Brian Freemantle - No Time for Heroes

The static recurred, losing at least an entire sentence from whomever Kosov was talking to. The next voice was Kosov’s. ‘ Other ways? ’

‘… shouldn’t interfere…’ came from the other end, with abrupt clarity.

‘… It’s their job! ’ Kosov’s remark was greeted with guffawed laughter from both ends.

‘… want… wrong…’

‘ Nothing will go wrong,’ came Kosov’s voice, enabling the demand to which he was responding to be inferred. It was an eager-to-please assurance, like Olga’s pitter patter laughter, earlier.

The reception was suddenly so good they had to turn the volume down. ‘ You sure you can get there? ’

‘ Quite sure.’

Danilov moved to speak but Cowley shook his head against the interruption.

‘ How’s the car? ’

‘ Fantastic.’

‘ We want it to work. And I don’t mean the car.’

‘ I’ve told you it will! ’

‘ Think of the car: the sort of gratitude there’ll be.’

‘ Don’t need to think. I know.’

‘ We’re relying on you. Yevgennie Grigorevich.’

Danilov nodded to Cowley, at the introduction of an identifiable name.

‘ I wouldn’t have thought you needed confirmation by now.’

‘ We always want confirmation. Three people are dead because we wanted confirmation.’

The silence was so long both Cowley and Danilov thought there had been a complete break. Then Kosov said: ‘ You didn’t need to say that .’

‘ Don’t take it personally.’

‘ What other way is there to take it? ’

‘ You’re being melodramatic.’

‘ I told you it’s all going to work! ’ Kosov’s voice was subdued.

‘ I heard you.’

‘ We’ll go on using this line.’

‘ If that’s what you think is best.’

‘ Safest,’ said Kosov, finding a better word. ‘ Anything else for us to talk about? ’

‘ Just do what you’ve got to.’

‘ What about the rest of it? ’

‘ All covered,’ guaranteed the other man, the strength of the signal fluctuating again. ‘ Not your concern.’

‘ I need to know! ’ The protest was still subdued.

‘ You will, when it’s necessary.’ The contempt leaked over the telephone link.

‘ What, until then? ’

‘ Stay in touch.’

The reply was lost. So was any farewell. There was a high-pitched whine, ‘ That’s right ’ from Kosov, and then the deafening music again: Billie Holliday singing ‘Melancholy Baby’.

‘We’re right there, in his office!’ declared the American. Flat voiced, he quoted: ‘“We’ll go on using this line.” How else is he going to do business but from the guaranteed security of his car phone!’

Danilov found it hard to believe how easy it had suddenly become. ‘Not anyone official.’ It was essential to analyse.

‘Definitely not,’ agreed the American. In further, belated agreement he added: ‘It could have been about the discussion you and Kosov had.’

‘“You sure you can get there?”’ echoed Danilov. ‘That could refer to Kosov thinking he can transfer to the Organised Crime Bureau.’

‘We shouldn’t over-interpret,’ warned Cowley. ‘The conversation can be made to fit, but I don’t think we should be too positive yet.’ Was the reluctance professional objectivity, or personal unwillingness to accept the inevitable?

‘I’d liked to have heard more about “other ways”,’ said Danilov. ‘I can’t guess what that meant.’

Cowley had isolated the remark, too, linking it with what followed about interference, Which had caused both speakers so much amusement. ‘There can’t be any doubt about the three people who died to provide confirmation. But confirmation of what?’

Danilov took the question further, not able to provide an answer. ‘It was a threat to Kosov. The three who died had their mouths blown away. So Yevgennie Grigorevich knows what it’s all about: he could tell us!’

‘Not until we’re a greater threat,’ stressed Cowley. ‘Nobody’s frightened enough of us yet, either here or in America.’

‘And they’re hardly likely to be,’ said Danilov, cynically.

Cowley said: ‘I won’t pass any of this on to Washington, not yet. It might have meaning for us. For anyone else it just raises more questions than it answers.’

‘Maybe we won’t have to wait much longer,’ said Danilov.

They didn’t.

Over the succeeding days they eavesdropped on Yevgennie Kosov’s car adequately enough to understand approximately eighty-five percent of every conversation. Sometimes they listened to activities inside it, too.

There were a lot of command briefings to Kosov’s subordinates in his Militia division, usually bullying and demanding. There were outings with Larissa, during one of which she protested she didn’t like the people they were going to meet and Kosov told her to shut up and be pleasant because they were the providers of a lot of the ‘good things’ they enjoyed. Danilov and Cowley played that tape several times, to extract every nuance, and listened intently to the homeward journey in the hope of hearing a name, which they didn’t. There was a telephone conversation with someone named Eduard, with a peremptory insistence upon a wine and Western spirit delivery within a week, upon which Danilov particularly concentrated because an Eduard Agayans was a black marketeer to whom he’d introduced Kosov: Danilov was unable to decide if it was the same man from the faintness of the intercepted voice. There was an incoming call, probably the most difficult to decipher, which they decided was an instruction to Kosov to guarantee the unimpeded passage through his district of a fleet of six trucks, coming up from the south. Throughout the exchange Kosov showed the respect of the first overheard recording, but the reception this time was too bad to be certain if it was the same man: Cowley said if they turned the tapes over to the technicians at Quantico, a positive voiceprint could be made. There was no indication during the conversation what the lorries contained.

That afternoon Kosov dialled someone they were sure was the man of the first day. It was an extremely brief exchange, Kosov asking if there was anything he should be told, which there wasn’t, and the man asking the same in return and receiving the same reply. Cowley thought it possible when they made the tape available to Washington, other Quantico specialists would be able to extract a number – from which in turn they could get an address – from the electronic variations in the dialling. There were two clumsy, sexually intimate conversations with women, quite soon after one of which a girl audibly entered the car. Fifty American dollars was agreed, for fellatio, which was performed to a lot of grunted pleasure from Kosov.

There were recordings of three other passengers in the car, all male, one obviously another Militia officer. That journey was the day after Kosov received his instructions about the lorry convoy, which he passed on in specific detail to the unnamed policeman: three days later there was a call of thanks from the man who had sought an unhindered journey. Another passenger was a fence, paying a bribe of $500 for the right to operate on Kosov’s territory. They were not sure about the third. The man said very little and what he did say was spoken in a quiet voice, so not everything was picked up, even though he was sitting literally on top of one of the microphones. A lot of it was also intentionally ambiguous. It was not until Kosov talked openly of a ministry – although without stipulating which one – that Danilov guessed at a government official. They prepared a written transcript of the entire encounter, paring away the double meanings finally to agree Kosov was establishing himself as the man’s supplier – ‘anything you want, all you’ve got to do is ask, you know that,’ Kosov said at one point.