Brian Freemantle: Dead Men Living

It was not the tribunal Charlie had expected, and with this new and complete realization he wondered how much advantage he could maneuver out of it. Follow their lead, he told himself. But not necessarily subserviently, which was always inherently difficult anyway and would be especially so now that he understood all he neededabout Mason. What else could he read from the situation, before it began? They clearly believed he did know it all to have picked him up and to have arraigned him at this level of authority. And were shit-scared. There was obviously no question of his relaxing, but Charlie began to feel vaguely comfortable.

Boyce said, “You appear to have made very serious allegations.”

“I am carrying out an assignment,” said Charlie. The bastards were going to make him stand, which was stupid. To their disadvantage, not his. It put him on the orchestra podium, baton ready.

“It was not part of your assignment to leave Moscow without authorization.”

Like a lot of small men, Boyce was a bully, Charlie guessed. He was also a lousy interrogator, if indeed that’s what the man saw his function to be. There was no hurry: let them set out their battle formations. “I was authorized ten days ago to come here from Moscow to carry out inquiries as part of that assignment. I considered my going back to Moscow for the Russian announcement merely an interruption of that original authorization. I had not finished the inquiries I came here to complete. Now I have.” Charlie hoped the director-general appreciated not having any responsibility off-loaded.

“That’s a fatuous explanation!” rejected the permanent secretary.

Blustering, deciding Charlie. He wondered how many times pompous men at this echelon were openly opposed. Not often, he wouldn’t have thought. “Then that must be your judgment. Mine is that by coming back today I have totally obeyed my director-general’s instructions to find out how-and why-a British lieutenant, with others, was murdered fifty-four years ago in a remote part of what was then the Soviet Union ….” He turned slightly, to look directly at Mason. “Wouldn’t you agree that to be a reasonable assessment, Sir Peter?”

It became so quiet, Charlie could hear the sound of the long-cased clock; even its tick was respectful. He thought the chill that permeated the room would be akin to that at the depth of winter in Yakutsk itself, when the climate was at its subzero worst. They really did have to be shit-scared to be staging this performance.

Boyce said, “I’d like your response to what I said about your making serious allegations against Sir Peter.”

Thin-ice time. Charlie said, “I put a number of points to Sir Peter as part of my investigation.”

“Points you claim to have communicated to others,” said Boyce, briefly looking directly at the director-general. “Yet Sir Rupert does not appear to be aware of them.”

The bloody fools were seeking damage limitation, Charlie accepted. “I was responding to a question from Sir Peter about a battle-dress button and a shell casing from a revolver,” said Charlie. “Both of which formed part of a very early report to London.”

“That is so,” cut in Sir Rupert Dean, from the side.

“From my battle dress and revolver!” interjected Mason.

Why, apart from overwhelming pomposity, was the man this confident? Looking around the room, Charlie estimated that the man, whom he knew from the Who’s Who entry to be close to eighty-five, had to be at least twenty years older than anyone else. “I’ll take that as the confirmation you didn’t provide earlier.”

“I meant that’s what you claimed them to be,” flustered the man.

One of the unidentified men leaned briefly to his companion, whispered, and then said more loudly, “This isn’t getting us very far, is it? Let’s discuss it more directly, shall we?”

“I think you should tell us everything you know,” ordered Boyce.

If he hadn’t been one hundred and one percent right about Sir Peter Mason, he wouldn’t be standing on increasingly painful feet in front of this Star Chamber, Charlie knew. So he could be far more accusative than he had been trying to trap the man into an admission earlier. How much further could he go? He could bring in the Hitler bunker staff, although cautiously. And the fact that Larisa Krotkov and Raisa Belous had switched from art conservators to Trophy Brigade looters to NKVD intelligence officers, using their art expertise as a cover for their association with Norrington and Timpson. And what about Mason, too? Charlie reminded himself. He still wasn’t sure how to bring that accusation in.

Charlie talked not to the assembled men but to the former permanent secretary, intentionally in the manner of a prosecutor, careless of the personal contempt being obvious. He embellished the scene he’d read about in the log of Novikov’s father, confident from the references to the mental collapse of both Mason and Harry Dunne that Mason wouldn’t clearly remember. Very quickly Charliebecame alert to Mason’s reaction. It wasn’t the bombastic refusal of earlier in the day, although his face grew red again and his body stiffened. Mason was hardly looking at him. Instead his eye-flickering concentration was upon everyone else in the room: men who, with the possible exception of James Boyce, were for the first time hearing a full and detailed account of the Yakutsk incident. With those aware-nesses came a further understanding. Mason, so sure and cocooned for so many years, felt himself humiliated, particularly by the contempt with which the accusations were being leveled. Briefly Charlie turned back into the room and caught expressions of disdain on the faces of two of the unidentified men. Boyce was gazing pointedly down at his desk. Standing as he was at that moment, Charlie missed the moment when Mason broke, brought back to the man by the near-shout. “It wasn’t like that at all!”

The bastard thought he could justify it, Charlie recognized, amazed. “Maybe you should tell it, instead of me?”

“I’m going to,” insisted the man, still looking beyond Charlie to the others in the room. “You’ve got to know the real truth, not this. Understand how it happened ….”

Behind him Charlie heard the stir move through the room but didn’t look back again, his total attention upon the man straightening, commandingly, before him. He couldn’t be wrong! Charlie told himself. It was impossible. Yet …?

“It was the political opportunity of the entire war … of the century,” began Mason, forcefully. “Something that couldn’t have been ignored. Hitler’s staff, the men and women who knew everything! Where all the documentation was, all that Hitler had done and said in the last months of the war. His actual will, which the Russians seized: still have. Gold, literally, for Dunne and myself. And the hiding places of the Nazi loot, for Norrington and Timpson ….”

Mason paused, swallowing. The color was lessening. The man would have made hundreds of presentations in this room but none so impassioned as this, Charlie was sure: not since, maybe, the first time he’d been called upon to explain.

“We knew it was genuine,” Mason picked up. “The Russians got to the bunker first: had all the staff names, which checked out against those we had. Tricked Norrington and Timpson, to begin with. Linked them up with the women when they went into the Russiansector to check out the Goering rumor, which wasn’t true, of course. Promised them everything that was stolen from Tsarskoe Selo: even the Amber Room. Then they talked about all the political material. I didn’t know then … didn’t know for a long time … that they’d identified Dunne and myself as political officers … commissars, they called us … I took the call from Norrington: Dunne spoke to Timpson. Special clearance, they said. No problem with documentation for Russia. Norrington was perfect: had both languages. According to the Russians, the bunker staff had agreed to cooperate-tell them where everything was from Tsarskoe Selo and make Hitler’s will available to us-in return for being transferred away from Yakutsk. But they wanted the guaranteed safety of British and American officers, to ensure they wouldn’t be cheated. All be over in two or three days, they said. There was certainly no problem for any of us to take off for two or three days. Made our own rules. Everyone did.”