Brian Freemantle - No Time for Heroes

Danilov began his fight back within minutes of Metkin leaving him, giving the man just enough time to re-enter his own suite before descending to the basement garage. There were six unused cars in their bays. The office in one corner, with I. A. Borodin lettered on the door, was a hutch of a room, misted in cigarette smoke and with used stubs smouldering in an ashtray. Borodin, who was bent over a magazine displaying melon-breasted, splay-legged women, didn’t look up.

‘I’m looking for the manager,’ announced Danilov. ‘I want a car. That Volga outside looks good.’

Borodin, a dumpy man with grease-encrusted fingernails, snorted a laugh, bringing his head up from the pornography. ‘ I allocate cars. Where’s your authorisation docket?’

‘You’ve had a memorandum from the Director…’ Danilov stretched his copy across the desk, in front of the other man.

Borodin blinked down at it, then smiled up. ‘So you’re the new Deputy Director! Your having a car depends upon availability, I’m afraid. Everything out there is committed. Sorry.’

The instructions how he should be treated had permeated throughout every floor, literally from the top to the bottom, realised Danilov. ‘You’ve also seen this?’ asked Danilov, extending Metkin’s order making him responsible for the supplies and facilities throughout the building.

Borodin nodded, not bothering to reply.

How well had he remembered the what’s-in-it-for-me approach, wondered Danilov. ‘The car pool, this garage, is a listed facility. All vehicle spares, petrol, the purchasing of new cars and the disposal of old vehicles is categorised under supplies. You are no longer allowed to order in your own name and under your own authority any parts, for any car. Nor will you be permitted to order a new car or dispose of an old one without reference and approval from me. All petrol purchasing will in future be by me. I will also want, weekly, details of all mechanics’ work sheets and all overtime claims. I have also been appointed overall controller of finance: no money will be paid on any overtime claim unless I have countersigned it. I want all authorisation dockets, at the end of every week, detailing use on official police business.’

Borodin’s mouth hung open almost as wide as the legs of the naked women he had been studying. ‘I don’t… I mean…’ stumbled the man who had just heard the threat of every bribe-accepting, price-inflating racket being taken from him.

At a conservative estimate, Danilov reckoned Borodin stood to lose about twenty times his official salary: probably more. He waved the handful of instructions from Anatoli Metkin, because it was important the cause of the catastrophe be identified from the outset. ‘The new Director is determined upon great change.’

‘I don’t want to get our relationship off on a bad footing,’ said Borodin anxiously.

‘Neither do I,’ assured Danilov.

‘You know anything about running garages? Cars?’

‘Nothing,’ admitted Danilov. ‘I’ll learn, in time.’

‘It would be easier if we worked together.’

A motto that should be enshrined in stone over every official Russian door.

‘I wouldn’t want it any other way.’ Danilov waved an arm towards the garage. ‘Perhaps you’d let me have the order sheets, so I can see who those are going out to?’

Borodin made a half gesture of looking through the rat’s nest of a drawer in his desk. ‘I don’t seem to have made one up yet. But I’m not sure, upon reflection, the Volga is committed. I think I could rearrange things to make it available.’

‘I’d regard that as a favour,’ said Danilov. ‘Why don’t you get it cleaned and valeted for me to pick up tonight?’

‘It’ll be waiting,’ promised Borodin eagerly.

He hadn’t forgotten a thing about how the system worked, decided Danilov happily. His meeting with the initially dismissive manager of stores and maintenance was a repeat performance; it took less than fifteen minutes to make clear to the man the benefits he had to lose, and be instantly promised next-day delivery of everything he needed for his empty office.

The Volga ran well and the valeting had been meticulous. Olga insisted on a first-time ride, demanding they go almost halfway around the outer Moscow ring road.

‘This is better!’ she said, head back against the seat. ‘Like it was in the old days! About bloody time.’ They had not had a car of their own for four years, since their old Lada had crumbled beyond repair. It had been one of the most expensive gifts Danilov had ever received, from a black marketeer whose convoys he had guaranteed through his Militia district for eight years. The watch that rarely worked had come from the same source.

Danilov glanced across at her. He couldn’t detect the greyness through the tint, in the half light, but he didn’t think he liked her hair quite as long. Apparently thinking a good appearance was necessary in a prestige car, Olga had put on her new coat, a brown tweed with a deeper brown felt collar. There was a button missing from the front. Olga was the sort of woman from whose clothes buttons always seemed to be missing, even when they were new. She never appeared to notice.

‘It is ours, isn’t it?’ she demanded, with sudden concern. ‘No-one’s going to take it back?’

‘Don’t worry about it,’ said Danilov.

‘I’ve invited Yevgennie Grigorevich and Larissa to dinner to celebrate your promotion,’ she announced.

‘That will be nice,’ he said neutrally.

‘You don’t mind?’

‘Why should I mind?’

‘No reason.’

He was aware of her looking directly back at him across the car. ‘When?’

‘Larissa’s going to call, to confirm a night. Now you’ve got the promotion and more money, I thought I could shop at the open market by the State Circus.’

‘I’m not sure the increase will cover that.’ He’d heard that prices in open markets, which were always groaning with produce and meat being sold by independent farmers and growers, were frequently ten times those in government controlled stores – although in government controlled stores the same items were rarely available. If there was a difference, it was that luxuries were no longer confined to the Party and KGB concessions. Ironically, the Party and former intelligence agents now had to stand in line behind their successors, the gangsters who had inherited the dollars and the power.

‘We’ll see,’ said Olga, airily.

Danilov was careful to remove the wipers when he parked outside his apartment. He’d have to ensure, tomorrow, that the car was protected by the local Militia station. He wondered what he would have to offer in return.

All the office equipment was delivered the following morning, but when he went to the store cupboard by the squad room he found the contents of three boxes tipped over the floor in total disarray, although the door had been locked. The boxes were missing. The one in which the bulbs had been hidden was untouched, though, which was a bonus because he’d insisted on being supplied with bulbs along with everything else. Now he had spares.

He was aware of the sniggering attention of the other detectives as he ferried his belongings to and fro, to the upper floor. He genuinely tried to re-assemble his working area neatly, but almost at once it became the jumbled chaos of before. He still knew where everything was, if he needed it.

Danilov had been encouraged by his easy success with the garage and the supply manager. It gave him further ideas how to manipulate his specific orders. No-one in the squad room would be sniggering, very shortly.

Cowley had to concede the slight advantage in personal publicity when the call from the Alexandria police, across the Potomac in Virginia, came direct to him, without the delay of being routed through the normal FBI receiving and comparison system to link what had been found in the National Airport parking lot with the killing of Petr Serov.