No Time for Heroes

CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

Gusovsky’s house on Kutbysevskij Prospekt was very large, close to being a mansion; there were similarities between it and the surveillance photographs of the Ostankino leader’s home. Both were cordoned behind high stone walls, with huge metal gates closing off the protective grounds, and outside each were fleets of cars: the Chechen appeared to prefer BMWs, which explained Kosov’s choice. Danilov thought the Volga looked insignificant and shabby, parked at the end of the convoy, but for once, he guessed, his wipers and wing mirrors would be safe.

He had to announce himself at a control panel set into one of the gate pillars, and a man who had watched his Metropole meeting with Kosov came to the gate to confirm his identity before it clicked open on an electronic release. As it snapped shut behind him, Danilov felt the dip of genuine fear. At that moment he thought Cowley had been right, all along: that they’d had sufficient to counter the Chechen threats and the evidence they’d retrieved from Switzerland was unnecessary. Cowley’s most forceful argument – ending in a shouting tirade – had been against this personal confrontation: they’d parted at Petrovka an hour earlier with the American yelling red-faced it was ridiculous, absurd, a macho affectation to impress no-one but himself and that he’d come to believe his own heroic publicity. Danilov certainly didn’t feel heroic now. He felt frightened, weaklegged and sweating, and if the gate hadn’t been barred behind him and at least eight guards watching in front he would have turned back: maybe even run.

The man who’d checked him at the gate said something Danilov didn’t hear. Danilov just nodded back, following across a wide gravelled forecourt which divided the two halves of the garden. In the middle of the forecourt was a cherubed fountain from which no water spouted. There were three more BMWs to the left, with men around each: two were vaguely polishing the vehicles but others either sat inside or lounged against the bonnets and boots. They all watched him: someone must have made a remark, because abruptly the two on the closest car laughed. Danilov was surprised no-one attempted to search his briefcase. I’m a trusted, bought policeman, he thought.

The house was pre-revolutionary, and the baroque and rococo of the period had been intricately restored in the carved woodwork and the ornate plaster cupolas of the high ceilings. The hallway was marble-floored and escorting the full climb of a huge, encircling staircase was a flight of cherubs from the same flock as those on the fountain outside, sculpted here from the solid stone walls. Heavy brocade tapestries which couldn’t have been genuine but which appeared old hung from other sections of the walls.

Arkadi Gusovsky and Aleksandr Yerin were waiting for him in a wood-panelled study on the far side of the hallway. Like everything else about the house, the room was enormous, two walls dominated by bookshelves, another hung with more tapestry. There was a wide, leather-inlaid desk in front of leaded windows, but Gusovsky was in a deep leather armchair to one side of a stone fireplace big enough for a man to have stood upright beneath the mantel. Most of the other chairs and couches were also leather, but Yerin sat on a more upright, brocaded chair. For the first time the man’s disability was covered by shaded glasses.

Gusovsky rose at Danilov’s entry, going towards a regiment of bottles on a side table, asking what Danilov wanted as he walked. He looked fully at the investigator for the first time when Danilov said he didn’t want anything, the cadaverous smile uncertain. It was Yerin, a man who used his ears for the eyes he did not have, who cocked his head to one side and said: ‘You’re by yourself. Where’s the American?’

‘This only needed me,’ said Danilov. He hoped the perspiration wasn’t obvious on his face. He could feel it wet on his back.

Gusovsky came away from the liquor table without pouring anything. ‘There is a problem?’

‘Not now,’ said Danilov. He went further into the room, towards the two men. All the convenient seats and couches were low: having listened to everything Cowley had ever said about psychology, Danilov decided it would be better if he remained standing.

‘What is it?’ demanded Yerin.

‘I am going to reach an agreement with you, but nothing like you imagined,’ announced Danilov. ‘I’m not taking any payment from you, now or in the future. Nor coming on your payroll. Ever. Neither is Cowley.’

Gusovsky didn’t sit either, but came up to stand behind his partner’s chair: there was the slightest turn when Yerin realised the presence behind him. Yerin, the quicker thinker, said: ‘What has happened to the money in Switzerland?’

‘It has all been returned to its rightful owner, the Russian government. You haven’t got it. I never intended you should.’

Gusovsky felt forward, lightly touching Yerin’s shoulder. Silence filled the room. Coldness, too, although sweat still glued Danilov’s shirt to his back.

Gusovsky said: ‘Oh, you silly man. You very silly little man.’

‘Maybe,’ agreed Danilov, finding the calmness difficult. ‘It was an enormous temptation: we even talked about it.’

‘Do you know what’s going to happen to you?’ said Gusovsky. He sounded very calm, too, his normally resonant voice soft, as if he were savouring something.

‘I could guess a lot you’d like to do,’ said Danilov. ‘Particularly here, which is practically as secure as the Kremlin and with all your people around you. But you’re not going to do anything. Now, or later. You can’t afford to.’

Yerin reached up, touching the other man’s hand warningly. ‘You tell us why you’re so sure about that?’

‘That’s what I’ve come to do,’ said Danilov. He considered moving closer to the fireplace but weighed the psychology again and didn’t: he would have looked small in comparison to the huge surround. ‘I didn’t tell you all the evidence I could bring against you. I didn’t tell you about the KGB deputy’s confession, about the gun that killed Petr Serov. And why we had to bring the security man out of the embassy in Washington. Or even a quarter of what Antipov has told us, about what he did for you. Which I could put to Zimin in Italy and get even more, if I wanted to. So I’ll tell you now…’ Which he did, not needing any prompting from the copied material he carried in his briefcase and which he was still unsure whether to show them, in the evidence form in which it was assembled.

The two Mafia chieftains remained motionless, but Danilov detected the now familiar redness coming to Gusovsky’s face: he abruptly realised he was clutching the briefcase to him, like the nervous lawyer during the brief trip to Switzerland, and hurriedly put it beside him.

‘Complete, wouldn’t you think? But I don’t think it is, you see. It would certainly seem so, on the surface: they’re all properly recorded confessions and you’re personally named, over and over again. But where’s the proof! It’s their word overwhelmingly against yours, but it could be argued against. And I do know how powerful you are. I believe you’ve got other people in ministries whose names I don’t know: people you could force or bribe to help in some way. The judiciary, too, so you might be able to influence the judges: even get those who’ve got to do what you tell them ruling on the admissibility of evidence. And I know you could get people killed, even in jail. I’d certainly have a hard job introducing the confessions of dead witnesses, wouldn’t I…?’ Danilov’s confidence was growing. Not by much, but the hollowness was lessening: he actually managed to smile. ‘I know you’d do all those things. In your position, you’d be mad not to. So you’re not in so much danger, after all…’

‘Which makes me think you are,’ intruded Gusovsky. He was very red, as always resenting being treated as the inferior.

Danilov held up a halting hand, intentionally overbearing. ‘I’m going to open the briefcase,’ he warned, more for his protection than theirs. ‘You know what it is I am going to show you, but I want you to understand the position it puts you in…’ Very slowly, he unclipped the case and extracted the photocopy of the replacement Founder’s Certificate for the anstalt, announcing what it was for Yerin’s benefit as he handed it beyond the blind man, to the standing Gusovsky. ‘ This is proof! You know we have the original. It carries both your names and both your signatures… I guess you were guided to the place where you had to sign, Aleksandr Dorovich, but the signature is still provably yours. I now hold irrefutable documentary proof of your attempt to gain control of a government fortune. But not held here, in Moscow. Evidence can disappear in Moscow, can’t it? The original is already back in Washington, sealed, in Cowley’s name. You can’t get it or interfere with it…’

Once more it was the rational Yerin who spoke. ‘You said, at the beginning, you were going to deal.’

‘I know and Cowley knows you kept copies of the photographs,’ said Danilov. ‘It was always inconceivable you’d part with something as useful: you must have thought us very naive, unable to think beyond the amount of money you were talking about. But the deal I offered then still stands, exactly as I set it out. I will ensure no prosecution against you. And you will never use those photographs. If you do, Cowley will in turn produce the original Swiss document, and no influence you think you’ve got could keep you out of jail…’ He paused, not wanting to show the fear but knowing how he had to finish, for his own safety. ‘And that is why I am going to walk out of here today, without any interference. Why I’m not in any personal danger. You’d agree about that, wouldn’t you? Understand now why Cowley isn’t here…?’

Gusovsky’s face blazed, and he had to grip the back of the other man’s chair to keep his control. Yerin said: ‘A standoff, this time. What about next time?’

‘I shall investigate as hard and as properly as I can. And bring whatever prosecution I can. And if you tried to fight me off by using the photographs, then I’d have a second prosecution with the Swiss case, wouldn’t I? Cowley would have to resign, but we’ve already gone through that. Like we’ve talked of how I’d respond to the pictures of Olga being released.’ The future was the weakest part of the whole bluff. And not just with future investigations into one of the major crime Families in Moscow: there was always the outside possibility the Justice Ministry and the Federal Prosecutor might change their minds, later, about bringing against these men precisely the prosecution they’d decided not to pursue. There was, he accepted philosophically, always going to be a nagging uncertainty. It was just another, to go with all the rest: he wasn’t sure in which order.

‘You were silly,’ insisted Yerin. ‘Of course we kept copies of the pictures. But I don’t think we would ever have used them. You would have been far too valuable. Worth the money and everything else we would have given you.’

‘I’m more comfortable this way,’ said Danilov, recognising the closeness to pomposity. ‘You know why it was so easy to trick you? You can’t imagine anyone being honest, can you? That’s what the director before Metkin said: that everyone in Russia is still too entrenched in the old ways…’

‘Leonid Andreevich Lapinsk certainly knew how to work the old ways in the old system,’ agreed Yerin. ‘We lost a good and grateful friend with his retirement. He managed to block your succession, but Metkin was never good enough to be the sort of director we wanted. He was far too stupid and far too greedy.’

Gusovsky’s control went completely after Danilov’s unopposed departure, the man’s fury fuelled by his impotency to orchestrate a situation of which he’d imagined themselves in charge. Yerin, no less furious but contemptuous of timewasting performances, said in rare impatience to the other man: ‘Stop it! It’s not achieving anything.’

‘I want him!’ insisted Gusovsky. ‘No-one treats me – no-one treats either of us! – like that!’

‘He’s got us, so that’s exactly what he can do,’ accepted Yerin. ‘He’s got protection, with the American, that we can’t touch. You know it and I know it but most importantly, he knows it. He’s fucked us. Absolutely.’

‘He can’t!’

‘He has,’ said Yerin flatly. ‘But he has to be reminded how vulnerable he’ll always be.’