Brian Freemantle - No Time for Heroes

‘But a plea for a reduced sentence could be entered in mitigation?’ pressed Cowley.

‘It’s possible,’ conceded the Italian.

Danilov had an abrupt but vivid recollection of a shuddering man leaking blood all over him, and became hot with anger at the thought of any of them escaping with legal tricks. It was worse for not knowing how he could prevent it.

‘I can break Zimin,’ declared Cowley quietly. ‘I’m sure I can break him.’

There were doubtful looks from everyone else in the room.

Initially the doubt seemed justified.

Day followed day and separate interrogation followed separate interrogation without anyone in the Mafia groups collapsing. Cowley discussed his approach with Danilov, who always let the American lead the encounters with Zimin with the ridicule and threats of jail violence. Several times they both thought the man was going to break, but always he seemed to pull himself back from the very edge. At their nightly review, at the end of the fifth day, Melega said that although there was no concern about the Sicilians, because of the already existing charges, the Italian prosecutors were becoming unsettled at the delay in formal accusations being put against Palma and the Russians: it could be a defence that they had been unfairly subjected to duress, with legal representation withheld.

‘I want to do something,’ declared Cowley. He’d endured each day’s questioning with foreboding of further jibes about souvenir photographs, which hadn’t come. It had, he supposed, been naive to expect them. The first remark had been a warning, of a bargaining demand yet to come. It could be soon, if the Italian agreed to what he wanted.

When he explained, Melega said: ‘It’s a trick.’

‘It’ll work,’ insisted Cowley. I hope, he thought.

It was far worse than any jail pit into which they had ever descended, which surprised Danilov because he’d thought nothing could be as bad as Russian penitentiaries.

The noise was first, hardly recognisable as human sounds: a muttering, growling hum like a beehive where the insects crawl one over the other. And then there was the smell. It was a stomach-souring, retching stink of every conceivable body odour and stench.

They had made Zimin shower and given him cologne, which he had applied, with no way of knowing. The noise came close to a roar – the automatic reaction to authority entering the Rebibbia dungeons – but then Zimin was picked out between them, manacled to identify him from Cowley and Danilov and the guards, and the cacophony began, the shouts and the calls, distorted faces at cell bars and metal – screened windows. There were a lot of arms reaching out, with grasping fingers. They made Zimin walk the entire length of the cell block, slowly, controlling his pace by the tethering chain. The Russian began to shake before he reached the end, trying to pull himself among them, for protection or to hide.

‘This is where you’ll be,’ said Cowley.

‘No! Please no!’

A cell had been cleared, at the very end, although it hadn’t been cleaned. When he realised he was being led towards it Zimin tried to fight and finally fell, crying, to the ground. He’d won, Cowley knew. The bastard was too terrified even to remember the photographs. He would, though.

The girl, who was freshly bathed and who had already begun her careful, unobtrusive make-up, reacted at once to the telephone because it was the time the telephone started to ring, the start of her working day. She said of course she was free: she could fit in with whatever arrangement. She’d be waiting for him, she promised.

‘A full night?’ It was always important to establish things at the very beginning. He’d been very demanding last time.

‘All evening, all night. That a problem?’

‘Not at all. I just didn’t want to commit myself elsewhere.’

‘Don’t do that. Dollars, like last time?’

She hesitated, wondering whether to bargain, but decided against it. ‘That’ll be fine.’

‘Two hours?’

‘I’ll be there.’

The girl’s name was Lena Zurov. She was twenty-eight years old, and a professional and extremely successful prostitute operating in a very select Moscow circle.

Five thousand miles away, Michael Rafferty grinned up from the latest package to arrive from Geneva and said to his partner: ‘They may be getting all the glory and all the shit in Rome, but you know who’s going to put this baby to bed? The good old Swiss police! And us, because we’ve made the connection.’ He flicked the photograph across the desk to Johannsen. ‘Look at that!’

The forbidden cigar-smoking had increased in the past weeks, so that Gusovsky was sometimes racked by paroxysms of coughing; it happened now, stopping the conversation. No-one – not even Yerin – risked reminding the man of the medical ban. The smoke had further fogged the rear room of the Pecatnikov club, already thick with that of his henchmen’s Marlboros. Antipov waited with the rest for the spasm to be over.

‘It went well?’ gasped the Mafia head.

‘Wonderfully,’ smiled the hitman, a remark as much for his own amusement as an answer to the question. She always had been one of the best.

‘You didn’t make any mistakes?’ demanded Yerin, remembering Washington.

‘None,’ insisted Antipov.

‘Kosov has some explaining to do,’ said Gusovsky, quite recovered. ‘He said everything was safe and it wasn’t. Get him here, to talk to me. Don’t hurt him. Just get him here.’

The terror was still juddering through Maksim Zimin when he was led into the interview room. He smelled foul and Cowley guessed he’d wet himself, perhaps worse. He looked with undisguised hatred at both of them, his gaze remaining on the American.

‘You quite sure now?’ said Cowley.

‘Bastard!’ It was a hoarse whimper, without any force, the man had screamed so much. ‘You know what I’m going to do! And enjoy doing it.’

‘Wait!’ warned Cowley, not to put off the inevitable but to get as much as they could before it came: he still delayed switching on the tape recorder. ‘You don’t have them: I guess your people have, but you don’t. We’re not dealing with that, not now. What we’re going to decide today is whether what you tell us is good enough to stop us putting you back in the hole, like last night. And we will. If you fuck us about maybe we’ll even give you a shared cell. And go on doing it until we’re satisfied we’ve got it all. You clear on that?’

Danilov sat on the sidelines, bewildered. There’d been no rehearsal, as there hadn’t when the American had recognised the man as a bully who could be broken, and Danilov didn’t have any idea what this latest exchange was about. Once again he decided to wait, until he got a guide from his colleague.

‘Bastard!’ said Zimin again, louder this time.

‘You’re wasting time: risking going back down below. Don’t be stupid.’ Cowley had realised the previous night there was no way the man would have been carrying copies of the photographs – the photographs Cowley, in fact, did have, locked in the briefcase at his hotel.

‘You’ll deal!’ It was meant as a threat but it came out more as a question. ‘My people will make you deal.’

Not just a bully but a fool, thought Cowley. The man had just confirmed who the blackmailers were. It hardly mattered. He couldn’t use the information to any benefit.

Did Zimin imagine the American had more influence in Italy than he did, as a Russian? thought Danilov. It had been Cowley who’d manipulated the man’s collapse, so he might think so.

Beside him Cowley depressed the start button on the recording machine and said: ‘You’re Chechen, right?’