Their wetness inside the BMW caused the windows to steam when Jackson put the heater on full. Charlie knew it wouldn’t be sufficient to dry his feet. He was lucky, he supposed, not to suffer from rheumatism.
Jackson said, “You think you’ll learn anything from whatever’s inside the coffin?”
“Just confirmation of what I already suspect, if indeed there is a body.”
The car swerved slightly at the attache’s snatched sideways look. “You think it might be empty?”
“I wouldn’t be speechless if it were.”
But it wasn’t.
The skeleton, largely in its expected shape, was still inside the now-opened coffin being extensively photographed when Charlie and Jackson were shown into the glassed observation annex raised above the forensic pathology examination room. Because of the elevationCharlie could see almost everything inside the box. What remained of the hairless skull was on its left side, horizontal to the shoulder area, which also appeared disarranged. There were isolated wisps of a thin, gauzelike cloth that Charlie presumed to be the shroud.
The medical examiner was standing back for the photographs and saw them enter. He was gowned, despite there being no risk of outside contamination of a corpse so long dead. Only when the German’s voice echoed into the viewing chamber (“There’s communication between us; there are permanent microphones on the ledge in front of you”) did Charlie see the pathologist was wearing a headset and voicepiece.
“Anything specific you want to establish?” Wagner added.
“Extent of the injuries that killed him,” set out Charlie, his list mentally prepared. “Every possible body measurement. And height. Your opinion, if you can reach it, about his possible body weight. It looks from where I am as if all the hair has gone, but if there are traces I’d like to know the color. Any orthodontistry which might help. Any indication from the bones of injury prior to his death: broken leg or arms, something like that. Anything, obviously, that might be in the coffin that you wouldn’t expect. Particularly personal objects. And anything else you can think of and I haven’t.”
Jackson sniggered at Charlie’s final remark. Wagner didn’t. After a pause the German said, “I will talk as I examine.”
The pathologist worked alone, lifting what sometimes appeared bone only a few millimeters in either length or diameter, virtually dismembering and reassembling the entire skeleton. Everything was measured and weighed in the transfer, every piece identified by its proper medical name, its size and weight itemized. What Charlie regarded as of major significance registered very early in the examination, but he did not interrupt until the pathologist finished the reconstruction.
“Severe physiogmatic trauma?” echoed Charlie.
“That’s what I said.”
“Would the face have been destroyed beyond recognition?”
“Without any doubt. There’s no trace of either cheekbone or the left jawbone, including the eye socket surround. Any teeth that remained have been shattered beyond any orthodontic comparison. There’s no nasal formation whatsoever. In my opinion he got hitdirectly in the face: death would have been instantaneous.”
“You also used the word severe to describe the hand injuries?” said Charlie.
“You can see for yourself, from where you are,” said Wagner.
“From where I am it looks as if both hands were totally smashed.”
“They have been,” agreed the doctor. “There is no right thumb or index finger.”
“What about the tips of fingers?”
Wagner had been looking toward the panoramic window separating them. Briefly he turned to bend over the examination table before coming back to them. “No finger-nor the left thumb-extends its full length to the final joint. Perhaps he put his hands in front of his face at the last minute, to shield himself from whatever hit him.”
It was a further two hours before the examination was complete. It was established that the unknown dead man had been one and three-quarter meters tall and from chest and body structure reasonably thickset. The dead man had suffered no bone damage injury prior to his death. There was no surviving hair, nor any unexpected personal objects in the coffin.
It was still only midday when they emerged from the mortuary. The rain had changed, driven down in solid walls by a wind that hadn’t been blowing earlier. Charlie didn’t think the graveside plastic would have survived if it had been. His feet got soaked again on his way to the car.
“Well?” queried Jackson, once they were inside.
“Sometimes it’s not what you find but what you don’t,” said Charlie.
Natalia was thinking the same, in Moscow.
She looked up from the yellowed sheets that Lestov had set out in front of her. “It could simply have failed to be recorded.”
The homicide colonel, bristle-chinned and light-headed from a totally sleepless night at his desk, shook his head. “It was my first chance fully to examine the records of Gulag 98, after getting them back from Travin. We all missed something important. They’re perfect. No omissions, no gaps. It was a very special camp indeed, at least while it existed.”
“So?” demanded Natalia.
“Look at the plot numbering,” urged the man. “It’s consecutive, a name recorded against every plot in a cemetery that no longer exists. There isn’t an entry for Larisa Krotkov. She was sentenced to life imprisonment, but there’s no record of her dying there. Or being buried there.”
What possible connection could there be with the disappearance of the visitors’ slips in Berlin? Natalia wondered, remembering the previous night’s telephone conversation with Charlie. “Gulag 98 was closed very soon after Stalin’s death. Inmates were either released or transferred.”
“She wouldn’t have been released, for conspiring with the enemy ….” He gestured to the mound of papers in front of Natalia. “Two hundred people were transferred. Every name is there. Larisa Krotkov’s isn’t.”
“What have you done about it?”
“Asked St. Petersburg for trial depositions. There aren’t any, for her. There are for five others, all men, accused of the same crime directly after the siege was lifted. The sentence was mandatory: execution.”
Natalia had spread the papers across her desk for comparison. Slowly she began stacking them, one on top of the other. “Conclusion?”
“Larisa Krotkov wasn’t sentenced to Gulag 98. She was sent there, a supposed prisoner, for a reason. And the only possible reason is something connected with Tsarskoe Selo. Which links her with Raisa Belous.”
It was wildly speculative, thought Natalia. But then so was everything else. “It could only have been with the knowledge-the positive direction-of the NKVD.”
“A search would need your authority,” Lestov pointed out.
Always looking backward, thought Natalia. “We’ve got a name and a date. It shouldn’t be too difficult to locate, if anything exists. She could even still be alive!”
“All we need to understand it all is someone living, not dead,” agreed Lestov.
“I’m station chief!” yelled Saul Freeman.
“And I’m the person you were happy to assign to this becauseyou were too fucking frightened of all the political implications to get involved yourself!” Miriam shouted back. She was red-faced, sweating, needing to support herself as she leaned across his desk to confront him, which was what she’d been waiting to do when he’d entered the office that day. Her overnight cable to Washington and its response lay between them.
“I don’t remember you putting up much of a fight.”
“I’m putting one up now. It’s totally political, isn’t it?” She put a flat hand close to her chin. “Right up to here? And I’m the fall guy if anything goes wrong-so fucking anxious to get there, fight for everything, that I didn’t see the curve. You bastard!”