Brian Freemantle - No Time for Heroes

‘No,’ said Danilov. ‘And he isn’t going to.’ He was going to have to rely greatly upon the American, if they ever found a way in Russia to move the enquiry on.

Cowley’s seat in the corner of the bar, near the television set showing CNN for the benefit of the Western tourists, was waiting for him: before he reached it the barman was pouring the Scotch.

She arrived an hour and two drinks later, smiling across at him from her established seat near the foyer. There had been two other regulars setting up positions ahead of her and they’d smiled, too, but he hadn’t responded. This time he did. There was obviously an arrangement between the bar staff and the girls, who often sat without drinks unless they were bought by prospective clients.

Cowley intercepted the enquiring look between the barman and the girl, and said: ‘On my tab.’ The girl chose creme de menthe and smiled at him again, more openly this time, edging the second chair slightly away from her table, in invitation. Why not? What was wrong with just talking? He hadn’t talked with or been in the company of a woman since the night out with Danilov’s wife and Larissa. He carried his own drink from the small bar. As he approached she pushed the chair out further.

‘I am Lena,’ she said. Her voice was surprising deep, almost mannish. It was the only thing that was. The check wool dress was too well cut to be Russian, tight enough – but not too tight – to accentuate a perfect, ample-breasted body. The dark hair was short, the make-up discreet, certainly not so garish as the other girls in the bar.

‘Bill,’ he said.

‘I wasn’t sure it would ever happen.’ Her English was good, not hurried, which was a usual Russian mistake.

‘Nothing has, yet.’

‘I think it’s might, don’t you?’

‘We don’t have to use English. I speak Russian.’

‘I want to practise.’ There was no double entendre in the remark.

‘English then,’ he agreed.

‘You’ve seemed lonely.’

That was practically a stock phrase, but Cowley didn’t take it as such. He was lonely. Cowley had been with quite a few hookers, certainly before his marriage to Pauline and occasionally afterwards, when he’d been away or abroad on protracted trips and still hadn’t sobered up, in all ways. His immediate impression was that Lena would be one of the better ones. If he became a client, that is: he still didn’t have that intention, despite her confidence. Her appearance wasn’t surface thin, as it all too often was. Her nails were perfectly manicured, her hands well kept, and the smell was of perfumed freshness, not artificial fragrance of the previous day’s scent. In the West she would have been sophisticated enough to have worked through a discreet, high-class agency, not ply openly in hotels. Been a model, even.

Lena did not overdo the sexual innuendoes, and easily followed in whatever direction he led the small talk. She did not even attempt to hustle drinks, usually a requirement of establishments allowing a hooker to operate, but on two occasions even refused when he beckoned for more.

Cowley always had one, though.

Later – too much later – Cowley’s recollections were splintered, not even in the order in which things probably unfolded. He remembered agreeing without argument to $100 in American currency. There was the grandiose gesture of having champagne sent to the room. He had no memory of getting there. She’d undressed for him, languorously, but the imagery was hazy; tits bigger than he’d expected, a pubic thatch tantalisingly close to his face, before being pulled away, hips gyrating, then thrusting, letting him know the pleasure that was to come. There’d been no awareness of getting undressed himself: just of her helping but not clumsily, easing things erotically away from him. There’d been a cold reminder that he was naked, when he spilled champagne upon himself. That was about the last thing he could even vaguely call to mind: from then on it became completely disjointed, things that had to have happened, like her going down on him, her hair covering his crotch, mingled with an impression of their being among other people, which had to be from the earlier part of the evening, in the bar.

Cowley awoke feeling dreadful, the worst of the newly experienced hangovers there had so far been. His entire head seemed encased in a tightening shell. His throat and mouth were raspingly dry, like they had been when he’d been anaesthetised for a cartilage operation after a college football accident, and when he stood he began to heave and had to stumble to the bathroom, although when he got there he couldn’t be sick.

Lena was gone, but everything was wrecked by what they had done together. The half drunk bottle of champagne was lodged haphazardly in its cooler, slowly dripping what remained of its contents over the small table. Two glasses lay on their side, the bowl of one cracked. Bed covering, sheets and pillows, were strewn everywhere, his clothes among them. With enormous difficulty, his head squeezed by the pain, Cowley sorted through, retrieving everything he had discarded the previous night. Towards the end, as coherent thought returned, Cowley started both to hurry but at the same time concentrate, remembering Lena’s profession and frightened by what she might have stolen before leaving.

She’d taken nothing.

Which left him with only one uncertainty. He didn’t know whether he’d used a condom the previous night: if they had fully made love he was sure Lena would have ensured they were protected, as much for herself as for him, a first time, unknown client.

He supposed he could always ask her, tonight. And perhaps tonight he wouldn’t get so drunk, so he could enjoy it more the next time.

‘We don’t want Antipov near any of the places,’ decreed Gusovsky. ‘We’ll get a message to him – no telephone – to keep away until the surveillance is lifted.’

‘Shall we brief Kosov together?’ asked Zimin.

‘I think we should,’ decided Yerin. ‘Make the bastard understand that he’s got to earn his money: he’s taking too long to do what we tell him.’

‘What about the other business?’ asked Zimin. The previous night another lorry convoy had been hijacked, and they had lost an entire consignment of Scotch whisky.

‘It’s a direct challenge,’ agreed Gusovzky. ‘We’ve obviously got to respond just as directly.’

‘And hard,’ said Yerin. ‘But try to limit the killing. I think we should try to avoid too much public attention.’

‘We should cost them money,’ reflected Gusovsky.

‘I’ll organise it,’ offered Zimin, who enjoyed violence. He already had an idea in mind.

When the moment came for Danilov to work with the total independence upon which he’d decided, he was stopped by a last moment of doubt: after all the outside attempts to destroy him he was knowingly inviting his own destruction, like a lemming rushing towards the cliff edge. It was a brief hesitation. Someone or some group in an official position had to know what Serov had been doing, how he was doing it and why he was doing it. So for him to go on duplicating memoranda to ministries and officials like the hare in a paper chase was telling the very people he needed to search out and confront how to evade and hide.

It was the meticulous and methodical Pavin who found what Danilov had missed in Washington. The reserved, puffy-eyed Cowley called it a breakthrough but Danilov, more cautiously, suggested it was no more encouraging than the rest. When Danilov added he had no intention of telling anyone, the American said: ‘You could be putting the rope around your own neck, before kicking the chair away.’

‘We need to do it. If we don’t you might as well go back to Washington and I might as well mark the whole thing unsolvable.’