The pyrolysis test on buttons required them to be heated to 770 degrees Centigrade. This converted the material into gas, to be run through a chromatograph mass spectrometer. It had therefore been necessary to destroy four of the samples under scientific test conditions. One of the buttons had beyond doubt formed part of a set of six green coloured fastenings, three of which had remained on the shirt, close to and below where her belt would have covered them, listed as being that worn by Ann Harris on the night of her murder. Five buttons were analysed by a Foyier Transformer infra-red spectrometer: two unquestionably came from the same shirt, actually completing the hacked-off green set. In the holes of two others, one blue, one brown, remained strands of the cotton that had secured identical buttons to the outer coat that Lydia Orlenko had worn when she was attacked, and to the fashionable driving jacket in which Nadia Revin had kept warm on her way home from the Metropole Hotel. Both buttons again proved positive, under pyrolysis.
Cowley paused, briefly looking up from his recitation of the scientific facts. ‘There was no comparison possible with three manufactured from a nylon base or one of polyester. Neither from the three …’ Cowley faltered, frowning up to meet the puzzlement of both Danilov and Pavin. ‘… Neither from the three made from bone, which is not a substance reacting to the stated tests,’ he forced himself to finish, unevenly.
There were several moments of complete silence in the room. Then Pavin insisted, defensively: ‘The log isn’t wrong.’
‘We compiled it together,’ Cowley agreed.
‘Let’s do it again,’ Danilov insisted.
They did. With the same result.
‘It doesn’t make sense,’ complained Pavin, the man of absolute accuracy.
‘There’s one way it could,’ Danilov suggested.
‘It’s unthinkable!’ blurted Cowley.
‘Find another explanation.’
There was a further silence, then: ‘I can’t.’
The Moscow offices of the
New York Times
are on Ulitza Sadovo Samotechanya, about a mile from the American embassy, so it was convenient for them both to stop en route to taking Cowley to the US compound. The visit only took minutes. Afterwards, they agreed to meet again that evening: by then they would both have guidance. Danilov was quite open about going back to the Lubyanka.
With so much to transmit to Washington – and certainly verbally to discuss as well, on a secure line – Cowley set out at once for the FBI office. But almost at once he paused, changing his mind to make the simple detour. Pauline opened the door, smiling curiously.
‘Barry asked me if I’d make sure there were no problems, remember?’ Cowley said.
The agreement to a meeting had been instant, as before, but Danilov entered the suite of Kir Gugin more confidently on this second occasion.
Danilov said at once: ‘I know how you used me. Congratulations. It worked very well.’
Gugin shook his head. ‘You confuse me.’
Danilov was impatient with the charade. ‘I want you to use me again. There was more, wasn’t there? You hadn’t finished.’
The Colonel, whose intended disruption had itself been disrupted by the seizure of Petr Yezhov and who had been seeking a way to recover, smiled cautiously. ‘Why don’t we talk about it?’
‘Why don’t you just give me what I want?’
The effect would be what he wanted, Gugin reflected: the other man deserved the resentful independence, having realized the earlier manipulation. ‘Why not?’ he agreed.
Chapter Forty
In one of those bureaucratic decisions defying logic, unless it had to do with saving money, Barry Andrews had again been booked into the temporary, scarcely basic hotel across the river in Pentagon City. The commute to and from FBI headquarters was almost an hour if he hit rush-hour traffic, like he was doing this morning. All in all, Andrews was annoyed, thoroughly pissed off at the thoughtlessness. He didn’t deserve it; didn’t his record describe him as outstanding? He bet Cowley had never been dumped out in the boondocks, although Christ knows he’d deserved to be, so many times. Andrews felt the anger building and tried to stop it getting worse. Foolish to lose his temper. He’d given himself plenty of time, so it didn’t matter that he was stuck in traffic. He’d still be early: early enough maybe to grab some breakfast because he refused to eat anything in that Pentagon City dog’s nest. Give him time to settle down. That was the thing to do. Settle down. Stay calm: calm and cool. Today was
the
day. Reward time, after the Moscow imprisonment. Today he was going to get the final assignment of duties, within the Russian division. And ahead of Cowley’s return. Showed what little clout the guy had, in his own section, decisions being made without him.
The traffic block shifted and Andrews was able to start moving slowly across the 14th Street bridge. He’d certainly been treated pretty good since he’d gotten back, apart from the hotel. He guessed everyone getting a headquarters posting probably received the welcoming letter from the Director, but he’d liked the gesture: deserved it, too. And all the guys in the division had been friendly, beers after work the first night, always someone suggesting lunch, offers of help from everyone if he needed it. Had him marked out, Andrews guessed. Someone on the ascendancy: asshole creeping. He didn’t care. It was good.
He’d respond, of course: invent some problems so no one would think he was too smart, not needing help from anyone. Which he didn’t. Still wise to settle in, though: settle in and see which way the wheels turned. Even the shitty hotel wouldn’t be an irritant much longer. He’d kept on top of the letting agency and been promised he could get back into Bethesda by the weekend. Perfect timing for Pauline’s arrival. Have to go through it with her again, how he wanted it all to be. She hadn’t been properly concentrating in Moscow. The distraction of Cowley, he decided: everyone distracted by William John Cowley, reformed alcoholic, reformed everything, Mr Good Guy. If the man with the beard and the trick with feeding five thousand hadn’t got there first, Cowley could have invented a whole new religion.
The traffic was smoother when he left the bridge and Andrews settled more comfortably back in his seat: he’d been unaware of being tensed forward like that. It was going to be interesting, when Pauline got back: watching, listening, picking up the hints that would be there to what they’d done behind his back in Moscow. That was going to be the best part, in the very beginning. The first game. Cultivating the revived friendship, putting them together all the time and all the time each of them knowing – because they
always
had to know – that he had her. Who’d won. She was a bitch, he decided suddenly. Didn’t deserve him. No matter.
Andrews left the vehicle in the car-park on 12th Street to walk the last few hundred yards, admiring the squat red building as he approached. Had it really been personally designed by Hoover with machine-gun emplacements at the corners, to put down any communist-inspired insurrection? Quirky thing to find out: make a good cocktail-party story, if it were true. He was anticipating a lot of parties.
Entering the darker foyer from the outside brightness of a spring morning, Andrews didn’t immediately see the personal assistant who’d hand-delivered the Director’s letter. He was almost at the entry security turnstile, activating pass in his hand, when the normally bland-faced Fletcher approached, smiling this time.
‘Assignment day,’ Fletcher announced. ‘I’m to take you.’
Andrews smiled in return, falling into step with the man. ‘Any news from Moscow?’
‘Being wrapped up,’ the man promised.
On their way up through the floors and more monitoring turnstiles, Andrews said he was glad to be back in America (‘although Moscow was a marvellous workplace: don’t get me wrong’) and that the traffic here was a mess but the weather wonderful and that he might get himself a small boat, either on the Potomac or up on Chesapeake.
‘Sounds good,’ agreed Fletcher, standing back at the entrance to an anonymous, unmarked room for Andrews to enter.
Which he did. To stop dead, frozen, uncomprehending.
It was a large room but quite bare, just closed metal cupboards along one side and a table dividing it, although not quite in the middle.
William Cowley was sitting at the table. With Dimitri Danilov beside him.
Andrews was utterly astonished, momentarily beyond speech or thought. ‘Bill …! What in the name of …?’
‘Waiting for you, Barry. Come on in.’
Waiting for him? Why the hell were they waiting for him? He abruptly became conscious of other things in the room. There was a side-table, with a male stenographer and recording apparatus, red operating lights already on. And other men. He hadn’t seen them when he’d walked in but he became aware of them now. Five, all lined along the back. ‘I don’t understand … I mean what …’
‘We know you did it, Barry. All of them. I want you to tell me about it. Everything. You’ll do that now that we know, won’t you?’ Cowley hoped it wouldn’t be a long interrogation. Meadows, the psychiatrist at Quantico, had guessed it wouldn’t be, but then admitted he wasn’t sure.
‘Bill! I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about! Help me here! What’s happening?’
So it wasn’t going to be easy. Hit him hard, Meadows had advised. ‘You miscounted. Miscalculated, too, but you might have gotten away with it if you hadn’t miscounted. And forgotten colours. It’s always the silly little things, isn’t it?’
What was the motherfucker on about? Didn’t Cowley know he had to be careful: that he was going to take over the divisional directorship very soon, replacing him here like he’d replaced him everywhere else, even in bed? ‘Help me understand, Bill! For Christ’s sake!’
‘You know.
We
know. We just want you to tell us about it.’
‘Bill!’ exclaimed Andrews. Too loud: shouldn’t have sounded so loud, like he had something to be frightened about. Didn’t have anything to be frightened about.
‘Buttons,’ declared Danilov, entering the interrogation: the agreed arrangement, against what might happen later, was that the tape would show shared questioning. ‘When Yezhov was seized, he had two buttons on him. And there were ten, at the apartment. Making twelve. They were all sent back here, because of America’s superior technology. Sent by you. But we got fifteen back: fifteen of which nine all came from the women killed or attacked.’
What did they think they were talking about, trying to trick him? Little people, trying to trick
him
! ‘Listen! This isn’t right! I just shipped back what you gave me, Bill. You know that. You gave me the buttons in the plastic exhibit bags and I simply pouched them. That’s how it was: the job I was ordered to do, by he Director. I’m damned if I’m going to get stuck with some problem I don’t even understand, apart from something to do with mistaken arithmetic.’
‘This is a pretty big problem and we didn’t get our arithmetic wrong,’ said Cowley, keeping his voice as low as he’d been instructed at Quantico, although it wasn’t easy for him. ‘I counted. Dimitri counted. Pavin counted. All of us. Separately. And each of those counts before I handed them over to you. You got it wrong, Barry. Finally fucked it up. Blew it.’
Friends could use his Christian name. Not enemies. Not people he hated:
the
person he hated most of all. Hadn’t fucked anything up.
‘And not just counted,’ Danilov came in. ‘We recorded the individual colours, as well. Three red, three green, two blue, one brown, and three fashioned out of bone. No black. Yet two black buttons arrived here: and one of them conveniently, for the conviction of Petr Yezhov, from Nadia Revin’s skirt.’ He’d been nervous to begin with: nervous at being in America for the first time – alone, vulnerable, not knowing how to behave – and earlier at meeting the FBI Director and then taking part in this interrogation, on show in front of so many Americans, in front of everybody, because it was all being recorded to be listened to and discussed later, back in Moscow. But it was better now it had started. He didn’t think there was going to be a confession, though: would have wagered there wouldn’t be, if he hadn’t wanted the money for other things.
He’d let them talk, Andrews decided. Hear the idiots out.
‘You fooled me,’ Cowley admitted, sacrificing any later discomfort from the tape play-back to achieve the collapse he wanted. ‘I missed it all, until you got the count wrong. Then I went back over everything. It was all disjointed, of course. Like things are. Let me throw something at you. How about your attack upon Lydia Orlenko, when thank God she didn’t die?’
‘This is ridiculous.’ Enough! They should talk, not him.
‘How about your remark?’ suggested Cowley, relentlessly, allowing himself at last to hate this man who’d stolen his wife. ‘“What about the woman last night? There must be
something
!”’
Andrews shook his head, wearily. ‘This isn’t making any sense. It’s quite ridiculous.’
‘Now it isn’t,’ insisted Cowley. ‘It didn’t make sense, not then. Remember? It was when I came back from interviewing Hughes, about the attack upon Lydia Orlenko. But you didn’t
know
, then, who the victim had been. So how did you know it was a
woman?
The first attack was on a man. So it could have been another man. Unless you
knew
it had been a woman.’
Weak shot. Another trick. Perry Mason shit. Andrews gave a heavy sigh. ‘I really don’t know what we’re doing here. Talking about.’