Thank God he’d been in touch with Washington, providing the easy escape, thought Cowley. How easy would it really be? It wasn’t his problem: not a lasting one, at least. He felt sorry for the diplomats. Nearly all of them looked like rabbits caught in a poacher’s light, tensed for the explosion of the gun. ‘I think we should talk later tonight.’
‘Precisely what I want,’ agreed Burden, enthusiastically. ‘Good man!’
He’d graduated from being a boy, recognized Cowley. Burden moved away to mingle with the embassy staff, a politician permanently at work. Prescott was attentively at his elbow. A plump, vaguely dishevelled man who had been with the Senator approached, smiled and said: ‘James McBride, in case you missed it first time. I handle the media. Guess it’s going to be pretty hectic tomorrow.’
‘Probably,’ Cowley accepted. Apart from arranging to meet Danilov first, he hadn’t thought much about it. ‘Noon, right?’
‘Noon it is,’ confirmed the other American.
Would the material promised from Washington arrive in the following day’s diplomatic bag? If it did, Cowley decided he would have the confrontation that afternoon or early evening. Where? Here at the embassy? Or at home? The embassy would probably be best: more properly official. He’d not alerted Washington in advance of the encounter — determined to be utterly sure before he made any accusation — and he certainly wasn’t going to make any disclosure at a press conference he was reluctant to attend in the first place. Objectively Cowley realized he’d be open to criticism for withholding the very announcement everyone wanted, if he got a confession. But being even more objective, Cowley decided the criticism could only come from Burden in his desire to be centre stage. He was sure the FBI Director would support the in-field decision to wait until all the conclusive evidence was assembled, to avoid any evasion. ‘I’m not sure it’s going to be very worthwhile.’
‘You any idea of the coverage this is getting, back home?’ demanded the press spokesman.
‘Some,’ said Cowley. One of the instructions he’d received from Washington was to urge the Russians to continue separating the murder of the taxi driver and Ann Harris. It was difficult to imagine Burden’s reaction if he learned of the link. Which, Cowley supposed, was inevitable, eventually. There was a valid rationale, if the suspicions were confirmed: maybe Burden’s fury would be mitigated by the possibility of a trial taking place in the United States. That reflection began another but Cowley halted it, determinedly: he was tiptoeing into legal minefields he wasn’t trained to explore and which were none of his concern. His job was to assemble the evidence, make the arrest and let wiser, superior minds take it from there.
‘You know what? This time tomorrow you could be a media star! You realize that? You’re going to be televised into millions of homes all across America — all across the world, I guess — as the American G-man hunting a Russian maniac. What do you think of that?’
In truth Cowley didn’t think very much of it at all. ‘The term G-man isn’t used inside the Bureau any more: I’m not sure it ever was, particularly. It was …’ Cowley hesitated, realizing what he was going to say, acknowledging its validity now. ‘… a publicity hype,’ he finished.
‘So what guidance can you give me?’
‘Guidance?’
‘The Senator’s going to be right up there with you,’ explained McBride, patiently. ‘I know you’re going to brief him later, but I want a steer I can give some of the press: particularly the TV majors like NBC and CBS. That way you’ll know what’s coming at you. No awkward questions you didn’t expect. Everything looking cool and under control. Know what I mean?’
Cowley sighed, looking around for the steward: he didn’t want another drink but it would have been a minimal break from this conversation. ‘Yes,’ he said, evenly. ‘I know what you mean.’
‘So what’s the word?’ McBride smiled again, encouragingly.
‘The inquiries into Ann Harris’s murder are ongoing. It’s a new investigation, little more than days old. It is, as you know, a joint investigation with the Russian authorities. That cooperation is proving very satisfactory.’
McBride remained looking at him, the smile uncertain now. Cowley was conscious of movement just behind him, to his right, and turned to see both Baxter and Hughes. He wondered if they had approached in time to hear what he said.
‘Go on,’ prompted McBride.
‘That’s it,’ said Cowley, shortly. ‘Anything else you want, you’ll have to get from FBI headquarters in Washington.’
The press spokesman’s face became serious. ‘Now wait a minute here, buddy. That’s a whole bunch of crap and we know it. We try a slip and slide like that and we’re all of us going to get roasted. And the Senator doesn’t get roasted. Not ever.’
Before Cowley could respond, Baxter said: ‘Doesn’t sound like you’re getting very far.’
The steward reappeared at last, and Cowley replaced his empty glass and took another. ‘There’s a Bureau rule against discussing murder investigations at cocktail parties. Takes all the fun out of the evening.’
‘I suppose it has to be difficult, this early into an inquiry,’ said Hughes. He was holding his cigarette in the same hand as his glass: it looked like whisky, from the colour of the contents.
‘Sometimes there’s an early break,’ said Cowley. ‘Lots of evidence just lying around, to be picked up.’
‘But not this time?’ persisted the financial director.
‘Bits and pieces,’ said Cowley.
‘You guys better excuse me,’ said McBride, striding off after the glad-handing Senator.
‘So you could be here in Moscow for quite a while?’ suggested Baxter. ‘Have to make sure we look after you. Sign you into the club, put on a dinner or two.’
‘Too early to say yet how long I’ll be here.’ Neither man appeared any longer offended by the previous day’s encounter. Across the room Cowley saw McBride in a mouth-to-ear conversation with Burden: almost at once Burden looked back in his direction, frowning.
‘So you don’t anticipate it being a very productive press conference?’ said Hughes.
Cowley decided the way the man was holding both his glass and cigarette was overly artificial. ‘Maybe the Russians will have something to say.’
‘Wouldn’t they have told you, if they had?’
‘Maybe. Maybe not,’ answered Cowley, honestly. The Senator and his followers were approaching, trailed by the ambassador.
‘I would …’ began Baxter but the Senator talked over him, dismissively. ‘I think it’s time we talked.’ He looked sideways, to the ambassador. ‘Your office free?’
‘Yes … please …’ volunteered the anxious Richards.
Cowley put his glass on a small side-table as he followed Burden through a linking door into the familiar room: he thought it was even more attractive at night, illuminated by the chandelier. Every one of Burden’s party came into the office with them. Burden went directly to the ambassador’s desk, settling heavily into the chair. The others ranged themselves in a half-circle in close attendance.
‘I gather there’s been a misunderstanding between you and Jimmy here?’ said Burden, nodding in the direction of the press official.
‘I don’t think so,’ said Cowley. It was pointless their playing verbal ping-pong, batting nuance and ambiguity back and forth between themselves. ‘I am very early into an investigation. I am not permitted to discuss any part of that investigation with you. I have been told to suggest your contacting FBI headquarters in Washington for any information. There’s really no purpose at all in our having this or any other sort of meeting.’ Cowley heard what sounded to be a surprised intake of breath but didn’t know from where. Certainly it wasn’t from Burden. He’d come forward in the ambassador’s chair, wide-eyed beneath a lowered head, dark-faced with annoyance.
‘You know who you’re talking to, boy?’
Demoted, thought Cowley. He stood regarding the other man, feeling no apprehension. The
stupidity didn’t deserve an answer.
‘I asked you a question, boy.’ The anger clipped off the end of the words even more than usual.
‘I obviously know the personal circumstances and you have my sympathy,’ said Cowley, turning towards the door. ‘I say again, I was told to suggest you contact Washington direct, for any information. There are very good communication channels here.’
‘Don’t you walk out on me!’ roared Burden.
Cowley halted, half turning back. ‘This is embarrassing. But it’s not a situation of my making. I don’t want to be part of continuing it. I am not trying to be offensive. Or obstructive. I am simply following specific instructions from Washington.’
Burden appeared to realize that the situation was of his creation and to exacerbate it would make him look even more ridiculous. His escape was to redirect the anger. ‘That bastard Ross!’ he said.
‘I would expect the Director to take your calls,’ offered Cowley.
‘A lot of people are going to take my calls. A lot of people are going to get them, too.’ Burden attempted to sound ominous, but that wasn’t any more successful than the earlier effort at intimidation.
As he continued towards the door Cowley saw the attractive blonde in Burden’s party turn away to prevent the Senator seeing her obvious amusement.
This was going to be the best one. The cleverest. It was going to be balanced on a knife-edge — there was a giggle, at the image — but the confusion would be complete. A blonde. A blonde really would be good. The one that failed off Ulitza Kislovskii with the sudden appearance of the man friend had been blonde. Hadn’t failed. Wrong to think that. Been interrupted, before it had started. Couldn’t have failed if it hadn’t started. Forget it. Hadn’t happened. Where was the panic? There should have been panic by now. Newspaper stories. People frightened. Wanted people to be frightened. They would be, after this one. Really the cleverest. Blonde. And buttons. Red buttons. That’s what the real things were like, red buttons.
The complete list of psychiatric patients whose case history showed possible similarities with the fixations manifested by the killer of Vladimir Suzlev and Ann Harris comprised twenty-six names when it was submitted to Major Yuri Pavin. With the need to have two officers present at every interview, and the even greater need to get those interviews completed as soon as possible, Pavin requested three extra men, anticipating the objections. Which came at once. There were officially written complaints that such a concentration of manpower would halt two other ongoing investigations, one a fraud case, the other an inquiry into currency speculation. General Lapinsk ruled that both should be suspended. The decision worsened the criticism throughout Petrovka towards Dimitri Danilov and to a lesser extent towards Pavin. The Major considered addressing everyone involved in the questioning in the early morning charge-room assembly, but upon reflection decided against it, believing it would appear as if he were defending himself when he did not consider he had anything to defend himself against. He stressed the importance of the psychiatric questioning when he assigned individual names to the paired groups. The response from every one was sullen indifference. Perhaps, decided the Major, Danilov himself should make the assembly-room address. He was the Colonel in charge, after all: it was his responsibility.
Then he read the overnight report of a two-man team engaged on another aspect of the inquiry, and in his initial excitement Pavin lost all concern about the psychiatric report problems.
Before telling Danilov he would have time to carry out the other inquiry the man had ordered, after seeing Vladimir Suzlev’s widow again. It was all coming together!
Chapter Twenty
With a lot to crowd in before the press conference, Danilov got up early, slipping out of bed with practised ease to avoid waking Olga. There was a clean shirt in the drawer, although it wasn’t very well pressed, but they hardly ever were. It took a long time going through kitchen cupboards and shelves to find black polish, to cover the neglected tear in his shoe. When he found it, the polish was hard and atrophied, oddly topped with a white powder. It didn’t achieve much of a shine but the tear was less visible. While he waited for water to boil for tea, he wetted his hair and at once regretted doing so: it was so short it stuck up, like wheat in a wind. It would dry before the conference and the inevitable photographs. Olga hadn’t stirred by the time he left the apartment, the carefully removed windscreen wipers wrapped in paper.
He was ahead of the morning rush hour, reaching Petrovka sooner than he expected, which made him even earlier than he’d planned: the Militia building was in transition between night and day shift. His floor was deserted. In his now brightly lit office Danilov wrote out the morning schedule, beginning with Pavin and running through the other preparations as he waited for the American to arrive to be taken to meet Lapinsk and the Federal Prosecutor, in advance of the actual conference. Finally he sat considering the conference itself. He’d never attended such an event before and didn’t know what was expected. The reason for the advanced encounter with the Director and the Prosecutor, he supposed. All he’d have to do was take their lead. Particularly about both murders. Were they going to disclose the connection today? Danilov smiled, suddenly, at his own question. The reservation about the possibility of an embassy involvement still existed. Would an apparent insistence upon making a linking announcement today force the American into some sort of disclosure? It might be worth trying. In which case he’d have to brief Lapinsk and Nikolai Smolin in advance, to ensure their proper response. Definitely worth a try, he decided. Danilov was reaching forward, to make an unnecessary reminder note on his pad, when Pavin entered the office: he never completed the note. Pavin, who never moved quickly, positively flustered in, his normally dour face broken by an expansive grin. The expression was so unusual that Danilov saw for the first time that the man had a gold-edged filling on an eye-tooth.
‘I’ve got the restaurant and the man,’ announced the Major. Across the desk he offered the security agency’s reception photograph of Ann Harris with her hand on the arm of Paul Hughes.
Danilov smiled up at his assistant, in what appeared to be matching triumph but which included a lot of relief. ‘No doubt?’
‘Absolutely none. The restaurant is called the Trenmos: it’s a combination of two names, Trenton, in New Jersey, and Moscow. Very American and very popular with the embassy. They ate there a lot: were well known. And the reservation, for that night, was actually in Hughes’s name. And there’s even more. I took the photograph this morning to Suzlev’s taxi firm, when I made the check you ordered. Three other drivers remember Hughes as one of Suzlev’s regular customers. He used to practise his Russian, just like the wife said.’
Danilov went back to the photograph before him. ‘We’ve got him! … Shit! It was there and I missed it! Look!’
‘What?’ said Pavin, astonished by the outburst.
‘I even thought something was odd at the mortuary but I didn’t see it was,’ said Danilov. ‘And that was it — see! How could I have missed it?’
‘What?’ repeated Pavin, bewilderment replacing astonishment.
Instead of replying Danilov offered back the photograph. ‘Look at him!’ he insisted. ‘Look at the hand!’
‘The finger’s twisted!’ isolated Pavin, instantly.
‘The index finger of the right hand,’ agreed Danilov, more calmly. ‘It will obviously need to be confirmed forensically, for courtroom evidence. But it’s twisted so that it couldn’t give a proper impression. Just as none of the lateral pocket loop prints in Ann Harris’s apartment have a proper impression of the right hand that held the vodka glass. Or made prints in the bathroom. Hughes’s prints and those we found will match! I know they will!’ Danilov no longer felt inferior. That was, he conceded to himself, just how he had felt from the moment of Cowley’s arrival: inferior in scientific facilities and personal ability and in personal training and even — the most uneasy admission of all — in how he looked and dressed, compared to the Am
erican. But not any longer: not completely. In appearance maybe, but not on any other level. He’d drawn even, professionally proving himself equal. Now he wouldn’t have to stage any phonily rehearsed disclosures at pre-conference encounters. Because now he knew. So how would he handle it? He wasn’t sure, not at that moment.
‘That’s what the American would have been doing in the evidence room,’ Pavin guessed. ‘Checking the fingerprint sheets.’
‘Most probably,’ Danilov accepted. What he’d just learned might carry the investigation on. But, like so much else in the case, it created as many questions as it provided answers. There was far more political implication than before. And what was the Russian jurisdiction? Could he, a Russian investigator, enter the US embassy to question an American diplomat? He was sure he couldn’t. Whatever the result of any questioning, could Hughes invoke diplomatic immunity? Probably. Did what they had discovered really incriminate the man in murder? Not necessarily. Or merely extend a suspicion heightened by the telephone transcripts that the Cheka had reluctantly made available and which showed Hughes to be a liar? Maybe nothing more than that.
‘Now we’ve got to take it forward,’ said Pavin, prescient as always. ‘It’s the complication everyone was frightened of. It won’t be easy.’
‘It’s never been easy.’
‘You going to tell the American?’
‘I haven’t decided, not yet.’
‘It doesn’t look as if he was confiding in us.’
‘One of us is going to have to tell the other sometime,’ pointed out Danilov. ‘Otherwise it becomes ridiculous.’ So much was ridiculous.
‘Do we have enough to make an arrest?’
Danilov examined the question. ‘Maybe if Hughes were Russian. Certainly enough to bring a Russian in for questioning: people are always nervous, being interrogated in a police station. Stalin’s best legacy to the Russian legal system.’
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