Brian Freemantle - The Watchmen

“Not at all,” said Cowley without any hesitation this time. “How long do you think?”

“A day or two. Three maybe. Anything I should know from your end?”

“One or two useful-looking leads but nothing positive,” said Cowley. “If there’s a definite development I’ll tell you at once. Otherwise I’ll bring you up to speed when you get here.”

“That sounds good. What about your not expecting another attack?”

Cowley hesitated. “You read that?”

“Had it suggested to me.”

“Your side?”

“No.”

“That’s interesting.”

“Thought you might find it so. True?”

“Of course not.”

“Didn’t sit comfortably with me, either.”

“Pamela and I are working closely on this,” said Cowley. “I’m going to be office bound for a few days, but if you come through and I’m not here, she’ll have the handle on everything.”

“Look forward to working with you, Pamela,” said Danilov.

“And I with you,” said the woman. Pointedly she added, “Finally.”

Cowley supposed she was allowed the complaint. The frown had gone but there was a weary-faced resignation. He sat initially unspeaking after replacing the telephone, looking across at the woman. When she stayed equally silent he said, “Well?”

She shrugged. “I guess I got security clearance. I just wish we had been told something that needed it.”

Cowley smiled at her. “We were. Welcome to the land-and the need-of double-speak.”

Her face remained expressionless while Cowley sketched the difficulties under which Danilov operated. “The arrangement is that if I initiate the call we speak in Russian. If he calls me, it’s in English. A switch, like today, indicates he’s got a problem-is being blocked or misled. Whatever, he can’t speak freely. We never spoke, before the boat blew up, about his supplying duplicate although obviously empty warheads. Nor did we make-discuss even-any plans for his coming here. He was telling me a lot by seeming to tell me nothing. And if anyone was listening at his end, they wouldn’t have understood a word.”

Pamela’s face relaxed at last. “Very Hollywood.”

“Hollywood couldn’t make it up.”

Danilov was relieved at reestablishing his direct and very necessary link with Cowley. He felt a confidence he hadn’t until now realized had been missing since the catastrophe in which the American could have died with all the rest. There was an excitement, too, at the thought of getting away from a dull, gray existence in a dull, gray Moscow to where there always seemed enough electricity to charge the people as well as all their neon and flashing lights. It might, also, temporarily resolve the immediate problem toward which he was driving, unsure what to expect when he got there.

Olga was at Kirovskaya, which Danilov half expected. What Danilov hadn’t anticipated was the condition of the apartment itself. Or of his wife. The flat was tidier-cleaner-than he could ever remember it being. There were no discarded clothes anywhere, the couch and seat coverings were neatly arranged and looked freshly pressed, and the bed was made. Olga herself was in an unstained dress and wore a cardigan he didn’t know she possessed, without elbow holes and with all the matching buttons still attached. Her hair was neatly arranged, although still in its several shades of blond.

“Can I get you something?” she offered.

“I’ll do it myself,” said Danilov. The stalagmite of dishes had gone and there was food in the refrigerator and ice for his vodka.

“I stayed with Irena,” Olga announced before Danilov asked about her previous night’s absence, which he hadn’t intended to do. “We had a long talk.”

Danilov nodded, with nothing to say.

“I don’t know why I did it. Here, I mean.”

“Does it make any difference? Has it ever?”

“I want to try again.”

Danilov looked blankly at her, not understanding what she was saying.

“I mean you and me. Try to put our marriage back together.”

“Olga! Don’t be ridiculous. We don’t have a marriage. There’s nothing to put together.”

“Please, Dimmy.”

“Olga, there’s no point. No possibility. You know that.”

“I’m trying to say I’m sorry. That I’ll never do anything like it again. Ever. I’ll do anything!”

“Stop it, Olga! I’ve already decided I’ll get another place.”

Her face began to harden. “So you’re throwing me out?”

“I said I’ll find somewhere else.”

“Like the place you found with Larissa!”

“I don’t want to fight.”

“That’s what she said,” blurted Olga, the bitterness overflowing, her voice shrill. “That I wouldn’t be abandoned: that she’d always see I was looked after. She said that to me . Like she was doing me a favor! Making it all all right.”

Larissa had insisted on that, Danilov remembered. Meant it, because of the sort of woman she had been, knowing there was going to be an upheaval and trying to do everything she could to cause as little hurt as possible. “She wasn’t taking me away from you. You drove me away from you years ago. It was stupid, bothering to stay together. We both know that.”

“You know what I did when she got killed?”

“I don’t want to.”

“I laughed.”

“Don’t, Olga! This isn’t achieving anything.” It was, he conceded. It was the only way she could hurt him, which she’d known. He wasn’t going to argue-couldn’t be bothered to argue. All he could do was hear her out-or rather try not to hear her out-closing his mind and his feelings to whatever or however she wanted to avenge herself.

“You’ll pay!

“I have already.”

She snorted a laugh too heavily, so that her nose ran. She didn’t try to wipe it. “So romantic! So touching!”

“I’m going to America,” he announced, trying to stop her. “I’ll start looking around when I get back. Until then, for the next two or three days, let’s just try to be civilized. I’ll only be here at night. Let’s try to endure that as best we can.”

She wiped her nose finally. “No!” she said. “You won’t move out. I will. I’ll find somewhere else while you’re away. Somewhere nice, better than this rathole. And I’ll see a lawyer, make sure I get all the money and support that a loyal, loving wife deserves when she’s abandoned. You’re going to regret the day you ever met me.”

“I’ve been doing that for years,” said Danilov. “You want to get into a competition about who betrayed whom first, you’re welcome. I’m not interested.”

“You’ve got more to lose than me,” threatened Olga. “You’ll become the joke, I won’t.”

Patrick Hollis had been physically sick. Even now, hours later in his locked den, he still felt nauseated. On the keyboard of his for once ignored computer lay the drawing that had been waiting for him, mixed in with that morning’s mail. It showed a limp penis, the head drawn as a bespectacled, weeping face. Written beneath, in capital letters, was SORRY.

The explosion that blew away three of the tiered steps running from the top to the bottom of the Washington Monument came at 1:00 A.M. the following morning.

From the initial-but instantly withdrawn-Parks Department inspection they knew the explosion appeared to have separated the stairs that spiral from the bottom to the viewing gallery at the very top of the 555-feet monument, leaving a metal-tangled gap where the 304th, 305th, and 306th levels had been. It would have been impossible for Cowley to contemplate trying to climb that high, but at that moment the entire Mall, from beyond the Lincoln Memorial at 23rd Street up to 3rd Street and between Constitution and Independence avenues, was sealed to anyone on foot except the bomb disposal unit.