There was a further long silence, this time for the incredulous director-general to find the words. He eventually said, “You have any more conspiracy theories? Or is this the last?”
“That’s it,” said Charlie. “Our only protection is to find out everything. Only by knowing it all can we defend ourselves.” But more importantly defend myself and Natalia and Sasha, although not in that order or priority.
“I’m compromised, aren’t I? By having agreed to meet you like this?”
“No,” said Charlie. “This meeting never took place.”
“Would you swear to that, under oath, if this evening was ever discovered and put before a tribunal inquiry?”
“Yes,” said Charlie, at once. “If it’s morally-and philosophically-right for a wartime general knowingly to sacrifice the lives of eight hundred men to save those of eight thousand, isn’t it morally-and philosophically-right to tell a small lie to establish a more important truth?”
“No!” refused the other man, just as quickly. “Your morality and your philosophy don’t work. Any more than your logic.”
“They do if I discover that truth,” insisted Charlie. “That’s what’s going to keep us in existence.” And me in Moscow, he thought.
“What happens if you fail to discover it?”
“I won’t.” Because I can’t, Charlie mentally added.
“You haven’t eaten your sandwiches,” said the older man.
“They’re very good,” Charlie said politely, beginning at last.
“The pickle’s homemade,” said Dean. “Jane does her own. She likes growing things.”
“I can’t get anything like this in Moscow.”
“Perhaps she could find you a pot, before you leave.”
“That would be very kind.”
“Don’t ever imagine that this evening has established any special, back-channel situation between us, will you?”
“No, sir.”
“Good. Never take my inexperience for softheartedness.”
After more than a week of being starved of any apparent progress, the Moscow announcement of a further although unspecified development caused the renewed media uproar that Vadim Lestov had predicted.
“Having finally returned to give us an explanation, you can’t explain it!” attacked Gerald Williams, eagerly and at once. He’d definitely made his mind up: anything he could do to show up the man’s inability would all contribute to what he intended at the end.
Cunt, thought Charlie. The seating arrangements put him at the bottom of the table, with the control group pincering him from either side, which Charlie supposed would be the composition of the sort of tribunal Sir Rupert Dean had talked about the previous night. To which he’d said he’d have no difficulty lying under oath, Charlie remembered. Doing just that without an oath, he said, “Not abouttoday’s announcement, no. But as it has been announced, I’ll obviously be told, won’t I?”
“Will you?” demanded Williams.
For the most fleeting of moments Charlie allowed himself to imagine the effect upon the overweight man if he’d said just how sure he now was of being told and by whom. He contented himself-only just-by saying, “Trust me.”
The financial director’s face mottled at the awareness of being mocked, but before he could speak Jocelyn Hamilton said, “We’ve heard through the Foreign Office that the FBI has been on from the American embassy in Moscow, wanting to speak to you.”
“She’s been on to Cartright, too,” hurried in Williams, determined that nothing should be left out.
“So it could be a breakthrough,” finished the deputy director-general. “If it’s that important, perhaps this is a mistimed visit?”
“I ordered the recall,” reminded Dean.
“It will be easy enough for me to return Miriam Bell’s call from here, later,” said Charlie. It wasn’t Miriam Bell’s style to chase like this. So she was panicking. So, too, were the Foreign Office and MI6. Everyone running around like chickens with their heads cut off. But who was wielding the ax?
“Considering your apparent belief that another English officer was involved, you seem remarkably relaxed,” suggested Hamilton.
“That, above all else, is what we need to discuss,” said Patrick Pacey, the political officer.
“Perhaps we’d get a more comprehensive picture if we let Charlie talk without so much interruption,” proposed the director-general.
“A comprehensive picture would be very welcomed, if it’s at all possible,” said Williams, overstressing the condescension.
Fuck you, like you want so badly to fuck me, thought Charlie. While he sat, waiting, he decided that although he scarcely needed any preparation, the previous night’s never-happened encounter with the director-general had been more than a useful rehearsal, sifting in his mind the gold nuggets to keep back from the obscuring silt. Reminded by the same conversation, Charlie decided that so many organizations, agencies and people were involved that there was absolutely no risk of his inadvertently even hinting at his very specialsource. Abruptly, disconcertingly, Charlie was seized by the thought that he’d missed something, failed to realize or recognize something that he should have. The men at the table began to shift impatiently-Jeremy Simpson very obviously looking questioningly at the political officer-and Charlie tried to push the unsettling impression aside but only partially succeeded. He had to force the intended ridicule. “I thought I’d wait to make sure the finance director had finished.”
Gerald Williams’s face flooded red. Before the man could speak, Dean said tightly, “I think we’re all waiting,” and Charlie acknowledged he’d gone too far. He still thought, Fuck it.
Then he thought bullshit baffles brains and set out his encapsulation in what appeared great detail, beginning chronologically, from the reindeer herder’s discovery of the bodies. He went through the first and second autopsies, itemizing what had-and had not-been found in the grave and on the bodies. He gave a lot of time to the entrapping press conference-conscious of Gerald Williams’s smirk at the admission of being tricked-to illustrate the animosity between Yakutskaya and Russia. He talked of Gulag 98 being a special prison, although keeping back his first nugget, the names of the fifteen German prisoners who had been there in 1945. Neither did he say anything about his full discovery from the Document Center in Berlin. And he didn’t disclose the name of the dead American as George Timpson. With their art-connected background the presence of Raisa Belous and Simon Norrington had in some way to be linked to looted Nazi art treasure, a suggestion Charlie offered with the reminder that Raisa had belonged to the specially formed Russian Trophy Brigade that matched and at times exceeded the Nazis in Moscow’s indiscriminate art rape of Europe. The injuries to the skeleton in the Berlin grave proved, Charlie insisted, that the man had been killed to provide the identity for Simon Norrington, from dog tags and personal items stripped at Yakutsk and put on the Berlin body: the face of the victim had been destroyed beyond recognition, all teeth smashed and no finger ends-and therefore no possible fingerprints-left.
“Killed to order?” demanded Jeremy Simpson, the prescient lawyer. “Are you suggesting Norrington was killed to order? A far-reaching, carefully calculated conspiracy?”
“It fits,” asserted Charlie, unworried by the obvious disbelief from everyone in the room, even shared maybe by Sir Rupert himself. What concerned Charlie more was the still persistent, intrusive feeling of having overlooked something!
“Stuff and nonsense!” sneered Williams, who never swore. Addressing the lawyer, Williams said, “Is there anything we’ve been told this morning that you’d be prepared to argue in a court and expect to be taken seriously?”