In the Name of a Killer (58 page)

‘But it
did
fit a set.’ Danilov picked it up on rehearsed cue. ‘Perfectly. The set I recovered from Ann Harris’s apartment on Ulitza Pushkinskaya. It’s even printed with the maker’s name, Kuikut, on the blade. And it’s on the knife rack we took for evidence, too.’

‘And the handle has your fingerprints all over it. You should have kept your rubber gloves on: the rubber kitchen gloves Pauline could never understand disappearing like they did. Had to spend a lot of time, I guess, getting the tobacco smell all over them from that cigar habit you specially acquired to connect with Hughes’s smoking. With the knife maybe you should have better remembered the Quantico lectures about serial killers needing souvenirs. And stopped yourself. But you couldn’t by then, could you? You’d
become
the serial killer you wanted to be.’

Andrews smiled. ‘Cleverer than you. Always cleverer than you.’ He’d wanted them to know. Now they would. Perfect.

He began to hum.

Neither felt like celebrating – Cowley least of all – but the American decided he had to make as big an effort as possible for the few days Danilov remained in Washington, and they both ended up trying, each for the other.

They ate at the Occidental, close to the FBI headquarters, and at two separate restaurants in Georgetown, a district Danilov preferred to any others they visited. Cowley imposed upon the Secret Service and got the Russian ahead of the normal tour of the White House and waited in a queue he didn’t want to be part of to get to the top of the Washington Monument. There was another special visit to the Congress buildings and the usual tourist route to the Lincoln and Vietnam monuments. One night they saw a Shakespeare production at the Kennedy Center. Cowley considered asking Pauline to join them, but quickly abandoned the idea. On the last day they returned to Georgetown, to eat and for Danilov to shop: Cowley planned to drive direct to Dulles airport, when they’d finished.

‘It all worked out in the end,’ Danilov suggested. They were in a French café just beyond Wisconsin Avenue, at Danilov’s request. He ordered soft-shelled crabs, which he’d eaten at most meals.

‘We put Yezhov into psychiatric clinic. Sent him irreversibly mad,’ Cowley insisted. He’d ordered the crabs, too, although he wasn’t hungry. He had more tidying up to do, after putting Danilov on the plane. He was uncertain how it was going to go.

‘Andrews’s victim, as much as any of the others.’

‘We contributed.’

‘There hasn’t been an investigation in the history of crime where mistakes weren’t made.’

‘I wish we hadn’t made this one.’

‘What’s happened to Hughes?’

‘They’ve had to stop: worried about
his
mental health. He’s denied everything. They’re still unsure about entrapment but the inconsistencies about the murder alibis have to be accepted simply as that now, inconsistencies. Maybe the wife was trying to get even: that’s what he said. Difficult to believe she’d go that far, but who knows what a woman would do, in her situation …?’ He hesitated, sure of friendship with Danilov now. ‘You think the KGB, or whatever it’s called, had him?’

Danilov made a doubtful head movement. ‘He’d have been useful, kept in the position he was. So they would have protected him, if they’d had him already. I don’t know, but I’d guess they decided to sacrifice a potential, to cause as much disruption as possible. At which they did pretty well.’

‘I’m curious,’ announced Cowley. ‘About you.’

‘Me?’

‘There’s been a suggestion that
you’re
KGB.’

Danilov laughed, hugely. ‘Not me. The tapes were, obviously. But I’m not.’

‘I don’t suppose you’d tell me, if you were,’ said Cowley, mildly.

‘I suppose not. But I’m not.’

Cowley nodded, satisfied. ‘The ambassador is being withdrawn, because of the other recordings. And Baxter. Ann Harris was a very busy girl. It’s all pretty devastating.’

‘The Cheka will regard it as a good operation,’ guessed Danilov. He supposed during his visit to the FBI headquarters he would have been covertly photographed: there would have been fingerprints, too. ‘Why didn’t you tell me that your ex-wife married Andrews?’

Cowley pushed aside the barely touched meal. He shrugged. ‘It didn’t seem important. To affect anything.’

‘It became the most important fact there was.’

‘Hindsight,’ shrugged Cowley. ‘You sure you got everything you want?’

‘Quite sure,’ said Danilov. He’d had a far better haircut than he could ever have got in Moscow: at the moment there wasn’t any grey showing at all. He’d bought three of the shirts he liked, the ones with the pin that went behind the tie, and perfume for Olga. He’d returned to the perfumery after the first purchase to get a second bottle for Larissa. The grateful Agayans had exceeded himself, changing roubles for dollars, the reverse of how it normally worked. Danilov was still determined against accepting the television or the washing machine or the dresses Olga wanted. He finished eating and said: ‘All ready to go!’

‘I’d like to know what happens to Yezhov.’

‘You will,’ promised Danilov. He paused, recalling the distant promise about secrets on a wind-swept murder scene. ‘There are still some things belonging to Ann Harris to be returned to the family.’

‘Yes?’ said Cowley, curiously.

‘The letters were listed as correspondence on the evidence list: not itemized. I don’t think there’s any need to send back all those talking about sex, do you?’

‘None at all,’ agreed Cowley. ‘Always difficult to remain entirely detached, isn’t it?’

‘Always.’

Chapter Forty-One

There appeared to be as many packing cases lying around the Bethesda house as there had been on his previous visit. And Pauline moved around the room as if she couldn’t see where she was going, actually collided with one of the larger containers in the hallway when she went to get coffee.

‘The diagnosis is that he’s absolutely insane,’ said Cowley. ‘Beyond treatment, although of course they’ll try. They’ve got to.’

Pauline nodded, but absent-mindedly, as if she wasn’t interested.

He wanted to move across to the couch where she was sitting: to hold her, comfort her. He stayed where he was, on the single chair. ‘You’re the official next-of-kin. There’ll be some legal documents to sign. Committal authority. And a hearing, before a judge in chambers. I’ll take you, if you’d like.’

She nodded again, listlessly. ‘But no trial?’

‘He’s incapable of facing one. There wouldn’t be any point.’

Pauline stirred, forcing herself to concentrate. ‘What about the point of clearing that poor bastard in Moscow?’

Her voice was strident: cracked. Cowley supposed she deserved some near-hysteria. ‘It’s better this way. Yezhov’s being cared for. He’s not suffering.’

‘Better for whom? For the Bureau! And Burden! For the great American public, who’ll never learn an FBI man was a mass murderer!’

‘And for you,’ tried Cowley. ‘You any idea of the clamour there’d be around you, if it was all made public?’

‘Bullshit!’ rejected Pauline, viciously. ‘No one’s given a fuck about me, making this decision! It’s all political!’

‘It’s better,’ repeated Cowley, Why was he being called upon to defend it?

‘Expedient,’ she corrected.

‘OK, expedient.’

‘Jesus! Doesn’t it make you sick to your stomach?’

‘Often.’ Cowley watched her look helplessly around the disorganized living-room. He said: ‘Barry will officially be listed on permanent sick leave. His salary will continue. Pension, too. There’s nothing for you to worry about there.’

‘Stop it, William! You’re talking like they must talk.’

‘I live here, you know. Across the river, at Arlington.’

She’d retreated inside herself, merely nodding.

‘I’d like to help.’

‘How?’

‘I don’t know,’ admitted Cowley, ‘I just want you to know I’m around. Will be around, if you … I’m here. OK?’

‘Did he mean it to happen?’ she demanded, going off on a tangent. ‘Did he want me to prepare food with a knife he’d killed people with?’ Horrified revulsion shuddered through her.

It was exactly what the psychiatrist had guessed and Andrews had confessed to, under the analysis that was still going on. That he’d wanted Pauline to use it making meals for the three of them, when Cowley had got back from Moscow and they’d invited him over for dinner. Dr Meadows had referred to it as vampire thinking. Cowley said: ‘No one will ever know that. I can’t conceive it.’

She shuddered again. ‘I can’t believe we shared the same bed: that he touched me, although he didn’t, not very much.’

Stop! thought Cowley. Please stop.

‘Would he have killed me?’

Cowley spread his hands towards her, in apparent helplessness. ‘I don’t know! No one can know. Ever.’ Which wasn’t true. That was exactly what Andrews had admitted planning, in his final babbled, mad confession. Cowley had heard the tape.
Kill the bitch. And Cowley: kill them both. They fuck, you know? I know they fuck, behind my back
. That and so much more. Hysterical ramblings of intending to kill Ann in her apartment that night, until she had surprisingly emerged, almost confronting him as he was entering from the spot where he’d watched Hughes emerge. Of intending to replace the knife he’d taken after one of his love visits the day after the murder and of finding Danilov had already sealed the apartment. About him, most of all. Of the hatred, from the time they were in London together: violent, insane jealousy, blaming him for every setback, real or imagined, ever since he’d been in the Bureau.

‘But he would have killed again?’

Cowley hesitated. ‘They think so.’ He would have been one of the record-breakers, the psychiatrists at Quantico had predicted: killed and killed and killed again.

‘With the knife he wanted me to use in the kitchen!’

‘Talking like this doesn’t make any sense.’

She snorted a laugh. ‘Isn’t that it? Isn’t it all mad?’

‘I don’t want you to forget what I said.’

She frowned, confused. ‘What about?’

‘Me being here in Washington.’

‘You and me, you mean?’

The near-hysteria was close again. ‘No! Just that I’m around, if you need somebody.’

‘No, William!’

Cowley didn’t respond immediately. ‘If you ever change your mind.’

‘I won’t.’

‘I can say it was a gift from someone here at the hotel,’ said Larissa.

Danilov hadn’t considered how she’d explain the gift to her husband. The excuse had come very easily: did she accept presents from other people, here at the hotel? He’d been clever enough to buy separate bottles though, Giorgio for Larissa, Dior for Olga. ‘I had to guess. I’m glad you like it.’

‘I’d hoped you’d come, finally.’

‘Just as a friend,’ insisted Danilov, hurriedly. She was sitting demurely on the edge of the bed, he more than a metre away on the only chair. She hadn’t come forward to kiss him or moved to start taking off her clothes, as she’d always done before.

‘Just as a friend,’ she agreed, equally quickly.

‘Good.’ For whose benefit was this performance?

‘I love you very much. But from now on, it’s all got to be how you decide.’

That was the problem, Danilov recognized. And she knew it. He supposed Larissa thought she’d won. He wasn’t sure whether she had or not.

A Biography of Brian Freemantle

Brian Freemantle (b. 1936) is one of Britain’s most prolific and accomplished authors of spy fiction. His novels have sold more than ten million copies worldwide, and have been optioned for numerous film and television adaptations.

Born in Southampton, on the southern coast of England, Freemantle began his career as a journalist. In 1975, as the foreign editor at the
Daily Mail
, he made headlines during the American evacuation of Saigon: As the North Vietnamese closed in on the city, Freemantle became worried about the future of the city’s orphans. He lobbied his superiors at the paper to take action, and they agreed to fund an evacuation for the children. In three days, Freemantle organized a thirty-six-hour helicopter airlift for ninety-nine children, who were transported to Britain. In a flash of dramatic inspiration, he changed nearly one hundred lives—and sold a bundle of newspapers.

Although he began writing espionage fiction in the late 1960s, he first won fame in 1977, with
Charlie M
. That book introduced the world to Charlie Muffin—a disheveled spy with a skill set more bureaucratic than Bond-like. The novel, which drew favorable comparisons to the work of John Le Carré, was a hit, and Freemantle began writing sequels. The sixth in the series,
The Blind Run
, was nominated for an Edgar Award for Best Novel. To date, Freemantle has penned fourteen titles in the Charlie Muffin series, the most recent of which is
Red Star Rising
(2010), which brought back the popular spy after a nine-year absence.

In addition to the stories of Charlie Muffin, Freemantle has written more than two dozen standalone novels, many of them under pseudonyms including Jonathan Evans and Andrea Hart. Freemantle’s other series include two books about Sebastian Holmes, an illegitimate son of Sherlock Holmes, and the four Cowley and Danilov books, which were written in the years after the end of the Cold War and follow an odd pair of detectives—an FBI operative and the head of Russia’s organized crime bureau.