The Watchmen

5

Dimitri Danilov’s plane came in directly over the joining of the Volga with the river Oka. Briefly it was impossible to see both banks of the waterway that flows for more than two thousand miles from the frozen north to the subtropical Caspian Sea, to separate European from Asiatic Russia. It narrowed nearer to Gorki itself, but there were so many boats and ships-two cruisers large enough to be considered liners-that they looked from the air like discarded debris, without any regulated direction. He tried to locate the canal from the Volga to Moscow that Stalin forced his gulag prisoners to scoop from the earth with their bare hands but couldn’t and decided it must be farther downstream. The vast, flat hinterland of taiga forests was black, not conifer green, pockmarked in a lot of places into total baldness by clear-cutting without replanting. There were also the huge interruptions of uniform, regimented weapons and military materiel manufacturing buildings, each visibly divided from its matching neighbor by watch-towered, fenced perimeters. Two actually on the riverbank were on either side of an enormous man-made canal he could see humped with the pens in which the submarines now hemorrhaging their nuclear core into Murmansk harbor were originally housed, ready to fight America into mutual atomic annihilation. Which factory below was known simply by the number 35 and specialized in another sort of annihilation? Danilov wondered.

The aircraft, surprisingly, arrived exactly according to the schedule he’d given Colonel Oleg Reztsov, head of Gorki’s serious crime division, but there was no greeting officer. There was no waiting militia car outside, either, and Danilov accepted both, sadly, as an augury.

The smell of stale tobacco competed with the even staler stink of body odor in the rattling, sag-seated taxi festooned with dangling trolls and head-nodding toy animals. One had a broken neck. Danilov had forgotten the horizon-to-horizon taiga-covered mosquito bog and marsh. Flying things feasted off him, despite his lowering the window as far as it would go. The incoming breeze didn’t disperse the smell, either. When he told the inquiring driver, who’d smiled expectantly at Danilov’s American-bought suit bag, that he wasn’t going to pay in dollars, the man said having luggage inside the car would cost an extra fifty rubles. Danilov told the driver who he was, and the man said there wasn’t an extra charge for carrying a militia general.

Danilov’s room at the National Hotel overlooked a trash-strewn square at the rear, next to an air-conditioning or heater unit the throbbing of which reverberated into his room. Cockroaches killed by whatever was in an upturned cardboard container in the closet lay atrophied, legs stiffly in the air. There was no soap or sink or bath plug, which Danilov knew he should have anticipated and was annoyed that he hadn’t.

Colonel Reztsov wasn’t available when Danilov called. The woman who answered the telephone said she didn’t know where he was or when he would be back. Danilov suggested she find out to tell the president’s chief of staff when he called from the White House in Moscow in fifteen minutes, and in ten Reztsov came thickvoiced on the line.

“I didn’t think you were arriving until tomorrow.”

“I sent a fax.”

“It must have been mislaid.”

“You do understand how seriously it’s being treated?”

“I’ve got a squad on it already.”

“I’d like whoever’s in charge waiting when I get to your office. Which I will do in thirty minutes.”

“That-” the man began but stopped.

“What?” demanded Danilov.

“Nothing. I’ll send a car.”

Danilov parted with another ten dollars to get his room changed to one with soap and a bath plug and without mummified cockroaches. The mystery throbbing was less intrusive, too. The promised driver waiting in the lobby was a woman and blonde, and the car was a blue BMW. Danilov stopped momentarily-stupidly, he recognized at once-halted by the unneeded and unwelcome deja vu: The vehicle in which his mafia paymasters had blown up Yevgennie Kosov had been a BMW, blue like this one, and Larissa, who’d died with him, had been blonde, although slim and poised and beautiful, not at all like this woman, who was plump and round-faced and waddled. The obvious comparison made his reaction even more stupid. It had to stop, as the one-sided graveside conversations had to stop. He was hovering, Danilov supposed, on the edge of a nervous breakdown-close to some sort of breakdown. Time-long past time-to take hold of himself. Learn to live with the grief, as sensibly mature adult people adjusted to loss, no matter how traumatizing or unbearable it first appeared.

The driver took Danilov’s hesitation to be admiration and said it was Colonel Reztsov’s personal car. Danilov decided Reztsov was either a fool or very arrogant to show off a vehicle that would have cost the man a lifetime’s salary if he’d bought it honestly. And then Danilov accepted that Reztsov was probably neither. What the police chief was, in fact, was a typical senior Russian militia officer, living more than comfortably on a mafia payroll, and eager to show a visiting senior Moscow militia officer he imagined similarly cared for that life was as sweet in the provinces as it was in the capital.

What about his own foolishness? Danilov demanded of himself, settling into the squeaking leather upholstery and initially savoring the aroma from an unseen, perfumed deodorizer after the gagging journey from the airport. Danilov wasn’t a rarity in Moscow policing. He was now an arm’s-length, ostracized oddity, as unknown in modern Russia as the Neolithic long-haired mammoths occasionally found frozen in perfection in Siberian glaciers. So why had he come-alone-expecting honest, find-the-truth cooperation from a major provincial militia? He should, at least, have brought Yuri Pavin, whose apparent elephantine slowness belied a mind of jaguar speed. On something as high profile as this he should have risked the very real and constant backstabbing danger of an unsupervised department to bring his trusted deputy with him. Although Pavin was his deputy, now with the rank of senior colonel, he was still a street-level, gutter-thinking policeman who could smell a lead, like a bloodhound scenting a trail. It was the sort of expertise Danilov suspected he was going to need.

If Reztsov’s car hadn’t been a sufficient pointer, the police chief’s appearance would have been. Danilov wondered if it was an institutionalized psychology for men whose supposed function required uniforms to dress like the mobsters with whom they exchanged money-filled, back-alley handshakes. Reztsov’s single-breasted Western-style suit was blue, practically a match with the car, and had a silky sheen. The watch and its band was gold, balanced by the gold identity bracelet on his right wrist. On the man’s right hand the diamond shone with lighthouse brightness from a knuckle-reaching gold band. Major Gennardi Averin, the other man in Reztsov’s opulent office-which smelled of the same perfume as the car-was a clone of his superior, although the shiny suit was gray and Averin didn’t have a gold identity bracelet.

Both men were as sleek as their clothes, smooth-faced, well barbered, confident of their surroundings and their domination in it. The handshakes were effusive, Reztsov actually retaining Danilov’s hand to lead him away from the officialese of the grandiose desk to a lounge-chaired, plant-dotted informal area close to a book-lined cabinet. There was Chivas Regal as well as vodka already set out. The glasses were cut crystal. Danilov accepted vodka, going along with the charade. Reztsov and the major both had whiskey.

Danilov said at once, “How can you help me?”

“We’ve come up with something from records,” announced Reztsov. “An arms smuggler.”

“What sort of arms?”

“Conventional,” said Averin. “Not something either of us have personally dealt with.”

“What have you done?”

“Waited for you.”

“Was any loss reported from Plant 35?”

“No,” Reztsov said immediately.

“Have you spoken to Plant 35 directly?”

“Decided to wait until you got here,” parroted Averin. “Got an appointment for us with the director tomorrow, at ten.”

“But you have spoken to him?”

“By telephone,” said Averin. “Just to make the appointment.”

“You didn’t ask him if there was anything missing?”

“He said he’d check. Tell us tomorrow.”

It was difficult for Danilov to curb the anger. He wasn’t sure if he should bother, confronted by this almost smirking contempt. “How much conventional weaponry disappears from the establishments here?”

Reztsov made an uncertain movement. “Can’t remember the last time we were called in. Security’s very good.”

“How many official crime families do you have in Gorki?”

Reztsov made another shrug. “Hardly families. Just one or two loose-knit groups.”

“As well as the last case of known thefts from factories here, I’d like all your intelligence on organized crime groups,” set out Danilov. “Particularly those with known links to families in Moscow. I’m having checks carried out there, for connections here. Most particularly-and obviously-I want any known association with America … any supposedly genuine America joint venture businesses here. You’ll put that in hand right away, will you?” The condescension began to go, and Danilov was glad he’d kept his temper.

“That could be quite an undertaking-” Reztsov began to protest but Danilov overrode him.

“If it’s too much for your department, I’ll move militia personnel from Moscow,” he said. “Normal local authority and jurisdiction doesn’t apply. I want an office to work from, and I’d like to start on the organized crime material right away.”

“Yes, of course,” said the now-subdued local police colonel.

Dimitri Ivanovich Danilov read the intelligence dossiers on organized crime in Gorki with the expertise of a detective who had once been on the take and could learn as much from what was not recorded as he could from what was. The slimmest and most inadequate file was on a group headed by Mikhail Sidak, the thickest-and the most actively investigated-on the family led by Aleksai Zotin, which told Danilov they were the biggest two in the city, in turf competition with each other and that Reztsov had most probably earned the sweet-smelling BMW from Sidak for harassing the opposition. There had been prosecutions against four low-level members of a third family headed by Gusein Isayev for importing drugs along the Volga from the opium-producing south. Danilov surmised it was a business in which Sidak was eager to expand.

Both trials of the already identified conventional weapons trafficker, Viktor Nikolaevich Nikov, had failed through lack of evidence. Nikov was described as a bull-the Russian underworld term for a hit man-predictably in the family, or brigade, of Aleksai Zotin. The cases had involved a consignment of Kalashnikov rifles and antipersonnel mines. The chief prosecution witness had been the storeman at Plant 20, a conventional weapons factory, who’d retracted a sworn statement that Nikov had been the man to whom he’d sold the guns and mines. Three defense witnesses had testified that Nikov had been with them in Moscow, buying imported foreign cars for his garages, when the prosecution claimed he had been in Gorki. None of the Moscow defense witness names meant anything to Danilov, but that was hardly surprising, considering the number of brigades in the capital. The only names he knew-ingrained in his memory-were the crews of the Chechen and Ostinkono families whose territorial war had led to Larissa being killed. Some-too many-had escaped, were still alive.

“There’s the sort of Moscow connection you were asking about. I’d momentarily forgotten about it,” said Reztsov. Apologizing that it might take several days to find an available office, the local police chief had insisted that a desk, chair, and filing cabinet be moved into his own suite and remained attentively close to Danilov, even selecting and offering the folders.

“Considering how big the arms industry is here, I’m surprised there’s been so very little crime-leakage-involving it, particularly now that so much is superfluous with the end of the Cold War,” said Danilov.

“I told you, security’s good,” reminded Reztsov. “It’s directed from Moscow.”

“There’s no more than this?” pressed Danilov. Their attitude wasn’t patronizing but their selection was. It had taken less than an hour to produce.

“This is what I understood you wanted,” said Major Averin. “How else can I help?”

“Zotin is the foremost family?”

“We’ve moved against them a lot,” Averin pointed out.

“You got any feedback from informants that they might be connected with what happened in New York?”

“Not yet,” said the major. “My task force was only formed two days ago. We’ve spread the word.”

“We should talk to Nikov,” said the local police chief, as if it were a decision no one else would have reached.

“Does he still run the garages referred to in his file?” asked Danilov. They’d sell cars stolen in Western Europe and smuggled in largely through Poland.

“When we last heard,” Averin said carelessly.

“You haven’t checked the whereabouts of someone who twice escaped arms-dealing prosecution?” Danilov demanded sharply.

“We always know where he is,” assured Reztsov, the condescension edging back. “We always know where all our major players are.”

“Let’s bring him in then; see what he’s got to say,” agreed Danilov.

The dinner that Danilov decided he had to accept and to which they drove in Reztsov’s perfumed car showed how fully the police chief’s preparation-and his misunderstanding-had been. The genuinely French owner greeted Reztsov at the door of the restaurant overlooking the oil-smooth river. It took a long time for Danilov’s disinterest to register with both Reztsov and Averin before they stopped recommending several girls smiling invitingly from the bar and an outer lounge.

There was a message from Yuri Pavin asking Danilov to call him at home, at any time, when he got back to the National Hotel. Pavin answered on the first ring. Two of the defense witnesses at Viktor Nikolaevich Nikov’s second trial were logged on Moscow’s criminal records as being associates of a family operating under the aegis of the Dolgopruadnanskaya, the city’s largest mafia grouping. The third had been shot dead in a territory war with a Chechen gang soon after testifying for Nikov.

“What Chechen gang?” Danilov demanded at once.

“Not the one that would interest you,” said Pavin, equally quickly, accustomed to the question. “Perhaps Nikov’s your man?”

“We’ll soon find out,” said Danilov. “He’s being brought in for questioning.” Danilov supposed his religiously minded deputy actually believed in miracles. He certainly didn’t.

William Cowley and Burt Bradley moved up to the more centrally convenient Manhattan FBI office and split equally between them the interviews with what in the end turned out to be six claimed eyewitnesses, three commuter plane pilots, a second trash barge captain, and a yacht charter skipper. They dismissed completely the account of the yacht skipper, whom they decided was seeking business publicity-and who later asked payment for media interviews-and at the end of a long day distilled down to just one page anything remotely of value from the remaining five. The consensus was that there had been two people-one possibly a woman-on the cruiser from which the missile had been fired. None of the witnesses had actually seen the ignition or anyone holding the launcher because the hitting of the Secretariat Tower had been more obvious. Four insisted the cruiser was blue and white, one that it had been entirely white. Two thought a blue canvas canopy had been erected over the flying bridge, three weren’t sure it had a flying bridge at all. None could suggest a make, and the estimates of its length varied from between thirty feet and fifty-five feet. Only two chose the same photograph of one of the eight cruisers reported stolen in the previous week. One of the commuter pilots was so unsure he said it could have been any one of three.

By the end of that third full day no terrorist group had claimed responsibility, and the special task force Bradley created at Pennsylvania Avenue to computer analyze and cross-reference every known and potential faction-with an emphasis on missile or military technical expertise-had processed eight, with four breakaway associations, covering the spectrum from the Ku Klux Klan to the Black Brotherhood. Islamic fundamentalism was definitely slammed. It was Cowley’s suggestion to ask Interpol to provide all likely international organizations in their files and to extend beyond known Islamic fundamentalist movements by asking the Mossad, Israel’s intelligence service, for what information they possessed on the state terror structures of Iraq, Iran, Algeria, and the Sudan. The personal authority of Leonard Ross had been invoked for all three branches of the military to research their files for people with specialized weapons knowledge-particularly missiles-who had recently left or been discharged from their service.

Bradley said, “We’re building ourselves a paper mountain and we ain’t got Jack squat. We’re just waiting for the next outrage.”

“I know,” accepted Cowley. He’d expected the FBI director to have more readily accepted his assessment that Washington was the most likely target. It had been bridge building to suggest it to Burt Bradley, too: The resentment from the other man at Cowley being officially designated case officer was obvious. For that reason Cowley had urged Bradley to include the warning in one of his early assessments, as if it had been his idea.

“You think your guy in Moscow’s going to get anything?”

“Not on what we’ve been able to give him so far.”

Bradley looked at his watch. “We’re too late for happy hour, but I’m ready to pay full price.”

If Bradley hadn’t suggested it, Cowley knew he would have done so. Continuing the bridge building, to the benefit of the investigation, he told himself.

Cowley was struggling into his coat, so Bradley took the telephone call. At once he shouted, “Leave it! Don’t touch a thing! Rope everything off until we get scientists up there.” He looked across at Cowley with the telephone still in his hand. “Highway Patrol took until this afternoon to check out a report of a fire in a creek near New Rochelle. And found the Eschevaux, one of our missing boats.”

“This is wonderful!” enthused Elizabeth Hollis.

“It’s foreign. A Jaguar,” said her son. “I can go 120 miles an hour at least.”

“You haven’t driven that fast?” the woman demanded, swiveling in her seat to look at him.

“Of course I haven’t, mother! That would be illegal.”

“You promise me?”

“I promise you.”

“I couldn’t live without you, Patrick. Without knowing you’re always going to be close to me, looking after me now that your father’s passed on.”

“You’re never going to have to. I keep telling you that.”

She patted the leather seat. “I love the new smell!”

“It’s nice, isn’t it?”

“Only what you deserve, working so hard for the bank as you do.”

“I don’t want you to tell anyone how grateful they are,” warned the man. “You know how jealous people get.” He still used the three-year-old Volkswagen to drive to Albany. Would Carole-would any of the girls-go out with him if they knew about the Jaguar?

“I’d like people to know how important you are.”

“No, mother. It’s better this way-the way the bank wants it.”

“I like going out for rides like this.”

“Then we’ll do it a lot,” Hollis said.

Ironically the exit Hollis took off the interstate to get back to Rensselaer was very close to the mobile home park in which Clarence Snelling lived.

Snelling said, “They’re not going to do anything about it, you know? They don’t understand the technology they’re relying on.”

“What are you going to do about it?” demanded his wife.

“Go to the police,” decided Snelling.

“What can they do?”

“Maybe they can frighten the bank into taking more action than they are so far.”