‘Igor Rimyans?’ suggested Danilov.
The nod came again.
‘How long before the Ostankino started the pressure?’ guessed Cowley, more experienced in Mafia take-overs.
‘It was Paulac, to begin with. He tried to persuade my father to move most of the money from Switzerland into America: said there was no point in holding it in Switzerland, just earning interest. That it had to be used to generate more money. But the coup had failed by then. Everyone who’d supported it but escaped arrest was waiting, terrified of the knock on the door. My father most of all, because he’d set up the escape fund that nobody – none of the plotters, that is – was going to be able to use. That’s why Paulac began coming to Washington so often, to meet me: that was the route, you see? My father kept Petr Aleksandrovich in Washington so there was a channel of communication from Paulac to me to my father, back here in Moscow. Everything we wrote to each other went back and forth untouched and unread by anyone else, through the diplomatic mail…’
Danilov did not want to interrupt the flow, but it was imperative to establish the extent of official government involvement. ‘So Petr Aleksandrovich was almost incidentaclass="underline" a cipher kept in Washington for the diplomatic convenience through which you could handle things with your father?’
Raisa smiled, a sad expression. That’s one of the most ironic parts. I told him not to do it, but he said it was a way to protect us. We didn’t want to be involved, you see. We were both ciphers, for my father. Isn’t that funny! Without the names you would never have found out, would you?’
Another reaction they hadn’t anticipated, recognised Danilov. Before he could pursue the most intriguing remark, Cowley said: ‘Paulac was the man who began the pressure?’
‘Then it got frightening, from here,’ took up the woman. ‘My father was ill by then: his fear at being implicated in the coup had a lot to do with it, I think. These men, gang people, began openly threatening him: said if he didn’t transfer the money like they wanted, they’d make public what he’d done, have him arrested and put on trial, like the rest of the plotters…’
Knowing the original deposit in Switzerland was untouched, Danilov said: ‘But he didn’t give in to the threats?’
She shrugged. ‘I pleaded with him to return it. End the whole stupid business.’
‘Why didn’t he?’ said Cowley.
‘He was very ill. He asked Dolya to do something. Frighten them off. Dolya told him the KGB was being broken up, into internal and external services: in chaos. It didn’t control everything, like it once had: Dolya said the Ostankino were prepared to expose him, as well as my father. There was nothing he could do.’
‘Whose idea was it to go to another Family?’
‘Dolya’s. Some of his former officers were involved with the Chechen, apparently: a lot of them are in crime now. The Chechen promised to protect us: said we had nothing to fear any more. But they wanted access to the Swiss holdings…’
‘… Which your father gave them?’ said Danilov – a trick question, because he knew the documentation in Switzerland was still in the name of the Ostankino leaders.
‘No!’ she said. ‘He went to hospital soon after: wasn’t fit to do anything legal. That’s another irony, isn’t it? Having to do something legal with men who only break the law…’
He hadn’t tricked her, Danilov accepted. ‘And then you inherited control, upon his death.’
Raisa looked down when she nodded, a moment of sadness. She came up again, breathing deeply, determined to explain. ‘It didn’t take us long to realise we’d simply exchanged one pressure for another – one worse, in fact – by going to another gang. I’d always intended to return the money somehow, when I realised that one day I’d be in charge of it. I didn’t want the damned money… It was stolen!’
‘You told them you were going to give it back?’ asked Cowley.
She made an uncertain shoulder movement. ‘I told Paulac, the last time we met. Paulac got very frightened: he hadn’t told the Ostankino about the Chechen being brought in for protection: that they were pressuring me to change the directorship. He said to change the names would get us killed. Like giving the money back would get us killed. I didn’t believe him. I thought he was just trying to scare me…’
‘You came back to Moscow to return the money? The sickness of your mother was the excuse?’ queried Danilov.
‘This time and a lot of times before. All I wanted to do was protect my father’s name and get rid of the damned money. I told Paulac I wasn’t scared. I said I’d tell the Ostankino man, Ryzhikev: made Paulac give me a telephone number, to reach him…’ She halted, shuddering. ‘Then the murders happened, Paulac and Petr Aleksandrovich
… and the first one here…’
‘So you didn’t contact Ryzhikev?’
‘I was terrified: we both were…’ She smiled up at Yasev again. ‘I knew Paulac hadn’t been exaggerating…’
‘The day after Petr Aleksandrovich’s funeral a man came to my flat,’ said Yasev, surprising them with the intrusion. ‘He said he’d been with the KGB before the coup and knew what had been set up. He said Raisa had to sign over the Founder’s Certificate to people he would take us to: that the Chechen were assuming full control. I knew by then they weren’t exaggerating, either.’
‘You told her she had to?’ Danilov asked him.
It was the woman who answered. ‘We didn’t know what to do! It was another way of getting rid of the money and the pressure, wasn’t it! Just give them what they wanted…!’
Why had the money still been intact in Switzerland, wondered Danilov. ‘When did you do it?’
‘Three or four days after all the stories in the papers about what happened in Italy.’
‘The same man who came to my flat arranged it,’ volunteered Yasev. ‘We went to a big house in Kutbysevskij Prospekt…’
The address they’d got in Rome, recognised Danilov. ‘Who did you meet?’
‘There were a lot of men: we weren’t told who they all were.’
‘You must have had a name to pass over the Founder’s Certificate!’
‘Arkadi Pavlovich Gusovsky.’
Another Italian confirmation! He was aware of Cowley nodding beside him, in matching awareness. ‘Anyone else?’
‘Someone called Yerin…’ she shivered. ‘He made me very nervous. He’s blind, milky-eyed, but he looks at you as if he can see you.’
‘You signed,’ encouraged Cowley. ‘What happened then?’
‘I had to sign as well, as a witness,’ said Yasev.
‘How was the transfer to the Chechen to work?’
‘When the investigation died down and it became safe to access the anstalt I was to instruct a Swiss lawyer to substitute what I’d signed over for what already existed there. They’d sent someone to Geneva to find out how to do it.’
‘Giving the Chechen the whole thirty million?’
‘And us relief, at last,’ said Yasev.
The man appeared content to remain subservient, Danilov thought. Had Raisa Serova dominated her husband as completely as she clearly dominated her lover? It was a passing reflection, leading to another. Dominant or not, he was going to have to adjust his attitude towards the woman, if what she’d said was true. And he had no way of proving she hadn’t intended to return the money, before being terrorised into parting with it.
The questioning continued for a further two hours, coming down largely to filling in dates and details. Raisa Serova produced the telephone number of the Ostankino leader, Yuri Ryzhikev, and Yasev gave the exact day when the Svahbodniy documents had been signed over, which was only one day before the Swiss authorities froze the account, supporting Danilov’s guess there had been insufficient time to plunder it. Yasev volunteered the relationship between himself and Raisa dated from their overlapping posting to the Russian embassy in Paris: Raisa volunteered that if they had been able to return the money, she had intended divorcing her husband to marry Oleg.
‘Putting something else right, as it should have been a long time ago,’ said Yasev.