Brian Freemantle - The Watchmen

“Roanne Harding made four telephone calls from Lexington Place to the same public booth in Chicago as Arseni Orlenko from Bay View Avenue,” Pamela announced triumphantly.

“And all on the same days,” agreed Cowley, looking at the telephone accounts.

Four hours later-at precisely 2:30 A.M. Moscow time-the projectile was fired from a car that paused briefly on Ulitza Chaykovskovo, near the U.S. Embassy. Part of the building is hedged by barbedand mesh wire netting. The missile ricocheted off the metal thicket, deflected completely from the legation toward the boxlike diplomatic compound at the rear. The deputy cultural attache, his wife, and their twin eight-year-old daughters were killed instantly. So flimsily constructed was the Russian-built complex that the rocket’s explosion destroyed two adjoining apartments, killing a further five Americans.

Dimitri Danilov was already awake when Yuri Pavin telephoned him at the UN Plaza Hotel in Manhattan. When he recognized his deputy’s voice Danilov cut him off and said, “I’ve already heard: I need to know everything you’ve got!”

“Mikhail Vasilevich Osipov got blown up last night. Three others died. But that could have waited until later.”

“What?” demanded Danilov.

Pavin said, “Olga’s dead.”

It was the Washington political carousel, finally and inevitably spinning up to the White House, rather than the more practical otherside-of-the-world logistics that created the twenty-four-hour hiatus. So frenetic was the activity that followed the attack upon the US Embassy in Moscow that none of those in the far from calm eye of the storm were aware of either a respite or even a delay. And that was minimized as much as possible by Cowley’s task force being allocated Air Force Two for the eventual flight to Moscow.

Some of the most outspoken critics declared from the very beginning that it was a diplomatic mistake for the U.S. ambassador in Moscow, with the personal authority of the president, to invoke international protocol in declaring the embassy and its compound technically U.S. territory and therefore beyond any Russian jurisdiction or entry. By so doing he adopted the same stance as the Chinese after the destruction of its United Nations quarters.

Deciding-and announcing-that stance after a series of White House and State Department meetings was the major cause for the delay in taking not just Cowley and Danilov as well as a full forensic team headed by Paul Lambert but also Secretary of State Henry Hartz. The aircraft was fitting transportation in which to return with sufficient state solemnity the coffins of the dead to their grieving relatives and a carefully modulated, unsteady-voiced president waiting at an Andrews Air Force base ceremony.

Lost in the Russian fury at the implied distrust of Moscow’s ability successfully to investigate the embassy attack was that by coming to them, Hartz overcame the still-unresolved Russian reluctance to appear the supplicant in meetings at secretary of state to foreign minister level. Also lost was the attempt to assuage the America-in-charge impression by having Dimitri Danilov publicly identified for the first time in the carefully choreographed arrival photo opportunity.

What wasn’t anticipated but perhaps should have been and what stoked the angry Russian resentment were the additional, although nonviolent, Watchmen attacks.

There were two, both equally humiliating to Washington and Moscow.

One of the first U.S. presidential decisions was that no details should be publicly released of the missile that wrecked the U.S. compound until the arrival of American investigators. Even before the team boarded the aircraft, the terrorists posted, not just on supposedly swept U.S. government sites but on Russian government screens as well the full specifications of the American-manufactured 66mm single-shot M72 A2s rocket, including its weight and the fact that it was shoulder-fired from a throwaway telescopic launcher. Within four hours of Washington’s diplomatic insistence of U.S. jurisdiction over the embassy-when the investigatory team was only just airborne-the second Watchmen statement was posted on official American and Russian websites.

It read:

SO RUSSIA SURRENDERS ITSELF TO BECOME A LICKSPITTLE COLONY OF AMERICAN IMPERIALISM. TWO WHITE HOUSES BUT ONLY ONE PRESIDENT.

On Russian screens it was in Cyrillic. And there was a computer graphic of the American Stars and Stripes fluttering from the Kremlin flagstaff.

By the time Air Force Two landed at Sheremet’yevo Airport, the American president had made another television address to the nation. In his anxiety to reassure the country after more American deaths he fueled the diplomatic outrage by allowing the assumption from his renewed arrest pledge that any trial would be under American, not Russian law. His attempt to ridicule the already posted Watchmen declarations was equally bad, almost an ambiguous confirmation rather than his intended denial.

Henry Hartz’s arrival statement was more carefully prepared-he had winced at the president’s efforts, patched into the aircraft television during the flight. In it he insisted that the investigation remained totally mutual and jointly cooperative. Danilov stood self-consciously next to him. But by the time the American cavalcade reached the heavily guarded embassy, the banner-carrying imperialism protesters were estimated at more than two hundred and growing. In the Duma, Russia’s lower-house parliament, a motion was tabled criticizing the Russian president for allowing an American investigation in the heart of the Russian capital. Its proposer talked openly of possible impeachment.

Dimitri Danilov did not travel in to the city with the American party but was met, by arrangement, at Sheremet’yevo by Yuri Pavin.

“Who have you assigned to the Osipov killing?” Danilov demanded as their car moved off.

“It happened during Mizin’s shift. He began before I was told. I left him heading the investigation until you got back.”

“There seem to be a lot of coincidences involving Ashot Yefimovich Mizin.”

“You want me to take him off it?”

“No. Leave it as it is. All the forensic samples sent to America were switched.”

Pavin nodded. “Mizin used a pool car to deliver the warhead to the Foreign Ministry. I checked the garage log. He was out for three hours. I could walk it in fifteen.”

“What about Gorki?”

“Reztsov says he’s got a definite suspect, from Plant 35. I told him I’d go if there was an arrest.”

“If there is one we both will,” decided Danilov.

The burly deputy said, “Chelyag’s demanding to see you immediately at the White House. But there’s time to stop at the Kliniceskaja Bolnica. Olga’s body is still there.”

Danilov guessed that despite the apparent acceptance-and sympathy-it had always been difficult for his deeply religious deputy to condone the situation with Larissa. Now the man would despise him further for imagining he’d maintained a married relationship with Olga-that he might even have known about the pregnancy before going to America.

The obstetrician, a young, fresh-faced man whose hair was so blond he appeared scarcely to have any, also despised him. There was no handshake, and the man said at once, “I opposed the termination. Your wife said you were insistent.”

“We hadn’t spoken at sufficient length about it,” said Danilov.

“That was obvious.”

“What was the cause?”

“Septecemia. It’s easier to get ill than get well in Russian hospitals. Once the infection began to spread we couldn’t stop it.”

“How pregnant was she?”

The doctor regarded him curiously. “Did you speak at all ?”