No Time for Heroes

CHAPTER THREE

Dimitri Ivanovich Danilov prepared carefully because there was always the possibility others would be there – the Federal Prosecutor or someone high up in the Interior Ministry, perhaps – and he wanted to look right. He’d waited a long time, sometimes he thought too long, and he wanted his appearance to be correct in every detail. Danilov was professionally meticulous about detail, although the outward chaos in which he appeared to work hardly indicated that.

The Director had virtually promised Danilov the succession, before he’d gone to America the previous year during the joint murder investigation, and he’d shopped there with this sort of moment in mind, an occasion when he needed to look his best. He’d scarcely worn the shirt with the pin that fastened the collar behind the tie, which was also new. The shirt was more rumpled than he would have liked but it wouldn’t be improved by Olga ironing it again, because she was hopeless at laundry, like she was about most household chores. The American sports coat was newer and held its shape better than either of his two suit jackets, but he chose a suit, the thinner one because of the summer heat. A sports outfit would be too casual.

Danilov dressed as quietly as possible to avoid disturbing Olga, who lay on her back, the sheets bundled around her, her mouth slightly open. The snore was irregular, rising and falling like a faulty engine. A shaft of early light was across her tangled hair, showing the greyness through the uneven brown tint. He hadn’t noticed the varying shades until that moment – but then, they didn’t look at each other that closely any more.

Danilov was genuinely sad about the way things had collapsed between himself and Olga. Wrong word, he rejected at once. It had been more of an erosion, a wearing away through neglect and lack of interest until the shell of a marriage was left, with no substance to support it. They existed now in polite pretence, performing a weary charade, each waiting for the other to declare the last act. More his pretence than Olga’s, Danilov corrected, refusing himself the escape. He’d been the one knowingly and cynically to prolong it, letting her think there was a chance of salvaging something long after he’d fallen in love with Larissa and no chance remained. And he’d cheated Larissa as well as Olga, making both wait until this moment, this day.

He’d be powerful enough after today to resist the possible embarrassment of long-ago compromises. Would Yevgennie Kosov disclose those compromises, when Larissa asked for the divorce, as he could now ask Olga? For a policeman as boastfully corrupt as Kosov it would be an act of suicide, because of the cross-accusations Danilov could make in return, but having known Kosov for as long as he had, Danilov guessed the man might be vindictive enough to pull the roof down on his own head if he felt his property was being stolen, which was how he’d think of Larissa leaving him – although the Kosov marriage was even more of a mockery than his own to Olga. So it had been sensible to wait until now: indefensible, by his much vaunted moral integrity, but sensible for the career culminating today.

Danilov’s final, most careful preparation was to comb the fair, thinning hair over that part of his forehead where it had already retreated. It was an oversight, not to have had it cut: the threat of impending baldness wasn’t so obvious, close cropped.

Danilov left the Kirovskaya apartment without waking Olga. There was a crush at the Kazan metro station, and he looked forward to having a permanent official car. He’d have to pressure the local Militia station to increase patrols around his block to protect the vehicle: it would be humiliating if the wipers or windscreen or wheels were stolen, which would happen if he didn’t have it guarded. He’d have the power, as Director, to get it looked after: power for whatever he wanted to do. And he wanted to do a lot.

He tried to check the time, not wanting to be late, but his watch – one of the few remaining tributes from his erstwhile grateful friends – had stopped again, so he had to wait for a station clock. He was ahead of time.

His elevation wouldn’t be welcomed by anyone in the Organised Crime Bureau of the Moscow Militia. From the moment of his transfer, six years earlier, Danilov had regained an integrity that had lapsed when he was in uniform, and refused to get involved in the deals and the trading and the pay-offs. He’d been virtually the only one, apart perhaps from the Director. Danilov guessed that when his appointment became public there would be a lot of worried fellow officers who’d sneered and laughed and openly called him stupid over those previous six years. And they’d have every reason to be worried: under his directorship the Organised Crime Bureau would stop being a rigged lottery, with every player a winner.

He wouldn’t move too hurriedly. Or without proper consideration. If he purged it as quickly and as thoroughly as it deserved, there’d hardly be an investigator left, and he wouldn’t be improving a bureau by wrecking it. In fact he probably wouldn’t do anything about the past at all, except to use his awareness for the future. He’d let it be known, subtly but clearly enough, that the old days and the old ways were over: that under his command the back alley meetings and package-filled handshakes were gone. He’d move hard against those who disregarded the warnings, either transferring them back into uniform or dismissing them entirely as examples to those who remained.

There was no-one else apart from General Leonid Lapinsk in the top floor office at Petrovka, and the Director did not rise from behind his desk when Danilov entered. Lapinsk had been showing his age in the last couple of years, but now Danilov decided the man looked positively ill, his face not just grey but cadaverous. Under stress the General had the habit of coughing, puntuating his words. He did it now, during the greetings, and Danilov wondered why: he couldn’t image anything stressful about this encounter, virtually a meeting between friends.

‘There are matters for us to discuss,’ said the older man.

‘Yes,’ accepted Danilov. He supposed Lapinsk could make the announcement himself. Or perhaps they’d go on to the Federal Prosecutor’s office on Pushkinskaya, or to the Interior Ministry, after Lapinsk had made clear how much he’d had to do with promotion.

‘You brought particular credit to this department after the joint American investigation…’ There was a burst of coughing. ‘After which I gave you what amounted to an undertaking, about your future.’

Here it comes, thought Danilov. ‘I appreciate the confidence you’ve always shown in me.’

Lapinsk looked down at his desk. ‘Which has been justified by something rare here. But which frightens people. Honesty.’

Danilov was bewildered, ‘I don’t understand.’

‘You are not to succeed me,’ declared Lapinsk, hurrying the coughing words. ‘The appointment goes to Metkin.’

‘What!’ Anatoli Nikolaevich Metkin was a colonel too, but lacked Danilov’s seniority. And he headed the list of men to be warned in the clean-up Danilov had intended in the Bureau. A clean-up, he realised at once, that now wouldn’t be happening.

‘I’ve failed, in my promise to you: like I’ve failed properly to run this Bureau,’ blurted Lapinsk, in sudden admission, ‘I allowed certain practices, understandings, to go on. It’s always been the way: policemen have to mix with criminals, to solve crime. I never intended it to become what it has, virtually a criminal enterprise. That’s why I wanted you to take over: to put things back as they should be. I thought I had the power, even though I was retiring…’ The old man gulped to a halt, near to breaking down. ‘… But it isn’t just the Bureau. People here are protected higher up, within the Interior Ministry. And they’re protected by others for whom they do favours in other ministries. Even by the gangs themselves. It’s like a club, everyone looking after each other. I was blocked, in every way I tried to put you forward… In the end they’ve mocked me, mocked you… I’m sorry. So very, very sorry.’

Danilov tried to analyse what he was being told, examine it coherently. He’d been out-manoeuvred in a coup he hadn’t suspected by those who’d sneered and laughed but known what he would do if he gained control. There’d be a lot more sneering and laughing now. ‘How are we being mocked?’

Lapinsk cleared his throat. ‘Officially, I have been told that, such was your success over the American business, you are too valuable an investigator to be elevated into the administrative position of Director…’

‘So I remain senior colonel, in charge of investigations?’

Lapinsk shook his head, unable to look straight at his protege. ‘You are to be Deputy Director.’

‘There’s no such position.’

‘It’s being created.’

The outrage physically burned through Danilov. It wasn’t recognition. It was emasculation, removing him from the day-to-day work of a bureau as corrupt as the criminal organisations it was supposed to be investigating into a position where he could do nothing about it. He said: ‘It’s meaningless, professionally. There will be no power: nothing for me properly to do.’

‘There’ll be a car,’ evaded Lapinsk. ‘And a salary increase.’

‘I could refuse.’

‘They want you to,’ Lapinsk warned him. ‘If you do that, you’ll have to accept whatever alternative you’re offered. Or quit altogether.’

‘Why can’t I remain as senior investigator?’

‘Your former position has already been filled.’

Totally emasculated, Danilov accepted. Any alternative would be the most demeaning that could be found: doubtless had already been found, in expectation of his rejection. He said: ‘It’s all been cleverly worked out, hasn’t it?’

‘You have enemies,’ conceded Lapinsk.

‘Who?’ demanded Danilov. ‘Give me names! I need the names!’

‘Practically everyone here, in the Bureau.’

‘Of course. But who in the Ministries?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Who do you think are honest, then?’ asked Danilov desperately.

‘The Federal Prosecutor, Smolin, maybe. Those at the very top of the Interior Ministry: I could never get through to them. But I don’t know who stood in your way, just below them.’

Danilov felt lost, totally exposed. In sudden awareness he said: ‘A position didn’t have to be created.’

‘If you accept, you will remain in the building: people will know what you are doing. If you refuse, you could – and probably would – be downgraded on some invented disciplinary charge and relegated to the furthest Militia post, where you’d never be heard of again.’

If they wanted to know what he was doing, there had to be some apprehension about him. Despite the emptiness of the newly created position, Danilov wondered if he could use it to his advantage. It was a comforting thought. ‘I don’t have a choice, do I?’

‘No,’ admitted the outgoing Director.

He needed time to think: consider all his options. Perhaps first even to find one. ‘If you need me to say it formally, I accept.’

‘Just survive, Dimitri Ivanovich.’

‘I wanted to do more than that!’

‘You can’t. And won’t. Crime has won, here in Moscow. In the old days it was organised by the Party – Brezhnev and his gang. Now the gangs are on the streets: better organised even than then. And nobody cares, because nobody knows any other way. There is no other way.’

‘I won’t accept that.’

‘You haven’t a choice,’ echoed Lapinsk.

Chillingly, Danilov realised the older man was probably right.

The Hertz computer at Dulles airport, where the car had been rented, automatically registered the failure to return the grey Ford at the expiry of its hiring date. There was no concern, because the charges simply went on accruing against the platinum American Express card issued to Michel Paulac, of 26, Rue Calvin, Geneva, Switzerland. It was quite common for tourists to miss their return date, forgetting to advise they were keeping a car for a longer period than they’d originally intended.