Brian Freemantle - In the Name of a Killer

‘The State Department are bringing the kinky bastard back,’ Ross disclosed. ‘Hughes hasn’t finished answering questions, by a long way. The CIA are using words like disaster. Hughes is going to spend more time wired to a polygraph than Frankenstein’s monster. There won’t be a secret left, about Ann Harris or anything else, when the CIA finally unplug him from the lie detector.’ The white-haired man shook his head, a discarding gesture. ‘Anything more since your overnight report?’

‘The Russians are going to go public on the first murder. And the most recent attack.’

The Director frowned. Then his face cleared, in understanding. ‘It would have happened while you were in the air, of course. They already have. Burden’s given yet another press conference, in Moscow. He’s complained information has been withheld: said he felt the entire investigation was being mishandled. Or that there was concealment, for political purposes. He’s talked about raising it from the floor of the Senate. Got his usual headlines, all over this morning’s papers. Knowing Burden he’ll probably claim it was his presence that forced the Russian announcement and warned the people of Moscow. Christ, that man’s a pain in the ass!’

‘It would have made it even worse, delaying any longer,’ suggested Cowley. ‘We were in a no-win position.’

‘It’s already gotten worse,’ said Ross. ‘He’s already called the President, from the Moscow embassy. Repeated the earlier threat about who has the power up on the Hill. He’s flying back for the girl’s funeral. Which doubtless he’ll turn into another media event.’

Politics and crime never mixed, reflected Cowley: which made it surprising how often the two were stirred together. ‘He has to be told everything?’

‘I’m damned if I’ll have law enforcement conducted to please Senator Walter Burden!’ said Ross, vehemently. ‘He’ll be told what I choose to sanitize and tell him. He and the President are career politicians. I’m not.’

He was definitely not being taken off the case, Cowley realized. There was a relief that went far beyond his professional ability not being seriously questioned: that the Director was accepting errors were unfortunately inevitable this early in any investigation. He wanted to go back and start again and not make any more mistakes and be there when they manacled a killer. To prove what to whom? Himself to himself, he supposed: to show he hadn’t lost the edge, after three years out of the field. Who else was there, anyway? Absurdly Pauline’s name — Pauline herself — came into his mind. Why should he want to impress his ex-wife? Because it mattered to him to do so, pointless though it was now that she was married to another man. To clear his mind Cowley talked of the interviews and meetings he wanted to have, now he was back in America. Ross agreed to everything.

‘Other things first,’ cautioned Ross.

‘What?’

‘The reason I brought you back. We’re due at Langley in an hour.’

There was always a fluster about a Director’s departure from Pennsylvania Avenue, particularly from the main entrance within the inner courtyard, and today Cowley was part of it and was conscious of the attention of everyone in and around the vestibule and from the overlooking windows. Cowley knew just how quickly rumours cooked in the microwave of FBI headquarters and was curious about what was being said about him at that moment. Whatever, he would be labelled someone in ascendancy, because failures didn’t get to ride with the Director. The glass screen was raised between them and the driver, enabling unrestricted conversation, but the Director initially kept to small-talk, asking about Moscow and the embassy and the investigation methods of the Moscow police.

As the driver took Memorial Bridge, to get over the river, Ross looked directly across the car and said: ‘How’s it working out personally, with Andrews?’

‘Well,’ said Cowley. ‘He’s helpful in every way he could, within the embassy. We’ve been together socially. No problems at all.’

‘That’s good. No resentment at being restricted to the embassy?’

‘None.’

‘Personnel want to settle the reassignment. We’re moving Harvey Proffitt from California. Giving the guy a chance.’

‘Andrews talked to me himself about his tour being over.’

‘He say what he hopes to do next?’

Cowley didn’t think he should rely upon the conversation with Pauline, although he knew she would be right. He shook his head. ‘No.’

‘Not anything about being attached to the Russian division back here?’

‘Nothing.’ Cowley waited for the Director to ask if he would have any personal feelings about it. Ross didn’t.

Instead he said: ‘Personnel have asked to bring him back, for discussions. Would that inconvenience you, at the moment?’

It would mean the complete burden of communications falling upon him, Cowley realized. But discussions were standard procedure in these sorts of career move. To object, as he was entitled to object, could hinder that career: the career of a man who’d cheated him and stolen his wife. Cowley wished the last thoughts hadn’t even occurred, especially as he’d already decided that hadn’t ever been the case. He said: ‘Of course he should come back.’

By the time the admission formalities to the Langley complex were completed, a man was waiting in the main foyer to escort them. There was no identification. Cowley was instantly reminded of Fletcher, back at FBI headquarters. Perhaps there was a cloning farm somewhere in the Mid-West producing featureless and characterless personal assistants for Washington chief executives. They went directly to the seventh floor, in the CIA Director’s personal elevator. There were three other men and a female stenographer with Richard Holmes. Cowley supposed the three unnamed men were part of the Agency’s Russian section. He would have thought the meeting could have been quite satisfactorily conducted between himself and them, without the presence of both Directors. And probably would have been but for Moscow telephone calls to the President from the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee. He was aware of witnessing at first hand the Washington self-defence art known as Watching Your Ass.

‘I’ve indicated the concern,’ said Ross.

‘So?’ said Holmes.

Cowley was disconcerted by the cursory tone of the demand: maybe he should start watching his own ass. He definitely wasn’t going to respond in front of a recording stenographer to a single-word question like that. ‘What, precisely, are you asking me?’

‘Is Paul Hughes being set up by Russian intelligence?’

Cowley weighed his answer. ‘I have no idea,’ he said, finally.

One of the aides sighed, but Cowley didn’t detect which one.

‘We want the specific details of Hughes’s telephone interception,’ Holmes insisted.

Again Cowley hesitated, anticipating a later demand and aware he was going to look an inexperienced amateur, even a bungling one, in their eyes. He replied chronologically, trying to avoid the admission, talking of getting Hughes’s embassy telephone number as one Ann Harris had called, of Hughes’s lying explanation at their initial interview, but of the man’s collapse when the verbatim conversation was put to him at the later, early morning confrontation after Lydia Orlenko had been attacked.

‘Now let’s go back over all that again,’ said Holmes, with forced patience. ‘Why didn’t you challenge Hughes’s first explanation with the verbatim record?’

He was going to be shown up, Cowley accepted, desperately: there was no possible way he could watch — or save — his ass. ‘At the first interview I didn’t have a transcript: just the number.’