Read In the Name of a Killer for Free Online

Director.
    ‘I need to seal the flat.’
    ‘There’s been an official complaint, through the Foreign Ministry! What the hell happened?’ There were several barking coughs.
    After a detailed explanation Danilov said: ‘They expect to take control. I don’t know the man’s name but I think he’s FBI.’
    ‘It’s preposterous – arrogant – for them to imagine that!’
    ‘I hoped that’s how you’d feel.’
    There was a momentary silence, from the other man. Then Lapinsk said: ‘I’ve been called to the Foreign Ministry. The Agency for Federal Security have been summoned too.’
    ‘Do you want me to be there?’ suggested Danilov. It hadn’t taken long for the pressure to begin.
    ‘Novikov is doing the autopsy this morning: I told him to expect you. Stay on the investigation. Did you tell the Americans about the other business?’
    ‘No. Or everything that happened to the girl.’
    ‘I accept you were badly treated. I’ll see that a protest is made, to counter theirs.’
    The Records clerk at the Foreign Ministry said they had been lucky: it was the benefit of the new Western-style computerization. The official registration details of Ann Harris, an American national, for whom a diplomatic visa had been issued in May the year before last, listed her address as Ulitza Pushkinskaya 397. The man, who was obviously a gossip, asked what she’d done wrong. Danilov told him it was nothing, a technical matter.
    ‘Outside the compound!’ Danilov announced triumphantly, to Pavin, keeping the telephone in his hand to summon the waiting forensic scientists.
    ‘The Americans are going to be furious.’
    ‘I’m not exceeding any authority,’ Danilov insisted. ‘The address is not within the official diplomatic residencies.’
    ‘It’s probably still considered diplomatic territory, beyond our jurisdiction.’
    ‘We’ll worry about that later,’ decided Danilov. He paused. Then he demanded, suddenly: ‘Who’s Dick Tracy?’
    Pavin frowned quickly across the car. ‘I don’t know. Why?’
    ‘I’m curious.’
    Over the next three hours the repercussions of Ann Harris’s murder rippled quickly throughout widely differing parts of the world.
    The American Secretary of State was halted by an aide just before taking off for Hyannisport for a sea fishing trip. He decided to cancel.
    On Capitol Hill, in Washington, DC, a polite State Department officer hesitantly entered the Dirksen Building suite of Senator Walter Burden and said: ‘I am afraid, sir, there’s some unpleasant news. The Secretary of State asks you to call. He wishes to tell you personally.’
    At the FBI headquarters on Pennsylvania Avenue, at the bottom of Capitol Hill, a priority cable arrived from Moscow and because of Ann Harris’s family connections was hurried immediately to the Director. Although the Director was a judge himself, he convened a conference of the Bureau’s legal department.
    Simultaneously, a matching priority cable was received at the CIA headquarters at Langley, Virginia. The Director called his own legal conference before telephoning his counterpart on Pennsylvania Avenue. Both Directors agreed to get separate legal opinion and talk later.
    In Moscow Lieutenant-Colonel Kir Gugin hurried officiously into the Foreign Ministry, irritated there had been no reason for the summons, but curious to see if there could be any benefit for the newly created Agency for Federal Security.
    And senior Militia Colonel Dimitri Danilov, with assistant Major Yuri Pavin, arrived at a third-floor flat on Ulitza Pushkinskaya ahead of any American presence.
    Petr Yakovlevich Yezhov had carried out two known assaults on women. During the second he had completely bitten off the left nipple of a prostitute who in unintended retribution had given him gonorrhoea minutes before the bite.
    For both attacks, mental evidence having been called at each trial, Yezhov served periods of detention in Moscow psychiatric institutions. As a result he had