No Time for Heroes

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

Danilov telephoned Pavin from Kirovskaya that he was making an enquiry on his way in, impatient to get to Cowley’s hotel. His enthusiasm faltered at the sight of the American, who was grey-faced; the skin sagged under his eyes, which were vague, without focus. He looked distracted, exhausted.

‘You don’t look well.’

‘I slept badly.’ Cowley knew exactly how shitty he looked and didn’t need to be told.

‘You sure that’s all it is?’

‘You said you had something important,’ urged the American.

Danilov’s excitement took over. He bustled Cowley into the Volga, picking up the inner ring road but without any destination. Danilov tried to keep the account coherent, interspersing the actual conversation of the previous night with his impressions, but several times the American had to intrude with a question, fully to comprehend. Towards the end Cowley forced aside the eroding depression and the aching fatigue, recognising this possibly to be the biggest break so far, and one they certainly needed.

‘It was obvious Kosov was on the take,’ Cowley agreed.

‘But not to this extent,’ qualified Danilov. He hadn’t admitted that at uniform level he’d also been a willing player. He didn’t intend to, if he could avoid it: he very much wanted the American’s professional respect.

‘What’s your guess?’

‘I don’t want to guess. I want to find out, definitely. And I want you to help me.’

‘How?’

‘You broke a New York Family with some impressive bugging, particularly in cars. That car is Kosov’s status symbol. He’ll do business from it: maybe enough for us to go further forward.’

‘You still don’t intend telling everyone officially?’

‘More determined than ever not to.’

‘It’s your neck.’ Cowley slightly lowered the window, for air.

‘You said that already.’

‘We had a hell of a Task Force, on the New York operation. With local police back-up. We couldn’t create an organisation like that here. Definitely not if we’re working virtually solo. Which we are.’

‘We could do the car, surely?’ insisted Danilov.

Cowley nodded, but doubtfully. ‘We couldn’t guarantee the reception unless we established a permanently close tail. Which we can’t. So the strength of the signal will vary enormously. We wouldn’t get everything.’

‘I don’t want everything: just enough!’

‘We could connect the transmitter to a receiver in the embassy,’ suggested Cowley. Deciding their co-operation was sufficient, he added: ‘There’s a man there who could monitor.’ It would provide something more practical for Stephen Snow to do than relaying messages.

‘I’ve already suggested another evening. Kosov’s bound to insist we use the BMW.’

‘We’ll be fucked if he doesn’t.’

‘We’ll keep on until he does,’ said Danilov, refusing to be put off.

‘The Bureau have a hell of a range of equipment,’ offered the American. ‘If I ask for it today we should get it by tomorrow’s pouch: allow an extra day, just in case there’s a difficulty. So fix the evening any time after that.’ If the eavesdropping had any practical success, whoever had the photographs would hit on him with the blackmail. How long before the ignominious disgrace? A week? A fortnight? As long as a month? To whom would the pictures be released? The embassy was an obvious guess; the Bureau in Washington, as a long shot. Either would be contained internally, certainly after his instant resignation. What about a public leak, to newspapers? There were enough permanent American bureaux in Moscow, all listed in the telephone book. And the censor-free Muscovite press. Cowley didn’t think any of the pictures could be published, but they wouldn’t have to be: they could be described in print in sufficient detail and innuendo. So he would become a public as well as a private laughing stock. Pauline would hear or read what had happened: know he hadn’t changed in any way. He hated the idea of Pauline knowing most of all. He’d been drunk and tricked by a whore and was going to be destroyed by it. And it was no-one’s fault but his own.

‘How about Friday?’ suggested Danilov. ‘We’ll need to familiarise ourselves.’

‘Friday’s good,’ agreed Cowley. He was silent as Danilov made the connecting loop, to return them along the peripheral road. Then he said: ‘Kosov’s your friend. Larissa, too?’

Danilov darted a quick look across the car. ‘He replaced me, when I got out of uniform. Things kind of grew from there.’ Only because of Larissa, he thought.

‘It’s never easy, turning in a dirty cop. Particularly if he’s your friend.’ Why had the Russian jumped like that?

‘No,’ agreed Danilov. He hadn’t thought yet of the personal implications, but he started now.

‘Maybe something could be worked out. If he’s not definitely involved – just a conduit – maybe it could be dealt with discreetly? A quiet retirement.’ Which was the best he could hope for, realised Cowley. He was thinking more about himself than about a corrupt Militiaman.

Everyone goes for compromise, accepted Danilov. ‘He’s more than a conduit: messengers don’t drive brand new German cars. At the least, he might be withholding information about a murder.’ So Kosov would have to be arrested and charged, unless it were stopped by higher authority. Wasn’t it obvious Kosov would try to bargain with accusations about his own past? And it wasn’t just the criminal investigation. What would Kosov do when he and Larissa made their announcement? The euphoria Danilov had felt began to leak away.

‘It’s going to seem a long time until Friday,’ said Cowley, more to himself than to the Russian.

But it didn’t.

The first intriguing – although still inconclusive – development confirmed Pavin’s prediction that the undiscovered name had more significance than the others in Petr Serov’s belongings.

With an approximate date to put through their computerised immigration records, the Swiss authorities traced an entry into Geneva of an Ilya Iosifovich Nishin on 22 May 1991. American immigration located the arrival of Nishin at Dulles airport five days later, on 28 May. Michel Paulac’s passport – and another immigration check – showed Paulac on the same flight. Both men, on their visa forms, gave the Mayflower Hotel as their Washington DC address. FBI records did not have Nishin criminally listed.

In the same diplomatic pouch with that information Cowley received from the FBI’s Psychological Behavioral Unit at Quantico, to which he had sent every tape of the Mikhail Antipov interrogation, confirmation that their approach to the man had been the right one. Detailed analysis of the tapes had failed to detect any stress peaks, which was inconceivable confronted with the irrefutable evidence, at that time, of the murder weapon.

‘He knew the gun would disappear,’ said Cowley.

‘Thanks for going to the trouble, but I didn’t need a psychologist to tell me that,’ said Danilov.

It wasn’t the end of the name discoveries. On the Thursday, Danilov finally received a reply from Oleg Yasev to his query about the identities of the three unknown mourners at Petr Serov’s funeral. One, Valentin Lvov, had known the murdered diplomat from their joint posting at the Paris embassy. The other two, Ivan Churmak and Gennardi Fedorov, had officially represented the government.

‘Fedorov!’ identified Pavin at once.

Danilov had already recognised the name as one of the three on Lapinsk’s list. It took an hour to identify him as the senior representative on the permanent Interior Ministry executive.

‘And there’s another link,’ disclosed Pavin. ‘Oleg Yasev also served in Paris during the same period as Petr Serov.’

‘You haven’t given me these names before,’ accused Cowley.

‘I didn’t think they had any part in the case,’ said Danilov. ‘I thought they were given to me as a personal warning.’

‘It’s a hell of a coincidence, isn’t it?’ questioned Cowley.

‘They represented the government,’ reminded Pavin.

‘Which is concerned over potential embarrassment about a criminally-linked diplomat,’ completed Danilov.

‘Kosov bullshits,’ decided the blind man. ‘We should go ahead, not wait to see if he can deliver Danilov.’

‘I’m the one who’ll be exposed,’ protested Zimin.

‘Frightened?’ goaded Yerin.

‘For the success of an operation that is going to make this Family one of the most powerful in the world: certainly in Russia!’ returned the indulgently fat man.

Gusovsky was concerned the animosity between the two men was going to end in disaster. Objectively, he thought again, it would have to be Zimin who was removed. ‘We already know we have to wait. But we don’t need to produce the money. So we can get the control transferred at our leisure.’

‘Do we go ahead?’ persisted Yerin.

‘No,’ decided Gusovsky. ‘We wait a little longer to see if Kosov can get Danilov. It’s worth the delay.’

‘It would be a double bonus if he does. It would mean we were back where we were before with the Organised Crime Bureau,’ pointed out Zimin.

‘The man won’t produce,’ insisted Yerin emphatically.