The Watchmen

24

The expected but unwelcome call from Interior Minister Nikolai Belik came within minutes of Danilov’s arrival at Petrovka the following day.

“I have been told, ordered, that I am now directly responsible to-and operating under-presidential authority.” Danilov thought his remark sounded like the schoolboy-to-schoolmaster recitation it was.

“I am your superior,” said Belik.

“A point I made to Georgi Chelyag. I was told you would be advised of this changed arrangement.” This wasn’t so much the sort of loose end he and Cowley had talked about the previous night-more of a rope with which he could so very easily hang himself.

“I am not challenging any new arrangement. You are, additionally, to report to me.”

“I have not been told that by the White House.”

“You don’t have to be told by the White House. I’m telling you.”

Danilov felt the telephone becoming slippery in his hand. “That’s not my understanding-my orders-from the White House.”

“They’re your orders from me. Which you will follow.”

Damned if he did-and Georgi Chelyag found out-and damned if he didn’t, by the man who was his ultimate superior and whose instructions were unquestionable. Why was the situation-the cliche itself-so constantly the same? “I think the matter needs to be clarified.”

“There is nothing whatsoever you need to clarify with anyone-any other authority-except me. Nor will you.” Belik paused. “Although perhaps, Dimitri Ivanovich, your proper political understanding is lacking. Which is something else upon which you will take guidance from me and no one else.”

Danilov’s curiosity began to grow. “Perhaps I would benefit from some political clarification.”

The pause this time was longer, the man at the other end making a decision or maybe arranging his words. “There is going to be widespread political fallout at the very highest level over this. The Duma resolution is not an empty gesture.”

“I realize that,” encouraged Danilov. It had been spelled out at the first of their joint meetings, which, like Cowley, he was glad was over.

“Then perhaps you should also realize that it’s important you give support to those upon whom you-and your future-most depend.”

The telephone was still greasy in his hand but Danilov felt a physical chill. Unformed thoughts-awarenesses-jostled in his mind, very much indeed needing to be clarified, put in their proper order. It had been Belik’s voice when he’d lifted the telephone. So the call hadn’t come through either the ministry or militia switchboard. Officially it wasn’t taking place. Belik was positively ordering him not to approach Georgi Chelyag. Uncertain, then, despite the heavy-handed innuendo about choosing the right side. So which was the right side? The traditionalists in whose camp he’d already put Belik, along with the security chief and the deputy defense minister? Or the supposedly reforming presidential faction increasingly threatened by the communist-dominated-and therefore traditional-Duma? It was very much a matter for political judgment. Danilov’s problem was reaching it.

“Dimitri Ivanovich?” prompted Belik.

“I appreciate your guidance,” Danilov said emptily, needing more time. Uncertain, he thought again. It hardly mattered whether this telephone conversation was deniable or not. Nikolai Mikhailovich Belik was taking an astonishing-desperate-risk approaching him like this, scarcely bothering anymore with clumsy innuendo.

“It’s important that you take it,” said the politician. “I accept you already have arranged commitments with the Americans. What’s a good time in your schedule for us to meet?”

The word “desperate” echoed in Danilov’s mind again. No longer demanding. Accommodating. “I’ll need to get back to you.”

There was yet another pause, the longest yet. “Make sure you do, Dimitri Ivanovich. Make sure you don’t make a mistake you could very easily and very soon regret.”

Danilov had a joint schedule with William Cowley, but he moved on to it distracted, unsettled by the choice demanded of him.

If the obvious comparison between the technology-controlled and gleaming FBI building on Pennsylvania Avenue and the cracked Bakelite and the unswept corridors of Petrovka registered with Cowley, the American didn’t show it. But then, remembered Danilov, he’d been there before, knew what to expect. Or rather was not to expect. Danilov was still glad of the improvements to his own office: His television was actually bigger than Cowley’s. He’d left it on CNN while he’d gone down to greet the American, and when they reentered that day’s renewed demonstrations outside the Ulitza Chaykovskovo embassy were on the screen. The voice-over commentary claimed the crowd was larger than the previous day, despite Henry Hartz’s televised assurance of full cooperation with the Russian foreign minister, and Cowley said that was very definitely the impression from inside the building. To avoid running the gauntlet he’d come directly to Petrovka from the hotel. Immediately after the television report of an intended meeting between Hartz and the Russian president, there was a live interview with an English-speaking communist deputy from the Duma insisting that the resolution criticizing the president would definitely become an impeachment debate.

His mind still very much upon the conversation with the interior minister, Danilov said, “What do your State Department people traveling with the secretary say about that?”

“Haven’t discussed it with anyone in detail.” Cowley shrugged. “Takes a hell of a long time to impeach a president, either here or at home.”

“Unless they’re forced out by the threat, like Nixon was,” reminded Danilov.

“Then it comes down to how hard-assed your guy is,” said Cowley. “A political problem, not ours.”

“Yes,” agreed Danilov, wishing it were true. Should he talk to the American about the Belik conversation: ask Cowley to circulate the question of the Russian president’s survival among Hartz’s support staff? There would be an exaggerated show of confidence from the Russian White House in front of Hartz and his people, so any playback would be misleading. And apart from the sort of television pictures on at that moment, the Americans had little way to gauge the parliamentary opposition’s strength or weakness.

Cowley held up his hands against the reunion with Yuri Pavin becoming too effusively bear-hugging, and the Russian avoided any reaction to the American’s hair ditch along one side of his head. The greetings were quickly over.

“So how was dinner at the Golden Hussar?” demanded Danilov.

“The food was better than the chances of recognizing anyone-which I didn’t-but it definitely has the smell of a new brigade location,” Pavin said at once. “A lot of available women, men in their favorite shiny suits and just slightly more Mercedes than BMWs. Accepts every Western credit and charge card and the menu’s priced in U.S. dollars.” Danilov nodded to the gesture toward his desk, and Pavin unrolled a white tube of paper he was carrying, pinning the edges open with the telephone and pen holder. “Architect’s drawings of the restructuring work carried out less than a year ago. No record of their being approved but they’ve been carried out, so someone paid someone.” As Danilov and Cowley came to either side, Pavin moved his finger in explanation and said, “And here’s our problem. Long bar, immediately after the main entrance. Restaurant, supposedly for sixty people, directly beyond that. Kitchens, closed off obviously, halfway down the left-hand side and from them, leading out into an alley quite separate from an adjoining road, are two doors.” The finger traced on. “And here’s what’s listed as office and administration space. See, here, here, and here are three more doors, designated fire exits, but in fact closed off from the restaurant itself by this full-length wall.” He looked to each man. “Two of them lead again into separate roads. Five different ways by which people can come and go, unseen, unless we’re going to surround the place by what would need to be a squad of at least twenty observers.”

“If I was a cynical FBI investigator, I’d say the Golden Hussar was a custom-designed mob place,” said Cowley. “Lambert’s photographer went through four rolls of film last night, although he’s worried about the light and the quality. Thinks they can get prints to put against your criminal records by the end of today.”

“All of people going in through the front door,” reminded Pavin. He took a colored booklet from his inside pocket, laying it on top of the plans. “The official pictorial brochure, handed out with the bill. Gives you some idea what it looks like.”

There were a lot of long-leafed plants, small trees almost, around the walls, and in the very center there was more jungle-type greenery around an ornamental, fountain-fed pond.

Pavin said, “The pond has real fish.”

“What about telephones?” demanded Danilov.

“Two public, to the side of the bar. Neither is the number listed on the Bay View Avenue billing account. That has to be somewhere in the back, in one of the offices.”

“What about a tap from the exchange? Any problem getting a court order for that?”

“A bigger problem would be finding someone here who’d put it on without telling the Golden Hussar with his hand out,” said Danilov. Who, he wondered, would the homosexual Anatoli Lasin name as the mafia source within Petrovka?

“Lambert’s got a bunch of guys sightseeing and buying matroyshka dolls in the Arbat,” said Cowley.

Danilov had lowered the sound but kept the television on: The banner-carrying crowd seemed to have increased since he’d last looked. He said, “If your people installed it, the monitor would have to be from inside your embassy.”

Cowley followed Danilov’s look, toward the screen. “We’re wired at the Brooklyn end. Maybe it’s not a good idea to try to connect up here after all.”

“What about continuing the surveillance?” asked Pavin.

“I think we need to know how many people-and get identification if that’s possible-use the rear doors,” said Danilov.

“Let’s hope the identification isn’t of Americans doing it,” said Cowley, accepting the unasked request.

Pavin opened a farthest, functional flap of the restaurant brochure still lying on Danilov’s desk. “The bill. We both had goose. It was excellent, like I said. But very expensive.”

At the height of the KGB’s all-pervasive, all-intrusive power, the supposed militia guards on Moscow’s foreign embassies had all been KGB-America’s more heavily covered than any other. With the diminishment of the organization, the concentration had been scaled down although not completely abandoned. Danilov recognized at once that the bearded man, so big he dwarfed Pavin, was not just basic street-level but basic street-mentality militia. The uniform was soiled, shining from grease and wear, and the felt of his regulationissue winter boots, which he was still wearing in early summer, was scuffed through to the canvas lining. He smelled.

His immediate, apprehensive concentration was on the obviously American William Cowley, and his suspicious eyes flickered between Cowley-whom he also dwarfed-and the plastic-wrapped missile launcher that Pavin had collected from the Petrovka forensic department on his way to escort the embassy guard from the vestibule.

Danilov said, “We want you to tell us about the attack.”

“I acted correctly picking up that thing. It was evidence,” the man said at once, defensively.

“You’re not here to be accused of anything.”

“Nothing much to tell,” said the guard. “It was raining. Hard. I was in the hut, trying to keep dry. Heard a car but didn’t see it, not at first. No cars around, not even on the ring road, that late. Looked out and saw it had stopped, although the engine was still running. Then someone got out, bundled up. I saw him bring something up to his shoulder but it was too thick to be a rifle. Suddenly there was an explosion and a flash, as if something was blowing up, and then I heard a crash from farther down the alley beside the embassy and a very big explosion. I didn’t see him drop that thing, but when the car drove off I realized something was lying where the car had been. I pressed the alarm button and picked up the frame from the road. I knew it was important so I put it inside the shelter and didn’t give it to the Americans who came out. I waited for a militia colonel to arrive and gave it to him. He said I’d done the right thing. That’s all. A lot more officers came then. Took over.”

“Were you wearing gloves when you picked it up?” asked Cowley.

“Yes. It was cold. Wet.”

“What about the officer you gave it to? Was he wearing gloves?”

“I don’t know.”

Maybe-just maybe-the chance of a fingerprint if the officer could be eliminated, thought Danilov, following the direction of the questioning. “Tell me about the car. What make was it?”

“Foreign. American,” said the embassy guard at once.

“You sure about it being American?” demanded Cowley.

“I worked for two years with GIA: traffic.”

The man’s size alone would have terrorized motorists into handing over the expected bribes rather than be issued fabricated tickets, Danilov thought. He wondered whom the man had failed to bribe to keep the job. “Do you know the make?”

“It was big: bigger than a Zil. It went up at the back. The design, I mean.”

“Fins?” suggested Pavin.

“Yes.”

“Mercedes are foreign. So are BMWs. There are a lot of those in Moscow?”

“Mercedes and BMWs don’t go up at the back, like this car did.”

“What about a number?” pressed Pavin.

“I didn’t get a number. It was over too quick. And it was raining. And I thought he had a special gun.”

“What about a color?”

“Dark colored, not light.”

“There’s sodium lighting on that road!” insisted Pavin.

“It was two o’clock in the morning. Raining. I couldn’t make out a proper color.”

“What about the man who fired it?” urged Danilov.

“I didn’t see him. Just a shape.”

“Was he wearing a coat? A hat?” said Cowley.

“Both. A coat and a hat. And I thought at first he was very tall, but he wasn’t, not really. It was the gun thing he was pointing upward like you hold a rifle upward.”

“You mean like a soldier holds a rifle properly?”

“I suppose so,” the man said doubtfully.

“How did he fire it? Simply stand upright and put it against his shoulder? Or did you get the impression he was doing it in a special way, again like a soldier would have properly done it?”

The man didn’t immediately respond. “I don’t know how these things are supposed to be fired. Maybe he was crouched a little.”

“How many people were in the car?” said Pavin.

“I couldn’t see. Two, certainly. The man who fired got out of the rear seat and got back into the rear afterward.”

“Was anything said between the man who fired and whoever was in the car?” said Danilov.

“Not that I heard. It was a long way away.”

“You think you could recognize the car again?” asked Cowley.

“Maybe,” said the man, again doubtfully.

As the man left, again escorted by Pavin, Danilov said. “American car, American bazooka, American embassy.”

“And the weapon held correctly, as a trained soldier would have held it,” completed Cowley.

The American was standing beside the bagged-up rocket launcher when Pavin reentered. He said, “According to our forensics, it’s clean.”

“That’s what Lambert was frightened of,” remarked Cowley.

There were four of them.

The intention was to go directly from the funeral to confront Lasin at his Pereulok Ucebyi apartment, so it was convenient for Cowley to have come with him, but Danilov hadn’t expected the American to suggest it. He was glad he had. It was Cowley who’d reminded him about flowers, which they’d stopped on the way to buy. He’d never needed reminding about flowers for Larissa’s grave, which was in another part of the Novodevichy Cemetery. He couldn’t see it from where they were but knew exactly where it was. If Cowley hadn’t been with him he would have gone there afterward, but he wouldn’t now.

Danilov hadn’t told Igor, who stood on the other side of the open grave, head bowed for the end of the interment oration, but he guessed that Irena had. Irena’s hair appeared as haphazardly streaked as Olga’s had been. Danilov supposed Igor was Irena’s hairdresser, too. The bearded priest was promising that Olga was going to a happier life. Danilov hoped it was true, because she probably hadn’t been very happy for much of the one she’d just left. He wondered if there were better hairdressers in Olga’s heaven. He hesitated when the priest offered him the trowel but then bent and tossed some earth on to the coffin. Instead of handing the trowel back to the priest, he offered it directly to Igor. As he threw earth into the grave, Igor began to cry. Irena did, too. They backed away to let the gravediggers complete the filling in but remained separate. Danilov couldn’t think of anything to say to the other two so he nodded.

It was Igor who spoke, brokenly. “I’m sorry.”

Danilov wondered what, exactly, the man was apologizing for. “No one was with her. That’s sad.”

“I didn’t know. She didn’t tell me.” His voice caught, from his crying.

So Igor was the father. How many children did he have by his legal wife? “There are some photographs,” Danilov offered.

“That would be,” started the man. Then he said, “Thank you. I …?”

“I’ll send them to Irena.”

“Thank you,” Igor repeated. His voice caught again.

As they walked toward their car Danilov said: “Larissa’s buried over there.”

“I know,” said Cowley. “I came to her funeral, too.”

Danilov waited for the question, but it didn’t come.

Yuri Pavin, who’d been sent ahead to establish that Anatoli Sergeevich Lasin was at Pereulok Ucebyi and keep the man there if he was, opened the apartment door to them.

Danilov said, “How is he?”

Pavin said: “Going through the routine. He says a bracelet was stolen when he was at Petrovka. I’ve told him he was lucky that was all and to have survived the turf war, but he needs to shout a little longer.”

“He can shout as long as he likes providing he tells us something. He alone?”

Pavin nodded. “I was surprised about that.”

“Is he frightened?” asked Danilov.

“Concealing it well, if he is,” said Pavin.

The wire-thin, blond man was wearing the same sort of second-skin trousers and silk sweater-both in complimentary shades of blue-as he had during their first encounter but this time all the jewelry-with the possible exception of the missing bracelet-was glitteringly in place. Lasin’s immediate concentration was on William Cowley.

“I told you I’d be robbed!” protested the man, at once.

“We’re not here to talk about your bracelets, are we, Anatoli Sergeevich?” said Danilov. “We’re here to talk about things much more important than that.”

“A lot of people have died. Here, now. More, in America,” said Cowley. “And your own brigade got hit-Mikhail Vasilevich Osipov himself.”

“What have you got to tell us about that?” picked up Danilov.

“Nothing.”

“You’re being stupid, Anatoli Sergeevich. And irritating,” said Danilov. “You know why we’re here?”

“Of course I know why you’re here!”

“No,” contradicted Danilov. “Here, in your apartment. We’re here so that no one in Petrovka-and no one outside Petrovka-is ever going to know we’ve had this meeting.”

“Keeping you safe,” added the rehearsed Cowley. “That was the undertaking, wasn’t it? Keeping you safe?”

Lasin’s eyes flickered snakelike-blankly, as snakes’ eyes are blankly unresponsive-before he said, “Osipov’s dead. The brigade’s smashed. That’s all I know.”

“Who killed him?” demanded Pavin.

“How do I know?”

“We’re sure you do,” insisted Danilov.

“I do the cars, that’s all. There was a war a few years back. I wasn’t with him then. Ask the brigade he fought then.”

“Can we tell them you sent us?” asked Pavin.

The bravado began to crumble. “I don’t know!”

“Our deal,” reminded Danilov. “You were going to get me a name I needed?”

“I couldn’t,” the man refused, bluntly.

Silence grew up in the opulent, flower-overwhelmed apartment, like building blocks for a wall. Danilov said, “You seen all those people outside the American embassy?”

“Hasn’t everybody!”

“Don’t worry, we’ll get through,” said Cowley, to Danilov. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Not unseen,” said Danilov, back to the American.

“We’ll try,” said Cowley.

Danilov spread his hands toward the Russian gangster. “You can’t say I didn’t try to keep my side of the bargain.”

“What the fuck you talking about now?”

“The same thing, keeping you safe. Not letting anyone know you’re helping us,” said Danilov.

“You’re not making sense,” jeered the man, although uncertainly.

“Can’t be many foreign cars-European, American-you can’t recognize, being in the business like you are?” suggested Cowley.

Lasin’s eyes flickered once more, but he didn’t speak.

“Got a lot of pictures of American cars at the embassy,” said Cowley. “What we want you to do is look through them, see if you can match any to a description we’ll give you of the car used in the attack on the embassy.”

“Pity you couldn’t give me a name from Petrovka,” said Danilov. “And tell us about the Osipov killing. Wish I had enough people to guarantee your safety after you’ve been to the embassy, but we’re as stretched as hell. Sorry.”

“Bastard!” said Lasin.

“It’s the business we’re in-makes us like that,” said Pavin. “We all ready?”

Cowley and Danilov moved toward the door together.

“Mizin!” blurted the man. “Ashot Yefimovich Mizin!”

Who’d volunteered to deliver Plant 43’s double-headed missile-the missile that had been switched in transit-to the Foreign Ministry and the self-appointed investigator of brigade godfather Mikhail Vasilevich Osipov, thought Danilov. “You see, you can help, when you really try.”

“Now let’s talk about American cars in Moscow,” picked up Cowley.

“And after that we’re going to go back to who killed Mikhail Vasilevich and destroyed the Osipov Brigade.”

“You’ll get me killed! You know you’ll get me killed!”

“You help us, we’ll help you,” promised Danilov.

“Motherfuckers!”

“We don’t enjoy it, either,” said Cowley. “Just part of the job.”

Pamela Darnley was pissed off: irrationally, which she knew and which didn’t help, angry but with no one and no target at which to vent it. It had begun so well, so seemingly complete. All it needed was one simple, fucking 25 cent telephone call-why was everything in nickels and dimes! — and she’d have been there, wherever there was. There with a SWAT team and helicopters-a fucking army, maybe-and they’d have all been in the bag, tied at the neck, the national emergency over and done with.

But there hadn’t been a call between 69 Bay View Avenue, Brooklyn, and a public street booth on the corner of Lake Shore Drive and 14th Boulevard, Chicago.

In the thirty-six hours since she’d established the monitor, the Chicago surveillance team had racked up $480 in overtime and taken 250 unnecessary photographs, including three sets of street hookers who used the telephone for business. And the Manhattan listeners knew what take-out pizza toppings Arseni and Mary Jo Orlenko preferred, that when she was out jogging on the bay road he called telephone sex lines, and because the house was live to every sound that he enjoyed oral sex when she came back, before she showered.

There was an equally frustrating paradox about the bank investigation, too. Within the thirty-six hours that the bureau auditors had moved in to the regional offices, there’d been the breakthrough that the siphoning from three banks in New York City and four in Philadelphia had gone beyond pennies: at two, in Philadelphia, three separate amounts of ten dollars had disappeared. The frustration came with the caution from the fraud team supervisor that while she-and Anne Stovey-had probably locked in on a substantial crime, it was still going to be difficult to isolate the embezzlers.

Pamela was actually in the Manhattan office, listening to the conversation between the couple on Bay View Avenue, when the fight began that alerted them.

Pamela said: “This could be something!”

It was but not at all-or anything-what any of them wanted, Pamela Darnley least of all.

Patrick Hollis had been panicked, open-boweled, for the rest of the day after Gillian Carling’s cafeteria announcement and sleepless that night in his locked den. But he was better now. Totally calm. It would not be just difficult, it would be impossible to catch him. And he’d always intended Robert Standing to be hurt, as badly as possible, for what he’d done, although more by an internal bank audit than by an FBI investigation.

Because it was an FBI investigation he still had to be careful, Hollis acknowledged. Better to get rid of the Jaguar than need to explain it, despite the inheritance cover he’d created. It was, really, a small sacrifice to make.

Senior Colonel Investigator Ashot Yefimovich Mizin was a thin, round-shouldered man who didn’t make the mistake of flaunting his additional income with impeccable tailoring, like Reztsov and Averin in Gorki, but there was the faintest attitude of superciliousness as he came into Danilov’s office.

Danilov said, “I thought I should have an update on the brigade murder.”

Mizin shrugged. “Another turf war, like the ones a few years back.”

“Who’s the opposition brigade?”

“I’m not sure, not yet. I doubt we’ll be able to bring a case even if I do find out.”

“I don’t want it written off,” said Danilov. “I want it properly investigated.”

“Trust me,” said Mizin.

“Of course I will,” said Danilov.