‘The taxi checks haven’t been completed, but there’s nothing so far,’ reported Johannsen. Unexpectedly he added: ‘The papers say you speak fluent Russian. You get anything of what they were whispering to each other yesterday?’
Despite the assumed nonchalance they were both good, Cowley acknowledged. ‘When you pressed Pavlenko about social engagements, particularly on the night Serov died, the guy who wasn’t introduced told Pavlenko he couldn’t talk about it.’
‘That all?’ demanded Johannsen, disappointed.
‘What I did get was incomplete. Just two words: “ You can’t.” They were taking a lot of trouble not to be overheard.’
‘The papers also say you’re head of the Bureau’s Russian division, monitoring all Russian personnel in this country,’ said Johannsen. ‘You make the second guy, who wasn’t introduced?’
Very good, thought Cowley. ‘Nikolai Fedorovich Redin. KGB when it was the KGB. Now it’s called an external security service.’
‘What about Serov planning to defect?’ suggested Rafferty. ‘It’s happened elsewhere, despite all the changes. Redin discovers it, knocks Serov off and throws in the mouth shot to blow smoke in our eyes…’ The man paused, apparently unaware of the appalling metaphor. ‘… It would even be appropriate, if Serov were going to tell us things we shouldn’t have heard. And the Russians do kill people who try to run: it’s happened a lot.’
‘In the past,’ disputed Cowley. ‘One, defectors invariably are intelligence officers, with something to offer: our files mark Serov as a genuine diplomat. Two, there’s usually some approach, before they try to run. It’s very rarely a walk-in: someone literally coming off the street. Three, I am head of the Russian division: if there’d been any prior contact, I’d know about it already. There wasn’t.’
Both detectives looked unconvinced.
‘Your files could be wrong,’ said Rafferty.
‘Maybe, rare though it is, he did intend to be a walk-in,’ said Johannsen. ‘You think the CIA would tell you if they had Serov about to jump into the bag?’
‘Not necessarily,’ conceded Cowley.
‘Shouldn’t you ask the Cousins at Langley?’ suggested Rafferty.
It had been an impressive double act, admired Cowley: probably carefully rehearsed, like using the tradecraft word Cousins, which was coming close to going over the top. Cowley didn’t think it would produce anything, but then neither had the house-to-house enquiries. ‘Yes, we should,’ he admitted. ‘I hadn’t thought of it, which I should have done. Thank you.’
Both detectives smiled, satisfied.
Harry Robertson was standing expectantly in his office, shifting from one foot to the other with the impatience of a dedicated specialist. He was a giant of a man who wanted to be bigger and was trying hard to achieve it. His hair was long, part secured by a coloured bandana in a pony tail and the rest matted into a beard that had never been trimmed and exploded in all directions to hang fully down to his chest, like a napkin. His stomach was enormous, encased in a lumberjack-check workshirt and bulging over corduroys held up by a death’s head buckled belt at least two inches wide. The ensemble, predictably, was finished off by high-laced work boots.
Cowley decided Robertson had to be damned good to be allowed to get away with such determined affectation: J. Edgar Hoover would be corkscrewing in his grave. But then, the homosexual Hoover would probably be wearing a dress.
‘Here’s the little feller!’ announced Robertson, with the pride of a conjuror producing the rabbit from an empty hat.
The shell casing was still enclosed in a see-through exhibit pouch. To Cowley it looked like an ordinary brass shell sleeve. ‘How can you be sure it’s Russian?’
‘Size!’ declared Robertson. He gestured towards a desk as dishevelled as he was. For the first time Cowley saw two handguns, side by side. They looked identical. There were bullets alongside each.
Robertson picked up the gun on the right of the desk, offering it for examination. ‘Observe the Walther PP!’ he invited. ‘One of the most successful hand weapons after the invention of the bow and arrow. Developed by the Germans in 1929 as a police pistol, not to be confused with its smaller brother, the PPK, of James Bond fame and all that crap…’ The man paused, to make his point. ‘It is also the most copied handgun in the world, both with and without permission.’
Cowley shook his head against taking the gun. He supposed the theatrical presentation went with the man’s appearance.
‘Specifications,’ itemised the scientist. ‘It’s 6.38 inches long and has a six-grooved, right-hand-twist barrel 3.35 inches long and an eight round magazine. Most popular chambering is known as a Short…’ Robertson picked up one of the unspent bullets and held it forward for inspection.
Cowley looked, dutifully.
Robertson took up the second gun. ‘The Russian 9mm Makarov,’ he announced. ‘It’s 6.35 inches long and has a four-grooved, right-hand-twist barrel 3.85 inches long. And uses an eight round magazine…’ He turned back to his desk, hefting the Walther again, making balancing movements with a gun in either hand. ‘The Makarov is the unlicensed, unauthorised Russian copy of this…’
‘So how can you be sure it was a 9mm Russian copy and not a 9mm German original that killed Serov?’ demanded Cowley. ‘Or any other 9mm copy?’
‘Simple, dear sir!’ said Robertson, pleased with the question. ‘I’ve already told you. Size. It can only be a Makarov because this shell’… he produced the spent casing in its glassine bag… ‘won’t fit anything but a Makarov. They modified the shell. It’s fractionally larger than any other 9mm slug. You can’t fire an ordinary 9mm round from a Makarov, and the Makarov will only fire a Russian-manufactured 9mm bullet.’ He tossed the pouch up and down. ‘And that’s what this is. Guaranteed one hundred percent Russian.’
Reluctant as Cowley was to accept it, the ballistic evidence took them closer to a tie-in with the Russian Mafia. ‘What about casing marks?’
‘Pretty as a picture,’ promised Robertson.
‘So if we get a suspect weapon, we could make a match?’
‘We’d testify right up to the Supreme Court,’ assured the co-ordinating expert.
‘The effects list mentioned a notepad being tested for impression from previous writing?’ Cowley reminded.
‘A blank,’ said Robertson. ‘We put it through every test, chemical as well as electronic. Not a register.’
‘It was a new pad?’
‘Half used.’
‘Why didn’t something show?’
‘Because careful Mr Serov did not use a single piece at a time. The only way to keep the unused pages as clean as they are would have been to remove three or four leaves every time from beneath whatever he wrote.’
Which could also have been the action of an intelligence officer, accepted Cowley. ‘Anything else?’
‘We’re taking the clothes apart, for alien fibres, dust, whatever we might find. And we scoured the ground cleaner than it’s ever been: it’ll take a while to go through that. We’re not looking for anything specific, after all. Just something that shouldn’t be there.’
‘You still want that area sealed?’
Robertson shook his head. ‘What we haven’t got now we ain’t never going to get.’
Cowley remembered the blood-gouted shape of Serov’s body: before the covering tent was dismantled he’d advise the DC highway authority to clean it up, to prevent a macabre photograph appearing somewhere. ‘Thanks for identifying the weapon.’
‘Hope it helps,’ said the huge man.
‘So do I,’ said Cowley, sincerely. For the moment, it compounded the problem.
Leonard Ross sat hunched forward over a yellow legal pad, making notes like the trial judge he had once been, not interrupting Cowley’s briefing. Only when it finished did he say: ‘You think we’ve finally got to face it’s Russian Mafia?’
‘I don’t see how we can avoid it.’
‘What about defections and spying?’
‘I don’t buy it.’
‘Why not?’
‘Instinct. Which is fallible and why we’ll have to take it as far as we can.’