He said, “That was nostalgic.”
“I didn’t need the memories.”
“You’d better tell me about it.”
Natalia did, at last, in short, tight sentences, finally holding back nothing, looking away from him most of the time.
Charlie didn’t speak for several moments after she’d finished. “It was ridiculous, stupid, not to have told me from the beginning.”
“I know. Now. I didn’t guess how you’d react at there being an overhang from the Popov affair.”
“There was an official inquiry. You were completely exonerated.”
“Viktor Ivanovich was a member of the tribunal,” she reminded Charlie, in turn. “He obviously didn’t accept the finding.”
“There couldn’t be any other reason?”
“Not that I can think of. And I’ve thought about it a very great deal.”
Charlie raised his hands, warding off apology before he spoke. “You couldn’t have misunderstood?”
“Not after yesterday.”
“Which you seem to have won?”
“This time. I need to go on winning.”
“More than that, even. If they’re trying to destroy you, you’ve got to destroy them.”
“I’m so tired of playing games: our games, their game, anyone’s game!”
“We’re not playing games anymore,” insisted Charlie. “We’re going to fight.”
“With what? I was lucky yesterday-the timing was in my favor-but it was a fluke. If I don’t stay ahead on this every step of the way, I’ll be replaced.”
Charlie lapsed into silence again, immersed in thought. He wouldn’t say it-couldn’t say it-because the resolve had been obvious for a very long time and they’d shaken it to death like two dogs holding on to a single bone, but if Natalia were forced to leave the ministry-to become simply but all-importantly his proper legal wife, Sasha’s mother-all their personal working difficulties wouldbe ended, at a finger snap. But Natalia needed her job, as much as he needed his. Until now-uncertain, unsure now-both their personal lives had been a litany of one disaster imploding upon another. They were only confident about their professional ability and success, clinging to it as a blind man tightly holds his stick to get through each day without colliding with unseen obstacles. He said, “If they want a war, we’ll take it to them.”
Natalia said, “I’ve talked to Lestov. He thinks you had a lot you hadn’t shared. According to the American woman, you’re a sneaky son-of-a-bitch. Her words.” That was an exaggeration, but Natalia had no difficulty with it.
So, thought an unoffended Charlie, was Miriam Bell. “You knew that without being told.”
“Have you got something I can fight with?” demanded Natalia, gazing steadily at him.
Decision time, Charlie recognized: shit or get off the pot. Loyalty to the department? Or loyalty to Natalia? The department had cheated him and been disastrously cheated in return; and they’d cheat him again, if it became expedient to do so. Natalia had never cheated him-tried to even any score-despite the times and the ways he’d failed her. Nor, he thought, would she ever. And was the job as important to him as he’d tried to make out, with his elaborate blind man’s analogy? Charlie was surprised he even needed to pose himself the question.
He stood, breathing in deeply, offering his hand to bring her up with him, and began slowly wandering the path toward the hothouses. And as they walked, Charlie told Natalia all he knew or thought he knew: even, toward the end, his director-general’s now-ignored insistence that he offer as little as possible to gain as much as he could, until a reason was established for the English lieutenant being in Yakutsk.
“Miriam Bell’s right. You are a sneaky son-of-a-bitch.”
“Do you still have sufficient authority to try to find the records of Gulag 98?” demanded Charlie.
“It would have been Beria’s time. The NKVD,” Natalia recalled, talking as much to herself as to Charlie. “It’s said that for more than a layered mile beneath the Lubyanka there’s a virtual city beneath a city stretching as far as Red Square and the Kremlin and PloshchadSverdlova, under the Bolshoi: Stalin had his own railway system, to move around it. One entire level is occupied by archives, hundreds of millions of them. Yakutskaya was one of the biggest secrets, so records might have been destroyed, as they were in Yakutsk itself. But we won’t know that until we look.”
“Don’t be specific,” warned Charlie. “A general inquiry about camps is an obvious extension of the inquiry: something you’d be expected to do. Isolating a specific camp at the very beginning wouldn’t be, unless the information came from your own people.”
“Charlie!” she protested, pained.
“If we’re not going to take chances, we’re not going to take chances,” he said, offering Charlie Muffin logic. “Channel everything through you. You’ll know what you’re looking for. Dump the rest on Travin. Drown him. Nikulin is your secret weapon-so secret that he doesn’t know it.”
“You’re going to have to spell this out for me step by step!” protested Natalia.
“You’ll understand every little skirmish,” promised Charlie.
“Recognize something?” she demanded, stopping abruptly where they were.
Charlie gazed around the huge glassed building with its giant, roof-sized fern leaves, realizing for the first time they’d actually gone into one of the houses. “No,” he conceded.
“It’s the same one you walked me to when you admitted your defection was phony and that you’d lied,” identified Natalia. “It was right here you told me you were going to abandon me and go back to London.”
The recollection-and the remorse-was immediate. Charlie said, “I came back. And this time I’m not abandoning you.”
“No,” accepted Natalia. “It’s a good feeling.”
Going personally to the American embassy, leaving the protection of his own territory for the uncertainty of theirs, was as conscious a psychological act as dressing to be despised and therefore underrated, despite Miriam Bell’s suspicion. Charlie didn’t expect an identity for the murdered American to be freely offered if it had already been found, but he’d sense the nuance if there had been progress. There were other considerations, too. The FBI quarters at Ulitza Chaykovskovowere far more extensive and certainly more luxurious than his badger’s hole in which more than three people at any one time risked suffocation, and the American embassy mess extended happy hour to two and on occasions three. There was no drink price concession at all at the British bar. Charlie suspected Gerald Williams.
It had been Miriam’s number he’d called from the Lesnaya apartment before leaving to meet Natalia, and the Americans were waiting for him, easily accommodated in Saul Freeman’s office. It was little more than a passing impression that Miriam had showered and washed her hair and tried makeup on a face showing scarcely any sign of the Yakutsk ravages. His immediate concentration was upon two men already in the room, against a far wall almost as if they were not part of the intended gather. Charlie looked curiously, invitingly, to Freeman, who instead of introductions said, “Coupla guys from State. Just sitting in.”
The elder, white-haired man was clear-skinned and tight-bodied and beak-nosed, which, combined with the length at which he wore his hair, gave him a patrician appearance. It was the second man who held Charlie’s attention. He was slightly built and unobtrusively dressed in muted gray and sat completely unmoving. What registered most was washed-out blue eyes that never blinked. In Charlie’s experience men with no name who didn’t blink either wore six-guns in Western movies or ear protectors on practice ranges, where he’d never been able to stop blinking. And this man didn’t look at all like an actor.