Dead Men Living

by Brian Freemantle

  “What am I to do?” Miriam suddenly felt lost.

  “Pack up. Close your apartment. We’ll do our best about severance. Personal word of the director himself.”

  “Fuck you. Fuck all of you!” Miriam shouted down the telephone.

  “Know how you feel,” sympathized the Bureau’s overseas director.

  “You know fuck-all, like the rest of them,” said Miriam.

  37

  There was instant professional-to-professional recognition and they didn’t ask Charlie why they’d had to arrest him and Charlie didn’t offer any explanation, which would have been difficult anyway, his not being precisely sure. There was bound to be a wide choice under the Official Secrets Act. The policemen tried with soccer, to which Charlie couldn’t contribute because he didn’t follow it on his satellite sports channels, and eventually they found common ground with movies, agreeing there was too much sex and violence. The driver mourned the passing of those wonderful musicals and admitted an unrequited passion for Doris Day.

  Charlie’s curiosity was answered when they passed between the headquarters of both intelligence agencies on opposing sides of the Thames to sweep into the entrance tunnel of the Foreign Office. As Charlie was signed into the custody of a Foreign Office uniformed custodian, like the special delivery he supposed he was, one of the Special Branch officers wished him luck and Charlie thanked him. As the custodian escorted Charlie along darkened corridors and into noiseless elevators, the man said Charlie would probably need it because James Boyce was a bastard. Charlie didn’t bother to reply, passingly surprised at the indiscretion, more immediately aware that his not being escorted into the building by the Special Branch—being brought in fact to the Foreign Office instead of a police station—meant he wasn’t under arrest. It was essential for whatever was awaiting him to seize every pointer like that.

  The corner office, on the fourth floor overlooking the statued square, the Houses of Parliament and across Westminster Bridge, immediately designated the sleek, diminutive man behind the regulation landing-strip desk as a permanent secretary. Charlie assumed him to be James Boyce, although once more there were no introductions. There were six other men already waiting. Sir Rupert and Patrick Pacey, the department’s political officer, both sat stone-faced, unsympathetic mourners at a funeral.

  Charlie guessed the only way Sir Peter Mason could have arrived ahead of him after giving Special Branch the rented car number was by helicopter, which was significant.

  It put the final piece in the puzzle to make everything crystal clear. Charlie had only once before, a long time ago, been involved with a traitor who had been given amnesty in exchange for all that he’d known and done for the other side. It had been one of the few occasions—apart from now with Natalia, which was totally different—that he’d been unable to separate business from personal animosity. He could recite backward all the professional justification for turning a traitor back upon his masters, but it was one of the few established practices of a totally amoral professional that was anathema to Charlie. He assumed from the proprietorial way Mason sat easily in one of the encompassing leather armchairs by the Parliament Square windows that the room had once been the man’s own.

  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 needed about 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 Charlie became 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 Russian sector 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.”

  Mason stopped again, as if to judge the reception. Charlie’s feet began to throb.

  “There were a lot of Russians, but only Norrington could properly talk to them,” resumed the old man. “They were very friendly. A lot of drinking. Toasts to friendship. Lent us protective clothes for the flight and for when we got there. They said it was summer, but I’ve never known anywhere so cold … .”

  He parted his cupped hands briefly to cover the ear that had been frostbitten, as if he could still feel pain. “Separated us, when we got there. Dunne and I were by ourselves: that’s the way it had to be, they said. Politics for us, art for them. Hitler’s bunker staff were all assembled. Dollmann. Buhle. Staubwasswe. Stoelin. The Russians said Norrington and Timpson were elsewhere, with the rest. We talked through Russian interpreters. The Germans were willing to tell us all they could to get away from the place: that was the first we—anyone—knew that Hitler’s last will and testament had survived. The proper discussion was planned to begin the following day. Dunne and I slept in a barrack in the prison camp. When we asked about the others, we were told they were in another part, with the Hitler staff who knew all about the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg fur die Besetzten Gebiete … . There was a van waiting to take us to what they said would be a conference room. It had been dark when we arrived—it was dark practically all the time—but there was enough light in the morning for us to see prisoners in another section. The interpreters said they’d committed very serious offenses, mostly war crimes. It was light enough, too, to realize that we were being taken out of the camp … . Then we heard some explosions and saw smoke up ahead … .”

  Mason trailed off, bringing a handkerchief up to his mouth, head bowed. His voice was cracked when he started to speak again. “I’ll never forget that scene. Can’t. There was still a lot of smoke around the crater. Debris still falling. And Russians. I don’t know how many, but at first too many to see that Norrington and Timpson were shackled and kneeling by the hole, with the woman. Larisa wasn’t shackled, but she was crying. Everyone around them had guns and the men in the van pulled guns on us, too. They made us get out and I thought we were going to be shot, as well. Norrington was talking in Russian, loudly, arguing. Raisa was crying. Timpson didn’t see us until we got very close, because of his eyes, but when he did, he shouted out: said he didn’t know why, but they were going to be killed … told us to make them stop.”

  Mason abruptly sobbed, then coughed, and Boyce said, “Peter, you don’t have to …” but the old man waved the deformed hand and said, “I do. I won’t be wrongly accused … !” He looked up, swallowing, for the first time looking steadily at Charlie. “They took my revolver, put one of theirs literally to my head, the barrel touching me. Made me stand directly behind Raisa and said I had to kill her. Put my gun back in my hand and told me to press the trigger. I refused. Told them to kill me. There was a terrible explosion and then another and I thought they had, but someone had shot Timpson. I saw him thrown forward into the crater, and there was another flash but no sound and I saw there were photographers on the other side of the hole, taking pictures. Larisa was on the ground, screaming. They told me again to kill Raisa, but I wouldn’t. Norrington was yelling in Russian. The next shot killed him, knocking him into the grave on top of Timpson. I think they were still shouting for me to fire, but I couldn’t hear properly because the shots had been very close. Someone grabbed me from behind—put their hand over mine and pressed the trigger, and Raisa’s head seemed to split in half and there were more photographs and then I was let go … .”

  There was a further, gulping break. “I stood there, waiting to be shot, but nothing happened. There was a lot of confusion. Dunne just stood there; I don’t know if he’d been made to fire or not. Everyone was concentrating upon burying the bodies. I got back to the truck. I remember being sick. Then running. I just ran, anywhere. I don’t know where. It had got very dark again. And cold. Dear God, it was so very cold. I couldn’t find any road. Kept falling over, and in the end I couldn’t get up anymore, so I lay there, knowing I was going to die. I didn’t hear men, only dogs that were brought from the camp. That’s what I remember next, being in the camp. Being wrapped in blankets and looked at, by a doctor … .” The hand went up to his ear again. “Being operated upon. We were flown out that night, back to Berlin.”

  The gaze, totally upon Charlie, was defiant. “They had the photographs of us by the graveside but not of Russians. They’d been painted out … . They planned to blackmail us, as killers of our fellow officers.”

  “Enough!” stopped Boyce, at last. “There’ll be no more! Sir Peter is not on trial, has nothing whatsoever to answer for. All that’s necessary for each of you to know further is that Sir Peter has performed for this country—hi
s country—one of the bravest and most successful services in its postwar history. At any time in history. For a full twenty years, until his retirement, Sir Peter—with Harry Dunne, who provided what appeared to be confirmation from the State Department in Washington—fed Moscow with whatever we wanted them to believe. While all the time they understood they were receiving information from a priceless source, for fifteen of those years from the permanent secretary to the Foreign Office himself! In effect, for twenty years, we and the Americans ran Russia’s foreign policy, as and how we wished. Not just in espionage terms but politically as well, we conducted the coup of this or any other century. Because the discovery of the bodies was made publicly known, an investigation had to be publicly staged. As of this moment it is officially closed, as I can tell you it has been by America … .”

  He looked at Charlie. “Except for you. You learned far too much. I want your sources.”

  “And I want a total and complete apology,” demanded Sir Peter Mason. He looked pointedly across the room to Sir Rupert Dean. “And other assurances to go with it.”

  “One at a time,” said Charlie, to the director-general’s undisguised wince. “The source first. There is nothing that cannot be bought or bribed in Moscow, for the right price. Apart from what I deduced for myself, in Yakutsk and what little—far too little to matter—was shared by the FBI, everything came from Russian intelligence archives. Sir Peter was not named, but there were details of his frostbite injuries to his ears and hand, which I recognized when we met.”

  “Did you understand from the archives you read that the Russians still believe everything they were told was genuine?” demanded the permanent secretary.

  “Yes,” said Charlie.

  “How much of it do the Americans know?”

  “The cooperation wasn’t good. I’m not sure.”