No Time for Heroes

CHAPTER TWO

The alarms were sounded overnight, and by early morning the meetings were arranged at timed intervals in the Secretary of State’s seventh floor office at Foggy Bottom.

The FBI was obviously first. Henry Hartz cupped the Bureau Director’s elbow to guide him away from office formality to the dining annexe, where breakfast was laid.

‘So what the hell have we got here?’ demanded Hartz. ‘A Russian diplomat, killed Mafia-style!’

‘I wish to God I knew.’ Leonard Ross was a carelessly fat, carelessly dressed man who had been a senior judge on the New York bench before accepting the appointment as FBI Director. After two years of Washington politics he regretted it, and promised himself he’d quit one day soon. Hartz was one of the professionals he got on with better than most.

‘The Bureau will naturally handle everything,’ declared Hartz.

Ross refused the covered food dishes, but poured himself coffee. ‘You know Russia’s got its own Mafia?’

‘That’s where I want it to stay. I don’t even want to think what the media are going to make of this.’ Hartz crumbled a Danish, mostly missing his plate and making a mess.

‘Have the Russians said anything?’

‘The ambassador is due at noon. What do we know about Serov?’

Ross made a doubtful face. ‘Senior cultural attache. Married. No children: not with him in this country, anyway. We never marked him as anything but a genuine diplomat…’ He sipped his coffee. ‘Only intriguing thing is his length of service. Seven years here. There have been two visa extensions…’ Ross smiled. ‘Both of which your people approved, without reference to us.’

‘How big a task force will you put on it?’ The early sunlight reflected oddly off Hartz’s spectacles, making him look sightless.

‘Depends how it develops,’ said Ross, refilling his cup. Too much coffee was something else he intended to give up. ‘I’m not having an army, running around and getting in each other’s way.’

‘You going to appoint Cowley supervisor?’ asked Hartz, expectantly.

‘Head of the Russian Division at the Bureau is an administrative position,’ reminded Ross.

‘Horses for courses,’ cliched Hartz. Very occasionally the German birth and education that had ceased at the age of ten, when his family had come to America, still sounded in some word; it was evident now.

‘I guess it’s got to be him,’ agreed Ross. ‘The media will make a lot of comparisons about that, too.’ He wondered if the contacts William Cowley had made in Moscow the previous year, on a combined Russian-American investigation ironically into the murder of an American diplomat at the US embassy there, would be of use this time.

‘I’ve told the President,’ disclosed Hartz. ‘He doesn’t like the Mafia connotation one little bit.’

‘You think I do!’

‘If we’ve got an organised crime connection in the middle of the Russian embassy, we’ve got ourselves one great big can of worms.’

‘That’s going to be the speculation,’ predicted Ross.

‘That’s why I want the control to be between the two of us, to prevent it becoming a media circus.’

‘How are the DC guys going to feel about that?’

‘Maybe they’ll be glad to get rid of it,’ suggested Hartz.

The local police were, but the mayor was not so enthusiastic when, on their arrival, the Secretary of State announced the responsibility for the investigation would legally be that of the FBI.

‘We’ll cooperate in every possible way,’ guaranteed John Brine, the police chief, with obvious relief. ‘I’m sure we’re going to work just fine together.’

‘This is going to bring a lot of heat,’ intruded the mayor, Elliott Jones. ‘Washington, the murder capital of the World: that sort of nonsense.’ Jones was a second term civic leader, with ambitions for national office. In several interviews he’d admitted a willingness to be considered for the first black Vice President. He was still waiting for an approach from the Democrats.

‘What’s known so far?’ demanded Ross.

‘Not much,’ admitted the homicide captain. Mort Halpern looked the detective he was, a big man in a blue suit shining from wear. ‘It wasn’t a mugging. There was still $76 in his pockets, and his watch and ring were untouched.’

‘What about the mouth wound?’ said Ross.

‘Inflicted after death, according to the early medical examination,’ said Halpern. ‘Accepted Mafia trademark in the elimination of a stool-pigeon, of course. Every indication of it being a professional hit, too. The bullets were hollow nosed or scored to caused maximum damage. Nothing left for ballistics to work on…’ He paused, looking at the Director. ‘Everything is being bagged up for you already.’

‘The scene of crime still secure?’ asked Ross. ‘I’d like to send some of my people to take a look – with your officers too, of course.’

‘It’s down between the canal and the river, in Georgetown,’ said Halpern. ‘Practically underneath the Whitehurst Freeway. Pretty easy to seal off completely. It was raining off and on last night: I had a canopy put over the whole area to prevent as much water damage as possible…’

‘I went there last night, too,’ said Brine, anxious for his participation to be known. ‘I put uniformed officers on duty throughout the night. There are others there today. No unauthorised person has touched anything.’

‘The two homicide detectives who initially responded are on standby,’ added Halpern. ‘I guessed you’d want them to liaise. And for them to remain part of whatever squad you set up.’

They were glad for someone else to carry the can, thought Ross. ‘That’s fine.’

‘So what’s the feeling?’ said the mayor briskly. ‘Is this a Mafia assassination of a Russian diplomat?’ He smiled. ‘That’s pretty sensational, isn’t it?’

‘Too sensational,’ said the Secretary of State, guardedly. ‘There’s going to be enough speculation, without our contributing to it. At the moment we don’t have an official view of Mafia involvement. That understood by everyone?’

Elliott Jones frowned. ‘I think we need to get some things clear. My office have already had a lot of media requests for a statement. Naturally I’ve held off until now, but I’ve obviously got to say something.’ He was always immaculately dressed, usually in waistcoated suits and with a lot of jewellery. He looked good on television and knew it: his secretary had standing orders to video every appearance.

Hartz thought the handbook could be called Public Participation Without Political Problems: maybe he should write it himself. ‘I’d like you to confine yourself to regret at the killing and your understanding that everything possible is being done to apprehend the murderer.’

‘Is that all?’ protested Jones, disappointed. ‘I’ve got a lot of people who expect me to be up front with them.’

‘I’m not telling you what to say: I know I can’t do that,’ sighed Hartz. ‘I’m asking. And that applies to off-the-record briefings or conversations with particular media friends. That, perhaps, most of all. I want to keep as tight a lid on this as possible. By which I mean all statements that could be regarded as political coming from here, at State…’ he nodded sideways, to Ross ‘… and anything about the investigation coming from the Bureau.’

‘I see,’ said the mayor, stiffly.

Hartz smiled a professional diplomat’s smile. ‘For my part, I would be quite happy publicly to link your name with anything from here. And I would naturally expect you to participate in any press conference.’

Recognising his cue, Ross said: ‘I don’t consider the Bureau to be taking over lock, stock and barrel. We will need your homicide people on the team. And that’ll be made clear in anything we say, from the very beginning.’

‘I’m happy enough with that,’ accepted Brine.

‘I think I can go along with it, too,’ accepted Jones. There was still reluctance in his voice.

‘I’m grateful,’ said Hartz.

‘But we will keep in touch?’ persisted Jones. ‘I’ll know what’s going to be issued before it’s announced? I don’t want to be caught out on something I don’t know anything about.’

‘My personal guarantee,’ assured the Secretary of State.

After the city official had left, Ross said: ‘The only way to keep the mayor quiet would be to shoot him in the mouth, too.’

‘I’m not sure what’s going to be more difficult,’ said Hartz. ‘The investigation. Or the politics.’

‘I am,’ said the Bureau Director, with feeling. ‘It’ll be the investigation. It’s going to be a bastard.’ Very briefly, he wished he hadn’t waited this long before resigning.

The overnight rain had cleared the thunder. The day was already hot, and was going to get hotter, as it does in Washington in high summer. There was no overhead shade at the far end of the parking lot where the grey Ford had been left, and by ten o’clock it was already beginning to cook.

Just over 5,000 miles away Mikhail Pavlovich Antipov, the man who had abandoned it there, walked across the concourse of another airport, conscious of the looks his new clothes were getting. He saw Maksim Zimin waiting for him before Zimin noticed him, and waved to attract the man’s attention.

The waiting BMW was in a prohibited parking area, but there was no penalty ticket. BMWs were the favourite of the Chechen Family, who considered Sheremet’yevo their undisputed territory: no police or airport official would be stupid enough to interfere with an obvious Mafia vehicle.

‘Did you get the documents?’ demanded Zimin, the moment they were in the security of the car.

‘There was nothing in Russian or Ukrainian. He said he’d left it in Switzerland; that there was no reason to carry it to Washington. I brought back some things I couldn’t read: French or German, I think. They might be it.’

‘You frighten him enough, so that he would have handed it over if he’d had it?’

‘I made him watch me kill Serov! How much more frightened could he have been!’

‘So what’s he going to do?’

Antipov frowned sideways. ‘Do? He’s not going to do anything. I killed him too.’

‘ What! ’

‘He was a witness to murder!’

‘Which didn’t achieve anything,’ dismissed Zimin. It had all gone badly wrong. And it was going to reflect upon him, because he was supposed to have organised it.

‘You said there had to be warnings,’ reminded Antipov, defensively. He’d taken his jacket off and laid it in the back of the car, to prevent it creasing as he sat. He’d done the same in the Ford, with the man jibbering in fear beside him.

‘We needed the documents!’

‘Isn’t there any other way?’

‘I don’t know,’ admitted Zimin. He was going to look very stupid. He couldn’t think of any way of avoiding the responsibility, either.