“It’s another blank wall with your names,” said the director-general. “Norrington’s unit was nominally military police: all of your five were, in fact, seconded from civilian forces. Every one of them is dead ….” He paused. “And as far as we know are in their proper graves. I guess that only leaves you with your Americans: and we know that one of them is dead, too, don’t we?”
Charlie felt a sink of disappointment, which almost at once became embarrassment, at his having to concede an oversight so quickly after being congratulated. “Maybe not,” he said. “I left one out. John Parnell wasn’t on my list. He was Norrington’s commanding officer who wrote the letter of condolence. A colonel.”
It took two hours to locate a Colonel John Wesley Parnell on the retired officers’ list, with an address in Rye, in Sussex. The quivering-voiced man answered the phone himself and said if it was important of course he’d see Charlie that night. He’d enjoy the company but apologized for not being able to offer dinner. Charlie said he wouldn’t think of imposing.
As Charlie headed south across the river yet again, this time in the rented car and slowed by evening rush-hour traffic, he thought happily that when you’re on a roll you’re on a roll and it was one of the better feelings. He probably wouldn’t have time to call Natalia, but she’d know there was a working reason, would be pleased to hear tomorrow that at long last there seemed to be some movement. As he had going to and from Sir Matthew Norrington’s Hampshire estate, Charlie drove constantly checking his rearview mirror for any obviously following cars. There weren’t any. Would Henry Packer have been replaced in Moscow? Charlie’s being in London meant Natalia and Sasha were safe, he realized, relieved.
It was a small house, its only attribute, in daylight, a partial view of the distant sea from what had to be the last road from which it would have been possible, the final stop of a lonely widower to genteel poverty. Charlie guessed the grandfather clock with the sticky, heartbeat tick in the hall and a few pieces of silver and engraved glass inthe open-fronted cabinet were all there was left to sell and thought of Fyodor Belous in Moscow. Charlie guessed, too, that the rugs that covered most of the furniture were to hide the splits and escape of their stuffing. It wouldn’t have been difficult to make a prosecution for gross indecency against the anally intrusive chair upon which he was sitting, with some twisted difficulty. Charlie was taking only token sips of the supermarket sherry retired Colonel John Parnell had insisted on serving from a decanter, not because it wasn’t any good but because he didn’t like sherry. He didn’t imagine the old man was eating any dinner that night, either.
Charlie remained silent and uncomfortable while the old soldier pored over the photographs Charlie produced of the Yakutsk grave, the bodies inside it, the mortuary shots of the corpses and the group copy of the art-recovery squad he’d obtained in Berlin. There were what appeared to be a lot of wartime photographs in the stark room in which they were sitting, but Charlie hadn’t been able to locate any of the people in whom he was interested from where he was sitting.
It was a long time before Parnell finally looked up. “Incredible. Absolutely incredible.” The voice was frail, like the man himself. He was thin and bald, shrunk with age inside an enveloping cardigan heavily and badly darned at both elbows. “Such a good, fine man. Unbelievable.”
Incredible and unbelievable had been the constant interjection during Charlie’s recitation of yet another edited account of the discovery of Lieutenant Simon Norrington’s body.
“You commanded the unit?” began Charlie, gently. “Know everyone in the Berlin photographs?”
“Only commanded the Britons, although I knew George Timpson and Harry Dunne, who everyone called Hank. But I didn’t know either of the women. You say the dark-haired one at the end was found in the grave with Simon? Incredible!”
“I didn’t know the fraternization was quite that close.”
“Neither did I, to tell you the truth. Us and the Americans, certainly. Good working relationship, for our particular job, but then most of them were only token soldiers: really professional policemen and art experts like Norrington and Timpson and Dunne. Surprised I didn’t hear about the women.”
“So you’ve never seen them before? No idea of their names?”
“Afraid not.”
“When do you think that photograph might have been taken?”
“Right at the very end, obviously. We were always at the sharp end: needed to be there before people and what they stole got dispersed. Difficult enough to track stuff down as it was.”
“Can you recognize the building in the background?”
Parnell pursed his lips, squinting down at the picture. “Could be the Pergamon Museum, which contains the fantastic Greek altar: it’s the most impressive building in the entire Museumsinsel complex.”
“But isn’t that in what was East Berlin?” pressed Charlie, the mistake intentional. This really was like trying to sieve mud in search of a gold nugget.
“The actual partition hadn’t happened then, but it would certainly have been in that part of the city the Russians controlled and later occupied. Explains the two Russian women, I suppose.”
“Simon and the others would have had to be there by invitation? Have permission, certainly?”
“Without a doubt,” agreed Parnell, at once. “So it must have been very early. Almost from the first days they occupied the east of the city the Russians established patrols, checking everyone, turning people back even though officially they had no right. Always amazed me how the rest of the Allies seemed surprised by everything the Russians did afterwards. I thought from the beginning their intention was to take Berlin entirely, which they would have done if it hadn’t been for the airlift.”
“Sir Matthew let me read your letter of condolence about Simon, to his father?”
“Never enough right words to say what you properly mean,” complained the old man.
“In your letter you said Simon’s body was returned by the Russians? I don’t understand what he was doing there, if the Russians were turning non-Russians back.”
“You’ve got to understand the chaos that was there, even after the supposed surrender. It was total. Not everyone got turned back-just those that couldn’t satisfy the intercepting patrols. And Simon was unique in our section, had Russian as well as German. And enough charm to use either language to talk himself into and out of anything.I gave him the assignment to go into the eastern part, as well as all the accreditation I could think of.”
It was coming! Slowly, awkwardly, but it was coming. “When was that?”
The old man shrugged. “Difficult to be precise, to a date. First day or two of May, something like that.”
“Was there still fighting in Berlin then?”
“Not in the way I think you mean, but a lot of shooting, certainly. Mostly in the Russian sector. Hate to sound like the Nazi propaganda machine, but the Russians really were subhuman the way they took their revenge.”
“Wasn’t it dangerous for Norrington to go in?”
“He was an Allied officer with all the necessary accreditation and authorization. Officially he had the right. He was a very confident young man. And I sent all these in the picture in with him, although as I said I didn’t know anything about the Americans or the Russian women being there, too. Can’t understand that.”
“What was the assignment?”
“Because of the way the Russians were behaving, there was a huge exodus of people from what became East Berlin, everyone trying to justify their right to stay in the west. You’ve heard what an art rapist Goering was, literally looting museums by the trainload?”
Charlie nodded.
“There was intelligence, from three separate sources, that Goering had an enormous amount of art he hadn’t been able to ship to Car-inhall, his hunting estate north of Berlin, stored in the basement of the Air Ministry. I sent Simon and his group to see if it was true.”