Brian Freemantle: Dead Men Living

“You will stop this!” said Boyce.

“I’m confused about the start,” Charlie bulldozed on. “You-and Harry Dunne-reported what had happened to military intelligence the moment you got back to the western sector of Berlin in late May?”

“Of course!” said Mason, flushed again. “It was before I left Berlinthat the planning began to deceive the Russians, which we did for so long.”

Easily recalling the dates from his Who’s Who reading, Charlie said, “Planning that wasn’t put into operation until five-or was it ten? — years later, not until you became part of the Foreign Office secretariat?”

“I won’t be subjected to interrogation!” said Mason.

“And I’ve told you to stop!” shouted Boyce.

“This is important, now that we know everything has to remain the secret it’s always been,” ignored Charlie, again. “We know, because he’s just told us, that Sir Peter didn’t know Raisa Belous before meeting her in May in the Russian-controlled eastern section of Berlin. But you’ve seen the Russian photographs released a couple of days ago, of some art objects that Raisa Belous saved from Catherine the Great’s palace. One of the prints was a Durer which is the next in sequence to the one I saw this morning-and on my first visit, although I didn’t connect it then-in Sir Peter’s house in East Dereham. And there’s a small pastoral scene-I think it’s a Watteau-just at the beginning of the hallway corridor which makes a pair with the one also in the photograph ….” Charlie felt the chill begin to settle in the room again. “And it might not be a good idea to offer for sale on the open market the small canvas of Sophia of Anhalt-Zerbst hanging just inside your study door, Sir Peter. That was Catherine the Great’s maiden title before her marriage and is listed in the palace catalogue as one of the masterpieces still missing.”

“This meeting is ended,” announced Boyce.

Not until you supercilious bastards know just how firmly I’ve got you by the balls, Charlie decided. To Boyce he said, “I take it you’ll explain everything to Sir Matthew Norrington? I wouldn’t want to tell him anything he shouldn’t know.”

“You’ve gained us a lot of enemies, yourself more than anyone,” said Sir Rupert Dean.

Before Charlie could respond, Patrick Pacey said, “But guaranteed the continuance of the department, in my opinion.”

“Don’t you ever again as much as think of going AWOL as you did,” threatened the director-general. “I’ll accept no excuse, no apology.It wouldn’t be politically acceptable for me to fire you after today. If I could, I would. And still might find a reason for doing so. Don’t think of your survival as anything other than a temporary postponement.”

He never had, thought Charlie. They’d walked back from the Foreign Office and his feet were on fire. “I understand. At no time did I intend any disrespect to you personally. Or to the department.”

“I said I didn’t want to hear any of that. You’re not going back to Moscow. There’s another problem to deal with first.”

First, seized Charlie. So his return was only a postponement, too. “Can I ask what?”

“Richard Cartright was arrested by the Russians: some nonsense about currency-dealing. Diplomatic immunity was invoked to get the bloody fool out, but he’s implicating one of us.”

“Who?” asked Charlie, just for the pleasure of hearing the name.

“Gerald Williams,” said the political officer.

“Incidently,” said Dean, “how much did you pay to get to the intelligence archives?”

“It wasn’t a lump-sum payment,” said Charlie, anticipating what was to come. “I’m keeping the man on a permanent retainer. It’s expensive but proved invaluable in this instance alone.”

On the telephone Natalia sounded as subdued, as desultory, even, as she had that morning. She accepted his remaining in London without asking why and told him not to bother when he asked what she thought he should bring back for Sasha. Natalia added that she didn’t want anything for herself, either. When he said everything had turned out perfectly and that he loved her, she said good but didn’t say she loved him in return.

It took several moments for Charlie to pick through the obscenities when he spoke to Miriam Bell, not immediately understanding what she was telling him.

“Stop off in London,” Charlie said. “And tell your people you’d like to meet Peters in person, to talk about Harry Dunne and Sir Peter Mason.”

“They going to save my life?”

“They just saved mine. What’s the story with Cartright?”

“He kept on that night we met about how I imagined you really got the money to afford the apartment, so I suggested the name of the man at the Arbat. And then anonymously telephoned the local militia post.”

“I’ll buy dinner when you get here,” promised Charlie.

It was scheduled as a tribunal hearing into the civilian arrest of Richard Cartright, but within the first hour of the first day Gerald Williams virtually became a coaccused, with Jocelyn Hamilton and SIS case officer Malcolm Covington only just avoiding an indictment.

Desperately Cartright insisted his Arbat approach-which had not been to a money dealer named Arkadi Orgnev but a posing militia currency investigator-had been part of an investigation into the activities of Charlie Muffin officially authorized by SIS case officer Malcolm Covington, and that he had the Moscow cable to prove it. The dollars he had shown the Russian had not been to trade but to pay for the identification, from a photograph he’d been carrying, of Muffin as a client. He had not known his woman companion, an Aeroflot stewardess, was carrying $430 she’d admitted to the militia she’d intended to sell. Cartright produced a diary of every conversation-and what was discussed-with Gerald Williams and called as a witness his department’s financial director to confirm his having checked Williams’s London conversation with the man about expenses claims, from which he’d assumed he was at liberty to talk to Williams on a combined agency investigation.

Miriam Bell arrived in London that afternoon, took a room on the floor below Charlie’s at the Dorchester and was waiting in the foyer when Charlie got back.

She said, “I’m pissed off. Been here half an hour and haven’t got propositioned once.” And smiled.

“This is London, not Moscow.”

“It shouldn’t make any difference!”

Charlie took her to the Rib Room because he thought she’d like the steaks, which she did. She agreed that Cartright sounded like a prick but didn’t deserve to be dismissed but Williams did. Charlie said that if he’d had any pity, which he didn’t, it would have been pitiful to listen to. Her steak covered half her plate, as his did, and she’d eaten it by the time he finished filling in all the details of the Yakutsk murders.

She said, “Jesus H. Christ! That was an operation and a half! Who d’you think got caught and turned first, Peter Mason or Harry Dunne?”

“I don’t know. Whoever it was immediately shopped the other.”

“Great idea, turning them and maintaining them for so long,” she said, admiringly.

“I wonder if it balanced out the damage they did before they got caught.”

“How am I supposed to know about this?”

“I told them we didn’t cooperate-that I didn’t know what you had. No reason why you shouldn’t have found out about Timpson like I did. Or that there’s a grave in Holland. No reason, either, why you can’t have established a paid source at Lubyanka Square.”

“I’d have had to share a source like that with Saul: he’s the Bureau chief. You’ve got a hell of an inside track there.”