“According to the newspapers, the Americans consider their officer to have been a hero. There’s a hero’s burial planned. Why hasn’t the same been said-planned-about Simon? And why was I asked to say nothing, do nothing, about burying him?”
“The American is being buried as an unknown victim,” seized Charlie. “Your brother won’t be, after I’ve found out the truth. Then, maybe, he’ll be accorded the honor he’s due.”
“No,” agreed Norrington, quietly. “Simon won’t be buried as an unknown. And I don’t want any maybes about his being accorded every honor to which he’s entitled. I’m not given to threats, Mr. Muffin-the need to prove myself. So what I am going to say isn’t a threat. It’s a statement of fact. I am not without official influence-access to private as well as public platforms. I am prepared totally and fully to cooperate with you in every way I am asked. But with a time limit. Unless I am convinced otherwise-and you must understandI will take a very great deal of convincing-I will announce two weeks from today that it was Simon’s body in the Yakutsk grave. I will disclose that somebody else was killed to fill a grave in his name in Berlin. And I shall demand a public inquiry into the circumstances of both deaths, and although it will offend me deeply I shall turn my brother’s burial here into a media event. I don’t, of course, expect you to be the messenger. I’ll telephone Sir Rupert to tell him myself. Do you think what I’ve said is unreasonable?”
Charlie said, “I think you’ve already shown a great deal of patience and I’m grateful for another two weeks. In your position I’d have probably kept it to one.”
Norrington’s smile was abrupt and open. “Interesting reply. When I said roughly the same to Burbage, he said he’d stop me doing anything under the Official Secrets Act, and when I told him I wasn’t a signatory to it, he told me I didn’t know what I was talking about and that it didn’t matter whether I’d signed it or not. That’s the real reason I didn’t call him when I agreed to your coming. Didn’t like the fellow. Very rude.”
But far more important, very stupidly indiscreet, bullying like that. Suddenly reminded of Richard Cartright, Charlie decided the standard was definitely going down.
Charlie refused the offer of lunch from Norrington’s willowy blond fourth wife who said to call her Davinia and whom he guessed to be half the baronet’s age. Instead he accepted rare beef sandwiches he didn’t get around to eating at the borrowed library desk, working steadily through the two wooden boxes of personal effects under the frozen, smiling gaze from three pictures of the man whose mysteries he was trying to solve.
He did so careful to retain the exact order in which each item had been kept, not removing one until that which preceded it had been replaced. The crocodile wallet was an early disappointment. It contained Simon Norrington’s English driving license and visiting cards in his own name-both necessary and easy identification, Charlie acknowledged-but no one else’s cards, letters, photographs or anything connecting him to Berlin or his unit. His army pay book was endorsed for his pay to be credited automatically to a Coutts Bank account on the Strand and although he didn’t expect it to lead to thelong-lost army records Charlie made a note of the pay book number. Charlie looked over it all, laid out on the desk in front of him, every item perfectly preserved, intact and undamaged, despite its age. How, he asked himself, could it have been accepted, apparently without a single question? Carried as it would have been, in the breast or inside pockets of the uniform, it should-and would-have all been totally destroyed by the massive force of whatever had killed the substitute Berlin victim.
The official notification of Simon Norrington’s death was as cold as the grave in which the man had lain for fifty years, a formal printed notice with the choice of striking out sir or madam, whichever was inappropriate, and gaps in the text for the details of names, relationship and date of death to be inserted by hand.
Charlie got the first of what he considered important information from the handwritten letter of condolence to the father from Norrington’s commanding officer, a colonel who signed himself John Parnell, and which was dated July 2. After the predictable eulogy of Norrington’s bravery and dedication to duty, it read:
I cannot, of course, disclose the nature of Simon’s very special work in these most recent months but I can say he was the only person in the unit with the very necessary qualifications to carry it out. Neither can I give any precise details of how or when he died, although of course we have made strenuous efforts to discover both. His body was returned to us from a Russian-occupied part of the city. The Russian documentation merely indicates that he was found dead, by Russian troops, on or around May 10. You will be aware that at that time there was still sporadic fighting in Berlin, an indication of the bravery of your noncombatant son to which I have already referred.
So much and yet so little, agonized Charlie, easing briefly back into the bucket chair, which creaked like all the other leather furniture. What was the work so very special that only the noncombatant Lieutenant Simon Norrington was able to undertake it in the Russian sector of Berlin in which there was still fighting? But who hadn’t been there at all but thousands of miles away?
There were thirty-two letters, all still in their envelopes and all indated sequence, which was how Charlie read them, searching for people with whom Norrington had worked, particularly for references to the names he’d gotten from the Berlin photograph. A Jessica appeared in the third letter, addressed from London when Norrington was clearly still attached to the War Office, and by the fourth it was obvious she was employed there with him. From the way the next was written, she’d spent a weekend at Kingsclere. Norrington had been glad his father liked her as much as he did, but she disappeared from the correspondence just before Norrington’s transfer to the art-loss unit. Norrington was relieved at the transfer: Bloody French go on all the time as if I was personally responsible for Dunkirk and seem to forget we got almost as many of their soldiers out as we did our own.
There wasn’t another name until Charlie was halfway through, and then it was clearly a nickname, Scotty. Norrington described him as a good man, salt of the earth. But hard. There were frequent references after that, but none of them hinted at particular friendship, more admiration. Then there was someone identified only as J, and as more single initials followed, Charlie guessed, disappointed, at Norrington’s own effort to obey wartime censorship rules. J was a tyrant, but fair, who knows his art. HH was a bully who’d clearly made an early choice about being a criminal himself and decided to step the other way over the line. And then there was the appearance of G, at which Charlie felt the tingle of recognition as he read. The letter was dated February 9, 1945. G was brilliant: I sit at his feet. G saw telltale brush detail-despite his problem-which Norrington missed: three fakes, in one day. It’s good to know the Nazis were cheated but it would have been even better if we thought they’d paid good money instead of stealing them.
By March they were a two-man team with the highest identification rate in the combined group. It was exhilarating to be so immediately close to it all. But the scale of the pillaging is indescribable: so much lost that will never be recovered.
Practically every letter written after Norrington had been posted to Europe exhorted his father to keep Matthew from enlisting, whatever you have to do. War was filthy. Men were animals. It was inconceivable what one could do to another. I don’t want Matthew seeing what I’ve seen, hearing what I’ve heard, doing what I’ve done to conform and despised myself for not being brave enough not to do it. The lastletter was dated April 2. The concluding sentence read: It truly will be over soon. I shall be coming home.