The Watchmen (35 page)
There was more progress than setback for Pamela Darnley when she arrived in the incident room. Silently Terry Osnan handed her the Chicago printout upon which Ivan Gavrilovich Guzov was listed, together with Arseni Yanovich Orlenko, as a codirector of OverOcean Inc. The Chicago office had already applied to a judge in chambers for a telephone tap.
There was also a report from the audio science department. There was no match between the voice of Mary Jo Orlenko and the woman who had called the Highway Patrol from the New Rochelle shopping precinct.
There was too much activity at too high a level at the U.S. Embassy and Petrovka was too porous, so at Cowley’s suggestion they gathered at his suite at the Savoy. Cowley, who’d needed to excuse himself from the continuing embassy preparations for Henry Hartz’s meeting with the Russian president, said, “You sure!”
“As sure as I can be without scientific proof.” It was the first time Danilov had been in Cowley’s room. There was a bottle of Glenfiddich scotch, with glasses, on a tray on a side table.
Yuri Pavin, who had to be included because Cowley couldn’t be involved in the intended confrontation and whose presence was a further reason for their not having met at the American legation, said, “I think so, too.”
“Jesus!” said Cowley. He wondered why, when it began to happen, the resolution of cases invariably seemed mundane compared to the crimes themselves. A premature reflection, he realized. A resolution to an investigation of this enormity was always going to seem an anticlimax, and at the moment they were as far away from concluding it as they’d ever been.
“It could provide a lot of answers,” encouraged Danilov. “Explain the murders. Why Osipov and Zotin got killed. Even double warheads from two separate plants.”
“Valeri Karpov was tortured and killed!” reminded Cowley.
“‘It was business: only ever business,’” quoted Danilov.
“Jesus!” Cowley repeated.
Danilov turned to Paul Lambert and the technician the forensic chief had brought with him. “Will you be able to make positive identification from a telephone call?”
“That’s the level of distortion we’re working on from the Golden Hussar, with the addition of a distance factor,” Lambert pointed out. “It should be enough. A less relayed—less diluted—exchange would be better.”
“We’ll try for both,” decided Danilov. “Advance warning doesn’t matter.”
The technician wired Cowley’s room phone and tested the pickup by calling Barry Martlew at the embassy. The equipment worked precisely as it should have. The technician rewound and wiped the tape. “All set, when you’re ready.”
“You,” announced Danilov, to his deputy. “It would more likely be you, wouldn’t it?”
The telephone table and nearby chair appeared too small for the huge man. From his reaction, the reply at the other end was very quick. Pavin played his role to perfection. He was very sorry. He didn’t intend to intrude. The return was a necessary formality, which he hoped wouldn’t cause any distress. He was sorry he didn’t have any news, but they could talk about that when he got there. He was grateful for the understanding and cooperation. He could certainly be there in an hour. It wouldn’t take very long.
They listened heads bent, attentively, to the instant replay. Danilov realized he was breathing shallowly, as quietly as possible. He thought the others were, too.
Cowley said, “I think you’re right.”
Lambert said, “I do, too.”
“Let’s make sure,” said Danilov. He and Pavin stripped to the waist and stood self-consciously while the sound technician taped them with body wires.
The man said, “I’m afraid it will hurt when we tear the tape off, but I’ve got to put this much on to keep it all as close and as inconspicuously as possible against your skin.”
Danilov was surprised that he had far more body hair than his deputy. Larissa had called him her bear, he remembered. The technician fed the wires and microphones through their clothes as they dressed, standing back to check the concealment, patting each to ensure he’d fixed the wires to avoid their being detectable if either man was touched. The final preparation was to test the recordings and sound levels, which again were perfect.
“How’s it feel?” asked Lambert.
“Like I’m trussed up, ready to be cooked,” said Danilov.
“You’re doing the cooking,” said Cowley.
On their way out to Pereulok Samokatnaja, Pavin said, “All we need is talk, isn’t it?”
“And to avoid arousing the slightest suspicion,” warned Danilov.
When Naina Karpov opened the door of the converted apartment, he said, “Thank you very much for seeing us like this.”
Naina Karpov was as neatly dressed as before, in a sweater and skirt, and again there was no makeup or jewelry. The attitude of uncaring resignation had gone, though. Today there was no child watching television, either.
Danilov said, “I thought I’d come, too. Just in case you’d remembered something since last time.” She was curious. Understandable: no cause for concern. There was more danger in over- than underreacting.
“You gave me your card to call you, if I did.”
Danilov shrugged his shoulders. “You never know.”
“No,” said the widow. “I haven’t remembered anything since last time. Can I offer you tea?”
Quite calm, unworried, Danilov recognized. How it should be. He refused tea. So did Pavin.
“I’m glad your daughter’s better,” said Danilov.
“It was nothing. What have you found out?”
The voice, which they’d thought on the first occasion to be the huskiness of grief, sounded just the same, deep in her throat. Danilov said, “Nothing at all that helps.”
“You actually think Valeri Alexandrovich was involved in all this other business?”
“He worked for a factory that manufactured weapons,” Pavin pointed out. “But we’ve no proof. It’s embarrassing for us. And the Americans.”
“I’m sure he wasn’t.” Looking to Danilov she said, “I read—or maybe I saw it on television—that you’d been in America?”
“It’s a joint investigation. I’m the liaison.”
“More seems to have happened there than here?”
“They were lucky, preventing a terrible explosion. But nothing’s led them anywhere.”
“Was that all it was, luck?”
“Entirely. A park attendant saw something he didn’t understand on the statue.”
She shuddered. “I still can’t believe that Valeri Alexandrovich knew gangsters—people who would do things like that. That’s what the papers said: that the man he was found in the river with was a gangster and that he worked for a crime group whose boss was killed, too. Is that true?”
“We’ve nothing to connect your husband to the crime group, only the man who was killed at the same time,” said Danilov. “And we haven’t been able to find out how they knew each other.”
“But it wasn’t another woman, was it?”
Danilov had forgotten her persistence at their first meeting. “No. We’ve found nothing about another woman.”
She looked at Pavin. “You said you had things to return to me?”
“Your husband’s belongings,” said the colonel. “Wallet and what was in it. His watch, although it’s stopped. And your wedding ring.” He offered the plastic container.
Naina Karpov looked briefly away, apparently composing herself, before reaching out to accept it. “Thank you.”
“We didn’t think you’d want anything else … clothes … ?” said Pavin.
“No,” the woman said sharply. “Certainly not that. This is all I want.”
“We’re sorry to have troubled you,” apologized Danilov. “If—”
“I know.” she stopped him. “I’ve got the card.”
“It’s her,” said Pavin, back in the car.
“I know,” said Danilov. “And that’s only the half of it.”
“Do you think she believed two supposed detectives couldn’t have made more progress than we said we had?”
“Easily,” said Danilov. “This is Russia.”
The technician hadn’t exaggerated. It hurt like hell when he pulled off the tape holding the wire in place.
“How!” demanded Cowley. He’d insisted on opening the whiskey in his suite and given Lambert and the technician a drink before they returned to the embassy. Now only he, Danilov, and Pavin remained. They were on their second, and now the bottle was less than half full.
“It was clearing up Olga’s things,” said Danilov. “I’ve kept our marriage certificate. And a photograph. In a box. Which was how Naina Karpov kept her things: She showed them to us when we saw her the first time. Then we were trying to find her husband’s connection to Viktor Nikov: find anyone who might have met Nikov when he arrived from Gorki. We had been told one might have been Igor Baratov, a name I thought I’d come across searching for Larissa’s killers—”
“Wait!” stopped the American, holding up his hand. “I’m totally lost!”
“It didn’t consciously register with me that I was keeping things in a box, the same as Naina Karpov. Not until this morning. It was only the coincidence, at first. Then I remembered her voice. But more important what I’d read on her marriage certificate.”
“What?” Cowley frowned.
“Baratov,” Danilov said simply. “It was Naina’s name before she married.” He paused. “She’s related to a man—a brother, I’d guess—who knew Nikov and who admits talking to him after he arrived from Gorki. But says he didn’t want to get mixed up in a deal he thought involved American cars. His full name is Igor Ivanovich Baratov, and he was a bull for the now supposedly broken up Osipov Brigade, before he almost got killed and quit to run a legitimate car business.”
Cowley was smiling now. He topped off all their glasses and said, “Now the pieces are really fitting!”
“If it’s proved scientifically to be Naina Karpov’s voice, which I think it will,” said the careful Pavin.
Danilov said, “It took me a long time to realize it. Which was a mistake I shouldn’t have made.”
“For Christ’s sake!” protested Cowley. “We’ve only had a voice to compare for forty-eight hours! Less.”
“I meant the Baratov name. I shouldn’t have missed that.” His fixation with Larissa’s death clouding everything, he thought.
“We’ve caught up now.”
“Have we?” challenged Danilov. “None of us doubt it, so let’s work on the assumption it is Naina Karpov. We know, from the Golden Hussar tape, she can get another warhead. Who from, now that her husband, who worked at the plant, is dead?”
Cowley stopped smiling. “We also know, from the tape, that there was a double cross. What if Valeri Karpov
wasn’t
his wife’s supplier?”
wasn’t
his wife’s supplier?”
“And she had him killed?” questioned Pavin, disbelievingly.
“It was supposed to be someone from America,” reminded Danilov.
“‘It was business: only ever business’” quoted Cowley, in reply. “Not heartbroken if she didn’t actually take out the contract.”
Danilov looked at his deputy. “Do we know, definitely, that the Osipov Brigade broke up after his killing?”
“No,” Pavin admitted immediately. “Like so much else, it came from Ashot Mizin.”
“So it’s a lie,” dismissed Danilov, at once. To Cowley’s frown, Danilov said, “We know Mizin’s on the payroll, and I’m very glad I did nothing about it. You think it’s too much to speculate that Naina Karpov has become head of what was the Osipov family?”
“It wouldn’t take a lot to convince me,” accepted the American.
“It isn’t the most important question,” said Pavin. “We still don’t know who her supplier is.”
“Or how to find out,” completed Danilov.
Pamela Darnley immediately realized the leads made possible linking the two Russians with OverOcean Inc., the most obvious and important being the name of a consignee to whom anything might have been shipped from Russia.
Yet another telephone tap was granted, after a bureau lawyer applied—and explained—to a judge in chambers. By the time that happened Frank Norton, at the White House, had invoked presidential authority to sweep aside the traditional obstructive hostility between the FBI and the IRS to get the company’s tax returns made available to one of the bureau’s few remaining auditors not involved in the embezzlement investigation, which had spread to sixty-four branches of four different banks operating in four eastern states.
OverOcean’s accounts were immaculate and all its taxes fully paid up. Its complete financial returns provided a detailed record of the company’s operations over the preceding two years of its incorporation, from which a list was compiled of every shipping company it had ever used, particularly any with obvious connections with Eastern Europe. Very quickly it was seen that although there was no direct Russian trading during those two years, OverOcean had six times shipped cargo from the Polish port of Gdansk aboard freighters operated by the Cidicj line. The last had been one month before the attack upon the United Nations.
With dates to work from, Pamela assigned four agents freed from the Lake Shore Drive public telephone tap to trace the cargo manifests declared to U.S. Customs on arrival. In every instance the cargo had been containerized and described as farm equipment returned for refurbishment. According to Customs’ records, no container had ever been opened for examination. Each had been marked for Chicago dockside collection, for onward delivery by OverOcean itself.
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