’s row?
As always, too many questions with too few answers. The first step—which professionally would be his last—was to get through the encounter with Sir Rupert. So totally upon that was Charlie’s concentration that he wasn’t aware of the siren or of the flashing lights of the police car until it actually came up alongside, with the observer waving him into the roadside. Charlie’s first thought was of Henry Packer.
He kept the window closed and the locks down, pointless though that would have been, until he was satisfied the two uniformed men walking back toward him really were policemen. And not armed. When Charlie finally wound down the window, the observer said, “Every unit in Norfolk is looking for this car and this number. I
don’t know what you’ve done, my son, but it’s upset a lot of important people.”
“I know,” said Charlie. He gave the same reply to the Special Branch officers who greeted him at Norwich police headquarters with the practically identical remark.
“I thought we were going to do some ourselves!” protested Irena.
“Of course not!” said Cartright, irritably. There was a virtual sea of tourists washing around the Arbat and it really was like forcing their way against a fast-running current. He felt more disoriented than discomfited.
“What are you going to do, then?”
“Find a particular man. Ask him to identify the photograph.” He patted the pocket containing the picture of Charlie Muffin, to reassure himself it was still there. There’d be a lot of pickpockets in a crowd like this.
“Why did you want me to come?” demanded Irena, still protesting.
“The man I’m looking for will feel more comfortable with a Russian than with a foreigner.”
“They have some nice jewelry in the foreign outlet store on Ser-ebryany.”
“We’ll look afterwards,” sighed Cartright.
“What’s the name?”
“Arkadi Orgnev. He works around the Buratino.”
“There it is,” she said, pointing to the café with the illustrations of Pinocchio after which it was named.
Cartright prompted Irena to ask and they were misdirected to two people before a short, rotund man in a baseball cap, T-shirt and Levi’s jeans was pointed out to them.
“Arkadi Orgnev?” asked Cartright, taking over.
“Maybe,” said the man.
“I think you might be able to help me.”
“How much?”
Cartright pulled the money from his pocket sufficiently for the man to see it was dollars. “Of course, I’m prepared to pay for what I want.”
The man put a whistle in his mouth and blew it and five men
materialized from the crowd, surrounding them. One was the second person Irena had asked to point out the money-changer.
“How did the cocksucker find out I hadn’t been fired?” demanded Miriam.
“I don’t know,” said Nathaniel Brindsley, in Washington. “Asked the director outright, apparently. The director didn’t have any alternative.”
“The son-of-a-bitch!”
“I’m sorry, honey. Really sorry. When Kenton Peters comes on the line, God takes the call.”
“What am I to do?” Miriam suddenly felt lost.
“Pack up. Close your apartment. We’ll do our best about severance. Personal word of the director himself.”
“Fuck you. Fuck all of you!” Miriam shouted down the telephone.
“Know how you feel,” sympathized the Bureau’s overseas director.
“You know fuck-all, like the rest of them,” said Miriam.