Brian Freemantle - No Time for Heroes

The American, who was drinking but not excessively, lifted his glass towards Danilov and said: ‘Here’s to the final recognition! Your directorship!’

It had once seemed very important to him, remembered Danilov. Lately it hadn’t crossed his mind, not even when he’d taken over the controller’s suite.

He was only a few minutes late arriving at the Druzhba but Larissa was already waiting, almost impatiently, in the foyer. ‘A surprise!’ she announced.

Danilov allowed himself to be bustled into the car and obediently drove out to the Tatarovo apartment. She led excitedly from the elevator, opened the door ahead of him and then stood back, inviting his inspection.

There was a table and chairs already arranged in the dining annexe and a couch, with matching chairs, in the living room. There were flowers – deep red blooms the name of which he didn’t know – in a vase on a side table, and a television on a stand. In the main bedroom – the only one furnished – was a made-up bed, covered with a deep blue duvet, with a matching dressing table opposite the built-in clothes closet. Both the living room and the bedroom had scatter rugs over the wood block flooring. There were a cooker and refrigerator in the kitchen, with pots and pans and a rack of knives neatly arranged. Everywhere smelled fresh and new.

‘You had to use Yevgennie’s friends, to get all this!’ he said, immediately alarmed.

‘No,’ Larissa said, pleased with herself. ‘One of the girls who shares our old arrangement is the ordering manager for the hotel. We’re refurnishing two of the top floors. So we told the suppliers what was necessary for them to get the order…’ She twirled, encompassing everything. ‘And this was what was necessary!’ With a final flourish she opened the already stocked refrigerator. ‘Champagne, for tomorrow night’s celebration!’

‘You’re wonderful!’ he said. Favour-for-favour, he thought.

‘I’m going to be, for you.’

‘I’ve decided where we’re going to tell them,’ he announced. ‘Not a neutral place, like we discussed. I want it to be at Kirovskaya. Tell Yevgennie I’ve a particular reason to want to see him.’

‘Why Kirovskaya?’ she frowned.

‘It’s Olga’s home. I want her to realise she’s being left with something she knows; something she recognises. I think it’s important.’ More psychology, he thought.

‘If you think so,’ said Larissa.

‘It’s not going to be easy, is it?’

‘But worth it,’ she insisted. She looked towards the prepared bed. ‘There’s no real reason to wait, until tomorrow night.’

‘Yes there is,’ refused Danilov. ‘Tomorrow night it will be right.’ He didn’t want to make love to her before that: it wouldn’t have been right.

It was the beginning of the trial-preparation period, a concluding stage he normally enjoyed for the opportunity to examine the entire enquiry in detail. There was no pleasure this time. Danilov went through a lot of the preliminary routine almost automatically, his mind more occupied by the approaching evening. He repeatedly tried to arrange the words, in advance, on the occasions when neither Pavin nor Galina were in the room actually muttering the attempts, until he realised the foolishness of it. Nothing sounded right anyway. All the words and phrases he could think of were stiff and unnatural, as if he were reading from a printed speech. Tonight wasn’t something he could practise, something he could make easier. It was going to be… be what? Tearful? Obviously. Any love between them might have gone long ago but Olga would still be shocked, bewildered, by the upheaval. She’d certainly cry.

What would Kosov do? Totally unpredictable. Danilov didn’t think the man, who had all the bombast and pretensions of a coward, would be physically violent. He’d shout and rage – maybe even threaten to fight – but it would be in other, already feared ways the man would try to get his retribution.

Danilov wasn’t as apprehensive now as he had been. He supposed it was the comparative ease with which the confrontation with the Chechen leaders had gone, being able to match threat for threat. He knew he could do precisely that, if Kosov started talking of the past. Go as far as playing the incriminating tapes, as tangible proof. There’d been the unreasoning fury when he’d learned how Kosov entrapped Olga, but although it was still with him the anger was colder now, not so all-consuming. Kosov would have lost his wife and his prestige with his paymasters and know there was never a possibility of their working together as partners at Petrovka. So did he need to go any further, to drive the man entirely from the Militia, which had been one of the first of the several unthinking resolutions he’d made?

Danilov did have to concentrate to prepare the evidence edited in the way the Federal Prosecutor decreed for the limited arraignment that had been decided, accepting as he did so the ultimate irony that he was doing precisely what he had promised the Mafia bosses, although not for the reasons they believed. Nikolai Smolin’s decision, not his, reflected Danilov, so Smolin could be the final arbiter of what was included. Accordingly Danilov set out to prepare what, in effect, was a precis of a statement or evidence account, attaching markers to events and facts Smolin might want either to add or omit. Because he respected the man’s ability, he frequently consulted the meticulous Pavin, so it was a time-consuming operation which he guessed would take him a further week to complete: maybe even longer. Danilov stopped earlier than he would normally have done on an initial preparation day, not wanting his personal distraction to affect his professional judgement.

He talked with Pavin about what they could buy Cowley. Pavin couldn’t think of anything in Moscow to compare in either quality or price with what Cowley had given them, but didn’t think that was necessary anyway: taking their lead from Danilov’s medal, why didn’t they go to the Arbat souvenir precinct and buy the American one of the dozens of genuine military decorations discarded by the greatly diminished army, and stage a valour presentation of their own? Danilov thought it was an idea that would appeal to Cowley.

Olga had tried very hard. She’d prepared hors d’oeuvres and set out bottles. In the forefront the FBI medal was on show, the presentation box open and propped up, for it to be displayed.

‘I don’t think that’s a very good idea,’ he protested gently. ‘It looks far too boastful.’

‘They’ll want to see it!’ she said, disappointed.

Danilov closed the box and took it from the table. As he walked towards the bedroom, he said: ‘If they ask we’ll show them. But not until they ask.’ He tossed it casually into his bedside drawer.

‘Yevgennie would show it off, if he had one,’ she said petulantly, when he returned to the living room.

‘Yevgennie and I do things differently,’ he said. There was already a mark on Olga’s new skirt.

‘Where are we going tonight, after the drinks?’

‘Why don’t we talk about it when they get here?’ He’d have to be the person to say something, first. Larissa and I have something to tell you, he thought. That wasn’t right. It transferred the announcement to Larissa. I have something to say. About Larissa and me. We’re in love – have been for a long time – and we’re going to get married. That was it, wasn’t it? He’d spent all day – and a lot of days before that – trying to wrap the declaration up in soft words and phrases, but there weren’t any soft words or phrases to make easier what they had to say. So he’d come out with it like that, bluntly, brutally. Olga or Kosov would say something then – Kosov, most probably – and then would come the tears and the arguments about divorce. And the last thing that would interest any of them would be an American medal. He had to remember to take it, he realised, suddenly. He hadn’t thought of packing anything yet – wouldn’t have been able to pack anything yet, without Olga asking what he was doing – but his clothes were all conveniently arranged, the shirts still folded suitcase size, from the trips abroad. He’d try to do it tonight, if Olga wasn’t too distressed or angry: make the break abrupt and clean. If he couldn’t he’d still take the medal, at least.