‘The replacement Founder’s Certificate will be presented at the opening of trading tomorrow,’ assured Gusovsky.
‘That’s perfect,’ said Danilov, for the satisfaction of Cowley and himself.
‘A week from now you’ll be rich!’ said Yerin.
‘A week from now we’ll all be rich,’ said Cowley. ‘And getting richer in the future.’
Danilov took a meandering route when they left, at first with no direction at all, in the first few moments actually checking to see if they would be followed from Glovin Bol’soj. He didn’t detect any shadowing cars.
‘Well?’ Danilov demanded of the slumped American beside him. ‘You’ve met your first dons.’
‘Yes.’
Danilov frowned sideways. ‘Well?’ he insisted again.
‘They’re real!’ said Cowley, as if the discovery surprised him.
‘Of course they are,’ accepted Danilov.
‘They’ll kill you,’ said Cowley. There’s no way they won’t kill you. They’ll have to.’
‘They won’t be able to,’ said Danilov. ‘You won’t be with me next time. But you were today. So you can identify them. Know what it’s all about. And you’ll hold all the proof.’
‘That won’t be enough, you crazy bastard!’
‘Yes it will.’
Danilov became aware of where they were when he drove past the Botanickeskiy Sad metro and at once took the side road to the Botanical Gardens. Each had travelled with their sealed envelope in their lap. Danilov opened his, looking down with renewed sadness at the woman he was about to abandon. The photograph Gusovsky had produced as a threat was the best, but there were two other shots taken from slightly different angles: she appeared bemused but very happy in each. There were two sets, as well as the negatives.
Cowley, beside him, hadn’t opened his package.
‘Shouldn’t you look?’ prompted Danilov.
‘I’ve seen them.’
‘Not the negatives.’
Almost uninterestedly, Cowley eased the flap open. He didn’t extract what was inside, merely parting the contents with his fingers. ‘They’re here.’
‘There’s rubbish bins in the park,’ said Danilov.
The American followed Danilov inside the gardens and watched while he made a bonfire in an empty metal basket of the photographs of Olga in the Nightflight club. Just before the fire died, Cowley extracted the contents of his own envelope and fed them one by one to the flames. The negatives were last, causing the biggest flare. Towards the end several people stopped on the pathways to look curiously at them.
‘How many copies do you think they will have kept?’ said Cowley, as they walked back to the Volga.
‘A set or two,’ accepted Danilov. ‘They might have kept a negative back, from the prints they supplied to you in the first place.’
‘They will kill you,’ insisted Cowley.
‘You’re my guarantee,’ repeated Danilov, just as insistently.
‘What if they release the photographs out of sheer revenge?’
‘Then we both die,’ said Danilov, with courage he didn’t feel. ‘Just in different ways.’
The government lawyer, Vladimir Olenev, was a small, bespectacled man thrust into unusual circumstances and made nervous by them. He was waiting in the foyer of the Foreign Ministry with a briefcase held before him in both arms, and after he got into the Volga with Danilov and Raisa Serova he remained with it clutched in his lap. The lawyer looked intently at Raisa, knowing what she had almost succeeded in doing: she stared back at him until Olenev became embarrassed and looked away.
The woman had still not been formally released from custody, but as always looked as if she was about to step out on to a model’s catwalk. Danilov wondered how she had managed to get her change of clothes and kept it uncreased. Her immediate demand, when he had collected her from the women’s detention centre on Ulitza Bucher, had been about Yasev. Danilov, who hadn’t seen the man since their last interview, said Yasev was all right, as far as he knew. Politely, no longer arrogant, she asked if she could be allowed to see him. Danilov, who supposed her detention would end after she had completed the surrender of the anstalt that day, said he thought it would be possible.
There was even less room in the car when they picked up Cowley from the embassy. Olenev’s uncertainty worsened in the presence of the American. There was nothing for any of them to talk about and they travelled out to Sheremet’yevo in virtual silence. Danilov supposed he was officially Raisa’s escort, so he sat beside her on the flight. She refused anything to eat or drink and spoke only once, asking when a decision was going to be made about herself and Yasev. Danilov said very soon, once the Swiss-held money was returned.
The smiling Paul Jackson was waiting for them at Geneva airport, fortunately in a larger embassy car than the Volga. The local FBI man at once congratulated Danilov on the valour award and made a remark about his being one of them now: Raisa frowned questioningly, but didn’t ask.
The lunch was a courteous attempt at diplomatic hospitality by Heinrich Bloch, but it didn’t really work. Raisa was even more the object of curiosity from the American party, which she treated with the same defiance as she had faced down the Russian lawyer. She seemed surprised when two of the Americans expressed sympathy at the death of her husband. Danilov wondered how fully they had been briefed, from all that Cowley had sent back to Washington. Olenev’s English was limited and Danilov frequently had to translate. Once or twice, to amuse herself, Raisa actually contributed. Despite the stilted difficulties, both Danilov and Cowley allowed themselves to relax, Danilov gesturing a silent toast to the Americans: Bloch’s first remark, when they met, was to confirm the presentation of a replacement Founder’s Certificate, naming Arkadi Pavlovich Gusovsky the new controller of the Svahbodniy corporation.
The hand-over formalities were more time consuming than Danilov expected. Bloch didactically insisted upon the procedures being explained in Russian, English and Schweitzer-Deutsch, with each set of lawyers signing documents of understanding. Raisa looked bored when her part in the proceedings came, and bemused when she was handed copies of every document recording her surrender of the anstalt. Olenev obviously approved the preciseness of the ceremony and queried whether he was not the proper recipient of the inoperative replacement certificate; Danilov guessed he might have persisted had not Cowley joined in his own insistence that it was rightfully theirs, as criminal evidence, and nothing to do with the return of the $30,000,000 to the current Russian government.
It was too late by the time they left Bloch’s office for Danilov to buy the intended gifts for Olga, but shops were still open at the airport. He left Raisa Serova in the charge of Cowley and the lawyer and bought a beige skirt and matching shoes, using the measurements he had copied from clothes in her closet before leaving Moscow. He didn’t have sufficient money left for the blouse to complete the outfit.
It was past nine before they got back to Moscow and Danilov was able to try the Kutbysevskij number, but Gusovsky was there.
‘We need to talk,’ announced Danilov.
When he got home to Kirovskaya, Olga said she would have preferred the skirt in a darker colour and she wished he had bought a blouse to finish it all off.
CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE
Gusovsky’s house on Kutbysevskij Prospekt was very large, close to being a mansion; there were similarities between it and the surveillance photographs of the Ostankino leader’s home. Both were cordoned behind high stone walls, with huge metal gates closing off the protective grounds, and outside each were fleets of cars: the Chechen appeared to prefer BMWs, which explained Kosov’s choice. Danilov thought the Volga looked insignificant and shabby, parked at the end of the convoy, but for once, he guessed, his wipers and wing mirrors would be safe.
He had to announce himself at a control panel set into one of the gate pillars, and a man who had watched his Metropole meeting with Kosov came to the gate to confirm his identity before it clicked open on an electronic release. As it snapped shut behind him, Danilov felt the dip of genuine fear. At that moment he thought Cowley had been right, all along: that they’d had sufficient to counter the Chechen threats and the evidence they’d retrieved from Switzerland was unnecessary. Cowley’s most forceful argument – ending in a shouting tirade – had been against this personal confrontation: they’d parted at Petrovka an hour earlier with the American yelling red-faced it was ridiculous, absurd, a macho affectation to impress no-one but himself and that he’d come to believe his own heroic publicity. Danilov certainly didn’t feel heroic now. He felt frightened, weaklegged and sweating, and if the gate hadn’t been barred behind him and at least eight guards watching in front he would have turned back: maybe even run.