Brian Freemantle - The Watchmen

“I like that argument!” Chelyag declared, at once.

“What possible reason could they want them for?” demanded Kedrov.

“Metal and size comparison,” responded Danilov, the improvised reasoning becoming clearer in his mind. “So we’re giving nothing away: There can’t be any dispute that the UN missile was ours.”

“I think it’s a good idea, a gesture without substance,” said the deputy foreign minister. “It would certainly provide the ambassador with a response.”

“And yourself,” encouraged Danilov. “To achieve the publicity-photographs even-we could announce in advance your personally delivering them to the U.S. Embassy.”

“We’ll do it!” decided Georgi Chelyag, the man of ranking authority.

“I want it officially recorded that I oppose it,” insisted Gromov.

“As I do,” said Kedrov. “It’s a pointless gesture.”

“Which is precisely why it’s so easy to make,” reminded the president’s advisor. To Danilov-but directing the remark to the stenographers-he said, “I want it recorded that Dimitri Ivanovich has made an extremely valuable contribution to today’s discussion.”

Only a few days ago it hadn’t mattered to him whether he was vilified or not, thought Danilov. Now it did. It was like waking up from a sleep that had gone on too long. But still with too many terrifying nightmares.

Yuri Pavin waited until Danilov had finished his account of the meeting before saying “Do you want me personally to deliver the warheads to the Foreign Ministry?”

“No,” said Danilov. “Someone else from the department.”

Pavin frowned. “Is that a good idea?”

“I’m going to make it one,” said Danilov. “Before you hand it over-before you even take it out of your car-I want you to scrape off some paint samples and break off some metal that won’t be obvious. Keep one sample for me. Give the other one to forensics”-he took two envelopes of Gorki samples from his pocket, passing them across to the other man-“with these. I want them very specifically and separately marked and signed for as being from Plant 35 at Gorki, from Plant 43 here, and from the empty warheads going to the Americans.”

Pavin didn’t speak for several moments. “You think it’s that bad?”

“Yes,” Danilov said flatly.

“Then we’ll never get anywhere with this investigation.”

“We will,” insisted Danilov. “People are trying to make me look stupid. I’m going to prove that I’m not.”

“The pathologist says there are definitely two distinct sets of lung hemorrhage lesions,” announced Pavin, moving on. “The worst torture both Nikov and Karpov suffered was to be partially drowned, revived into consciousness, and then brought to the point of drowning a second time.”

Danilov stared down at the pathologist’s report that Pavin put in front of him, carefully going through the injuries. Looking up to the other man he began, “That doesn’t make sense,” but stopped. “The same!” he started again. “Each was tortured in exactly the same manner and to exactly the same extent.”

“Yes?” Pavin frowned, doubtfully.

“Nikov was a bull, a professional killer. Used to violence,” reminded Danilov. “He’d have tortured like this himself, held out under questioning much longer than Karpov. But if Karpov had been interrogated about some information he had he would have broken, told whoever it was what they wanted to know long before so much was done to him. These were example killings, to warn others.”

“It was good of you to come,” said Cowley.

“I tried yesterday but it took this long to get a security clearance,” said Pauline. “And there’s a guard in the corridor. You really think they might try to get to you here in the hospital!”

“I don’t. The bureau does. There’s a lot the bureau and I don’t seem to be agreeing about.” Her hair was much shorter than she’d worn it the last time they’d met, and it was colored a deeper auburn. He thought she was slimmer, too. And looked terrific in the matching sweater and slacks.

“So how are you?”

“Better. The battle lasted all afternoon, but I compromised with the specialist in the end. I stay overnight and I can discharge myself tomorrow. He wants a waiver though. Which I’m giving him.”

She sniggered, embarrassed. “You look funny with that great pad on your head. And you’re going to look funnier when it comes off. They’ve shaved off half your hair.”

Cowley laughed with her. “I did a deal on the waiver. Tomorrow I get a much smaller, less dramatic dressing. I’ve got a meeting with the director.”

Pauline’s face straightened. “You can’t be well enough to go back to work, William!”

He’d always liked the way she’d called him William, never Bill. “I can see perfectly and my hearing’s coming back. The head’s practically healed and so’s the rib.” He hesitated, seeing the opportunity. “I could just maybe do with a little home help.”

His former wife didn’t pick up on the remark. Instead she said, “I think you’re crazy.”

“I sit in an office and make plans for other people to carry out.”

“You walked into a building that might have been full of fatal germs and escaped being blown to pieces by a fucking miracle!”

“Rare,” he said with attempted lightness.

“Don’t, William. What have you got to prove?”

He felt warmed by the concern. “It’s not proving anything. There needs to be a more experienced case officer: The panic’s percolating down. And there seems to be a problem with Dimitri in Moscow.” They’d met when Danilov had been in Washington the last time.

“I thought you got on well with him. Partners, you said?”

“I do. Others don’t seem to. If there’s a reason he’d tell me, because it’s like partners. He trusts me. Not anybody else. It’s instinctive in Moscow, in his position, not to trust people.”

Pauline nodded to the bedside telephone. “You could call Moscow from here.”

“Not a secure line,” Cowley said glibly. “Let’s stop talking about me. How about you? How’ve you been?”

“Fine. More than fine, I guess. Terrific.”

“That sounds … I’m not sure what it sounds like.”

“I was going to call, suggest we meet, before all this.”

“Why?”

Her shoulders rose and fell. “It might seem funny, us so long over I mean, but I wanted to tell you myself. Not, I suppose, that you’d have heard from anyone else.” She smiled. “I’m getting married again, William.”

“That’s wonderful!” he forced himself to say. “Really great.”

“His name’s John,” she said. “John Brooks. He’s an orthodontist. That’s how I met him, at a dental practice. Can you believe that! He’s just bought into a partnership on the West Coast, San Diego. So we’ll be moving to the sunshine.” She smiled. “Sunshine’s good for people getting older, so they say.”

“So they say,” he agreed. “I wish you all the luck and love.” Cowley had to force that, too.

“I knew you would.”

Hollis had gotten to work intentionally early that morning, to be there when Carole arrived, which he watched her do from his window overlooking the parking lot, and called her extension the moment she reached her station. He’d rehearsed what to say-written it down, against his breath tightening-but she’d said she was busy for the rest of the week and didn’t want to plan the next this early, so why didn’t they take a raincheck and talk later. When he’d gone for coffee, she’d been sitting with Robert Standing and didn’t even acknowledge him.

Cowley took the Tylenol the nurse offered and went to the bathroom to take another from the bottle with which they discharged him. As the bureau car drove downtown from the George Washington Hospital, Cowley gazed out at the White House and across the parks to the needle-like monument and the other memorials. He could see the nipple of the Capitol dome, too, over the far closer Treasury Building, and felt a lurch of despair at so many targets laid out like ducks at a shooting gallery. There seemed to be far more demonstrators than usual outside the White House. One of the banners read “Avenge the Innocent Dead” and the red paint had been allowed to drip, like blood. “Justice not Inaction” was written on another.