‘I’ve indicated the concern,’ said Ross.
‘So?’ said Holmes.
Cowley was disconcerted by the cursory tone of the demand: maybe he should start watching his own ass. He definitely wasn’t going to respond in front of a recording stenographer to a single-word question like that. ‘What, precisely, are you asking me?’
‘Is Paul Hughes being set up by Russian intelligence?’
Cowley weighed his answer. ‘I have no idea,’ he said, finally.
One of the aides sighed, but Cowley didn’t detect which one.
‘We want the specific details of Hughes’s telephone interception,’ Holmes insisted.
Again Cowley hesitated, anticipating a later demand and aware he was going to look an inexperienced amateur, even a bungling one, in their eyes. He replied chronologically, trying to avoid the admission, talking of getting Hughes’s embassy telephone number as one Ann Harris had called, of Hughes’s lying explanation at their initial interview, but of the man’s collapse when the verbatim conversation was put to him at the later, early morning confrontation after Lydia Orlenko had been attacked.
‘Now let’s go back over all that again,’ said Holmes, with forced patience. ‘Why didn’t you challenge Hughes’s first explanation with the verbatim record?’
He was going to be shown up, Cowley accepted, desperately: there was no possible way he could watch – or save – his ass. ‘At the first interview I didn’t have a transcript: just the number.’
‘I don’t understand that,’ complained one of the aides.
‘That’s just how it happened,’ said Cowley, miserably. ‘We were following a normal investigation routine, trying to check out any known acquaintances of Ann Harris. At the beginning I was provided with Hughes’s embassy number, nothing else.’
‘By whom?’ demanded another aide.
‘Danilov, the Russian detective.’
‘Who produced the transcript?’
‘Danilov.’ It was already looking bad and was going to get worse. Not simply bad. Appalling.
‘Where is it, in full? I haven’t seen it. Just your verbatim note of what was put to Hughes at the second interview,’ intruded Ross, beside him.
Exposed by his own Director, thought Cowley: at the moment he felt he could have been exposed by a child of ten. ‘I don’t have it.’
‘You don’t have it!’ echoed both Directors, in unison and shared astonishment. The sighing aide sighed even more deeply.
‘Mr Cowley,’ said the Agency chief. ‘I’m trying very hard to follow what you’re saying. But you’re not making it easy. We know there’s an intercept direct into the offices of the head of the economic section of the US embassy in Moscow. We know the man had sex habits that expose him to blackmail. And we are being told – I think – that those intercepts could also throw up intimate facts about the dead relation of one of the most important people in Washington, someone who is going to become even more important. Let’s take it slowly, a step at a time, so it’ll all become clear to us. You said – your words – that Danilov produced the transcript. If he produced it, where the hell is it?’
Cowley waited a long time before speaking, not wanting to be caught out by a misplaced word any more than he already had been. ‘I would like to make something clear; something I think is necessary to explain. I am – was – in Moscow investigating the murder of the niece of someone you rightly describe as one of, if not the, most important politician in Washington. It’s already clear she’s the victim of a serial killer who’s also killed a Russian and is going to kill again, if he’s not caught. At one stage it appeared that killer was Paul Hughes. Can you imagine the fall-out of an American walking the streets of Moscow, killing people, one the niece of Senator Burden? I can’t! Of course I recognized by even getting the number that there was an intercept. But that was not my immediate concern: my immediate concern was getting an admission from the man. Arresting him …’ Cowley hesitated, aware that if he disclosed the moment he learned of the transcript – when the Militia Director and the Federal Prosecutor demanded a Russian presence at any encounter with Hughes – he would be admitting how he’d misled his own Director. He was soaked in sweat, able to feel the wetness beneath his arms and making its way down his back. Shifting the lie, anxious it would not be the misplaced word he was frightened of uttering, Cowley continued: ‘Danilov did not produce the transcript until we were facing Hughes, in his apartment, the second time. And not to me. To quote from, to break Hughes down.’
Silence iced the room.
‘And you just made notes?’ sneered an aide.
‘At that time, yes.’
‘That explanation could be considered a speech of mitigation,’ said Holmes, joining in the sneer.
‘It was intended to make clear what I considered perfectly acceptable circumstances,’ said Cowley, careless of the taut faces of the men sitting opposite. He’d lost so much there wasn’t a lot more he could lose.
‘Have you seen any part of the transcript?’ asked one of the unnamed Russian experts. He spoke breathily, identifying himself as the one who sighed.
‘No,’ admitted Cowley.
‘Didn’t you think the transcript important to have?’
‘Not at that exact moment!’ said Cowley, regretting the indignation sounding like a plea. ‘I was doing my job, not yours. And at that moment I was trying to get a confession.’
‘So you don’t have the sequence of the conversation, to know who was calling whom?’
Cowley looked steadily at the CIA Director. ‘I did not tell you – neither did I suggest in any report I sent from Moscow – that it was Hughes’s embassy telephone that was tapped. You’ve inferred that. I understood from Danilov that the calls to Hughes were outgoing, from the girl’s apartment …’ He suddenly decided that he did have cause for indignation. The meeting – perhaps interrogation was a better description – was turning events into an unjust accusation of his ineptitude. ‘Why is the sequence important? You know, from what I’ve told you, that there is a tap.’ Just as Andrews had told him, on the night of his arrival, that there were taps in the new embassy building, he remembered.
‘From his office telephone Hughes presumably speaks to a lot of others far more important than his kinky bed partners,’ suggested Holmes. ‘The Berlin Wall might be souvenir pieces now and the Cold War supposedly history, but we’re not shutting up shop, any more than what was the KGB. Economics – just how fast and how far Russia is going down the financial tube – is the prime target. We want to know how big a damage limitation we might be looking at here.’
‘Maybe as extensive as the one the Bureau would have been involved in if Hughes had been the killer,’ said Cowley, wanting to score if he could.
There was more face tightening. The sighing man said: ‘Can you get the transcript?’
Cowley glanced worriedly at the stenographer, unsure of the commitment. If the Russian investigator had intended the promise to abandon the personal competition. And if Russian intelligence didn’t insist that whatever it provided was excluded from any cooperation. Too many ifs. ‘I would hope to be able to.’
‘Is Danilov truly Moscow Militia? Or could he be from the Cheka?’
‘We’re working from Militia headquarters. His is in a used office, occupied a long time.’
‘That doesn’t mean it’s his office. Why can’t it be a prop?’
‘He knows his way around it: is familiar there. He acts like someone accustomed to investigating crime,’ insisted Cowley. Imagining another scoring point, he said quickly: ‘If Danilov were an intelligence officer, why would he blow Hughes, if Hughes were targeted or already suborned? Why, for that matter, would they let him?’
‘To bring about exactly what’s happened,’ said the CIA Director. ‘It doesn’t matter if Hughes comes through the polygraph tests like George Washington and the apple tree. Or goes on to resist all the other questioning there’s going to be. We’re not going to be able to believe hi
m. So we and the State Department are going to have to go back through everything the man has ever provided during the time he’s been in Moscow and reassess and re-analyse and adjust every decision that might have been made, based upon it. It’s called disinformation and it’s a bastard.’
In the car returning to Washington, Cowley said: ‘I’m sorry. It wasn’t very good back there, was it?’
‘No,’ said Ross, shortly.
‘Do those guys look for microphones in the john, before they sit down?’
‘For cameras, too,’ said Ross. ‘It’s the way their minds work.’ He hesitated, thinking how good it would be to get out of Washington permanently. Pointedly he added: ‘I’d like to do better, if there’s a next time.’
When Cowley called Quantico from his hotel, a behavioural psychologist named Peter Meadows said the profile was complete with the additional material about the failed attack and that he’d be happy to discuss it. Judy Billington said on the telephone she didn’t know how she could help. Cowley said something might come up, as they talked. She said it would have to be after the funeral, naturally. Naturally, Cowley agreed.
They’d decided to wait, because Yezhov’s mother was sure he would be home within the hour, which he wasn’t. Now they were annoyed. The senior detective, Ivan Truchin, was an ice-hockey fan who had front-row seats for tonight’s game and was anxious about being late. His partner, Anatoli Zuyev, had an appointment of gratitude with a garage owner for whom he’d obtained a consignment of tyres, and wanted to get his money that night. The woman roamed the apartment on Bronnaja Boulevard, arms wrapped around herself, not knowing what she was protecting herself against: they’d refused to tell her what Petr had done, but she was sure it would be bad. She was terrified.
It was almost another hour before he came home. Petr Yezhov knew authority at once and withdrew inside himself. They couldn’t trap him – lock him up – if he didn’t say more than he had to. He confirmed with a nod that he was a labourer at the marshalling yards at Kursk Station. When they asked what he was doing on the night of January 17, his mother hurriedly assured the policemen he had been at home with her: Petr couldn’t remember dates and would have looked guilty of whatever it was. He hadn’t been home on January 17. She said he’d been with her the night Ann Harris had been killed, too. Which was only partially true. He’d gone out for one of his walks around ten o’clock and she had been asleep before he returned. Yezhov told the Militia men he didn’t know anything about any attack, on any women. He was better now: he knew it was wrong to do that any more. He said he didn’t know where Gercena or Granovskaya were. It was getting late for both detectives when they made him open the locked door to his room. They were surprised at its neatness, which they ruined with the quick roughness of their search, rifling and discarding through bedside drawers and cupboards and making him open a cardboard suitcase beneath the bed. It contained photographs of railway engines: Yezhov liked railway engines, which was why he enjoyed working at Kursk Station.
In the car, as they left, Truchin said: ‘Another waste of time, like all the rest.’
‘Thank fuck we finished as quickly as we did,’ said Zuyev.
Back in the apartment, his mother made Yezhov sit directly in front of her, reaching out to hold both his hands, as she had when he had been a child – younger than he was now, certainly – and she’d wanted him to admit doing something wrong. ‘Have you been bad again? If you’ve been bad you’ve got to tell me, Petr Yakovlevich.’
Chapter Twenty-Five
There wasn’t a clean shirt. Olga complained the machine was broken again. She didn’t know when it might be fixed. Until it was, he should take extra care to keep his cuffs and collar clean. Driving to Petrovka in the unmarked car, Danilov was waved down on the corner of Serova by a felt-booted, uniformed Militia man. There was a smell of stale sweat when the officer leaned through the window: Danilov wondered how often he changed his shirt. The man insisted Danilov had been exceeding the speed limit, for which there was a statutory fine if an on-the-spot summons were issued. He supposed it was difficult, keeping to a speed limit in a nice car like this; it had to have cost a lot and be expensive to run. He smiled in contented anticipation of the bribe when Danilov reached into his jacket. He stayed smiling when Danilov produced the Militia identification, shrugging in resignation as he stepped back, his time briefly wasted. Danilov was curious at the amount the officer made during an average week by such extortion.
Pavin was already in the office when Danilov reached Militia headquarters. That morning’s briefing meeting with the Director had been postponed for an hour: Lapinsk had been summoned to the Foreign Ministry. There was nothing from any of the ongoing routine inquiries, but Yevgennie Kosov had called personally, wanting to speak as soon as possible. When Danilov returned the call, Larissa’s husband said it was to do with the murders but he didn’t want to discuss it over the telephone. Why didn’t they meet for lunch: he’d already made a reservation at the hard-currency room at Kropotkinskaya 36. Danilov frowned, both at the prospect and crackle-crackle dialogue: more imported American films on the impressive video, he guessed. He said lunch was a good idea, interested to see what the restaurant would be like: he’d heard about it but never eaten there. He wished he’d had a clean shirt. While he waited for Lapinsk, Danilov made arrangements with the hospital to revisit Lydia Orlenko.
He was kept waiting more than an hour. When he finally entered Lapinsk’s top-floor office Danilov knew from the coughing, like a misfiring engine, that the old man had emerged from a bad meeting at the Ministry.
‘There’s a lot of annoyance at the complaints the Senator has made,’ Lapinsk announced. ‘There were Interior Ministry people at the meeting today, as well as Foreign. Nikolai Smolin, too.’
‘What about the security agency?’
The Director nodded. ‘Gugin attended.’
‘Are they taking over?’ He would have expected Lapinsk to be happier, if that decision had already been reached.
‘Not yet. Gugin made it seem there was already a great deal of cooperation: that it was virtually a joint investigation.’
‘So they’re still trying to avoid it?’ Mixed with Danilov’s satisfaction was the awareness that he was being left in charge by default, not from any expression of confidence.
‘Yes.’
‘But that could change?’ guessed Danilov.
‘We’ve got to make available to Gugin everything we get from America, through our liaison with the FBI.’
‘To prepare them completely if they are ordered to take over?’
‘That’s the obvious surmise.’ There was no reluctance in the admission. Lapinsk’s face relaxed for the first time at the prospect of being spared a problem from which he was eager to escape.
Danilov supposed it was only a matter of time before he was discarded, as a failed investigator, an embarrassment. And unless he could bring about a quick pre-emptive breakthrough – which he already knew he couldn’t, because there wasn’t a single avenue left to follow – then the time would be measured simply by how long the former KGB managed to evade the ultimate, inevitable responsibility. Why the hurt resentment, the anger at Lapinsk for the obvious acquiescence? Pride, he supposed. But what place did pride have for Dimitri Ivanovich Danilov? It certainly hadn’t had much importance when he’d headed a Militia district. And realistically had been little more than an affectation after the transfer to Petrovka, with his attempt to sever his manipulative ties to the past. What, practically, had it achieved? Had it made him a better detective? Made it easier to solve cases? Impressed and influenced his police colleagues? Certainly not the latter. The reverse. His pride – or rather his facile attempt to achieve it, refusing to compromise, refusing to be introduced by others in the initial friendly welcome to the sort of smiling entrepreneurs necessary at every level of Russian life – had marked him as a suspicious oddity, someone to be avoided until higher-echelon common sense prevailed and he was shunted sideways into th
e obscurity from which he had emerged. The excuse for which could come from the transfer to the Lubyanka of this investigation. Where would he be shunted? He didn’t know of anyone being sent back to a district, from Militia headquarters, although he supposed it must have happened. He doubted, if it had happened, that the move had been to a command position, which he had abandoned to come here. There were other, uniformed divisions, of course. Maybe there’d be a place for him there. Not a relegation quite so ignominious as street duty; but perhaps something within the chain where he could benefit from the kickbacks from smirking Militia men ambushing motorists on street corners. Danilov blocked the self-pity, surprised how easily it had come. In needless justification, he said: ‘We held back from any public warning to make it easier if the killer had been the American!’
‘There hasn’t been anything official from Washington,’ said Lapinsk. ‘How could there be, for that very reason! It’s only the press and television reaction to what the Senator said. The Foreign Minister is calling in the American ambassador, for consultation. The media are demanding more information: more press conferences and access to the woman who survived.’
‘Are we going to give it? Any of it?’
‘I don’t want to take part in any more conferences. Neither does Smolin.’
‘Does that mean I have to do it?’ asked Danilov, directly.
‘Not by yourself. That way we’d be accepting full accountability for delaying as we did,’ the Militia Director reassured him. ‘You’ll only do it with the American. And only then after it’s made clear to the American ambassador that we no longer see any reason why we shouldn’t disclose why we held back.’
In the Name of a Killer (The Cowley and Danilov Thrillers) Page 29
