Brian Freemantle - The Watchmen

“All right,” the woman agreed, retreating into resignation again. Then she said, “I know there was a woman. That there had to be. But”-she looked around the room-“I don’t have anywhere else. Any one else. And now I don’t have him, do I?”

“I’m sorry,” said Pavin.

“Can you find out who did it? Have …” She stopped, groping. “People who saw it … witnesses …?”

“No,” admitted Danilov. “But we’re going to try very hard. It’s very important that we do. We’d like to look inside the car. Can you take us down to the garage?”

At the apartment door Naina called out to her daughter that she would only be a few minutes, and they rode in silence to the ground floor. The garage, like the car, was immaculate. Danilov sniffed apprehensively, but there was no overperfumed deodorizer, just the smell of newness. The tachometer registered just over 1,500 kilometers. There was nothing in the glove box or side pockets-not even the car’s documentation-and only a forgotten doll, which the woman retrieved, on the backseat. The trunk was empty, apart from a quilted jacket.

She said, “He kept it very tidy.”

“I can see he did,” said Danilov. He handed her a card. “If you remember anything you think might help, will you call this number? Ask for me or Colonel Pavin?”

“Yes,” she said emptily. “Yes, of course.” She paused. “If you find who the other woman was, will you tell me?”

Neither man replied.

“No,” she accepted. “No, there wouldn’t be any purpose in that, would there? It’s all over.”

As he picked up the first of the two highways to take them back to Moscow Pavin said, “He told her he sold metal to garages. And Nikov had three garages in Gorki, from what you’ve told me. What better place to get a foreign car than a mafia garage?”

“I made the connection,” said Danilov. “Not actually distraught, was she?”

“She’d accepted the marriage was over. A lot of people-husbands and wives-go on doing that when they’ve nowhere else to go. Which she said she didn’t.”

“There is-or had been-a lot of money,” judged Danilov. “I’ve never seen two apartments connected like that before. And nothing in it was cheap.”

“Why torture them?” demanded Pavin. “I can fit everything else together, but I can’t see the reason for doing what they did to them before killing them. No one was coming to us with information. We don’t know anything more now than when we started.”

“There’s one thing I’m anxious to establish from the Tushino plant,” said Danilov. As the new question came to him he said, “More than one, in fact. Several.”

Plant 43 was almost-but not quite-a clone of its Gorki progenitor, which Danilov acknowledged to be hardly surprising in view of the centrally controlled, centrally designed, centrally dictated, early 1960s, Cold War fridgidity of communist collectivism. The Tushino installation was smaller than the enclaves at Gorki, and each of its three divided factories were connected by an internal road, which by security-separating standards was a waste of time in the first place. They took the publicly designated turnoff to the centrally located Plant 43 itself. There was still the combination of control tower and private road checkpoint, but the tower appeared unmanned and there was only one yawning man at the gatehouse who waved away their offered proof of official authority because their names were already on his approved entrants’ list.

They were early by fifteen minutes and kept waiting a further thirty minutes by the plant director. Vladimir Leonidovich Oskavinsky was an emaciated, imperiously mannered man who was so obviously surprised by their authorized visit that he insisted upon telephoning the Science and Defense ministries extension to reaffirm the permission and still seemed to disbelieve the confirmation. He coughed a lot, and Danilov wondered if his earlier cynicism about a leak had been as rhetorical as he’d intended.

“Of course I know why you’re here,” said the man, ahead of any explanation. “I’ve seen the pictures from America. It’s Gorki, not here. How do you imagine I can help you?”

Instead of answering Danilov, just as impatient, offered the mortuary photograph of Valeri Karpov. The plant director’s face twisted in disgust. He came back up to them and said, “What’s this! Why are you showing me this?”

Pavin said, “Don’t you recognize him?”

“Why should I?”

“He worked here. As a stores supervisor. Valeri Karpov.” Pavin put Karpov’s official pass beside the photograph.

Oskavinsky frowned down again at both. “Over two hundred people are employed here.”

“Don’t you recognize him?” asked Pavin.

“I think so. Vaguely. What happened to him?”

“I would have thought that was rather obvious,” said Danilov. He offered a second photograph, of the dead man’s balloon-size genitalia, and said, “He was working with organized crime: selling materiel from here.”

“That’s absurd! I refute that absolutely.”

“I hope you’re right,” said Danilov, allowing his annoyance at official condescension to return. “You know-because you’ve just checked-the authority with which we are here. If you’re wrong you’ll be dismissed. As it is, I could have you suspended. I don’t want-won’t have-your arrogance. I want your total cooperation.”

Momentarily Oskavinsky, king of his own tiny castle, was dumbstruck by the ramparts being breached. The coughing became more pronounced. Humbly he said, “How can I help?”

“By not trying to avoid-or lie to-a single question,” bullied Danilov. Who didn’t think from then on that the cadaverous man did.

After checking with his operational manager, Oskavinsky stated that there were 102 ineffectually designed double warheads at Tushino, conceding at the same time that while Valeri Karpov had no authority to go anywhere near the biological or chemical facility, it was conceivable that he knew the way to enter every facility.

The director’s collapse continued when Danilov pedantically counted the racks of the identically stored weapons in their identically uniform racks in an identical subterranean cavern-at the fourth basement level once more-and only got up to ninety-eight. The side stenciling matched the size and print of Gorki but none of the numbering-for which Oskavinsky gave the same explanation-had the same sequence as the UN missile. Danilov didn’t even ask permission to scrape the lettering and base paint from a warhead into one of the unused envelopes he still had from the Gorki hotel. Oskavinsky insisted on again calling the Science Ministry before allowing Danilov to take possession of an empty warhead.

Back in the director’s office, Danilov said, “I want to talk about the metal that is used to make both the warhead and the delivery systems. Is it specially forged-made-whatever the technical expression is?”

“Yes,” Oskavinsky replied at once.

“One metal? Or an alloy?”

“Alloys, for both,” said the man, eager now to help. “There has to be a tensility to the missile base, to allow for the brief but extreme launch heat. If there weren’t it would melt, exploding the contents at source. The launch mechanism is basically nothing more than a disposable frame. Because the one we’re talking about was intended to be shoulder-mounted, it was made of lighter alloy-mostly aluminium, bronze, and copper. The faceplate, to protect the operator from the initial intense blast-back, was a laminate of heat-rejecting plastics with a bauxite infusion.”

“As a stores supervisor, would Valeri Karpov’s job have been to order such metals?”

“Various department requisitions would have been passed on to him, yes.”