No Time for Heroes

by Brian Freemantle

  ‘You think something will be held back?’

  ‘I want some way of knowing how independently Serov was operating from Ministry control. Which we might get if the material is incomplete. Serov was five thousand miles away: he had to have a link back here.’

  Back at Petrovka, Danilov began dismantling the barriers erected against him. He sent memoranda to both deputy ministers that he was resuming command, with a carbon copy to Vladimir Kabalin to reinforce his authority to receive what had so far been assembled on the Ignatov killing. He added that he wanted Kabalin and Raina to remain part of the murder squad, which would need extra manpower. Trying to ease Pavin’s workload, he ordered them to take over the scrutiny of Sheremet’yevo airport entry visas, for any reference to Michel Paulac. He advised the Foreign Ministry he wanted to interview Serov’s wife again, for them to appoint an observer if they wished, hoping they wouldn’t consider the woman’s complaint sufficient to do so. He decided against telling Pavin that he was making additional photocopies of everything: it came close to being a paranoid precaution.

  It was not until the very end of the day that any of the promised material on the Ignatov murder arrived, a preliminary autopsy report delivered to Danilov by one of Metkin’s secretaries, with an assurance a duplicate had been sent direct to Cowley. Danilov thought Metkin’s effort pitifully inadequate, like everything else, but he was glad he did not have to go to the American embassy himself. He had the woman carry back to Metkin copies of all the instructions he had issued, guessing the man would already know from Ludmilla Radsic: she had left the room several times after finishing the typing.

  Ivan Ignatsevich Ignatov had been a well-nourished male, aged forty-nine, with no indication of organic disease, although his medical file recorded treatment for syphilis. The medical report confirmed the mouth-shot had been post death. There was no water in the lungs, so Ignatov had been dead before going into the river, and there was no water damage to the body, so it had not been immersed for any length of time. Cause of death had been a direct bullet wound to the heart. There was evidence of previous, non-fatal injuries: what were judged to be three stab wounds to the left arm and shoulder and another, which could have been far more serious and would probably have required hospital treatment, to the lower right-hand side of the body, near the liver.

  Before leaving the Militia building Danilov ordered Pavin to assemble – and copy for Cowley – all available archival material on the known Mafia Families of Moscow, particularly the Ostankino with whom Ignatov had been linked. When he telephoned Cowley, the American said he was going to hit the sack, too.

  Danilov was later unable to remember anything of the drive to Kirovskaya, his recollection beginning with being in the apartment trying to explain to Olga that he’d attempted to warn her of his return from Washinton the previous day but that she hadn’t been there to take his call.

  Olga smiled hopefully towards the suitcase. ‘Do I have presents?’

  ‘Perfume. Armani,’ said Danilov. He’d bought it in-flight, during the duty-free distribution.

  Olga frowned. ‘I gave you a list!’

  ‘I came back in a hurry. There wasn’t time for shopping.’ He had forgotten all about her damned list, but there really had not been time.

  ‘I don’t believe you!’

  ‘I was working! Not on vacation!’

  ‘I saw a photograph of you coming out of a restaurant! Was that work?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said emphatically.

  ‘A normal married man would have found time!’

  A normal married man probably would have done, he conceded. But he didn’t consider himself to be normally married, not any more. ‘I’ll be going back,’ he said, without thinking, wanting only to deflect the diatribe.

  ‘You’ll get them all then?’ The hope was back in her voice.

  ‘I promise.’ He’d promised Larissa he’d resolve their situation when he returned to Moscow.

  Olga followed him into the bedroom, talking all the time but disjointedly, verbally giving him a shorthand account of what she had done while he had been away. She went into minute detail about her dinner at the Metropole Hotel with Yevgennie Kosov and of going afterwards to the most popular nightclub in Moscow, having decided there was no reason not to tell him because it had all been entirely innocent. But by then Danilov was deeply asleep, and didn’t hear anything she said.

  Cowley had more difficulty getting to sleep than Danilov, lapsing into half slumber but then coming abruptly awake in the darkened hotel room, his mind too busy with the events of the day.

  The courtesy visit to the embassy had been predictable and uneventful. No-one he’d met on the previous visit appeared still to be there. The First Secretary was a beaming Texan named Jeplow who seemed uncomfortable out of cowboy boots and promised the ambassador was available whenever Cowley felt like saying hello. The resident FBI agent was a chain-smoking New Yorker two assignments distant from Barry Andrews, but who apparently knew the story of Cowley’s first visit, because the man’s initial greeting had been that whatever happened it was going to work out better this time. His name was Stephen Snow. He hadn’t come out to Sheremet’yevo because he didn’t want to make himself too obvious to the Russians, even though it was now two to a bed and everything was hunky-dory. Cowley, who couldn’t remember the last time he’d heard the expression, assured the man he understood. Snow said, naturally, he was there to do anything Cowley asked.

  A recurring reason for Cowley’s wakefulness was the bizarre encounter with the Militia Director. Cowley didn’t think he’d ever witnessed a depth of antipathy between two men as obvious as that which seemed to exist between Metkin and Danilov, which – as he’d said immediately afterwards – wasn’t any of his business. His concern was how long it could remain none of his business, if it was going to wash over into their professional relationship, which it had clearly done that morning. It was a long way from being a situation to bring officially to the notice of the Bureau or the State Department, but it was something he had to keep very much in mind. It might have helped if he’d had some idea what it was all about. Did he know Danilov well enough openly to ask? Something else he did not have to decide right away.

  The meeting was again in the Pecatnikov club, where they felt most secure: Alexandr Yerin was particularly familiar with the surroundings, because he lived in an apartment two floors above.

  Mikhail Antipov frowned across the table at the komitet, not sure how forcefully he could protest but deciding he had to, because he was the one exposed to all the risk. ‘I won’t have any defence, if anything goes wrong!’

  ‘Nothing will go wrong,’ soothed the blind man.

  ‘How do we know we can trust them to do it right?’

  ‘They’ve got to do it right,’ said Gusovsky. ‘They’ve got to do everything we tell them: they’re ours.’

  ‘A new Mercedes and $5,000,’ reminded Yerin.

  ‘Just laugh at them?’ queried the killer.

  ‘That’s all. Just laugh at them,’ agreed Gusovsky.

  After the man left, Maksim Zimin said: ‘No-one expected the American to come back.’

  ‘That won’t be a problem,’ said Yerin. ‘In fact, I don’t think he should be left out.’

  ‘What are you suggesting?’ asked the thin-bodied Chechen leader.

  ‘I don’t have an idea at the moment,’ admitted Yerin. ‘But I will. We’ll fix Danilov and we’ll fix the American.’ The man smiled. ‘Before the year is out, we’ll virtually be running Moscow: we’re practically doing it already.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  The available material on Mafia Families in Moscow lacked any of the detail official police dossiers should have contained. It was predominantly newspaper clippings, giving the impression the city’s freed press had better access to information on organised crime than the police department supposedly responsible for gathering it, which Danilov guessed was probably true. Although the input to the records had been Metki
n’s responsibility until recently, and therefore the man’s failing, Danilov prevented it being obvious to the American. He had Pavin prepare a verbal instead of a factually written presentation.

  Pavin identified six Mafia clans in the capital, each with links to major cities throughout the former Soviet Union: the connections with St Petersburg were particularly strong. The Ostankino, with which Ivan Ignatsevich Ignatov was linked, was not reckoned to be the largest or the most powerful. The strongest and best organised was the Dolgoprudnaya who, under the freedoms of the new market economy, were already suspected of large-scale involvement and investment in legitimate businesses.

  ‘Just like the mobs in America. And in Sicily,’ interrupted Cowley. When he had been married to Pauline, Cowley had served at the Rome embassy: his later posting to London, where his marriage had collapsed and Pauline had met Barry Andrews, had been a reward for Cowley’s part in breaking a major Mafia drugs cartel.

  Relaxing and becoming more assured, Pavin said the Chechen were the chief rivals to the Ostankino. Pavin used the Western phrase, calling territorial battles turf wars. What the Americans and Italians called capos were leaders in Russia; enforcers were bulls; gangs were brigades. Those who controlled them were therefore Brigadiers, not God-fathers, although Brigadiers were thought to operate under higher authority for which there was no colloquialism. Each Family imposed entry fees upon anyone wanting to become a member, but each commanded a casual, transitory army of small-time thugs. Here Pavin used another street word – lokhi – which strictly translated as amateur.

  The Chechen concentrated upon Moscow’s four airports – mostly upon Sheremet’yevo, the international receiving terminal from which the most valuable Western articles could be stolen. They raided passenger luggage and freight, sufficiently able to bribe or intimidate security guards that they freely brought lorries right up to the warehouses to haul away what they stole. Their knowledge and control of the airport involved them in the shipment of drugs from the south, where there were big growing areas for marijuana and the poppies from which heroin was refined.

  The Chechen appeared to work in reasonable harmony with the other large-scale drug traders, the Assyrian Family. With their hordes of street bulls, the Lubertsy brigade’s single most important income was from extortion, from small business up through to joint-venture companies with Western, overseas connections who considered it easier to pay off than officially protest. The Ramenki extended their running of prostitutes around the main hotels to exacting tributes from the hotels themselves, which again found it easier to pay than protest. The Ostankino, who had been the quickest to see the potential of spare and discarded weaponry following the disbandment of the former Soviet military machine, were the armourers for all the other Families, and because of their access to every sort of gun, grenade, shell and explosive device were frequently the most violent, especially in their turf wars with the Chechen.

  It took Pavin almost an hour to make the presentation: the man was croaking, dry-throated, when he finished. Danilov thought Pavin had done brilliantly with what little had been available, and wished there had been a proper higher authority from which he could have got an official commendation, beyond the personal congratulation he intended later.

  ‘What about specifics?’ demanded Cowley worryingly.

  ‘Not enough,’ conceded Pavin, at once but not apologetically. ‘They’ve divided Moscow, like your five Families have carved up New York: the Lubertsy, for instance, are overlords of the south-east of the city, the Dolgoprudnaya have the north-west. A lot of Western copying, here. They meet in restaurant and nightclubs; particularly in nightclubs, with the new freedoms. We’ve got some locations but they change: by the time we get there, it could be a place of the past. And the fear is absolute. No-one is going to tell us that theirs is the restaurant or club where anyone meets. At worst they’d be killed, their premises bombed. If they escaped physical harm their drink and food supplies would cease: what customers remained would be met at the door and turned away.’

  ‘The old ways are still the best,’ remarked Cowley.

  Pavin did apologise in advance for the limited number of known identities. He produced a total of fifteen, spread throughout the Families: some were incomplete, lacking patronymics and none, Danilov noted, were those on Lapinsk’s brief letter, or had appeared in Serov’s code.

  ‘What about overseas links, to either America or Sicily?’ he asked.

  Pavin shook his head. ‘Not a thing.’

  ‘So we’ve got ourselves a first,’ said Cowley reflectively.

  ‘That we know about,’ qualified Danilov.

  The murder file already created by Pavin on Ivan Ignatsevich Ignatov was far more comprehensive than any on the organised crime Families. Ignatov was thought to have been forty-nine years old at the time of his death, although the date of birth in Kiev, in the Ukraine, was uncertain. There was no date, either, for his arrival in Moscow or record of the permission to live in the city that had been a legal requirement under the old Communist system, so he had been permanently breaking the law until five years earlier. Each time, there had been a sentence for the residential offence in addition to the verdicts on eight of the ten separately listed criminal convictions. Five had been for physical violence, the others for larceny, burglary and running prostitutes. He’d served a total of eight years in various prisons, two in the Ukraine, the rest in Russia. Apart from extra jail terms for illegal residency, there had always been enforcement orders for the man to be returned to the Ukraine at the completion of each jail term.

  Ignatov had been linked to the Ostankino Family during his last arrest. It had been for violence, for smashing the arms and legs of a breadshop owner on Ulitza Ogarova during an extortion demand, for which he had been jailed for three years. The baker had named the Ostankino as a crime syndicate to which he had been paying protection money: Ignatov had been the collector, demanding side payments for himself. In court Ignatov had denied any knowledge of any gang. Eight months after the trial at which the Ostankino Family had been named, the extortion victim, who had just started to walk again, had been knocked down in a hit-and-run accident and was now permanently crippled, confined for the rest of his life to a wheelchair.

  Court records provided three different addresses in Moscow – one a brothel operated by three shalava, sleevesnatching street whores unable to get foreign clients because of age or feared disease, reduced to charging visiting peasants less than a hundred roubles a time. No-one, at any address, admitted any knowledge of the dead man. His occupation was variously given as a labourer and a porter, never with any workplace or employer. So far no friends or acquaintances had been found, nor any record of his having been married or permanently involved with any woman.

  ‘A man who didn’t properly exist,’ said Danilov. Holding up the last pages, listing the arrests and court appearances, he said to emphasise his point: ‘And stupid. Every arrest at the scene of a crime, convicted because he was taken straight from police detention to a court. What’s that tell us?’

  ‘Small time,’ agreed Cowley. Enjoying the new word, he said: ‘A lokhi.’

  ‘So what’s the connection between a street-level pimp and thug and a murdered Soviet diplomat? OK, we’ve accepted Serov was dirty. But surely Ignatov was too small time!’

  Pavin answered the telephone when it rang, listening without interruption. At the end of the one-sided conversation he put his hand over the mouthpiece and said: ‘A uniformed Militia search party has found a gun, close to where Ignatov’s body was recovered. It’s a 9mm Makarov.’

  ‘Leave it where it is,’ ordered Danilov, as he got up from his desk. Exhausted or not, it had been a mistake not to have gone to the scene the previous night.

  ‘It don’t make sense!’ protested Bradley, probing for beef in the stroganoff before him. He chomped, open-mouth, and said: ‘This really isn’t bad. Great, in fact.’ He gulped at some red wine before he’d emptied his mouth. ‘You should have had
it.’

  Hank Slowen had already pushed his pork aside, deciding it was too rich roasted with plums: he was convinced he had an ulcer, although two examinations hadn’t discovered any medical evidence. ‘It’s early days yet.’

  ‘All the druggies in the fucking place should be pleading for mercy by now!’

  ‘They are,’ pointed out the FBI supervisor. ‘We’ve got hospital registers to prove it. They’re screaming.’ They’d chosen the Gastronom Moscow, right on the Brighton Beach boardwalk, making themselves very visible, like the rest of the Task Force throughout the area.

  ‘For methadone or whatever other shit substitute they can get!’ dismissed the detective. ‘They’re not screaming what we want to hear! Neither are the hookers or their pimps or any other bastard. It’s like a monastery under a vow of silence out there!’

  ‘Too early,’ repeated Slowen. He wondered if Bradley knew whether it was monks or nuns who lived in a monastery: probably not.

  Bradley finished his stroganoff: he missed a grease blob on his chin with his napkin and the FBI man couldn’t bring himself to point it out. ‘Not too early,’ argued Bradley. ‘Too fucking scared. And if everyone in Brighton Beach is that scared, they’ve got something to be scared about. Like we’ve got something to worry about, because it means we’re wasting our fucking time.’

  Sergei Ivanovich Stupar believed himself a lawyer whose time had finally come. He had a brilliant, analytical brain which he’d known was being wasted in the former Soviet Union, mourning his inability then to quit for the West, where he knew he could have made a fortune.

  He had been forty-five years old when Communism died, which was too old for a man seeking long-delayed rewards to study for any postgraduate degree in a foreign law school. Which Stupar, who was also a conceited man, decided he didn’t have to do anyway. International law – particularly international financial law – was subject to interpretation from both sides of a no longer divisive barrier. Stupar, who had spent the beginning of his career manipulating the doubtful laws of Communist finance, blended perfectly into the milieu of adjusting and fashioning financial arrangements between East and West. Legitimate negotiations were, however, poorly paid.