‘I’d already decided to ask him.’
‘Surprised he was there?’
‘I suppose it was understandable.’
The police photographs were printed at once, to maximum enlargements, and compared to every picture so far gathered on the three cases. There was no match. Danilov had just finished dictating the official request to Oleg Yasev for their identities when the call came from Smolin that the widow had already complained, through Yasev, about the media presence at the funeral. She blamed the Russian investigator personally for releasing the time and location to the press. Today’s protest had also repeated the demand that her husband’s still-retained diary be returned. Smolin saw no reason why that should not be done.
The rebuke finally made Danilov’s mind up how to operate in the future, which was not, he didn’t think, the way Nikolai Smolin intended. Danilov concluded he had been freed from the restrictive interference of a corrupt director to have it replaced by the restrictive interference of a group of government officials more interested in satisfying diplomatic than legal requirements. And then, he further qualified, only if the replacement group were honest.
Danilov shared every message with the American. Cowley said: ‘He know about going through Serov’s stuff from the embassy again?’
‘No,’ said Danilov. ‘And he isn’t going to.’ He was going to have to rely greatly upon the American, if they ever found a way in Russia to move the enquiry on.
Cowley’s seat in the corner of the bar, near the television set showing CNN for the benefit of the Western tourists, was waiting for him: before he reached it the barman was pouring the Scotch.
She arrived an hour and two drinks later, smiling across at him from her established seat near the foyer. There had been two other regulars setting up positions ahead of her and they’d smiled, too, but he hadn’t responded. This time he did. There was obviously an arrangement between the bar staff and the girls, who often sat without drinks unless they were bought by prospective clients.
Cowley intercepted the enquiring look between the barman and the girl, and said: ‘On my tab.’ The girl chose creme de menthe and smiled at him again, more openly this time, edging the second chair slightly away from her table, in invitation. Why not? What was wrong with just talking? He hadn’t talked with or been in the company of a woman since the night out with Danilov’s wife and Larissa. He carried his own drink from the small bar. As he approached she pushed the chair out further.
‘I am Lena,’ she said. Her voice was surprising deep, almost mannish. It was the only thing that was. The check wool dress was too well cut to be Russian, tight enough – but not too tight – to accentuate a perfect, ample-breasted body. The dark hair was short, the make-up discreet, certainly not so garish as the other girls in the bar.
‘Bill,’ he said.
‘I wasn’t sure it would ever happen.’ Her English was good, not hurried, which was a usual Russian mistake.
‘Nothing has, yet.’
‘I think it’s might, don’t you?’
‘We don’t have to use English. I speak Russian.’
‘I want to practise.’ There was no double entendre in the remark.
‘English then,’ he agreed.
‘You’ve seemed lonely.’
That was practically a stock phrase, but Cowley didn’t take it as such. He was lonely. Cowley had been with quite a few hookers, certainly before his marriage to Pauline and occasionally afterwards, when he’d been away or abroad on protracted trips and still hadn’t sobered up, in all ways. His immediate impression was that Lena would be one of the better ones. If he became a client, that is: he still didn’t have that intention, despite her confidence. Her appearance wasn’t surface thin, as it all too often was. Her nails were perfectly manicured, her hands well kept, and the smell was of perfumed freshness, not artificial fragrance of the previous day’s scent. In the West she would have been sophisticated enough to have worked through a discreet, high-class agency, not ply openly in hotels. Been a model, even.
Lena did not overdo the sexual innuendoes, and easily followed in whatever direction he led the small talk. She did not even attempt to hustle drinks, usually a requirement of establishments allowing a hooker to operate, but on two occasions even refused when he beckoned for more.
Cowley always had one, though.
Later – too much later – Cowley’s recollections were splintered, not even in the order in which things probably unfolded. He remembered agreeing without argument to $100 in American currency. There was the grandiose gesture of having champagne sent to the room. He had no memory of getting there. She’d undressed for him, languorously, but the imagery was hazy; tits bigger than he’d expected, a pubic thatch tantalisingly close to his face, before being pulled away, hips gyrating, then thrusting, letting him know the pleasure that was to come. There’d been no awareness of getting undressed himself: just of her helping but not clumsily, easing things erotically away from him. There’d been a cold reminder that he was naked, when he spilled champagne upon himself. That was about the last thing he could even vaguely call to mind: from then on it became completely disjointed, things that had to have happened, like her going down on him, her hair covering his crotch, mingled with an impression of their being among other people, which had to be from the earlier part of the evening, in the bar.
Cowley awoke feeling dreadful, the worst of the newly experienced hangovers there had so far been. His entire head seemed encased in a tightening shell. His throat and mouth were raspingly dry, like they had been when he’d been anaesthetised for a cartilage operation after a college football accident, and when he stood he began to heave and had to stumble to the bathroom, although when he got there he couldn’t be sick.
Lena was gone, but everything was wrecked by what they had done together. The half drunk bottle of champagne was lodged haphazardly in its cooler, slowly dripping what remained of its contents over the small table. Two glasses lay on their side, the bowl of one cracked. Bed covering, sheets and pillows, were strewn everywhere, his clothes among them. With enormous difficulty, his head squeezed by the pain, Cowley sorted through, retrieving everything he had discarded the previous night. Towards the end, as coherent thought returned, Cowley started both to hurry but at the same time concentrate, remembering Lena’s profession and frightened by what she might have stolen before leaving.
She’d taken nothing.
Which left him with only one uncertainty. He didn’t know whether he’d used a condom the previous night: if they had fully made love he was sure Lena would have ensured they were protected, as much for herself as for him, a first time, unknown client.
He supposed he could always ask her, tonight. And perhaps tonight he wouldn’t get so drunk, so he could enjoy it more the next time.
‘We don’t want Antipov near any of the places,’ decreed Gusovsky. ‘We’ll get a message to him – no telephone – to keep away until the surveillance is lifted.’
‘Shall we brief Kosov together?’ asked Zimin.
‘I think we should,’ decided Yerin. ‘Make the bastard understand that he’s got to earn his money: he’s taking too long to do what we tell him.’
‘What about the other business?’ asked Zimin. The previous night another lorry convoy had been hijacked, and they had lost an entire consignment of Scotch whisky.
‘It’s a direct challenge,’ agreed Gusovzky. ‘We’ve obviously got to respond just as directly.’
‘And hard,’ said Yerin. ‘But try to limit the killing. I think we should try to avoid too much public attention.’
‘We should cost them money,’ reflected Gusovsky.
‘I’ll organise it,’ offered Zimin, who enjoyed violence. He already had an idea in mind.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
When the moment came for Danilov to work with the total independence upon which he’d decided, he was stopped by a last moment of doubt: after all the outside attempts to destroy him he was knowingly inviting his own
destruction, like a lemming rushing towards the cliff edge. It was a brief hesitation. Someone or some group in an official position had to know what Serov had been doing, how he was doing it and why he was doing it. So for him to go on duplicating memoranda to ministries and officials like the hare in a paper chase was telling the very people he needed to search out and confront how to evade and hide.
It was the meticulous and methodical Pavin who found what Danilov had missed in Washington. The reserved, puffy-eyed Cowley called it a breakthrough but Danilov, more cautiously, suggested it was no more encouraging than the rest. When Danilov added he had no intention of telling anyone, the American said: ‘You could be putting the rope around your own neck, before kicking the chair away.’
‘We need to do it. If we don’t you might as well go back to Washington and I might as well mark the whole thing unsolvable.’
‘You’re the one who’s got everything to lose,’ warned Cowley. He, by comparison, had everything to gain.
Reminded of the other endangered person, apart from himself, Danilov said to Pavin: ‘If there is ever an enquiry I will testify you acted upon my specific orders: that you had no choice.’
Pavin considered the undertaking. ‘It wouldn’t save me, not entirely. If I disagree I should go over your head.’
‘ Do you disagree?’ asked Danilov.
‘No,’ said the man. ‘I think this is what we should do.’
There had been a section missing from Petr Serov’s original records when they were returned to Petrovka from the Foreign Ministry, an apparently innocuous account of a week-long visit to the Kennedy Centre in May, 1991, of a Nigerian dance group. Intermingled in Serov’s English written report were ten Cyrillic letters, which Pavin, knowing the code to follow, had formed into the name Ilya Nishin.
‘I think this name is particularly important,’ said Pavin. The man was clearly flattered at being included in a planning meeting, enjoying the praise for locating another name. ‘All the others appeared in the autumn of ’91. This one is the first.’
‘We haven’t tried to connect the names against the dates they were concealed,’ pointed out Danilov. ‘Why don’t we do that, starting with this one hidden in May, 1991? If it doesn’t turn up on your criminal computer, let’s run it through your immigration records, for the entire month.’
Cowley nodded to the idea. ‘We could take it further: give the name, month and year to the Swiss to see if they’ve got any trace.’
All Danilov’s doubts had gone. His only feeling now was satisfied excitement at having something positive to pursue.
‘We’ve got more than one curious name,’ reminded Pavin. Stultifying Russian bureaucracy required that the returned Foreign Ministry documents carry the signature of the official approving their release. The authority had been that of Oleg Yaklovich Yasev.
‘He has been assigned to Raisa Serova, both for the interview and the funeral,’ Danilov pointed out, trying to remain objective. ‘There’s a logic in his handling the document request as well.’
‘I don’t believe in coincidences,’ said Cowley.
‘Neither do I. He’s an executive officer: reasonably powerful. And he’s been using that power, with all the complaints…’ To Pavin he said: ‘I want to know everything you can possibly find out about him.’
Cowley said: ‘I’ve got a gut feeling about this. Things are going to start happening now. Just you see.’
It was a casual aside the American did not later remember, so he never realised the bitter irony of the remark.
Cowley was back at the embassy by mid-afternoon. It took him less than an hour to transmit the newly discovered name and set out the complete checks he wanted made, and with time on his hands he agreed to a drink in the embassy mess with the chain-smoking Stephen Snow. He limited himself to two, still not feeling completely recovered from the previous night.
The resident FBI man had read the cable traffic, so the conversation was obvious. Cowley repeated he had a detective’s instinct it was going to take them somewhere.
Cowley used the Marlboro trick to get a taxi outside the embassy, and slumped in the back, thinking of Danilov. The guy was taking a hell of a risk. But he was an adult, sane and over twenty-one, so he could make up his own mind. Cowley accepted it convincingly answered all his early uncertainties about the openness of Danilov’s co-operation. The guy wasn’t just co-operating now: he was virtually working with America and closing out his own people. A hell of a risk, he thought again. Although from all that had happened he had a pretty good idea, Cowley conceded he couldn’t properly guess the sort of shit Danilov had had to wade through in the beginning. Not just the beginning: up until just a few days ago.
Cowley smiled expectantly at the receptionist, the expression becoming a frown when she handed him the package with his key. It was a stiff-backed manila envelope, about 10? by 8?, made thick by its contents. The only marking was his name, scrolled with the stiff difficulty by someone unaccustomed to forming Roman lettering.
He made no attempt to open the envelope in the lobby. Instead, with the proper caution of a trained investigator handling a Mafia enquiry, he carried it to his room to examine and feel it minutely, fingering for anything solid, squinting from every angle for any detonating wire or thread. He still opened it from the bottom, gently pulling against the glue to ease the flap open.
The contents were as explosive as any bomb could have been.
There were twelve prints, all professionally lighted, all professionally sharp, all perfectly developed. Every one completely identified him, apparently taking part in every sort of sexual act. His closed-eyed semi-consciousness when Lena had performed fellatio looked like an expression of ecstasy. So it did with her vagina at his mouth for the feigned cunnilingus. Lena had put herself into three different positions of supposed sexual intercourse. There were two photographs of him completely naked, her hand on his limp genitals. In both he was smiling drunkenly, a tilted champagne glass in his hand, the FBI shield they had taken from his jacket open in its wallet on the bedside table.
Cowley swallowed against the bile, gripping the shake away from the hands that held the photographs. He went through them several times, turning each one to look for any inscription. There wasn’t one, on any. He looked carefully back inside the envelope for a message, It was empty.
For a few brief moments he remained uncertainly by the bed – the bed so clearly shown in the pictures now laid out upon it – striving to think rationally, coherently. He finally assembled the photographs and put them back into their envelope, which in turn he put inside his briefcase: never once did it occur to him to destroy them, which would have been pointless because they were prints, not negatives from which as many other prints as were wanted could be developed.
Aware in advance his next action would be equally pointless, he still descended the four flights to the bar, halting directly inside the door. The barman nodded the nightly greeting, starting to pour the Scotch unbidden. Two of the regular girls smiled up, hopefully. Lena, of course, was not there. There wouldn’t, he knew, be any purpose in asking where she was.
Cowley turned, going back to his room. He retrieved the photographs, going carefully through them once more, gaining nothing from the renewed examination. He finally replaced them in the briefcase before sitting down, staring between the case and the telephone.
How would it come? he wondered. With what demand? And what would he do, whatever that demand was?
The despair finally engulfed him. ‘Dear God,’ he said, aloud. ‘Dear God, help me.’
The location came from Yevgennie Kosov, a restaurant on Ulitza Moskina, quite close to the Kunstler Theatre, from which it drew a lot of its clientele; like the Western counterparts they copied so assiduously, the Moscow Mafia enjoyed a show business ambience. It was an established Ostankino haunt.
Zimin took six bulls with him. They saw the Ostankino group go in and allowed half an hour for them to settle, unsuspecting, before bursti
ng in. The surprise was absolute. Only one Ostankino bull had time to try any effective defence but his Stetchkin shot wide, embedding its bullet harmlessly in the wall. The Chechen had guns but did not use them. They carried wooden and metal staves and crowbars with which they broke arms and legs and in two cases fractured skulls, matching identically the Ostankino attack on the Domodedovo convoy. Completing the mocking comparison, they torched the restaurant as they left.
Zimin supervised the attack but took no personal part in it. He liked watching. It was better for him than sex.
FORTY
There’d been no warning from either Olga or Larissa, and Danilov stalled because their evenings were nearly always arranged in advance. His thoughts see-sawed. Larissa had talked of announcing their decision together. But Kosov wouldn’t be as friendly as this. He would if he didn’t know what was coming. Larissa wouldn’t do something like this without telling him.
‘Just as you are,’ urged Kosov. ‘A few drinks, some cold meats. Just sitting around, chatting about things.’
Olga fussed for an hour, undecided between two dresses, eventually choosing the first she’d selected. He tried to reassure himself, while he waited. There had been unplanned occasions before – he’d initiated a few himself in the first flush of his affair with Larissa – but not for a long time: certainly not since he’d been at the Organised Crime Bureau. Larissa wouldn’t try to force his hand like this, impatient though she might be: he knew she wouldn’t. If he called back to make an excuse, Larissa would think he wasn’t sure. Which he was.
‘How do I look?’ asked Olga, parading.
‘Very pretty.’ He’d have to find a way of telling her about all the different colours in her hair: it looked as if she had an old rug on her head.
Danilov looked with curious apprehension at Larissa when they arrived: unseen by anyone but Danilov, she raised her eyebrows in an expression he didn’t understand but hoped was matching curiosity at the unexpected invitation. She wore Armani jeans that Olga could not have risked, and the sweater was inevitably cashmere. He hadn’t seen her wear either before: she looked sensational, and he decided he was as anxious as she to get some permanence into their relationship. He didn’t want to go away tonight, leaving her with someone like Kosov.
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