Lestov simply left the man in total, soundless isolation to feed off his own fear throughout the first night of his detention and most of the following day. Belous was also denied food or water or lavatory facilities, which made the interview distasteful because Belous had shit himself at least twice by the time he was led into the interview cell. Already laid out on the table between them were some prints, a small, single-framed icon, the oil portrait of a woman, what appeared to be a gold-framed religious triptych missing its third panel, a single gold-framed pastoral scene picked out in precious stones, two rings, both set with heavy red stones, and a ribbon-suspended medal. There were also four photographs. The first showed Raisa Belous at what was obviously an official ceremony, the medal on her chest. The second was of the woman alone, in front of the Catherine Palace. The third was of her with a blond woman featured in the first picture. And the last showed Raisa yet again with the woman and the American who had been found in the grave in Yakutsk. The American and the blond woman had their arms around each other, laughing, and Raisa appeared to be looking on approvingly.
The display was set out to face Belous when he sat down, whichhe did uncomfortably. Further to demean the man, Lestov exaggerated his disgust at the smell.
Belous said, “You can’t do this to me!” His voice was hoarse from dehydration.
“I am doing it,” Lestov pointed out, logically. “And I will go on, as long as it suits me.” He splayed his hand over what was set out on the table. “You’re obviously a thief. A burglar.”
“You know they’re my mother’s things.”
“Not if I want to jail you for ten, fifteen years I don’t. A thief, from a church or a museum.”
“They’re my mother’s!” repeated the man, whimpering.
“You recognize anyone in that first photograph, apart from her? I think I do. I think the man with the heavy mustache was most often known as Joseph Stalin. And the balding man next to him wearing glasses is Lavrenty Beria, who headed Stalin’s secret police, the NKVD. You recognize them, Fyodor Ivanovich?”
“It was when she was acknowledged as a hero of the Soviet Union.” He briefly touched the medal. “My grandparents told me.”
Lestov picked up the jeweled pictures. “Do you know where this was from?”
“The Catherine Palace. Part of the Amber Room.”
“Was there more?” persisted Lestov.
“I think there was. My grandparents sold things, to survive.”
“What have you sold?”
“Nothing!”
“Liar!”
The stinking man touched the two rings. “Just some jewelry, like this.”
“Do you know who the man is, in the picture with your mother and the other woman?”
“The American from the grave?”
Lestov nodded. “Why did you keep these things?”
“I thought I could sell them-the pictures, I mean. I wanted the American to be identified before I approached the American reporters who came to me after the Moscow News story. I was going to say I’d discovered all this: sell them the photographs and see if there was a reward for the Amber Room stuff that everyone wrote about after my mother was identified.”
Lestov decided it was too pitiful to challenge. “There would have been some papers, documents, belonging to your mother?”
“Beria tried to gain power after Stalin died. Was purged. My grandparents were frightened: destroyed everything they thought might dangerously connect them to the man.”
“So your mother was NKVD?”
“I think so. That’s what it was known as then, wasn’t it?”
“Do you know who the woman is, with the American and your mother? Did your grandparents ever tell you a name?”
“No.”
“You’re in serious trouble, Fyodor Ivanovich. If I discover you’re still lying, I shall be very angry.”
“I don’t know anything more! Please give me something to drink. Let me clean myself. This isn’t right!”
Lestov shook his head. “I’m going to let you live in your own shit so that you can think extremely hard to make sure you haven’t forgotten to tell me all that you know.”
“Please!” wailed the man.
“This is how people were treated all the time in the old days-that time you admire so much. Enjoy it while you can.”
Marina Novikov stood with the official notification in her hand, her eyes too blurred to read it again. She said, “I never imagined this day would come.”
“Neither did I,” said the doctor.
“I’m frightened.”
“So am I,” admitted Novikov.
Marina looked around the room. “My father built this house. It’s still the best in Yakutsk.”
“Then it’ll be easy to sell.”
“What will Moscow be like? Big, I expect. Difficult to understand at first.”
“But we will,” promised Novikov.
“I’m frightened,” she repeated.
“We’ve got the boys out,” said Novikov. “They won’t have to live the lives that we’ve had to.”
“No,” she accepted. “That’s what’s important. Do you think your side of the bargain with the Englishman will be enough?”
“We’ve got the official notice!” insisted the man, actually taking it from her.
“What if what you have isn’t enough and it’s canceled?” she asked.
Novikov shook his head in refusal against her doubt, but he didn’t reply.
30
The instruction had been for Charlie not to be late and he’d set out from London before the early morning rush hour, although not to comply with Sir Peter Mason’s autocratic demand. After his even earlier telephone conversation with Natalia, in a three-hour-time-difference Moscow, Charlie’s impression was of events closing in upon him in ever-constricting circles without his being able to orchestrate the process, and it was always necessary for Charlie to be the one with the baton in his hand. Which was why, driving unhurriedly and still constantly checking his mirror through the low Norfolk countryside, he wasn’t happy. And why he needed the time properly to analyze what he and Natalia had discussed to rearrange the score to his own tune, not that of the other players.
Unquestionably to Charlie’s benefit was the virtually speed-of-light granting of Moscow residency for Vitali Novikov and his family, which would bring them into the city and the already-provided apartment in the next two or three days. Even more unquestionable was that he had to be ready and waiting when the Yakutsk doctor arrived, finally to learn what the man knew about the murders.
If anything.
That nagging, persistent uncertainty was Charlie’s primary concern, as it had been from the first, initially unexplained approach from the thin, intense man. Charlie accepted with Novikov that he was in an all-or-nothing situation: all if the doctor had enough to unravel the riddles, nothing if he’d fallen for the desperate bluff of an innocent exile who’d greatly exaggerated his knowledge of a long-ago-eradicated camp and its special prisoners. The only thing hecould do-had ever been able to do-was call that bluff, if that’s what it was.
Which meant delaying his going on to Washington to try to find out if an American named Harry Dunne was still alive and had a nugget or two to contribute. In addition to trying equally hard to discover, either there or in London, the obvious although unknown importance of fifteen Germans imprisoned in the very last month of the war in a barely living hell on earth.
Was a shortcut possible with the Germans? Charlie knew-although she wasn’t aware of his knowing-that Miriam Bell had the fifteen names when she’d gone back to Washington; was prepared, even, to believe her return might well have been connected with that identification. She could, after all, easily have gotten the FBI in Washington to make the inquiry on her behalf. But Charlie, who’d objectively seen similarities between himself and the American, gauged Miriam Bell’s ambition to be such that, like him, it was always necessary for her to do things herself rather than rely upon others.