‘We’ve got the photographs,’ said Johannsen philosophically. He picked up the print that had accompanied Cowley’s request from Moscow. ‘All we’ve got to do now is make the match.’
Which they did surprisingly quickly.
‘Son of a bitch!’ exclaimed Rafferty again. ‘We’re really getting good at this!’
They got even better. Computerised immigration records threw up a number of exit and entry visas not just for Oleg Yasev, but for Raisa Serova, too.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
They got to Leninskaya early, before eight o’clock, wanting to guarantee Raisa Serova would be there. The widow opened the door to them in a trousered lounging suit: she wasn’t made-up – Danilov decided she hardly needed to be – but her hair was perfectly in place, although hanging loose. It was more of an instinctive than positive gesture, to try to close the door in their faces, and she didn’t push against it when Danilov reached out, stopping her.
‘Don’t be silly,’ he said.
‘I shall complain…’
‘… Stop it!’ interrupted Cowley. ‘It’s over, Raisa. We know.’
For several moments she remained at the door, gazing at them, then stood back, unspeaking, for them to enter. She went to her usual couch, in front of the widow, and huddled into it, her legs tucked beneath her as if she was trying to make herself inconspicuous. They sat where they had before. Pavin got out his notebook, ready.
‘It was Italy, I suppose,’ she said dully.
‘And America: it was in America, after Italy, that everything was pulled together,’ said Cowley. They intended, in the beginning, to be intentionally obscure, to lure her into saying more than she otherwise might.
‘Would you believe me, if I told you I am relieved?’ said Raisa.
It would have been easy to feel pity for her, but Danilov didn’t. Instead of replying, he reached sideways for the damning evidence Pavin had waiting. One by one, on the table between them, he set the photographs from both Geneva and Washington, jabbing his finger on each print as he enumerated them.
‘This is a copy of the photograph I took from your apartment in Massachussets Avenue… a photograph you were extremely anxious to have returned. It shows your late husband with your father, Ilya Iosifovich Nishin, also now dead… Here is your father with Igor Rimyans, a known Ukrainian gangster living in the United States of America. It was removed from his house in the Queens district of New York…’ Danilov hesitated at the photographs that had only become significant in the last forty-eight hours, since Rafferty and Johannsen had carried out the comparison Cowley had requested on his return to Moscow, then his finger jabbed again, three times, in separate identification.
‘In each of these Michel Paulac, a naturalised Swiss financier whose family came from the Ukraine, where their name was Panzhevsky, is shown at official Washington receptions…’ The finger pointed very definitely. ‘And here… here… and here… you are shown at those same functions, although the invitations were in your husband’s name and you never signed or gave your correct name in the registration records that are kept at these events…’
‘… I don’t think this should continue!’
For several moments it would have been difficult for either Cowley or Danilov to continue. Oleg Yasev stood at the entrance to the bedroom corridor. He was unshaven, hair still disordered from sleep. He wore trousers and his shirt was undone at the neck, without a tie.
Determined against his previous arrogance, Danilov said: ‘ We will decide what should or should not continue, like we will decide whether to believe your explanation of why you tried to withhold the name of Ilya Nishin from the documents you returned from the Foreign Ministry. Come in and sit down!’
Yasev did, with unexpected humility, on the edge of Raisa Serova’s encompassing couch. Automatically she put her hand out to rest on his thigh. Just as automatically, he took it in his.
Cowley came into the questioning, as they’d arranged. Offering duplicates of the anstalt agreement, he said: ‘These are legal Swiss documents, translated into Russian for our benefit although I am sure you have a similar copy somewhere, of a secret financial corporation established by your late father with thirty million dollars of stolen Communist Party money, just prior to the coup against Mikhail Gorbachev in August, 1991: an escape fund, if the coup failed. Which it did. But for which none of the main ringleaders – apart from your father and a few others – ever managed to evade responsibility. And which they were never properly able to utilise anyway…’
‘… Please, no more…!’
‘… And this,’ persisted Danilov relentlessly, ‘… is another legal Swiss document, the passing over of the Founder’s Certificate – the absolute control – of the secret Swiss holding. It legally passes that control to you, Raisa Ilyavich Serova.’
The room was icily silent.
Raisa stirred from her curled-up position. ‘If my father hadn’t already been so ill, it might have been different! It could have all been reversed…’ She reached up, for Yasev’s hand. ‘At least we tried
…’
Neither Danilov nor Cowley understood her response. Danilov pressed on: ‘Petr Aleksandrovich was never properly part of it, was he? He was the clerk, because he was brilliant at detaiclass="underline" but you were the person who always negotiated with Paulac… tried to retain control of the money…’
The woman interrupted, which was fortunate because Danilov was close to going ahead of himself. ‘Petr Aleksandrovich was happy to do what he was told: happy to stay forever in America, which was what he wanted.’
‘What did you want?’ asked Cowley, looking between the woman and the man perched at her side.
She took the full meaning. ‘To get out of the mess I was in.’
It was becoming splintered, difficult to follow. ‘Your father was operating for the plotters, right?’
She nodded. ‘Some of them: the KGB chairman, certainly. I think there were others like my father, but I don’t know any names. He didn’t. He believed in the old system, you see. Quite sincerely. He couldn’t imagine – couldn’t believe – it was all coming to an end. He wasn’t well, even then. Knew he couldn’t be active, in the attempted overthrow…’
Cowley intruded, in an effort to get more coherence into the account. ‘Why the Ostankino? Why any Mafia group? Your father was in the government: the deputy chief in the Finance Ministry! It doesn’t make sense.’
‘KGB,’ said the woman shortly, barely helpful.
Something that slotted into the Rome interrogation, isolated Danilov. ‘Who?’
‘Vasili Dolya. Director of the First Chief Directorate. He was a university classmate of my father’s. They remained friends, afterwards. At least, my father thought they were friends. Dolya was part of the coup, with the chairman, although he was never found out. And he knew how things operated outside the country: that was the expertise of his division, after all. He said there should be contingency arrangements, if it went wrong. It was Dolya who introduced my father to Paulac, in Switzerland. And the two of them who suggested the Ostankino cells in the United States be brought in: he said they would know how to make the money work in America.’
‘The Ostankino weren’t necessary, were they?’ took up Cowley, ahead of the Russian but equally aware of the value of what they were learning. ‘So Paulac was the first to cheat?’
Raisa nodded. ‘We didn’t know. Not at first. Not for a long time.’
‘Was it Paulac’s suggestion that Yuri Ryzhikev and Vladimir Piotrovsky should be Svahbodniy directors?’ pressed the American.
There was another agreeing nod. ‘He told my father it was the proper, necessary business arrangement: Ryzhikev, from here, would direct his American partner.’