Cowley always had one, though.
Later – too much later – Cowley’s recollections were splintered, not even in the order in which things probably unfolded. He remembered agreeing without argument to $100 in American currency. There was the grandiose gesture of having champagne sent to the room. He had no memory of getting there. She’d undressed for him, languorously, but the imagery was hazy; tits bigger than he’d expected, a pubic thatch tantalisingly close to his face, before being pulled away, hips gyrating, then thrusting, letting him know the pleasure that was to come. There’d been no awareness of getting undressed himself: just of her helping but not clumsily, easing things erotically away from him. There’d been a cold reminder that he was naked, when he spilled champagne upon himself. That was about the last thing he could even vaguely call to mind: from then on it became completely disjointed, things that had to have happened, like her going down on him, her hair covering his crotch, mingled with an impression of their being among other people, which had to be from the earlier part of the evening, in the bar.
Cowley awoke feeling dreadful, the worst of the newly experienced hangovers there had so far been. His entire head seemed encased in a tightening shell. His throat and mouth were raspingly dry, like they had been when he’d been anaesthetised for a cartilage operation after a college football accident, and when he stood he began to heave and had to stumble to the bathroom, although when he got there he couldn’t be sick.
Lena was gone, but everything was wrecked by what they had done together. The half drunk bottle of champagne was lodged haphazardly in its cooler, slowly dripping what remained of its contents over the small table. Two glasses lay on their side, the bowl of one cracked. Bed covering, sheets and pillows, were strewn everywhere, his clothes among them. With enormous difficulty, his head squeezed by the pain, Cowley sorted through, retrieving everything he had discarded the previous night. Towards the end, as coherent thought returned, Cowley started both to hurry but at the same time concentrate, remembering Lena’s profession and frightened by what she might have stolen before leaving.
She’d taken nothing.
Which left him with only one uncertainty. He didn’t know whether he’d used a condom the previous night: if they had fully made love he was sure Lena would have ensured they were protected, as much for herself as for him, a first time, unknown client.
He supposed he could always ask her, tonight. And perhaps tonight he wouldn’t get so drunk, so he could enjoy it more the next time.
‘We don’t want Antipov near any of the places,’ decreed Gusovsky. ‘We’ll get a message to him – no telephone – to keep away until the surveillance is lifted.’
‘Shall we brief Kosov together?’ asked Zimin.
‘I think we should,’ decided Yerin. ‘Make the bastard understand that he’s got to earn his money: he’s taking too long to do what we tell him.’
‘What about the other business?’ asked Zimin. The previous night another lorry convoy had been hijacked, and they had lost an entire consignment of Scotch whisky.
‘It’s a direct challenge,’ agreed Gusovzky. ‘We’ve obviously got to respond just as directly.’
‘And hard,’ said Yerin. ‘But try to limit the killing. I think we should try to avoid too much public attention.’
‘We should cost them money,’ reflected Gusovsky.
‘I’ll organise it,’ offered Zimin, who enjoyed violence. He already had an idea in mind.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
When the moment came for Danilov to work with the total independence upon which he’d decided, he was stopped by a last moment of doubt: after all the outside attempts to destroy him he was knowingly inviting his own destruction, like a lemming rushing towards the cliff edge. It was a brief hesitation. Someone or some group in an official position had to know what Serov had been doing, how he was doing it and why he was doing it. So for him to go on duplicating memoranda to ministries and officials like the hare in a paper chase was telling the very people he needed to search out and confront how to evade and hide.
It was the meticulous and methodical Pavin who found what Danilov had missed in Washington. The reserved, puffy-eyed Cowley called it a breakthrough but Danilov, more cautiously, suggested it was no more encouraging than the rest. When Danilov added he had no intention of telling anyone, the American said: ‘You could be putting the rope around your own neck, before kicking the chair away.’
‘We need to do it. If we don’t you might as well go back to Washington and I might as well mark the whole thing unsolvable.’
‘You’re the one who’s got everything to lose,’ warned Cowley. He, by comparison, had everything to gain.
Reminded of the other endangered person, apart from himself, Danilov said to Pavin: ‘If there is ever an enquiry I will testify you acted upon my specific orders: that you had no choice.’
Pavin considered the undertaking. ‘It wouldn’t save me, not entirely. If I disagree I should go over your head.’
‘ Do you disagree?’ asked Danilov.
‘No,’ said the man. ‘I think this is what we should do.’
There had been a section missing from Petr Serov’s original records when they were returned to Petrovka from the Foreign Ministry, an apparently innocuous account of a week-long visit to the Kennedy Centre in May, 1991, of a Nigerian dance group. Intermingled in Serov’s English written report were ten Cyrillic letters, which Pavin, knowing the code to follow, had formed into the name Ilya Nishin.
‘I think this name is particularly important,’ said Pavin. The man was clearly flattered at being included in a planning meeting, enjoying the praise for locating another name. ‘All the others appeared in the autumn of ’91. This one is the first.’
‘We haven’t tried to connect the names against the dates they were concealed,’ pointed out Danilov. ‘Why don’t we do that, starting with this one hidden in May, 1991? If it doesn’t turn up on your criminal computer, let’s run it through your immigration records, for the entire month.’
Cowley nodded to the idea. ‘We could take it further: give the name, month and year to the Swiss to see if they’ve got any trace.’
All Danilov’s doubts had gone. His only feeling now was satisfied excitement at having something positive to pursue.
‘We’ve got more than one curious name,’ reminded Pavin. Stultifying Russian bureaucracy required that the returned Foreign Ministry documents carry the signature of the official approving their release. The authority had been that of Oleg Yaklovich Yasev.
‘He has been assigned to Raisa Serova, both for the interview and the funeral,’ Danilov pointed out, trying to remain objective. ‘There’s a logic in his handling the document request as well.’
‘I don’t believe in coincidences,’ said Cowley.
‘Neither do I. He’s an executive officer: reasonably powerful. And he’s been using that power, with all the complaints…’ To Pavin he said: ‘I want to know everything you can possibly find out about him.’
Cowley said: ‘I’ve got a gut feeling about this. Things are going to start happening now. Just you see.’
It was a casual aside the American did not later remember, so he never realised the bitter irony of the remark.
Cowley was back at the embassy by mid-afternoon. It took him less than an hour to transmit the newly discovered name and set out the complete checks he wanted made, and with time on his hands he agreed to a drink in the embassy mess with the chain-smoking Stephen Snow. He limited himself to two, still not feeling completely recovered from the previous night.
The resident FBI man had read the cable traffic, so the conversation was obvious. Cowley repeated he had a detective’s instinct it was going to take them somewhere.
Cowley used the Marlboro trick to get a taxi outside the embassy, and slumped in the back, thinking of Danilov. The guy was taking a hell of a risk. But he was an adult, sane and over twenty-one, so he could make up his own mind. Cowley accepted it convincingly answered all his early uncertainties about the openness of Danilov’s co-operation. The guy wasn’t just co-operating now: he was virtually working with America and closing out his own people. A hell of a risk, he thought again. Although from all that had happened he had a pretty good idea, Cowley conceded he couldn’t properly guess the sort of shit Danilov had had to wade through in the beginning. Not just the beginning: up until just a few days ago.