No Time for Heroes

CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

It was the Metropole again, but the man wasn’t waiting to intercept him in the foyer, nor in the bar itself, when Danilov arrived, a few minutes ahead of the arranged time. The waiter peremptorily tried to move him from the booth, until Danilov said he was waiting for guests and didn’t intend occupying it alone: he deliberately ordered beer, the cheapest drink on the list.

Danilov welcomed a few minutes by himself. He was about to try the biggest bluff of his life. Cowley, still not entirely knowing what he was attempting, had continued to argue against it. So had Pavin, who had come from their original office, where he still had his files, to announce the number deciphered from Kosov’s car phone had been traced to the Kutbysevskij address. Pavin had wanted to order foot and motor patrols around Kutbysevskij and the restaurant on Glovin Bol’soj until Danilov pointed out both were in Kosov’s Militia district, and that it was inevitable the man would learn about them. He refused, too, to have any squad personally imposed for protective surveillance. His most positive rejection was to Cowley’s suggestion he wear a body microphone and transmitter.

Danilov did not seriously believe he was in any physical danger – not this first time at least – but it was not until after he’d made the final arrangements with Kosov that he realised how few precautions there were to take. He wrote a detailed statement, listing as much as he suspected about the man’s links with the Chechen, to supplement the stack of incriminating tape transcripts. In particular, he itemised that day’s date and included timings for a provable and continuing narrative implicating the man in the imminent Mafia encounter. He intended to supplement it even further with whatever identifying conversation would be recorded from the BMW.

Kosov was fifteen minutes late. The reluctant waiter became smilingly attentive when he bustled towards the booth, looked disgustedly at the beer, and ordered Chivas Regal, widening his thumb and forefinger to make it double. Danilov was aware of three men entering the bar at almost precisely spaced intervals after Kosov. They wore Western-style suits and upon one there was a glint of gold, from a bracelet and a ring on the same hand, but the features were Slavic. The one with the gold reminded him of Mikhail Antipov: Danilov was glad he had not agreed to a similar escort, which would have been not so well dressed but just as obvious.

‘So there’s no hurry?’ said Danilov, as Kosov began to drink.

‘There’s time to talk. These men – the people you’re going to meet – like respect. They’re big… very big.’

‘Do I play the peasant or the kulak?’

‘Just trying to help,’ said Kosov. He was subdued, close to being openly frightened.

It would be wrong to offend the man. ‘Who will I be meeting?’

‘They’ll tell you their names, if they want to.’

‘Where are we going?’

‘It’s quite close.’

Both Kutbysevskij and Glovin Bol’soj were quite close. For a few moments he sat regarding Kosov, not speaking. Kosov would definitely be as vindictive as possible. He’d try to ride out the exposure, Danilov decided: certainly not resign, unless it was demanded. And resist that demand, as strongly as possible. ‘What else should I know about them?’

‘They’re very generous, to people they consider friends.’

‘I would have to prove the friendship, of course?’

‘Of course.’

There was nothing to be gained by pressing further. ‘They very worried about Italy?’

Kosov’s face clouded. ‘They’re still furious at being misled.’

‘Not by me. And you know how that happened.’

‘It would help if you explained again to them, in person.’

‘I’ll make a point of it.’ Danilov was suddenly caught by the irrational wish to play the car intercepts back to the man: particularly the one involving the sadly flattered Olga. He dismissed the fantasy, irritably, looking up in time to see two of the men who’d entered closely behind Kosov both looking at him: one turned away too quickly.

Kosov smiled at the assurance. ‘It’s going to be very good, when you’re connected like I am: when we’re really a team, officially and otherwise.’

Danilov thought ‘connected’ had some American Mafia connotation, but wasn’t sure. He looked pointedly at his watch, which was a waste of time because it had stopped again. ‘Shouldn’t we go?’

The BMW was parked prominently outside the hotel. Danilov didn’t bother to check the three followers he was sure would be leaving directly after them, more concerned with feeding the incriminating tape. ‘How far do we have to go?’

‘I told you, it’s quite close.’

‘Where do they meet, the Chechen? Are there special houses… restaurants… public places… what?’

Kosov, who was heading back in the direction of Red Square, looked sharply across the car. ‘Who said anything about the Chechen?’

Shit! thought Danilov, caught out. Quickly recovering, he said: ‘That’s who the Americans think is involved.’

‘They move around,’ offered Kosov, after a pause.

He had to give as much as possible of the route. Seeing the illuminations ahead, Danilov said: ‘I would have expected the Kremlin stars to be taken down, wouldn’t you? It’s a Communist symbol, after all.’

‘I haven’t thought about it,’ dismissed Kosov, impatiently. ‘You’re not armed, are you?’

‘No.’ Should he explore the demand? It hardly required an explanation, and he didn’t want a too-persistent question-and-answer exchange.

Kosov turned on to Sverdlova. As they passed the US embassy – aware that briefly the American, at the listening apparatus, was only yards away – Danilov said: ‘Cowley says conditions inside the embassy there are terrible. The KGB bugs in the new building should have all been located by now, wouldn’t you think?’

‘I haven’t thought about that, either,’ said Kosov shortly.

Kosov had not attempted to play either his radio or taped music: so he was too distracted – concentrating upon other things – to show off. Or worried. Perhaps the Metropole drink hadn’t provided sufficient buoyancy. They were passing the monolithic Peking restaurant and Danilov was about to introduce it as another marker when Kosov pulled sharply into the underpass for the inner peripherique in the opposite direction. ‘What the hell are you doing? We’re going back the way we came!’ He’d keep to their optimistically devised monitoring but Danilov already knew he was in free orbit, virtually untraceable. The hope of maintaining a street-by-street identification had always been impractical.

‘Making a detour,’ replied Kosov flatly.

Recognising another name-identifying chance, Danilov said: ‘Surely you – and the Chechen – don’t think I’d surround myself with bodyguards! So we’re being checked out by minders?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Of course you know! This is ridiculous, Yevgennie Grigorevich!’

‘It’s not my idea!’

‘How much longer do we drive around and around like this?’

‘I said it wasn’t my idea!’

‘They were too obvious.’

‘Who? You’re not making sense!’ protested Kosov.

‘Your three Chechen protectors, back at the hotel.’

‘I don’t know anything about three men at the hotel.’

Enough, decided Danilov again: he had the Chechen linked by name with Kosov. ‘The Kammeny Bridge! This really is the conducted tour!’

Kosov did not reply.

If Moscow were divided by the Mafia into a cake they were a long way now from what was acknowledged to be the Chechen slice: certainly a long way from Kutbysevskij Prospekt or Glovin Bol’soj. Danilov was curious if they would continue, to complete the inner ring road. But once again Kosov made an abrupt and unannounced underpass turn to reverse yet again the direction in which they were driving. Preposterous though it was, Danilov conceded it would have been impossible for any surveillance car to have remained with him this far without being identified. They re-crossed the Kammeny Bridge and went by the embassy and the Chinese restaurant a second time but almost at once turned off Sverdlova, on to minor roads. On what Danilov thought he recognised to be Kisel’nyj Street Kosov unexpectedly slowed, to be passed by two cars flashing their lights.

‘I’m glad they’re satisfied,’ said Danilov.

‘Shouldn’t you be glad they’re so careful?’

‘I don’t know yet what I have to be careful about.’

They only drove for another few minutes and Danilov managed to get the place name when Kosov visibly began to slow once more. For the benefit of the tape, Danilov said: ‘Finally we get to Pecatnikov, which we could have done in five minutes if we’d come direct!’

‘I told you it was close,’ said Kosov.

Close indeed, to the favoured restaurant, Danilov recognised: Glovin Bol’soj was only two or three streets away. He half expected Kosov to go through the connecting alleys to reach it, but the man didn’t. Instead he pulled up within yards, in front of a huge, pre-revolutionary building which at first appeared a blank-walled, unlit block. Only when they went through a passage into an inner courtyard was there any sign of life or even habitation, which even then was still dimly lit.

Danilov guessed they were going into one of the apartments, but they didn’t. Kosov led towards a far basement corner, where there was a brighter light for the stairs leading down, but no nameplate to mark what it was. He absorbed everything as he followed Kosov, appreciating the absolute security. It was not, he acknowledged, protection against any sudden raid by a law enforcement agency. This was security against rival gang incursions, and was perfect. He hadn’t seen the surveillance, but the passage from the road would somehow be constantly monitored: any suspected entry would be identified halfway along and the occupants of whatever it was in this far corner warned before the intruder reached the courtyard. Danilov guessed there were enough exits from the rabbit warren he was entering for it to be cleared before an interloper began to cross the square.

Directly inside the basement entrance was a small, curtained-off vestibule with a reception counter to the left. An extremely attractive, heavily busted girl in a blouse too tight and too low smiled at him. The gold-adorned man from the Metropole blocked a further curtained entrance to whatever lay beyond: Danilov could hear the muttered noise of people. The man smiled, too, and advanced towards Danilov, hands familiarly outstretched for a pat-down search.

Danilov extended his own, halting hand. He’d have to concede, but it would be a mistake not to protest, now and later. This was the only chance he’d get: if he failed tonight, here, he failed in everything.

‘He’s OK. I asked,’ tried Kosov.

‘Orders,’ said the man, simply.

Would it only be a weapon search? Or would the man be feeling for a wire, too? Whatever, Danilov was glad he hadn’t gone along with Cowley’s suggestion. ‘This once,’ he accepted, tensing against the man’s hands going over his body. He would have welcomed the Militia – certainly the Militia at Petrovka – being this cautious.

‘OK,’ approved the man, stepping back.

‘Who was on guard when you were at the hotel?’ asked Danilov.

The man smiled again but didn’t answer.

A club, decided Danilov, as he pushed through the curtain. Hardly a public one, if every customer had to endure a body search. Another records check for Pavin tomorrow, to discover in whose name the property was registered. The room was very small, circular until the far end, where it flattened out into a roughcast, whitewashed wall, in which were set three doors, all closed. There was a small dance floor, surrounded by tables and chairs, and a tiny stage to the left. That, too, was curtained-off: to one side, from a glassed cubicle, another extremely attractive girl with displayed cleavage rivalling the receptionist’s was at a turntable. The music was quiet, American jazz. No-one was dancing. Danilov guessed there were about thirty people in the room, far more men than women. They were smoking well-packed Western cigarettes; the emptying bottles on the tables bore the labels of Western gins and whiskies. Three or four girls were alone at tables: he wondered if Lena Zurov had come here often.

No-one paid them any noticeable attention as they skirted the dance floor towards the far wall. Danilov expected them to go through one of the doors, but Kosov stopped at a table almost hidden by the unused stage, where a dark-haired, sallow-faced man sat alone.

He smiled up at Danilov, indicated a chair and said: ‘It’s good to meet you.’ He extended his hand but didn’t stand.

Danilov didn’t sit or accept the offered hand. ‘I will speak with Arkadi Pavlovich Gusovsky.’

The man lowered his hand but remained smiling. ‘You’re speaking to him.’

Danilov breathed out, heavily. He hadn’t expected, after all the caution so far, immediately to meet the Mafia leader, but they should at least have surrounded whoever this substitute was with others, to make it look right. It was unthinkable Gusovsky would have greeted him without escorts. Unthinkable, too, that the real ganglord would have smiled at the handshake refusal. ‘I’ve been through enough theatrical shit tonight. I’m not going through any more. Go and tell Gusovsky I want to meet him. I don’t care how many others he wants around him, but I’ll only deal with him direct. He’s got five minutes to make up his mind. If I’m not with him in that time – and satisfied that it is him I’m meeting – I’ll leave, having wasted my time. Tell him in those words. You got all that?’

The smile faded, into blankness. ‘I’m not used to being spoken to like that,’ tried the man.

‘I’m sure you are,’ said Danilov. ‘And you’re wasting time. Tell Gusovsky I want to talk about murders. And drug deals in Italy. And about fund-holding corporations in Switzerland. And about all the mistakes you’ve made and are going to go on making – make worse, in fact – unless we speak.’ He looked at the watch that wasn’t working. ‘You’ve already lost one of your five minutes.’

For a moment or two longer the Mafioso remained where he was. Then he pushed the chair back, noisily, and disappeared through the left-hand door.

‘What are you doing!’ hissed Kosov, beside him.

Briefly Danilov had forgotten the other policeman. Kosov’s face was twisted in frightened bewilderment.

‘Establishing ground rules,’ said Danilov. It seemed a long time since he and Cowley had done the same.

‘I told you…’

‘… I’m here now, Yevgennie Grigorevich! From here on I’ll decide how to behave: what to say and how to say it. You don’t have to be involved, associated with it.’

‘This is madness…! Terrible…!’

‘You know what Gusovsky looks like? I want a sign that it’s him.’

‘No… no…’ muttered Kosov, looking nervously around the room. ‘This isn’t right… not how it should have been…’

Danilov wasn’t sure whether that was a denial or a refusal: either way it didn’t matter. Kosov was clenching and unclenching his hands, eyes rolling in a fruitless search for nothing in particular: probably, Danilov thought, it was escape. An ancient record on the turntable – Louis Armstrong singing ‘Mac the Knife’ – had reached the phrase about oozing blood, which Danilov hoped didn’t turn out to be appropriate. He guessed it was an in-joke against them, for the benefit of the others in the room. They were being stared at now, standing obviously by the stage. ‘I’ll make my arrangements my way. If they don’t like it, it’s my…’ He paused at the cliche shared between East and West. ‘… It’s my funeral.’

Kosov was too disoriented to make any coherent response: he positively moved back, as if retreating, when the man who had greeted them emerged from the nearby door, trying to compensate for his own rebuff by simply jerking his head, for Danilov to enter. Kosov shifted, from one foot to the other, but was spared a problem he didn’t want by a further head movement, forbidding him to follow into the inner sanctum.

Beyond the door was a small, private dining room. There were only three tables. At one sat two men, the older with unnatural milky eyes. His companion was totally nondescript apart from the physical thinness of a man suffering a prolonged illness. His face had a chalk-white pallor and his skin, particularly on the hands he now held in front of him, resting his chin to examine Danilov, looked paper thin, as if it might tear. The appearance was worsened by a crumpled grey suit that was too large, sagged off the shoulders, the jacket sleeves partially covering the hands, despite the way he was sitting with his arms up. There was a finger-wide gap between his shirt collar and his neck.

Only one of the other tables was occupied. One man, wearing a turtlenecked sweater under a chamois bomber jacket, was a stranger; the other two had completed the watching group at the Metropole, with the gold lover outside. Definitely street people, Danilov decided. And he knew who the blind man was: so the chances were it was Gusovsky he was meeting. There were bottles and glasses on each table, but no food.

Danilov went to the table with the two men and sat, uninvited. To the thin man he said: ‘I still don’t know who you really are…’ He half turned, to address directly the man unable to see him. ‘… But I know you, Aleksandr Yerin…’

The most obvious stir at his awareness of a name came from the escort table: there was one very noisy grating of a chair. Yerin leaned forward, so adjusted to his disability that if the eyes had not been opaque it would have seemed he could see. Danilov’s impression was that he was sniffing, like an animal sniffs the scent of another, to gauge danger. Only the thin man remained totally expressionless. Still with his chin on his hands, he said: ‘I am Gusovsky.’ The voice was surprisingly deep, a rasping timbre.

‘I hope you are,’ said Danilov.

‘My man outside said you were insolent,’ said Gusovky, as if he were confirming something. He pointedly poured red wine into his own and Yerin’s glasses. There was a third glass on the table: the man put the bottle down without offering it to Danilov.

Danilov thought it was an artificial gesture, like so much else. ‘I’m guessing it was Georgi Visco. He should have carried off the deception better than he did, with his KGB training. And you should have put people around him, like you have here. That was bad attention to detail. And the three you sent to watch my meeting with Kosov, to make sure I was alone, were a bad choice, too. They couldn’t have been more obvious with signs around their necks.’ Danilov was surprised how easy he found it to force the arrogance.

There was a fresh shuffle of movement from the adjoining table, at the introduction of the KGB colonel’s name and the personal sneer at two of the men sitting there. Gusovsky’s mouth tightened just very slightly, at the unprecedented lack of respect. ‘So they did talk, in Rome?’

‘You can’t be sure of that, can you?’ He had to be extremely careful not to connect source to fact: everything had to confuse them, worry them as much as they had to be worried, to allow him this close, this quickly. He breathed in, readying himself. A lot had been known before – and then afterwards – by the KGB who were now spread among all the Families in the city, hadn’t it? he said. Neither replied, listening like statues. They shouldn’t forget, he suggested, that it was virtually instinctive for the KGB, even disbanded, to infiltrate organisations to gain control. Had they thought about that, being overthrown not by rival gangs but by recruits they thought loyal? And then there was America. A lot had come out there. And Switzerland.

Opposite him Gusovsky and Yerin remained impassive, not drinking, not interrupting, not doing anything.

One by one, Danilov enumerated the Chechen names he had obtained in Rome, but which could have come from many other leaks. He threw in, quite superfluously, a lot of Genovese and Italian Mafia identities, to thicken the smokescreen. How much did Gusovsky think the Genovese consiglierie and the Liccio clan had to pass on? How certain would Gusovksy be there wasn’t an informant here in Moscow, deep in their own organisation? Sure he’d created sufficient obscurity, Danilov concluded: ‘You couldn’t plug all the leaks even if you knew where they were.’ He didn’t want, this early, to introduce the Geneva anstalt and the attempted Chechen take-over.

‘So we know what you’ve got,’ accepted Yerin. The man spoke softly but with precise pronunciation, for every word to be heard.

‘I don’t think you do,’ further lured Danilov.

‘What do you want?’ demanded Gusovsky. It was a contemptuous question from a man accustomed to dispensing favours to the frightened or the bribable.

Danilov allowed some silence. ‘I’m not the supplicant. You are.’

‘Don’t treat us like fools.’

Danilov thought the blind man had difficulty controlling his voice that time: they really weren’t accustomed to anything but abject respect. ‘Let’s not treat each other like fools.’

Gusovsky’s mouth tightened further, and his pallor accentuated an angry redness. ‘We were told you wanted to discuss things of mutual interest.’

‘More your interest than mine.’ Very soon now, he’d find out if Kosov really had kept the past to himself. Or whether he had offered it to ingratiate himself with these men, to arm them with the sort of pressure they always sought.

‘Why don’t you tell us what you think our interests are?’ demanded Gusovsky. He indicated the bottle at last. ‘Take some wine.’ It was an order, not an invitation.

Danilov was tempted to accept but wait for the other man to pour, but he didn’t. He had no intention of obeying the expected rules by acting cowed or subservient, even on their own territory, but there was no benefit in unnecessary antagonism. He filled the available glass and drank, but without any meaningless toast. ‘I think one major interest is in forming an association with other Mafia groups, in Italy and in America and in Latin America. I think you believe you have funds available, to finance that association. I think you’re concerned how endangered that intention is, by the arrests in Italy: you’d be stupid if you weren’t. There’s the confrontation with the Ostankino…’ He let the recital trail, waiting intently. Would they pick up on the half-intentional clue about imagined funds? He hoped not, this soon. He did not want to play every card without an indication of what they were holding, in their attempt to outplay him.

Neither responded at once. The sightless Yerin bent slightly sideways to the other man, deferring to him the right to speak first, which Gusovsky eventually did. ‘Quite a catalogue!’

‘Your shopping list, not mine.’ They were going to trap him, if he didn’t soon get what he expected thrown back at him. Make me bargain, thought Danilov desperately.

‘The Italian arrests didn’t come from here? It was American information?’ said Yerin.

Kosov the faithful conduit! thought Danilov. ‘That’s how it happened. From America.’

‘You work closely with the American?’ asked Gusovsky.

‘Yes,’ embarked Danilov, cautiously. This was the way he’d wanted it to go: the opening hand, card for card.

‘He confides in you?’ asked Yerin.

They were close to overplaying, thought Danilov: or in too much of a hurry. ‘There’s a full exchange.’

‘There are probably some things he doesn’t share with you,’ suggested Gusovsky. He smiled for the first time, pleased with himself: the dentures were too large for his mouth, as if they had been made when he was much fuller featured, or he had borrowed them from someone else.

Danilov began to revise his opinion of the man as nondescript. He was unsure whether to pre-empt them about the photographs or let them over-extend with their announcement. Give it a little longer, he decided. ‘I doubt it.’

There must have been some sort of shelf or container beneath the table and a signal between them Danilov didn’t see. Yerin knew immediately where to reach. He passed the package to the expectant Gusovsky who in turn offered it across the table. ‘Isn’t it strange, how some men get so much pleasure from screwing whores?’

Danilov refused to accept them, stranding the Mafia chief with them unlooked-at in his hand. ‘Those!’ said Danilov. ‘I thought Lena looked very pretty. Fantastic body. I’ve never considered the male motivation, until you mentioned it, but I’ve always been curious why girls as attractive as she was become prostitutes. I would have thought it would be easy for them to get grateful husbands. Perhaps it isn’t so simple, in Moscow. Or perhaps it’s just sex: that they like variety. You didn’t have to kill her, though. That was panic, after the Italian arrests. Stupid.’

Danilov’s nonchalant dismissal of the blackmailing pictures – the only part of the encounter for which he was half prepared – and the obvious fact he’d already known about something he didn’t regard as a threat, caused the greatest shock of anything he’d said or done since entering. Gusovsky remained with them in his outstretched hand for several moments before putting them on the table. For the first time Yerin was disoriented, moving his head jerkily as if he’d lost the direction from which the voices were coming. There were audible sounds of astonishment from the other table.

Danilov was savouring the moment, believing he had achieved precisely what he wanted, when Gusovksy’s remark exploded in his mind. He connected it with Pavin’s detailed account of Lena Zurov’s murder and for the briefest moment he had the physical sensation of tightness, all over his body, a ballooning of excitement. It was only a guess, he warned himself: a wild, snatch-in-the-air guess. But one he could follow and possibly prove, because as always Pavin had been meticulous. And this time it would be done right.

‘You don’t think it would be embarrassing if these photographs showing a woman later murdered with an American pistol reached newspapers here and in America?’ challenged Gusovsky.

‘Cowley will have to resign, certainly,’ agreed Danilov. ‘But he’s already decided to do that. And it will be an American embarrassment. It won’t affect what happened in Italy, or influence any prosecutions I originate here…’

‘You sure about that?’ interrupted Yerin.

They did know about his compromising past! At least he had the confirmation: could calculate from now on from knowing, not from guessing. ‘Yes, I’m sure about that,’ he lied, grateful there was no uncertainty in his voice.

Yerin dipped sideways again, once more for Gusovsky to offer a photograph, which he did by sliding it across the table. And this time, the shock was Danilov’s.

It was fortunate he was looking down, concealing any facial surprise, although he didn’t think he showed much. The glare of the camera flash had shown up the fade in Olga’s black dress. She was caught looking vaguely surprised, the smile slack, as if she were slightly drunk, which she probably had been. From his later visit there, Danilov was able to recognise the balcony of the nightclub on Tverskaya.

‘You might not recognise her with her clothes on,’ said Gusovsky. ‘The girl beside your wife is Lena Zurov.’

‘I know,’ said Danilov, looking up, sure he’d regained his control. ‘It was the night Yevgennie Kosov took her to Nightflight. I was in Washington at the time.’ Once more his casual acceptance discomposed them. Inwardly he boiled: some day, somehow, he was going to make Kosov hurt in every way possible, and he didn’t give a damn about any retribution the man might attempt against him.

‘Kosov told you!’ blurted Yerin.

‘No. My wife did. Was there any reason why she shouldn’t have done?’

‘Doesn’t that compound the embarrassment though?’ persisted Gusovsky. ‘A cocksucking whore who serviced your American partner, also at a nightclub with your wife?’

‘It will make headlines,’ agreed Danilov. He put a sneer into his voice. ‘But think about it far more sensibly than you obviously have, so far. If I brought against you, personally, the charges I can – and then a lot more against people in your organisation, which I also can – wouldn’t that show exactly what those photographs are; a cheap and clumsy blackmail which didn’t work anway? Cowley’s already decided to quit. And Olga would be shown to have been what? A guest at a nightclub, taken there by a policeman friend, innocently having her photograph taken with a woman she didn’t know was a whore…’ It was sounding far better than he’d hoped. ‘… Balance it,’ he said, making it sound like an order. ‘Murder, extortion, massive theft and a huge drug-smuggling operation on the one hand. On the other a drunken man tricked by a whore and a naive woman, inveigled by a crooked policeman

…’ He smiled. ‘I think I’ve won, don’t you?’

‘Now let’s get…!’ began Gusovsky, outraged, but the calmer Yerin talked over the other man in his soft but clear voice.

‘From what you’ve just said it would seem so. But there’s a lot more we need to know, because so far you’ve talked in riddles. I think you’d better start discussing things properly. So we’ll all understand what we’re saying to each other.’

Danilov did not, at this stage, want to go one step further. But he needed to end everything on his terms and with them even more unsure. He hoped his luck would hold. He looked briefly to the second table, aware of the bewilderment of the three men who had never before witnessed Gusovsky or Yerin treated with such contempt. He said: ‘These others aren’t necessary. From now on the discussion will just be between the three of us. I want them out of the room.’

‘ You want them out of the room?’ boomed Gusovsky, incredulous.

‘That’s what I said.’

‘I don’t know what the hell you think you’re doing, what you’re saying!’ erupted Gusovsky, his anger finally taking over, which was what Danilov had hoped. ‘Have you any idea who you are talking to? What we can do to you? You’re a little person, you hear…?’ He held out his thumb and forefinger, but in a narrowing gesture, not like Kosov’s in the hotel bar, earlier. ‘That little. That’s all. You can’t make demands, about anything. That’s what we do. So now you start showing respect! You sit there like the little person you are and you say what you think you’ve got that’s so important and you say please and you say thank you…’ The man stopped, breathlessly. He gulped, heavily. ‘You’ve annoyed me, little man. It’s not good for anyone, when I lose my temper.’

Perfect, judged Danilov. It could still fail – he wouldn’t know he’d succeeded until he was outside in the street, and not be sure even then – but he thought he’d got away with it. Why did they always defeat themselves by arrogance! ‘So you’re not going to tell them to leave?’

In front of him Gusovsky visibly trembled, the patchy redness against his normal complexion making him look ridiculous, like a painted clown. It was Yerin, again, who better suppressed his rage. ‘You’ve been told what to do.’

Here comes the test, thought Danilov. He pushed his chair back, standing. He was conscious of the three bodyguards instantly coming up, too, but he did not look at them, remaining staring down at the two Mafia chieftains. ‘ I control the Svahbodniy holding in Switzerland, not Raisa Serova! Let Kosov know when you want to talk again.’

All three guardians were barring the exit when he turned, and Danilov felt a stir of uncertainty. Without looking behind him, he said: ‘Tell them to get out of the way.’

It seemed a very long time before they moved, although later Danilov guessed it could only have been a minute or two: not even that, just seconds. It must have been a gesture, because no-one spoke behind.

Kosov was at the table by the dance floor. He rose the moment Danilov emerged, scurrying alongside as he continued towards the outer door.

‘What happened?’ demanded Kosov, anxiously.

‘I annoyed them,’ admitted Danilov.

It pleased Danilov to terrorise Kosov further by refusing to discuss the encounter, beyond saying he expected the Chechen to want another meeting. Just to drive Kosov to the edge – an edge over which he was now absolutely determined to push the bastard, for all he had done – Danilov warned Kosov they might want to talk to him, as well.

‘You told them I hadn’t misled them: that it wasn’t my fault?’

‘Of course I did,’ assured Danilov, who had forgotten.

Kosov returned him to Kirovskaya, where he remained only long enough to phone Cowley and say he was on his way to the hotel. Olga asked why he’d bothered to come home if he intended going out again so soon: Danilov said something unexpected had arisen and left her blinking uncertainly when he kissed her, as he left. He wasn’t sure why he’d done it, either.

Cowley had been drinking but wasn’t drunk when Danilov got to the Savoy. For the first time, Danilov explained in precise detail what he was trying to achieve, concluding with the wild possibility that had occurred to him during the actual encounter with the Chechen hierarchy.

‘You’ll never get it all together,’ protested the American, awkward in his gratitude. ‘I can’t believe you’re trying to do this, for me! Why should you?’

‘You were very necessary to me, in the the beginning,’ reminded Danilov. ‘And now it isn’t just for you. There’s Olga.’

‘I don’t know what…’

‘Then don’t say it,’ stopped Danilov. ‘It hasn’t worked yet.’

‘And won’t,’ insisted the impossibly depressed Cowley.

Danilov’s first instruction the following morning was for the re-arrest of Mikhail Antipov. He put Pavin in personal charge of the seizure, with specific instructions that everything necessary in a proper investigation had to be brought in this time.

He didn’t have to ask for a meeting with those in ultimate charge of the investigation. There was already a Foreign Ministry summons waiting for him.

It was not until the middle of that day that the hurriedly despatched Sergei Stupar telephoned Gusovsky at Kutbysevskij Prospekt. ‘Our lawyer made an approach, claiming it was an investment enquiry. The anstalt is frozen.’

Gusovsky replaced the telephone, looking across to the blind man. ‘The bastard was telling the truth! He does control it.’