No Time for Heroes

by Brian Freemantle

  ‘I suppose so,’ agreed Zimin.

  That was slightly off centre, as if the man knew a lot but not all, even though he claimed to be on the governing committee of the crime family. Where was the key? Was it in the past, in August 1991? Or maybe earlier: as early as May of that year, the very first time a name still unexplained appeared in the Serov documents? Abruptly, Danilov said: ‘Who is Ilya Iosifivich Nishin?’

  Danilov was unsure if the frown was of genuine ignorance or surprise that he had the name. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You must!’ pressed Cowley. He was sure he would be tainted with the man’s stink.

  ‘I don’t!’

  Nishin was important, Danilov determined. And he thought at last he knew the direction in which to look, to fit another piece into the puzzle. It would have needed a government official to move at least $20,000,000 out of Russia. But the coup had collapsed so quickly it would have had to be moved prior to the attempt, because there was no time afterwards! May, 1991 – when Ilya Nishin had visited Geneva and then Washington – was very significant. His mind on Switzerland, Danilov said: ‘Why was Michel Paulac killed?’

  ‘He was stupid. Wouldn’t listen.’

  ‘To what?’ came in Cowley.

  ‘That control was going to change.’

  ‘Control of the money in Switzerland?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘To the Chechen?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘From whom?’

  ‘The Ostankino.’

  Finally it was settling into place! Danilov asked: ‘Why was Serov killed?’

  ‘A warning.’

  ‘Who to?’

  ‘Those who had to realise it.’

  ‘Why was Ignatov murdered?’ demanded Cowley.

  ‘A warning again.’

  ‘Who to?’

  ‘The Ostankino.’ He paused. ‘I’m getting tired.’

  ‘There’s a cell downstairs, in the basement, where you can rest if you want,’ said Cowley relentlessly. ‘“Control was changing.” Changing from the Ostankino to the Chechen?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So the Ostankino had the money first?’

  ‘Thought they did.’

  ‘How did the Chechen learn about it?’

  Zimin shifted uncomfortably in his seat, and Cowley decided the man had fouled himself. The Russian said: ‘A recruit.’

  One of the August 1991 ringleaders had been KGB chairman Vladimir Kryuchkov: whose all-embracing, all-knowing, all-pervasive intelligence organisation had probably been the most hard-hit casualty. ‘There were a lot of unemployed, weren’t there? He must have been high ranking, before. Or been in some administrative position, to learn things?’ It was a supposition, but Danilov was sure it was a correct one.

  ‘What was the rank?’ chanced Cowley, joining in the guess.

  ‘Colonel,’ conceded Zimin.

  ‘We need to get names,’ said Danilov. ‘Why don’t we start with his?’

  ‘Visco,’ said the man. ‘Georgi Petrovich.’

  ‘Go on,’ prompted Cowley.

  Zimin nervously allowed himself a faint sneer. He said: ‘The KGB had a file on us. On all the Families. Visco knew a lot, about everyone.’ He smiled openly at Danilov. ‘There were files on co-operative people in the Militia, too. The most comprehensive details of all were about the transfer to Switzerland of the Party funds. He’d heard about it from another KGB officer, Anatoli Zuyev, who had links with the Ostankino and who had somehow – he didn’t know how – been involved.’

  Quantico’s teaching had been right, Cowley thought: once the floodgates opened, the disclosures poured through. ‘Let’s go on with names! All the Chechen! And the Ostankino: as many as you know!’

  Zimin’s list came to twenty-two, eighteen from his own organisation. The ultimate leadership, the other two on the komitet, were Arkadi Pavlovich Gusovsky and Alexandr Dorovich Yerin.

  ‘More!’ demanded Danilov, following an idea. ‘What is Ivan Zavorin, the man with you?’

  ‘Money man. Accountant.’

  ‘Boris Amasov, the other one?’

  ‘A bull.’

  ‘Like Mikhail Antipov!’ seized Danilov.

  For the second time, Zimin risked something approaching a sneer. ‘Pity you had to release him. An embarrassment.’ At the word the man focused on Cowley, seeming about to speak, but at the last minute he changed his mind.

  ‘Those amenable people you learned about from your KGB recruit?’ said Danilov. ‘Anatoli Metkin one of them? Vladimir Kabalin another?’ He intentionally stopped short of mentioning Kosov.

  ‘Please let me stop,’ pleaded Zimin. ‘I’ve done a lot: told you a lot.’

  They were all tired, Danilov accepted. If they went on they risked becoming overwhelmed, losing sight of what they were getting.

  ‘Not enough,’ refused Cowley.

  ‘Tomorrow,’ said the man, still pleading. ‘But don’t send me back: please don’t send me back!’

  Cowley looked enquiringly at Danilov, who nodded. The American snapped the machine off. With the recording off, Zimin said: ‘You will help me? I’ll tell you everything, but you must help me.’

  He wouldn’t, Cowley knew. But they’d already got far more than he’d expected. ‘You won’t be sent back tonight. What happens tomorrow depends on what you tell us tomorrow. Before then you can clean yourself up.’

  The meeting with Melega and Barclay Smith was the first in which they had anything worthwhile to exchange. Melega said, pessimistically, they might have prevented the link-up this time, but another would succeed soon. The local FBI agent just said: ‘Jesus!’ Neither was hopeful what they knew now would pressure the people they were questioning into any confirmation or new disclosure. Danilov argued there were still unresolved enquiries in Russia and America which could be hampered by any publicity about the confession, which would be better kept until the eventual trial. Melega reluctantly agreed.

  After the conference, Cowley and Danilov separated to their different embassies to send their cables. For each of them, incoming messages were waiting.

  Cowley was told of the possible Geneva photographic identification of Ilya Nishin and that scientists at Quantico, working through the sample instruments provided from Moscow, believed they had isolated the number dialled on Yevgennie Kosov’s car telephone, from which they could trace an address.

  After a day solving a lot of mysteries the information at the embassy for Dimitri Danilov created another one, but he put it aside, more anxious to understand the bewildering exchange between the American and Zimin, at the beginning of that morning’s interrogation.

  Cowley was already in the cocktail lounge at the Bernini Bristol when Danilov got back to the hotel. The Russian accepted a drink at the bar but carried it away to a table, making Cowley follow him.

  Quoting, Danilov said: ‘“Bastard! You know what I’m going to do! And enjoy doing it.”’ He waited several moments. ‘What is it Zimin doesn’t have but “his people” do?’

  ‘You told us it was safe! Specifically! That’s what you had to do! All you had to do: find out!’ Gusovsky’s voice was frighteningly quiet.

  ‘That’s what he told me!’ protested Kosov ‘He was going back to Washington! The investigation was virtually over.’

  ‘Why would he trick you?’ demanded Gusovsky.

  ‘I don’t know!’

  ‘You’ve got to find out,’ said Yerin, looking blank-eyed at the Militia colonel. ‘And you’ve also got to find out what’s happening in Italy: if anyone’s talking.’

  ‘I’ll try.’

  ‘No,’ said Yerin. ‘You won’t try. You’ll find out. And if you don’t, we’ll kill you.’

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  Danilov laid the photographs aside after glancing at only four or five, uninterested in the rest. He thought the girl was very pretty. Her body reminded him of Larissa: a lot of the activity, too. ‘I didn’t need to see them.’

  ‘A lot of people are going to, v
ery soon now.’ They were in Cowley’s hotel room. He collected the prints from the table and put them back in his briefcase, as if wanting to hide them away again as quickly as possible. The man was physically bowed, pressed down by a burden he couldn’t finally support.

  Danilov wasn’t sure whether the remark was cynicism or self-pity: perhaps a mixture of both. He had a sickening feeling a very recent puzzle was to become very clear very quickly: he wanted to hear everything Cowley had to say, before telling the American.

  ‘There are newspapers and magazines in Moscow now who would publish them: not the most explicit, but some.’

  ‘In America they’d even use the explicit ones,’ accepted Cowley. He hadn’t detected any criticism or disgust from the Russian. It was important to make the other man understand it wouldn’t jeopardise the investigation.

  The query came suddenly to Danilov. ‘She was in the bar for about a week before you went with her?’

  ‘About that.’

  ‘Be more specific,’ insisted Danilov, almost peremptorily.

  ‘What’s it matter?’ frowned Cowley.

  ‘How soon, after the night out with Yevgennie Kosov?’

  Cowley nodded slowly, in gradual understanding. ‘The motherfucker! It fits! The night after: two at the most.’

  Danilov nodded back. ‘He insisted we all travel in the BMW: I thought he was boasting about the car. But they had to find out where you were staying.’ Would the Chechen hit him with the same determination they had hit Cowley, if Kosov had told them of his black-market dealings in the past? Of course they would. So he’d be destroyed as completely and as effectively as the American. And if the Chechen didn’t do it, Kosov still might, when he and Larissa made their announcement. Danilov guessed Larissa would take it much better than Olga. He felt a brief but very positive surge of pity for his wife. ‘They will try to deal. Blackmail!’

  ‘No deal!’ refused the American, loudly. ‘I did it! I was drunk, which isn’t an excuse, and I was stupid. They set me up and I fell for it, like a jerk. So they won. That time. What we now know is too big – far too big and far too important – for any deal. Which I wouldn’t consider, even if it weren’t. So in the end, I’m going to win. We’re going to win. We’re getting it now. And we’re going to get more. I’ll hang in, for as long as I can: as long, I guess, as they’ll let me. Which is a pretty shitty thing for an FBI man to have to admit about a bunch of punks! But when I go down, they go down!’

  Danilov’s admiration for Cowley soared. He wasn’t shocked or offended by the pictures – none showed anything he and Larissa didn’t do most times they were together – and he was tempted to argue they were not as professionally compromising as Cowley was making out. But deep down he recognised that they were, so to say that would be patronising. Danilov’s mind ran on, to a thought that had come to him during that morning’s questioning. ‘I want to use Zimin: he might even see it as a deal.’

  Cowley frowned again. ‘How?’

  ‘He knows about the Ignatov killing: that Antipov did it,’ insisted Danilov. ‘I’m sure he does! About Metkin and Kabalin, too. All of it. He’s got to be sentenced here to satisfy Italian justice, but if it could be arranged he serves his sentence in Russia, he could give evidence against all of them.’

  ‘That might not delay the exposure. It won’t be Zimin’s decision, whether or not to publish them.’

  ‘They don’t know what we’re getting. Melega’s agreed no publicity.’

  Cowley smiled faintly. ‘Would Zimin give evidence against them?’

  ‘Depends how frightened we keep him.’

  ‘What about special treatment?’

  ‘Maybe a reduction of sentence,’ suggested Danilov. ‘It would be worth it to get the other convictions.’

  It wouldn’t do anything to close the Washington files on Michel Paulac or Petr Serov, but it might just delay his humiliation. Should he feel any different – slightly relieved, perhaps – now he’d shared the personal disaster with someone else, someone who’d accepted it without any critical judgment, professional or moral? If there was going to be any such relief, it hadn’t come yet. His only feeling was surprise at how little there had been to discuss about the entrapment. It was practically an anti-climax. Objectively he knew the hostile enquiries and detailed reports – and the scouring criticism – would come later.

  Believing there was nothing more to talk about, Cowley said: ‘There were things waiting for me at the embassy. We’ve got the number Kosov was talking to, so we can get an address. And we know who Ilya Nishin is. He’s the same guy in the photograph you took from Serov’s apartment in Washington …!’

  ‘Whom Raisa Serova identified as her father!’

  ‘For the moment we can forget pornographic pictures and blackmail. Get this investigation completely buttoned down!’

  ‘I’m not sure we can forget it, not entirely,’ cautioned Danilov. ‘The whore in the photographs? Did she have a name?’

  Apprehension began to stir through Cowley. ‘Lena. That.’s all. Just Lena.’

  ‘I had a message waiting for me at the embassy, too. There’s been another killing in Moscow, with a mouth shot: a high-class prostitute named Lena Zurov.’

  ‘She was killed because of me. It’s as if I killed her.’ Cowley’s voice was distant, cracked.

  ‘It wasn’t a Makarov,’ completed Danilov. ‘The bullet was from a Smith and Wesson. An American gun.’

  Yevgennie Kosov waited for Olga to ask, which she did when she realised they were driving through the outskirts of Moscow. ‘Ilyinskoye village. The Izba. You’ll love it.’ He was having to make it a social occasion, a casual Saturday outing, but it was difficult because he was terrified. She had to know something.

  ‘Larissa on duty again today?’

  ‘I don’t know why she insists on working. It’s not as if she needs the money: she can have as much as she likes.’ He shouldn’t rush it but it was difficult not to.

  ‘I asked her the same thing,’ offered Olga. ‘She said she would get bored in the apartment by herself all day.’

  ‘Maybe she’s having an affair,’ said Kosov. ‘Working in an hotel would be convenient, wouldn’t it?’

  Olga looked sharply across the car. ‘Who with?’

  They cleared the city and Kosov stamped on the accelerator, taking out his impatience in physical speed, ‘I just said maybe.’

  ‘Would it worry you, if she was?’

  ‘We’ve got a pretty loose marriage,’ admitted Kosov. He didn’t want to talk about Larissa or marriage! He wanted to talk about her bastard husband, cheating him in Italy.

  Was the approach she’d worried about on their first outing going to come now? Why had she been worried? She wasn’t now. She wasn’t sure what she would do, if he made a pass, but she wasn’t frightened. Remind him they were friends, probably: say something about not wanting to spoil it. What would it be like, to have an affair? A tiny tremor of excitement flickered through her at the thought. A lot of women had affairs: some women she worked with. It was hardly as if she would be seriously deceiving Dimitri. He didn’t have any physical interest in her any more. They only made love when she practically demanded it, which was rare because she didn’t have a great deal of physical interest in him any more. The marriage had gone beyond that. She wasn’t sure where the marriage had gone to. Perhaps nowhere. Perhaps it had just gone. ‘What would you do, if you found out she was involved with another man?’

  ‘She’d be very silly, if she was. I’ve got a lot of friends who could help me.’ Who at the moment were probably planning to kill him, if he didn’t find out what they wanted to know! He needed to break the inane conversation. He reached across the car, covering her hand. Olga opened her fingers to receive his, returning the pressure. ‘Why do you work?’

  ‘Same reason as Larissa, I suppose. And I like having my own money.’

  The right direction, he thought. ‘Dimitri Ivanovich doesn’t keep you short, surely!’


  Olga hesitated. ‘We have to live on his salary.’

  ‘That can’t be easy.’

  ‘It isn’t.’

  ‘We had a talk, just before he went away.’

  ‘You’re going to help him meet people!’

  ‘I’ve offered.’

  Olga squeezed his hand. ‘That would be wonderful. You’re a good friend.’

  ‘From what the newspapers and television say, he seems to have been fantastically brave in Sicily.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What’s he said about it to you?’

  ‘He hasn’t called.’

  It couldn’t be! thought Kosov, anguished. ‘Not at all?’

  ‘I suppose he’s been busy. I actually thought he was in Washington.’

  He was wasting his time with this fat, stupid, ugly woman! ‘So did we all. So you don’t know how the investigation is going?’

  ‘Only what I read in the papers. It must be going well if they’ve made all those arrests.’

  At the Risskaya Izba they had smoked fish, with mutton to follow, which was too heavy so she left a lot; when she went to the rest-room to comb her hair and repair her make-up she saw, dismayed, there was a grease spot on the lapel of her cream jacket. Trying to wash it off made it worse.

  Kosov, made persistent by fear, suggested walking by the river after lunch. Again he took her hand. ‘You do trust me, don’t you?’

  Olga felt the tremor again. She had to prepare her answer. ‘Of course. Why did you ask that?’

  The gesture of dismissal came close to being overdone, but Olga didn’t see it as that. ‘It occurred to me that Dimitri Ivanovich and I talk work a lot: police work. I didn’t want to bore you, asking about it today.’ He still wasn’t sure the bitch wasn’t holding back: it didn’t seem possible there hadn’t been one call from Italy, after all the Superman heroics.

  ‘You don’t bore me, Yevgennie Grigorevich.’ Olga felt warm, heavy-eyed and lethargic from the wine. She was sure he was going to make a pass.

  ‘I don’t think Dimitri Ivanovich treats you well enough.’

  Olga wished he wouldn’t keep reminding her of her husband. ‘People get too used to each other.’