‘I was told the same.’
‘True or false?’ There was, of course, no hangover from the previous night but Cowley wished there hadn’t been the sour taste in his mouth. He thought Danilov looked very good, although the hair was definitely thinner: he avoided an obvious examination, knowing the Russian’s sensitivity.
Cowley was exploring, Danilov realised, unoffended: he’d done the same himself in Moscow, when the embarrassment was tilted more to America’s disadvantage, and was doing it again now. ‘Someone, somewhere, must know what was going on. Raisa Serova insists she did not know Michel Paulac, or of her husband’s association with him. What is there from Switzerland?’ If he was right about what he’d found in the diaries, Cowley was already holding back.
The American slid a folder across his desk towards Danilov. ‘Your copy of all we know, so far,’ he said. ‘Paulac was a bachelor, thirty-eight, headed an investment group which, according to the Swiss, is highly successful. So he lived well. Rolls Royce as well as a Mercedes, apartment close to the lake. They’ve interviewed the two other majority partners in the firm. Both say they knew nothing about any association with Petr Serov and that there are no company records linking Paulac with Serov. That’s possible, apparently: although they’re partners they worked independently, each running their own portfolios.’
‘What was found on Paulac’s body?’ One thing in particular that had to be there, Danilov thought.
‘Keys, credit cards, $400 in cash, American, $300 in Swiss francs. There was a pocket diary with no entry referring to any meeting with Serov the day they both died. It’s blank. So are the preceding days that we know, from the airline booking and the car rental, he was in this country.’ He wondered if Danilov would pick up on what was missed out.
‘That all?’
‘A briefcase, inside the car. There were some company papers, pro-forma advertising stuff setting out the tax benefits of investing in Switzerland. There was a business address book but no listing for Serov. No note of any American number, in fact. A personal cheque book, three cheques missing, counterfoils showing total withdrawals of $2,500 but all the transactions were in Switzerland, before he arrived here. He rented the car on an American Express card. From the Amex records we know he stayed at the Mayflower Hoteclass="underline" the date of his arrival tallies with the day he booked in. We’ve shown photographs of Serov to all the staff. No-one can remember him ever coming to the hotel. There were two other credit card counterfoils, for restaurants. Again, a blank on any connection with Serov. One was a Chinese restaurant downtown, near the old Post Office: a waiter insists Paulac ate alone.’
Danilov sat silently for several moments. ‘You haven’t mentioned the passport,’ he challenged.
‘It was found,’ Cowley confirmed.
‘How many times had Paulac been here?’
‘So you found something at the embassy?’ smiled Cowley, challenging in return.
Danilov didn’t smile back. ‘Why were you keeping it back?’
Cowley did not answer directly. ‘We checked out every restaurant against which there was a credit card slip. There wasn’t one single identification of Paulac with Serov. Only this last time. Paulac always stayed at the Mayflower, Serov never showed there.’
‘So you didn’t consider it significant?’
Cowley, discomfited, said: ‘What sort of limitations have your people put upon you?’
‘I’d guess about the same you worked under in Moscow. I intend operating properly, as best I can. And if I don’t think I can, I’ll tell you. I’m sorry you don’t feel like doing the same.’ He had little room for genuine anger, Danilov accepted.
‘There was no sighting of him with Serov on the previous occasions!’ repeated Cowley. He guessed he was visibly flushing. He nodded to the file still unopened in front of Danilov. ‘The other entry dates are set out there. You’d have seen them when you read it!’
‘I only had the one visit with which to confront Raisa Serova in Moscow. It could have been useful to have them all.’
It was a valid point, conceded Cowley. But he hadn’t recognised how it might have helped the Russian. Which was an absurd oversight. Worrying, too. ‘My mistake,’ he admitted.
‘There was no sensible reason!’
‘I’m sorry.’
Danilov supposed he could send Pavin to see the woman again, but guessed she would swamp the man with her arrogance. He took the paper from his pocket, dictating the four other dates in the earlier months on which the misspelled words appeared in Serov’s diary both in the office and the man’s home.
‘Paulac was here on every occasion,’ confirmed Cowley, checking them off against his own copy of the dossier. He was still burning with embarrassment at Danilov’s rebuke. It had been stupid, doing what he’d done: or been made to appear stupid, the way Danilov had caught him out. Worse, it had meant the man going ill-prepared into the interview with the wife.
He’d won the exchange, Danilov decided: there was nothing to be achieved maintaining an offended attitude. ‘Serov never mentioned Paulac by name,’ Danilov disclosed. ‘He used a simple but quite effective code. On each day he also records attending an event in a public place – the Smithsonian, that sort of thing – where anyone could go.’
‘You think he might have met Paulac at those places?’
‘I think it’s worth taking the photographs to the organisers and staff to check.’
‘So do I,’ agreed Cowley. ‘What was the code?’
‘Misspelling an English word with a Cyrillic letter.’
‘That the only time he used it?’
Danilov hesitated. Practically all of the two-hour delay in coming to Pennsylvania Avenue had been spent trying to understand the purpose or function of the other misspelled words in the apartment diary, which was resting now in the inside pocket of his jacket. And which he had failed to do. Just as he failed to understand the purpose of the same code which Serov appeared to have used over the preceding years in a lot of the papers and files – although never the official embassy diary – in the shelved bottom cabinet of the office bookcase, which Danilov had specifically checked before leaving the embassy for the FBI building. A computer was a million times faster than the human brain, he thought. ‘There were a lot of other occasions. But I don’t think it connects with Michel Paulac.’
‘Why not?’
‘The duplication isn’t in the office diary, which the Paulac meetings are. The letters appear in the diary he kept at Massachusetts Avenue, and link with the logs and archives of what he did over the most recent years he was here: he was a fanatical keeper of records. And in this case the letters aren’t duplications, either.’
‘I don’t understand,’ frowned Cowley.
‘It’s just a collection of separate letters. Could your scientific people programme a computer to play Cyrillic crossword puzzles? But without the clues to guide them?’
‘I think they’ve been doing it for years,’ smiled Cowley, glad that Danilov smiled back.
Danilov finally opened his dossier and held up the much enlarged photograph taken from the financier’s passport. ‘This Paulac?’
‘Yes,’ nodded Cowley.
‘I’ve collected some photographs from the apartment, of Serov with another man. This isn’t him.’
‘We’re not going to get that lucky!’ said Cowley.
Danilov continued looking through the file. After a few moments he looked up and said: ‘The briefcase was inside the car, not the boot?’
‘Yes.’
‘Locked or unlocked?’
Cowley smiled again, acknowledging the professionalism. ‘Open. It’s a combination lock that gave our forensic people a hell of a job: the two sets of numerals are separately programmed but only mesh when they’re operated in unison.’
Danilov nodded, as if he were receiving confirmation of something. ‘A Swiss financier whose entire professional life is governed by secrecy doesn’t leave open in a car a briefcase he’s taken the trouble to have fitted with an especially difficult lock.’