Brian Freemantle - No Time for Heroes

‘So we know what you’ve got,’ accepted Yerin. The man spoke softly but with precise pronunciation, for every word to be heard.

‘I don’t think you do,’ further lured Danilov.

‘What do you want?’ demanded Gusovsky. It was a contemptuous question from a man accustomed to dispensing favours to the frightened or the bribable.

Danilov allowed some silence. ‘I’m not the supplicant. You are.’

‘Don’t treat us like fools.’

Danilov thought the blind man had difficulty controlling his voice that time: they really weren’t accustomed to anything but abject respect. ‘Let’s not treat each other like fools.’

Gusovsky’s mouth tightened further, and his pallor accentuated an angry redness. ‘We were told you wanted to discuss things of mutual interest.’

‘More your interest than mine.’ Very soon now, he’d find out if Kosov really had kept the past to himself. Or whether he had offered it to ingratiate himself with these men, to arm them with the sort of pressure they always sought.

‘Why don’t you tell us what you think our interests are?’ demanded Gusovsky. He indicated the bottle at last. ‘Take some wine.’ It was an order, not an invitation.

Danilov was tempted to accept but wait for the other man to pour, but he didn’t. He had no intention of obeying the expected rules by acting cowed or subservient, even on their own territory, but there was no benefit in unnecessary antagonism. He filled the available glass and drank, but without any meaningless toast. ‘I think one major interest is in forming an association with other Mafia groups, in Italy and in America and in Latin America. I think you believe you have funds available, to finance that association. I think you’re concerned how endangered that intention is, by the arrests in Italy: you’d be stupid if you weren’t. There’s the confrontation with the Ostankino…’ He let the recital trail, waiting intently. Would they pick up on the half-intentional clue about imagined funds? He hoped not, this soon. He did not want to play every card without an indication of what they were holding, in their attempt to outplay him.

Neither responded at once. The sightless Yerin bent slightly sideways to the other man, deferring to him the right to speak first, which Gusovsky eventually did. ‘Quite a catalogue!’

‘Your shopping list, not mine.’ They were going to trap him, if he didn’t soon get what he expected thrown back at him. Make me bargain, thought Danilov desperately.

‘The Italian arrests didn’t come from here? It was American information?’ said Yerin.

Kosov the faithful conduit! thought Danilov. ‘That’s how it happened. From America.’

‘You work closely with the American?’ asked Gusovsky.

‘Yes,’ embarked Danilov, cautiously. This was the way he’d wanted it to go: the opening hand, card for card.

‘He confides in you?’ asked Yerin.

They were close to overplaying, thought Danilov: or in too much of a hurry. ‘There’s a full exchange.’

‘There are probably some things he doesn’t share with you,’ suggested Gusovsky. He smiled for the first time, pleased with himself: the dentures were too large for his mouth, as if they had been made when he was much fuller featured, or he had borrowed them from someone else.

Danilov began to revise his opinion of the man as nondescript. He was unsure whether to pre-empt them about the photographs or let them over-extend with their announcement. Give it a little longer, he decided. ‘I doubt it.’

There must have been some sort of shelf or container beneath the table and a signal between them Danilov didn’t see. Yerin knew immediately where to reach. He passed the package to the expectant Gusovsky who in turn offered it across the table. ‘Isn’t it strange, how some men get so much pleasure from screwing whores?’

Danilov refused to accept them, stranding the Mafia chief with them unlooked-at in his hand. ‘Those!’ said Danilov. ‘I thought Lena looked very pretty. Fantastic body. I’ve never considered the male motivation, until you mentioned it, but I’ve always been curious why girls as attractive as she was become prostitutes. I would have thought it would be easy for them to get grateful husbands. Perhaps it isn’t so simple, in Moscow. Or perhaps it’s just sex: that they like variety. You didn’t have to kill her, though. That was panic, after the Italian arrests. Stupid.’

Danilov’s nonchalant dismissal of the blackmailing pictures – the only part of the encounter for which he was half prepared – and the obvious fact he’d already known about something he didn’t regard as a threat, caused the greatest shock of anything he’d said or done since entering. Gusovsky remained with them in his outstretched hand for several moments before putting them on the table. For the first time Yerin was disoriented, moving his head jerkily as if he’d lost the direction from which the voices were coming. There were audible sounds of astonishment from the other table.

Danilov was savouring the moment, believing he had achieved precisely what he wanted, when Gusovksy’s remark exploded in his mind. He connected it with Pavin’s detailed account of Lena Zurov’s murder and for the briefest moment he had the physical sensation of tightness, all over his body, a ballooning of excitement. It was only a guess, he warned himself: a wild, snatch-in-the-air guess. But one he could follow and possibly prove, because as always Pavin had been meticulous. And this time it would be done right.

‘You don’t think it would be embarrassing if these photographs showing a woman later murdered with an American pistol reached newspapers here and in America?’ challenged Gusovsky.

‘Cowley will have to resign, certainly,’ agreed Danilov. ‘But he’s already decided to do that. And it will be an American embarrassment. It won’t affect what happened in Italy, or influence any prosecutions I originate here…’

‘You sure about that?’ interrupted Yerin.

They did know about his compromising past! At least he had the confirmation: could calculate from now on from knowing, not from guessing. ‘Yes, I’m sure about that,’ he lied, grateful there was no uncertainty in his voice.

Yerin dipped sideways again, once more for Gusovsky to offer a photograph, which he did by sliding it across the table. And this time, the shock was Danilov’s.

It was fortunate he was looking down, concealing any facial surprise, although he didn’t think he showed much. The glare of the camera flash had shown up the fade in Olga’s black dress. She was caught looking vaguely surprised, the smile slack, as if she were slightly drunk, which she probably had been. From his later visit there, Danilov was able to recognise the balcony of the nightclub on Tverskaya.

‘You might not recognise her with her clothes on,’ said Gusovsky. ‘The girl beside your wife is Lena Zurov.’

‘I know,’ said Danilov, looking up, sure he’d regained his control. ‘It was the night Yevgennie Kosov took her to Nightflight. I was in Washington at the time.’ Once more his casual acceptance discomposed them. Inwardly he boiled: some day, somehow, he was going to make Kosov hurt in every way possible, and he didn’t give a damn about any retribution the man might attempt against him.

‘Kosov told you!’ blurted Yerin.

‘No. My wife did. Was there any reason why she shouldn’t have done?’

‘Doesn’t that compound the embarrassment though?’ persisted Gusovsky. ‘A cocksucking whore who serviced your American partner, also at a nightclub with your wife?’

‘It will make headlines,’ agreed Danilov. He put a sneer into his voice. ‘But think about it far more sensibly than you obviously have, so far. If I brought against you, personally, the charges I can – and then a lot more against people in your organisation, which I also can – wouldn’t that show exactly what those photographs are; a cheap and clumsy blackmail which didn’t work anway? Cowley’s already decided to quit. And Olga would be shown to have been what? A guest at a nightclub, taken there by a policeman friend, innocently having her photograph taken with a woman she didn’t know was a whore…’ It was sounding far better than he’d hoped. ‘… Balance it,’ he said, making it sound like an order. ‘Murder, extortion, massive theft and a huge drug-smuggling operation on the one hand. On the other a drunken man tricked by a whore and a naive woman, inveigled by a crooked policeman