‘Did you get the documents?’ demanded Zimin, the moment they were in the security of the car.

‘There was nothing in Russian or Ukrainian. He said he’d left it in Switzerland; that there was no reason to carry it to Washington. I brought back some things I couldn’t read: French or German, I think. They might be it.’

‘You frighten him enough, so that he would have handed it over if he’d had it?’

‘I made him watch me kill Serov! How much more frightened could he have been!’

‘So what’s he going to do?’

Antipov frowned sideways. ‘Do? He’s not going to do anything. I killed him too.’

‘ What! ’

‘He was a witness to murder!’

‘Which didn’t achieve anything,’ dismissed Zimin. It had all gone badly wrong. And it was going to reflect upon him, because he was supposed to have organised it.

‘You said there had to be warnings,’ reminded Antipov, defensively. He’d taken his jacket off and laid it in the back of the car, to prevent it creasing as he sat. He’d done the same in the Ford, with the man jibbering in fear beside him.

‘We needed the documents!’

‘Isn’t there any other way?’

‘I don’t know,’ admitted Zimin. He was going to look very stupid. He couldn’t think of any way of avoiding the responsibility, either.

CHAPTER THREE

Dimitri Ivanovich Danilov prepared carefully because there was always the possibility others would be there – the Federal Prosecutor or someone high up in the Interior Ministry, perhaps – and he wanted to look right. He’d waited a long time, sometimes he thought too long, and he wanted his appearance to be correct in every detail. Danilov was professionally meticulous about detail, although the outward chaos in which he appeared to work hardly indicated that.

The Director had virtually promised Danilov the succession, before he’d gone to America the previous year during the joint murder investigation, and he’d shopped there with this sort of moment in mind, an occasion when he needed to look his best.