‘… I don’t think this should continue!’
For several moments it would have been difficult for either Cowley or Danilov to continue. Oleg Yasev stood at the entrance to the bedroom corridor. He was unshaven, hair still disordered from sleep. He wore trousers and his shirt was undone at the neck, without a tie.
Determined against his previous arrogance, Danilov said: ‘We will decide what should or should not continue, like we will decide whether to believe your explanation of why you tried to withhold the name of Ilya Nishin from the documents you returned from the Foreign Ministry. Come in and sit down!’
Yasev did, with unexpected humility, on the edge of Raisa Serova’s encompassing couch. Automatically she put her hand out to rest on his thigh. Just as automatically, he took it in his.
Cowley came into the questioning, as they’d arranged. Offering duplicates of the anstalt agreement, he said: ‘These are legal Swiss documents, translated into Russian for our benefit although I am sure you have a similar copy somewhere, of a secret financial corporation established by your late father with thirty million dollars of stolen Communist Party money, just prior to the coup against Mikhail Gorbachev in August, 1991: an escape fund, if the coup failed. Which it did. But for which none of the main ringleaders – apart from your father and a few others – ever managed to evade responsibility. And which they were never properly able to utilise anyway …’
‘… Please, no more …!’
‘… And this,’ persisted Danilov relentlessly, ‘… is another legal Swiss document, the passing over of the Founder’s Certificate – the absolute control – of the secret Swiss holding. It legally passes that control to you, Raisa Ilyavich Serova.’
The room was icily silent.
Raisa stirred from her curled-up position. ‘If my father hadn’t already been so ill, it might have been different! It could have all been reversed …’ She reached up, for Yasev’s hand. ‘At least we tried …’
Neither Danilov nor Cowley understood her response. Danilov pressed on: ‘Petr Aleksandrovich was never properly part of it, was he? He was the clerk, because he was brilliant at detail: but you were the person who always negotiated with Paulac … tried to retain control of the money …’
The woman interrupted, which was fortunate because Danilov was close to going ahead of himself. ‘Petr Aleksandrovich was happy to do what he was told: happy to stay forever in America, which was what he wanted.’
‘What did you want?’ asked Cowley, looking between the woman and the man perched at her side.
She took the full meaning. ‘To get out of the mess I was in.’
It was becoming splintered, difficult to follow. ‘Your father was operating for the plotters, right?’
She nodded. ‘Some of them: the KGB chairman, certainly. I think there were others like my father, but I don’t know any names. He didn’t. He believed in the old system, you see. Quite sincerely. He couldn’t imagine – couldn’t believe – it was all coming to an end. He wasn’t well, even then. Knew he couldn’t be active, in the attempted overthrow …’
Cowley intruded, in an effort to get more coherence into the account. ‘Why the Ostankino? Why any Mafia group? Your father was in the government: the deputy chief in the Finance Ministry! It doesn’t make sense.’
‘KGB,’ said the woman shortly, barely helpful.
Something that slotted into the Rome interrogation, isolated Danilov. ‘Who?’
‘Vasili Dolya. Director of the First Chief Directorate. He was a university classmate of my father’s. They remained friends, afterwards. At least, my father thought they were friends. Dolya was part of the coup, with the chairman, although he was never found out. And he knew how things operated outside the country: that was the expertise of his division, after all. He said there should be contingency arrangements, if it went wrong. It was Dolya who introduced my father to Paulac, in Switzerland. And the two of them who suggested the Ostankino cells in the United States be brought in: he said they would know how to make the money work in America.’
‘The Ostankino weren’t necessary, were they?’ took up Cowley, ahead of the Russian but equally aware of the value of what they were learning. ‘So Paulac was the first to cheat?’
Raisa nodded. ‘We didn’t know. Not at first. Not for a long time.’
‘Was it Paulac’s suggestion that Yuri Ryzhikev and Vladimir Piotrovsky should be Svahbodniy directors?’ pressed the American.
There was another agreeing nod. ‘He told my father it was the proper, necessary business arrangement: Ryzhikev, from here, would direct his American partner.’
‘Igor Rimyans?’ suggested Danilov.
The nod came again.
‘How long before the Ostankino started the pressure?’ guessed Cowley, more experienced in Mafia take-overs.
‘It was Paulac, to begin with. He tried to persuade my father to move most of the money from Switzerland into America: said there was no point in holding it in Switzerland, just earning interest. That it had to be used to generate more money. But the coup had failed by then. Everyone who’d supported it but escaped arrest was waiting, terrified of the knock on the door. My father most of all, because he’d set up the escape fund that nobody – none of the plotters, that is – was going to be able to use. That’s why Paulac began coming to Washington so often, to meet me: that was the route, you see? My father kept Petr Aleksandrovich in Washington so there was a channel of communication from Paulac to me to my father, back here in Moscow. Everything we wrote to each other went back and forth untouched and unread by anyone else, through the diplomatic mail …’
Danilov did not want to interrupt the flow, but it was imperative to establish the extent of official government involvement. ‘So Petr Aleksandrovich was almost incidental: a cipher kept in Washington for the diplomatic convenience through which you could handle things with your father?’
Raisa smiled, a sad expression. That’s one of the most ironic parts. I told him not to do it, but he said it was a way to protect us. We didn’t want to be involved, you see. We were both ciphers, for my father. Isn’t that funny! Without the names you would never have found out, would you?’
Another reaction they hadn’t anticipated, recognised Danilov. Before he could pursue the most intriguing remark, Cowley said: ‘Paulac was the man who began the pressure?’
‘Then it got frightening, from here,’ took up the woman. ‘My father was ill by then: his fear at being implicated in the coup had a lot to do with it, I think. These men, gang people, began openly threatening him: said if he didn’t transfer the money like they wanted, they’d make public what he’d done, have him arrested and put on trial, like the rest of the plotters …’
Knowing the original deposit in Switzerland was untouched, Danilov said: ‘But he didn’t give in to the threats?’
She shrugged. ‘I pleaded with him to return it. End the whole stupid business.’
‘Why didn’t he?’ said Cowley.
‘He was very ill. He asked Dolya to do something. Frighten them off. Dolya told him the KGB was being broken up, into internal and external services: in chaos. It didn’t control everything, like it once had: Dolya said the Ostankino were prepared to expose him, as well as my father. There was nothing he could do.’
‘Whose idea was it to go to another Family?’
‘Dolya’s. Some of his former officers were involved with the Chechen, apparently: a lot of them are in crime now. The Chechen promised to protect us: said we had nothing to fear any more. But they wanted access to the Swiss holdings …’
‘… Which your father gave them?’ said Danilov – a trick question, because he knew the documentation in Switzerland was still in the name of the Ostankino leaders.
‘No!’ she said. ‘He went to hospital soon after: wasn’t fit to do anything legal. That’s another irony, isn’t it? Having to do something legal with men who only break the law …’
He hadn’t tricked her, Danilov accepted. ‘And then you i
nherited control, upon his death.’
Raisa looked down when she nodded, a moment of sadness. She came up again, breathing deeply, determined to explain. ‘It didn’t take us long to realise we’d simply exchanged one pressure for another – one worse, in fact – by going to another gang. I’d always intended to return the money somehow, when I realised that one day I’d be in charge of it. I didn’t want the damned money … It was stolen!’
‘You told them you were going to give it back?’ asked Cowley.
She made an uncertain shoulder movement. ‘I told Paulac, the last time we met. Paulac got very frightened: he hadn’t told the Ostankino about the Chechen being brought in for protection: that they were pressuring me to change the directorship. He said to change the names would get us killed. Like giving the money back would get us killed. I didn’t believe him. I thought he was just trying to scare me …’
‘You came back to Moscow to return the money? The sickness of your mother was the excuse?’ queried Danilov.
‘This time and a lot of times before. All I wanted to do was protect my father’s name and get rid of the damned money. I told Paulac I wasn’t scared. I said I’d tell the Ostankino man, Ryzhikev: made Paulac give me a telephone number, to reach him …’ She halted, shuddering. ‘Then the murders happened, Paulac and Petr Aleksandrovich … and the first one here …’
‘So you didn’t contact Ryzhikev?’
‘I was terrified: we both were …’ She smiled up at Yasev again. ‘I knew Paulac hadn’t been exaggerating …’
‘The day after Petr Aleksandrovich’s funeral a man came to my flat,’ said Yasev, surprising them with the intrusion. ‘He said he’d been with the KGB before the coup and knew what had been set up. He said Raisa had to sign over the Founder’s Certificate to people he would take us to: that the Chechen were assuming full control. I knew by then they weren’t exaggerating, either.’
‘You told her she had to?’ Danilov asked him.
It was the woman who answered. ‘We didn’t know what to do! It was another way of getting rid of the money and the pressure, wasn’t it! Just give them what they wanted …!’
Why had the money still been intact in Switzerland, wondered Danilov. ‘When did you do it?’
‘Three or four days after all the stories in the papers about what happened in Italy.’
‘The same man who came to my flat arranged it,’ volunteered Yasev. ‘We went to a big house in Kutbysevskij Prospekt …’
The address they’d got in Rome, recognised Danilov. ‘Who did you meet?’
‘There were a lot of men: we weren’t told who they all were.’
‘You must have had a name to pass over the Founder’s Certificate!’
‘Arkadi Pavlovich Gusovsky.’
Another Italian confirmation! He was aware of Cowley nodding beside him, in matching awareness. ‘Anyone else?’
‘Someone called Yerin …’ she shivered. ‘He made me very nervous. He’s blind, milky-eyed, but he looks at you as if he can see you.’
‘You signed,’ encouraged Cowley. ‘What happened then?’
‘I had to sign as well, as a witness,’ said Yasev.
‘How was the transfer to the Chechen to work?’
‘When the investigation died down and it became safe to access the anstalt I was to instruct a Swiss lawyer to substitute what I’d signed over for what already existed there. They’d sent someone to Geneva to find out how to do it.’
‘Giving the Chechen the whole thirty million?’
‘And us relief, at last,’ said Yasev.
The man appeared content to remain subservient, Danilov thought. Had Raisa Serova dominated her husband as completely as she clearly dominated her lover? It was a passing reflection, leading to another. Dominant or not, he was going to have to adjust his attitude towards the woman, if what she’d said was true. And he had no way of proving she hadn’t intended to return the money, before being terrorised into parting with it.
The questioning continued for a further two hours, coming down largely to filling in dates and details. Raisa Serova produced the telephone number of the Ostankino leader, Yuri Ryzhikev, and Yasev gave the exact day when the Svahbodniy documents had been signed over, which was only one day before the Swiss authorities froze the account, supporting Danilov’s guess there had been insufficient time to plunder it. Yasev volunteered the relationship between himself and Raisa dated from their overlapping posting to the Russian embassy in Paris: Raisa volunteered that if they had been able to return the money, she had intended divorcing her husband to marry Oleg.
‘Putting something else right, as it should have been a long time ago,’ said Yasev.
‘What’s going to happen to us now?’ demanded Raisa. ‘The blind man, Yerin, said we would be killed if we ever told anyone.’
‘I think, for the moment, you should come into protective custody.’
‘I think so, too,’ agreed Yasev anxiously.
‘You’ll arrest them, both gangs, won’t you?’ said the woman, just as anxiously. ‘We won’t be safe, Oleg and I, until they’re locked up.’
‘We’ll arrest them,’ assured Danilov. Against how many charges would be possible?
Yasev and the woman went together into the bedroom, to collect clothes to take with them.
‘That didn’t turn out at all like I expected it to,’ admitted Cowley.
‘Nothing in this case turns out like we expect it to,’ reminded Danilov.
It took most of the remainder of the day to go through the protective custody formalities and prepare a full report, accompanied by a transcript of the statements of Raisa Serova and Oleg Yasev, for the Federal Prosecutor. Because the Deputy Interior Minister had taken over the ultimate authority for the Organised Crime Bureau, Danilov duplicated to him, as well.
‘I wish you wouldn’t go ahead with this other thing,’ said Cowley. ‘It has no purpose.’
‘We don’t know that, yet.’
‘Any more than we know your people are going to cover up as much as you suspect they will.’
‘Trust me,’ said Danilov glibly.
‘I do. And I think you’re taking too much of a chance. In any court that even admitted in evidence the tape of you and Kosov in the car, a clever lawyer could make you sound the crookedest cop in the history of corruption.’
Danilov conceded that at the moment the American was right. ‘I want to see them: know what they’re like. I need to be ready, in advance of whatever the official decisions are.’
‘If it’s an official decision, it’s an official decision!’ argued the exasperated American. ‘You’ve solved a case. They decide how to take it from here.’
‘We’ve solved an embezzlement case, which we didn’t know we had. We haven’t solved four murders. Which we knew we did have. The Italian convictions will be theirs, not ours.’
‘Where else is there to go?’ exclaimed Cowley, in despairing cynicism.
‘Maybe where I’m going.’
‘If they’ll see you,’ cautioned Cowley.
‘They’ll see me. They can’t ignore me.’
‘You’ll be as exposed as hell!’
‘I’ll cover myself.’
‘Nobody knows where the hell you’re going,’ objected the American. ‘You’re totally at their mercy.’
‘The car’s bugged,’ reminded Danilov. ‘You can listen.’
‘Maybe to the sound of the gun going off,’ completed Cowley.
‘We’ll hear what he’s got, before we show him how we can hurt him,’ said Yerin.
‘He’ll deal,’ predicted Gusovsky.
‘We’ve got to have Zimin killed,’ said Yerin conversationally. ‘It doesn’t matter whether he’s talked or not; he’s got to be killed.’ He paused. ‘We should have done it a long time ago.’
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
It was the Metropole again, but the man wasn’t waiting to intercept him in the foyer, nor in the bar itself, when Danilov arrived, a few minutes a
head of the arranged time. The waiter peremptorily tried to move him from the booth, until Danilov said he was waiting for guests and didn’t intend occupying it alone: he deliberately ordered beer, the cheapest drink on the list.
Danilov welcomed a few minutes by himself. He was about to try the biggest bluff of his life. Cowley, still not entirely knowing what he was attempting, had continued to argue against it. So had Pavin, who had come from their original office, where he still had his files, to announce the number deciphered from Kosov’s car phone had been traced to the Kutbysevskij address. Pavin had wanted to order foot and motor patrols around Kutbysevskij and the restaurant on Glovin Bol’soj until Danilov pointed out both were in Kosov’s Militia district, and that it was inevitable the man would learn about them. He refused, too, to have any squad personally imposed for protective surveillance. His most positive rejection was to Cowley’s suggestion he wear a body microphone and transmitter.
Danilov did not seriously believe he was in any physical danger – not this first time at least – but it was not until after he’d made the final arrangements with Kosov that he realised how few precautions there were to take. He wrote a detailed statement, listing as much as he suspected about the man’s links with the Chechen, to supplement the stack of incriminating tape transcripts. In particular, he itemised that day’s date and included timings for a provable and continuing narrative implicating the man in the imminent Mafia encounter. He intended to supplement it even further with whatever identifying conversation would be recorded from the BMW.
Kosov was fifteen minutes late. The reluctant waiter became smilingly attentive when he bustled towards the booth, looked disgustedly at the beer, and ordered Chivas Regal, widening his thumb and forefinger to make it double. Danilov was aware of three men entering the bar at almost precisely spaced intervals after Kosov. They wore Western-style suits and upon one there was a glint of gold, from a bracelet and a ring on the same hand, but the features were Slavic. The one with the gold reminded him of Mikhail Antipov: Danilov was glad he had not agreed to a similar escort, which would have been not so well dressed but just as obvious.
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