Brian Freemantle: No Time for Heroes

Danilov said nothing.

Danilov gave up the Tatarovo apartment the following day. The concierge’s immediate concern was that he would want his dollar deposit back; he didn’t relax until Danilov made it clear he wasn’t asking for a refund. He wasn’t asking for the advance rent back, either.

‘What are you going to do with the furniture?’ asked the man, surveying the living room.

‘Why don’t you sell it for me? Either on the open market or to the next people who want the flat.’ It was unthinkable to transfer it to Kirovskaya, with some easy excuse for Olga, although everything here was better than theirs.

The concierge beamed at the prospect of even greater profit. ‘We’d better take an inventory. You put the prices against the items and I’ll do my best to get them…’ Hurriedly he added: ‘Not sure I’ll be able to get what you want, though. Might have to come down a bit.’

‘Why don’t you just get what you can?’

‘We’ll still make a list.’ At the refrigerator he said: ‘There are things in here. And a bottle of champagne.’

‘You have them,’ said Danilov. ‘The champagne, too.’

The man began to stack the food on the worktop, the champagne last. He said: ‘I’m sorry things didn’t work out for you. Sometimes they don’t.’

‘No,’ said Danilov. ‘Sometimes they don’t.’

The war broke out two days after the funeral. The Chechen restaurant on Glovin Bol’soj was raided by Ryzhikev’s gang. Three Chechen bulls were maimed – one blinded, two others crippled – and three innocent customers in the front section were badly injured: one was a twenty-one-year-old girl who lost an arm. The restaurant was torched with engineering expertise, fires set so it was not only gutted but the structure so weakened the roof and walls collapsed.

The attempted Chechen retaliation, ambushing a convoy of Ostankino lorries supposedly entering from Poland, was in reality an ambush in reverse. Nothing had come from Poland. Each truck held waiting squads of men more interested in humiliation than death and injury: one Chechen man was killed and two others injured – just as four Ostankino were injured – in the initial confrontation, but the remaining twelve, once overpowered, were stripped naked and left handcuffed and manacled in chains that had to be cut off with oxy-acetylene burners, and with signs around their necks identifying the Family they represented. Photographs appeared in four Moscow newspapers.

The Chechen did succeed better with a counter-attack at an Ostankino cafe, killing two, but five of the attackers were badly hurt and they didn’t manage to set it alight, which they had intended. The Ostankino retribution was again public mockery, but more effective on a second level because by hitting Kutbysevskij they showed they could get to the very heart of the Chechen empire, the residence of Arkadi Gusovsky himself. They blew up three BMWs parked in the road outside and set light to another two, intending them to burn more slowly. When Gusovsky’s guards tried to get out of the gates, they discovered they had been chained closed by three separate ropes of thick metal, so the alerted newspaper photographers this time had shots of the imprisoned guards pulling from the inside of the gates in frustration. The day after, two separate publications carried satirical cartoons of black-masked, striped-jerseyed gangsters running in opposite directions around a circle of money, piling up in head-on collision while a police group watched.

Danilov thought it was a good portrayal of his intentions, but it still wasn’t complete. It became so at the end of the third week. It was never discovered how the Ostankino got into Pecatnikov without being detected, although the rumour arose of a disillusioned defector. The frontal group managed to burst through the door of the club before any alarm was raised, and sprayed the interior with Russian RPK and Yugoslav Mitrajez M72 machine guns. The Chechen were utterly surprised and the battle was over very quickly, with eight dead. The delay was still sufficient for Gusovsky and Yerin to escape from the rear dining room through the labyrinth of corridors honeycombing the complex: both would have survived if they’d hidden in Yerin’s upstairs apartment, but their only thought was to get completely away.

The second assassination squad must have followed Gusovsky from his home to isolate and mark his car. As the thin man bustled from a rear entrance of what he’d thought an impregnable fortress, hurrying the blind man towards the BMW, waiting gunmen opened up with more machine guns – RPKs and M72s again – catching both in triangular fire. Three bodyguards and the waiting driver died as well.

The killing of Gusovsky and Yerin ended the inter-Mafia conflict: the fighting that followed was between second-level Chechen battling for succession to the leadership.

‘It was how it should have been settled,’ said Pavin, when they learned of the death of the Chechen leaders.

‘There isn’t any satisfaction,’ said Danilov.

‘There shouldn’t be, not in vengeance,’ said the other man.

It was the day the summons to the Interior Ministry arrived, from Vasili Oskin.

There was tea and further congratulations, this time for the way the prosecution evidence had been assembled and presented. There was also the news that the Rome trial was expected to begin in November. It was predicted to last three months, and the Italian authorities had been assured Danilov would be available throughout the entire hearing.

‘So you will be away from Moscow for a considerable time,’ said the soft-voiced deputy minister. ‘It could even extend beyond that period.’

Was he here for nothing more than a hypothetical discussion about a trial he’d always known he’d have to attend? ‘I’ll make a diary note of the date, to avoid any overlap with cases here.’

‘However long it takes, it will mean your being away from Petrovka,’ said the man. ‘And there is still the unresolved matter of the directorship. I clearly can’t continue as the titular head.’

It wasn’t a hypothetical conversation, Danilov accepted. ‘Clearly not,’ he agreed cautiously.

‘There’s been widespread discussion, about your being appointed,’ disclosed Oskin. There is a strong feeling among many people the position is rightly yours, after the success of this most recent case

…’ He hesitated. ‘… and another strong body of opinion that precisely because of that success, you are far too valuable an investigator to be elevated into an administrative role…’

They weren’t even bothering to change the excuse. Danilov waited to feel disappointed – robbed again – but nothing came.

‘… And then there is this further long absence, in Italy. The Bureau could not be left without a commander for an indeterminate period…’

‘No,’ agreed Danilov. If there was a feeling, it was boredom.

‘So the appointment is to be made from within this Ministry, not from the Militia,’ said Oskin. ‘A trained lawyer. Vadim Losev. A very able man. He will have the title but in effect it will in future be a joint command. And you’re being promoted, to full General.’

‘I am sure we will work well together,’ said Danilov.

That evening, as he had done on several nights since her death, Danilov detoured to Novodevichy cemetery on his way home to Kirovskaya to stand by the marked grave, knowing he had to stop doing it but unwilling to, so soon.

‘They did win, darling,’ he said. ‘I fought like you said I should, but they still defeated me.’ He wondered if he would ever learn who they were. And what he could do about it, if he ever did. He wouldn’t bother to tell Olga, not yet. She’d only become upset, even with the confirmed but meaningless promotion. He’d tell her about Italy, instead. She could start making another shopping list.