“I already worked that out,” said Lestov, pained.
In her fury Miriam missed the sarcasm. It had to be something very dramatic indeed for Charlie to have been called back like this. So she wasn’t ahead of everyone after all. The opposite. Way behind. But why hadn’t the son-of-a-bitch called? Making a point, obviously. Bastard! And why was Washington closing her out, insisting they couldn’t locate the relevant OSS files? Or trace any of the German names she’d asked to be identified, which she didn’t think Lestov had believed when she’d told him? Who the fuck’s side were they on? She grew angrier at her impotence. Petulantly she said, “So much for share and share alike! All right by me. I’ll play his rules from now on. Cut him out.”
Well aware by now of Miriam’s stop-at-nothing ambition, Lestov was not surprised at her peevishness but thought she sounded vaguely ridiculous. “Don’t you think we should wait to see if we can afford to?”
The Russian was right, Miriam accepted. “Let’s take a rain check on tonight, darling. I need to get back to the embassy and tell Washington straightaway.” She couldn’t think of a way to avoid admitting Charlie had gone off without telling her and knew she was going to appear pretty damned stupid.
Lestov wasn’t surprised at that announcement, either. His own possible benefit already worked out, he said, “One thing this should prove to us is the importance of you and I exchanging absolutely everything: no holding back, whatever we might be officially told to do.”
“I thought that was our understanding already,” said Miriam. She probably would have to do so if she stood any chance of catching up and saving her ass.
“It’s certainly mine,” said Lestov. He wasn’t particularly upset at Miriam canceling the evening. On his way to the hotel he’d become excited by an idea he had no intention whatsoever of discussing with her, as well as an oversight that needed correcting. Now he could go back to the ministry and start working at once. The barman finally condescended to move toward them. It gave Lestov a lot of satisfaction to walk away before the man reached them. He didn’t leave a tip for the previous drinks, either.
At the Lesnaya apartment Sasha handed the telephone back for Natalia to finish the conversation with Charlie and afterward said, “He is going to stay my daddy, isn’t he? He is coming back?”
“Yes,” said Natalia. “He’s going to stay your daddy forever.”
“Good,” said the child, positively. “I don’t want anybody else.”
“Neither do I,” said Natalia.
“The Foreign Office has been told by the State Department Charlie Muffin is here in England,” protested Patrick Pacey, the political officer. “According to the Ministry of Defense he’s turned up in Berlin. Both want explanations why they weren’t informed!”
“Charlie must have detoured,” said Dean, easily. “And have a reason. And we’re not required to advise departments either in advance or after initiating an inquiry in an investigation that we’re officially in charge of. The Ministry of Defense and Washington can go to hell.”
“He should have advised us,” said Hamilton. “He just can’t go wandering off.”
“I warned you,” said Gerald Williams. “Warned everyone. The man does what he likes and we’ll all suffer because of it.”
Charlie had been right about the reaction from the rest of Whitehall, thought Dean, reflectively. And why was it so important to America?
“Berlin is quite safe,” insisted Boyce. “We tidied it up when it all began.”
“Where, exactly, is the damned man? England or Germany?”
“Dean thinks he’s moving somewhere between the two.”
“Thinks! Why doesn’t he know? I don’t like this man doing what he likes, when he likes. We’re not properly in control,” objected Peters. “I’ve got a replacement for Packer. I don’t think we should wait any longer.”
“It wouldn’t look right, so soon. Don’t forget what Dean put on record. He’s too independent: he’d make a fuss. I’m still seeing everything that’s coming in. Muffin’s still way off course. We’ll let him continue going around in circles. It’s actually causing more confusion than we’d hoped to create.”
“I’m going to close down my end,” decided Peters. “I think you should do the same.”
“Not yet, Kenton,” said the other man, who disliked the American’s need always to be in complete charge. “We’ll let my end run on for the moment.”
25
It rained, very softly, a drenching mist. The ground had become soaked before they tried to extend the surrounding plastic for some overhead protection. There wasn’t enough sheeting. All it had done was narrow the gap through which the water came, adding to themorass in which they stood. The mud of the partially redug grave came up to the diggers’ ankles and the surrounding grass was quickly churned into mire beneath the shuffling feet of the rest of them. Jackson’s inappropriately bright red and white golf umbrella kept their heads and shoulders dry, but Charlie could feel the dampness seeping in through his spread-apart shoes. The need to wear them into comfortable collapse was always a problem in the wet.
There had been formal introductions at the cemetery lodge but no conversation afterward. The German officials hunched under their own umbrellas. The plump medical examiner, whose name Charlie had caught as Wagner, kept looking accusingly at Charlie, as if their dawn misery was his personal fault. The embassy padre, now occupied in head-bent prayer, had earlier looked equally upset at Jackson’s umbrella. The priest himself didn’t have any covering. His hair and nose dripped. It was more crowded than originally intended inside the dank enclosure because of Charlie’s visit the previous day.
Charlie and Jackson had gone directly from the cemetery to the embassy and failed to find any official approach to account for the three recorded but untraceable visits, which, inexplicably in Charlie’s opinion, had caused the head of chancellery to send a second secretary today. His attendance had, in turn, ensured that of the previous day’s registration clerk, no longer patronizingly hostile but instead anxious for them to know she had gone through the entire ledger to ensure the slips hadn’t been wrongly indexed, which they hadn’t been, and a nervous official from the War Graves Commission, who’d assured Charlie there was nothing in their local Berlin directories, either, but that a full search was being carried out in London. Charlie acknowledged that the official motions had to be gone through and didn’t tell them they were wasting their time. He also didn’t tell Jackson.
The diggers were even more deeply immersed when they located the coffin, which they did at first by feel, and sunk even farther, up to their elbows, groping into the quagmire to slip lifting canvas beneath the casket.
There was a muffled, shoulder-shrugging conversation between the German officials before Wagner said to Charlie, “What are you looking for?”
Charlie shrugged back. “Whatever’s there.”
“Anything of forensic importance could be destroyed, attempting a preliminary examination in these conditions.”
“Don’t let’s try, then,” said Charlie, who’d already decided that, as he’d also decided that, remote though the possibility would have been, anything outside the coffin, at the bottom of the grave, would have been lost, too.
The embassy padre invited them all to pray as the slime-coated coffin came into view with a slurped, sucking sound, and Charlie dutifully bent his head with everyone else, wondering idly where God had been when Simon Norrington’s head had been blown off in Siberia, or, indeed, throughout the entire Second World War. Perhaps He’d been busy.
Instead of edging back against the sweating plastic to make room for the box, Charlie led the way out. The ambulance attendants, who’d so far remained dry inside their vehicle, emerged reluctantly to accept the body. Jackson promised the medical examiner he knew the way to the mortuary and the registration clerk and the War Graves officially repeated that they’d go on looking for the missing dockets and Charlie said he appreciated their continuing efforts. The cemetery official exchanged signed documents with the medical examiner.