Dead Men Living Page 6

  It took Natalia five interviews to reach Colonel Vadim Leonidovich Lestov. She was immediately encouraged by the thirty-year-old man’s down-at-the-heel imitation leather shoes and lapel-curled dark gray suit, shiny at the seat and elbows, a clear indication that he had so far failed to establish a private tailoring allowance. He was blond, fresh-faced and when he became enthusiastic, as he did when Natalia outlined the assignment and mentioned Yakutskaya, stammered in his eagerness to get his words out.

  “My grandfather is still alive: a Stalinist. He insists the Yakutskaya gulags never existed. That they were an invention of Stalin’s detractors.”

  “There are several million people who’d argue against him if they were still alive,” remarked Natalia.

  “I want to go!”

  “Then you shall,” decided Natalia.

  Olga Erzin was Natalia’s choice for the forensic pathologist. The woman had impeccable medical qualifications, five years’ experience of forensic medicine and a weight problem she appeared to be doing little to control. Natalia guessed the woman, whom she knew from personnel records to be the same age as Lestov and like the militia colonel unmarried, weighed close to two hundred pounds.

  “It will be extremely uncomfortable,” warned Natalia.

  “It’s the chance to become involved in an incredibly unique murder case.”

  “Which will attract attention. To you, I mean. We can’t afford any errors.”

  “I won’t make any if you don’t,” said the younger woman.

  “I don’t understand.” Natalia frowned, surprised at the near impertinence.

  “By choosing someone other than me,” said Olga.

  After so long—and with so little information from which to judge—Natalia was unsure if any worthwhile forensic evidence would remain and decided initially only to send one scientist, to become team leader if his assessment was that a full scene-of-crime contingent was justified. Natalia was able to extend her age limit choice, because scientific technicians did not have the access—nor therefore the opportunity—for contorted handshakes in dark alleys. Lev Fyodorovich Denebin was a lugubrious fifty-five years old whose pure white hair rose from his head as if in shock, which he’d never been, whatever the brutality of the crimes he’d investigated. Which, since the KGB control of Moscow had been virtually replaced by the mafia, had been a lot.

  Denebin very obviously had that in mind when he said, after Natalia had outlined what she so far knew, “This could be fascinating. Very different.” His voice was blurred from a lifetime’s addiction to tobacco.

  “And very difficult,” Natalia warned once more.

  “The bastards want us to admit we haven’t got the facilities!” protested Valentin Polyakov.

  “They’re going by the book,” suggested Yuri Ryabov, who’d been summoned immediately after the cabinet session that Polyakov had chaired. “Acknowledging the degree of independence we’ve so far achieved.”

  “It’s important the British and Americans are coming,” decided Polyakov, his decision quite positive now.

  “We can’t question Moscow’s ultimate authority, certainly as far as foreign policy,” said Ryabov.

  “I don’t intend to,” assured Polyakov, feeling very satisfied. He was a huge, towering man, his size seemingly made greater by a never-trimmed spade beard, which, ironically for a man who despised everything Russian, was allowed to grow fully down to his chest in the Russian style of a man of deep religious orthodoxy, which he wasn’t. Polyakov looked intently at his police commissioner. “But they don’t have the power of life or death, like they had in the past; like they had over my father and your father and everyone else’s forefathers. Here, now, I’m in charge. And here’s what we’re going to do. We show every consideration and help to whoever London and Washington send in. I want everyone they come into contact with to understand that. I’ll actually receive them … .” He stopped, one idea following the other. “But we won’t include the Russians. You understand what I’m saying?”

  “I think so,” said the militia commissioner, uncertainly.

  “But don’t make it too obvious, for your part,” continued the chief minister. “I want you as part of whatever investigation team Moscow sends. At all times. It’s essential publicly to appear a joint investigation, not a Moscow take over. And that’s how I want our response to read: that we’re inviting their assistance.”

  Ryabov shifted, his uncertainty growing. “Why, exactly?”

  “Because I’m going to ensure we’re the focus of world attention,” announced Polyakov, who was given to cliché in his attempt to appear statesmanlike.

  “Moscow has asked for details of what was recovered from the bodies. And photographs,” reminded Ryabov.

  Polyakov smiled, pleased with the way he’d worked everything out. “Moscow comes to us, on our terms. They wait until they get here to see what there is.”

  “All right,” accepted the police chief, uncomfortably.

  “You realize how fortunate we are, having the media contacts we have in Canada?”

  “Not really,” Ryabov frowned.

  “You will,” promised Polyakov.

  Alexei Popov’s replacement as Natalia’s deputy was a taciturn, sleek-mannered, sleek-featured Georgian. The deputy interior minister had outmaneuvered an unsuspecting Natalia to get Petr Pavlovich Travin appointed, making it obvious that after the Popov debacle the Interior Ministry felt it necessary to have their own watchdog as close to the top of her department as possible, which was in no way a guarantee of Travin’s honesty or integrity: an enshrined legacy of communism, maybe even inherited by them from the tsars, was that poachers made the best gamekeepers.

  Travin listened, wordless and expressionless, while Natalia talked and still didn’t immediately speak when she’d finished and Natalia, who’d first met Charlie as his KGB debriefer when Charlie had staged a false defection, identified the familiar trick of extended silence to lure more from someone being interrogated. With that awareness came curiosity that Travin might already consider himself entitled to interrogate her. Finally the man said, “I expected to be involved from the very beginning: selecting the Russian team with you. I might have had some suggestions.”

  The burly, mustached man did consider himself her equal—if not more—Natalia recognized. Stressing the demand in her voice, Natalia said, “You will be in charge, from here, of overall liaison, between us and the British and Americans. We expect—in fact it’s been politically decided we want—them to go to Yakutsk.”

  “What is the chain of command?” demanded Travin, virtually in open challenge.

  “Mine is to Dmitri Borisovich Nikulin, the president’s chief of staff. Yours is to me. It’s imperative from the outset that there are no misunderstandings between us. I hope there won’t be.”

  “So do I,” said Travin, insolently.

  How many times had she already said and thought those words? wondered Natalia. And how many times was she going to repeat them in the immediate future? She said, “The most important thing for you to understand is that whatever the outcome, no blame or error should attach to our people.”

  “I’ve understood that already,” assured Travin.

  “That’s good.”

  It was only when Natalia was redrafting for the third time her bureaucratically necessary memorandum to Dmitri Nikulin—with copies to everyone else in the planning group—that she accepted the first version had been quite adequate and that she was stupidly delaying her return to Lesnaya and Charlie.

  “I’m on my way,” she said into the telephone.

  “There’s a lot to talk about,” said Charlie.

  “I know.”

  “It’s an opportunity!” insisted Vitali Novikov.

  “How? Why?” asked his wife.

  “There’ll be foreigners: American and English.”

  “What good will they be?” demanded Marina.

  “I don’t know, not yet. But I’ll find a way.”

 
; “Vitali Maksimovich! You’ve tried so hard for so long. Nothing works!”

  “You want Georgi and Arseni to live like we’ve had to live?”

  “You know I don’t. But there is no other way. No way out.”

  “My father was a clever man. A meticulous man.”

  “And you’re clever, too, my darling. But I can’t see how Americans or British can help us.”

  “I’ll find a way,” repeated the medical examiner, stubbornly. “Even if I have to cheat and lie.”

  Gerald Williams examined his idea from as many aspects as he could think of before telephoning his fellow finance director across the river at Vauxhall Cross. His second call was to Richard Cartright in Moscow.

  “I thought I should introduce myself, now that our two departments are going to be working together,” said Williams.

  7

  The phrase that came to Charlie’s mind was phony war, although it didn’t fit because he wasn’t going to allow a war between himself and Natalia, phony or otherwise. They were moving around the apartment, overly attentive upon Sasha, overly polite toward each other, with long periods of silence, as if each were expecting the other to fire the first shot.

  It was, however, Natalia who proposed the armistice. “Angry?”

  “No.” Charlie was on his second Islay malt of the evening, Sasha already asleep.

  “What, then?”

  “Disappointed.”

  “It had to be this way: from our Foreign Ministry to yours, in London.” She shook her head to the wine he held up.

  “I know that. You might just have mentioned something.” Charlie was, in fact, very angry, although not at Natalia. He’d timed the telephone lecture from Sir Rupert Dean at forty minutes, immediately followed by the promised memorandum, and after that there had been the personal visit from Richard Cartright with the insistence that he was sure they were all going to work together perfectly. To which Charlie had thought bollocks and said he was just as sure.

  “I’ve got so much to mention I doubt I’ll remember it all,” said Natalia, turning his expression.

  Charlie looked at her curiously. “Go on.”

  “I’m not sure I can do it,” blurted Natalia. “That we can do it: keep secret what we have to. I’ve almost gone mad!” And she still didn’t intend to tell him everything.

  “It might have helped to talk.” He was glad he hadn’t told her of Irena’s apparently brief affair with Saul Freeman. Glad, too, that there’d been no personal contact from the woman after that one night, which she’d hinted at when he’d walked her to the street-level door.

  “Perhaps. I just wanted to do it this way. Try some separation, so that we couldn’t be professionally accused of anything.”

  Charlie smiled at her sadly. “I know I was a shit before. But I’ll make you a solemn promise. I will never, ever, cheat you or use you or expose you to any risk I can possibly avoid. Or put Sasha at any risk.”

  Natalia stayed silent for several minutes, changing her mind and pouring her own wine. “I believe you, about us.”

  She didn’t, Charlie decided. She wanted to—maybe would come to, in time—but at the moment there was too much to forget. He took Sir Rupert Dean’s fax from his pocket and slid it across the table toward her. “Now it’s official, I suppose we can talk about it.”

  She smiled, relieved it had been this easy, reading it slowly, not looking up for several minutes. “Those are all the facts there are?”

  “Seems like it.”

  “How do you feel about working with the SIS?” she asked, anticipating the answer.

  “I don’t like working in groups. Cartright won’t be the only person.”

  “It’s an order, Charlie,” said Natalia, at once worried.

  “They won’t know that, will they? They might even have their uses.” He sipped his whiskey. “Read up on what I could about Yakutskaya, from the embassy library. Seems a hell of a place. There was an embassy assessment from here, in Stalin’s time, just at the suggestion of the gulags that was marked doubtful because the descriptions weren’t considered humanly possible.”

  “Even though Stalin’s been denounced and disgraced, public records stay sanitized,” said Natalia.

  “I won’t take a paperback and sun oil.”

  Natalia refused the anxious flippancy. “Be careful.”

  Charlie waited. When Natalia didn’t continue he said, “Everyone and his dog out to screw me?”

  “I won’t let you be exposed to any risk I can possibly anticipate and prevent,” said Natalia, matching his earlier promise.

  At once, urgently, Charlie shook his head. “Don’t anticipate for me! Let me anticipate for myself.”

  “So you don’t trust me!”

  “We’re not talking us!” insisted Charlie, “We’re talking gutter survival. I’ve been there: lived my life there. You haven’t, not operationally. Leave me to watch my own back, until I ask for help. That way there’s no confusion.”

  In his opinion she couldn’t do without his help, but he could do without hers, judged Natalia. “There isn’t a score to even, Charlie.”

  “I’m not balancing scores,” persisted Charlie, unhappy at her response. “This hasn’t anything to do with your not talking to me before now … .” He waved the London fax still lying between them. “You think the Americans got the same?”

  “Positive.”

  “So,” Charlie said patiently, although still with some urgency. “We’ve got fifty-year-old unreported, totally unknown murders of apparent English and American officers. We’ve got a hostile, probably obstructive local authority. We’ve got a resented Moscow intrusion. Without doubt someone involved from America. And in effect, I’m working under monitor … .” He paused, trying to imagine anything he’d left out. Unable to, he went on, “Each and every one of whom—with the possible exception of whoever America sends—will be trying to discredit each and everyone else. There’s no way, from a distance of three thousand miles, you could or can anticipate what will be going on. Not in a way to help me … .” He gulped at his whiskey, needing the pause. Who the fuck was going to help him, then? It was the worst possible scenario, a bunch—a committee—of disorganized, fractious, warring people. And committees-working with them, for them, being part of them—ranked on Charlie’s hate list equal to tight shoes, ice in single malt and the need constantly to justify his expenses. Maybe, even, a little higher than all three.

  “I wasn’t thinking of three thousand miles away,” said Natalia, quietly. “I was thinking about back here, in Moscow.”

  Charlie drank some more whiskey, matching her seriousness. “I’d be grateful. And need it.”

  Maybe she needed it more than him, thought Natalia. “I’m frightened, Charlie. Nothing’s working out as it should.”

  “It hasn’t started yet!”

  “I’m worried how it’s going to finish.”

  Charlie responded before Natalia when Sasha cried out. He was back within minutes from the child’s bedroom, after resettling her. “She had a bad dream.”

  “I’m having them, too,” said Natalia. “And they don’t go away when I’m awake.”

  It was Charlie’s idea for he and Natalia to test their intuition one against the other by refusing any prior opinion of the Russian group with whom he would be going to Yakutskaya, not even to be told their names. It meant his going to the Interior Ministry totally unprepared, because there hadn’t been the prior contact he’d half expected from the American embassy and Charlie hadn’t called Saul Freeman: there was no benefit—not yet at least—and he certainly didn’t intend conveying even an impression of a joint operation, despite Sir Rupert Dean’s assurance that London and Washington had agreed on complete cooperation.

  Charlie’s initial surprise on entering Petr Travin’s office was that it was Miriam Bell, the FBI chief’s deputy, and not Saul Freeman himself who was already there. She had a yellow legal pad on a primly crossed leg, the skirt of her severe business suit cove
ring her knee. The blond hair was in a tightly coiled chignon. She gave the barest response to Charlie’s greeting. So, too, did the Russian pathologist and the forensic scientist at Travin’s introduction, but Vadim Lestov stood, smiled and insisted in experimental English that he was delighted to meet Charlie. Seemingly reminded, Travin said there was an interpreter available if necessary. Miriam said it wasn’t, ahead of Charlie.

  “That, at least, might make things easier,” commented Travin. “At the moment very little else does.”

  “I’d appreciate knowing what else there is, beyond what was sent to my State Department,” said Miriam.

  The Ice Maiden Meets the Ice Mummies, thought Charlie, sitting back contentedly. Except that was hardly Miriam Bell’s reputation. According to Freeman, who enjoyed not only kissing but telling, she swore like the devil and was more than willing to use the body of an angel to each and every advantage. Although she did have a figure made for underwear commercials, it was in other ways he needed to know a lot more about her, decided Charlie. He wondered, idly, if Miriam had been as disappointed in Freeman’s fuck-by-numbers technique as Irena.

  To the side of the huge room there were two stenographers and an operator at a recording machine. International crime-fighting cooperation, like justice, had to be seen to be done, Charlie supposed. During Alexei Popov’s unsuspected tenure of an office very similar to this there’d been vodka as well as tea from a traditional samovar for such encounters. But then Popov had hidden deceit behind friendliness.

  “There were some belongings on the bodies but nothing that could identify them,” offered Travin.