The Watchmen

by Brian Freemantle

  31

  The photographs were of Naina Karpov. After it was enhanced, one of the departing shots showed the man to whom she was turning in farewell to be Igor Ivanovich Baratov.

  Five of the pictures were pinpoint sharp, and in three of them she appeared to be looking directly at the camera, as if she were posing. The transformation from the dowdy, distracted widow of Pereulok Samokatnaja was so complete that Danilov thought that in a casual, crowded situation he might not have even recognized her. The neglected hair was coiffed perfectly around an oval, even beautiful face to show off the glittering earrings that, with the singlestrand choker, made a complete set that threw off enough light to be genuine diamonds, which they probably were. There was a diamondlike flare from the ring on her ring finger, too, but no wedding band. The dress—maroon, according to Martlew—was close fitting without being tight, cut bare-shouldered and in two of the pictures exposing deep cleavage hidden by a covering stole of the same material. She was smiling—openly laughing in one frame—to show sculpted, even teeth.

  Yevgenni Leanov was just as immaculate—and smiling—in a single-breasted, Western-cut suit that Martlew remembered as dark blue. The surveillance photographs revealed a tactile attentiveness that had not registered with the two FBI watchers until the very end of the evening. In the arrival pictures Leanov had cupped Naina Karpov’s arm to help her out of the Oldsmobile and had his hand familiarly in the small of her back as they’d gone in through the restaurant’s rear door. Their hands had been touching in the first of the emerging photographs, and Leanov’s was around her waist in the others.

  It was not possible to see anything of Baratov, apart from his face, from the angle of the one print in which he’d been caught. He’d been smiling, like the rest of them.

  Danilov was grateful the necessary responses to the identification—and the murder of Anatoli Lasin—had delayed his day’s schedule until midday but he still felt crushed (the coming together of the rock against the hard place) by the hangover. It had been ridiculous—posturingly theatrical—to go on drinking as he had the previous night, as if integrity could be drowned in alcohol. He hadn’t, in fact, become forgetfully drunk. At least the vomiting had stopped. He wished the remorse and the pain would.

  Because of Henry Hartz’s continued presence at the U.S. Embassy, they were again in Cowley’s suite. The Golden Hussar photographs didn’t occupy much space on the table around which they were sitting, even though they were enlarged as well as enhanced. The rest was taken up by official Russian prints of Anatoli Lasin’s blown-apart car and fire-blackened shell of the Pereulok Ucebyi apartment block. Considerately, ever conscious of how Larissa died, Pavin had covered the murder scene pictures with those of the destroyed apartments.

  “If it was a delayed wake for the sadly missed husband, they enjoyed themselves,” said Cowley, disturbing the neatly piled prints of Naina Karpov. One of the American’s early-morning checks had been to establish from the Manhattan eavesdropping that there had been no calls from Brooklyn to the restaurant the previous night.

  “There as well as back at Leanov’s apartment,” said Danilov, working hard to disguise how he felt, surprised that Cowley was showing no discomfort whatsoever. Practice, he supposed. The ownership of the Pereulok Kalasnyj apartment was one of several things that Pavin had established during the morning. Another was that Leanov had divorced his wife four years earlier. A third was that the lock-up block listed on the same property register was owned by Lev Baratov’s garage company.

  “Why kill Lasin?” queried Pavin.

  “Because he knew Nikov he was originally brought into headquarters, which might not have been the best idea,” reflected Danilov, his headache so bad his words seemed to echo in his skull. “To keep her talking—to get as much for the voice comparison as we could—we told Naina Karpov we were going to reinterview everyone we’d already seen. Lasin was their weak link.”

  “The irony is that he didn’t tell us anything,” said Pavin.

  “He would have if we’d threatened him with Lefortovo and a trumped-up charge over his handguns,” said Danilov.

  “Let’s not forget, either, the example factor of the Nikov and Karpov killings,” suggested Cowley.

  “Or fail to take advantage of it ourselves!” said Danilov, with an awareness that pleased him. The band wasn’t tightening around his head anymore, either.

  “How?” Cowley frowned.

  “We’ll use our resident informer,” decided Danilov. “Senior Colonel Ashot Ivanovich Mizin will work the two killings jointly. Tell him we’re still going along with his turf war theory and that it’s all part of the Osipov Brigade breakup. I want them to go on thinking they’re safe, with the investigation under the control of their own man.”

  “We need to get to the Oldsmobile,” said Cowley. “There might just be something for forensic. And there’s an identification from the embassy guard.”

  Danilov’s headache was definitely lifting. His stomach felt easier, too. “The Russian way,” he said simply.

  “Not admissible in an American court,” refused Cowley, just as simply.

  “In which court, under whose law, would an attack carried out from Russian soil—Ulitza Chaykovskovo—against what’s technically American territory ever be heard?” demanded Danilov.

  “You any idea how many guilty bastards walk free from American courts on points of law?”

  “You any idea how many people will die from anthrax or sarin if these bastards beat us and get a warhead into America?”

  “I think I’ve taken my eye off the ball a little here,” Cowley abruptly apologized. “In Russia it’s got to be the Russian way, hasn’t it?”

  The Russian president’s ultimate coup was to make his worldwide televised address from the podium of the Duma that was preparing to impeach him. He asked permission to do so from an entrapped, unable-to-refuse parliament with the American secretary of state at his side at an apparently impromptu press conference after their second meeting. He even had Henry Hartz seated at the very edge of the dais so that in some shots the two men appeared together.

  The towering, white-haired man actually began by sweeping his hand out toward Hartz to declare that the man’s presence was physical, visible proof of the total commitment between their two countries to confront and defeat the fanatical terrorism that both were facing. So, too, was the fact that also in the chamber—there was another flowing hand movement to guide the cameras—were the military chiefs of all three armed services.

  The announcement that all civilian participation in the safeguarding of all stockpiled Russian weaponry was being removed was accompanied by the raising high into the air of what the man declared to be a presidential decree he was lodging with the Duma. From that moment the security of every arsenal anywhere in the country was entirely in the hands of the military, who were trained for such a task and had the manpower to ensure it was properly and fully carried out. The camera-guiding gesture now was to the assembled ministers and their deputies—defense, foreign, and interior—with the insistence that although he had abolished civilian involvement at plant, installation, and stockpile level, appropriate civilian ministers should work with the military chiefs to ensure that never again would a single item of potentially harmful Russian war materiel fall into the wrong hands.

  “Were that to happen—with the responsibility for preventing it so positively and clearly defined—the investigation to discover the culprits would be absolute, conducted by the special tribunals established by my decree today. Also set out in today’s decree are the penalties I would expect to be imposed. I realize, of course, that the creation of law involving punishment is the function of the Duma and the upper house. I ask them to ratify those parts of my decree that require it.”

  Danilov and Cowley watched the address from the Savoy suite. Cowley said, “I don’t know what the hell game that guy’s playing, but I wouldn’t like to be on the other side.”

  “Neither would I,”
Danilov said hopefully.

  In the final moments of preparation, both Cowley and Danilov thought beyond the basic illegality of burglary to the fact that neither was trained—or had experience—for what they intended to do. Cowley had never attended a SWAT team intrusion. On the two occasions Danilov had used a spetznaz unit, the entry techniques and safeguards had been the responsibility of its commander. It was obviously among the worries of the subdued Paul Lambert, who very early in the briefing asked if they had a search warrant.

  “The entry is upon my—Russian—authority,” said Danilov. He didn’t doubt he could have gotten approval from Georgi Chelyag, but it would have been given in the unrecorded circumstances of their conversation, so there’d been no point in asking. Danilov had excluded the protesting Yuri Pavin and the trusted but unaware group from Petrovka from any involvement, distancing them—and their careers—from himself if anything went wrong. Another unspoken awareness between Danilov and Cowley was that if it did go wrong, the danger wasn’t so much from civilian arrest but from mobsters who imposed their own law with their own guns.

  “No Russian backup?” persisted the leader of the forensic team.

  “The embassy attack is an American-controlled investigation,” said Danilov, uneasy with the threadbare logic. It was a relief that his hangover had gone.

  “Which needs to be tightly controlled,” broke in Cowley, just as uneasy. “I’m taking American responsibility for it being done this way.”

  With the early-afternoon departure of the American secretary of state and his entourage, it was easier for them to use one of the small conference rooms back at the embassy. A greatly enlarged section of the Nikitskij Boulevard street plan and the lock-up garage side alley was on a display board with a selection of that afternoon’s photographs, also enlarged, alongside. Barry Martlew identified the garage in which he’d seen Leanov park the Oldsmobile and described how the up-and-over door had been secured at ground level by what appeared to be ordinary, snap-fastening padlocks.

  “No obvious alarms anywhere,” said the Moscow-based agent. “It’s a cul-de-sac that bends where the garages are. Gives us some cover from the main road.”

  “How long did it take Leanov to close three padlocks?” demanded Cowley.

  “A good fifteen minutes,” said Martlew, understanding the question.

  “So there are some precautions, and after New Rochelle that’s our greatest concern,” Cowley said to the two men whom Lambert had designated his entry specialists. “You lost friends in New Rochelle. After you’re sure that everything’s safe, I want you to go back to the beginning and start again. And if you have the slightest doubt, a bad feeling about anything, we walk away. OK?”

  One man nodded. The other said, “OK.”

  Cowley looked back to include everyone else in the room. “Let’s go play Watergate.”

  “Watergate fucked up,” said someone.

  The constant volume of roaring, speeding traffic in one of the busiest parts of the city—Ulitza Vozdvizenka, at one end of Nikitskij Boulevard—provided both the cover for the intrusion but also the risk of its being seen, despite the curve in the alley. Cowley had a rotating team cover the cul-de-sac from midafternoon, to ensure that the Oldsmobile remained inside its garage. Another group watched Yevgenni Leanov’s apartment to see if the man emerged and appeared to be going to collect the car.

  Upon their arrival Cowley reduced the alley surveillance—just one man, lingering close to its entrance as the last alert to the two entry men. The rest dispersed unobtrusively in the immediate vicinity, mostly along the more pedestrian-crowded Nikitskaya. Cowley kept in constant touch by throat mike, his hearing aid—style receiver in his undamaged ear.

  “We’ve got a problem,” alerted one of the FBI burglars. “The padlocks are wired: We can feel a lead. Guess the disarmament requires the approved key. Pick it and we ring the bells or whatever.”

  Shielded by Danilov and others feigning arm-waving conversation all around him, Cowley said, “Can you fix it?”

  “Depends how much slack wire we can get.”

  “We can’t leave any sign.”

  “Any alternative?” asked Danilov.

  Lambert said, “There’s some magic stuff, epoxy resin based, we can squirt into the lock to give us a key definition. It would take an hour to set sufficiently to withdraw it to cut a workable key. We’re talking tomorrow. We wouldn’t have to damage any outer casing if we could get enough slack for a wire bypass.”

  “Gotta clamp on the first,” came a voice from the alley.

  Cowley, Danilov, and Lambert turned around at Skarjatin, to walk back the way they’d come. Danilov said, “I don’t understand the way it works.”

  Lambert said, “Each padlock is alarmed. Break or force one and whatever happens happens. If we can get a loop above each of the three padlocks we maintain the circuit, make the locks themselves obsolete. All we’ve got to do then is pick them. Each will have a different operating key, of course. It’s quite simple.”

  “Sure,” said Danilov. Three Americans in their group passed them without showing any sign of recognition, going in the opposite direction.

  “Two neutralized,” came the earpiece voice.

  “What about you guys at Kalasnyj?” demanded Cowley, in apparent conversation with Danilov.

  “Lights on in the apartment but the drapes are drawn,” came the reply. “Maybe a quiet evening, six-pack and a ball game.”

  “No wise-assing: only what matters and what you’re asked,” ordered Cowley. Schnecker’s brusque instruction against nervousness going into the UN building, Cowley remembered: a million years ago? Two million?

  “Three immobilized,” said the voice from the alley.

  “Go back and start again,” Cowley instructed at once.

  “You sure they’ve got this much time?” demanded Lambert.

  “Dead they’ve got all the time they could want. Eternity,” said Cowley.

  “Sneaky motherfuckers!” said the recognizable voice.

  “What?” said Cowley.

  “Secondary system, parallel to the guide rail for the up and over. Static wires, simple hook-and-eye connection on both sides. Door goes up but the wires don’t, unless they’re unclipped. Glad we had a second feel around.”

  “So am I,” said Cowley.

  “Thanks,” said Lambert, to the other American.

  “Whenever you’re ready to join us,” invited the burglar.

  Their rehearsed arrival in the alley was intentionally straggled, to avoid attracting attention additionally risked by some of the forensic technicians’ equipment. Further protective surveillance was reestablished along Nikitskij, on either side of the alley, with the existing man remaining in between at its entrance.

  The up-and-over door was lifted a bare minimum to admit them, and no light was put on until everyone was inside. The sudden fluorescent glare momentarily blinded all of them. They recovered standing around the immaculately gleaming, dark-green vehicle as Lambert, assuming control, said, “We’re not here to admire. Let’s get it done.”

  The smoothly rehearsed movement of the forensic team was another uncomfortable reminder to Cowley of how Jefferson Jones’s squad had automatically assumed their roles on the outskirts of New Rochelle. He physically turned away, conscious as he did so that Dimitri Danilov was already exploring the garage, at that moment at the very rear. Danilov pointed and said, “Steel door, steel framed. Locks top and bottom.”

  To one of the men who’d picked the outer locks Cowley said, “You spare a moment?”

  The technician stood beside Danilov for several moments before saying, “Now, that’s one hell of a door beyond which visitors aren’t at all welcome.”

  “Try,” urged Cowley.

  It took an hour. The constant checks with the watchers outside in Nikitskij Boulevard and Pereulok Kalasnyj were virtually the only sounds from inside. The forensic scouring of the Oldsmobile ended with the entry technician still on his kne
es, the door frame alarm safely looped and one lock already picked. Scanning the door itself with a stethoscoped magnet, he found the tumbler device activated by the slightest uneven movement. He steadied it—attaching magnets at either end—and said, “I haven’t seen anything like this outside a strongroom.” The second lock took a further fifteen minutes. When he felt delicately inside the door that was open just enough for his fingers to get through, he found two separate, rigidly fixed alarm wires that would have triggered if the door had widened another half inch. It took another ten minutes to disconnect them, before the door was finally opened.

  “Jesus!” exclaimed Cowley, when the light finally went on in the room beyond. It was not intended—certainly not used—as a garage. Stacked the entire length of the opposite wall were boxed mines and grenades, with other boxes marked to be grenades and timers and heavy-caliber ammunition. Near the door were four of the same A4-427 rockets and their launchers used in the U.S. Embassy attack. Unprompted, the forensic cameraman began to photograph everything. The rigid, inside door fixings were simple booby traps to separate wall-mounted antipersonnel mines. Another lead ran from the tumbler to disappear beneath the main stockpile itself.

  Cowley said, “Jerk that door open and the entire block would disappear.”

  Lambert was bending over the mines, scraping off paint samples into a specimen envelope. Conscious of Cowley and Danilov behind him, he said, “The same as the Lincoln Memorial.”

  Abruptly, into their earpieces, a voice from Pereulok Kalasnyj said, “An Audi’s just drawn up. It’s Naina Karpov!”

  “Out!” ordered Cowley. “Everybody out!”

  He and Danilov remained with the entry specialists reattaching the traps and alarms to the inner door. As they got to the outer garage door, the Kalasnyj voice said, “The light’s gone out in Leanov’s apartment.” Then, minutes later. “They’re coming out. On their way to you.”