No action was being taken over the embezzlement, and they knew all the murders had been committed by the Chechen. But no Mafia clan was going to be above the law any more. They had a file on the Ostankino, like they had on every other Family: they knew Wernadski Prospekt was the main house, but they had all the other clubs and restaurants as well. To prove it, Danilov listed those they had discovered, during the surveillance, adding the one that had been firebombed by the Chechen. They didn’t just know the locations, they had identities, too, he continued, and to prove that recited all the names listed in Zimin’s confession, as well as the few Pavin had managed to assemble from the sparse Petrovka files. They didn’t rate the Ostankino as seriously as the other Families, because they knew it would be swept up by the Chechen, who were already taking over whatever they wanted. When he said that, Danilov offered the certificate that had never become operable, replacing the Ostankino directors with Gusovsky and Yerin.
‘The Chechen are going to take you over: look how easy it is for them to kill your people, whenever they like. So by eradicating them we get rid of not one but two mobs, don’t we?’
They already had a massive file on the Chechen. They had over thirty names and they knew the meeting places, at Gusovsky’s home on Kutbysevskij Prospekt and the restaurant on Glovin Bol’soj and the well-protected club on Pecatnikov.
Danilov made it a condescending lecture, once waving the man down when Ryzhikev appeared about to speak, and when he finished the man’s face was puce and he was hunched forward in his chair, looking more bull-like than before, as if he were about to charge.
‘You can go now,’ dismissed Danilov. ‘Until you’re absorbed, just remember what I’ve said. We know who you are and where you are. We can swat you like a bug, whenever we want.’
‘You’re out of your fucking mind,’ managed Ryzhikev at last. ‘You got it wrong. All wrong.’
I hope I haven’t, thought Danilov, at the end of that day. He was in the basement, where the incinerator was housed, feeding the car tapes and the transcripts into the flames, carefully and individually, wanting it all completely consumed, like Larissa had been completely consumed. Technically it was evidence, he acknowledged. But as Cowley had agreed, at the embassy the night it happened, Gusovsky and Yerin would never be punished for ordering the assassination. What he had tried to achieve today was much better: justice without trial. The ultimate personal compromise, for a policeman.
The double funeral was at Novodevichy cemetery, like Serov’s. Olga cried. Danilov felt nothing, emptied. Having been at the scene he wondered what, if anything, was in the coffins. There were representatives from the Justice and Interior Ministries, as well as a sizeable contingent of uniformed Militia, eight of whom formed an honour guard. A uniformed Militia colonel whom Danilov did not recognise gave a graveside eulogy in which Yevgennie Kosov was described as an outstanding policeman of integrity and leadership and Larissa as a loyal and loving companion. No matter how long it took, the perpetrators would be brought to justice for one of the vilest crimes in Moscow’s criminal history.
‘It was true, wasn’t it? What a fine man Yevgennie was?’ said Olga, on their way back to Kirovskaya.
‘Yes.’
‘I just can’t imagine what it will be like, not having them any more.’
‘No.’
‘At least Larissa went too. She wasn’t left by herself. I couldn’t bear to be left by myself.’
Danilov said nothing.
Danilov gave up the Tatarovo apartment the following day. The concierge’s immediate concern was that he would want his dollar deposit back; he didn’t relax until Danilov made it clear he wasn’t asking for a refund. He wasn’t asking for the advance rent back, either.
‘What are you going to do with the furniture?’ asked the man, surveying the living room.
‘Why don’t you sell it for me? Either on the open market or to the next people who want the flat.’ It was unthinkable to transfer it to Kirovskaya, with some easy excuse for Olga, although everything here was better than theirs.
The concierge beamed at the prospect of even greater profit. ‘We’d better take an inventory. You put the prices against the items and I’ll do my best to get them…’ Hurriedly he added: ‘Not sure I’ll be able to get what you want, though. Might have to come down a bit.’
‘Why don’t you just get what you can?’
‘We’ll still make a list.’ At the refrigerator he said: ‘There are things in here. And a bottle of champagne.’
‘You have them,’ said Danilov. ‘The champagne, too.’
The man began to stack the food on the worktop, the champagne last. He said: ‘I’m sorry things didn’t work out for you. Sometimes they don’t.’
‘No,’ said Danilov. ‘Sometimes they don’t.’
CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN
The war broke out two days after the funeral. The Chechen restaurant on Glovin Bol’soj was raided by Ryzhikev’s gang. Three Chechen bulls were maimed – one blinded, two others crippled – and three innocent customers in the front section were badly injured: one was a twenty-one-year-old girl who lost an arm. The restaurant was torched with engineering expertise, fires set so it was not only gutted but the structure so weakened the roof and walls collapsed.
The attempted Chechen retaliation, ambushing a convoy of Ostankino lorries supposedly entering from Poland, was in reality an ambush in reverse. Nothing had come from Poland. Each truck held waiting squads of men more interested in humiliation than death and injury: one Chechen man was killed and two others injured – just as four Ostankino were injured – in the initial confrontation, but the remaining twelve, once overpowered, were stripped naked and left handcuffed and manacled in chains that had to be cut off with oxy-acetylene burners, and with signs around their necks identifying the Family they represented. Photographs appeared in four Moscow newspapers.
The Chechen did succeed better with a counter-attack at an Ostankino cafe, killing two, but five of the attackers were badly hurt and they didn’t manage to set it alight, which they had intended. The Ostankino retribution was again public mockery, but more effective on a second level because by hitting Kutbysevskij they showed they could get to the very heart of the Chechen empire, the residence of Arkadi Gusovsky himself. They blew up three BMWs parked in the road outside and set light to another two, intending them to burn more slowly. When Gusovsky’s guards tried to get out of the gates, they discovered they had been chained closed by three separate ropes of thick metal, so the alerted newspaper photographers this time had shots of the imprisoned guards pulling from the inside of the gates in frustration. The day after, two separate publications carried satirical cartoons of black-masked, striped-jerseyed gangsters running in opposite directions around a circle of money, piling up in head-on collision while a police group watched.
Danilov thought it was a good portrayal of his intentions, but it still wasn’t complete. It became so at the end of the third week. It was never discovered how the Ostankino got into Pecatnikov without being detected, although the rumour arose of a disillusioned defector. The frontal group managed to burst through the door of the club before any alarm was raised, and sprayed the interior with Russian RPK and Yugoslav Mitrajez M72 machine guns. The Chechen were utterly surprised and the battle was over very quickly, with eight dead. The delay was still sufficient for Gusovsky and Yerin to escape from the rear dining room through the labyrinth of corridors honeycombing the complex: both would have survived if they’d hidden in Yerin’s upstairs apartment, but their only thought was to get completely away.