No Time for Heroes

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

The time difference between Washington and Moscow worked better in reverse, because it enabled Pavin to send to America as much as was known about the murdered Ivan Ignatov before Danilov left the embassy the following morning. Quite obviously, in such a short period, the extent of that information was still limited to official, available records, but what there was offered another ill-fitting piece for the incomplete jigsaw. Ivan Ignatsevich Ignatov had a criminal history ranging from pimping, violence – one victim lost an eye, another was permanently crippled from a shattered kneecap – to foreign tourist mugging and larceny from Customs-bonded warehouses at Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport. By far the most interesting and connecting fact, however, was that the man’s crime sheet identified him as a member of the Ostankino Family, one of the Militia-acknowledged clans making up the Moscow Mafia.

His body had been found near the permanent exhibition area for international trade, by the river loop. It was possible the killer or killers had hoped it would be washed down-stream, but instead it had lodged on a just-submerged mud bank. Like the Washington victims, he had been shot three times: the complete autopsy was yet to be carried out, but the scene-of-crime preliminary examination suggested the mouth shot had been the last: an earlier bullet, directly into the heart, had been the cause of death. The bullet to the mouth and what was believed to be its casing had been recovered. It had come from a 9mm Makarov pistol. There was no evidence of robbery or torture.

Cowley read the single-page report quickly. ‘Back in your territory?’

‘It always had to be there, at some time and in some way,’ said Danilov.

‘How public are these Families?’

Danilov considered his answer. ‘We don’t have the resources – or the official urging – properly to move against them. And a lot of people don’t want them curbed anyway. The Mafia provide what can’t be obtained.

‘Chicago, 1920s,’ compared Cowley.

‘The role model,’ agreed Danilov.

‘But they are known people?’

‘It’s not been my section,’ apologised Danilov. Organised gang investigation had supposedly been the responsibility of Anatoli Metkin, before his elevation to Director. Could that be the reason for the man’s near-hysterical interest in the Serov killing, even though it had been 5,000 miles from Moscow?

‘So we could shake the trees and maybe make a few apples fall?’

Danilov frowned, unaccustomed to Cowley speaking like so many of the other detectives but glad he understood: quite often over the last few days he had had to struggle to keep up. ‘We could try.’

‘Let’s hope with more success than Brighton Beach.’

‘Let’s hope,’ agreed Danilov, sincerely. It might prove even more obstructed, this time, with officialdom added to the difficulties.

‘So we’re going back,’ said Cowley.

He didn’t want to, Danilov acknowledged: so much so that since Pavin’s call the previous night and the cables that morning he had consciously avoided thinking about it, which was ridiculous. And then he fully realised what Cowley had said – we’re going back. In Moscow, even with the uncertain support of the deputies in the Foreign and Interior Ministries, there would still be the intrusion and obstruction of the resentful Metkin, whom he did know, and others, whom he didn’t. But not if Cowley were there as well. ‘Back we go again,’ he agreed.

‘I suppose we do,’ agreed Cowley.

That was certainly what Leonard Ross expected, when Cowley met the Director an hour later. The man agreed at once to a Task Force to blitz Brighton Beach and that Hank Slowen could supervise from the New York office. The Director also promised personally to brief the Moscow embassy, through which Cowley had to communicate daily. Remembering the gulag-type living conditions of the American residential compound, Cowley hurriedly said he’d prefer to live this time in an hotel, which Ross accepted without question.

Back in his own office Cowley ensured he and Danilov were booked on the same flight and cabled the FBI station at the embassy, asking for a reservation to be made at the Savoy.

At the Russian embassy on the other side of the White House and Lafayette Square Danilov sat at Serov’s desk, listening to his own telephone at Kirovskaya ring unanswered. He put it down, deciding he would have to return unannounced. He had a hell of a lot to do before leaving Washington the following day. And he still hadn’t had his hair cut, which they did so much better here than they did in Moscow.

It was at the request of the Secretary of State that Leonard Ross invited the Washington mayor, the police chief and the chief of detectives to the Bureau later that afternoon for as full a briefing as possible.

When Ross finished, Mort Halpern said: ‘You think we got a whole new Mafia organisation, stretching from here to Russia? Or a tie-up between our Cosa Nostra and theirs, somehow connected through the embassy?’

‘We don’t know, not yet,’ admitted the FBI Director. ‘But it looks like it. And if we have, it’s the most serious development of organised crime I can think of.’

‘Either scenario worries the hell out of me,’ said Halpern.

‘Of us all,’ agreed Ross.

‘We going public on this?’ asked Elliott Jones.

‘No!’ said Ross adamantly. ‘Under no circumstances! This stays wrapped for as long as we can keep it that way.’

‘What about warning the public?’

‘Warning them of what?’ rejected Ross. ‘The only thing that would come of releasing it at this time would be panic and more headlines that we could handle.’

The whole intention of the briefing was, ironically, to prevent any leak percolating out to the media: by sticking to their understanding to keep the City officials informed, Ross and the Secretary of State expected them to maintain theirs and make no statement, public or otherwise, about the case.

It showed surprising, even naive, trust.