“I’d like better proof,” conceded Simpson, uncomfortable at being Charlie’s critic instead of his defender. Pedantically he said, “Your main premise that there was another Englishman at the murder scene is the apparent finding in the grave of a button from a British officer’s battle-dress uniform, as well as a torn-out label and British-caliber bullet? But we don’t definitely know about the button; that’s based on a remark the Yakutsk pathologist thinks he overheard the Russian forensic scientist make when the man was using his laboratory facilities?”
“Yes,” said Charlie, accepting it to be his weakest evasion but with no way of telling them how he knew the button to exist.
“What on earth does a Yakutsk medical examiner know about an English officer’s battle dress or its fastenings?” demanded Hamilton.
“Absolutely nothing!” snatched Charlie. “Which is why he couldn’t have misheard or imagined the remark! Moscow knew it was an apparent British officer before sending their forensic expert. Who would, obviously, have been chosen for knowledge beyond his particular discipline. He would have known what a British uniform-and its buttons-looked like!” On second thought, maybe it wasn’t as weak as it had initially sounded. The rehearsal really had been useful.
“I think the suggestion is absurd,” rejected Williams. “Does the report of the Berlin pathologist state that the body in Norrington’s grave was murdered?” This really was going far better than he could have hoped, Williams thought. The man was being made to look ridiculous.
“No,” admitted Charlie. “That would be impossible, after so long.”
“So it’s purely your interpretation!” sneered Williams.
“The body was chosen to be that of Simon Norrington-had theman’s identity planted on it,” Charlie pointed out. If Gerald Williams hadn’t existed, he would have had to be invented; the man’s unthinking determination to oppose and argue with everything was taking all their minds from any awkward questions. Most importantly Charlie was able so far to avoid volunteering anything new.
“You think it could have been the Russians who tampered with the visitors’ records at the cemetery?” asked Patrick Pacey.
It could, even, have been possible, Charlie accepted, but he had to be careful with the reply. “The Russians took Berlin-totally controlled it, initially-and were responsible, I suppose, for the burials during those early days. But the Four Powers were in control when the Allied cemetery was created.” If there’d been colored ribbons and a stake tall enough, he could have led everyone a merry dance around the maypole. He was aware of the director-general regarding him quizzically.
“I don’t consider there’s anything to support the idea of another British officer being involved in this,” insisted the political officer, siding with Williams. “I expected a lot more from this meeting.”
“So did I,” said Hamilton.
“In fact,” said Williams, recognizing his support, “I think you should go back to Moscow as soon as possible, pick up whatever crumbs drop from the table of others and leave us to reach far more sensible and acceptable conclusions than you’re offering.”
Charlie gazed unspeaking at the fat man for several seconds, aware at last what had been nagging him, the feeling at once relief more than apprehension. Quietly, almost humbly, he said, “There are some more inquiries I want to make here first.”
“Which I’ve approved,” came in the director-general quickly, ahead of any opposing argument. “There’s certainly the need to speak again to Sir Matthew Norrington.”
“Isn’t the more immediate urgency finding out what the FBI in Moscow wants, as well as what this latest Russian declaration is all about?” demanded Hamilton.
Charlie was almost sad at the adjournment, so well did he consider the encounter to have been going, but it gave him time fully to consider Gerald Williams’s slip. The assertion to Sir Rupert Dean the previous night that Williams’s participation was entirely financial was unarguable. How, then, could Williams have known that MiriamBell had been in contact with Richard Cartright unless he, in turn, had been in direct touch with the SIS officer in Moscow? Cartright’s communication route was through his own, separate department. Which in turn, according to regulations, should have advised the director-general-as the Foreign Office had told the political officer-not the finance director. So Gerald Williams was talking, unofficially, to Richard Cartright. Who in Moscow had formed some relationship with Natalia’s sister. What silly men, Charlie thought. What silly, silly men.
The connection, from a side office off the director-general’s suite, was immediate. Miriam said, “You don’t write, you don’t phone, you don’t send flowers …?”
Forced cool, judged Charlie. “You called?”
“You didn’t, before you left.”
“It was a rush.”
“You still in London?”
Keep the pot bubbling, decided Charlie. “People aren’t happy.” Maintaining the pretense, he said, “Particularly when I’m here and Moscow’s issuing enigmatic statements.”
“It’s something to do with Tsarskoe Selo is all I know. I don’t know how it fits. If it fits at all, although I suppose it’s got to, somehow. Lestov wants to know when you’re getting back.”
Charlie frowned, not just at the immediately volunteered information-which he knew from Natalia to be accurate-but more at the tone of Miriam’s voice. “What’s the matter?”
“Problems with Washington. I could do with your being back here: talk through some stuff. When are you getting back?”
“A few things to sort out here first. You want to talk now?”
“Later. But not too much later. And you watch your back, you hear?”
“You think I need to?” asked Charlie, seriously.
“Yeah, I think you need to. Maybe we both do.”
“You think this new Tsarskoe Selo stuff is important?” Charlie pushed on.
“Lestov says it’ll take a few days to sort out.”
There was his excuse for not immediately returning, Charlie recognized. Still more, possibly. “You called the embassy twice?”
“Thought we had a deal. Wondered what happened to it.”
Ignoring her implied question, he said, “You spoke to Cartright?”
“My call got redirected. Anything wrong?”
“Not at all,” assured Charlie, who hadn’t initiated such an arrangement. “Obvious person to backstop.”
“There really are things to talk about when you get back.” Now that she was working to her own, different agenda there was no reason why she shouldn’t tell Charlie of the conversation with Kenton Peters, although she wouldn’t throw it away. She wouldn’t offer too quickly what she’d gotten from the World Jewish Congress, either. She had a lot of things to trade: to buy insurance with.
By the time Charlie got back to the conference room, the coffee was cold. They didn’t bother to reassemble for the result of his phone call.
“It seems very much like the blind leading the blind,” said Williams.
But who’ll be seeing more clearly by the time it’s all over? wondered Charlie.
Richard Cartright wasn’t happy with the way things had evolved. It was, for all intents and purposes, a combined operation that initially and on the face of it had made quite acceptable his talking as he had with Gerald Williams. But he wasn’t sure any longer. From the sheer restriction of anything and everything he was begrudgingly being allowed to know by his own department-against their constant and unremitting demands for any scrap from him-it had become increasingly obvious this was a very important assignment indeed for someone on his first tour of duty and that it was anything but the combined operation he’d first imagined it to be.
And now he was trapped. On the one hand he’d already cooperated too much with someone from another department suddenly to seek authorization for doing so from his own controllers, which too late he now realized he should have done from the start. On the other, and by the same measure, he didn’t see how he could abruptly refuse, not knowing how much power or influence Gerald Williams possessed.