Brian Freemantle - No Time for Heroes

The Federal Prosecutor gave another negative head shake. ‘You took Antipov’s confession. He never identified them by name. Just that he was told to laugh at your interrogation about Ignatov: that no prosecution would be made.’

‘So there is to be no trial?’ asked Cowley.

‘They will be dismissed from the Militia, with the loss of all pensions and privileges, by a disciplinary hearing.’

‘Raisa Serova?’ queried Danilov. He didn’t expect there would be another opportunity, so they had to learn everything now.

‘America has agreed to withdraw any restriction on the anstalt. We are providing the supporting documents, as was suggested to you…’ The prosecutor looked directly at Danilov. ‘You will personally take her to Bern, to supervise her signing over the money to Russia.’

If he were present, the one uncertainty – the danger of the timing slipping out of sequence – was removed! And he had his answer, about any further Chechen prosecutions! So he could do it! He glanced quickly at the American, to see if the man had realised, but Cowley didn’t answer the look.

Instead Cowley said: ‘But not accused of any criminal act?’

‘No,’ confirmed Smolin.

‘Yasev?’

‘Dismissed, with the loss of all pensions and privileges. So is every other serving member of permanent government who’s been implicated.’

The punishment of the old – but perhaps returning – days of Communism, thought Danilov: those not facing a court were being reduced to the status of non-persons. ‘What’s the post-trial statement, about Ignatov and the woman?’

Smolin shrugged, the wording both undecided and unnecessary. ‘Rival gang fights: there’s enough of that practically every day on the streets of Moscow. Whores get killed all the time. It hardly needs explaining.’

Cowley shifted uncomfortably. ‘Washington is still your weakness,’ he insisted. ‘ Why was Serov involved?’

‘What’s wrong with the truth again?’ asked Smolin. ‘He was the American-based liaison between the Russian gangsters living there and whose names were in his possession – and the Swiss financier whose family came from a republic of the former Soviet Union. That’s sufficient inference, for their connection. If the tie-up between Russian, Italian and American Mafias had been formed, there would have needed to be a liaison, wouldn’t there? We can even speculate they intended using the security of the diplomatic mail as a conduit between Moscow and Washington. Which is true again.’ He straightened, briskly, looking between the two investigators. ‘Anything left out?’

‘No,’ said Cowley.

‘No,’ said Danilov.

‘There’ll be something,’ predicted Cowley, back at Petrovka.

‘He was using us, like he – and the others – have been using us all along,’ contradicted Danilov. ‘We’re the closest to it all, so we had to be the first: the filter. It’ll be refined and polished and rehearsed, long before it gets to any court. By the time it does, it’ll be perfect.’

‘I forgot how good you guys were at fixing courts! There wasn’t any real criticism in the remark.

‘Which you guys were happy enough with the last time and are going along with now,’ retorted Danilov, unoffended.

‘And the only poor bastard wrongly accused will be Petr Aleksandrovich Serov, the messenger boy who’s going to be made out to be a diplomatic Al Capone.’

‘You realise I can control the timing now, don’t you?’ demanded the Russian. ‘That the one danger is out of the way.’

‘It’s the Mafia, Dimitri Ivanovich,’ lectured the American. ‘Danger isn’t ever going to be out of the way.’

‘After what we’ve been railroaded into doing!’ protested the Secretary of State. ‘You’ve got to be joking! Tell me you’re joking!’

‘We agreed he should get some recognition! He saved the life of an American agent, for God’s sake!’ argued Leonard Ross.

‘They can go piss into the wind,’ rejected Hartz.

‘Danilov didn’t put the pressure on us! He did his job. Bravely. We should do something,’ insisted the more reasonable FBI Director. ‘I thought it could be something unusual.’

‘Like what?’ said the Secretary, unimpressed.

‘If an FBI agent had done what Danilov did, in the line of duty, he would have got our Medal of Valour.’

‘We making honorary FBI agents now?’

‘Why not?’ asked Ross. ‘That’s all it would be: honorary. It’s in my authority to give the award, doesn’t require any special discussion or decision, and would have just the right touch, publicly.’

‘God protect me from a liberal, legal mind!’ said Hartz. ‘I bet you never sentenced anyone to death in your whole goddamned career.’

‘I did,’ corrected the Director. ‘Five, in fact. But I never condemned anyone wrongly. That’s the important thing.’

At the end of five days the surveillance of the Ostankino had confirmed three more meeting places. Danilov had become convinced the thickset man was Yuri Ryzhikev and was frustrated he couldn’t confirm it, although realistically accepting it was a professional disappointment. The information was just for background files, after all. He told Pavin to suspend the observation after a further week.

The detour around the Moscow streets was even more convoluted than before so Danilov guessed they were not going to Pecatnikov, the address he already knew and which would have made the precaution pointless. It was, he supposed, a sensible precaution for them to take: by now they would be frantic, not knowing if Mikhail Antipov had talked. Danilov hoped so. From Kosov’s demeanour – and stumbled demands to know about Antipov’s arrest – he certainly was. The man had insisted on three drinks before setting off, hands jerking so nervously he came close to spilling them, sweat leaking from him. He’d never properly finished anything he began saying, which wasn’t necessary because it had almost all been complaints at the way Danilov had behaved, personally, towards him.

Danilov had enjoyed every whining protest. His determination to destroy Kosov was as strong as ever, but he was unsure when or how to submit to the Justice or Interior Ministries the dozens of tapes they now possessed from the BMW in which they were at that moment zig-zagging around the city. It couldn’t be before Cowley left: they had decided to stick to the story of the bugging as an entirely independent American operation, with the tapes being surrendered as a departing gesture. Danilov was sure he could sustain the deception of not having known.

What he was even surer about, after the latest discussion with the Federal Prosecutor, was that Kosov would not be disgraced in a public trial, which was what Danilov had always envisaged: there would be an unpublicised disciplinary tribunal and an unpublicised dismissal, and that would be the discreet end of it all. No, he corrected at once. If they dealt with Kosov the way they had dealt with everyone else, the man would be stripped of all government privileges, so he would lose his worth to the Chechen and whoever else from whom he took bribes and favours. And he was going to lose Larissa. So Kosov would be destroyed: not publicly, perhaps, but in every other way. Danilov didn’t admire himself for the vindictive satisfaction.

And if everything was to be resolved discreetly, maybe his own past – compensated for by what he had achieved at Petrovka – might be treated with less than an outright dismissal. His survival, at some level within the service, would be a minimal guarantee for his and Larissa’s future. Olga’s too. Recognising it as hypocritical, he decided nevertheless that he really had to remember to buy Olga some of the things she wanted when he made the trip to Switzerland. And try to convert some money into dollars, for the Tatarovo apartment. Double hypocrite, he thought.