No Time for Heroes

CHAPTER THIRTY

Danilov saw at once that Metkin was not there. But Nikolai Smolin was: Danilov was still curious at the Federal Prosecutor being excluded from the departure briefing. At once he announced the identification of Mikhail Antipov from the recovered murder weapon, conscious of the palpable relief that went through the other three men. But it was limited, by objectivity. The Deputy Interior Minister said: ‘Getting a name isn’t getting the man.’

‘All available officers from the Bureau are being supplemented by uniformed Militia wherever and whenever necessary,’ assured Danilov.

‘Do the Americans know?’ demanded Oskin.

‘Cowley attended the briefing at which the search was organised.’

Sergei Vorobie frowned. ‘Which brings us to the original purpose of this meeting, the formal protest Note handed to our ambassador in Washington. The identification of the killer greatly mitigates the problem, but it is exactly the sort of diplomat embarrassment we wanted to avoid. And warned you about. Why did the American tell you in advance he was making a complaint?’

Danilov decided at once why Metkin wasn’t present. These men regarded him, the recognised officer leading the investigation, as the man responsible for the fiasco. Limiting himself to the question, Danilov said: ‘I regarded it as a matter of courtesy.’

‘Don’t you also regard it as arrogant of the man to raise it as high as he did? Making it official like this?’ asked Vasili Oskin.

Danilov hesitated. ‘The mistakes were serious, at the time endangering the entire investigation. And couldn’t be rectified.’

‘Why were mistakes made?’ said Smolin.

He was being blamed! It was easily defensible and he was going to have to rebut the accusation, but he had wanted any internal enquiry at least begun independently of himself, so there could not be any later charges of a vendetta or personal animosity. ‘I can’t answer that. I was not here when the body was found: when the investigation was started.’

‘Who could answer?’ demanded Oskin, unusually loud voiced.

Why were they forcing him to name the Director, from whom it was obvious the answers had to come? And why wasn’t the man here, either at his own request or at their demand? From the call he’d made to Pavin from the Druzhba hotel he knew Metkin hadn’t made any enquiry about the investigation during his absence: that didn’t make sense, either. ‘Anatoli Nikolaevich Metkin is the Director.’

‘Who supervised the initial enquiry?’ persisted Oskin.

‘Senior investigating colonel Vladimir Kabalin,’ supplied Danilov. This encounter wasn’t going at all how he had expected: at that moment he wasn’t sure how it was going. Despite his intended determination specifically to avoid the role, they were making him the accuser: and isolating themselves from any damaging fall-out by doing nothing other than properly reacting as their official positions might later require. Communism had institutionalised everyone, Danilov decided: made everyone frightened of offending an unknown higher authority.

‘Tell us, in absolute and precise detail, what wasn’t done,’ insisted Smolin.

First accused, then accuser, now the prosecutor. Throughout the litany of failures, a recitation of beginning-to-end facts from the moment of their arrival at the river bank, the three men sat regarding him impassively. At the end Vorobie said: ‘That’s appalling. Inconceivable.’

With me as much a victim as Ivan Ignatsevich Ignatov, thought Danilov.

‘If we arrest Antipov, and from him understand the connection between the killing here and those in Washington, we might be able to avoid giving the explanation the Americans are demanding,’ suggested Smolin.

‘According to the ambassador, the Americans think an organised crime group is operating out of our embassy with the tacit awareness if not the positive encouragement of the Russian government!’ declared Vorobie. ‘The fact that Antipov is a proven gangster is a virtual confirmation.’

‘We can deny official knowledge,’ insisted Smolin.

‘We already have!’ said Vorobie irritably. ‘How the hell can we be believed when an accredited, murdered Russian diplomat provably had the names of Russian gangsters secretly in his possession? I wouldn’t believe any denial myself! No-one would!’

Someone had to know what the names were doing there, thought Danilov. Who? Was it one of these two ministers, calmly lying, sure of remaining undiscovered because they were on the inside of the investigation, aware of everything that was happening?

‘The Americans should not have been allowed to know of the names,’ said Oskin critically.

‘I didn’t know they were names,’ defended Danilov. ‘They were meaningless letters until a computer made sense of them.’

‘The whole thing has been a shambles,’ said Smolin.

‘It has not been a shambles!’ protested Danilov. ‘I was not responsible for the American protest.’

No-one knew for several moments how to continue. Then Oskin said: ‘We must get Antipov! And quickly. Why don’t we bring in the Security Ministry, too?’

‘A manhunt that wide would leak,’ cautioned Danilov, careless of the obvious inference of corruption throughout enforcement agencies. ‘If Antipov learns of it he’ll cross into any one of the former Soviet republics and be safe. I can’t pursue him there, not any more.’

There was another brief silence, broken again by Oskin. ‘If we don’t get him quickly – a week at the outside – the Security Ministry will be brought in.’

‘Definitely no more than a week,’ endorsed Vorobie.

Smolin’s nod made the suggestion unanimous.

Danilov decided he had not emerged well from the encounter.

‘Let’s hope there’s nothing else to harm relations between us and Washington before we get him,’ said Oskin.

It was a forlorn hope.

The following day’s story given by the mayor to the Washington Post detailed everything down to the Mafia identities being found in Serov’s papers, and named Ignatov as the third victim. But to protect Elliott Jones as the source it carried a Moscow dateline, giving the impression the news came from a Russian informant.

The media circus everyone had wanted to avoid cranked into gear.