“That’s what Miriam told me. Bizarre place, apparently.”
“Thought you might have gone yourself.”
“What about you?” hedged Freeman.
“Would have done in the old days,” agreed Cartright, as if he were volunteering something, seeing a way to follow. “MI5 in England is increasingly taking an FBI, crime-fighting role, so it had to be Charlie.”
The wine-Georgian-was poured without their being asked to taste it. The surprise was that it was drinkable.
“Interesting guy,” said Freeman, which was precisely the reaction Cartright wanted.
“No one at the embassy quite knows how to take him. Lot of experience, apparently. Bit unconventional.” Like the second phone call from Gerald Williams was unconventional, although it was a combined operation and Cartright had checked that the two financial directors were talking to each other in London. Cartright’s unease was not so much keeping an eye on a colleague as personal apprehension at that colleague being as odd and as unpredictable as he was finding Charlie Muffin to be.
“One of our guys died in that nuclear business,” reminded Freeman, although without hostility.
“There were some casualties, although not physical, at our embassy, too,” recalled Cartright, nervously. “You ever go out socially with him, find out what sort of guy he was?”
Freeman shook his head. “Gather he and a gal from our technical department in Washington got close on the nuclear thing, but he doesn’t seem particularly social, apart from the odd drink. Got a hell of an apartment, I understand. Never been there, though.”
“Neither have I.” Cartright decided he was wasting his time. “Got any interesting numbers to swap?”
Freeman smiled. “Got to know a fantastic Aeroflot stewardess.”
“Worth a hello call?”
“Wouldn’t be telling you if she wasn’t. Her name’s Irena.”
“It must be widely known that there was a camp nearby?” pressed Charlie.
“There were so many.”
“How did you remember Gulag 98?”
“My father.”
“You haven’t told anyone else? Not Ryabov or Kurshin?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I want something they can’t give me.”
“What makes you think I can?”
“I’m taking the biggest chance I’ve ever taken in my life, in praying that you might be able to. And until you do, you don’t get everything. Which is how I am protecting myself.”
9
In a long and often uncertain life, Charlie Muffin had met a lot of desperate men and recognized that Vitali Maksimovich Novikov was a very desperate man indeed. Without any compunction Charlie further decided it was an attitude to be taken every advantage of, certainly until the doctor stopped playing games and spelled out the deal he wanted. Everyone had to live, and to live it was first necessary to survive. It was a very good beginning.
The transport division was the same as the previous day. As theyassembled in the hotel parking lot, Charlie thought it was practical for Olga Erzin to have worn trousers, but as big as she was it created an unfair comparison between the Russian pathologist and the American, whose jeans were actually tailored.
As the vehicles moved off, Novikov said, “It’s getting hotter.”
He’d follow the other man’s pace at all times after the previous night’s approach, Charlie decided, settling in Novikov’s car. Which did not, of course, preclude a little prodding.
The sun was actually visible today and it was airless. The roads were permanently wet with the seepage from the deeper thawing of the road-edge tundra, and the insect swarms were much thicker and persistent. Charlie lowered the window, hoping the rush of passing air would blow them away. It didn’t seem to help. Seizing the obvious opening, Charlie said, “When the weather is normal, when you have your usual spring and summer here, does it get as hot as this?”
“This would be a very hot day. Unusually so.”
“At the end of your summer, after a period of warmth, how deep into the ground does the thaw reach?”
Novikov gave one of his nervous sideways glances, aware it was not a casual conversation about the weather. “About a meter, I suppose. Maybe less. Why?”
“How deep was the grave?”
Novikov drove on in silence for several moments. “Much deeper than that. At least a meter and a half. Kurshin took measurements.”
“Had anything been done to disinter the bodies, before you arrived ?”
“No.”
“But an arm was protruding?”
“Yes.”
“How much of an arm? To the wrist, the elbow, the shoulder?” asked Charlie.
“From the wrist. Not much of that.”
They were among the higgledy-piggledy nursery-rhyme buildings of the town again. The lines seemed longer outside the shaman temples on Prospekt Lenina. A lot of the people there-and on the other streets-were wearing their heavy winter clothes, unbuttoned and undone, expecting the phenomena to disappear at a finger snap or a shaman’s incantation.
Although it was only ten in the morning, there were already several men slumped drunkenly or sleeping against walls. One lay in the gutter. Novikov said, “Miners. They come into town once a month, to drink and fuck. There have to be houses, because normally it’s too cold, but they’re hardly brothels. Just shelters. There’s three in the next street back, by the vodka factory. I suppose there’s something significant that the factory is the biggest building in town.”
Charlie thought the red, brick-dust smear down an ocher wall looked like blood several moments before Novikov identified it as their mortuary destination. Charlie made a mental note to pick up later on the mine conversation.
The transformation of Olga Erzin in the surroundings of a mortuary was almost visible. She virtually expanded into an autocratic bully, clipping her words and responses, instinctively assuming superiority. It was Olga, not Novikov, whose mortuary and laboratory it was, who led the way up the rickety stairs into the building. She stopped just inside the autopsy room, exaggerating her disdain, making no effort to help Novikov or his two tentative assistants get the three naked corpses from the storage cupboards onto examination trolleys. Already on separate tables alongside each, like produce displays at a village fete, were the proper specimen containers augmented by village fete vegetable jars holding what Charlie guessed to be every removable organ of each body. Behind each, again on separate identifying tables, were the uniforms and their contents. At once Charlie saw, dismayed, that nothing had been done to keep the uniforms or the woman’s clothes in the subzero temperature at which they had survived for so long. Already mold had begun to fur the fabric, endangering possible stains or marks from the moment of death.
Charlie said to Novikov, “I’d appreciate it if you could keep it as simple-as nonmedically technical-as possible.” He smiled. “I’m going to need all the help I can get and you’re the only person who might be able to provide it.”
“That’s a hopeful expectation,” sniffed the Moscow pathologist.
“Which I’m sure will be met,” said Charlie, still smiling. “I’d appreciate your nontechnical input, too. That’s the understanding, isn’t it? Total and mutual cooperation?”
The woman looked sharply at Charlie, aware of the rebuke. She said, “I’ll look forward to your input, as well.”
“The sooner we start, the better, then,” said Charlie, easily.
The woman made as if to respond, but then apparently changed her mind. Instead she turned back to Novikov and peremptorily said, “Talk me through your examination.”
To Olga Erzin’s obvious irritation, Novikov translated every medical technicality into layman’s terms, identifying each organ in each container. Charlie listened patiently to the recital, waiting for the details of the actual injuries. At the same time, he tried his best to study the clothing, conscious for the first time that a space at the bottom of the individual tables was allocated to scene-of-crime photographs. They were either badly taken or badly printed-or perhaps both-but even from a distance of almost two meters Charlie thought he isolated something curious.