The Watchmen cad-3 Page 5

  If Reztsov’s car hadn’t been a sufficient pointer, the police chief’s appearance would have been. Danilov wondered if it was an institutionalized psychology for men whose supposed function required uniforms to dress like the mobsters with whom they exchanged money-filled, back-alley handshakes. Reztsov’s single-breasted Western-style suit was blue, practically a match with the car, and had a silky sheen. The watch and its band was gold, balanced by the gold identity bracelet on his right wrist. On the man’s right hand the diamond shone with lighthouse brightness from a knuckle-reaching gold band. Major Gennardi Averin, the other man in Reztsov’s opulent office-which smelled of the same perfume as the car-was a clone of his superior, although the shiny suit was gray and Averin didn’t have a gold identity bracelet.

  Both men were as sleek as their clothes, smooth-faced, well barbered, confident of their surroundings and their domination in it. The handshakes were effusive, Reztsov actually retaining Danilov’s hand to lead him away from the officialese of the grandiose desk to a lounge-chaired, plant-dotted informal area close to a book-lined cabinet. There was Chivas Regal as well as vodka already set out. The glasses were cut crystal. Danilov accepted vodka, going along with the charade. Reztsov and the major both had whiskey.

  Danilov said at once, “How can you help me?”

  “We’ve come up with something from records,” announced Reztsov. “An arms smuggler.”

  “What sort of arms?”

  “Conventional,” said Averin. “Not something either of us have personally dealt with.”

  “What have you done?”

  “Waited for you.”

  “Was any loss reported from Plant 35?”

  “No,” Reztsov said immediately.

  “Have you spoken to Plant 35 directly?”

  “Decided to wait until you got here,” parroted Averin. “Got an appointment for us with the director tomorrow, at ten.”

  “But you have spoken to him?”

  “By telephone,” said Averin. “Just to make the appointment.”

  “You didn’t ask him if there was anything missing?”

  “He said he’d check. Tell us tomorrow.”

  It was difficult for Danilov to curb the anger. He wasn’t sure if he should bother, confronted by this almost smirking contempt. “How much conventional weaponry disappears from the establishments here?”

  Reztsov made an uncertain movement. “Can’t remember the last time we were called in. Security’s very good.”

  “How many official crime families do you have in Gorki?”

  Reztsov made another shrug. “Hardly families. Just one or two loose-knit groups.”

  “As well as the last case of known thefts from factories here, I’d like all your intelligence on organized crime groups,” set out Danilov. “Particularly those with known links to families in Moscow. I’m having checks carried out there, for connections here. Most particularly-and obviously-I want any known association with America … any supposedly genuine America joint venture businesses here. You’ll put that in hand right away, will you?” The condescension began to go, and Danilov was glad he’d kept his temper.

  “That could be quite an undertaking-” Reztsov began to protest but Danilov overrode him.

  “If it’s too much for your department, I’ll move militia personnel from Moscow,” he said. “Normal local authority and jurisdiction doesn’t apply. I want an office to work from, and I’d like to start on the organized crime material right away.”

  “Yes, of course,” said the now-subdued local police colonel.

  Dimitri Ivanovich Danilov read the intelligence dossiers on organized crime in Gorki with the expertise of a detective who had once been on the take and could learn as much from what was not recorded as he could from what was. The slimmest and most inadequate file was on a group headed by Mikhail Sidak, the thickest-and the most actively investigated-on the family led by Aleksai Zotin, which told Danilov they were the biggest two in the city, in turf competition with each other and that Reztsov had most probably earned the sweet-smelling BMW from Sidak for harassing the opposition. There had been prosecutions against four low-level members of a third family headed by Gusein Isayev for importing drugs along the Volga from the opium-producing south. Danilov surmised it was a business in which Sidak was eager to expand.

  Both trials of the already identified conventional weapons trafficker, Viktor Nikolaevich Nikov, had failed through lack of evidence. Nikov was described as a bull-the Russian underworld term for a hit man-predictably in the family, or brigade, of Aleksai Zotin. The cases had involved a consignment of Kalashnikov rifles and antipersonnel mines. The chief prosecution witness had been the storeman at Plant 20, a conventional weapons factory, who’d retracted a sworn statement that Nikov had been the man to whom he’d sold the guns and mines. Three defense witnesses had testified that Nikov had been with them in Moscow, buying imported foreign cars for his garages, when the prosecution claimed he had been in Gorki. None of the Moscow defense witness names meant anything to Danilov, but that was hardly surprising, considering the number of brigades in the capital. The only names he knew-ingrained in his memory-were the crews of the Chechen and Ostinkono families whose territorial war had led to Larissa being killed. Some-too many-had escaped, were still alive.

  “There’s the sort of Moscow connection you were asking about. I’d momentarily forgotten about it,” said Reztsov. Apologizing that it might take several days to find an available office, the local police chief had insisted that a desk, chair, and filing cabinet be moved into his own suite and remained attentively close to Danilov, even selecting and offering the folders.

  “Considering how big the arms industry is here, I’m surprised there’s been so very little crime-leakage-involving it, particularly now that so much is superfluous with the end of the Cold War,” said Danilov.

  “I told you, security’s good,” reminded Reztsov. “It’s directed from Moscow.”

  “There’s no more than this?” pressed Danilov. Their attitude wasn’t patronizing but their selection was. It had taken less than an hour to produce.

  “This is what I understood you wanted,” said Major Averin. “How else can I help?”

  “Zotin is the foremost family?”

  “We’ve moved against them a lot,” Averin pointed out.

  “You got any feedback from informants that they might be connected with what happened in New York?”

  “Not yet,” said the major. “My task force was only formed two days ago. We’ve spread the word.”

  “We should talk to Nikov,” said the local police chief, as if it were a decision no one else would have reached.

  “Does he still run the garages referred to in his file?” asked Danilov. They’d sell cars stolen in Western Europe and smuggled in largely through Poland.

  “When we last heard,” Averin said carelessly.

  “You haven’t checked the whereabouts of someone who twice escaped arms-dealing prosecution?” Danilov demanded sharply.

  “We always know where he is,” assured Reztsov, the condescension edging back. “We always know where all our major players are.”

  “Let’s bring him in then; see what he’s got to say,” agreed Danilov.

  The dinner that Danilov decided he had to accept and to which they drove in Reztsov’s perfumed car showed how fully the police chief’s preparation-and his misunderstanding-had been. The genuinely French owner greeted Reztsov at the door of the restaurant overlooking the oil-smooth river. It took a long time for Danilov’s disinterest to register with both Reztsov and Averin before they stopped recommending several girls smiling invitingly from the bar and an outer lounge.

  There was a message from Yuri Pavin asking Danilov to call him at home, at any time, when he got back to the National Hotel. Pavin answered on the first ring. Two of the defense witnesses at Viktor Nikolaevich Nikov’s second trial were logged on Moscow’s criminal records as being associates of a family operating under the aegis of
the Dolgopruadnanskaya, the city’s largest mafia grouping. The third had been shot dead in a territory war with a Chechen gang soon after testifying for Nikov.

  “What Chechen gang?” Danilov demanded at once.

  “Not the one that would interest you,” said Pavin, equally quickly, accustomed to the question. “Perhaps Nikov’s your man?”

  “We’ll soon find out,” said Danilov. “He’s being brought in for questioning.” Danilov supposed his religiously minded deputy actually believed in miracles. He certainly didn’t.

  William Cowley and Burt Bradley moved up to the more centrally convenient Manhattan FBI office and split equally between them the interviews with what in the end turned out to be six claimed eyewitnesses, three commuter plane pilots, a second trash barge captain, and a yacht charter skipper. They dismissed completely the account of the yacht skipper, whom they decided was seeking business publicity-and who later asked payment for media interviews-and at the end of a long day distilled down to just one page anything remotely of value from the remaining five. The consensus was that there had been two people-one possibly a woman-on the cruiser from which the missile had been fired. None of the witnesses had actually seen the ignition or anyone holding the launcher because the hitting of the Secretariat Tower had been more obvious. Four insisted the cruiser was blue and white, one that it had been entirely white. Two thought a blue canvas canopy had been erected over the flying bridge, three weren’t sure it had a flying bridge at all. None could suggest a make, and the estimates of its length varied from between thirty feet and fifty-five feet. Only two chose the same photograph of one of the eight cruisers reported stolen in the previous week. One of the commuter pilots was so unsure he said it could have been any one of three.

  By the end of that third full day no terrorist group had claimed responsibility, and the special task force Bradley created at Pennsylvania Avenue to computer analyze and cross-reference every known and potential faction-with an emphasis on missile or military technical expertise-had processed eight, with four breakaway associations, covering the spectrum from the Ku Klux Klan to the Black Brotherhood. Islamic fundamentalism was definitely slammed. It was Cowley’s suggestion to ask Interpol to provide all likely international organizations in their files and to extend beyond known Islamic fundamentalist movements by asking the Mossad, Israel’s intelligence service, for what information they possessed on the state terror structures of Iraq, Iran, Algeria, and the Sudan. The personal authority of Leonard Ross had been invoked for all three branches of the military to research their files for people with specialized weapons knowledge-particularly missiles-who had recently left or been discharged from their service.

  Bradley said, “We’re building ourselves a paper mountain and we ain’t got Jack squat. We’re just waiting for the next outrage.”

  “I know,” accepted Cowley. He’d expected the FBI director to have more readily accepted his assessment that Washington was the most likely target. It had been bridge building to suggest it to Burt Bradley, too: The resentment from the other man at Cowley being officially designated case officer was obvious. For that reason Cowley had urged Bradley to include the warning in one of his early assessments, as if it had been his idea.

  “You think your guy in Moscow’s going to get anything?”

  “Not on what we’ve been able to give him so far.”

  Bradley looked at his watch. “We’re too late for happy hour, but I’m ready to pay full price.”

  If Bradley hadn’t suggested it, Cowley knew he would have done so. Continuing the bridge building, to the benefit of the investigation, he told himself.

  Cowley was struggling into his coat, so Bradley took the telephone call. At once he shouted, “Leave it! Don’t touch a thing! Rope everything off until we get scientists up there.” He looked across at Cowley with the telephone still in his hand. “Highway Patrol took until this afternoon to check out a report of a fire in a creek near New Rochelle. And found the Eschevaux, one of our missing boats.”

  “This is wonderful!” enthused Elizabeth Hollis.

  “It’s foreign. A Jaguar,” said her son. “I can go 120 miles an hour at least.”

  “You haven’t driven that fast?” the woman demanded, swiveling in her seat to look at him.

  “Of course I haven’t, mother! That would be illegal.”

  “You promise me?”

  “I promise you.”

  “I couldn’t live without you, Patrick. Without knowing you’re always going to be close to me, looking after me now that your father’s passed on.”

  “You’re never going to have to. I keep telling you that.”

  She patted the leather seat. “I love the new smell!”

  “It’s nice, isn’t it?”

  “Only what you deserve, working so hard for the bank as you do.”

  “I don’t want you to tell anyone how grateful they are,” warned the man. “You know how jealous people get.” He still used the three-year-old Volkswagen to drive to Albany. Would Carole-would any of the girls-go out with him if they knew about the Jaguar?

  “I’d like people to know how important you are.”

  “No, mother. It’s better this way-the way the bank wants it.”

  “I like going out for rides like this.”

  “Then we’ll do it a lot,” Hollis said.

  Ironically the exit Hollis took off the interstate to get back to Rensselaer was very close to the mobile home park in which Clarence Snelling lived.

  Snelling said, “They’re not going to do anything about it, you know? They don’t understand the technology they’re relying on.”

  “What are you going to do about it?” demanded his wife.

  “Go to the police,” decided Snelling.

  “What can they do?”

  “Maybe they can frighten the bank into taking more action than they are so far.”

  6

  The helicopter flight gave Cowley the chance to review everything he’d ordered put into place, as case officer in total charge with absolute authority and responsibility. He felt quite confident about it, with none of the first-day unreality.

  He might have misunderstood, but he hadn’t detected any of the usual resentment at federal authority interference from the local police chief, sheriff, or Highway Patrol commander to whom he’d spoken in turn, not even when he’d insisted the sealed-off area remain clear until the helicopter arrival of the forensic scientists and technicians from Washington, whom he’d alerted first because they had the farthest to travel. He had, though, accepted the police chiefs offer of scene-of-crime forensic and communication vehicles and the suggestion that a sports field on the outskirts of New Rochelle, reasonably close to the coast, would be the best place for their helicopters to land. And there hadn’t been any argument against his asking for an initial media blackout, although the police commander, Steven Barr, had warned that with so many agencies involved, it might already be too late. If it was they’d ensure no one got anywhere near the boat.

  “The Eschevaux was one of eight cruisers reported stolen,” reminded Bradley, beside Cowley. “What if this isn’t the right one-just burned out by joy riders when they’d finished with it?”

  “Better overkill than underkill,” said Cowley. “Joy riders are more likely simply to have abandoned it.”

  Bradley nodded, persuaded. “So how much forensic will be left for the scientists to find?”

  “Pray to whoever your God is,” suggested Cowley, who didn’t have one.

  Steven Barr’s distorted voice came on to their headsets from the already in-place communications van, promising to ferry them from the sports field to the boat. Then came the voice of Terry Osnan, the FBI agent in charge at Albany, who’d actually been working the area and reached New Rochelle by road, asking what he should do. Cowley repeated that he wanted no one anywhere near the cruiser until it had been scientifically checked for tire tracks or footprints “or for anything that might be there.” He said, “Absolutel
y no contamination. If there’s anything left at all it’ll be forensic.”

  “Will do,” assured the man, in a Southern accent.

  “How many more of our guys are coming in by road?”

  “Maybe five or six. And I’m told the owner’s on his way down from Norwalk. A lawyer named Bonwitt. Harry Bonwitt. Bringing an insurance assessor with him.”

  “Who the hell told him?” Their information was that the Eschevaux was a fifty-two-foot Sea Ray that had disappeared from the biggest marina at the Norwalk inlet on Sunday night, after Bonwitt had returned from that day’s sailing.

  “Marina people, I guess. When the check was made on the boat’s name.”

  “If Bonwitt gets there before I do, tell him the boat has been seized as a federal exhibit. Same rules for them as everyone else. Nowhere near it.”

  “He won’t,” intruded the pilot, linked to the conversation. “We’ll be there in five minutes.”

  All the sports field nighttime lights were on, perfectly illuminating it as a landing area. There didn’t seem to be a lot of light from nearby houses. There was one helicopter, marked Highway Patrol, already droop-rotored like a sleeping insect. There were a lot of cars and three vans, mostly marked police vehicles, parked in perfect pattern on the perimeter. As they began to descend, the pilot of the inbound Washington machine patched into their circuit with an estimate of ten minutes from landing. A new voice came on insisting the area remain totally untrampled. Cowley said he knew and so did everyone within a hundred miles, and the voice said he hoped so.