No Time for Heroes

by Brian Freemantle

  ‘That’s for us to decide,’ said Oskin briskly.

  ‘No!’ denied Danilov. ‘Of course I know there is going to be the biggest cover-up possible: I’ve guessed that from the start …’ Which was why, he thought – enjoying the American phrase – he had already, for a variety of reasons, gone so far out on a limb. ‘But how can we persuade the American administration privately, to go along with it?’

  ‘Far easier than perhaps it will be to satisfy public opinion,’ said Barazin, close to being dismissive. ‘In the case investigated by yourself and Cowley a little over a year ago, there was intense pressure from Washington to allow the mistaken arrest to remain the accepted solution …’

  It was brilliant, accepted Danilov, knowing in advance what the diplomatic blackmail would be: absolutely brilliant.

  ‘… Our most recent psychiatric information, about the man detained here, shows indications of recovery. If that recovery were to continue I, as Justice Minister, would have to consider releasing him. A public explanation would have to be given, of course …’

  There would even be such a preliminary psychiatric report, Danilov knew, prepared by a puppet psychiatrist, of which the security authorities of Russia still contained an abundance, from the previous era. ‘Which still isn’t a public explanation for the murders now! This time we don’t conveniently have a mentally deranged man!’

  ‘Which is why I am taking part in today’s discussion,’ disclosed Barazin. ‘I’ve read everything so far, apart from the woman’s confession. I want your personal assessment of what we’ve got, to compare against our opinions.’

  Danilov desperately wished he’d had time to think through his answer, to avoid leaving himself exposed. Cautiously, he said: ‘In Italy I indicated to Zimin we’d reach an agreement, in return for his giving evidence here. The man knows Mikhail Antipov is guilty of the Ignatov killing. He hinted he knows about the lost gun, which could implicate Metkin and Kabalin, too. He claims to be a member of the Chechen komitet, and we know the Chechen tried to take over the Swiss fund, although we’ve only got the woman’s word for it, no documentary evidence. If Zimin is that high in the Mafia organisation, it’s conceivable he’ll know what happened in America as well. If we make the deal, his telling us about America could be part of it …’

  ‘It’s linked with the embezzlement of the Party funds and the government, which you’ve been told must not come out!’ broke in Smolin.

  ‘Everything I have so far suggested would be restricted to a Russian enquiry which could finally culminate in a Russian court,’ pointed out Danilov. Looking between the Justice Minister and the Federal Prosecutor and measuring every word, he said: ‘We – you two, most of all – control the evidence and the prosecution presented before a Russian court …’

  Barazin smiled, bleakly. ‘A point well made. What else?’

  He was covering himself, Danilov decided. He moved towards further protection. ‘I have this morning ordered the re-arrest of Antipov, for further questioning. I’m convinced he knew the murder weapon would disappear. This time he won’t have any idea what I’ve got: what I might have learned in Italy. So this time the interview is going to be very different …’ If he told them what else he’d ordered – or intended – regarding Antipov he ran the risk of being caught out, because everything else still remained a guess. ‘… If you decide to offer Maksim Zimin the deal, there will need to be discussions between yourselves and the Italians. Possibly the return to Italy of Cowley and myself, to get as much as we can in advance of any trial of what the man can tell us, to satisfy Washington …’

  Barazin gave another smile, more like a facial stretching exercise. ‘This is good.’

  Their acceptance was such that Danilov decided to press on. ‘And I think it is important I continue the investigation, beyond what we already have and know,’ he lured.

  ‘Why?’ asked Oskin.

  ‘According to the woman, she has signed over control of the Geneva anstalt to the Chechen leadership. But we know, from the Swiss, they haven’t tried to access it. I think it’s important we find out why: for me to return there, for that purpose. Vasili Dolya was closely involved with creating the Swiss arrangement. I want your permission to arrest and interrogate him, before he knows there is not going to be a prosecution … And I want to talk to Raisa Ilyavich Serova again. As well as Yasev. I think there is more for them to tell. So I would resist their being released, until I can question them again. As I said, it is protective custody.’

  ‘You’re straying back into government problems again!’ warned Smolin.

  ‘Until we know completely what those problems might be, we won’t properly be able to prevent that happening,’ insisted Danilov, with unarguable logic. ‘The investigation isn’t properly concluded, not yet. It needs to be, before you can be entirely confident of avoiding any government embarrassment.’ If he got it all, he even had a slender excuse for making personal contact with the Chechen leadership.

  Danilov was kept only briefly outside Vorobie’s ornate office, for the government officials to have another unrecorded discussion. When he was recalled, Barazin said: ‘You are to continue with the investigation. And with providing daily reports, through Federal Prosecutor Smolin. Which will include everything. We will open discussions with Washington on other matters.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Danilov. They would never know how complete his gratitude was. He hoped they never knew, either, how he’d twisted his requests.

  A lot awaited Danilov when he returned to Petrovka. Mikhail Pavlovich Antipov had been re-arrested, on this occasion after a minor struggle, and was in a holding cell. At the Ultiza Fadajeva apartment he had once again been in bed with the mother-and-daughter whores. Danilov hoped that was encouraging.

  ‘And the rest?’

  ‘Cowley’s already collected everything. He’s waiting for you,’ said Pavin.

  ‘What about the hair?’

  ‘That’s what caused the struggle. He’s got this’ – Pavin hesitated, realising Danilov wore his hair in a crew cut too, ‘short hair,’ he resumed. ‘But we got enough.’

  The telephone number Raisa Serova had provided for the Ostankino Family had been traced to a large house on Wernadski Prospekt. Danilov ordered round-the-clock surveillance, supplemented at all times by photographs from which they could attempt positive identification to go with the names they now had. Yevgennie Kosov had tried to make contact on three occasions, always leaving the message he would call again. When he did, from the BMW, Danilov said he wouldn’t be able to talk for at least three or four days. There were other developments which had to be handled before then: everything had become very tricky. When Kosov demanded to know what he should tell ‘his friends’, Danilov said just that. Danilov’s final instruction to Pavin was to arrest Vasili Dolya, for which there was signed authority from the Interior Ministry. Dolya was to be held in solitary confinement, like Antipov.

  Danilov and Cowley considered amusing themselves by going to the Metropole bar because they felt it was appropriate but didn’t, meeting in the Savoy instead.

  ‘You could just be right!’ greeted the American, trying to climb from his despondency, ‘I’ve put an action-this-day priority on everything.’

  ‘I’m certainly right about something else,’ said the Russian. It only took minutes to disclose the pressure Moscow intended imposing upon Washington.

  Cowley’s initial, desperate thought was for Pauline, if the Russians disclosed who the real Moscow serial killer had been. It would destroy her: drive her from Washington, maybe even into a new identity. ‘Doesn’t anybody think of anything other than blackmail, for Christ’s sake!’

  ‘I don’t see how your people can resist it,’ said Danilov.

  ‘Nor do I,’ said Cowley. Please God don’t let them try, he thought.

  It took Danilov longer to recount the rest of the meeting with the politicians.

  ‘Our luck can’t hold,’ insisted Cowley. Pauline could be faced with a
double exposure, he thought: him and a massmurderer husband.

  ‘We’re committed now,’ said Danilov, equalling the insistence.

  ‘I’ll cable Bern we’re coming back,’ undertook Cowley. His message crossed one directed to him from Switzerland, from the case-monitoring police inspector Henri Charas, that a Swiss lawyer had made an investment enquiry about the Svahbodniy corporation.

  ‘Why the hell has Antipov been re-arrested?’ asked Yerin.

  ‘I don’t know!’ pleaded Kosov. ‘All Danilov said was there had been developments … that I was to tell you that.’

  ‘Get him here!’ order Gusovsky.

  ‘He said three or four days.’

  It had to be at the investigator’s whim, Gusovksy accepted. For the moment: but only for a very limited moment. Softly, at his most menacing, the thin man said: ‘This is very serious. We want to know what’s happening. And why it’s happening. And if you don’t help us do that, the person for whom it’s going to be the most unfortunate is you.’

  ‘I’ll do everything I can. I really mean everything!’

  ‘Kosov is useless,’ insisted Yerin, after the man had left the cafe at Glovin Bol’soj.

  ‘We need him for the moment,’ said Gusovsky. ‘He’s our link.’

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

  The second finance conference was for the Russians’ benefit, with Cowley little more than an observer, like the Swiss police inspector who travelled with them from Geneva to Bern: their practical involvement would come later. On this occasion Danilov needed guidance on the specific legal details of the anstalt, and the precise-minded Heinrich Bloch took an expert’s pleasure in expanding his earlier explanation.

  At its end Danilov said: ‘So according to Swiss law, Raisa Ilyavich Serova still controls the corporation once it is unfrozen?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘And how is it unfrozen?’

  ‘A formal declaration from America, with whom our treaty exists, that they are satisfied the assets were not intended for or the proceeds of drug trafficking,’ recited Bloch, as if he were reading from the statute. ‘In the circumstances, there should perhaps be supportive affidavits from the Russian authorities.’

  ‘What if, covered by notarised authority from Raisa Serova, a new Founder’s Certificate were presented, transferring control to someone else?’

  ‘It wouldn’t be effective with the anstalt suspended,’ said Bloch at once. He appeared disappointed at what he believed to be Danilov’s lack of understanding.

  ‘What if it were no longer suspended?’

  Bloch frowned. ‘The transfer would need to be additionally confirmed by her authority sworn before a Swiss notary.’

  Danilov felt a jump of satisfaction. ‘So the transfer certificate by itself is insufficient?’

  ‘My government protects itself with the second document. A Swiss notary has to be satisfied the person surrendering the Founder’s Certificate understands they are abandoning all rights.’

  ‘This is always explained, at the formation of a company?’

  ‘It is the law that it should be done,’ said Bloch.

  ‘But the transfer papers, by themselves would still constitute legal documents, in court?’

  ‘If there were need for them to be produced,’ confirmed Bloch stiffly.

  ‘We’ve travelled from Moscow to hear that,’ said Danilov. And got far more into the bargain, he thought.

  Bloch gave a frigid smile. ‘What has the investment enquiry got to do with this?’

  ‘A great deal, I hope,’ said Danilov.

  ‘Do you want the lawyer examined?’ offered Charas.

  ‘No!’ said Danilov urgently. ‘He’ll only be acting as a nominee anyway: I don’t want anything to alarm him. Or the people he’s acting for. What I do want are the transfer documents when they are presented.’

  ‘You are sure there is going to be an attempted transfer?’ queried the official.

  ‘Positive.’

  ‘I hope you fully understand what the regulations require.’

  ‘Absolutely,’ assured the Russian.

  ‘And they will be accompanied by the necessary legal release from Washington?’ persisted Bloch, a man for whom everything had to have a written authority. He directed the question at Cowley.

  ‘Yes,’ promised the American.

  ‘And with supporting Russian representation,’ said Danilov.

  ‘You any idea what could happen if anything – just one thing – gets mistimed!’ demanded Cowley, over dinner that night at their hotel. He was allowing himself wine.

  ‘The money isn’t at risk,’ reminded Danilov. The legal requirements precluded that particular débâcle, but he wasn’t so sure about other potential disasters.

  ‘You think they’ll collapse and confess?’ demanded the American.

  ‘We’ll be lucky if they do,’ admitted Danilov.

  ‘It’s still supposition.’

  ‘I’m right,’ insisted Danilov. He was going to test another guess when they got back to Moscow the following day: one he was intentionally not sharing with Cowley. The deception worried Danilov. If he were wrong, it was something the American need never know. If he were right, Cowley would learn about it, at some time. Danilov thought he could still explain it away to convince the American he hadn’t risked their personal understanding. Or could he? What sort of man would Vasili Dolya be? He’d know soon enough. Unless Dolya tried some futile defence, it shouldn’t take long. Danilov was surprised, now they were reaching what he believed to be the conclusion of everything, how little time it was taking to slot the final pieces of the jigsaw into place. Not one jigsaw, Danilov reminded himself: several. ‘You’ll advise Washington, ahead of whatever my Foreign Ministry ask?’

  ‘They’re going to be one very pissed off group of people,’ predicted Cowley.

  ‘They’ll be happy enough in the end,’ insisted Danilov.

  The guess about Vasili Dolya did prove to be right.

  There was almost an hour’s delay on the return from Geneva to Moscow, and Danilov feared at one stage he would have to postpone the encounter, but they made up time during the flight, and Pavin was still waiting patiently at Sheremet’yevo. On the way into the city, he said there was a note waiting from the Justice Ministry, saying that Raisa Serova and Oleg Yasev had formally sought release from protective custody. They were being put off – as Danilov had requested – by the insistence there were arrests still to be made. Stephen Snow had relayed a message from Washington that the forensic examination on the Mikhail Antipov material would be completed within forty-eight hours.

  The chairman of what had formerly been the KGB division responsible for foreign espionage entered the Petrovka office trying to maintain what would once have been inherent superiority like a piece of familiar clothing, despite the disorientation of solitary confinement. He was a small, pinch-faced man of contrasting mannerisms: his eyes flickered constantly, absorbing every detail, but his voice and movements were measured, every word reflected upon before being uttered, every gesture considered: Danilov didn’t think the man would have ever done anything spontaneous or unpremeditated in his life. Then he remembered the reason for the interview. The failed 1991 coup had been a hastily conceived, disorganised shambles from confused beginning to quickly capitulating end.

  Dolya wore civilian clothes – a grey suit, white shirt and muted patterned tie – but there was an Order of Lenin ribbon in his lapel. Danilov realised, for the first time, they both held the same rank of lieutenant general. His was an acting promotion, he remembered; he supposed that gave Dolya a slight supremacy, and he was glad he had retained, still without permission, the vacant director’s suite. Yuri Pavin sat so unobtrusively in a far corner that Danilov wondered, despite the moving eyes, whether Dolya registered there was an official notetaker.

  ‘Why have I been arrested? I demand an explanation!’ said the man at once. The voice was high-pitched – although not yet from obvious nervousness, w
hich Danilov hoped would come soon.

  In their halcyon past the KGB had disdained any Militia authority. Probably, thought Danilov cynically, with every justification. He had to stop it becoming a game of verbal gymnastics. ‘You have been shown the signed authority for your arrest?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So let’s stop wasting our time.’ He put Raisa Serova’s statement on the expansive desk between them, not needing it as a reminder, and took Dolya through every part that implicated him, from the university friendship with Ilya Nishin to the identities of the former KGB officers who were now part of the Ostankino and Chechen Families. As he talked Danilov realised it would still be possible for the former intelligence chief to deny the accusations, but towards the end Dolya discernibly began to wilt and Danilov suspected, relieved, the confidence was more fragile than it appeared on the surface.

  Dolya’s instant response made the attitude understandable. ‘I was obeying orders, from a superior office,’ he declared.

  It was confirmation, but not of what Danilov wanted confirmed. More bluff, he acknowledged, before continuing: not as dangerous but perhaps more desperate than the confrontation with the Chechen leadership. ‘Whose orders, about the gun that killed Michel Paulac and Petr Serov?’

  The eye shudder now was fear. The man’s head moved, too, looking rapidly around the office, and Danilov reckoned it was the first time the man saw they were not alone and that the conversation was being recorded.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re asking me.’

  ‘Of course you do,’ said Danilov, bullying. ‘You know, because there’s been enough publicity about it, that I’ve been to Washington. Carried out a very full investigation at the embassy there …’ Openly lying but knowing there was no way Dolya could challenge him, Danilov went on: ‘It’s odd that you should say you were obeying orders. That is what Nikolai Fedorovich Redin told me.’