No Time for Heroes (62 page)

‘OK?' asked Cowley finally.

Danilov nodded.

‘We need to talk. For you to hear things.'

Danilov nodded again.

Cowley held him tightly, very briefly, ‘I'm sorry.'

Danilov was fully conscious of what had happened and what he was doing and where he was, but he still moved and reacted dully, needing to be prompted and guided as they entered the darkened, night-staffed embassy and were led by Cowley to the FBI office: Pavin remained at the rear of the procession, a cautious hand hovering at Danilov's shoulder.

‘I'm all right,' insisted Danilov when they got there. ‘Thank you, but I'm all right.' He looked questioningly between Pavin and the American. ‘How?'

Pavin said: ‘I've known for at least three years. It was your weakness: how you could have been attacked. I've never understood why you weren't. I always tried to cover your back.'

‘Yuri telephoned, after you called him to find out from the uniformed division what had happened,' expanded Cowley. ‘I figured you might need help.'

‘We were going to tell them tonight,' said Danilov, not really addressing either man. ‘Olga and Yevgennie. Talk about divorce and then get married …' He gave a shrill laugh, momentarily close to the edge. ‘We've got a flat. We were going to celebrate with champagne tonight.'

Just as introspectively, Cowley said: ‘Holy shit!'

‘We came here for a reason,' reminded the pragmatic, less emotional Pavin.

Cowley straightened, reaching for the tape which had been carefully marked, so he could cut it off before the sound of the explosion.

‘
We told you to come!
' echoed Gusovsky's voice. ‘
When we say come, you come!
'

‘
I couldn't. Not immediately
.' Kosov was snivelling, a trapped animal.

‘
You set us up!
'

‘
I didn't! He cheated me, too
.'

‘
You're no good to us any more, Yevgennie Grigorevich. We can't trust you
.'

‘
No! I'll speak to him!
'

‘
There's nothing to speak about
.'

‘
Let me try!
'

‘
No good to us any more
,' repeated Gusovsky, monotonously. ‘
He laughed at us, as fools. Did you both laugh: think we were fools?
'

‘
No
!' wailed Kosov.

‘
You're the fool, Yevgennie Grigorevich
.'

Cowley snapped off the replay button, at the warning marker. ‘They did it.'

‘I know,' said Danilov simply.

‘It was the last conversation we recorded.'

‘I want to hear the explosion!' demanded Danilov.

‘No you don't,' said Pavin, gently. ‘There's no point.'

‘They probably brought someone in from another republic to do it,' said Danilov, close again to personal musing. ‘They'll never be charged, not Gusovsky or Yerin.'

‘No,' agreed Cowley. ‘That's the way it's done.'

‘It's not the way it should be,' said Danilov.

CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX

The investigation was not given to the Organised Crime Bureau but to a general criminal unit, which spared Danilov from inevitable participation. When it was learned it had been the car of a Militia district commander, the newspapers speculated it was a revenge killing by someone whom Kosov had arrested: police records of all his cases were being examined, for a likely motive through which to trace the killer. Television as well as newspapers carried photographs of Kosov and Larissa. It was a good picture of her – posing in her head-tilted way – and he cut it from two different newspapers because he didn't have a picture of her. Olga cried a lot but Danilov didn't, not after the breakdown that first night, by the crater. He took to arriving at Petrovka by eight in the morning and not leaving until six or seven, but never later, because it was unfair to leave Olga alone.

The man from whom Pavin bought the medal on the Arbat insisted it was for bravery under fire: they were doubtful, but that was what they told Cowley on the day he left Moscow, and he was as delighted as Danilov had guessed he would be. They talked over the reunion plans that didn't need any more discussions: there had been no reference, from either Cowley or Pavin, to Larissa's death during the four days since they had got him away from the scene. Only at the moment of parting, at Sheremet'yevo, the last thing Cowley said was: ‘I really am sorry.' Danilov thanked him.

Danilov hadn't discussed with the American what he intended doing, because there was no reason for Cowley to know. He didn't tell Pavin, either, although he guessed the man would realise later because it was Pavin he told to organise the swoop on Wernadski Prospekt, to bring in the Ostankino leader.

Yuri Yermolovich Ryzhikev was much heavier than he'd appeared in the prints, bull-chested and thick-necked, with very full black hair and the dark complexion of someone from one of the southern republics: Danilov thought occasionally there was the trace of a Georgian accent. There was a lot of gold adornment, which seemed to be the requirement of every mafioso in the city: the man came into the Petrovka suite with a camel-coloured topcoat slung cape-like around his shoulders, over a brown silk suit. The shoes were crocodile. There wasn't the arrogance of the Chechen chieftains, but there was no apprehension over the arrest, either.

He sat where Danilov told him but asked at once if Danilov knew what the fuck he thought he was doing. Danilov quietened the attitude at once by offering across the table the copies of the original
Svahbodniy
Founder's Certificate and the second certificate transferring control to Raisa Serova upon her father's death, both of which held Ryzhikev's name. The government had recovered the money, Danilov said. Ryzhikev had been stupid like the Chechen had been stupid, but in Ryzhikev's case it hadn't happened once but twice, first losing it to the Chechen and then to the Russian authorities. So he did know what the fuck he was doing. He was giving Ryzhikev a warning.

No action was being taken over the embezzlement, and they knew all the murders had been committed by the Chechen. But no Mafia clan was going to be above the law any more. They had a file on the Ostankino, like they had on every other Family: they knew Wernadski Prospekt was the main house, but they had all the other clubs and restaurants as well. To prove it, Danilov listed those they had discovered, during the surveillance, adding the one that had been firebombed by the Chechen. They didn't just know the locations, they had identities, too, he continued, and to prove that recited all the names listed in Zimin's confession, as well as the few Pavin had managed to assemble from the sparse Petrovka files. They didn't rate the Ostankino as seriously as the other Families, because they knew it would be swept up by the Chechen, who were already taking over whatever they wanted. When he said that, Danilov offered the certificate that had never become operable, replacing the Ostankino directors with Gusovsky and Yerin.

‘The Chechen are going to take you over: look how easy it is for them to kill your people, whenever they like. So by eradicating them we get rid of not one but two mobs, don't we?'

They already had a massive file on the Chechen. They had over thirty names and they knew the meeting places, at Gusovsky's home on Kutbysevskij Prospekt and the restaurant on Glovin Bol'soj and the well-protected club on Pecatnikov.

Danilov made it a condescending lecture, once waving the man down when Ryzhikev appeared about to speak, and when he finished the man's face was puce and he was hunched forward in his chair, looking more bull-like than before, as if he were about to charge.

‘You can go now,' dismissed Danilov. ‘Until you're absorbed, just remember what I've said. We know who you are and where you are. We can swat you like a bug, whenever we want.'

‘You're out of your fucking mind,' managed Ryzhikev at last. ‘You got it wrong. All wrong.'

I hope I haven't, thought Danilov, at the end of that day. He was in the basement, where the incinerator was housed, feeding the car tapes and the transcripts into the flames, carefully and individually, wanting it all completely consumed, like Larissa had been completely consumed. Technically it was evidence, he acknowledged. But as Cowley had agreed, at the embassy the night it happened, Gusovsky and Yerin would never be punished for ordering the assassination. What he had tried to achieve today was much better: justice without trial. The ultimate personal compromise, for a policeman.

The double funeral was at Novodevichy cemetery, like Serov's. Olga cried. Danilov felt nothing, emptied. Having been at the scene he wondered what, if anything, was in the coffins. There were representatives from the Justice and Interior Ministries, as well as a sizeable contingent of uniformed Militia, eight of whom formed an honour guard. A uniformed Militia colonel whom Danilov did not recognise gave a graveside eulogy in which Yevgennie Kosov was described as an outstanding policeman of integrity and leadership and Larissa as a loyal and loving companion. No matter how long it took, the perpetrators would be brought to justice for one of the vilest crimes in Moscow's criminal history.

‘It was true, wasn't it? What a fine man Yevgennie was?' said Olga, on their way back to Kirovskaya.

‘Yes.'

‘I just can't imagine what it will be like, not having them any more.'

‘No.'

‘At least Larissa went too. She wasn't left by herself. I couldn't bear to be left by myself.'

Danilov said nothing.

Danilov gave up the Tatarovo apartment the following day. The concierge's immediate concern was that he would want his dollar deposit back; he didn't relax until Danilov made it clear he wasn't asking for a refund. He wasn't asking for the advance rent back, either.

‘What are you going to do with the furniture?' asked the man, surveying the living room.

‘Why don't you sell it for me? Either on the open market or to the next people who want the flat.' It was unthinkable to transfer it to Kirovskaya, with some easy excuse for Olga, although everything here was better than theirs.

The concierge beamed at the prospect of even greater profit. ‘We'd better take an inventory. You put the prices against the items and I'll do my best to get them …' Hurriedly he added: ‘Not sure I'll be able to get what you want, though. Might have to come down a bit.'

‘Why don't you just get what you can?'

‘We'll still make a list.' At the refrigerator he said: ‘There are things in here. And a bottle of champagne.'

‘You have them,' said Danilov. ‘The champagne, too.'

The man began to stack the food on the worktop, the champagne last. He said: ‘I'm sorry things didn't work out for you. Sometimes they don't.'

‘No,' said Danilov. ‘Sometimes they don't.'

CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN

The war broke out two days after the funeral. The Chechen restaurant on Glovin Bol'soj was raided by Ryzhikev's gang. Three Chechen bulls were maimed – one blinded, two others crippled – and three innocent customers in the front section were badly injured: one was a twenty-one-year-old girl who lost an arm. The restaurant was torched with engineering expertise, fires set so it was not only gutted but the structure so weakened the roof and walls collapsed.

The attempted Chechen retaliation, ambushing a convoy of Ostankino lorries supposedly entering from Poland, was in reality an ambush in reverse. Nothing had come from Poland. Each truck held waiting squads of men more interested in humiliation than death and injury: one Chechen man was killed and two others injured – just as four Ostankino were injured – in the initial confrontation, but the remaining twelve, once overpowered, were stripped naked and left handcuffed and manacled in chains that had to be cut off with oxy-acetylene burners, and with signs around their necks identifying the Family they represented. Photographs appeared in four Moscow newspapers.

The Chechen did succeed better with a counter-attack at an Ostankino cafe, killing two, but five of the attackers were badly hurt and they didn't manage to set it alight, which they had intended. The Ostankino retribution was again public mockery, but more effective on a second level because by hitting Kutbysevskij they showed they could get to the very heart of the Chechen empire, the residence of Arkadi Gusovsky himself. They blew up three BMWs parked in the road outside and set light to another two, intending them to burn more slowly. When Gusovsky's guards tried to get out of the gates, they discovered they had been chained closed by three separate ropes of thick metal, so the alerted newspaper photographers this time had shots of the imprisoned guards pulling from the inside of the gates in frustration. The day after, two separate publications carried satirical cartoons of black-masked, striped-jerseyed gangsters running in opposite directions around a circle of money, piling up in head-on collision while a police group watched.

Danilov thought it was a good portrayal of his intentions, but it still wasn't complete. It became so at the end of the third week. It was never discovered how the Ostankino got into Pecatnikov without being detected, although the rumour arose of a disillusioned defector. The frontal group managed to burst through the door of the club before any alarm was raised, and sprayed the interior with Russian RPK and Yugoslav Mitrajez M72 machine guns. The Chechen were utterly surprised and the battle was over very quickly, with eight dead. The delay was still sufficient for Gusovsky and Yerin to escape from the rear dining room through the labyrinth of corridors honeycombing the complex: both would have survived if they'd hidden in Yerin's upstairs apartment, but their only thought was to get completely away.

The second assassination squad must have followed Gusovsky from his home to isolate and mark his car. As the thin man bustled from a rear entrance of what he'd thought an impregnable fortress, hurrying the blind man towards the BMW, waiting gunmen opened up with more machine guns – RPKs and M72s again – catching both in triangular fire. Three bodyguards and the waiting driver died as well.