The Watchmen (15 page)
“This is terrifying,” said Hartz, almost to himself. “And I thought I had already used up all the terror I could feel.”
“It’s modern technology, Mr. Secretary,” said General Smith, judging the moment safe to come back into the discussion. “It terrifies me, too.”
“That’s the lowest level of security,” persisted Norton. “What else is there?”
“Machines with their own hard disks, their own programs. They’re all swept, automatically, every month—in the most sensitive areas, every week—but we’ve already overridden that time frame. We’re already sweeping every machine down to the war room itself. But even if we pick them up, they will have alarmed themselves, as I’ve just explained.”
“Jesus H. Christ!” said Norton, exasperated. “Anyone here realize what the reaction would be from the American public if they knew this?”
“Probably close to the reaction they’re showing at the moment to every other example of our helplessness,” said Hartz.
“Bill,” Leonard Ross said unexpectedly, “you got any point you’d like to make? Or would you like to sit this one out? You’re really not looking at all well.”
It was only then that Cowley realized he’d slumped down in his chair, even allowing his eyes to close as they’d been closed when the director spoke, although he’d heard everything. He said, “I was thinking—or trying to think—about something else.”
“That’s obvious,” said Ross. “And for the case officer that’s pretty worrying, as far as I am concerned. You’ve had a long day already. Why don’t you rest a little?”
“I don’t think the Pentagon break-in is our immediate consideration,” declared Cowley.
He felt Pamela’s hand on his sleeve and Ross said, “I think you’d better call it a day, Bill. My mistake, your mistake.”
Cowley shook his head in refusal. To Paul Lambert he said, “You must have found something obvious to be able to be here this soon?”
“It was Semtex,” said the bespectacled, crew-cut forensic scientiest. “Simplest thing imaginable: wrapped around a timer preset for one A.M. We’re still checking for prints, obviously. Source is either the Czech or Slovakian republics: Czechoslovakia is the only country in the world still producing the stuff. We’ll identify the timer before the day’s out. But if the bomb squad doesn’t find anything else, we’re not going to be able to help you very much beyond this.”
“They’re taking it slowly,” said Cowley. “Tibbert’s talking of another two days—there might even be something intact.”
“Two days!” protested David Frost, the diminutive police commissioner, sitting between two other uniformed officers. “It’s going to become impossible! The city’s already virtually gridlocked by that central area being closed just today. Even before I came in for this meeting I was getting reports of people coming in just to stand and look. If it goes on for two more days the city will have to close down, there’ll be so many tourists.”
“I don’t think traffic control is very high on our list of priorities at the moment, Commissioner,” said Ross.
“It is,” said Cowley, softly at first. Then, more loudly: “Jesus, of course it is!”
Everyone looked in bewildered astonishment.
To the forensic chief Cowley said, “The charge! How big was the charge?”
The man shrugged his shoulders. “Maybe half a pound. Less, perhaps.”
“Easily carried? And timed to explode when there wouldn’t be anyone there to get hurt?”
“Sure.”
“Wouldn’t it have fit easily into a shopping bag or backpack?”
“Yes.”
“And easily fixed?”
“Sure,” Lambert agreed again. “Semtex is gray, same color as the steps. It was just slipped down the sides, against the outer wall.
“Bill—” Ross began sympathetically.
“Please!” demanded Cowley, remembering the stairwell gaps he’d looked at until his eyes ached earlier that day. “The gap between the stairs and the outer edge could have hidden much more than half a pound of Semtex, couldn’t it?”
Lambert shrugged his shoulders in another helpless gesture. “If they’d wanted to plant more …”
“That’s just it!” said Cowley, looking urgently to Leonard Ross. “They
didn’t
want to plant any more. This isn’t their speed, their way! They wanted to kill hundreds, certainly, with the warhead. Suckered us into the ambush at New Rochelle. Which is what this is! A decoy.” He stopped, remembering the thick, solid line of people around the Mall. Trying to control his rising panic, Cowley leaned toward the police commissioner. “There’s got to be a thousand people out there, all around the Mall. Two thousand. And there’s another bomb, another device. Get it cleared! Get the Mall, all the roads, clear of people. Don’t funnel them into the Smithsonian Metro. Close that. Just get everyone away as quickly as you can. Otherwise there’s going to be another massacre.”
didn’t
want to plant any more. This isn’t their speed, their way! They wanted to kill hundreds, certainly, with the warhead. Suckered us into the ambush at New Rochelle. Which is what this is! A decoy.” He stopped, remembering the thick, solid line of people around the Mall. Trying to control his rising panic, Cowley leaned toward the police commissioner. “There’s got to be a thousand people out there, all around the Mall. Two thousand. And there’s another bomb, another device. Get it cleared! Get the Mall, all the roads, clear of people. Don’t funnel them into the Smithsonian Metro. Close that. Just get everyone away as quickly as you can. Otherwise there’s going to be another massacre.”
No one moved. No one spoke.
Cowley looked imploringly at Leonard Ross. “Please!” he said. “I’m right. I know I’m right. This time they really do intend killing hundreds.”
“Anne! We’re talking seven bucks!” protested the Albany detective to whom Clarence Snelling had first complained.
“And forty-nine cents,” she reminded.
“And forty-nine cents. I thought you guys were kinda occupied by something else?”
“So what have you done?”
The man spread his hands without replying.
“Not spoken to the bank?”
“No,” said the detective. “I haven’t spoken to the fucking bank! When I arrest the son of a bitch who killed the Seven-Eleven night man with a sawed-off twelve-gauge to steal maybe twenty bucks and then catch the bastard who raped the twelve-year-old on the Saratoga Road turnoff I’ll really put my mind to Clarence Snelling’s precious fucking seven bucks and forty-nine cents.”
“So you wouldn’t mind me doing it meanwhile?”
“Honey, if I hadn’t seen your fucking shield you know what I’d do. I’d arrest you for impersonating an FBI agent.”
“Don’t worry,” said Anne Stovey. “I won’t arrest you for impersonating a New York State detective. Or for not knowing your criminal history.”
It had become routine since the beginning of the investigation for Dimitri Danilov to keep his office television on and tuned permanently to CNN, so he learned of the Washington Monument bomb within seconds of arriving at Petrovka, for once earlier than Pavin. Danilov had slept badly on the couch and left the apartment before six, to avoid encountering Olga. She’d been snoring when he eased the door closed behind him. He put a call in to Cowley but was told both he and Pamela Darnley were in conference.
There was an overnight log note that Anatoli Sergeevich Lasin, one of the two men who had provided the alibi for the murdered mobster, had been arrested during the night at his last known address, an apartment on Pereulok Ucebyi, in bed with a boy of fifteen. Both were being held, separately, in basement cells.
Danilov at once saw the advantage, which was why he decided to leave them there, wanting first to read the case file of the Osipov mafia brigade to which Anatoli Lasin belonged. It had become instinctive to look for names that would personally mean something to him from Larissa’s murder, but very quickly, sighing in weary professional recognition, he saw the obvious tampering and accepted the pointlessness. The last criminal records photograph of the godfather—the brigadier himself, Mikhail Vasilevich Osipov—had been taken twelve years earlier, when he’d been bearded and heavily mustached. There wasn’t any explanation for there being no updated picture to accompany the two subsequent arrests. The beard and mustache would have long gone, and Osipov would be unrecognizable from the only image they had on file. There had been insufficient evidence—due to loss, also unexplained—to prosecute on either subsequent arrest, and there was even an assessment, unsigned, that the brigade was fragmenting under pressure from other, more powerful mafia families upon whom more attention should be focused. From which Danilov at once knew it wasn’t breaking up at all but that after the territory wars to which Pavin had referred—quoted in the assessment as evidence of the family’s demise—it had probably emerged one of the strongest in the city.
Who, wondered Danilov, was the well- but discreetly paid officer within his Organized Crime Bureau ensuring that the Osipov family remained protected from any irritating official intrusion? He was at once annoyed—embarrassed—at asking himself the question. Shouldn’t he know? It was his department, and he’d taken up the appointment as its director after exposing the corruption of the previous commanders with the burnished shield and sworn determination to cleanse it from the bottom as effectively as he’d cleansed it from the top. And done what? Gotten rid of two of the most obviously bribed inspectors, earned the obstructive animosity of practically every other one, and after Larissa, in his swamp of selfpity and disinterest, allowed everything to go on—get worse, maybe—as it had before.
What about the other self-imposed determination, his supposedly always being honest with himself? The so-far avoided question. Which it was time to confront. His unease wasn’t at his failure to correct the crookedness of others. It was at the thought—the vaguest, seductive wisp of an idea—of the only way he could maintain two homes and support Olga if she carried out her threat, which he had little doubt she would vindictively do.
But how could he? Danilov demanded of himself. Everything was totally different now from how it had been when he’d gone along with the accepted system. Which (excuse-seeking, he at once accused himself) in his case had not been dealing
with
the organized crime families. The reverse. He’d protected the small shopkeepers and businesses and independent entrepreneurs in the district he’d commanded as a uniformed militia colonel, facing down—arresting and prosecuting—the gangs who’d tried to extort protection money. For which those shopkeepers and businessmen and entrepreneurs had been grateful. He’d never exacted a levy or asked for any tribute. Whatever had been given had been offered freely: not once had he treated differently someone who had never given him a gift from someone who had.
with
the organized crime families. The reverse. He’d protected the small shopkeepers and businesses and independent entrepreneurs in the district he’d commanded as a uniformed militia colonel, facing down—arresting and prosecuting—the gangs who’d tried to extort protection money. For which those shopkeepers and businessmen and entrepreneurs had been grateful. He’d never exacted a levy or asked for any tribute. Whatever had been given had been offered freely: not once had he treated differently someone who had never given him a gift from someone who had.
But he wasn’t any longer a uniformed militia officer with a comparatively small suburb of the city to administer, no longer the policeman who could take an offered apple from the stall. He was at the absolute center now—and at the pinnacle. What would his worth be to the brigade whose file was on the table in front of him or any of the other mafia groups who’d sliced the Moscow cake between them? Incalculable. Whatever car he demanded, whatever retainer he suggested, whatever rent-free apartment he chose.
Yuri Pavin’s arrival broke the reverie, and Danilov was glad, actually embarrassed at the entry of one of the few truly honest men in the department while he had even been thinking as he had.
Pavin nodded toward the volume-reduced television. “Seems minor, thank God.” Pavin was devoutly religious, a regular communicant at the new cathedral, sometimes stopping there on his way to Petrovka on weekdays as well as Sundays. The invocation of God was genuine, not blasphemous.
“I spotted Bill.”
“So did I. You called him yet?”
“We’ll speak later,” said Danilov. “I’ve waited for you before seeing Lasin. What about the other one, Baratov?”
“Not at the last known address we have.”
Danilov nodded to the Osipov dossier in front of him. “It’s been doctored.”
“I know.”
“Who’s their friend here in the building?”
“There’s a lot to choose from.”
“I’ve let things slip here,” Danilov confessed abruptly.
“Maybe when this is over?” suggested the other man.
“Definitely,” said Danilov. “Maybe today could be the beginning. And I want you to start making up a suspect list, OK?”
“OK.” The deputy smiled.
As he stood Danilov said, “We don’t have time to fuck around. We’ll hit Lasin hard. I want results.”
They heard the shouting long before they reached the cell in which the man was held. Danilov slid aside the peephole of the adjoining one holding the fifteen-year-old Vladimir Fedorin. It wouldn’t, Danilov knew, be the boy’s real name. His hair was long, almost to his shoulders, and richly dark. He was very slim, in a silk shirt and second-skin trousers. He’d been crying and the mascara was smudged. He looked up, unspeaking. Danilov said, “You’re in serious trouble,” and slammed the shutter closed. It would be very easy to use the terrified boy if it was necessary.
Lasin actually tried to leave the moment his cell door was opened and would have done so if Pavin hadn’t put a spadelike hand against his chest, pushing him back inside.
“Who the fuck do you think you are that you can do this!” demanded the man. “I want a lawyer now! Some fucking desk sergeant took all my belongings: watch, rings, bracelet. I’ll never get them back. I want everything accounted for. I don’t get them back, I’m going to sue.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Pavin said, calmly. “Sit down.” He and Danilov did, leaving Lasin standing. He was a small, wire-thin man who nevertheless conveyed an unsettling impression of coiled-up strength. He, too, wore trousers as tight as his lover’s next door, and the sweater was silk. The hair was very obviously dyed, a yellow blond. Danilov decided it was too good to have been done by Olga’s hairdresser lover.
“What can you tell us?” demanded Pavin.
“About what?”
“Nikov’s murder. And about Valeri Karpov.”
“Nothing. There’ll have been things stolen from my apartment, too. I’ll sue for that, as well!”
“I told you to stop being ridiculous,” said Pavin.
“The arrest sheet lists four handguns—two American Smith and Wessons—found in your apartment,” said Danilov.
“Not an offense,” said Lasin.
“Nikov and Karpov were shot. You think we might find the bullets came from one of your guns if we did a ballistics test?”
“Wasting your time.” The man sneered.
“Maybe we should extend the tests: compare the bullets recovered in other murders and shootings? There was a lot when the Osipov brigade fought for control of the Vnukovo Airport area.” Pavin spoke to Danilov, not the gangster.
“That’s a good idea,” accepted Danilov. “We’ll do that.”
“All right!” said Lasin with impatient bravado. “What do you want? However much it is, call Vladimir Leonidovich and he’ll pay you.”
“Shouldn’t we negotiate through someone here in the building?” Danilov asked casually.
For the first time Lasin regarded them warily. “Who are you?”
The recognition was obvious when Pavin identified them. Lasin sat down. He said, “I want a lawyer.”
“You’ve been seeing too many American films,” said Pavin. “The only rights you have are those we allow you, and we’re not allowing you any.”
“What am I being held for?”
“Suspicion of murder, until we complete all the ballistics tests on those guns,” said Pavin. “Could take a long time.”
“Weeks,” agreed Danilov. “Not safe, leaving your apartment empty for weeks. Not in a place like Moscow.”
“I don’t know anything about Viktor Nikolaevich’s killing,” said the slightly built man.
“But you knew he was in Moscow?”
“He was often in Moscow. He dealt in cars. So do I.”
“Cars stolen in the West?” said Pavin. “We’ll check out the ones you’ve got, see if there’s anything we can make a case on. That’ll take even longer.”
“I don’t know anything!” protested the man. “Viktor Nikolaevich arrived two weeks ago. We did a bit of business—car business. I thought he’d gone back. I haven’t seen him for more than a week.”
“What did he tell you he was doing?”
“Looking at cars.”
“What else?”
“He said he had some people to see. He didn’t say about what.”
“Selling weapons?” pressed Pavin.
“I don’t know anything about selling weapons.”
“You knew he did. You alibied him before.”
“I didn’t do anything with him.”
“How did you know him?”
“We grew up together in Gorki.”
“You got a resident’s permit to be here in Moscow?” said Pavin. “You could be sent back if you haven’t. You could have a lot of problems, one way and another.”
“The only dealings I had with Viktor Nikolaevich were about cars.”
“What about Igor Baratov?” demanded Danilov.
“I don’t know. Ask him.”
“Where is he?”
“I don’t know.”
“He do business with you?”
“Sometimes.”
“Dealing in cars?”
“Yes.”
“What else?”
“Nothing.”
“Not weapons?”
“No.”
“Osipov deal in weapons?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why don’t you know?” Pavin cut in. “You work for him.”
“I don’t know all of what Mikhail Vasilevich does.”
“But you do work for him?”
“I look after—service and maintain—the cars he uses in his businesses.” All the bombast had gone. Lasin was sweating, even though it wasn’t hot in the cell.
“So you must know what his other businesses are?” Danilov came back into the questioning.
“No!
People come to me, say they work for Mikhail Vasilevich and he’s told them to bring their car to me. I check and if Mikhail Vasilevich says he knows them, I do the car.”
People come to me, say they work for Mikhail Vasilevich and he’s told them to bring their car to me. I check and if Mikhail Vasilevich says he knows them, I do the car.”
“You must see a lot of people,” encouraged Pavin.
“A few.”
“Hear a lot of interesting things?”
Lasin didn’t reply.
“You ever hear about other brigades dealing in weapons?”
“There’s a lot of weapons around, now the army’s been reduced.”
“Special weapons? Like germ warheads?”
Lasin shook his head. “Don’t know about special weapons. Warheads.”
“What about ordinary weapons?”
“No.”
“How long have you and Vladimir been together?” demanded Danilov, nodding toward the adjoining cell.
Lasin blinked at the abrupt change of direction. “None of your business.”
“You choose him that young so he wouldn’t have AIDS?”
“That’s nothing to do with you, either.”
“I don’t like you,” Danilov said conversationally. “I don’t like your attitude, and I think there’s a lot more you could tell us that you think you don’t have to. So here’s how I see it. We’ll hold you while we check out those guns against the Nikov and Karpov murders. And the other killings during the turf wars. I’m sure we’ll be able to make a case against Osipov for having some stolen cars in that fleet you look after for him. No need to hold your boyfriend, though. We’ll let Vladimir go. Tell him why we’re keeping you, so he’ll know you’re being cooperative. Won’t have to worry you’re being roughed up in here at least.”
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