Brian Freemantle - The Watchmen

“Let’s have a drink and make sure,” said the American.

Their reservations were at the United Nations Plaza. Cowley had taken Danilov to the bar there on his earlier visits to show off its glass-and-chrome Americanism.

Danilov said, “There’s a lot of this in Moscow now. And dollars-and crime-rule more than ever.” This time he joined Cowley in scotch. It would be the first time he could speak properly to the American, and Danilov wanted to. It seemed absurd, but he supposed Cowley to be his only real friend.

“You really think Nikov’s our man?” said Cowley. He really did intend a review of all they’d done as well as having a drink: The lift he was getting was more from the adrenaline than from the booze. Why was he even thinking about it anymore? His drinking was under control.

“Obviously part of it. It’s part of what that I can’t make up my mind about.”

“We’ll give it twenty-four hours before we exercise the search warrant,” decided Cowley. “I’m hoping they’re still there. Will lead us somewhere.”

“Don’t you intend picking them up if they are?”

“I want all of them, not just one or two. People this determined wouldn’t give us the rest under questioning. They’d consider themselves prisoners of war: not even name, rank, and serial number.”

“Dangerous strategy, if we lose them.”

“Legally there’s no proof-no suggestion even-of a crime committed here in America,” Cowley pointed out. “Let’s hope we get enough for you to pick up in Moscow. And that people don’t get in the way.”

“Nothing’s gotten any better there. Worse maybe.” Danilov hesitated, looking down into his drink. “The great anticorruption crusader stopped crusading. It was too much trouble.”

Danilov wanted to talk, guessed Cowley. “What happened?”

“I destroyed them,” Danilov declared, quietly, not looking at the other man. “The Chechen Brigade that ordered Kosov’s car bombed, with Larissa in it, for not earning the money they were bribing him with. Created a war between them and an Ostankino Brigade and watched them picked off, one after the other, until all the hierarchy we knew about were killed.” The Russian looked up at last. “Doesn’t that tell you how it is in Moscow: letting them kill each other because I knew they’d bribe or murder their way out of any charge I legally brought against them!”

Cowley shrugged. “Not the first time a policeman’s done that anywhere in the world. You couldn’t have proved the guys in charge gave the order for Kosov to be killed.”

“I wanted them dead,” said Danilov. “Would have killed them myself if any I knew about hadn’t been taken out.”

“You sure about that?” Cowley queried, in disbelief.

“Quite sure,” Danilov insisted at once, coming up from his drink again. “I’m still not satisfied. I broke the gang-destroyed the men responsible for Larissa being killed-but I never found the bull who actually planted the explosion.”

“Stop it, Dimitri!” urged Cowley, although sympathetically. “You’re going to eat yourself away with hate like that.”

“Maybe I already have.” The Russian shrugged. “After the gang war I gave up trying with anything else within the department or the militia. There’s too many and too much for one man-a squad of men.”

“It was a vengeance crusade. Not the same thing.”

“I still stopped.”

“So start again.”

“Maybe.” It wasn’t important enough-wouldn’t mean anything-to talk about the divorce from Olga. Danilov looked pointedly at Cowley’s gesture for refills and said, “How are you managing?”

“OK,” Cowley said at once. Not for the first time-unaware of Danilov’s earlier, matching reflection-Cowley thought how odd it was that the only person aware of a problem that could end his career was a Russian who so few years ago would have been an enemy and considered the information a weapon. Instead of which Danilov had saved his career, smothering the sexual blackmail the Chechen gang had attempted during their last combined investigation in Moscow, posing him helplessly drunk to be photographed naked with a gymnastic hooker.

“You sure?”

“I haven’t slipped for over a year,” insisted Cowley. “I won’t, not now. I’m clean. Well and truly.”

“That’s good.”

“I think so. It’s good to be able to talk like this, too.” He paused, feeling he should offer something in exchange. “Pauline’s getting married again.”

“You ever hope to get back together?” Danilov asked presciently. A dark-haired, slightly built woman, he remembered. Not unlike Pamela Darnley.

“I’d thought about it after I got straight.”

“What about her?”

“We saw each other a few times as friends. Which we still are. But I let her down a lot when I was drinking. One girl in particular, but there were others I threw in her face. I don’t think she would ever have been able to believe I could change that much.”

Danilov snorted a laugh. “Couple of maudlin old failures, aren’t we?”

Cowley finished his drink, putting the empty glass down firmly on the table to make an unspoken statement. “No failure this time. There can’t be.”

“No, there can’t be,” agreed Danilov. To which of them was it more important to prove themselves to themselves? About the same, he guessed.

The Bay View Avenue clapboard remained empty throughout the night, which they knew before arriving at the bureau office because Cowley’s instructions had been for him to be called the moment there was any movement. The telephone billing records arrived exactly at 8:05 A.M. They were in the name of an Arnie Orlenko.

“Orlenko’s a Russian name,” Cowley identified at once.

“And Arnie is an easy Americanization of Arseni,” suggested Danilov.

“Wouldn’t it be great to get a break just once?” mused Cowley.

“That only happens in detective novels,” reminded Danilov.

Pamela Darnley assembled her intended task force controllers before 8:00 A.M., too, which was a mistake because the expected list hadn’t arrived from the Pentagon. She started to fill the time briefing the eight male and two senior-grade female agents on what she knew from Manhattan, which was obviously very little. Even more obvious-she guessed to the rest of the incident room as well as to herself-was that she couldn’t possibly have answered at least three consecutive questions from Al Beckinsdale. Irritated, she acknowledged a fact she scarcely needed to remind herself about: that she was in sole supervisory control of a specific task force, without the physical authority of William Cowley, the case officer. She also acknowledged that Beckinsdale had to be at least fifteen years her senior. What she judged to be the first opportunity to justify herself to Leonard H. Ross, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, this chauvinistic son of a bitch saw as showoff sex challenge time. So be it.

“Case this important, I’m surprised we haven’t been able to get things faster from the Pentagon or Immigration, that being the only lead we’ve got after all this time,” persisted Beckinsdale, a fat man who perspired and rarely fastened his collar or tightened his tie. He lolled back in his chair, legs stretched out in front of him.

“The Pentagon computer was sabotaged, as you know,” Pamela said, evenly. “And Immigration’s a physical check through God knows how many individual pieces of paper.”

“Can’t imagine that would have been much reassurance to people who’d lost family if the Lincoln bomb had gone off. Could have killed a lot of people.”

There was an uneasy shift from among the group facing her. One agent said something Pamela couldn’t hear to the man next to him, who smiled.