Brian Freemantle - The Watchmen

Patrick Hollis was, as usual, drinking his coffee alone in the cafeteria when Gilliam Carling, a junior programmer in his loans and securities division, came in, smiling expectantly for someone she knew. When she only found Hollis the smile faded but she still came over, needing someone in her excitement.

“Guess what?”

“What?”

“The director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation has been talking personally to the chairman at Main Street! How about that!”

“I don’t believe you,” said Hollis. It was like an operation, without anesthetic, his stomach being gouged out.

“And there were two agents there in person,” insisted the girl, pleased with his shocked reaction.

“It can’t be right.”

“Janet, my roommate, works on the switchboard there, for Christ’s sake! She put the call through from Jackson’s office.”

“What about?”

“She didn’t listen ! Just handled the call. But it must be important, big, mustn’t it?”

“Yes,” agreed Hollis. “I suppose it must.”

When they were eventually reunited late that night-after Henry Hartz, with the Russian foreign minister beside him at a televised press conference, identified the embassy missile to be American-William Cowley and Dimitri Danilov tried to compile their list of priorities. Like Pamela Darnley earlier in Washington, they decided the first had to be the Moscow connection to the house-or rather the telephone-at 69 Bay View Avenue, Brooklyn.

Which was the Golden Hussar on Pereulok Vorotnikovskij. No American calls had been made to or from it after those listed on the Brooklyn billing records. Cowley and Danilov reluctantly judged they were too publicly recognizable to visit it personally. Yuri Pavin was told to take his surprised wife out to dinner and the FBI’s Moscow-based Barry Martlew had to miss the departure party of the Internet-identified CIA station chief to remain outside with one of the newly arrived Washington forensic team, photographing customers.

Photographs took up a lot of their discussion. There was no criminal records trace of Arseni Yanovich Orlenko. Danilov had brought with him the FBI’s New Jersey surveillance pictures of Vyacheslav Fedorovich Kabanov and Ivan Gavrilovich Guzov, the two Russian directors of the company that owned the Brooklyn house.

“Will the personnel photographs of the KGB people who were let go within the CIA’s timeframe have been kept?” wondered Cowley. They were in the bar of the Savoy, where Cowley was staying.

“I don’t know.”

“Be a bitch if they haven’t.” Cowley was relieved to be in Moscow, spared overcrowded committee discussions that got nowhere. “What about tying up all the ends you left hanging when you came to Washington?”

“Anatoli Lasin, certainly. Even if he gives me a name, I don’t think we’re able to move against anyone else here in Moscow yet. I think we should go to Gorki.”

“So do I,” agreed the America. “As soon as possible.” He hesitated, knowing he had to say it. “I’m sorry about Olga.”

“Yes,” said Danilov.

Cowley waited but Danilov didn’t say anything more.

The Kirovskaya apartment would be as she left it going to the Kliniceskaja Bolnica for the abortion, Danilov realized. And as he would have expected it to be, if she had still been alive. There were discarded clothes, even underwear, on the living room couch and the bed was unmade, a jumbled heap of blankets and sheets. The familiar stalagmite of unwashed dishes jutted from the kitchen sink.

He found an old cardboard suitcase with only one clasp that worked and heaped all the living room trash into it before adding the rest of Olga’s clothes from the closet and drawers in the bedroom, surprised there was so much because she’d always seemed to wear the same things, day after day. He found a separate supermarket bag for her four pairs of shoes, all of which needed repairing.

He realized for the first time that nowhere in the apartment were there photographs of them when they first married-when he at least had been trying to make it work-and found three, including a wedding picture, him in his militia uniform, in a box at the bottom of the bedroom closet. Their marriage certificate was there, too. He left it all as it was and carried everything that had belonged to his wife out into the entrance hall, convenient for the following day.

He should, he supposed, tell her friends about the funeral, but the only one he could remember-knew even-was Irena. And Igor, the hairdresser. He decided to clean up the mess in the kitchen first.

The expected but unwelcome call from Interior Minister Nikolai Belik came within minutes of Danilov’s arrival at Petrovka the following day.

“I have been told, ordered, that I am now directly responsible to-and operating under-presidential authority.” Danilov thought his remark sounded like the schoolboy-to-schoolmaster recitation it was.

“I am your superior,” said Belik.

“A point I made to Georgi Chelyag. I was told you would be advised of this changed arrangement.” This wasn’t so much the sort of loose end he and Cowley had talked about the previous night-more of a rope with which he could so very easily hang himself.

“I am not challenging any new arrangement. You are, additionally, to report to me.”

“I have not been told that by the White House.”

“You don’t have to be told by the White House. I’m telling you.”

Danilov felt the telephone becoming slippery in his hand. “That’s not my understanding-my orders-from the White House.”

“They’re your orders from me. Which you will follow.”

Damned if he did-and Georgi Chelyag found out-and damned if he didn’t, by the man who was his ultimate superior and whose instructions were unquestionable. Why was the situation-the cliche itself-so constantly the same? “I think the matter needs to be clarified.”

“There is nothing whatsoever you need to clarify with anyone-any other authority-except me. Nor will you.” Belik paused. “Although perhaps, Dimitri Ivanovich, your proper political understanding is lacking. Which is something else upon which you will take guidance from me and no one else.”

Danilov’s curiosity began to grow. “Perhaps I would benefit from some political clarification.”

The pause this time was longer, the man at the other end making a decision or maybe arranging his words. “There is going to be widespread political fallout at the very highest level over this. The Duma resolution is not an empty gesture.”

“I realize that,” encouraged Danilov. It had been spelled out at the first of their joint meetings, which, like Cowley, he was glad was over.

“Then perhaps you should also realize that it’s important you give support to those upon whom you-and your future-most depend.”

The telephone was still greasy in his hand but Danilov felt a physical chill. Unformed thoughts-awarenesses-jostled in his mind, very much indeed needing to be clarified, put in their proper order. It had been Belik’s voice when he’d lifted the telephone. So the call hadn’t come through either the ministry or militia switchboard. Officially it wasn’t taking place. Belik was positively ordering him not to approach Georgi Chelyag. Uncertain, then, despite the heavy-handed innuendo about choosing the right side. So which was the right side? The traditionalists in whose camp he’d already put Belik, along with the security chief and the deputy defense minister? Or the supposedly reforming presidential faction increasingly threatened by the communist-dominated-and therefore traditional-Duma? It was very much a matter for political judgment. Danilov’s problem was reaching it.