Danilov didn’t understand the remark. The American’s face was rigidly impassive. Forcing himself on, waveringly close to being knocked off psychological balance himself by the obvious inference, Cowley said: ‘You were forming links between the Chechen in Moscow, the Genovese in New York and the Liccio here in Sicily.’
Zimin studiously examined his fingernails, not bothering to answer. Danilov was reminded of the encounter with Anripov, not realising how much more fragile Zimin’s attitude was. ‘Tell us why Ivan Ignatsevich Ignatov was murdered? Shot in the mouth.’
‘I don’t know anyone named Ivan Ignatsevich Ignatov.’
Cowley wished Danilov had not intruded. ‘Tell me about the Chechen.’ He anticipated the rejection, expecting nothing that day. But the interview wasn’t wasted. He was studying the man, deciding the pressures.
‘I don’t know who or what the Chechen is.’
Through the frustration, Danilov thought that at least this bastard wouldn’t escape justice, like Antipov.
‘You frightened, Maksim?’ said Cowley. ‘I’d be, if I were you. Frightened as hell.’
The Russian didn’t reply.
‘I’m right, you know. About going to jail. You any idea what it’ll be like, in a cage for the rest of your life?’
Zimin stayed silent.
So, too, did Danilov. He guessed the American was using a trained approach, and determined against interfering until he realised what it was.
‘You won’t do well in jail,’ persisted Cowley. ‘Look at you! Soft! Flabby! They’ll make you into a girl in jail. Fuck you, when they like, how they like. Think about that, Maksim! Think what it’s going to be like being held down while everyone takes their turn. No-one to protect you any more.’
There was a nearly imperceptible twitch to the man’s face, and a hot smell came across the table from him. ‘Stop bothering.’
‘I’m not the one who’s going to be bothered,’ Cowley went on. ‘You’re not looking forward to being a jail whore, are you? You’ll become infected, of course. Venereal disease if you don’t get AIDs. Cancer develops from anal venereal disease. Did you know that?’ According to the Quantico lectures there had to be the fear of physical violence or assault. Maybe the thought of homosexual rape would not be enough, if the man were gay. How did he know about the photographs? He would have to be fairly high ranking within the Chechen. Which followed, Cowley reasoned: nobody unimportant would have come to set up this operation. Could Zimin be the don that Italian rumours had suggested?
Danilov thought he guessed the approach. ‘If you talked to us – told us all we want to know – we’d try to help.’ Could they cut a deal? The idea of making any arrangement with someone like Zimin offended him, but it would bejustified if it solved everything else. Edging towards another compromise, he thought.
Zimin came forward in his chair, hands fisted hard before him, his face wet. ‘I’m not going to jail! I didn’t take part in any killing.’
‘Of course you’re going to jail,’ insisted Danilov. ‘I’m personally going to see that you do. You talk to us sensibly and I’ll intercede for you. But go on being stupid and you’re going to be locked away forever.’
Zimin strove for bravado. ‘You seem very interested in my ass. So I’ll do you a favour. I’ll let you kiss it. How about that? You like to kiss my ass? It’s yours.’
Danilov grinned at the man. ‘No, I don’t want to kiss your ass. But you’re going to be kissing mine, before we’re through: before we’re through you’re going to be grovelling on the ground, begging me to help you. You and Zavorin and Amasov.’
None of them did, not that day.
After Zimin, they tried to question Ivan Zavorin, a thin, neat, clerk-like man with fidgeting eyes and a stutter, neither of which emerged as nervousness they could break. The attitude was different from Boris Amasov, but the refusal was the same. Instead of offering supercilious rejection or ignorance of what had been going on, the fat-bellied, hugeshouldered man with a knife scar down the right side of his face was mulishly stubborn, remaining mute, not responding to anything he was asked.
They had arranged nightly conferences. Everyone assembled depressed in Melega’s room. Melega had had the only minor success: the oldest of the three Sicilians had been identified as Antonio Liccio, the son of the man who had given his name to the Mafia clan and who was on the ‘most wanted’ list of twelve Mafia dons. The other two were brothers, Victor and Umberto Chiara. There were outstanding indictments against all three, the majority for organised crime offences: it meant they could be held for as long as the Italians chose, without any of the current charges having to be proffered until their eventual questioning by the examining magistrate was completed. Liccio had openly challenged Melega to produce a judge brave enough to hear a case against them.
Barclay Smith’s only contribution was that Palma spoke Italian as well as he did English, but wouldn’t volunteer anything in either language: he had replied to each attempted question by demanding access to a lawyer. His only remark apart from that had been to insist he had been unarmed and taken no part in the shooting. Reminded, Danilov asked Melega about the weapons in the farmhouse. All that had been recovered were the traditional Mafia wolf-hunting shotguns: all bore the fingerprints of the Sicilians, none of the others.
‘So Palma and the Russians do have a defence that they didn’t take part in the shoot-out!’
‘Under our law they are equally guilty,’ insisted Melega.
‘But a plea for a reduced sentence could be entered in mitigation?’ pressed Cowley.
‘It’s possible,’ conceded the Italian.
Danilov had an abrupt but vivid recollection of a shuddering man leaking blood all over him, and became hot with anger at the thought of any of them escaping with legal tricks. It was worse for not knowing how he could prevent it.
‘I can break Zimin,’ declared Cowley quietly. ‘I’m sure I can break him.’
There were doubtful looks from everyone else in the room.
Initially the doubt seemed justified.
Day followed day and separate interrogation followed separate interrogation without anyone in the Mafia groups collapsing. Cowley discussed his approach with Danilov, who always let the American lead the encounters with Zimin with the ridicule and threats of jail violence. Several times they both thought the man was going to break, but always he seemed to pull himself back from the very edge. At their nightly review, at the end of the fifth day, Melega said that although there was no concern about the Sicilians, because of the already existing charges, the Italian prosecutors were becoming unsettled at the delay in formal accusations being put against Palma and the Russians: it could be a defence that they had been unfairly subjected to duress, with legal representation withheld.
‘I want to do something,’ declared Cowley. He’d endured each day’s questioning with foreboding of further jibes about souvenir photographs, which hadn’t come. It had, he supposed, been naive to expect them. The first remark had been a warning, of a bargaining demand yet to come. It could be soon, if the Italian agreed to what he wanted.
When he explained, Melega said: ‘It’s a trick.’
‘It’ll work,’ insisted Cowley. I hope, he thought.
It was far worse than any jail pit into which they had ever descended, which surprised Danilov because he’d thought nothing could be as bad as Russian penitentiaries.
The noise was first, hardly recognisable as human sounds: a muttering, growling hum like a beehive where the insects crawl one over the other. And then there was the smell. It was a stomach-souring, retching stink of every conceivable body odour and stench.
They had made Zimin shower and given him cologne, which he had applied, with no way of knowing. The noise came close to a roar – the automatic reaction to authority entering the Rebibbia dungeons – but then Zimin was picked out between them, manacled to identify him from Cowley and Danilov and the guards, and the cacophony began, the shouts and the calls, disto
rted faces at cell bars and metal – screened windows. There were a lot of arms reaching out, with grasping fingers. They made Zimin walk the entire length of the cell block, slowly, controlling his pace by the tethering chain. The Russian began to shake before he reached the end, trying to pull himself among them, for protection or to hide.
‘This is where you’ll be,’ said Cowley.
‘No! Please no!’
A cell had been cleared, at the very end, although it hadn’t been cleaned. When he realised he was being led towards it Zimin tried to fight and finally fell, crying, to the ground. He’d won, Cowley knew. The bastard was too terrified even to remember the photographs. He would, though.
The girl, who was freshly bathed and who had already begun her careful, unobtrusive make-up, reacted at once to the telephone because it was the time the telephone started to ring, the start of her working day. She said of course she was free: she could fit in with whatever arrangement. She’d be waiting for him, she promised.
‘A full night?’ It was always important to establish things at the very beginning. He’d been very demanding last time.
‘All evening, all night. That a problem?’
‘Not at all. I just didn’t want to commit myself elsewhere.’
‘Don’t do that. Dollars, like last time?’
She hesitated, wondering whether to bargain, but decided against it. ‘That’ll be fine.’
‘Two hours?’
‘I’ll be there.’
The girl’s name was Lena Zurov. She was twenty-eight years old, and a professional and extremely successful prostitute operating in a very select Moscow circle.
Five thousand miles away, Michael Rafferty grinned up from the latest package to arrive from Geneva and said to his partner: ‘They may be getting all the glory and all the shit in Rome, but you know who’s going to put this baby to bed? The good old Swiss police! And us, because we’ve made the connection.’ He flicked the photograph across the desk to Johannsen. ‘Look at that!’
The forbidden cigar-smoking had increased in the past weeks, so that Gusovsky was sometimes racked by paroxysms of coughing; it happened now, stopping the conversation. No-one – not even Yerin – risked reminding the man of the medical ban. The smoke had further fogged the rear room of the Pecatnikov club, already thick with that of his henchmen’s Marlboros. Antipov waited with the rest for the spasm to be over.
‘It went well?’ gasped the Mafia head.
‘Wonderfully,’ smiled the hitman, a remark as much for his own amusement as an answer to the question. She always had been one of the best.
‘You didn’t make any mistakes?’ demanded Yerin, remembering Washington.
‘None,’ insisted Antipov.
‘Kosov has some explaining to do,’ said Gusovsky, quite recovered. ‘He said everything was safe and it wasn’t. Get him here, to talk to me. Don’t hurt him. Just get him here.’
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
The terror was still juddering through Maksim Zimin when he was led into the interview room. He smelled foul and Cowley guessed he’d wet himself, perhaps worse. He looked with undisguised hatred at both of them, his gaze remaining on the American.
‘You quite sure now?’ said Cowley.
‘Bastard!’ It was a hoarse whimper, without any force, the man had screamed so much. ‘You know what I’m going to do! And enjoy doing it.’
‘Wait!’ warned Cowley, not to put off the inevitable but to get as much as they could before it came: he still delayed switching on the tape recorder. ‘You don’t have them: I guess your people have, but you don’t. We’re not dealing with that, not now. What we’re going to decide today is whether what you tell us is good enough to stop us putting you back in the hole, like last night. And we will. If you fuck us about maybe we’ll even give you a shared cell. And go on doing it until we’re satisfied we’ve got it all. You clear on that?’
Danilov sat on the sidelines, bewildered. There’d been no rehearsal, as there hadn’t when the American had recognised the man as a bully who could be broken, and Danilov didn’t have any idea what this latest exchange was about. Once again he decided to wait, until he got a guide from his colleague.
‘Bastard!’ said Zimin again, louder this time.
‘You’re wasting time: risking going back down below. Don’t be stupid.’ Cowley had realised the previous night there was no way the man would have been carrying copies of the photographs – the photographs Cowley, in fact, did have, locked in the briefcase at his hotel.
‘You’ll deal!’ It was meant as a threat but it came out more as a question. ‘My people will make you deal.’
Not just a bully but a fool, thought Cowley. The man had just confirmed who the blackmailers were. It hardly mattered. He couldn’t use the information to any benefit.
Did Zimin imagine the American had more influence in Italy than he did, as a Russian? thought Danilov. It had been Cowley who’d manipulated the man’s collapse, so he might think so.
Beside him Cowley depressed the start button on the recording machine and said: ‘You’re Chechen, right?’
Momentarily Zimin hesitated, and Cowley thought he was going to go on with the threats. Then he said: ‘Yes.’
‘What level?’
‘Komitet.’
‘Inner council?’
‘Yes.’
‘How many?’
‘Three.’
High, seized Danilov triumphantly: high enough to explain everything, surely!
‘What was the meeting for, in Sicily?’ Another Quantico lesson was that the more they talked, the easier the flow became.
‘Big. The biggest ever …’
‘For them? Or you?’
‘Biggest ever for the Chechen.’
‘How big?’
‘Ten million.’
‘Which currency?’ The man was exaggerating, trying to make himself sound more important.
‘Dollars.’
‘You don’t have access to ten million dollars!’ challenged Danilov, deciding the intrusion was necessary, thinking the same as Cowley. They wanted the truth, not lies from a man trying to avoid being thrown back into the horror they’d shown him. The profit from crime in Moscow had to be enormous, but there couldn’t be this much.
‘There’s more. Ten million was all I was authorised to negotiate this time.’
‘For what?’ Cowley decided to let the man believe he was successfully bullshitting them until he tripped over his own lies. Then he’d threaten the hole again.
‘Drugs,’ declared Zimin. ‘Heroin, from the Liccio people here. Cocaine through the Genovese, from Latin America …’ Zimin went between the two investigators. ‘There’s a huge market, everywhere in the world. The idea was to make it two way. We were going to set up an organisation in Georgia: move heroin and marijuana from Uzbekistan and Kazakstan … ship it out through the Black Sea to the Mediterranean to here …’
Zimin was being clever, thought Cowley: mixing what could have been fact with fiction. Before he could make the intended threat, Danilov said: ‘You’re lying! You don’t have ten million dollars!’
‘So you’re going back to the hole!’ supported Cowley, reaching out to turn off the recording machine.
‘No!’ wailed Zimin. ‘There is the money!’
‘From where?’ demanded Cowley. ‘The truth!’
‘Government money!’
The announcement momentarily stopped both investigators, each coming towards the same conclusion from different directions. Cowley guessed it was going to throw the entire American government into the biggest loop of this or any other administration. Danilov decided what they were hearing would be officially blocked and diverted and derailed and that all along he’d been a puppet, dancing on a string to convince the Americans of co-operation never intended. It’s like a dub, everyone looking after each other. Leonid Lapinsk’s cynicism echoed in his mind, more like a jeer than a warning.
Danilov spoke first. ‘Are you telling us �
� wanting us to believe – your presence here is known about by the Russian government … that it’s somehow official?’ The man could still be lying. But Petr Serov had been a Russian diplomat. And Oleg Yasev, a senior and as yet unchallenged Foreign Ministry man, had withheld a name-identifying document. And Gennardi Fedorov, who’d gone to Serov’s funeral, was attached to the Finance Ministry.
‘Not the government,’ groped Zimin, who’d started to sweat badly. ‘Not the government in control now!’
‘You’re not making sense!’ protested Cowley.
‘Listen to me!’ pleaded Zimin. ‘It was the coup!’
The American remained lost. For Danilov the fog was still thick, but there were shapes vaguely forming. Serov’s concealed diary-entry dates connected perfectly with the August 1991 attempt by the desperate Communist hardliners to overthrow Mikhail Gorbachov and reverse the reforms he had initiated. Danilov’s awareness grew. Billions had been stolen: stolen and never recovered. A government commission had been established to investigate. If he was correctly interpreting what Zimin was saying, the exposure – if it ever were exposed – would be sensational.
‘How much, in total?’
‘We don’t know!’ insisted Zimin. ‘Twenty million at least.’
‘We’re talking about the Communist Party funds that were looted? And have never been found?’
‘Of course we are!’ said Zimin, almost impatiently.
Conscious of the need to get it audibly on the slowly revolving tape, Danilov said: ‘The Chechen, a Moscow Mafia organisation, have access to twenty million dollars of looted Communist Party funds?’
‘That’s right.’
Both Danilov and Cowley were curious at the sly smile that accompanied the admission.
‘In Moscow?’ pressed Danilov.
‘No.’
‘No, it wasn’t, was it:’ understood the American. ‘It’s in Switzerland! Michel Paulac was looking after it: the local man administering it!’
‘Only government officials – Communist government officials – would have been able to move a sum of money that large out of Russia?’ suggested Danilov.
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