No Time for Heroes (2 page)

Elliott Jones frowned. ‘I think we need to get some things clear. My office have already had a lot of media requests for a statement. Naturally I've held off until now, but I've obviously got to say something.' He was always immaculately dressed, usually in waistcoated suits and with a lot of jewellery. He looked good on television and knew it: his secretary had standing orders to video every appearance.

Hartz thought the handbook could be called Public Participation Without Political Problems: maybe he should write it himself. ‘I'd like you to confine yourself to regret at the killing and your understanding that everything possible is being done to apprehend the murderer.'

‘Is that all?' protested Jones, disappointed. ‘I've got a lot of people who expect me to be up front with them.'

‘I'm not telling you what to say: I know I can't do that,' sighed Hartz. ‘I'm asking. And that applies to off-the-record briefings or conversations with particular media friends. That, perhaps, most of all. I want to keep as tight a lid on this as possible. By which I mean all statements that could be regarded as political coming from here, at State …' he nodded sideways, to Ross ‘… and anything about the investigation coming from the Bureau.'

‘I see,' said the mayor, stiffly.

Hartz smiled a professional diplomat's smile. ‘For my part, I would be quite happy publicly to link your name with anything from here. And I would naturally expect you to participate in any press conference.'

Recognising his cue, Ross said: ‘I don't consider the Bureau to be taking over lock, stock and barrel. We will need your homicide people on the team. And that'll be made clear in anything we say, from the very beginning.'

‘I'm happy enough with that,' accepted Brine.

‘I think I can go along with it, too,' accepted Jones. There was still reluctance in his voice.

‘I'm grateful,' said Hartz.

‘But we will keep in touch?' persisted Jones. ‘I'll know what's going to be issued
before
it's announced? I don't want to be caught out on something I don't know anything about.'

‘My personal guarantee,' assured the Secretary of State.

After the city official had left, Ross said: ‘The only way to keep the mayor quiet would be to shoot him in the mouth, too.'

‘I'm not sure what's going to be more difficult,' said Hartz. ‘The investigation. Or the politics.'

‘I am,' said the Bureau Director, with feeling. ‘It'll be the investigation. It's going to be a bastard.' Very briefly, he wished he hadn't waited this long before resigning.

The overnight rain had cleared the thunder. The day was already hot, and was going to get hotter, as it does in Washington in high summer. There was no overhead shade at the far end of the parking lot where the grey Ford had been left, and by ten o'clock it was already beginning to cook.

Just over 5,000 miles away Mikhail Pavlovich Antipov, the man who had abandoned it there, walked across the concourse of another airport, conscious of the looks his new clothes were getting. He saw Maksim Zimin waiting for him before Zimin noticed him, and waved to attract the man's attention.

The waiting BMW was in a prohibited parking area, but there was no penalty ticket. BMWs were the favourite of the Chechen Family, who considered Sheremet'yevo their undisputed territory: no police or airport official would be stupid enough to interfere with an obvious Mafia vehicle.

‘Did you get the documents?' demanded Zimin, the moment they were in the security of the car.

‘There was nothing in Russian or Ukrainian. He said he'd left it in Switzerland; that there was no reason to carry it to Washington. I brought back some things I couldn't read: French or German, I think. They might be it.'

‘You frighten him enough, so that he would have handed it over if he'd had it?'

‘I made him watch me kill Serov! How much more frightened could he have been!'

‘So what's he going to do?'

Antipov frowned sideways. ‘Do? He's not going to do anything. I killed him too.'

‘
What!
'

‘He was a witness to murder!'

‘Which didn't achieve anything,' dismissed Zimin. It had all gone badly wrong. And it was going to reflect upon him, because he was supposed to have organised it.

‘You said there had to be warnings,' reminded Antipov, defensively. He'd taken his jacket off and laid it in the back of the car, to prevent it creasing as he sat. He'd done the same in the Ford, with the man jibbering in fear beside him.

‘We needed the documents!'

‘Isn't there any other way?'

‘I don't know,' admitted Zimin. He was going to look very stupid. He couldn't think of any way of avoiding the responsibility, either.

CHAPTER THREE

Dimitri Ivanovich Danilov prepared carefully because there was always the possibility others would be there – the Federal Prosecutor or someone high up in the Interior Ministry, perhaps – and he wanted to look right. He'd waited a long time, sometimes he thought too long, and he wanted his appearance to be correct in every detail. Danilov was professionally meticulous about detail, although the outward chaos in which he appeared to work hardly indicated that.

The Director had virtually promised Danilov the succession, before he'd gone to America the previous year during the joint murder investigation, and he'd shopped there with this sort of moment in mind, an occasion when he needed to look his best. He'd scarcely worn the shirt with the pin that fastened the collar behind the tie, which was also new. The shirt was more rumpled than he would have liked but it wouldn't be improved by Olga ironing it again, because she was hopeless at laundry, like she was about most household chores. The American sports coat was newer and held its shape better than either of his two suit jackets, but he chose a suit, the thinner one because of the summer heat. A sports outfit would be too casual.

Danilov dressed as quietly as possible to avoid disturbing Olga, who lay on her back, the sheets bundled around her, her mouth slightly open. The snore was irregular, rising and falling like a faulty engine. A shaft of early light was across her tangled hair, showing the greyness through the uneven brown tint. He hadn't noticed the varying shades until that moment – but then, they didn't look at each other that closely any more.

Danilov was genuinely sad about the way things had collapsed between himself and Olga. Wrong word, he rejected at once. It had been more of an erosion, a wearing away through neglect and lack of interest until the shell of a marriage was left, with no substance to support it. They existed now in polite pretence, performing a weary charade, each waiting for the other to declare the last act. More his pretence than Olga's, Danilov corrected, refusing himself the escape. He'd been the one knowingly and cynically to prolong it, letting her think there was a chance of salvaging something long after he'd fallen in love with Larissa and no chance remained. And he'd cheated Larissa as well as Olga, making both wait until this moment, this day.

He'd be powerful enough after today to resist the possible embarrassment of long-ago compromises. Would Yevgennie Kosov disclose those compromises, when Larissa asked for the divorce, as he could now ask Olga? For a policeman as boastfully corrupt as Kosov it would be an act of suicide, because of the cross-accusations Danilov could make in return, but having known Kosov for as long as he had, Danilov guessed the man might be vindictive enough to pull the roof down on his own head if he felt his property was being stolen, which was how he'd think of Larissa leaving him – although the Kosov marriage was even more of a mockery than his own to Olga. So it had been sensible to wait until now: indefensible, by his much vaunted moral integrity, but sensible for the career culminating today.

Danilov's final, most careful preparation was to comb the fair, thinning hair over that part of his forehead where it had already retreated. It was an oversight, not to have had it cut: the threat of impending baldness wasn't so obvious, close cropped.

Danilov left the Kirovskaya apartment without waking Olga. There was a crush at the Kazan metro station, and he looked forward to having a permanent official car. He'd have to pressure the local Militia station to increase patrols around his block to protect the vehicle: it would be humiliating if the wipers or windscreen or wheels were stolen, which would happen if he didn't have it guarded. He'd have the power, as Director, to get it looked after: power for whatever he wanted to do. And he wanted to do a lot.

He tried to check the time, not wanting to be late, but his watch – one of the few remaining tributes from his erstwhile grateful friends – had stopped again, so he had to wait for a station clock. He was ahead of time.

His elevation wouldn't be welcomed by anyone in the Organised Crime Bureau of the Moscow Militia. From the moment of his transfer, six years earlier, Danilov had regained an integrity that had lapsed when he was in uniform, and refused to get involved in the deals and the trading and the pay-offs. He'd been virtually the only one, apart perhaps from the Director. Danilov guessed that when his appointment became public there would be a lot of worried fellow officers who'd sneered and laughed and openly called him stupid over those previous six years. And they'd have every reason to be worried: under his directorship the Organised Crime Bureau would stop being a rigged lottery, with every player a winner.

He wouldn't move too hurriedly. Or without proper consideration. If he purged it as quickly and as thoroughly as it deserved, there'd hardly be an investigator left, and he wouldn't be improving a bureau by wrecking it. In fact he probably wouldn't do anything about the past at all, except to use his awareness for the future. He'd let it be known, subtly but clearly enough, that the old days and the old ways were over: that under his command the back alley meetings and package-filled handshakes were gone. He'd move hard against those who disregarded the warnings, either transferring them back into uniform or dismissing them entirely as examples to those who remained.

There was no-one else apart from General Leonid Lapinsk in the top floor office at Petrovka, and the Director did not rise from behind his desk when Danilov entered. Lapinsk had been showing his age in the last couple of years, but now Danilov decided the man looked positively ill, his face not just grey but cadaverous. Under stress the General had the habit of coughing, puntuating his words. He did it now, during the greetings, and Danilov wondered why: he couldn't image anything stressful about this encounter, virtually a meeting between friends.

‘There are matters for us to discuss,' said the older man.

‘Yes,' accepted Danilov. He supposed Lapinsk could make the announcement himself. Or perhaps they'd go on to the Federal Prosecutor's office on Pushkinskaya, or to the Interior Ministry, after Lapinsk had made clear how much he'd had to do with promotion.

‘You brought particular credit to this department after the joint American investigation …' There was a burst of coughing. ‘After which I gave you what amounted to an undertaking, about your future.'

Here it comes, thought Danilov. ‘I appreciate the confidence you've always shown in me.'

Lapinsk looked down at his desk. ‘Which has been justified by something rare here. But which frightens people. Honesty.'

Danilov was bewildered, ‘I don't understand.'

‘You are not to succeed me,' declared Lapinsk, hurrying the coughing words. ‘The appointment goes to Metkin.'

‘What!' Anatoli Nikolaevich Metkin was a colonel too, but lacked Danilov's seniority. And he headed the list of men to be warned in the clean-up Danilov had intended in the Bureau. A clean-up, he realised at once, that now wouldn't be happening.

‘I've failed, in my promise to you: like I've failed properly to run this Bureau,' blurted Lapinsk, in sudden admission, ‘I allowed certain practices, understandings, to go on. It's always been the way: policemen have to mix with criminals, to solve crime. I never intended it to become what it has, virtually a criminal enterprise. That's why I wanted you to take over: to put things back as they should be. I thought I had the power, even though I was retiring …' The old man gulped to a halt, near to breaking down. ‘… But it isn't just the Bureau. People here are protected higher up, within the Interior Ministry. And they're protected by others for whom they do favours in other ministries. Even by the gangs themselves. It's like a club, everyone looking after each other. I was blocked, in every way I tried to put you forward … In the end they've mocked me, mocked you … I'm sorry. So very, very sorry.'

Danilov tried to analyse what he was being told, examine it coherently. He'd been out-manoeuvred in a coup he hadn't suspected by those who'd sneered and laughed but known what he would do if he gained control. There'd be a lot more sneering and laughing now. ‘How are we being mocked?'

Lapinsk cleared his throat. ‘Officially, I have been told that, such was your success over the American business, you are too valuable an investigator to be elevated into the administrative position of Director …'

‘So I remain senior colonel, in charge of investigations?'

Lapinsk shook his head, unable to look straight at his protégé. ‘You are to be Deputy Director.'

‘There's no such position.'

‘It's being created.'

The outrage physically burned through Danilov. It wasn't recognition. It was emasculation, removing him from the day-to-day work of a bureau as corrupt as the criminal organisations it was supposed to be investigating into a position where he could do nothing about it. He said: ‘It's meaningless, professionally. There will be no power: nothing for me properly to do.'

‘There'll be a car,' evaded Lapinsk. ‘And a salary increase.'