From that morning’s conversation with London, Charlie knew Sir Rupert Dean was also still waiting for a reply to his inquiry, made even earlier. The director-general hadn’t argued with Charlie’s open accusation that they were being played with by every other interested government ministry and department. Instead he’d told Charlie he wanted him back in London by the end of the week.
“It’s put a lot of extra pressure on me,” complained Raymond McDowell. “The biggest continuing diplomatic dispute between Germany and Russia is stolen or disputed wartime art, even after all these years. I’ve averaged four cables a day from London since Raisa Belous was identified. So’s the ambassador.”
“I thought everyone was supposed to be fighting a war after 1939,” said Gallaway.
The limited military attache probably did, accepted Charlie. He decided to excuse himself as soon as possible from this aimless discussion. He wanted to be at the end of a telephone if Natalia called. There was even more to talk about after Dean’s week’s-end ultimatum.
McDowell said, “The Nazi treasure looting was more efficiently organized than the Final Solution. There was even a connection, of sorts. Hitler considered the people of Eastern Europe subhuman. He didn’t intend just to eradicate the Jewish race. Eastern Europeans were to go, too; become a vast slave resource while the Germans expanded eastwards to take over their countries. Anything of any cultural, artistic or historical significance was seized by Alfred Rosenberg’s E.R.R. organization: entire museums, libraries. And notjust by them. Goering, whose favorite was nudes, had Hitler’s permission to take whatever he wanted from occupied countries for an art gallery that was to be as big as Hitler’s, in Linz. Hitler had the plan and model of it with him when he committed suicide in the Berlin bunker; the speciality was to have been heroic Aryan portraits and sculptures. Himmler, Bormann, and von Ribbentrop each had their art squads; von Ribbentrop took every Renaissance painting he could lay his hands on in Italy. He had his own art-scavenging battalion, with three companies from it working exclusively for him in Russia alone ….”
Charlie began to concentrate, looking at the lecturing head of chancellery with sudden interest. It obviously all came from London and the detail was surprising. Maybe even more surprising was that the Foreign Office clearly considered it necessary to provide such an intense briefing. Calling upon his own specific, self-imposed modern history lesson, hopefully to encourage the diplomat further, Charlie said, “And the Soviet Union had the sort of Trophy Brigades that Ivan and Raisa Belous belonged to, with every front line regiment. The Soviet Trophy Brigades virtually trawled the countries-Germany particularly-when the war turned against Hitler. The almost obscene irony is that the Nazis made it easy for them: they’d stolen and got a lot of it conveniently together, for the Russians simply to pick up. Germany has officially listed something like three hundred thousand heritage treasures Russia refuses to give back. Moscow claims they’re war reparation.”
Gallaway snorted a laugh. “How can anyone argue the legality of that?”
“London did. And Washington,” deflated McDowell. “America’s OSS formed a special Art Loss Looting Investigation Unit. President Truman personally signed the order to ship two hundred European paintings to America, to go on touring exhibition. The intention was to hold on to them until Germany made its financial reparation. The paintings were only returned after American and European academics and art historians pointed out that America could be accused of the same cultural rape as the Nazis …”
Not all take and no give, thought Charlie; not a wasted morning, either! He hadn’t known of the existence of an American unit. But the FBI would. From which it logically followed that Miriam Bellwould, too. It had been almost forty-eight hours since Raisa Belous had been named and her art connection established. Time enough to have had the photograph Miriam had recovered from the body-and more recent ones of the corpse itself-checked through OSS archives. It might, even, account for the woman’s seemingly casual questioning of Fyodor Belous the previous afternoon and why, for the first time, she hadn’t wanted to talk things through after leaving the Russian ministry. If she already knew who her victim was-what he had been doing, even-all she would have needed to do was sit and listen during the meeting with Belous to ensure nothing emerged to endanger Washington’s cover-up. In fact, thought Charlie, warming to his speculation, it all made perfect sense of that intended cover-up and what he’d guessed to be the runaround to which he was being subjected. Still encouraging, he said to McDowell, “You’re remarkably well informed.”
“So are you,” challenged the man.
“Homework, here, after the Moscow News account,” said Charlie, more or less honestly. “I didn’t learn all you appear to have.”
“I asked for as much guidance as possible,” admitted McDowell.
“The Foreign Office suddenly seems to have a lot of information available,” suggested Charlie.
McDowell made an uncertain gesture. “It’s a sensitive area, particularly after all that business with Switzerland and Holocaust gold and bank accounts of Jewish concentration camp victims.”
“That’s spreading the net a bit wide, isn’t it?” questioned Cartright. “I can hardly imagine there was art treasure or looted Nazi gold in the prison colonies of Yakutsk!”
Charlie suddenly realized from the previous night’s conversation with Natalia what could have been there and was irritated for not thinking of it sooner. Natalia had even shown the way! Maybe, at last, there were a few pieces becoming clearer for the center of the jigsaw. There was actually an immediate direction-and reason-for his taking up the investigation away from Moscow as soon as possible, although not immediately to London. He’d already considered Berlin the place to go: where, hopefully, something no matter how small might have been overlooked.
He said, “It occurred to any of you we’re being jerked around in one bloody great cover-up?”
“Ours is not to reason why,” irritatingly cliched Gallaway. “We’ve got to obey orders.”
Charlie said, “I’d like to think that if I got shot in the back of the head, somebody, somewhere, someday, would try to find out why. Orders or no orders.”
Just the sort of cocky bloody-mindedness Gerald Williams had warned him to look out for, Cartright recognized. And by which his career could be badly affected-ruined-involved as he now was in this damned affair. And then there was that currency speculation business that the gorgeous and willing Irena had told him about. Definitely things he needed to talk about with Williams. Maybe even with his own department, too. Gallaway was right. If there was a cover-up there was a good reason, and it wasn’t their business here-certainly not Charlie Muffin’s-to question it.
The only sound in the White House suite of Dmitri Borisovich Nikulin was the faintest rustle as the president’s chief of staff turned the pages of what Natalia had placed before him thirty minutes earlier. Now she sat unmoving, outwardly in complete control, inwardly in turmoil. She knew-had known for months-that this moment was inevitable. But it had seemed so much easier-foolproof-talking it through with Charlie at Lesnaya than it did now, making the accusation to one of the most influential members of the Russian government about a deputy minister in that same government. The fact that the accusation was true-only this last, hopefully decisive device connived-wasn’t a reassurance. Nikulin had only moved Travin sideways. What if the presidential aide was a friend of Viktor Romanovich Viskov? Or Viskov had a protector even more influential and powerful than Nikulin?
Beside her, Colonel Vadim Lestov sat similarly statued, no longer awed or ill-at-ease in such baroque surroundings, although Natalia had no doubt he was as inwardly agitated by the sudden awareness of what she had directly involved him in.