No Time for Heroes

by Brian Freemantle

  There was sufficient food for a banquet for a starving African nation: a starving Russian nation, for that matter. Beluga caviare formed the centrepiece of the zakuski. There was smoked sturgeon, separate selections of dumplings and mushrooms in sour cream, basturma cured meats, meat-stuffed Siberian pelmini – the Russian ravioli – and chicken and pork shashlik. Again to impress Cowley – and themselves – there was a selection of Californian wines to go with other choices from France and Georgia. Cowley had limited himself to one whisky and took only one glass of wine: toadying to their posturing, he chose Napa Valley chardonnay.

  That posturing stopped very positively halfway through the meal: so, too, did most of the eating, both sides impatient with the pretence. Gusovsky called themselves businessmen, and thought there were going to be a lot of business opportunities in the future. From now on each would be mutually dependent upon the other: Cowley was not to imagine his involvement limited to this one occasion. Despite the setback of Italy, links would be formed with American organisations, so what was being established today would be a continuing situation when Cowley returned to America.

  Again the conversation was split between the two Chechen leaders. Directly to the American, Yerin repeated, with chilling casualness, the threats against anyone who talked openly in any court, and insisted Cowley made it clear during any pre-trial interviews in the future, with anyone involved. With businesslike practicality, he demanded how and where Cowley wanted his money paid. It was one part of the encounter Cowley and Danilov had rehearsed: Cowley said he thought he’d keep it in Switzerland, as Danilov intended to, and would let them know the bank details when they were fixed. He responded well aware the posturing was beginning again: they were going to make him and Danilov plead for the photographs.

  ‘Part of our arrangement is to begin today?’ he said. He didn’t resent appearing to beg: he was going to get more enjoyment out of the game than they were, although they didn’t know it yet.

  ‘For both of us,’ came in Danilov, accepting like the American they were expected to demean themselves, despite the business-together shit. He was as unoffended as Cowley, sure now the final victory was theirs.

  From the guessed-at recess beneath the table where they always sat Gusovsky took two sealed manila folders, one thicker than the other: he pushed the thicker towards Cowley, saying: ‘You’ll want to ensure every negative corresponds with a print?’

  ‘No,’ said Danilov. ‘We trust each other, don’t we?’

  Picking up on their own double act, Cowley said: ‘We’re partners now.’

  Gusovsky said: ‘This is forgotten by us: we regret it. We hope it is forgotten by you.’

  ‘Entirely,’ said Danilov. No, he thought.

  ‘Completely,’ said Cowley. No, he thought.

  ‘The sort of misunderstanding that arises sometimes in business,’ said Yerin. the false apologies all part of the affectation.

  Cowley thought there was a lot adopted from Hollywood: except that in Hollywood the players were acting. These two – one who appeared to be dying from some wasting disease, the other a white-eyed blind man – weren’t acting but were, literally, deadly serious: they could still have stepped from the screen of any Mafia movie he’d ever seen. Or any parody of one.

  Hands came out and were shaken. Gusovsky’s grasp was cold, like lifeless people were cold: Yerin’s hold was warm, cloying.

  ‘I’m worried about the money,’ said Danilov.

  ‘You’ve no need to be,’ said Yerin.

  ‘I meant getting control, from Switzerland. It’s got to be exactly right.’

  ‘It’s already being done.’

  ‘Don’t let us down,’ said Danilov.

  ‘Don’t let you down!’ said Gusovsky.

  ‘Don’t let either of us let anybody down,’ said Cowley. ‘We’re just anxious to make everything work out as it should.’

  ‘The replacement Founder’s Certificate will be presented at the opening of trading tomorrow,’ assured Gusovsky.

  ‘That’s perfect,’ said Danilov, for the satisfaction of Cowley and himself.

  ‘A week from now you’ll be rich!’ said Yerin.

  ‘A week from now we’ll all be rich,’ said Cowley. ‘And getting richer in the future.’

  Danilov took a meandering route when they left, at first with no direction at all, in the first few moments actually checking to see if they would be followed from Glovin Bol’soj. He didn’t detect any shadowing cars.

  ‘Well?’ Danilov demanded of the slumped American beside him. ‘You’ve met your first dons.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Danilov frowned sideways. ‘Well?’ he insisted again.

  ‘They’re real!’ said Cowley, as if the discovery surprised him.

  ‘Of course they are,’ accepted Danilov.

  ‘They’ll kill you,’ said Cowley. There’s no way they won’t kill you. They’ll have to.’

  ‘They won’t be able to,’ said Danilov. ‘You won’t be with me next time. But you were today. So you can identify them. Know what it’s all about. And you’ll hold all the proof.’

  ‘That won’t be enough, you crazy bastard!’

  ‘Yes it will.’

  Danilov became aware of where they were when he drove past the Botanickeskiy Sad metro and at once took the side road to the Botanical Gardens. Each had travelled with their sealed envelope in their lap. Danilov opened his, looking down with renewed sadness at the woman he was about to abandon. The photograph Gusovsky had produced as a threat was the best, but there were two other shots taken from slightly different angles: she appeared bemused but very happy in each. There were two sets, as well as the negatives.

  Cowley, beside him, hadn’t opened his package.

  ‘Shouldn’t you look?’ prompted Danilov.

  ‘I’ve seen them.’

  ‘Not the negatives.’

  Almost uninterestedly, Cowley eased the flap open. He didn’t extract what was inside, merely parting the contents with his fingers. ‘They’re here.’

  ‘There’s rubbish bins in the park,’ said Danilov.

  The American followed Danilov inside the gardens and watched while he made a bonfire in an empty metal basket of the photographs of Olga in the Nightflight club. Just before the fire died, Cowley extracted the contents of his own envelope and fed them one by one to the flames. The negatives were last, causing the biggest flare. Towards the end several people stopped on the pathways to look curiously at them.

  ‘How many copies do you think they will have kept?’ said Cowley, as they walked back to the Volga.

  ‘A set or two,’ accepted Danilov. ‘They might have kept a negative back, from the prints they supplied to you in the first place.’

  ‘They will kill you,’ insisted Cowley.

  ‘You’re my guarantee,’ repeated Danilov, just as insistently.

  ‘What if they release the photographs out of sheer revenge?’

  ‘Then we both die,’ said Danilov, with courage he didn’t feel. ‘Just in different ways.’

  The government lawyer, Vladimir Olenev, was a small, bespectacled man thrust into unusual circumstances and made nervous by them. He was waiting in the foyer of the Foreign Ministry with a briefcase held before him in both arms, and after he got into the Volga with Danilov and Raisa Serova he remained with it clutched in his lap. The lawyer looked intently at Raisa, knowing what she had almost succeeded in doing: she stared back at him until Olenev became embarrassed and looked away.

  The woman had still not been formally released from custody, but as always looked as if she was about to step out on to a model’s catwalk. Danilov wondered how she had managed to get her change of clothes and kept it uncreased. Her immediate demand, when he had collected her from the women’s detention centre on Ulitza Bucher, had been about Yasev. Danilov, who hadn’t seen the man since their last interview, said Yasev was all right, as far as he knew. Politely, no longer arrogant, she asked if she could be allowed to see him. Danil
ov, who supposed her detention would end after she had completed the surrender of the anstalt that day, said he thought it would be possible.

  There was even less room in the car when they picked up Cowley from the embassy. Olenev’s uncertainty worsened in the presence of the American. There was nothing for any of them to talk about and they travelled out to Sheremet’yevo in virtual silence. Danilov supposed he was officially Raisa’s escort, so he sat beside her on the flight. She refused anything to eat or drink and spoke only once, asking when a decision was going to be made about herself and Yasev. Danilov said very soon, once the Swiss-held money was returned.

  The smiling Paul Jackson was waiting for them at Geneva airport, fortunately in a larger embassy car than the Volga. The local FBI man at once congratulated Danilov on the valour award and made a remark about his being one of them now: Raisa frowned questioningly, but didn’t ask.

  The lunch was a courteous attempt at diplomatic hospitality by Heinrich Bloch, but it didn’t really work. Raisa was even more the object of curiosity from the American party, which she treated with the same defiance as she had faced down the Russian lawyer. She seemed surprised when two of the Americans expressed sympathy at the death of her husband. Danilov wondered how fully they had been briefed, from all that Cowley had sent back to Washington. Olenev’s English was limited and Danilov frequently had to translate. Once or twice, to amuse herself, Raisa actually contributed. Despite the stilted difficulties, both Danilov and Cowley allowed themselves to relax, Danilov gesturing a silent toast to the Americans: Bloch’s first remark, when they met, was to confirm the presentation of a replacement Founder’s Certificate, naming Arkadi Pavlovich Gusovsky the new controller of the Svahbodniy corporation.

  The hand-over formalities were more time consuming than Danilov expected. Bloch didactically insisted upon the procedures being explained in Russian, English and Schweitzer-Deutsch, with each set of lawyers signing documents of understanding. Raisa looked bored when her part in the proceedings came, and bemused when she was handed copies of every document recording her surrender of the anstalt. Olenev obviously approved the preciseness of the ceremony and queried whether he was not the proper recipient of the inoperative replacement certificate; Danilov guessed he might have persisted had not Cowley joined in his own insistence that it was rightfully theirs, as criminal evidence, and nothing to do with the return of the $30,000,000 to the current Russian government.

  It was too late by the time they left Bloch’s office for Danilov to buy the intended gifts for Olga, but shops were still open at the airport. He left Raisa Serova in the charge of Cowley and the lawyer and bought a beige skirt and matching shoes, using the measurements he had copied from clothes in her closet before leaving Moscow. He didn’t have sufficient money left for the blouse to complete the outfit.

  It was past nine before they got back to Moscow and Danilov was able to try the Kutbysevskij number, but Gusovsky was there.

  ‘We need to talk,’ announced Danilov.

  When he got home to Kirovskaya, Olga said she would have preferred the skirt in a darker colour and she wished he had bought a blouse to finish it all off.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

  Gusovsky’s house on Kutbysevskij Prospekt was very large, close to being a mansion; there were similarities between it and the surveillance photographs of the Ostankino leader’s home. Both were cordoned behind high stone walls, with huge metal gates closing off the protective grounds, and outside each were fleets of cars: the Chechen appeared to prefer BMWs, which explained Kosov’s choice. Danilov thought the Volga looked insignificant and shabby, parked at the end of the convoy, but for once, he guessed, his wipers and wing mirrors would be safe.

  He had to announce himself at a control panel set into one of the gate pillars, and a man who had watched his Metropole meeting with Kosov came to the gate to confirm his identity before it clicked open on an electronic release. As it snapped shut behind him, Danilov felt the dip of genuine fear. At that moment he thought Cowley had been right, all along: that they’d had sufficient to counter the Chechen threats and the evidence they’d retrieved from Switzerland was unnecessary. Cowley’s most forceful argument – ending in a shouting tirade – had been against this personal confrontation: they’d parted at Petrovka an hour earlier with the American yelling red-faced it was ridiculous, absurd, a macho affectation to impress no-one but himself and that he’d come to believe his own heroic publicity. Danilov certainly didn’t feel heroic now. He felt frightened, weaklegged and sweating, and if the gate hadn’t been barred behind him and at least eight guards watching in front he would have turned back: maybe even run.

  The man who’d checked him at the gate said something Danilov didn’t hear. Danilov just nodded back, following across a wide gravelled forecourt which divided the two halves of the garden. In the middle of the forecourt was a cherubed fountain from which no water spouted. There were three more BMWs to the left, with men around each: two were vaguely polishing the vehicles but others either sat inside or lounged against the bonnets and boots. They all watched him: someone must have made a remark, because abruptly the two on the closest car laughed. Danilov was surprised no-one attempted to search his briefcase. I’m a trusted, bought policeman, he thought.

  The house was pre-revolutionary, and the baroque and rococo of the period had been intricately restored in the carved woodwork and the ornate plaster cupolas of the high ceilings. The hallway was marble-floored and escorting the full climb of a huge, encircling staircase was a flight of cherubs from the same flock as those on the fountain outside, sculpted here from the solid stone walls. Heavy brocade tapestries which couldn’t have been genuine but which appeared old hung from other sections of the walls.

  Arkadi Gusovsky and Aleksandr Yerin were waiting for him in a wood-panelled study on the far side of the hallway. Like everything else about the house, the room was enormous, two walls dominated by bookshelves, another hung with more tapestry. There was a wide, leather-inlaid desk in front of leaded windows, but Gusovsky was in a deep leather armchair to one side of a stone fireplace big enough for a man to have stood upright beneath the mantel. Most of the other chairs and couches were also leather, but Yerin sat on a more upright, brocaded chair. For the first time the man’s disability was covered by shaded glasses.

  Gusovsky rose at Danilov’s entry, going towards a regiment of bottles on a side table, asking what Danilov wanted as he walked. He looked fully at the investigator for the first time when Danilov said he didn’t want anything, the cadaverous smile uncertain. It was Yerin, a man who used his ears for the eyes he did not have, who cocked his head to one side and said: ‘You’re by yourself. Where’s the American?’

  ‘This only needed me,’ said Danilov. He hoped the perspiration wasn’t obvious on his face. He could feel it wet on his back.

  Gusovsky came away from the liquor table without pouring anything. ‘There is a problem?’

  ‘Not now,’ said Danilov. He went further into the room, towards the two men. All the convenient seats and couches were low: having listened to everything Cowley had ever said about psychology, Danilov decided it would be better if he remained standing.

  ‘What is it?’ demanded Yerin.

  ‘I am going to reach an agreement with you, but nothing like you imagined,’ announced Danilov. ‘I’m not taking any payment from you, now or in the future. Nor coming on your payroll. Ever. Neither is Cowley.’

  Gusovsky didn’t sit either, but came up to stand behind his partner’s chair: there was the slightest turn when Yerin realised the presence behind him. Yerin, the quicker thinker, said: ‘What has happened to the money in Switzerland?’

  ‘It has all been returned to its rightful owner, the Russian government. You haven’t got it. I never intended you should.’

  Gusovsky felt forward, lightly touching Yerin’s shoulder. Silence filled the room. Coldness, too, although sweat still glued Danilov’s shirt to his back.

  Gusovsky said: ‘Oh, you
silly man. You very silly little man.’

  ‘Maybe,’ agreed Danilov, finding the calmness difficult. ‘It was an enormous temptation: we even talked about it.’

  ‘Do you know what’s going to happen to you?’ said Gusovsky. He sounded very calm, too, his normally resonant voice soft, as if he were savouring something.

  ‘I could guess a lot you’d like to do,’ said Danilov. ‘Particularly here, which is practically as secure as the Kremlin and with all your people around you. But you’re not going to do anything. Now, or later. You can’t afford to.’

  Yerin reached up, touching the other man’s hand warningly. ‘You tell us why you’re so sure about that?’

  ‘That’s what I’ve come to do,’ said Danilov. He considered moving closer to the fireplace but weighed the psychology again and didn’t: he would have looked small in comparison to the huge surround. ‘I didn’t tell you all the evidence I could bring against you. I didn’t tell you about the KGB deputy’s confession, about the gun that killed Petr Serov. And why we had to bring the security man out of the embassy in Washington. Or even a quarter of what Antipov has told us, about what he did for you. Which I could put to Zimin in Italy and get even more, if I wanted to. So I’ll tell you now …’ Which he did, not needing any prompting from the copied material he carried in his briefcase and which he was still unsure whether to show them, in the evidence form in which it was assembled.

  The two Mafia chieftains remained motionless, but Danilov detected the now familiar redness coming to Gusovsky’s face: he abruptly realised he was clutching the briefcase to him, like the nervous lawyer during the brief trip to Switzerland, and hurriedly put it beside him.

  ‘Complete, wouldn’t you think? But I don’t think it is, you see. It would certainly seem so, on the surface: they’re all properly recorded confessions and you’re personally named, over and over again. But where’s the proof! It’s their word overwhelmingly against yours, but it could be argued against. And I do know how powerful you are. I believe you’ve got other people in ministries whose names I don’t know: people you could force or bribe to help in some way. The judiciary, too, so you might be able to influence the judges: even get those who’ve got to do what you tell them ruling on the admissibility of evidence. And I know you could get people killed, even in jail. I’d certainly have a hard job introducing the confessions of dead witnesses, wouldn’t I …?’ Danilov’s confidence was growing. Not by much, but the hollowness was lessening: he actually managed to smile. ‘I know you’d do all those things. In your position, you’d be mad not to. So you’re not in so much danger, after all …’