She felt the excited anticipation of someone embarking on a new career. Which was, she supposed, exactly what she would be doing. Very soon now.
On this occasion there was no coffee served by broad-hipped ladies with iron-grey hair, and Ralph Baxter was already attentively with the ambassador, so Cowley guessed it was going to be a meeting of complaint, if not censure.
It was and it began at once. Hubert Richards said: ‘I was to be told of everything involving this embassy. You blatantly withheld from me this disgraceful business of Hughes and Miss Harris. And of Miss Donnelly, who has also been withdrawn. Mrs Hughes, too, of course. And you brought a member of the Moscow Militia into the embassy without my permission, which should have been sought. The first proper information I received of any of this came from the State Department, to me here. Which is preposterous!’
The ambassador had the hots echoed in Cowley’s head, from his interview with Judy Billington. Could Ralph Baxter be the other, unnamed diplomat who’d cried when he got too drunk to make love to the dead girl? Cowley supposed he could be censured for bringing Danilov on to the premises, but not for much else. He didn’t consider there was anything for which he had to make a grovelling apology. ‘The situation was governed by circumstances. The way it happened was unavoidable.’
‘Bringing a Russian detective into this embassy was avoidable,’ Baxter insisted, joining in the attack. ‘There was sufficient time to have fully briefed the ambassador before you returned to Washington. It would have then been quite possible to keep up the correct order of things, with us providing rather than receiving the information. It was all avoidable.’
In tandem, Richards announced: ‘I am protesting to the Bureau. Both direct and through the State Department. Your behaviour was arrogant and disrespectful.’
Momentarily Cowley couldn’t remember who else had been described as arrogant, and then recalled it had been Danilov, that first day: it seemed a favourite accusation at the embassy. How seriously would any complaint be taken against him? Everyone in Washington already knew the sequence of events: even that he’d brought a Russian investigator into the embassy. So the repeated news wouldn’t come as any startling revelation. ‘I don’t accept that I was either arrogant or disrespectful. But on the subject of information exchange, I consider I was not fully advised — which I could have been — about the sort of woman Ann Harris was. Now it’s no longer relevant: at the time I sought help, it might well have been.’ The two other Americans exchanged looks, and once more Cowley wondered if Baxter had been the disastrous one-night stand mocked by Judy Billington.
‘I want to know — now and fully — of anything else that might affect this embassy,’ Richards insisted.
‘You will have been warned of the security breach on telephone communication, into the embassy?’ questioned Cowley.
Baxter nodded: ‘We have already been advised that electronics experts are flying in to conduct a survey throughout the embassy. The entire staff are anyway under permanent instructions to be guarded in what they say on an open phone line.’
Advice that neither Ann Harris nor Paul Hughes had followed, thought Cowley. ‘There’s obvious concern that Hughes might have been isolated by Russian intelligence, as a blackmail target. The woman, too.’
Richards nodded again, as if he already knew that, as well. ‘Nothing else?’
‘Nothing,’ assured Cowley. He hoped neither man considered this the beginning of a complete information exchange between them. He certainly didn’t regard it as such.
‘The list of articles taken from Miss Harris’s flat refers to correspondence,’ said Baxter. ‘Does it contain anything that might cause any further possible embarrassment to this embassy?’
Cowley looked steadily at the man. ‘Like what?’ he said, question for question.
Baxter shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Anything.’
You wanted information, thought Cowley: so squirm, you bastards. ‘I have reason to believe, from the letters and inquiries I made among her friends back in America, that Ann Harris had been involved in sexual liaisons with other men, in addition to Paul Hughes.’
Both men regarded him impassively. It was Baxter who spoke. ‘Who?’
‘I don’t have names,’ said Cowley. Pointedly he added: ‘Not at the moment. I’m sure I’ll find out, by the end of the inquiry.’ There, he thought: sweat.
Paul Hughes went through four days of unremitting polygraph interrogation by a rotating team of CIA technicians before the machine gave a blip, indicating an inconsistency. The questioning at that stage did not involve the KGB and blackmaiclass="underline" they were still building up a full historical profile, taking Hughes’s movements back to the time when his wife was on home leave and Vladimir Suslev had been killed. Asked specifically if he had been with Pamela Donnelly on January 17, Hughes said he had. And the polygraph needle jumped.
Pamela Donnelly was interviewed the same day, in the more formal and intimidating surroundings of the FBI headquarters in Washington. Pressed repeatedly, the girl said she was sure she and Hughes had been together throughout Angela Hughes’s absence. After three hours she admitted there had been two nights when she and Hughes had been apart. She couldn’t remember if one of those nights had been January 17: in tears she finally conceded it could have been.
‘Hughes could be triggering the machine because he knows the significance of January 17,’ one technician pointed out, during a break.
‘Or he could be a murderer,’ said his more cynical partner.
‘The machine doesn’t react when he’s directly asked if he killed them.’
‘A polygraph isn’t infallible. You know that.’
In his fifth-floor office, Leonard Ross decided against alerting Cowley in Moscow to the apparent inconsistency. There had been too many false starts. He decided, with his legal training, that he needed more and better evidence.
Chapter Thirty-One
Cowley’s evening with Pauline at the embassy club was less difficult than he thought it might have been. Richards did not attend but Baxter did, and although not openly affable, the man played host like the trained diplomat he was, constantly introducing Cowley to embassy staff, always close at hand to move him on from group to group. There was steak and ribs and salad with the choice of five dressings. Cans of American beer floated in bins of gradually melting ice, alongside a selection of hard liquor and rows of Californian wine. A juke-box claimed to contain the latest American top ten: the attempts at dancing were awkward and quickly abandoned, despite the efforts of the sing-along marine detachment with their once-a-fortnight permitted excuse to get close to secretaries and female researchers and archive staff. One of the marines won the raffle: the prize was a child-sized white bear that growled when it was bent forward. The marines kept doing it. From what he believed he had learned of Ann Harris, Cowley found it easy to understand why the dead woman boycotted the majority of such occasions.
A lot of people had obvious difficulty restraining themselves from asking about the murders or Paul Hughes or both. Some — usually on their way to drunkenness — were not restrained. Cowley blocked every attempt at prolonged talk about either, repeating that he was forbidden to discuss any ongoing investigation or anything about the financial director. He lied that he did not know the reason for the man’s recall. All he allowed was that they were hunting a maniac and that it was a difficult case. He agreed with everyone that Ann Harris had been a wonderful girl. Several times, when the conversation appeared to be getting too persistent, Baxter intervened to suggest that there were other people he had to meet. Cowley didn’t encounter anyone, during the social exchanges, who actually said they liked Moscow. Always stated during any conversation about Moscow in particular and Russia in general was the precise length of time — occasionally detailed in days — their tour still had to run.