No Time for Heroes

by Brian Freemantle

  ‘If Antipov gets picked up it’ll take all the heat out of any protest,’ Cowley pointed out.

  ‘I know,’ accepted the Russian. He was glad professionally, but disappointed personally.

  ‘What about another meeting with Raisa Serova?’

  ‘Why don’t we try tomorrow?’ suggested Danilov. He’d have to contact the Foreign Ministry escort, he supposed. He frowned and then remembered: Oleg Yasev. Reminded by one new name, he thought of the other three Lapinsk had given him. Pavin would have exhausted criminal records by now. He’d have to ask what progress there was with the ministry personnel registries.

  He walked Cowley from the building, to phone Larissa from a street kiosk out of Ludmilla Radsic’s hearing. Larissa, who was working days, wasn’t sure if a room were free. He wanted to lunch, Danilov insisted.

  Although there genuinely was no time for anything else, Danilov remained uneasy about intruding his personal affairs into the middle of a day. Pavin’s obvious surprise, when he said he was making a private enquiry but would telephone before going to the Ministry, didn’t ease the feeling. Pavin didn’t know of Larissa, of course, but Danilov was sure he guessed there was another woman.

  Another of the reception managers who shared the same vacant room arrangement as he and Larissa recognised Danilov and smiled conspiratorially as he entered the hotel. He would, Danilov decided, be glad when all the deceit was over. Larissa was waiting beyond a curve in the reception area. She walked towards him head high, bringing her breasts up and with her hips undulating, and several men in the lobby turned to enjoy her progress.

  ‘You trying to tell somebody something?’

  She laughed at him. ‘Only what you’re missing. There isn’t a room.’

  ‘I said I wanted to eat lunch with you.’

  She took his arm as they went towards the restaurant: over Larissa’s shoulder he saw the other reception manager smile at them. Because Larissa was managerial staff and recognised they were seated and given menus at once, and the wine Danilov ordered was served within minutes. Russian favour-for-favour philosophy working on automatic pilot, Danilov thought: it seemed a long time since he’d frightened the garage and supply managers at Petrovka. They’d be praying for the murder investigation to last for ever: but then he did not really want it to end either.

  ‘You look fantastic,’ said Danilov. It wasn’t empty flattery. Unlike Olga, he’d never seen Larissa untidy or uncared for: the clothes always appeared just to have been put on – even after the times they’d practically torn them off – her hair was always perfectly coiffeured, her make-up never blurred. Wrong to compare the two: unfair, as well. Olga didn’t know there was a comparison. Larissa did.

  ‘How was America?’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Solve the crime?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Saw in the papers you were enjoying yourself.’

  It would have been the same photograph of him leaving the Georgetown restaurant to which Olga had referred. He said: ‘What shifts did you work, when I was away?’

  She looked at him curiously. ‘Days. Why?’

  So Larissa wouldn’t have been working when Kosov had taken Olga to the Metropole and on to a nightclub. ‘I just wondered.’

  ‘You going to be jealous of me when we’re married?’

  ‘I’m not jealous.’ What was it he’d felt watching the other men look at her in the lobby?

  ‘You blushed and looked guilty when Natalia smiled at you from the desk. I saw you!’ she teased.

  ‘I didn’t,’ he denied, pointlessly.

  ‘She thinks you’re nice,’ disclosed Larissa. ‘Everyone knows who you are, after what was in the newspapers and on television.’

  ‘I’ll be taking the American out while he’s here. Socially.’ He stared down at the blubbery pork that was placed in front of him, knowing he’d made a mistake.

  Larissa looked up at him questioningly. She’d been more sensible, ordering fish.

  ‘Olga thought it might be nice if we all went out together: her and you and Yevgennie,’ he went on.

  ‘I’d like that,’ Larissa said at once. ‘So would Yevgennie: it would make the asshole feel important.’

  ‘I thought the Metropole, perhaps?’

  She pulled another face. ‘Very impressive!’

  ‘You been there before?’

  ‘A few times. Yevgennie likes it. He can show off.’

  ‘Olga liked it, when he took her.’

  Larissa stopped eating, her fork poised half way between her plate and her mouth. ‘You’re joking!’

  ‘Didn’t you know?’

  ‘No!’ She shook her head, disbelievingly. ‘You’re not serious, are you?’

  ‘Olga said the Metropole was wonderful: told me about Yevgennie’s new car with dials in the front that light up.’

  Larissa pushed her plate aside. ‘Wouldn’t it be the funniest thing! Olga and Yevgennie …!’ She giggled.’Who’s going to tell them we don’t mind, you or me?’

  He didn’t like Larissa dismissing it as a joke, which he at once accepted was absurd. After his hypocrisy there would be an almost natural justice in Yevgennie Grigorevich and Olga having an affair. Could they be? Of course they could. Should he mind? Whether or not he should didn’t enter his reasoning. He did. The thought of Kosov making love to Olga offended him and the thought of his making love to Larissa offended him, although Larissa insisted it didn’t happen between them any more and hadn’t for a long time, years in fact. ‘I don’t understand it.’

  ‘Does it matter?’ she asked seriously. ‘I thought we had decisions to make when you got back? So? You’re back.’

  ‘I can’t do anything now. Not right in the middle of this case! That’s unreasonable and you know it!’ He hadn’t intended to sound so indignant.

  ‘When’s it going to end?’ She sounded indignant in return.

  ‘I don’t know. It could be soon.’

  ‘As soon as it’s over?’

  ‘As soon as it’s over.’ Danilov had the feeling of having said the same words before: but he was sure that if he had, Larissa would have challenged him about it.

  ‘I’ve decided how we’ll do it,’ she declared. ‘At the same time. We’ll choose a day and you tell Olga and I’ll tell Yevgennie.’ She smiled, sympathetically. ‘It’ll be easier for me. Yevgennie doesn’t care: he’s been fucking everything including knot-holes in wood since the day we got married. Olga doesn’t suspect anything, does she?’

  ‘She made some remark, a long time ago, that you and I seemed to get on well together. I don’t think she meant anything by it.’

  ‘It would be nice if we could stay friends, afterwards. With Olga I mean. It probably won’t happen, but it would be nice.’

  ‘I’d like that,’ agreed Danilov. ‘I won’t say anything to her, about her and Yevgennie. She told me, after all, so it can’t mean anything.’

  ‘I’m not interested enough to ask Yevgennie,’ dismissed Larissa.

  Danilov’s own words echoed in his head. It might not have meant anything to Olga, apart from a rare outing to places she didn’t normally go, but he belatedly remembered Olga telling him Kosov had asked about the Mafia investigation. ‘Yevgennie said anything else about me? About the job?’

  Larissa examined him over her wine glass. ‘You think that’s why he took Olga out? Trying to find out something about you?’

  Larissa was remarkably astute as well as being beautiful. ‘I don’t know,’ he avoided.

  ‘He’s taken me to places … restaurant and clubs …’ she offered slowly. ‘There have been people there he’s friendly with. I don’t like them.’ The movement didn’t amount to a shudder, but it came close.

  ‘What’s the new car like?’

  ‘German. Very luxurious.’

  ‘From his friends?’

  ‘Who else?’

  None of the black marketeers to whom he’d introduced Kosov had ever been grateful enough to offer him a limousine,
reflected Danilov. Thinking of how he had been rewarded, Danilov looked at his watch. Distrusting it, he checked with the restaurant clock and saw, surprised, that it was registering the correct time. ‘I have to go.’

  ‘Arrange the evening, with the American,’ said Larissa. She allowed a gap. ‘I’ll tell you, if Yevgennie says anything. About you.’

  ‘I want you to.’

  ‘I think he’s jealous of you,’ she said. ‘It’s nothing more than that.’

  ‘I’m not sure he’s jealous,’ said Danilov. He thought Kosov was altogether more than that.

  There was nothing new when he telephoned Pavin, at Petrovka.

  Rafferty and Johannsen had rarely had it so good and were determined to keep it that way. They were beyond the reach of their own precinct, on permanent secondment to the Bureau. And with Cowley in Russia things were on hold, although both were far too clever to let that become obvious. They worked out of an anteroom to Cowley’s office, which enabled them to appear constantly surrounded by illustration boards and annotated folders and exhibit lists. They maintained case records in immaculate order, creating a separate section for what Cowley sent back from Moscow. They used the telephone a lot, particularly when anyone looked into the room, direct dialling personal calls: Johannsen spoke to relatives in Stockholm he normally only communicated with in a card, at Christmas. Rafferty confidently got tickets for baseball games, knowing he could always make them. They harassed their DC colleagues two or three times a day for any progress at street level on the two murders, despite being told to go fuck themselves, and made friends with the security staff at the Swiss embassy, through whom anything might emerge concerning Michel Paulac. The interesting photographs came from there in the middle of the second week.

  ‘Now lookee here!’ said Rafferty, as they drove away. Johannsen was at the wheel. They’d decided to lunch at a seafood place an FBI agent had recommended up on the bay shore, near Annapolis.

  ‘You want me to crash the car or you going to tell me without my having to look?’ asked Johannsen.

  ‘Three pictures,’ announced Rafferty. ‘According to the covering note, Swiss security think they show our man Paulac with three men who could be Russian.’

  ‘Serov?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘They look Russian?’

  ‘What’s a Russian look like, for Christ’s sake! Baggy-pants days are over: these guys are into Gucci and Ralph Lauren now.’

  ‘Where do the photographs come from?’

  There was a rustle of paper and turned-over prints as Rafferty shuffled through the package. ‘Private party, hosted by Paulac, at some restaurant overlooking the lake …’ He was silent, reading for a moment. ‘… Somewhere around October, 1991.’

  ‘Looks like a comparison run past every Russian picture the Bureau have on record,’ said Johannsen. ‘We should start tomorrow.’

  ‘And if we blank out, we send them to Cowley in Moscow. There’s only about a hundred million Russians. Should be a piece of cake for him to get a match.’ The previous day they had told Cowley there were no police or FBI records on any of the Moscow Mafia names he’d supplied.

  ‘What about asking the Swiss to go through their entry files for incoming Russians, for say September, October and November, 1991?’ suggested Johannsen.

  ‘Christ, you’re a clever detective!’ mocked Rafferty.

  ‘I fancy shrimp,’ said Johannsen. ‘Shrimp and then a nice big crab. You think there’s crab available at this time of the year?’

  ‘Smart detective like you should be able to find one,’ said his partner.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Danilov saw at once that Metkin was not there. But Nikolai Smolin was: Danilov was still curious at the Federal Prosecutor being excluded from the departure briefing. At once he announced the identification of Mikhail Antipov from the recovered murder weapon, conscious of the palpable relief that went through the other three men. But it was limited, by objectivity. The Deputy Interior Minister said: ‘Getting a name isn’t getting the man.’

  ‘All available officers from the Bureau are being supplemented by uniformed Militia wherever and whenever necessary,’ assured Danilov.

  ‘Do the Americans know?’ demanded Oskin.

  ‘Cowley attended the briefing at which the search was organised.’

  Sergei Vorobie frowned. ‘Which brings us to the original purpose of this meeting, the formal protest Note handed to our ambassador in Washington. The identification of the killer greatly mitigates the problem, but it is exactly the sort of diplomat embarrassment we wanted to avoid. And warned you about. Why did the American tell you in advance he was making a complaint?’

  Danilov decided at once why Metkin wasn’t present. These men regarded him, the recognised officer leading the investigation, as the man responsible for the fiasco. Limiting himself to the question, Danilov said: ‘I regarded it as a matter of courtesy.’

  ‘Don’t you also regard it as arrogant of the man to raise it as high as he did? Making it official like this?’ asked Vasili Oskin.

  Danilov hesitated. ‘The mistakes were serious, at the time endangering the entire investigation. And couldn’t be rectified.’

  ‘Why were mistakes made?’ said Smolin.

  He was being blamed! It was easily defensible and he was going to have to rebut the accusation, but he had wanted any internal enquiry at least begun independently of himself, so there could not be any later charges of a vendetta or personal animosity. ‘I can’t answer that. I was not here when the body was found: when the investigation was started.’

  ‘Who could answer?’ demanded Oskin, unusually loud voiced.

  Why were they forcing him to name the Director, from whom it was obvious the answers had to come? And why wasn’t the man here, either at his own request or at their demand? From the call he’d made to Pavin from the Druzhba hotel he knew Metkin hadn’t made any enquiry about the investigation during his absence: that didn’t make sense, either. ‘Anatoli Nikolaevich Metkin is the Director.’

  ‘Who supervised the initial enquiry?’ persisted Oskin.

  ‘Senior investigating colonel Vladimir Kabalin,’ supplied Danilov. This encounter wasn’t going at all how he had expected: at that moment he wasn’t sure how it was going. Despite his intended determination specifically to avoid the role, they were making him the accuser: and isolating themselves from any damaging fall-out by doing nothing other than properly reacting as their official positions might later require. Communism had institutionalised everyone, Danilov decided: made everyone frightened of offending an unknown higher authority.

  ‘Tell us, in absolute and precise detail, what wasn’t done,’ insisted Smolin.

  First accused, then accuser, now the prosecutor. Throughout the litany of failures, a recitation of beginning-to-end facts from the moment of their arrival at the river bank, the three men sat regarding him impassively. At the end Vorobie said: ‘That’s appalling. Inconceivable.’

  With me as much a victim as Ivan Ignatsevich Ignatov, thought Danilov.

  ‘If we arrest Antipov, and from him understand the connection between the killing here and those in Washington, we might be able to avoid giving the explanation the Americans are demanding,’ suggested Smolin.

  ‘According to the ambassador, the Americans think an organised crime group is operating out of our embassy with the tacit awareness if not the positive encouragement of the Russian government!’ declared Vorobie. ‘The fact that Antipov is a proven gangster is a virtual confirmation.’

  ‘We can deny official knowledge,’ insisted Smolin.

  ‘We already have!’ said Vorobie irritably. ‘How the hell can we be believed when an accredited, murdered Russian diplomat provably had the names of Russian gangsters secretly in his possession? I wouldn’t believe any denial myself! No-one would!’

  Someone had to know what the names were doing there, thought Danilov. Who? Was it one of these two ministers, calmly lying, sure of remaining undiscovered
because they were on the inside of the investigation, aware of everything that was happening?

  ‘The Americans should not have been allowed to know of the names,’ said Oskin critically.

  ‘I didn’t know they were names,’ defended Danilov. ‘They were meaningless letters until a computer made sense of them.’

  ‘The whole thing has been a shambles,’ said Smolin.

  ‘It has not been a shambles!’ protested Danilov. ‘I was not responsible for the American protest.’

  No-one knew for several moments how to continue. Then Oskin said: ‘We must get Antipov! And quickly. Why don’t we bring in the Security Ministry, too?’

  ‘A manhunt that wide would leak,’ cautioned Danilov, careless of the obvious inference of corruption throughout enforcement agencies. ‘If Antipov learns of it he’ll cross into any one of the former Soviet republics and be safe. I can’t pursue him there, not any more.’

  There was another brief silence, broken again by Oskin. ‘If we don’t get him quickly – a week at the outside – the Security Ministry will be brought in.’

  ‘Definitely no more than a week,’ endorsed Vorobie.

  Smolin’s nod made the suggestion unanimous.

  Danilov decided he had not emerged well from the encounter.

  ‘Let’s hope there’s nothing else to harm relations between us and Washington before we get him,’ said Oskin.

  It was a forlorn hope.

  The following day’s story given by the mayor to the Washington Post detailed everything down to the Mafia identities being found in Serov’s papers, and named Ignatov as the third victim. But to protect Elliott Jones as the source it carried a Moscow dateline, giving the impression the news came from a Russian informant.

  The media circus everyone had wanted to avoid cranked into gear.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  The man who opened the door to Raisa Serova’s apartment was tall and straw-haired, aged about forty. Surprisingly deep black eyes were shielded behind rimless, medically tinted spectacles. The suit was well cut, conservative grey. When Danilov introduced Cowley, Oleg Yasev said: ‘I was not told an American was to be present!’