Brian Freemantle - No Time for Heroes

Momentarily Zimin hesitated, and Cowley thought he was going to go on with the threats. Then he said: ‘Yes.’

‘What level?’

‘ Komitet.’

‘Inner council?’

‘Yes.’

‘How many?’

‘Three.’

High, seized Danilov triumphantly: high enough to explain everything, surely!

‘What was the meeting for, in Sicily?’ Another Quantico lesson was that the more they talked, the easier the flow became.

‘Big. The biggest ever…’

‘For them? Or you?’

‘Biggest ever for the Chechen.’

‘How big?’

‘Ten million.’

‘Which currency?’ The man was exaggerating, trying to make himself sound more important.

‘Dollars.’

‘You don’t have access to ten million dollars!’ challenged Danilov, deciding the intrusion was necessary, thinking the same as Cowley. They wanted the truth, not lies from a man trying to avoid being thrown back into the horror they’d shown him. The profit from crime in Moscow had to be enormous, but there couldn’t be this much.

‘There’s more. Ten million was all I was authorised to negotiate this time.’

‘For what?’ Cowley decided to let the man believe he was successfully bullshitting them until he tripped over his own lies. Then he’d threaten the hole again.

‘Drugs,’ declared Zimin. ‘Heroin, from the Liccio people here. Cocaine through the Genovese, from Latin America…’ Zimin went between the two investigators. ‘There’s a huge market, everywhere in the world. The idea was to make it two way. We were going to set up an organisation in Georgia: move heroin and marijuana from Uzbekistan and Kazakstan… ship it out through the Black Sea to the Mediterranean to here…’

Zimin was being clever, thought Cowley: mixing what could have been fact with fiction. Before he could make the intended threat, Danilov said: ‘You’re lying! You don’t have ten million dollars!’

‘So you’re going back to the hole!’ supported Cowley, reaching out to turn off the recording machine.

‘No!’ wailed Zimin. ‘There is the money!’

‘From where?’ demanded Cowley. ‘The truth!’

‘Government money!’

The announcement momentarily stopped both investigators, each coming towards the same conclusion from different directions. Cowley guessed it was going to throw the entire American government into the biggest loop of this or any other administration. Danilov decided what they were hearing would be officially blocked and diverted and derailed and that all along he’d been a puppet, dancing on a string to convince the Americans of co-operation never intended. It’s like a dub, everyone looking after each other. Leonid Lapinsk’s cynicism echoed in his mind, more like a jeer than a warning.

Danilov spoke first. ‘Are you telling us – wanting us to believe – your presence here is known about by the Russian government… that it’s somehow official?’ The man could still be lying. But Petr Serov had been a Russian diplomat. And Oleg Yasev, a senior and as yet unchallenged Foreign Ministry man, had withheld a name-identifying document. And Gennardi Fedorov, who’d gone to Serov’s funeral, was attached to the Finance Ministry.

‘Not the government,’ groped Zimin, who’d started to sweat badly. ‘Not the government in control now!’

‘You’re not making sense!’ protested Cowley.

‘ Listen to me!’ pleaded Zimin. ‘It was the coup!’

The American remained lost. For Danilov the fog was still thick, but there were shapes vaguely forming. Serov’s concealed diary-entry dates connected perfectly with the August 1991 attempt by the desperate Communist hardliners to overthrow Mikhail Gorbachov and reverse the reforms he had initiated. Danilov’s awareness grew. Billions had been stolen: stolen and never recovered. A government commission had been established to investigate. If he was correctly interpreting what Zimin was saying, the exposure – if it ever were exposed – would be sensational.

‘How much, in total?’

‘We don’t know!’ insisted Zimin. ‘Twenty million at least.’

‘We’re talking about the Communist Party funds that were looted? And have never been found?’

‘Of course we are!’ said Zimin, almost impatiently.

Conscious of the need to get it audibly on the slowly revolving tape, Danilov said: ‘The Chechen, a Moscow Mafia organisation, have access to twenty million dollars of looted Communist Party funds?’

‘That’s right.’

Both Danilov and Cowley were curious at the sly smile that accompanied the admission.

‘In Moscow?’ pressed Danilov.

‘No.’

‘No, it wasn’t, was it:’ understood the American. ‘It’s in Switzerland! Michel Paulac was looking after it: the local man administering it!’

‘Only government officials – Communist government officials – would have been able to move a sum of money that large out of Russia?’ suggested Danilov.

‘I suppose so,’ agreed Zimin.

That was slightly off centre, as if the man knew a lot but not all, even though he claimed to be on the governing committee of the crime family. Where was the key? Was it in the past, in August 1991? Or maybe earlier: as early as May of that year, the very first time a name still unexplained appeared in the Serov documents? Abruptly, Danilov said: ‘Who is Ilya Iosifivich Nishin?’

Danilov was unsure if the frown was of genuine ignorance or surprise that he had the name. ‘I don’t know.’

‘You must!’ pressed Cowley. He was sure he would be tainted with the man’s stink.

‘I don’t!’

Nishin was important, Danilov determined. And he thought at last he knew the direction in which to look, to fit another piece into the puzzle. It would have needed a government official to move at least $20,000,000 out of Russia. But the coup had collapsed so quickly it would have had to be moved prior to the attempt, because there was no time afterwards! May, 1991 – when Ilya Nishin had visited Geneva and then Washington – was very significant. His mind on Switzerland, Danilov said: ‘Why was Michel Paulac killed?’

‘He was stupid. Wouldn’t listen.’

‘To what?’ came in Cowley.

‘That control was going to change.’

‘Control of the money in Switzerland?’

‘Yes.’

‘To the Chechen?’

‘Yes.’

‘From whom?’

‘The Ostankino.’

Finally it was settling into place! Danilov asked: ‘Why was Serov killed?’

‘A warning.’

‘Who to?’

‘Those who had to realise it.’

‘Why was Ignatov murdered?’ demanded Cowley.

‘A warning again.’

‘Who to?’

‘The Ostankino.’ He paused. ‘I’m getting tired.’

‘There’s a cell downstairs, in the basement, where you can rest if you want,’ said Cowley relentlessly. ‘“Control was changing.” Changing from the Ostankino to the Chechen?’

‘Yes.’

‘So the Ostankino had the money first?’

‘Thought they did.’

‘How did the Chechen learn about it?’

Zimin shifted uncomfortably in his seat, and Cowley decided the man had fouled himself. The Russian said: ‘A recruit.’

One of the August 1991 ringleaders had been KGB chairman Vladimir Kryuchkov: whose all-embracing, all-knowing, all-pervasive intelligence organisation had probably been the most hard-hit casualty. ‘There were a lot of unemployed, weren’t there? He must have been high ranking, before. Or been in some administrative position, to learn things?’ It was a supposition, but Danilov was sure it was a correct one.

‘What was the rank?’ chanced Cowley, joining in the guess.

‘Colonel,’ conceded Zimin.

‘We need to get names,’ said Danilov. ‘Why don’t we start with his?’