No Time for Heroes (36 page)

‘It was obvious Kosov was on the take,' Cowley agreed.

‘But not to this extent,' qualified Danilov. He hadn't admitted that at uniform level he'd also been a willing player. He didn't intend to, if he could avoid it: he very much wanted the American's professional respect.

‘What's your guess?'

‘I don't want to guess. I want to find out, definitely. And I want you to help me.'

‘How?'

‘You broke a New York Family with some impressive bugging, particularly in cars. That car is Kosov's status symbol. He'll do business from it: maybe enough for us to go further forward.'

‘You still don't intend telling everyone officially?'

‘More determined than ever not to.'

‘It's your neck.' Cowley slightly lowered the window, for air.

‘You said that already.'

‘We had a hell of a Task Force, on the New York operation. With local police back-up. We couldn't create an organisation like that here. Definitely not if we're working virtually solo. Which we are.'

‘We could do the car, surely?' insisted Danilov.

Cowley nodded, but doubtfully. ‘We couldn't guarantee the reception unless we established a permanently close tail. Which we can't. So the strength of the signal will vary enormously. We wouldn't get everything.'

‘I don't want everything: just enough!'

‘We could connect the transmitter to a receiver in the embassy,' suggested Cowley. Deciding their co-operation was sufficient, he added: ‘There's a man there who could monitor.' It would provide something more practical for Stephen Snow to do than relaying messages.

‘I've already suggested another evening. Kosov's bound to insist we use the BMW.'

‘We'll be fucked if he doesn't.'

‘We'll keep on until he does,' said Danilov, refusing to be put off.

‘The Bureau have a hell of a range of equipment,' offered the American. ‘If I ask for it today we should get it by tomorrow's pouch: allow an extra day, just in case there's a difficulty. So fix the evening any time after that.' If the eavesdropping had any practical success, whoever had the photographs would hit on him with the blackmail. How long before the ignominious disgrace? A week? A fortnight? As long as a month? To whom would the pictures be released? The embassy was an obvious guess; the Bureau in Washington, as a long shot. Either would be contained internally, certainly after his instant resignation. What about a public leak, to newspapers? There were enough permanent American bureaux in Moscow, all listed in the telephone book. And the censor-free Muscovite press. Cowley didn't think any of the pictures could be published, but they wouldn't have to be: they could be described in print in sufficient detail and innuendo. So he would become a public as well as a private laughing stock. Pauline would hear or read what had happened: know he hadn't changed in any way. He hated the idea of Pauline knowing most of all. He'd been drunk and tricked by a whore and was going to be destroyed by it. And it was no-one's fault but his own.

‘How about Friday?' suggested Danilov. ‘We'll need to familiarise ourselves.'

‘Friday's good,' agreed Cowley. He was silent as Danilov made the connecting loop, to return them along the peripheral road. Then he said: ‘Kosov's your friend. Larissa, too?'

Danilov darted a quick look across the car. ‘He replaced me, when I got out of uniform. Things kind of grew from there.' Only because of Larissa, he thought.

‘It's never easy, turning in a dirty cop. Particularly if he's your friend.' Why had the Russian jumped like that?

‘No,' agreed Danilov. He hadn't thought yet of the personal implications, but he started now.

‘Maybe something could be worked out. If he's not definitely involved – just a conduit – maybe it could be dealt with discreetly? A quiet retirement.' Which was the best
he
could hope for, realised Cowley. He was thinking more about himself than about a corrupt Militiaman.

Everyone goes for compromise, accepted Danilov. ‘He's more than a conduit: messengers don't drive brand new German cars. At the least, he might be withholding information about a murder.' So Kosov would have to be arrested and charged, unless it were stopped by higher authority. Wasn't it obvious Kosov would try to bargain with accusations about his own past? And it wasn't just the criminal investigation. What would Kosov do when he and Larissa made their announcement? The euphoria Danilov had felt began to leak away.

‘It's going to seem a long time until Friday,' said Cowley, more to himself than to the Russian.

But it didn't.

The first intriguing – although still inconclusive – development confirmed Pavin's prediction that the undiscovered name had more significance than the others in Petr Serov's belongings.

With an approximate date to put through their computerised immigration records, the Swiss authorities traced an entry into Geneva of an Ilya Iosifovich Nishin on 22 May 1991. American immigration located the arrival of Nishin at Dulles airport five days later, on 28 May. Michel Paulac's passport – and another immigration check – showed Paulac on the same flight. Both men, on their visa forms, gave the Mayflower Hotel as their Washington DC address. FBI records did not have Nishin criminally listed.

In the same diplomatic pouch with that information Cowley received from the FBI's Psychological Behavioral Unit at Quantico, to which he had sent every tape of the Mikhail Antipov interrogation, confirmation that their approach to the man had been the right one. Detailed analysis of the tapes had failed to detect any stress peaks, which was inconceivable confronted with the irrefutable evidence, at that time, of the murder weapon.

‘He knew the gun would disappear,' said Cowley.

‘Thanks for going to the trouble, but I didn't need a psychologist to tell me that,' said Danilov.

It wasn't the end of the name discoveries. On the Thursday, Danilov finally received a reply from Oleg Yasev to his query about the identities of the three unknown mourners at Petr Serov's funeral. One, Valentin Lvov, had known the murdered diplomat from their joint posting at the Paris embassy. The other two, Ivan Churmak and Gennardi Fedorov, had officially represented the government.

‘Fedorov!' identified Pavin at once.

Danilov had already recognised the name as one of the three on Lapinsk's list. It took an hour to identify him as the senior representative on the permanent Interior Ministry executive.

‘And there's another link,' disclosed Pavin. ‘Oleg Yasev also served in Paris during the same period as Petr Serov.'

‘You haven't given me these names before,' accused Cowley.

‘I didn't think they had any part in the case,' said Danilov. ‘I thought they were given to me as a personal warning.'

‘It's a hell of a coincidence, isn't it?' questioned Cowley.

‘They represented the government,' reminded Pavin.

‘Which is concerned over potential embarrassment about a criminally-linked diplomat,' completed Danilov.

‘Kosov bullshits,' decided the blind man. ‘We should go ahead, not wait to see if he can deliver Danilov.'

‘I'm the one who'll be exposed,' protested Zimin.

‘Frightened?' goaded Yerin.

‘For the success of an operation that is going to make this Family one of the most powerful in the world: certainly in Russia!' returned the indulgently fat man.

Gusovsky was concerned the animosity between the two men was going to end in disaster. Objectively, he thought again, it would have to be Zimin who was removed. ‘We already know we have to wait. But we don't need to produce the money. So we can get the control transferred at our leisure.'

‘Do we go ahead?' persisted Yerin.

‘No,' decided Gusovsky. ‘We wait a little longer to see if Kosov
can
get Danilov. It's worth the delay.'

‘It would be a double bonus if he does. It would mean we were back where we were before with the Organised Crime Bureau,' pointed out Zimin.

‘The man won't produce,' insisted Yerin emphatically.

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

The American equipment arrived with specific installation and reception instructions. There were several microphones, of different shapes and sizes – some little larger than a pinhead – and with a surprising variety of attachments, together with suggestions of how and where they could best be concealed. The monitoring equipment was more elaborate than Danilov had expected. That, too, could be used in different ways, either manually operated or voice activated, without the need for an operator.

They devoted a substantial part of the Friday, in advance of that evening's outing, testing everything as realistically as possible. They tried the bugs out in various positions in the Volga and drove throughout Moscow to assess the standard of reception and learn what sort of conditions risked the worst interference. They did a lot of the experimentation in and around Kosov's Militia district. Only then did Danilov realise the area Kosov commanded – and of which he himself had once been in charge – was convenient to two of the city's four airports, the operating territory of the Chechen Family. It should have occurred to him before.

Body pressure and movement overlaid conversation if a microphone was attached to the fabric of a seat. Aware of the impressive tape and radio deck in the BMW, they both worried that the music would drown anything less than a shouted exchange, reassuring themselves that if Kosov had the sort of discussion they hoped, he was unlikely to play music. Bridges and underpasses – even the tunnel quite close to the American embassy, where the receiving equipment was installed – made talk inaudible.

By mid-afternoon they had decided to plant two microphones, both in the front of the BMW on the logical assumption Kosov would always be driving: neither could recall sufficient detail about the interior layout to choose a precise location. They agreed to arrange themselves as before, giving Danilov the front passenger seat and the responsibility for fixing the devices.

‘Let's hope it'll work,' said Danilov. He was disappointed there wasn't better clarity on the tape, which they'd further agreed should be voice activated and therefore live at all times of day and night.

‘Let's hope,' echoed Cowley, with anything but hope in his voice, although Danilov missed it. The reluctance was introspective. A week or a fortnight or a month? he wondered again.

Cowley's entry into the Savoy bar, leading the rest of them, was his first since his entrapment, although he'd looked in from the lobby every night in the desperately empty hope of locating Lena, all the time knowing she would not be there. He forlornly searched for her that night, at last deciding he should stop making himself look stupid in his own eyes if not those of everyone else in the hotel.

Kosov quickly tried to impose himself – waving away Cowley's intention to reciprocate Danilov's earlier hospitality – and Danilov and Cowley made only a token protest, content to let him play the grandiose host any way he wanted.

Everything worked to choreographed perfection, with an additional advantage they hadn't expected. Danilov's making directly to the front of the BMW ensured the intended seating arrangements, and as he settled Kosov apologised for the restricted leg-room caused by the car phone, intentionally to draw attention to the new addition to the vehicle. Danilov allowed himself to be overly impressed, unclipping the instrument from its dashboard holder to examine it. He fumbled replacing it.

Kosov had clearly put a lot of thought and effort into the evening, even taking account of Cowley's stated preference for ethnic restaurants. They went to the traditionally Georgian U Pirosmani, with its spectacular view from Novodevichy Proyezd of the sixteenth-century convent on the other side of the river. There were violin music and Georgian specialities, but not as many questions from Kosov about the investigation as either Danilov or Cowley had expected. They were careful to be as vague as they'd always been about those he did ask, because it would have been a mistake to have responded differently.

Larissa manoeuvred herself next to Danilov and separate from the others as they walked from the restaurant to the car. ‘We're going to need somewhere to live, aren't we?'

‘I suppose so.'

‘One of the receptionists knows of an apartment that's becoming vacant soon, out in Tatarovo: her sister's getting married. Shall we look at it?'

Danilov felt a sink of uncertainty at making a positive commitment. ‘If you like.'

‘What would
you
like? You don't sound very enthusiastic!'

‘We'll look at it,' he said, more positively.

‘We'll need to bribe, because we're not on the housing list,' said Larissa, matter-of-factly. ‘I'll ask my friend how much she thinks it will cost.'

Danilov guessed from her familiar entry that the Nightflight had been the club to which Kosov had taken Olga, while he was in Washington: Kosov was greeted with the recognition he enjoyed and allocated a table at once. Because Olga did not dance there was no problem about the number of times he did, with Larissa. She was excited about the apartment, which was large by Russian standards, with two bedrooms as well as a lounge: Danilov thought it sounded expensive. Olga believed she saw some of Kosov's friends from the earlier visit but they made no greeting and he said nothing, so she decided she was mistaken. Cowley danced twice, for politeness, with Larissa, but spent some time circulating around the club more than was really necessary, looking at a lot of girls. Lena was not among them. There were a lot of men in suits that shone, smoking Marlboros: as they probably owned the Mercedes and BMWs outside, they wouldn't need to keep the packs to attract a cab. They ended the evening with renewed promises to go out again soon: Danilov initiated the discussion.