“No!”
Miriam felt Cartright turn toward her in the darkness and was glad she hadn’t told him earlier. It might have distracted him from the main reason he was in bed with her. On balance he was better than Lestov-enjoyed longer foreplay, as she did-but she still intended to end it soon. It was one of several decisions she’d made. The most important was to manipulate the now-established one-to-one association with Nathaniel Brindsley to get a transfer somewhere more civilized than Moscow. This episode had soured Russia for her. It was still instinctive, though, for her to go on picking and probing, right now to decide if Cartright was lying about not having heard from Charlie, to prepare herself for the following day’s lunch. “I asked him what sort of trip he’d had and he said pretty good-that there were a lot of things to talk about.”
“But not, apparently, to me-a colleague!”
Miriam thought the indignation sounded genuine enough; and although it had lessened, there had been those odd questions about Charlie when she’d first gotten back from Yakutsk. “You two guys have a problem?”
“He’s the one heading for a problem,” said Cartright, unthinking in his bitterness. With convoluted reasoning that defied logic or sense, Cartright was now blaming Charlie for his own mistake of getting involved with Gerald Williams. If he hadn’t avoided Williams’s call late that afternoon, he’d have probably known about the damned man’s return, but he didn’t care. He was sick and tired of the whole damned mess, Charlie most of all.
“What do you mean by that?” questioned Miriam.
“Nothing,” said Cartright, belatedly realizing his indiscretion.
He moved toward her and Miriam responded at once, but her mind wasn’t immediately on what he was doing, pleasant though thehardness of his tongue was. Maybe it was time to make another decision. Several, in fact. She still hadn’t devised a way for Kenton Peters to kiss her ass-which Cartright was close to doing at that moment-without the bastard knowing it was she making him do it.
32
By chance Charlie had been given the same table in the Minsk Restaurant as before and, as before, Miriam’s arrival in a severely tailored trousers suit caused the same head-swiveling contortions. The suit material was close to matching that of Sir Peter Mason’s, but there wasn’t a fresh rose buttonhole. Charlie stood to greet her, aware of the palpable envy throughout the room but not enjoying it as much as at their last lunch, now with too much else to think about, mostly the homecoming announcement he hadn’t expected. As Miriam sat, he poured the vodka, unasked.
They touched glasses and Miriam said, “I missed you. Which isn’t a pass; I’m better at making them than that. I mean workwise.”
Surprise upon surprise, thought Charlie, not as much surprise, though, as there had been at Natalia’s news. Bewilderment, tinged with suspicion, fit that better. He tried to reassure himself that if Natalia was reverting to the earlier nonsense, she wouldn’t in the first place have created the atmosphere between them by telling him the Russian investigation had been officially ended but insisting she didn’t know the reason.
Upon reflection it even seemed to mesh-although he didn’t know how-with the official runaround he was convinced to be going on in London, again without his knowing how or why. Which elevated this lunch to more than hopefully learning what Miriam might have found out about the German POWs in Yakutsk. Now to complete the circle he had to gauge, if he could, whether America, too, had from the beginning only ever been interested in suppressing instead of solving murders they already knew about. But if it did mesh, itcreated an even bigger mystery: what was the secret so overwhelming, after more than fifty years, that all three involved countries were determined it remain forever concealed? With the delicacy of a man tightrope-walking across a snake pit, Charlie said, “I should have kept in closer touch, but there really was a lot to do. Didn’t you find that in Washington?”
“No,” said Miriam, shortly. Charlie was playing the same old game, she recognized. Did it matter a fuck anymore? Why didn’t she come straight out and tell him she’d been closed down, that she was thoroughly pissed off about it and that from now on she was just going along for the ride without knowing who was driving where? Because she had to know, she answered herself at once. Washington-the cocksucker Kenton Peters in particular, the lapdog bureau director and Nathaniel Brindsley in general-was treating her like a dummy. It didn’t matter a damn what was written on her record, to which she anyway didn’t have access to confirm, she’d still be remembered by those who knew for obediently rolling over and dying. Far better, for her pride and reputation and career, to prove to Brindsley-and anyone else-she could close a case and make them the roll-over dummies doing nothing about it.
Shit, thought Charlie, disappointed. “How long were you there?”
“Coupla days.”
“Useful?”
“Bits and pieces. How about you?”
“Bits and pieces.”
“Who’s going to blink first?” she smiled, letting him know she understood.
Charlie held up the empty vodka carafe toward their passing waiter. Every reason for her to think it would be him, if that’s what she wanted. He could imply a lot of what he’d learned from Natalia to have come from London that she’d know to be true from the coitus conversations with Lestov. “My people have come up with the names of some Germans imprisoned in a camp that existed close to where the bodies were found.”
Necessary for him not to think that was a trade. “So have mine.”
“That why you were recalled to Washington?”
“Yes,” she said, straight-faced.
When the waiter returned with the vodka, they ordered quickly,to get rid of the interruption. To hint his awareness of the real source, Charlie said, “Lestov give you any lead on what the development is?”
“Maybe they’ve identified the Germans, too?”
The first blink, isolated Charlie: identifying went beyond knowing the names. “So we’re all three making progress?”
“Are we?” This was becoming a struggle.
“I think so,” said Charlie. What could he afford to volunteer, to edge her further forward?
“I’m not so sure.”
The moment to convince you, then, thought Charlie. “You think it’s time for us to stop playing silly buggers?”
“It might help. Seems to me we’re almost starting from scratch again. And I thought we’d come to an understanding.”
Blitzkrieg, decided Charlie, the pun intentional. “I thought so, too. We’ve got the Germans. We know who your guy was. Both of them, in fact. And we can make a lot of very informed guesses-not actual proof, I know, but enough to take us a long way forward-so why are we fucking about like this?” He was pleased of the feigned irritation he managed at the end.
Miriam was glad the blintzes arrived, although she’d forgotten she’d ordered them, needing the recovery and the time to assess. She’d heard enough to know he hadn’t been positively closed down, as she had. Point one. He knew about the POWs, which she knew Vadim Lestov hadn’t told him, so London must have another, maybe better, source. Point two. Proof of that better source was his saying he knew who both Americans were, when she’d only been trying to find the name of the one in the grave, which she still didn’t have. Point three and the biggest of all. And if London had that much, they had to be nearer to knowing a damned sight more, which put Charlie-England-way over the horizon. Thank Christ she’d played it this way so far. How to raise the bidding? Appeal to his macho, the male need to boast what was between his legs. She offered her glass, clinking it once more against Charlie’s. “Like I said on the telephone, we’ve got a lot to talk about.”
Somewhere he’d hit a target. But which one? Not the time to stop the bombardment. And the next shot was easy. “You first.”