He was able to see the American, too. “The shirt buttons are unfastened here, too …?”
“They’d been stripped of all official ID,” said Novikov. “No dog tags: no military identification at all.”
Charlie turned to the blood-clotted uniform, immediately seeing that there was no regiment designation on the brass buttons but that the shoulder insignia was that of a lieutenant. As casually as he was able, Charlie gently opened the jacket. Where the maker’s name and customer details should have been was an empty, cotton-framed rectangle where it had been torn out: the cloth had actually been ripped, more so at the top where the initial cut, probably with a knife, was clean.
Charlie went immediately but still attempting casualness to the trousers, briefly pausing to locate the mud marks on the knees where the man had been forced to kneel to be executed, which Charlie had known anyway from the downward trajectory of the wound that Novikov had already spelled out. The tailor’s duplicate label, upon which the owner’s name and measurements would have been recorded, had been yanked off even more roughly than from the jacket, a scrap of the label still remaining. There was sufficient to make out what looked like a half C, which was all Charlie thought he needed. He became even more confident when he found in the record of Novikov’s earlier autopsy the precise list of the dead man’s measurements.
Charlie double-checked his examination to fill in the time, not wanting the others to guess what he considered quick and unexpected success. He even ventured to the adjoining table, where Miriam was still frowning over the displayed contents.
She looked up at his approach and said, “You think we’re ever going to be able to make sense of this?”
“Not from what I’ve seen so far,” lied Charlie, who was sure he could identify the dead Englishman, just as he knew that the murder had been committed certainly with the knowledge of some people within the NKVD, the wartime forerunner of the KGB, although he guessed for a reason far removed from Yakutsk.
His more startling conviction-one he knew was going to cause an upheaval of seismic proportions-was that another Englishman had in some way been involved in the killing, which totally justified his keeping to an absolute minimum what he’d so far worked out. Until he discovered much more, he’d even have to keep the English involvement from Natalia.
“Who?” queried Irena.
“Cartright. Richard Cartright. I’m a friend of Saul Freeman’s. Just arrived in Moscow and trying to make some friends here.”
“You at the American embassy?”
“No. The British.”
Irena smiled to herself. “What have you got in mind?”
“A drink? Dinner, maybe?”
“Sounds fun.”
10
The mortuary and the militia headquarters were part of the same gradually sinking administration complex: some of the corridors along which they silently followed the heavy-footed military commissioner noticeably inclined and even more steeply declined like the decks of a wallowing ship. The crepe-soled grip of the Hush Puppies helped and briefly Charlie’s hammer-toed feet were at peace.
Charlie was more than content with the day so far. No one else seemed to be. Charlie was happy about that, too. The most dissatisfied was Olga Erzin and the Russian forensic scientist, the woman because she’d been unable substantially to improve on the first autopsy findings, Lev Denebin because in the woman’s determination to find something the postmortems had occupied the entire day. Now it was almost six in the evening, too late to go out to the grave, which Denebin had pressed for since midday, to the visible annoyance of Yuri Ryabov, who’d refused to alter his prearranged schedule.
There was no clue to its normal use in the sag-windowed roominto which Ryabov led them. It was starkly bare except for a communal table against which the precise number of chairs were already arranged, with a separate table and chair for the solemnly waiting secretary. Charlie dismissed his predictable committee claustrophobia, for once, rarely, benefiting by being part of a group. During the protracted time it had taken Olga Erzin to complete her examinations, Charlie had openly studied the clothing and the pocket contents of both Russian and American victims, maneuvering the opportunity by inviting the others to do the same with the belongings of the Englishman, confident they’d miss a lot of what was significant to him. It was important now to discover precisely what they had learned. Even more important was finding out if there was something he’d missed.
So for the moment Ryabov’s tight orchestration was not to his disadvantage; in fact, it was even more to his advantage than anyone else’s, Charlie hoped. He didn’t have the slightest doubt that he had enough. But that wasn’t sufficient. It never was. Charlie wanted it all, each and every time.
“I hope we’ve learned from our first day’s work-made progress …” opened the police chief, from the very positively chosen head of the table. He looked challengingly at Lev Denebin, who sat, totally withdrawn, doodling on a pad, refusing to take any part in the meeting. Ryabov shifted his attention, going encouragingly toward the Russian pathologist. “And that work has been largely yours, I think?”
Quickly Charlie said, “I was very impressed by the detail of the original examinations, by Dr. Novikov. I’d certainly like to hear what additionally Dr. Erzin discovered.”
The Russian medical examiner fixed him with the cast-in-stone look that Charlie expected and didn’t care about. With what Charlie judged to be attempted-and doomed-to-failure-avoidance, the woman said, “I have to subject all the organs to appropriate scientific examination, which hasn’t yet been properly done …”
Charlie snatched an opportunity he hadn’t anticipated. “Which you will, over the coming days?”
Imagining an escape, the woman said, “It will be necessary to take everything back to Moscow for total analysis.” She smiled triumphantly.
“What about your preliminary findings?” pressed Charlie, smiling not at the woman but at the tightly attentive Vitali Novikov.
The woman’s triumph faltered. “Comparatively straightforward,” she conceded. “I believe, however, that there were burn markings to the skull fragments I extracted: that the gun was placed directly against the backs of their heads.”
Which I could have told you, thought Charlie. He said, “The preservation of the bodies is remarkable, though, isn’t it?” No one was opposing his taking over the meeting and Charlie was glad, needing to be the ringmaster. They probably expected him to disclose something in his apparent eagerness. Hope in vain, he thought.
“Yes?” agreed the woman, although questioningly.
“So you were able to secure fingerprints, despite the fact that they died so long ago?”
“Yes,” said the woman, again. The reluctance was obvious.
“And you also took photographs of the faces not distorted by rigor?” Charlie had much earlier realized that the fogging of some of Novikov’s earlier scene-of-crime pictures was caused by insects blocking the camera lens, not bad development. It was all going remarkably well, he decided. He could have written the script himself. In fact, he realized, at that moment that was virtually what he was doing.
“You saw me do it,” said the woman, impatiently.
“So we have made progress!” declared Charlie, using the police chief’s expression. “You will be able to let my American colleague and I have fingerprints and photographs-as they were when they died-of people we have to identify. That’s wonderful.”
Olga Erzin didn’t immediately reply, aware not just of what she’d been trapped into conceding but that she now had no way to avoid surrendering both. Tight-lipped, she said, “Yes.”
Charlie continued to smile, apparently grateful, in reality anticipating the coup de grace. “As notes are being taken of this meeting-which I know are going to be made as available as the fingerprints and the photographs-I think it should also be made clear that the previous examination by Dr. Novikov was totally thorough and complete, wouldn’t you say that, Dr. Erzin?”