‘It would be easier if we worked together.’
A motto that should be enshrined in stone over every official Russian door.
‘I wouldn’t want it any other way.’ Danilov waved an arm towards the garage. ‘Perhaps you’d let me have the order sheets, so I can see who those are going out to?’
Borodin made a half gesture of looking through the rat’s nest of a drawer in his desk. ‘I don’t seem to have made one up yet. But I’m not sure, upon reflection, the Volga is committed. I think I could rearrange things to make it available.’
‘I’d regard that as a favour,’ said Danilov. ‘Why don’t you get it cleaned and valeted for me to pick up tonight?’
‘It’ll be waiting,’ promised Borodin eagerly.
He hadn’t forgotten a thing about how the system worked, decided Danilov happily. His meeting with the initially dismissive manager of stores and maintenance was a repeat performance; it took less than fifteen minutes to make clear to the man the benefits he had to lose, and be instantly promised next-day delivery of everything he needed for his empty office.
The Volga ran well and the valeting had been meticulous. Olga insisted on a first-time ride, demanding they go almost halfway around the outer Moscow ring road.
‘This is better!’ she said, head back against the seat. ‘Like it was in the old days! About bloody time.’ They had not had a car of their own for four years, since their old Lada had crumbled beyond repair. It had been one of the most expensive gifts Danilov had ever received, from a black marketeer whose convoys he had guaranteed through his Militia district for eight years. The watch that rarely worked had come from the same source.
Danilov glanced across at her. He couldn’t detect the greyness through the tint, in the half light, but he didn’t think he liked her hair quite as long. Apparently thinking a good appearance was necessary in a prestige car, Olga had put on her new coat, a brown tweed with a deeper brown felt collar. There was a button missing from the front. Olga was the sort of woman from whose clothes buttons always seemed to be missing, even when they were new. She never appeared to notice.
‘It is ours, isn’t it?’ she demanded, with sudden concern. ‘No-one’s going to take it back?’
‘Don’t worry about it,’ said Danilov.
‘I’ve invited Yevgennie Grigorevich and Larissa to dinner to celebrate your promotion,’ she announced.
‘That will be nice,’ he said neutrally.
‘You don’t mind?’
‘Why should I mind?’
‘No reason.’
He was aware of her looking directly back at him across the car. ‘When?’
‘Larissa’s going to call, to confirm a night. Now you’ve got the promotion and more money, I thought I could shop at the open market by the State Circus.’
‘I’m not sure the increase will cover that.’ He’d heard that prices in open markets, which were always groaning with produce and meat being sold by independent farmers and growers, were frequently ten times those in government controlled stores – although in government controlled stores the same items were rarely available. If there was a difference, it was that luxuries were no longer confined to the Party and KGB concessions. Ironically, the Party and former intelligence agents now had to stand in line behind their successors, the gangsters who had inherited the dollars and the power.
‘We’ll see,’ said Olga, airily.
Danilov was careful to remove the wipers when he parked outside his apartment. He’d have to ensure, tomorrow, that the car was protected by the local Militia station. He wondered what he would have to offer in return.
All the office equipment was delivered the following morning, but when he went to the store cupboard by the squad room he found the contents of three boxes tipped over the floor in total disarray, although the door had been locked. The boxes were missing. The one in which the bulbs had been hidden was untouched, though, which was a bonus because he’d insisted on being supplied with bulbs along with everything else. Now he had spares.
He was aware of the sniggering attention of the other detectives as he ferried his belongings to and fro, to the upper floor. He genuinely tried to re-assemble his working area neatly, but almost at once it became the jumbled chaos of before. He still knew where everything was, if he needed it.
Danilov had been encouraged by his easy success with the garage and the supply manager. It gave him further ideas how to manipulate his specific orders. No-one in the squad room would be sniggering, very shortly.
Cowley had to concede the slight advantage in personal publicity when the call from the Alexandria police, across the Potomac in Virginia, came direct to him, without the delay of being routed through the normal FBI receiving and comparison system to link what had been found in the National Airport parking lot with the killing of Petr Serov.
‘Just like yours, so I thought you’d be interested,’ suggested the Alexandria detective, Hal Maine. ‘Two in the chest and the third right in the mouth. And Christ, does he stink!’
It looked precisely the triumphal procession it was intended to be; a cavalcade of five BMWs, Gusovsky, Yerin and Zimin protectively in the middle vehicle, their minders in the others. They drove too fast along the central corridor which, until the collapse of Communism, had been exclusively reserved on the major Moscow highways for members of the Party. Now the Mafia considered if rightfully theirs, as the new rulers. No other cars impeded their progress. The GIA traffic police, in their elevated pods at the main intersections, controlled the lights in favour of the Mafia cars, as they once had for Party limousines.
‘The Ostankino torched two of our airport lorries last night,’ reported Zimin.
‘How do you know it was them?’ demanded Yerin. The Ostankino were the rival Family, jealous of the Chechen rule at airports, disputing all their territory.
‘It’s the word around,’ said Zimin, which was sufficient.
‘I’m not anxious for a war until we get the Swiss thing settled and make the arrangements in Italy,’ said Gusovsky.
‘If we don’t respond it’ll be regarded as weakness,’ warned Yerin.
That morning’s motorised tour was intended publicly to demonstrate their presence in their domain. Gusovsky leaned slightly forwards, to the driver. ‘Make the left, on Ulitza Sadovaya,’ he ordered.
‘That’ll take us on to Ostankino turf,’ warned the man.
‘Exactly,’ smiled Gusovsky. ‘Let’s hope they take it as the warning it’s meant to be.’
CHAPTER NINE
He did stink.
Few drivers had parked near the grey Ford for the past two days, so it had been easy to tape the area off, which Cowley thought hardly necessary because no-one was coming anywhere close to look. Four scene-of-crime technicians around the open trunk all wore respirators and gloves as well as protective overalls; the local officers, plain-clothed and uniformed, were well away from the car and carefully upwind. Cowley looked for Rafferty and Johannsen, whom he had alerted, but they hadn’t arrived. Rafferty had said they’d found out where Serov had eaten the night he’d been killed, and sounded rebuffed when Cowley topped that news with the announcement of a second, matching murder.
As he approached the police group there was the now familiar burst of television lights and flash-gun bulbs from the penned-off media. The commotion alerted the watching police group. Hal Maine hoped he’d done right calling Cowley direct; conscious of boundary jealousies, Cowley warned the local man he’d asked the two DC homicide detectives to join him.
‘You’re welcome to this,’ said Maine sincerely. He was a faded man in a creased suit and shirt; Cowley guessed he had about five years before retirement.
‘What do we know?’ asked Cowley.
Maine waved towards an open-doored, unmarked police car inside the cordon, where an overalled FBI specialist, a respirator discarded beside him, was sitting in the rear, transferring things from a crocodile briefcase into exhibit bags. ‘The case was in the car, not the trunk, so there’s not much smell. Swiss passport, in the name of Michel Paulac. Difficult to make a facial comparison with the photograph, because of the state of the body. Swiss driving licence in the same name, which matches that in which the car was rented from Hertz at Dulles, nine days ago. The rental agreement was in the briefcase, too. So was a first class return ticket, which should have been taken up four days ago, to Geneva. There’s a wallet of visiting cards. Paulac’s address is given as Rue Calvin, Geneva. There’s quite a few documents in languages I can’t read; looks like bank or financial stuff.’