Brian Freemantle - No Time for Heroes

‘Visco,’ said the man. ‘Georgi Petrovich.’

‘Go on,’ prompted Cowley.

Zimin nervously allowed himself a faint sneer. He said: ‘The KGB had a file on us. On all the Families. Visco knew a lot, about everyone.’ He smiled openly at Danilov. ‘There were files on co-operative people in the Militia, too. The most comprehensive details of all were about the transfer to Switzerland of the Party funds. He’d heard about it from another KGB officer, Anatoli Zuyev, who had links with the Ostankino and who had somehow – he didn’t know how – been involved.’

Quantico’s teaching had been right, Cowley thought: once the floodgates opened, the disclosures poured through. ‘Let’s go on with names! All the Chechen! And the Ostankino: as many as you know!’

Zimin’s list came to twenty-two, eighteen from his own organisation. The ultimate leadership, the other two on the komitet, were Arkadi Pavlovich Gusovsky and Alexandr Dorovich Yerin.

‘More!’ demanded Danilov, following an idea. ‘What is Ivan Zavorin, the man with you?’

‘Money man. Accountant.’

‘Boris Amasov, the other one?’

‘A bull.’

‘Like Mikhail Antipov!’ seized Danilov.

For the second time, Zimin risked something approaching a sneer. ‘Pity you had to release him. An embarrassment.’ At the word the man focused on Cowley, seeming about to speak, but at the last minute he changed his mind.

‘Those amenable people you learned about from your KGB recruit?’ said Danilov. ‘Anatoli Metkin one of them? Vladimir Kabalin another?’ He intentionally stopped short of mentioning Kosov.

‘Please let me stop,’ pleaded Zimin. ‘I’ve done a lot: told you a lot.’

They were all tired, Danilov accepted. If they went on they risked becoming overwhelmed, losing sight of what they were getting.

‘Not enough,’ refused Cowley.

‘Tomorrow,’ said the man, still pleading. ‘But don’t send me back: please don’t send me back!’

Cowley looked enquiringly at Danilov, who nodded. The American snapped the machine off. With the recording off, Zimin said: ‘You will help me? I’ll tell you everything, but you must help me.’

He wouldn’t, Cowley knew. But they’d already got far more than he’d expected. ‘You won’t be sent back tonight. What happens tomorrow depends on what you tell us tomorrow. Before then you can clean yourself up.’

The meeting with Melega and Barclay Smith was the first in which they had anything worthwhile to exchange. Melega said, pessimistically, they might have prevented the link-up this time, but another would succeed soon. The local FBI agent just said: ‘Jesus!’ Neither was hopeful what they knew now would pressure the people they were questioning into any confirmation or new disclosure. Danilov argued there were still unresolved enquiries in Russia and America which could be hampered by any publicity about the confession, which would be better kept until the eventual trial. Melega reluctantly agreed.

After the conference, Cowley and Danilov separated to their different embassies to send their cables. For each of them, incoming messages were waiting.

Cowley was told of the possible Geneva photographic identification of Ilya Nishin and that scientists at Quantico, working through the sample instruments provided from Moscow, believed they had isolated the number dialled on Yevgennie Kosov’s car telephone, from which they could trace an address.

After a day solving a lot of mysteries the information at the embassy for Dimitri Danilov created another one, but he put it aside, more anxious to understand the bewildering exchange between the American and Zimin, at the beginning of that morning’s interrogation.

Cowley was already in the cocktail lounge at the Bernini Bristol when Danilov got back to the hotel. The Russian accepted a drink at the bar but carried it away to a table, making Cowley follow him.

Quoting, Danilov said: ‘“Bastard! You know what I’m going to do! And enjoy doing it.”’ He waited several moments. ‘What is it Zimin doesn’t have but “his people” do?’

‘You told us it was safe! Specifically! That’s what you had to do! All you had to do: find out!’ Gusovsky’s voice was frighteningly quiet.

‘That’s what he told me!’ protested Kosov ‘He was going back to Washington! The investigation was virtually over.’

‘Why would he trick you?’ demanded Gusovsky.

‘I don’t know!’

‘You’ve got to find out,’ said Yerin, looking blank-eyed at the Militia colonel. ‘And you’ve also got to find out what’s happening in Italy: if anyone’s talking.’

‘I’ll try.’

‘No,’ said Yerin. ‘You won’t try. You’ll find out. And if you don’t, we’ll kill you.’

Danilov laid the photographs aside after glancing at only four or five, uninterested in the rest. He thought the girl was very pretty. Her body reminded him of Larissa: a lot of the activity, too. ‘I didn’t need to see them.’

‘A lot of people are going to, very soon now.’ They were in Cowley’s hotel room. He collected the prints from the table and put them back in his briefcase, as if wanting to hide them away again as quickly as possible. The man was physically bowed, pressed down by a burden he couldn’t finally support.

Danilov wasn’t sure whether the remark was cynicism or self-pity: perhaps a mixture of both. He had a sickening feeling a very recent puzzle was to become very clear very quickly: he wanted to hear everything Cowley had to say, before telling the American.

‘There are newspapers and magazines in Moscow now who would publish them: not the most explicit, but some.’

‘In America they’d even use the explicit ones,’ accepted Cowley. He hadn’t detected any criticism or disgust from the Russian. It was important to make the other man understand it wouldn’t jeopardise the investigation.

The query came suddenly to Danilov. ‘She was in the bar for about a week before you went with her?’

‘About that.’

‘Be more specific,’ insisted Danilov, almost peremptorily.

‘What’s it matter?’ frowned Cowley.

‘How soon, after the night out with Yevgennie Kosov?’

Cowley nodded slowly, in gradual understanding. ‘The motherfucker! It fits! The night after: two at the most.’

Danilov nodded back. ‘He insisted we all travel in the BMW: I thought he was boasting about the car. But they had to find out where you were staying.’ Would the Chechen hit him with the same determination they had hit Cowley, if Kosov had told them of his black-market dealings in the past? Of course they would. So he’d be destroyed as completely and as effectively as the American. And if the Chechen didn’t do it, Kosov still might, when he and Larissa made their announcement. Danilov guessed Larissa would take it much better than Olga. He felt a brief but very positive surge of pity for his wife. ‘They will try to deal. Blackmail!’

‘No deal!’ refused the American, loudly. ‘I did it! I was drunk, which isn’t an excuse, and I was stupid. They set me up and I fell for it, like a jerk. So they won. That time. What we now know is too big – far too big and far too important – for any deal. Which I wouldn’t consider, even if it weren’t. So in the end, I’m going to win. We’re going to win. We’re getting it now. And we’re going to get more. I’ll hang in, for as long as I can: as long, I guess, as they’ll let me. Which is a pretty shitty thing for an FBI man to have to admit about a bunch of punks! But when I go down, they go down!’

Danilov’s admiration for Cowley soared. He wasn’t shocked or offended by the pictures – none showed anything he and Larissa didn’t do most times they were together – and he was tempted to argue they were not as professionally compromising as Cowley was making out. But deep down he recognised that they were, so to say that would be patronising. Danilov’s mind ran on, to a thought that had come to him during that morning’s questioning. ‘I want to use Zimin: he might even see it as a deal.’