“I think so. Can you tell me what they did?”
“Immediately,” said Lewis. And he did.
The afternoon sessions had become routine, an examination and often reexamination of everything from the previous twenty-four hours unless there was something Lestov considered more urgent, which hedid the recall of Miriam Bell so soon after Charlie Muffin’s departure.
“You think there’s a connection?” demanded Natalia, who knew well enough from Charlie’s Berlin calls there wasn’t. Would Charlie have come up with anything by the time they next spoke?
“It’s too much of a coincidence,” insisted Lestov.
“What did she say?”
“That she’d been summoned to a reevaluation conference in Washington.”
“How good has her cooperation been, until now?”
“She wants more than she gives. I’d guess we’re holding back in equal measure.”
“What do you think about this?”
“The most obvious is that they’ve identified their victim. Maybe even know why he was there,” suggested the man.
Knowing from Charlie of the soft, late-night knocks on Miriam Bell’s Yakutsk hotel room door, Natalia said, “Who’s cooperated the most, out of the two of them?”
“Nothing in it,” judged Lestov, at once.
“So a reevaluation conference is a lie?”
“Inevitably,” accepted Lestov.
“What do we do?” Natalia invited.
“London and Washington have got to think we’ve got more than we have.”
“Yes,” agreed Natalia, doubtfully.
“Has there been any response about Larisa Krotkov?”
“Nothing.”
“Why don’t we use it?” questioned Lestov.
“Use what, how?” Natalia frowned.
“Issue a statement, without naming Larisa Krotkov, of a further mysterious connection with Tsarskoe Selo: generate the sort of publicity we did with the photograph of Raisa Belous. Maybe hint it has something to do with a second woman. It’ll bring them back, force them into an exchange.”
“Yes,” agreed Natalia, needing only to know what the Americans had. “It would, wouldn’t it?”
In Berlin Charlie eased back in the tiny cubicle that had been made available to him at the former American Document Center, gazing down tired-eyed but briefly euphoric at the photograph included in the comparatively small amount of material devoted to the American OSS period in the city, prior to the CIA. So small, in fact, that it probably shouldn’t have been there at all. And more probably still was unknown to the CIA, which grew from the Office of Strategic Services, or any other Washington department, certainly none overseen by the ubiquitous Kenton Peters.
Incredibly it was the instant recognition of the girl, not of the heavily bespectacled man, that had first registered with Charlie from the copied scrap Miriam found. But this print was intact, not cut as it had been to fit into the dead American’s pocket in the Yakutsk grave. There were a further seven men and two other girls smiling out at the camera. Charlie’s second instant identification was of a dress-uniformed Simon Norrington, without having to read the captioned name. He didn’t need the caption, either, to pick out Raisa Belous as one of the other two girls.
There was none of the previous day’s frigidness from the cemetery registration clerk when Charlie shuffled into her office two hours later. She said at once, nervously, “I’m sorry. We still haven’t sorted it out.”
“I’m sure you’re trying,” soothed Charlie. “I was wondering if you could do me a slightly unofficial favor.”
“Maybe,” the woman said, doubtfully.
“You’ve got contacts with your American counterparts in their Battle Monuments Department?”
“Yes.”
“Do they have their Second World War dead on computer?”
“Yes,” she said again.
“To save me time, could you give them a call to see where Lieutenant George Timpson is buried?”
“Could it help with our problem over the three missing visits?” she asked, anxiously.
“It very well could,” said Charlie, smoothly. “I like to know about visits to Timpson’s grave, too.”
The clerk only had to hold for the time it took the Americanofficial to check his Arlington, Virginia, register alphabetically. Lieutenant George Timpson had been killed, according to the file, on the same day as Simon Norrington and was supposedly buried in Plot 42 in the American cemetery at Margraten, in the Netherlands. Into the telephone the woman said, “No. We don’t understand it here, either. Of course I’ll let you know.”
She put the telephone down and said to Charlie, “They don’t have any supporting dockets for the five visits to Timpson’s grave, either. This is incredible.”
“Something like that,” agreed Charlie.
She nodded to the telephone. “You won’t tell anyone I did that, will you?”
“I won’t if you won’t.”
When Charlie got back to the Kempinski, Lieutenant Colonel Rupert Jackson was in the foyer and Charlie decided he’d already learned more from the man’s presence than the military attache was going to discover from waiting so patiently.
Charlie parted from the military attache after an hour and two malts, insisting he was flying directly back to Moscow, and used the public telephones in the lobby to avoid the switchboard. Natalia answered at once, expectantly, hearing Charlie through to the end before bringing him up to date.
“I agree with Lestov,” said Charlie. “Two people at the same time from Tsarskoe Selo can’t be a coincidence. What’s her name?”
Charlie’s hesitation at being told lasted so long that Natalia thought they’d been disconnected, calling his name. Charlie said, “Larisa Krotkov is the woman next to Timpson in the photograph I’ve got in front of me right now.”
Now it was Natalia’s turn to remain silent for several moments. “What about the statement Lestov suggested?”
“Make it!” said Charlie. “It’s true, isn’t it? But have Lestov get back to Tsarskoe Selo, for anything they might have about her.”
“He’s already doing that. This make anything clearer to you?”
“Not yet. What about Novikov and his family?” Could the lead come from whatever the doctor knew?
“Shouldn’t take any time at all. I’ve approved his application.”
“Sufficient for me to go to London, though?” He was still unsurewhether it would be necessary to go to America, so he decided against mentioning it.
He was glad he had when Natalia said, “But not for any longer than necessary, remember?”
The director-general was just as quick personally answering his direct line and, like Natalia, let Charlie talk without interruption.
“That’s preposterous.”
“It fits.”
“Prove it.”
“Allow me to.”
27
Sir Rupert Dean’s Hampstead house adjoined the heath and had an expansive garden of its own, adding to the intended country impression. As he walked up the long, low hedge-lined path, Charlie saw a woman wearing a shapeless gardening hat and gloves among a jungle of large-leafed greenery in a conservatory attached to the right of the house. It was she who answered the door, a trowel still in her hand. The hair beneath the hat was gray and a face that had never known makeup was unlined and tranquil. She smiled as if he were an old friend.
“He’s expecting you,” she said, when Charlie identified himself. Appearing aware of the trowel, she said, “Repotting xerophytes. They’re not as hardy as everyone thinks they are, you know; you need to be careful.”
“I wouldn’t know. I don’t have a garden,” said Charlie, following her into the house. He wondered if she’d have any use for the now-redundant beekeeper’s hat.
The room to which she directed Charlie was a true bibliophile’s library. Every available space was shelved from floor to ceiling, but there was no obvious order to their packed-together, one-on-top-of-the-other contents, books of every size hodgepodged unevenly together,waiting to be read or reread, not assembled for wall decoration. Others overflowed onto the floor, forming tiny battlements. Dean sat beneath a bright reading lamp in front of a dead fireplace, its emptiness unsurprisingly filled with a profusion of still more greenery. The book was bastard-sized, the cover print original German.