No Time for Heroes

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

When the moment came for Danilov to work with the total independence upon which he’d decided, he was stopped by a last moment of doubt: after all the outside attempts to destroy him he was knowingly inviting his own destruction, like a lemming rushing towards the cliff edge. It was a brief hesitation. Someone or some group in an official position had to know what Serov had been doing, how he was doing it and why he was doing it. So for him to go on duplicating memoranda to ministries and officials like the hare in a paper chase was telling the very people he needed to search out and confront how to evade and hide.

It was the meticulous and methodical Pavin who found what Danilov had missed in Washington. The reserved, puffy-eyed Cowley called it a breakthrough but Danilov, more cautiously, suggested it was no more encouraging than the rest. When Danilov added he had no intention of telling anyone, the American said: ‘You could be putting the rope around your own neck, before kicking the chair away.’

‘We need to do it. If we don’t you might as well go back to Washington and I might as well mark the whole thing unsolvable.’

‘You’re the one who’s got everything to lose,’ warned Cowley. He, by comparison, had everything to gain.

Reminded of the other endangered person, apart from himself, Danilov said to Pavin: ‘If there is ever an enquiry I will testify you acted upon my specific orders: that you had no choice.’

Pavin considered the undertaking. ‘It wouldn’t save me, not entirely. If I disagree I should go over your head.’

‘ Do you disagree?’ asked Danilov.

‘No,’ said the man. ‘I think this is what we should do.’

There had been a section missing from Petr Serov’s original records when they were returned to Petrovka from the Foreign Ministry, an apparently innocuous account of a week-long visit to the Kennedy Centre in May, 1991, of a Nigerian dance group. Intermingled in Serov’s English written report were ten Cyrillic letters, which Pavin, knowing the code to follow, had formed into the name Ilya Nishin.

‘I think this name is particularly important,’ said Pavin. The man was clearly flattered at being included in a planning meeting, enjoying the praise for locating another name. ‘All the others appeared in the autumn of ’91. This one is the first.’

‘We haven’t tried to connect the names against the dates they were concealed,’ pointed out Danilov. ‘Why don’t we do that, starting with this one hidden in May, 1991? If it doesn’t turn up on your criminal computer, let’s run it through your immigration records, for the entire month.’

Cowley nodded to the idea. ‘We could take it further: give the name, month and year to the Swiss to see if they’ve got any trace.’

All Danilov’s doubts had gone. His only feeling now was satisfied excitement at having something positive to pursue.

‘We’ve got more than one curious name,’ reminded Pavin. Stultifying Russian bureaucracy required that the returned Foreign Ministry documents carry the signature of the official approving their release. The authority had been that of Oleg Yaklovich Yasev.

‘He has been assigned to Raisa Serova, both for the interview and the funeral,’ Danilov pointed out, trying to remain objective. ‘There’s a logic in his handling the document request as well.’

‘I don’t believe in coincidences,’ said Cowley.

‘Neither do I. He’s an executive officer: reasonably powerful. And he’s been using that power, with all the complaints…’ To Pavin he said: ‘I want to know everything you can possibly find out about him.’

Cowley said: ‘I’ve got a gut feeling about this. Things are going to start happening now. Just you see.’

It was a casual aside the American did not later remember, so he never realised the bitter irony of the remark.

Cowley was back at the embassy by mid-afternoon. It took him less than an hour to transmit the newly discovered name and set out the complete checks he wanted made, and with time on his hands he agreed to a drink in the embassy mess with the chain-smoking Stephen Snow. He limited himself to two, still not feeling completely recovered from the previous night.

The resident FBI man had read the cable traffic, so the conversation was obvious. Cowley repeated he had a detective’s instinct it was going to take them somewhere.

Cowley used the Marlboro trick to get a taxi outside the embassy, and slumped in the back, thinking of Danilov. The guy was taking a hell of a risk. But he was an adult, sane and over twenty-one, so he could make up his own mind. Cowley accepted it convincingly answered all his early uncertainties about the openness of Danilov’s co-operation. The guy wasn’t just co-operating now: he was virtually working with America and closing out his own people. A hell of a risk, he thought again. Although from all that had happened he had a pretty good idea, Cowley conceded he couldn’t properly guess the sort of shit Danilov had had to wade through in the beginning. Not just the beginning: up until just a few days ago.

Cowley smiled expectantly at the receptionist, the expression becoming a frown when she handed him the package with his key. It was a stiff-backed manila envelope, about 10? by 8?, made thick by its contents. The only marking was his name, scrolled with the stiff difficulty by someone unaccustomed to forming Roman lettering.

He made no attempt to open the envelope in the lobby. Instead, with the proper caution of a trained investigator handling a Mafia enquiry, he carried it to his room to examine and feel it minutely, fingering for anything solid, squinting from every angle for any detonating wire or thread. He still opened it from the bottom, gently pulling against the glue to ease the flap open.

The contents were as explosive as any bomb could have been.

There were twelve prints, all professionally lighted, all professionally sharp, all perfectly developed. Every one completely identified him, apparently taking part in every sort of sexual act. His closed-eyed semi-consciousness when Lena had performed fellatio looked like an expression of ecstasy. So it did with her vagina at his mouth for the feigned cunnilingus. Lena had put herself into three different positions of supposed sexual intercourse. There were two photographs of him completely naked, her hand on his limp genitals. In both he was smiling drunkenly, a tilted champagne glass in his hand, the FBI shield they had taken from his jacket open in its wallet on the bedside table.

Cowley swallowed against the bile, gripping the shake away from the hands that held the photographs. He went through them several times, turning each one to look for any inscription. There wasn’t one, on any. He looked carefully back inside the envelope for a message, It was empty.

For a few brief moments he remained uncertainly by the bed – the bed so clearly shown in the pictures now laid out upon it – striving to think rationally, coherently. He finally assembled the photographs and put them back into their envelope, which in turn he put inside his briefcase: never once did it occur to him to destroy them, which would have been pointless because they were prints, not negatives from which as many other prints as were wanted could be developed.

Aware in advance his next action would be equally pointless, he still descended the four flights to the bar, halting directly inside the door. The barman nodded the nightly greeting, starting to pour the Scotch unbidden. Two of the regular girls smiled up, hopefully. Lena, of course, was not there. There wouldn’t, he knew, be any purpose in asking where she was.

Cowley turned, going back to his room. He retrieved the photographs, going carefully through them once more, gaining nothing from the renewed examination. He finally replaced them in the briefcase before sitting down, staring between the case and the telephone.

How would it come? he wondered. With what demand? And what would he do, whatever that demand was?

The despair finally engulfed him. ‘Dear God,’ he said, aloud. ‘Dear God, help me.’

The location came from Yevgennie Kosov, a restaurant on Ulitza Moskina, quite close to the Kunstler Theatre, from which it drew a lot of its clientele; like the Western counterparts they copied so assiduously, the Moscow Mafia enjoyed a show business ambience. It was an established Ostankino haunt.

Zimin took six bulls with him. They saw the Ostankino group go in and allowed half an hour for them to settle, unsuspecting, before bursting in. The surprise was absolute. Only one Ostankino bull had time to try any effective defence but his Stetchkin shot wide, embedding its bullet harmlessly in the wall. The Chechen had guns but did not use them. They carried wooden and metal staves and crowbars with which they broke arms and legs and in two cases fractured skulls, matching identically the Ostankino attack on the Domodedovo convoy. Completing the mocking comparison, they torched the restaurant as they left.

Zimin supervised the attack but took no personal part in it. He liked watching. It was better for him than sex.