The request to re-fasten seat-belts came with the announcement of the Amsterdam stop-over. Transit passengers could briefly disembark if they wished. Andrews decided to stay aboard: even try to get some sleep if he could. He wanted to be as fresh as possible when he arrived in Moscow. He had a lot to do.
Dimitri Danilov was becoming depressingly convinced that he had missed something among the evidence they had assembled, maybe some unconnected, minuscule piece of information or fact that was either obstructing them or, alternatively, pointing them in the wrong direction, just as they’d already once gone in the wrong direction, although at that moment Danilov would have welcomed any direction to follow, wrong or otherwise.
He accepted, the depression worsening, that the orders he was issuing now were little more than clutching at straws, activity for activity’s sake, with little hope of producing anything positive. At last Pavin had discovered the identity of the press conference questioner, which opened a narrow pathway to continue along. Pavin was also instructed to locate the one remaining psychiatric patient whose apartment on Bronnaja Boulevard had always been empty, once to an approach from Danilov himself.
The daily meetings with Lapinsk became scenes of constant argument but without any definite point, the older man clearly passing on ill-tempered pressure from above, irritably anxious for the whole insoluble business to be taken from the Militia.
And Danilov, justifiably but unsoundly, passed the criticism on down. He took over the morning duty conference on the day after Cowley’s return — the day of Lapinsk’s strongest rebuke — to lecture the ineffective street teams on their failures, itemizing particularly by name the officers who had conducted the provably flawed psychiatric inquiries, declaring and meaning it that he intended attaching his complaints to their work files. Such a challenge would have been unheard of at a Militia district or precinct level. It was positively unprecedented at the echelon of Petrovka, where everyone regarded themselves as above question or censure. The response was predictable and immediate, by the same afternoon. The resistance and sneers towards Danilov went beyond the headquarters building, reaching out into the districts because the Petrovka officers methodically manned telephones to spread stories claiming Danilov’s panicked incompetence and impending demotion. Pavin, confident of their relationship, postponed his visit to Bronnaja Boulevard to tell Danilov he shouldn’t have staged the confrontation and most definitely shouldn’t have threatened recorded discontent: professionally it would achieve nothing apart from creating an unbridgable gulf between himself and all junior officers. Equal-ranking officers would shun him, regarding him as a disruptive, incomprehensible threat to the established system. Senior officers, even General Lapinsk, would dismiss him as a fool. Danilov recognized every assessment to be true. And he wished he even felt better having made his stand. He didn’t.
On several occasions since the encounter at Leninskii Prospekt he’d considered speaking to Kosov about Eduard Agayans, but hadn’t. He wanted the intervention to be forceful but appear at the same time a casual, oh-by-the-way approach, not a positive protest. He was reluctant to put himself in a subservient position with the other man, asking as a petitioning intermediary for Agayans to be allowed to operate as before. He wanted to speak from the level of an equal whose views should be respected and acted upon when he insisted the black marketeer should be allowed to resume business. And Danilov accepted that he was not equaclass="underline" that he had no bargaining power. He decided to wait for the right opportunity, whenever and whatever that might be.
He supposed there would never be a right opportunity with Larissa: perhaps there never had been.
He actually welcomed her obvious reluctance to see him that evening, imagining it might make the encounter he intended easier, until he entered the selected hotel room behind her and realized that it was all part of the familiar play-acting, the aggrieved demi-mondaine demanding to be wooed.
‘You never bring me presents!’ she pouted at once. ‘The other girls I work with get presents. I don’t.’
Something else that was true in a day of various truths, conceded Danilov. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Do you think your prick’s bigger than anybody else’s: that it’s enough, by itself?’
It had seemed sufficient until now, reflected Danilov. ‘I had a difficult situation with Olga the other night.’
‘So?’ said Larissa, carelessly.
‘She accused me of having an affair with you. By name.’
‘So?’ said the woman, again. ‘What did you say?’
‘Denied it, of course. Said it was nonsense like I did before when she started talking about you.’
‘So why are we talking about it now?’ He wasn’t behaving as he should, standing there. There should have been more apologies: promises of a gift. She put her hand up, playing with the buttons of the blouse she would soon slowly start to take off.
‘I think it’s time we started to ease off.’
Larissa stopped fingering the blouse opening. ‘What?’
‘Maybe call a halt to the whole thing.’
‘Call a … what the hell are you saying?’
‘I think it’s time we stopped, Larissa.’
‘Stopped! Just like that!’ She snapped her fingers.
‘Yes.’
For the first time her manner wavered. ‘Don’t say that. As if it didn’t matter. As if it was just a fuck: that it didn’t mean anything. It wasn’t like that for you, was it? Tell me it wasn’t like that.’
‘Of course it wasn’t!’ he said, trying to imbue the feeling into his voice. Falling back on cliche, he said: ‘But it isn’t as easy as that. There are other people.’
‘Who?’ she demanded. ‘Olga? Yevgennie? That’s all. They don’t matter. I can divorce Yevgennie: want to divorce Yevgennie. You can divorce Olga. We can be married! That’s what you want, isn’t it? What you’ve always wanted.’
No, thought Danilov. He’d never wanted that. He wasn’t sure what remained between himself and Olga, but he’d never really contemplated anything permanent with Larissa. So why had he begun and pursued the affair? Reassurance, he supposed, unable to think of another word and deciding it was the right one in any case: he’d wanted the reassurance that he could still impress a beautiful woman if he tried. Which was pitifuclass="underline" pitiful and selfish and cruel and despicable. Obscene even. He was ashamed of himself, ‘I don’t want it.’ He had to force himself to say the words. When she flinched, as if she had been physically slapped, he said: ‘Not now. Not yet. I have to think … to decide.’
‘When? How long?’ She was pleading now, the confident arrogance all gone.
‘I don’t know … that’s why I think we should ease off … give ourselves time …’
Larissa straightened, regaining control. ‘You’re a bastard. A complete and utter bastard.’
‘Yes,’ agreed Danilov, knowing it was true. A day of truths, he thought again.
Chapter Thirty-Three
The book cover was red, with black lettering, and Nadia Revin knew it would stand out, look impressive, among the others on the Uspenskii bookshelves. He’d said it was being made into a film, so she determined to read it before putting it away, trying to visualize from the Hollywood actors and actresses whose names and faces she knew who she imagined would take the parts. It was a game Nadia played a lot in the afternoons and early evenings, waiting for the telephone to ring.
She was glad it had rung that night. It had been the sort of evening Nadia genuinely enjoyed, the way it was going to be all the time when she got to America. He had been an urbanely courteous, considerate, dollar-carrying Englishman who had told her to call him Charles and tried from the moment of the first greeting to please her, before himself. It hadn’t been difficult. Nadia considered the Metropole the best and most luxurious in Moscow since its refurbishment: certainly it was the most expensive. The food had been superb and he’d known a lot about wine, showing her how to sniff what he called a nose and swirling the sample taste around the glass for rivulets, which he called legs, to form. She’d listened attentively, considering it to be the sort of thing she needed to know, an addition to everything else she tried to learn to make her more sophisticated.