The dacha was in the wooded Lenin Hills, off the Medvedkovo road, and had been the weekend retreat of a senior Party secretary before Gusovsky took it over. The KGB had installed the alarms and protective fencing, which Gusovsky had disdained as totally inadequate: now the country house was completely enclosed by a high, electrified wall, with sensors seeded in the grounds, which men constantly patrolled with Doberman dogs.
It was an elaborate party, as Gusovsky’s gatherings always were. Marquee-covered tables were bowed under goose and snipe and partridge and hazel-grouse, and there were other displays of beef and pork and chicken. There was a separate bar tent stocked with every sort of liquor and wine and a range of cigarettes and cigars, and waiters were in constant circulation. Many of the specially supplied girls were swimming naked in the pool or playing softball. There were a lot of men but no wives: some of the men were also naked in the pool. Some couples had already paired off.
Gusovsky and Yerin sat apart, side by side on the encircling verandah of the dacha, equal on identical chairs. Gusovsky counted aloud: ‘Four ministries, two at Deputy level. Three judges, and senior officers from every Militia district.’
Yerin laughed. ‘Fairly average turn-out, for midweek.’
Gusovsky waved at Kosov’s approach. Encouraged, the man climbed on to the verandah. ‘Great party. The girls are wonderful!’
‘Take your pick,’ invited Yerin.
‘I will.’
‘We need to have Danilov,’ declared Gusovsky.
‘I understand,’ said Kosov.
‘We want you to get him for us.’
‘I can do it,’ undertook Kosov, too eagerly. Danilov had been on a payroll before: he was sure, after the conversation with Olga, that all it needed was the right persuasion. He decided against telling the other two men why he was so confident.
‘You sure?’ pressed Yerin.
‘Positive.’
Gusovsky nodded to the pool and the shrieking girls. ‘Try the one with hair almost to her waist: she’s very good.’
‘Do you really think he can get Danilov?’ asked Yerin, as Kosov hurried off towards the pool.
‘We’ll give him the chance: they know each other.’
‘I’m really not sure about Zimin being the one to go to Italy,’ said Yerin.
‘It’s always been the idea: he’s got the language,’ reminded Gusovsky. Excluding Zimin from the party, at Yerin’s urging, was the greatest concession Gusovsky had made so far to the blind man’s antipathy to the third man who ruled the Chechen.
‘He’s weak,’ insisted Yerin. ‘We can’t risk a weak man.’ Their intention was to make the Chechen the strongest and most powerful Family in Russia: they were confident the link they were about to forge in Italy would achieve it.
‘It would be difficult for you to go,’ said the thin man. ‘And for me.’ As if on cue, Gusovsky began to cough; he stubbed out his half-finished cigar.
‘I suppose there’s no alternative,’ Yerin capitulated. He was silent for several moments. ‘Zimin thinks we should give the Ostankino a definite message. He’s sure it was their people who intercepted our airport shipment. He knows the man who organised it, Ivan Ignatov.’
‘If he’s the man who did it, let’s kill him,’ decided Gusovsky, easily.
Danilov returned immediately to the embassy after his meeting with Cowley, apprehensively aware that the names of at least four recorded criminals, one a convicted killer, in Serov’s possession created precisely the sort of problem the Deputy Foreign Minister had specified at the departure briefing.
He warned the Foreign Ministry the Americans knew Serov had the names and that the following day he would travel with the FBI to the last known address of one of the listed Russians. He attached to the Ministry cable his orders to Pavin, to go through all available Moscow records for the three names not in the American crime computer.
Danilov left a copy of everything for Oleg Firsov’s arrival in the morning, stretching back in the chair at Serov’s desk which he had commandeered as his own workplace. He wished it were possible to talk personally to Pavin, but given the time difference between Washington and Moscow, Danilov knew the major would not be at Petrovka. He looked at his watch, to calculate the exact difference, but it had stopped at seven o’clock. He supposed Olga would be at Kirovskaya: then again, she might not. She spent a lot of evenings at the cinema with work-friends; sometimes it seemed that was all she ever did. He decided not to bother telephoning: he could not think of anything for them to talk about. There hadn’t been anything for them to talk about for a long time.
Olga was at the apartment, at that moment looking down at the photograph in Izvestia of her husband emerging from the Georgetown cafe. She thought he looked frightened and bewildered, like an animal caught in the glare of a hunter’s light. He’d been out enjoying himself. So she had no cause for unease at having gone out with Yevgennie Kosov. She hoped Yevgennie would call again, as he had promised. And that they’d go this time with Larissa, of course. She decided to pick out some clothes, just in case.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Cowley had delayed going to New York until the next morning so that he could brief the FBI Director. It also enabled Danilov to telephone Pavin at a Moscow time when he would be at Petrovka, and Cowley to get Rafferty and Johannsen’s report on the cultural events in Serov’s diary coinciding with Paulac’s visits to Washington.
Neither Danilov nor Cowley was entirely happy with their respective results.
Pavin said he’d gone again to Raisa Serova’s apartment on Leninskaya, and been turned away because he had not been accompanied by anyone from the Foreign Ministry. The major also warned that arrivals at Sheremet’yevo were not computerised; neither were they filed in any alphabetical, nationality or dated order. A slip-by-slip search for a visit by Michel Paulac could take months, even if the time frame were narrowed.
Danilov had just replaced the telephone when Nikolai Redin thrust into the room, demanding to know how the seven names had been discovered. Scarcely speaking – only saying “there!” and “there!” and “there!” – Danilov led the security officer through the dossiers, pointing out the incongruous letters which the computer had formed into identifiable names.
‘The list should have been returned to Moscow! Computers there could have given us the same breakdown!’ insisted Redin.
‘The individual letters were there, for you to see, when you made your search,’ returned Danilov. ‘You missed them.’
Redin went quiet at the clear implication. You’ve told Moscow?’
‘You’ve seen every message I’ve sent to Moscow.’
‘Are you going to tell them?’
‘I don’t see any practical purpose.’
The vaguest suggestion of a smile hovered at the corners of Redin’s mouth. Abruptly the man turned and left the office, without saying anything more.
Less than a mile away, on the fifth floor of the FBI building, Leonard Ross stared down at the Russian names and said: ‘Looks like we’ve got that great big can of worms nobody wanted. The Secretary of State is going to be one very unhappy man.’
‘Danilov says he’s not getting any vibes that it’s official.’
‘I hardly expected he would: or that he would tell us, if he did.’
‘He’d tell me,’ insisted Cowley. He hadn’t expected Rafferty and Johannsen’s inquiry to turn out as it had. He decided against discussing it with the Director: they were talking about positives, not negatives. Not that it was strictly negative. More inexplicable at the moment.
‘Right now I believe we’ve got unarguable evidence of the Russian Mafia operating out of the Russian embassy,’ said Ross. ‘And I don’t like that one little bit.’
‘How public are we going to go?’
‘I shouldn’t think Hartz would want to go public at all. There’s no advantage to us in doing so, is there?’
‘None.’
‘Best left to the diplomats,’ judged the Director. ‘Any playback from New York?’