“Where did your father’s parents tell you she was buried?” demanded Lestov.
“They didn’t. I mean, they didn’t know. They said there’d just been a notification that she’d been killed.”
“Where?” persisted the Russian detective.
“I don’t know that, either. They never said.”
Charlie deferred to Miriam when Lestov invited them to join the questioning, as always wanting the benefit of everyone else’s input before making his own. And was disappointed, even wondering if Miriam was using the same ploy to hold back for his contribution before making hers.
Charlie took his time, actually repeating some of Lestov’s questions hopefully to lessen the slightest edge of resistance he detected in Belous’s response to the American.
“Your grandparents were extremely proud of your mother?” he asked, edging toward his own agenda.
“Rightfully so,” said Belous. He had wispy, receding hair and the pallor of a permanent indoor worker.
“Indeed,” agreed Charlie, wondering at the defensiveness. “But they were your father’s parents?”
Belous frowned. So did Lestov. Questioningly Belous said, “Yes?”
“Weren’t they proud of a son who died in one of the most heroic episodes of the Great Patriotic War?”
“Of course they were!” replied Belous, indignantly.
“None of your photographs show him with your mother.”
“The newspaper appeal was for information about her, not him.”
“So you do have photographs of them together?”
“Not now.”
“What happened to them?”
“I don’t know. My grandparents showed me some, when they were telling me about my parents. I don’t know what happened to them after my grandparents died.”
“What were they photographs of?” demanded Miriam.
“Their wedding.”
“When was that?”
“June 1941.”
“How many were there?” Charlie bustled in. He didn’t believe parents would dispose of photographs of their son but keep those of their daughter-in-law.
“Four, I think.”
“Doing what?”
The man shrugged. “They were wearing the same clothes in each, so I guess they were all taken at the same time. There was one I remember showing them relaxing; nothing in the background. It was dated June 1940. The other two showed the Catherine Palace behind them, so it had to be Tsarskoe Selo, where they worked.”
“They worked?” seized Charlie. “You hadn’t told us that. What did your father do?”
Belous flushed. “He was the senior restorer at the palace. That’s how they met, when my mother joined the curator’s staff.” The man shifted uncomfortably.
Charlie’s feet gave a psychosomatic twinge, a usual body and mind indicator that he was going in the right direction, even if he didn’t know what the destination might be. Lestov and Miriam sat unmoving, waiting, as if they expected to learn something, too. Cautiously Charlie said, “I think we might have gone too quickly over what you told the Moscow News. And us, earlier. I’d like to make sure I’ve got everything right. Your mother and father worked together at Tsarskoe Selo until the German invasion in 1941. Your mother escaped, rescuing a substantial amount of the Catherine Palace treasures, and your father stayed behind and died just before the siege lifted, in 1943 …?”
“No,” said Belous, shifting again. “The paper got that wrong; made it a better story, I suppose. My father was drafted into the army long before the invasion. He left St. Petersburg-or Leningrad, as it then was-almost immediately after he and my mother married.According to my grandparents, they got married because he was being moved.”
“So where did your father die?” came in Miriam, again.
“They were never quite sure. My mother never showed them the official notice. They thought it was somewhere near the Polish border, Lvov in the Ukraine or on the other side, near Lublin.”
“You told us your grandparents virtually brought you up by themselves, after your mother came to Moscow?” probed Charlie, hoping Miriam wouldn’t interrupt again too quickly.
“I believe so. I can’t remember my mother.”
“Not ever having been with you?”
“No.”
“What age would you have been when they told you about her and your father?”
“I’m not sure. Seven, eight, nine-something around that age.”
“Is that when you saw the photographs of your mother and father together?”
“That would have been the first time, I suppose, yes.”
Charlie was intrigued at the man’s apparent selective memory. This was turning out to be a far different encounter than he’d imagined. “They were proud of her? Talked about her a lot?”
“Yes.” Belous relaxed slightly.
“When they told you about her for the first time, did they tell you she was away a lot?” Charlie was aware of the other man relaxing further. So what had made him tense?
“She had an important job, they said.”
“Doing what?” demanded Lestov.
“They never told me.”
“You don’t have any photographs of your mother in any sort of uniform?” Belous was lying, Charlie knew. To have told her bereaved son what his mother had done would have been the first thing proud grandparents would have done.
“No.”
“What about your father? Any photographs of him in his army uniform?”
Belous hesitated. “It looked like a uniform in the pictures in Tsarskoe Selo. I’m not sure.”
He was, Charlie decided. “Weren’t you ever told what army group or unit he was in?”
Belous shrugged. “He was killed at a battlefront. He must have been a soldier, mustn’t he?”
No, thought Charlie, who from his previous days’ study and the emerging attitude of Fyodor Belous believed he had a good idea of the wartime employment of both the man’s parents. The outside bits of the jigsaw were beginning to fit, but the center of the picture remained blank. He was curious if Miriam and Lestov thought the same. “You were seventeen when your grandparents died, within a month of each other?” said Charlie, picking up on what had been established in Lestov’s earlier questioning.
“Yes,” said the man.
“And you lived all that time in an apartment at Ulitza Kirova?”
“Yes.”
“They’re impressive apartments. Big,” said Charlie, who’d specifically gone there on his way to the ministry. “Your grandfather must have been an influential man: a Party worker like yourself, perhaps?”
Belous stared back warily, unspeaking for several moments. “It was allocated to my mother as a reward for what she did in Leningrad. They were allowed to keep it, after she died and was honored. Why is this important?”
“We’re trying to discover how and why your mother was murdered,” reminded Charlie. “Everything’s important. Tell us about things you remember in the apartment. Were there pictures, prints, on the walls. Ornaments around the place?”
“I don’t understand that question!” protested the man.
“Your mother worked in the palace of Catherine the Great: enjoyed things of rare beauty,” said Charlie, whose reading had extended to studying the illustrated masterpiece catalogue. “I would have expected her to try to decorate such a special apartment with things of special beauty.”
“You are suggesting my mother stole things!”
“Not at all,” lied Charlie. “Anything from the Catherine Palace would have been too well known, too well documented, for anyone to have kept them in Russia. Your mother would not have beenhonored as she was if there had been the slightest doubt about her honesty.”
Belous regarded him doubtfully. “There were some pictures, I suppose. A few ornaments. Nothing I remember particularly.”
Back to the selective memory, Charlie recognized. “Do you still have any of them?”
“No,” said the man, too quickly.
“They were sold?” demanded Charlie, directly.
“I don’t know.”
“If they weren’t sold, you’d still have them, wouldn’t you?”
“I don’t remember. They just weren’t there, after my grandfather died.”