Brian Freemantle - No Time for Heroes

Zimin supervised the attack but took no personal part in it. He liked watching. It was better for him than sex.

There’d been no warning from either Olga or Larissa, and Danilov stalled because their evenings were nearly always arranged in advance. His thoughts see-sawed. Larissa had talked of announcing their decision together. But Kosov wouldn’t be as friendly as this. He would if he didn’t know what was coming. Larissa wouldn’t do something like this without telling him.

‘Just as you are,’ urged Kosov. ‘A few drinks, some cold meats. Just sitting around, chatting about things.’

Olga fussed for an hour, undecided between two dresses, eventually choosing the first she’d selected. He tried to reassure himself, while he waited. There had been unplanned occasions before – he’d initiated a few himself in the first flush of his affair with Larissa – but not for a long time: certainly not since he’d been at the Organised Crime Bureau. Larissa wouldn’t try to force his hand like this, impatient though she might be: he knew she wouldn’t. If he called back to make an excuse, Larissa would think he wasn’t sure. Which he was.

‘How do I look?’ asked Olga, parading.

‘Very pretty.’ He’d have to find a way of telling her about all the different colours in her hair: it looked as if she had an old rug on her head.

Danilov looked with curious apprehension at Larissa when they arrived: unseen by anyone but Danilov, she raised her eyebrows in an expression he didn’t understand but hoped was matching curiosity at the unexpected invitation. She wore Armani jeans that Olga could not have risked, and the sweater was inevitably cashmere. He hadn’t seen her wear either before: she looked sensational, and he decided he was as anxious as she to get some permanence into their relationship. He didn’t want to go away tonight, leaving her with someone like Kosov.

‘This is a surprise?’ invited Danilov, still seeking guidance.

‘I wanted the American to come, but he wasn’t at the hotel when Yevgennie telephoned,’ said Larissa.

Cowley wouldn’t have been included if this were going to be honest declaration time! Danilov began to relax.

Kosov went into his usual performance with French champagne, flustering them, glasses in hand, into chairs and saying it really was like old times and they should do things on the spur of the moment more often. Olga said she thought so, too. Danilov let the small talk swirl around him. He and Larissa managed uninterrupted looks several times.

Danilov expected Kosov very quickly to raise the subject of the investigation, but he didn’t, not immediately. Instead, showing a depth of argument that surprised Danilov, he started discussing the increasing strength of the resurgent local-level Communist cadres, demanding Danilov’s opinion on whether it was an unstable reaction to the failure of supposed democracy, or whether Danilov believed it would be enough to reverse the fragile reforms and still uncertain changes. Danilov replied that the dismantling of the former order had gone too far to be turned back, and that it was unthinkable any of the newly independent republics would now consider anything more than the loosest of trade links. He added he was worried about the political frailty of Russia itself, which he was.

Both women became bored by the conversation – Danilov wondered if that hadn’t been Kosov’s intention – and started to gossip between themselves, and when Larissa talked of preparing the meal Olga volunteered to help. Kosov sent them off with refilled champagne glasses, switching to whisky himself.

‘I think the old ways are too ingrained,’ declared Kosov, resuming their debate. ‘I agree there will be changes at the political top but it will all be cosmetic, to impress foreign financiers. Real things aren’t going to alter. There are too many people who don’t know any other way: don’t want to know any other way.’

Danilov recognised the familiar favour-for-favour argument. ‘It would change – not quickly but eventually and inevitably – if people demanded it.’

‘But they don’t,’ insisted Kosov. ‘People only know the one way things work… understand it. That’s how they want it to go on…’

It was a bigoted, fallacious opinion, decided Danilov. ‘Work for some people. Not for all: not enough. Which was, after all, what the revolution was supposed to be all about.’

‘Starry-eyed ideology,’ sneered Kosov.

The man personified all that had been wrong in the past, Danilov thought: and now, in the present. Kosov had even joined the Communist Party to get this apartment and whatever other privileges were available to members, not from any political persuasion. ‘It’ll come, in time.’ He wished the women would come back, no matter how inconsequential their conversation.

‘Too late for me to benefit. Or you. Not that you benefit enough: not like you once did.’

Danilov now bitterly regretted following the inviolable rules in his uniformed days. It put him at a disadvantage with the other man: let Kosov know that despite his new-found and despised honesty, he’d operated like everyone else in the past. Was stained like they were stained: the same as them, which he didn’t want to be, ever again. ‘What’s that mean?’ he demanded directly.

‘Just a remark,’ shrugged Kosov. He topped up Danilov’s glass, adding whisky to his own.

‘It sounded as if you were making a point,’ pressed Danilov. He wasn’t drinking any more.

Kosov came back to him, smiling. ‘You’re missing out on a lot. I don’t have to tell you that.’

‘So why are you telling me?’

This time there were no words with the shrug. Kosov sat, seeming to find something of interest in the glass he cupped in both hands, swirling the drink around and around. He wasn’t actually drinking, either.

‘Is it you telling me?’ Danilov persisted. ‘Or are you expressing the views of other people you think I should take seriously?’ He was being approached! By whom? For what?

The shrug came again, like the automatic reflex of a boxer warding off a clumsy blow, but with no proper answer. Instead there was a question. ‘You really think you’re going to solve your famous crimes?’

‘Yes,’ Danilov exaggerated. How to keep the man talking? That’s ail he had to do, keep him talking.

Kosov shook his head. ‘Don’t be so naive, Dimitri Ivanovich! I’m your friend! Trust me!’

‘Perhaps I would, if I could understand what you’re saying.’

‘You survived at the Bureau, when you weren’t supposed to: won, even. The directorship could unquestionably be yours, like it should have been the first time, if people were sure of you.’

That reply didn’t help Danilov. Who was Kosov speaking for? One of the Mafia Families, or someone within the government operating in collusion with organised crime? The Ministry confrontation and the tribunal enquiry hadn’t been disclosed, yet Kosov was showing knowledge far beyond rumour. That awareness didn’t help answer the question either. But it suddenly made Kosov a very important person, although not for the reasons the man would have welcomed. ‘So I’m getting a message?’ Come on! thought Danilov, anxiously.

‘A personal opinion.’

Bollocks, thought Danilov: wrong to try too soon for specifics. He had to keep the conversation general and try to find the path to follow, ‘I can’t compromise on this. There’s the American involvement: the need to satisfy outsiders.’

‘Cowley follows where you lead: he doesn’t direct the investigation. What can’t be solved can’t be solved.’

What had there been so far positively to understand? He hadn’t been expected to survive Metkin’s attack. But he had. So now they – whoever they were – were worried: seeking that special sort of Russian agreement to prevent the inquiry into Ivan Ignatov’s murder reaching a legal conclusion. Why this approach so quickly? Had he or Cowley or Pavin missed something? Was there evidence they’d overlooked demanding to be recognised? What more? Kosov himself. Danilov knew the man had taken the favour-for-favour lifestyle of a Militia district commander far beyond the hand-over introductions he himself had made: at the level of those introductions there weren’t horse-choking wads of dollars, cocktail cabinets full of imported liquor and brand new BMWs with neons of dashboard lights. But he’d never imagined Kosov ascending to this echelon, speaking on behalf of the Mafia or high officials in government or both. Remembering Kosov’s enjoyment of flattery, Danilov said, without too much hyperbole: ‘I am impressed, Yevgennie Grigorevich.’